Iron style Kenjutsu Feedback patch 34

[GreatWhite 4]

Disclaimer: All damage tests have been conducted by a lvl60 player against a lvl60 Ninja Training Dummy for consistency's sake.

 

 

 

Way of the Blade (passive)

 

It's an old issue yet despite the new patch it's still not working at all which brings Kenjutsu down a passive.

 

Heavenly Strike of Autumn

Here are the damage numbers running 1393 attack power with Heavenly Strike's fully stacked 20% armor penetration debuff on the target(which adds about ~200 damage with all 5 stacks against low armor targets)

Here is Heavenly Strike with 3480 attack power with the same 20% armor penetration debuff.

The damage for this is similar to Swordsmanship Slashing Strike, but the cooldown is longer and it costs chakra. For PvE, the boost to armor on mobs has been significant and allows the armor penetration to hold up, but in return making physical damage abilities feel inferior across the board without it. The extra damage dealt bonus per stack feels negligible and it would be nice for there to be a slight buff to this.  

"...the target loses 25 chakra every second for 3 seconds." This isn't true. In fact, targets lose an upfront amount of chakra ranging in the thousands. I have no idea how this works, but perhaps it pertains to character levels. Against a lvl26, Heavenly Strike drained 4093 chakra, but against a lvl60 target it would drain 3271 and 3443 chakra...Weird. The answer is resilience.

Dance of Flocking Birds

Good ol' flocking birds. The damage on this is very similar to how it was pre-patch despite a larger amount of attack power, but I find this to be fine since instead of chunking someone for half health, it now deals about 1/8th of a health bar.

 

Although, there is a massive problem with this jutsu now which brings us to...

Early Morning Wind

The stun duration was reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second. I cannot stress enough how awful this jutsu feels to use now. Charge into a flock was the old bread and butter of Kenjutsu and you used to be able to get off the whole duration of flock inside of the stun, making these two abilities synergize incredibly well. Now with the 1 second duration, people can simply walk out of range of flock and even certain mobs will jump behind you and dodge your flock. This also makes flock feel clunkier to use in return as you cannot move in the process while your target can. Pre-jumping the charge also completely invalidates this jutsu. On top of all that, it has anti-synergy with other masteries since using charge for the 1 second stun will DR any other stuns from the rest of your toolkit. 

Bring back the 3 second duration.

 

Samurai Swordsmanship Style

The nerf from 300% to 200% was justified but it doesn't feel like a 4 minute cd jutsu anymore. I would like to see the cooldown reduced to 3 minutes or even 2 minutes in return. 

 

Swordsmanship Slashing Strike

Feels like it has the same issue as Heavenly Strike where the scaling is severely underpowered. I am currently doing less damage with this now at 3.5k ap than I ever did at lvl40 with 2.6k. Considering hp pools have been doubled or even tripled, this ability now tickles and it's especially bad against mobs near your level due to armor.

 

Here are the numbers running 1393 attack power:

Now here it is with 3480 attack power where the difference was only an increase of ~1k damage with an increase of ~2000 attack power which leads me to believe that slash scales somewhere around ~50% of attack power now. This is HALF of what it used to be and makes it feel incredibly undertuned. 

 

Final Glimmer of Evening Light

Execute still trucks. The damage increase was perfect for the new adjustment in health pools. Solid.

 

Soul of the Swordsman

This jutsu is dope, ngl, but at the same time it doesn't feel like a jutsu worthy of being at the bottom of the tree yet. 

"...as well as grants you the ability to deflect any blows..." This doesn't seem true at all as I've yet to block anything, auto attacks or abilities with this activated, so if you were a full melee character, you would not be able to attack anything at all while still taking damage from external sources. You also can't chakra jump or dash while Soul is in effect which I think is an oversight. 

I'd hope to see the "deflect any blows" part be fixed, but if not, I believe a cooldown reduction would be in order. 

Edited July 11, 2022 by GreatWhite