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making ninjas great again

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 11:24 pm
by goodriddance
Hey Bear's BBSers!

So I'm rocking a lvl 75 ninja and just started looking ahead in the edited realm to see what excitement is in store for the next 50 levels or so <egrin>. So what was I looking for? Well, what makes ninjas awesome?

- Awesome backstabs
- Crazy dodge
- Great damage for a sneaking/backstabbing class (after all, they get all weapons, not just 1H)
- Cool ninja-specific items because most silk gear is designed for casters. (After all, thieves, gypsies, missionaries all get leather, and mystics have their kai spells)

Well - in short, what I found was that at least from 90-120:
- Ninjas have by FAR the worst backstabbing bonuses of sneaking/backstabbing classes. (Based on stock, they should be 2nd only to thieves, right?)
- Ninjas don't have any weapons that outperform the rest of the sneaking/backstabbing classes, since the gap's been closed between 2h and 1h weapon damage (black adamantite, socketed, forged weapons are basically equal damage for 2H and 1H.)
- Ninjas have no solid ninja-specific items that mitigate the above...

Basic bonuses of high lvl sets:
Level 90 & 120 leather sets: +30/30/20 BS min/max/accuracy, +50-100 hp. Rangers also get nature's camo for an *extra* 10/30/50 BS upgrade, and gypsies/missionaries get all kinds of buffs.
Level 90 & 120 silk sets: no BS, no HP. (Mystics get big mana regen and damage bonuses though, and +20 dodge from old man)

As you would expect, silk > leather for dodge and leather > silk for AC, which I think even out. But ninjas get left in the dust when it comes to damage.

*Another key point: remorhaz gauntlets give *divine breathe* and mystics have their own healing. Ninjas are dramatically worse off, as the only sneakers without all these easy sources of dodge, healing, or HP.

At 100, ninjas get Erevis Cale gear. But currently this a major step down from their lvl 90 gear: -25 dodge, -9 ac, still no BS damage. But most importantly: no set bonus! I think Erevis Cale ninja gear predated a lot of the more recent armor and it probably needs a substantial upgrade to be comparable to other sets (remorhaz, taer, charred blue leather).

So what to do about it? Well, I figure there are a few options:

(1) Upgrade Erevis Cale set to be competitive with other high level sets. +HP, +dodge, some serious +BS to catch up (like +50 min/max/acc), some kind of healing or lifedrain, and maybe a +damage bonus to make ninjas the hard-hitting, backstabbing, dodging glass cannons they were intended to be? I guess in this case, it would replace taer fur as the endgame ninja gear. Give it a set bonus? Make it upgradeable? I think something like this is probably the right balance of easy & worthwhile.

(2) Add +BS or +damage to the taer fur and black & blue silk. (This might make mystics way overpowered though...)

(3) Expand high-level ninja-specific items in edit (!). This is a really fun option to think about, and I could imagine all kinds of coolness. Smoke bombs that could be held in the off-hand & used to decrease opponent AC? Backstab-bonus ninja-only bracers? A worn item that gives lifedrain to attacks? Ninja-only 2H weapons that actually do really solid damage or lifedrain? I'm sure it'd require some careful thought to get this just right.

Anyway, love to hear suggestions, particularly from ninjas & other sneakers! If you want, I can try to spec out what new Erevis Cale gear might look like...

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:37 am
by BearFather
Love the info. There is a new mod in the works, and I will make sure ninja gets some love in it.

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2020 1:05 pm
by goodriddance
Awesome! On a related note: I was thinking about cool high-level weapons that make having +crits actually meaningful.

Most chars easily max out crits by lvl 70 because of the +1 crits every 10 levels (see https://www.mudinfo.net/viewtopic.php?t=2301). And we know that crits only use a weapon's max damage in their calculation. This means one could make a weapon that would specifically do massive crit damage (by having a high max damage but low min damage), but where 40% crits are hard to obtain...

