2011-02-19, 11:58 AM
The biggest problem with DoT skills now is that they have practically no room in training. Enemies die way too fast before Venom can even last its full duration. Therefore, the only beneficial usage for Venom was at bossing instead. I imagine the same will occur for Ninja Ambush.
However, from what I can gather, Ninja Ambush may be more difficult set up at bosses for NL's since it requires NL's to be dead center of where you want the Ninja Ambush to trigger. Often times, NL's touching bosses = death unless you've HP washed yourself to oblivion. For Shadowers, Ninja Ambush may be more optimal if the DoT duration wasn't bugged. Provided that this gets fixed in the future, it will deal quadruple the Shadower's max damage range every second for 14 seconds provided that the Shadower has maxed Ninja Ambush and that it ticks twice every second.
It would be a nice addition to DPS, but looking at the Shadower's 4th skillset, there really aren't any skills worth sacrificing for Ninja Ambush with the exception of Taunt and Hero's Will. Hero's Will is great for Shadowers since Shadowers make great seduce mules. Taunt has been proven to work better for training Shadowers (let's face it, there aren't enough bosses in the game for you to be training on all day). I would say that neither of these skills are worth passing up for maxing Ninja Ambush. The only real counter argument I may have for this is that Taunt won't work on Lionheart Castle mobs due to their boss flags. However, by the time a Shadower starts raising Ninja Ambush, Lionheart's beefiest mob, the Castle Golem, will still go down in seconds, not warranting it necessary to Ninja Ambush.
The other problem that I foresee with Ninja Ambush when used with NL's is that if the damage calculation's anything like Venom, then this will discount the stars in the maximum damage equation. Venom's calculated without the NL's stars factored in. This puts the NL's Ninja Ambush damage anywhere from 10 to 30 weapon attack backwards. That's a huge hit for NL's as it certainly isn't easy anymore to scrounge up weapon attack for that class especially to 170 total without stars. Provided you have a clean VIP claw perfectly scrolled (109 weapon attack), max cygnus blessing (109 + 24 = 133), a 10 attack Facestompers (143), a 10 attack belt (153), you'll need a 17+ attack glove to total to 170 weapon attack before stars. At that point and by the time you start maxing Ninja Ambush, Triple Throw itself will probably deal way more damage in one strike to cover 14 seconds quadruple a nerfed maximum range than walking up to melee-range to a boss (and risking death) and walking back.
So, where does this leave us? In order to max Ninja Ambush, NL's will have to drop Ninja Storm, Taunt, and probably some points off of Hero's Will. While I know many NL's I've talked to say they only have one point in Will, I find it much safer to have it maxed, especially for a fragile class like an NL. The argument for Taunt is the same as the Shadower's. This leaves Ninja Storm to sacrifice points from. Now, Ninja Storm's a utility based skill allowing the NL to (finally) be able to knockback enemies around it. This skill has been rendered near useless through BigBang as NL's no longer need a minimum distance range to throw its stars. The upside is, it can still KB enemies farther than individually throwing stars to KB a group of enemies. KB is always useful, and when maxed, Ninja Storm provides 100% KB allowing for better utility. The question of whether or not NL's will have to use KB during training is dependent on the way each NL trains, meaning there's the possibility that Storm will be useless for some of them and better to max out Ambush. But since Ambush isn't needed for training........ You get the picture.
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What Nexon should have done with Ninja Ambush was turn it into an ultimate where ninjas suddenly appear from under the floorboards and from inside kitchen cabinets to throw a flurry of knives at every enemy on the screen, wail on a guitar, and then disappear (Cooldown 30 seconds).
However, from what I can gather, Ninja Ambush may be more difficult set up at bosses for NL's since it requires NL's to be dead center of where you want the Ninja Ambush to trigger. Often times, NL's touching bosses = death unless you've HP washed yourself to oblivion. For Shadowers, Ninja Ambush may be more optimal if the DoT duration wasn't bugged. Provided that this gets fixed in the future, it will deal quadruple the Shadower's max damage range every second for 14 seconds provided that the Shadower has maxed Ninja Ambush and that it ticks twice every second.
It would be a nice addition to DPS, but looking at the Shadower's 4th skillset, there really aren't any skills worth sacrificing for Ninja Ambush with the exception of Taunt and Hero's Will. Hero's Will is great for Shadowers since Shadowers make great seduce mules. Taunt has been proven to work better for training Shadowers (let's face it, there aren't enough bosses in the game for you to be training on all day). I would say that neither of these skills are worth passing up for maxing Ninja Ambush. The only real counter argument I may have for this is that Taunt won't work on Lionheart Castle mobs due to their boss flags. However, by the time a Shadower starts raising Ninja Ambush, Lionheart's beefiest mob, the Castle Golem, will still go down in seconds, not warranting it necessary to Ninja Ambush.
The other problem that I foresee with Ninja Ambush when used with NL's is that if the damage calculation's anything like Venom, then this will discount the stars in the maximum damage equation. Venom's calculated without the NL's stars factored in. This puts the NL's Ninja Ambush damage anywhere from 10 to 30 weapon attack backwards. That's a huge hit for NL's as it certainly isn't easy anymore to scrounge up weapon attack for that class especially to 170 total without stars. Provided you have a clean VIP claw perfectly scrolled (109 weapon attack), max cygnus blessing (109 + 24 = 133), a 10 attack Facestompers (143), a 10 attack belt (153), you'll need a 17+ attack glove to total to 170 weapon attack before stars. At that point and by the time you start maxing Ninja Ambush, Triple Throw itself will probably deal way more damage in one strike to cover 14 seconds quadruple a nerfed maximum range than walking up to melee-range to a boss (and risking death) and walking back.
So, where does this leave us? In order to max Ninja Ambush, NL's will have to drop Ninja Storm, Taunt, and probably some points off of Hero's Will. While I know many NL's I've talked to say they only have one point in Will, I find it much safer to have it maxed, especially for a fragile class like an NL. The argument for Taunt is the same as the Shadower's. This leaves Ninja Storm to sacrifice points from. Now, Ninja Storm's a utility based skill allowing the NL to (finally) be able to knockback enemies around it. This skill has been rendered near useless through BigBang as NL's no longer need a minimum distance range to throw its stars. The upside is, it can still KB enemies farther than individually throwing stars to KB a group of enemies. KB is always useful, and when maxed, Ninja Storm provides 100% KB allowing for better utility. The question of whether or not NL's will have to use KB during training is dependent on the way each NL trains, meaning there's the possibility that Storm will be useless for some of them and better to max out Ambush. But since Ambush isn't needed for training........ You get the picture.
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What Nexon should have done with Ninja Ambush was turn it into an ultimate where ninjas suddenly appear from under the floorboards and from inside kitchen cabinets to throw a flurry of knives at every enemy on the screen, wail on a guitar, and then disappear (Cooldown 30 seconds).