Ninja Smoke Flash

Hi everybody,

NSF's description reads, in part, "You can command one of your Ninja Henchmen to throw down a Smoke Bomb. [...] You can only use this power on a Ninja Henchmen." [sic]
The detailed info page lists NSF's effect as "Grants power Smoke Bomb to Genin", though.

Does this really mean that the power works only for the first tier henchmen? Or are Jōnin and Oni also able to get critical hits from this?

Thanks for any information on this,

10joy

It works for all Ninja pets. Not just Genin. Take it, slot it well and spam it. :P

ive actually never really liked the smoke flash power, the rech is real low, end cost is very high, and it doesnt really seem to do much of anything for the ninja

i have heard that the crits they get with smoke flash do unresistable dmg, but i have not been able to confirm this (poeple reported testing this on RWZ dummies although the dummies regen too fast for 1 mm to kill it)

Never heard of doing unresisted critical damage.

The best candidate for smoke flash is actually Genin because Genin uses the most attacks within 10s than Oni and Jounin. Jounin already has first critical from hidden and placate.

Oni is not bad if you can get him to use Breath of Fire during smoke flash. They messed up his AI in a way that he no longer opens the battle with Breath. He used to do that ALL THE TIME as long as he was within the range. I would smoke flash Oni, goto him and he would open the battle with critical Breath of Fire. It was pretty awesome.

I found it useful for opening combat on the Oni. Usually for mobs that were either too tough (or perceptive) for the Jounin alone, or in conjunction with their opening attacks. However, that doesn't mean I can't see dropping it.

It also depends how you play. On medium difficulty, smoke bombing a Jounin who's about to die gets you a last spike of damage before you have to resummon. In a lot of cases he may finish off the opponent who's threatening him too.

I hate resummoning, so I'm all about survival tactics for my henchmen.

ive tried doing those tactics but it never seems to work, and more than 90% of the time i have to resummon anyway, but ive burned away 1/3 of my end popping the smoke bomb

running on a ninja/dark mm i dont think ive ever had problems not using smoke bomb, would rather just skip it since its never noticeable to me except for burning my end

smoke flash would prolly be less annoying as well if i didnt have to target a specific minion to use it, i feel it could be improved if you threw the smoke bomb at the the enemy and placate the enemy for the next ninja attack, but idk if the ninja would get a critical (would prolly end up making the power code wise a helluva lot more complex)

meh, I go without it and do just fine

Yeah, if you play ninjas/dark, then having to target a specific pet would probably be quite an annoyance. I was using it on my ninjas/FF, where the guys don't get hit a lot (and I wasn't having to resummon very often), so flashing them was a good way to give myself enough time to get over and use my healing pool. I had to target the guy anyway, so I might as well use an uninterruptible power to prepare for the interruptible one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master smoke flash would prolly be less annoying as well if i didnt have to target a specific minion to use it, i feel it could be improved if you threw the smoke bomb at the the enemy and placate the enemy for the next ninja attack, but idk if the ninja would get a critical (would prolly end up making the power code wise a helluva lot more complex)

That would be interesting to find out. Maybe try using the temp smoke flash power and see if the ninjas get the crit. I'm pretty sure they don't, though. If they did, then taking the ice ancillary and slotting the placate proc to its sleep power would have interesting possibilities...

I also want to point out that when I tested Ninja, Oni's AI is really messed up. He usually only uses two attacks in sequence. With two upgrades, he usually opens the battle with Ring of Fire and then Char. He does not cycle Fire Blast regularly. And once he draws the sword out, it's even more messed up. He doesn't cycle every power when they are recharged.


Oni has:

Fire Sword: 3s
Ring of Fire: 4s
Fire Blast: 4s
Fire Sword Hack: 6s (but with 3s activation time??)
Char: 8s

Breath of Fire: 16s
Rain of Fire: 60s

If Oni truly cycles everything when they are recharged especially at melee range, there shouldn't be much "delay" at all. However, watch Oni carefully, he has a lot of "pauses". It's like he can't decide what to use on what.

If Oni cycles fire blast as soon as it's recharged, Smoke Flash on him should be even better.