Ninjitsu Question
A self heal, and *really* cool toys.
I have 3 */nin stalkers (50, 40, 12) and a BS/SR scrapper (50).
They are all equally difficult to kill, but the stalkers are much more active in how they go about it.
Different play styles for different moods.
Make a man a fire and keep him warm for the day, SET a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
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I have trouble calling caltrops a toy anymore. It's just too good. At least in PvE the amount of damage mitigation it can provide not just for you but for teammates as well is quite considerable. That plus a self-heal and psi resistance help out a lot. The psi resistance in particular nicely covers for some of those non-positional psi attacks that can come your way and go right through Ninjitsu (or SR's) positional defenses.
As for KB protection, I usually put one Karma:-KB in Hide and call it a day. At least for PvE that handles 90% of what can knock you down probably (assuming it can even hit you). Mainly I feel the lack of true KB protection on Hammi raids and nowhere else.
I've tried SR but never made it very far. The DDR is enticing but little else about it is to me. I KNOW I'll miss being able to stop an entire team-sized ambush in its tracks with Caltrops, bunch them up, and then confuse half of them with Blinding Powder.
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Agreed with Zem.
Problems in SR that Nin fixes:
Protection against confuse and fear
Protection against the one damage type that can destroy your defenses even when softcapped
Uninterruptible self heal
Protection against Toxic (just for giggles)
AoE protection before you've finished most of the leveling process
Perks of Nin:
Caltrops
Caltrops
Caltrops
Blinding Powder
SR's DDR is nice, but just take Retsu for instances when that would be needed.
Nin's mez weakness, kb, can be overcome with a single IO; SR's mez weaknesses cannot.
Major perk for SR: Quickness
The Inspiration Maker's Guide [i12] UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
A Flash in the Dark: The Electric/Ninjitsu Stalker [i23]
Kheldian Inspiration Macros UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
Guide to the Katana~Ninja Blade/Electric [i23]
It all comes down to playstyle. Are you a fire-and-forget it player who wants his secondary to just work all on its own, allowing you to focus solely on your primary, or are you a compulsive button-smasher who prefers more active mitigation and uses your secondary offensively alongside your primary?
If you're the former, you can join the proud ranks of stalkers with self-contained mitigation alongside Willpower and Electric Armor. Super Reflexes is for you. If you build correctly, you'll be operating from complete safety throughout most of the PVE experience.
If you're the latter, then it's Ninjitsu, and you're in for a fly-by-the seat of your pants kind of mitigation that can be exciting, effective and almost unkillable at times, provided you've got the reflexes and the computer to handle it. Just like Regeneration, Ninjitsu requires you to actually use your secondary actively to survive.
With Super Reflexes, you've got the same level of mitigation all the time, but when it's gone it's gone.
With Ninjitsu, you've got defense, but you've got other powers you can fall back on when the defense fails.
EDIT - and everything Zem and Microcosm said holds true, as well.
The Scrappers' Guide to Dark Melee | Kheldian Binds and Strategies
I guess Im judging it to quickly probably due to Ive already have two characters with Super Reflexes (Scrapper & Stalker) and feel more comfortable with it.
So Im gonna give it some more time and see how it goes, plus I didnt think about putting Karma KB protection in Hide.
One of the major perks about Ninjitsu is that you get all of your +Def from two toggles, rather than running a lot of toggles and taking passives (like SR). That, plus the self heal, is a major for me.
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I guess Im judging it to quickly probably due to Ive already have two characters with Super Reflexes (Scrapper & Stalker) and feel more comfortable with it.
So Im gonna give it some more time and see how it goes, plus I didnt think about putting Karma KB protection in Hide. |
Glad to hear, and good luck!
Just remember:
Caltrops are good for more than corner pulling. Throw out your caltrops as soon as you can, and stay within melee range of the patch. Stand on it if you have to.
You can use blinding powder while hidden without breaking hide or aggroing any mobs. In fact, I recommend doing so more often than not, because it will mitigate the alpha.
Go for your heal when you're at half health.
Smoke bomb DOES break hide, so if you take it don't try to use it pre-emptively.
The Scrappers' Guide to Dark Melee | Kheldian Binds and Strategies
Interesting thing you can do with nin/nin or bs/nin if you're softcapped but can't with SR:
(Assuming all of these powers are recharged)
Kuji-In Rin>Caltrops>Buildup>Assassin's Blade will put you back in hide if you have been scrapping and give you the full AS, no placate needed. If you get hit it doesn't work, but you were going to use all of those powers anyway. Not as useful as the electric melee version, but still...
The Inspiration Maker's Guide [i12] UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
A Flash in the Dark: The Electric/Ninjitsu Stalker [i23]
Kheldian Inspiration Macros UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
Guide to the Katana~Ninja Blade/Electric [i23]
Interesting thing you can do with nin/nin or bs/nin if you're softcapped but can't with SR:
(Assuming all of these powers are recharged) Kuji-In Rin>Caltrops>Buildup>Assassin's Blade will put you back in hide if you have been scrapping and give you the full AS, no placate needed. If you get hit it doesn't work, but you were going to use all of those powers anyway. Not as useful as the electric melee version, but still... |
LR and Build Up have the same recharge, so you can do this relatively frequently, and the knockdown from LR makes getting the AS (which also has a shorter activation time than nin blade or broadsword's) much easier. Greatly enhances the single target capability of an elec/nin stalker.
