Feedback Upcoming Night Lord updates and plans

Hello!
In the same vein as our Buccaneer feedback thread, we would like to discuss Night Lord now.

The Anniversary patch brought the community a controversial update focused on Shadow Shifter, that was turned into an active buff, from a passive dodge rate.
Our goal was to reduce Night Lord's "power with impunity" standing: being able to deal one of the highest DPM in the game, while having one of the highest avoidability + dodge rate combined, second only to Shadower.

Aside from the loss of avoidability in itself, the main complaint has been about the hit that the class identity, when seen as an extremely slippery damage dealer, has received.


Now, with that said, we are gonna try to alter Night Lords in a way that tries to reconcile their identity with our desire to tune down the class strength.

What we discussed is a partial revert of Shifter (albeit into a weakened version), the addition of methods to actively gain more dodge rate, and the option to "give up" the dodge rate in favor of increased damage.
Note that the base damage will likely be lowered, as a counterbalance for the regained Shifter effectiveness.

Shadow Shifter

• Passively grants dodge rate (lower than pre-anni, potentially around 15%, down from 30%).
• Active: consume your defense to temporarily increase your damage output.
  This can happen through one/multiple options, that we're still exploring. For example:
  • Simple increase of Triple Throw damage;
  • Increased Shadow Partner damage (up from 50%);
  • Additional damage lines;
  • Other potential improvements.
• Notes:
  • The goal here is to bring back the familiar playstyle, while introducing a new opt-in stronger mechanic.
  • It follows the same concept as our recent Berserk rework.

Flash Jump

• If the player has at least 1 point in Shadow Shifter, casting Flash Jump grants extra dodge rate, up to a maximum amount.
  The extra dodge rate is consumed the next time Shadow Shifter procs.
• Tentatively, this would grant 1% dodge rate per jump, stacking (at max Shifter level) up to 5 times, bringing the total dodge rate at 20%.
• Notes:
  • This doesn't aim to be a tool to augment in-combat dodge rate, rather it would come into play during passive moments, such as moving around maps, or boss downtime.

Extra

• We would also like to explore other active ways for a Night Lord to build up some extra dodge rate, but so far we don't have any specific plan yet.
• An idea we were considering was to replace Ninja Ambush (the damage other time 4th job skill) with something else.
  • Should you think that's an idea worth exploring, please let us know if you have suggestions!

The proposed changes above are still just a sketch, but we believe they already summarise our preferred direction for the class, that would still be a high damage dealer and nimble/slippery thief, although less extreme.

Moving around as a means to build up evasive abilities enforces the concept of slipperiness, and, on the other hand, spending that ability in order to obtain more power would double down on their role as high DPM.
It's basically a way to keep both worlds, without them overlapping excessively with each other.

Once again, changes are not set in stone. We are also aware that not everyone dislikes the current system, so we are also open to hearing those voices, should you wish to instead suggest augmentation to the current status of Night Lords.


As a final disclaimer, we're aware that bringing back passive dodge rate effects will potentially benefit multiclienting setups, and go against the "scalability nerf" we've been talking about a lot.
In that regard, should the passive effect come back, we will look into tackling that in other ways, such as by implementing more types of attacks that pierce dodging effects.


We're interested in hearing your opinions and feedback. Thank you!

UPDATED PROPOSAL ON PAGE 17:

In addition to the above, we are considering retaining the option to use active shifter on perhaps a shorter duration and shorter cooldown for players that want reactive gameplay:

• Active shifter (numbers TBD): 5-10s duration on a 1 minute cooldown for 100% avoid
• Using active shifter disables the passive bonus until the cooldown is back up
• Can be used to dodge the aforementioned "unavoidable" boss attacks (PB music note, zakum pillars, other attacks that might be tweaked in the future)

This is taking into account that passive shifter and luk scaling avoid are overall down from pre-anniversary patch. Assuming no damage changes and no other skill changes.

 

That's a fine opinion. Would you be opposed to let's say a 20% damage nerf for the shifter revert?