So what if you had a weapon like this? I'm thinking it would be perfect for an endgame ninja to work towards:

Jester's Blade
This odd, brightly colored sword looks like a shattered blade that was haphazardly re-forged. It has spikes protruding from other spikes at all angles, giving it the appearance of a jester's cap. It would be a profoundly unbalanced weapon to wield. Nevertheless, with a lucky swing, it would likely deal major damage.

2H sharp
Speed 3500 (or maybe a bit higher. 3700, like nexus spear?)
Damage 0-250 (Or a bit less - 210? This would have an average of 105 damage, exactly the same as massive skull crusher. But might need to be a bit higher to be comparable to the spell procs on forged/socketed weapons...)
Crits -30 (or even a bigger penalty, if that were too easy to max.)
Minlvl 80 or 90 or higher

(Could also have a high minimum strength requirement & high encumbrance. Could even be ninja-only!)

Key attributes:
- It would swing fast enough that anyone *could* get to 5s eventually (e.g. by level 100 or so)
- It would crit fiercely... *BUT* you'd have to have serious +crit gear or racial crit bonus to be able to max crits at 40% with it
- Its low minimum damage, high speed, and lack of magical secondary procs would mean that it would still be mediocre for bash/smash attacks. This is to encourage heavy warriors/paladins to look elsewhere! :)

Expected crit damage per round (with maxed crits):
(3*maxdamage)*(40% crit rate)*(5 swings)*(90% hit) + (100 dam)*(60% regular hit rate)*(5 swings)*(90% hit) = 1,350 dam.

This is quite comparable to socketed & forged 1H weapons (once you factor in that those get secondary spell procs and +50% spelldam from the crystal studded helm). Ideally, it should probably be slightly higher damage than a typical 1H endgame weapon. After all, 2H are supposed to be a little more potent than 1H, since you pay the price by making it a 2h weapon. Also you'd have to gear up just right for +crits to get there, which adds some challenge. But I am no expert in this kind of thing & it probably needs some tweaking to get just right...

Anyway, just a thought. It'd definitely get me excited to play for!

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:14 am
by goodriddance
Another weapon idea: making an equivalent 1H sharp to typical endgame weapons, but with a chance to lifesteal for ninjas.
Would do approx. same damage as forged weapon, but fix what all the other sneakers get in their remorhaz gloves...

Erevis Cale's Finger:
1H sharp 29-50
50% chance to grey spark for 145-360
25% chance Drain Life for 150-200
+30 BS min/max
ninja only

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 9:22 pm
by goodriddance
I'll also bump a couple suggestions from a post (Jek's I think?) a while back, with suggested bard/ninja/ranger upgrades. I think the ranger & bard stuff was implemented. Here were the ninja suggestions:

Level 60 Worn item from Gnome merchent - Jet black insignia
AC: 1/1, Magical +6, Crits +6, Dodge +3, Max Dmg +3,
BsAccy +60, BsMaxDmg +30, BsMinDmg +15, Loyal

Suggestion for level 100 armor set
Khalif's combat upgrade available for Erevis armor set

Great ideas, very much in the same spirit!

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2020 10:55 am
by goodriddance
Some more cool ninja ideas:

Smoke bombs (off-hand)
use 3x per day

What should they do? You could make them similar to ruby-encrusted bracers:
Target: room Confusion +100%, 2 rounds

or, alternatively, could use it to temporarily super-power your backstab
cast smokebuff:
BS min/max/accuracy +100/100/100 for 10 rounds

min level 90 or so? it would definitely be cool to add something like this to one of the ninja shops of the game.

Re: making ninjas great again

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:41 pm
by Jek
Some pretty great ideas here.. Just putting 2c in since I'm also running a Ninja class.

I do agree; upgrading Ninja sure would help balance things out some.
Particularly since the silk armor really is for casters, not so much for Mystics and Ninjas.

I've always liked the deep jungle side quests (Fangblade / Sylk), they are pretty ninja-ish.
Can see a new side quest for ninja's involving Sylk and / or Erevis Cale that would grant
some class specific weapons to make up for the armor.

Or just some new combat oriented silks for the mystics and ninjas could be nice too.