The Inspiration Maker's Guide [i12] UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
A Flash in the Dark: The Electric/Ninjitsu Stalker [i23]
Kheldian Inspiration Macros UPDATED with POPMENUS and Movement Binds!
Guide to the Katana~Ninja Blade/Electric [i23]
So my question is...other than the cool powers like Caltrops, Smoke Flash & Blinding Powder in Ninjitsu, what's the point of having Ninjitsu when we have Super Reflexes?
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I'm an old school Super Reflexes player who played it back when it didn't have scaling resistances in the passives, didn't have Defense Debuff Resistance, and didn't stack with Force Fields, Manuevers, or even Weave and Combat Jumping. I've struggled through the 28 levels to get some semblance of AoE defenses. I've resisted the impulse to get Aid Self, since I insisted on making the set survivable as designed. In fact, what I ended up doing is going to Stealth and Intimidate and making it play very much like Ninjitsu.
I see Super Reflexes as the Power Set for the super speedsters and agile hero archetypes, like Flash and Spiderman. But in the absense of Ninjitsu it was kind of a split concept, because it seemed to cover all the trained gadget-using heroes as well, like Batman. As such, it seemed to lack identity, it was all about Defense and nothing else, healing didn't fit the speedsters, and resistance didn't fit the gadget users.
When Ninjitsu came out, I immediately recognized it as the split off of the "wonderful toys" from Super Reflexes. Ninjisitu centralized the Defenses, bringing in AoE defense earlier, while giving less Defense overall. But, it added a self heal, which greatly improved the early survivability of the set, and cut down dramatically on downtime. Meanwhile, SR gained the scaling resistances, which made it easier to survive when you WERE low on hit points.
And the "gadgets" really come late in the set. Smoke Flash is really just a toy, it's useful to escape or to get another critical, but it's not game changing. Blinding Powder, though, it's as good as everyone says it is. Since I realized it doesn't break Hide, I've been throwing it out before every fight, and even before, it was usually my first move after an AS. It's not just a Confuse, AND a Sleep, but a -ToHit as well. There's nothing like that in Super Reflexes, not even Quickness.
Caltrops I haven't really found much use for, although I do use it to keep a Boss losing HP, and slow him down, when I'm fighting him. I also took it rather late, I didn't want to get it too much sooner than my Scrapper could, and he has to wait for Weapon Mastery.
That's not to say that Super Reflexes doesn't have its strength as well. They are different sets now, starting from the different base, and going in two different directions. You can pick up Aid Self and Invoke Panic from the Pool and get about the same results from SR. Or, you can pick up CJ and Weave if you want that extra 5.625% Defense in Ninjitsu. It's the same 5 Pool picks either way.
Caltrops is by far my favorite single power in this game.
Here's the thing. The non-details description doesn't mention the MAGNITUDE FIFTY FEAR.
But the fear effect makes it an AMAZING mitigator, because it keeps things running away from you a lot of the time. If you block a corridor with caltrops, enemies will sometimes run multiple rooms away. Caltrops plus the ranged defense toggle gives you better melee defense, in practice, than you get from the melee defense toggle, because everything runs away and then shoots at you.
It's not just that they run, though. Its that they run SLOWLY most of the time, so they spend quite a while in range of your melee attacks, but not meleeing with you.
And with any recharge at all, caltrops is always available. Add in a Positron's Blast chance for energy damage and it even does respectable damage.
I've got two traps characters (MM and def), and they have been known to simply run into a crowded group and drop trops, and not get badly hurt. Heck, I once managed to save an ally tanker who was down to about 3% health, surrounded by 6 enemies, with caltrops. Dropped caltrops, started killing everything as fast as I could. Nothing actually managed to land another attack, because they were all too busy running away.
Caltrops is a very situational power. The situation it's useful in is that there are enemies who might otherwise attack you.
I just made a new Stalker (Ninja Blade / Ninjitsu) last night, it's level 9 now. One thing I've noticed about Ninjitsu is that it's very similar to Super Reflexes, but Ninjitsu doesn't have any knockback protection like Super Reflexes has with Practiced Brawler. So my question is...other than the cool powers like Caltrops, Smoke Flash & Blinding Powder in Ninjitsu, what's the point of having Ninjitsu when we have Super Reflexes?
Now I already have a level 50 Scrapper & a level 50 Stalker, both have Super Reflexes as their secondary, so I'm very familiar with Super Reflexes. I'm really trying out Ninjitsu and I really don't see the benefit of it when I think Super Reflexes seems superior to it. I know level 9 is not really far enough to test out Ninjitsu, but I'm just thinking of the future of my Stalker using Ninjitsu. So I guess if you really want to feel like a Ninja, then I can see using Ninjitsu, but I'm looking for survivability with good defenses.
Does anyone else have Ninjitsu and prefer it over Super Reflexes and if so, why?
And here is a quick snippet of Ninjitsu for Stalkers from Paragon Wiki.
And here is a quick snippet of Super Reflexes for Stalkers from Paragon Wiki.