Various Mastery Feedback v47

[GreatWhite 4]

Ice

Cold Embrace of Winter (t3 passive) - The cooldown reduction and range increase feel incredibly minor. I've tried it, didn't like it, now I don't run it and I don't miss it at all. 

Frozen Senbon Strike - Deals too little damage. Could maybe have the passive stacks from Cold Embrace of Winter increase Frozen Senbon damage instead, then it would make for an actually good jutsu to have on Ice's PvE rotation. 

Permafrost - Feels perfect for what it is. Quite strong against those that choose to not chakra jump out of it.

Flash Freeze - Very useful ability for Ice. Flash Freeze will let you land skillshots when your stuns are on cooldown. The damage on this is sneakily high and it's completely viable to just ignore the fact that this is supposed to be a CC jutsu and use it purely for damage. 

Crystal Ice Mirror - Even without the Cold Embrace of Winter passive the TP range does not feel too small and the baseline range is enough to live comfortably provided you remember to not stray excessively far. 

Absolute Zero - Admittedly, this jutsu is overpowered relative to others. The cooldown is quite short, but it also feels like Ice lives or dies by this ability; to be able to stunlock and burst on short timers is sort of Ice's calling call. 

Great Glacial Barrage - It goes hand in hand with Absolute Zero along with Windscythe Gale all sharing similar cooldowns to make up Ice's bread and butter burst combo and it feels incredibly satisfying to hit.

Crystal Mirror Dome - An ultimate that feels like an ultimate and the epitome of Ice's damage capabilities. Nothing has been more satisfying and more fulfilling in PvP than hitting multi-man Domes and having a rapid-fire of numbers fill your screen. It's a very strong jutsu and the cast time provides many avenues of escape, making it seem more fair. 

In my opinion, Ice feels very well designed and fun to play. There's always a button that can be pressed, which can be overwhelming at first, but hours of time spent with the build will only inspire more creativity with how you use each of its jutsu. Overall, Ice beautifully ties in Wind and Water jutsu together into a cohesive toolkit with a hit-and-run, CC heavy, glass cannon style that is synonymous with Rogue gameplay from WoW. 

 

Water

Flooding Water/Deepsea Rupture - The real hitbox is about half the size it shows it to be visually. Making them smaller by matching the hitbox could also help with FPS issues.

Rising Geyser - Water's main filler ability. Wish it could be used without the restrictive target requirement. Giving this a minor range buff could also help alleviate clunkiness while trying to aim for something at max range. 

Aqua Prison - *chef's kiss* Quite literally single-handedly carried Water for many, many patches now. 

Great Waterbullet - Currently lies in the backburner of water's box of tools due to its low damage. The cast time feels fine, but the slow could afford to be stronger. Visually, it looks great but it also looks like it should pack a bigger punch. 

Water Dragon - Water's trademark. Still has the issue of the DoT aspect of Water Dragon not applying on targets that are suffering from hard CC.

 

Wind

Slicing Tempest - Not to be confused with its more popular and better looking sibling, 'Slicing Wind'. Slicing Tempest has the shortest cooldown out of all of Wind's abilities which makes you feel like it will be the star of the show, but no. It doesn't provide any fancy buffs or debuffs, and with a cast time that feels like forever, it doesn't even bring notable damage to the table. Reducing the cast time would only make this jutsu go from unusable to barely usable so what it really needs is a buff to damage. 

Gale Palm - Recent cooldown buffs were exactly what it needed. Good change. 

 

Earth

Earth Spike Explosion - There comes a time in every young earth chuunin's life when Earth Spike Explosion is useful, but that time passes by fast because it scales incredibly poorly. It's clunky to use, the cast time is too slow, and the damage is too little. If it were up to me, it would be reworked into Earth's own version of Rising Geyser; a ground-aimed AoE with knockup. After all ain't it a little odd that Earth can't throw rocks yet?

Rock Barrier - Sadly over-nerfed. Has the same cooldown as Susanoo Shield yet nowhere near as strong. Two seconds shorter, can't be used in hard CC, has a cast time. There's really no comparison in power between the two. It used to be a fantastic AoE grinding jutsu to group mobs together before grounding them up, but now it's too often on cooldown to be of much use. It deserves only a minute long cooldown at most. 

Earth could benefit a lot from having a general tech that reduces its jutsu cooldowns by 10 seconds similar to Poison and Genjutsu. 

 

Hyuuga

Air Palm - Hyuuga's only gap closer got bitch slapped with a huge cooldown nerf and is now in the running for Shinobi Story's worst jutsu. It deals unremarkable damage, and the stun lasts merely a single second. Air Palm used to be a staple ability for Hyuuga's breaker-palm combo and their most reliable interrupt for pesky medical shinobi, but after several consecutive nerfs it is left in the sad state that it's in now. I feel the nerfs to Air Palm should be reigned in a bit, perhaps by increasing the stun duration to two seconds so that it can be worked in as a solid gap closer again; it's the least Palm should be able to do for its 45 second cooldown. 

Byakugan Farsight Technique - Fulfill the Hyuuga rp fantasy of being able to see hundreds of meters away by changing this spell to be similar to WoW's Eagle Eye. Or at the very least, buff the duration of the current Farsight. Thanks.

Overall, Hyuuga has received some respectable nerfs but that hasn't stopped it from being a decent support mastery that can be plugged into nearly any melee build

 

Left Kenjutsu

Dance of the Flocking Birds - The damage is a bit low but more power can be put into the rest of the kit to balance it out. 

Samurai Swordsmanship Style - Surprisingly potent due to lasting 10 seconds and a short cooldown is always a plus. 

Swordsmanship Slashing Strike - The slight buff to damage was much needed and the new general techs add some good flavor to the stock Kenjutsu slashes for both trees. 

Heavenly Strike of Autumn - It's no secret that subsequent patch changes has drained out all the damage from Left Ken like pre-nerf Heavenly Strike used to drain chakra. Post nerf, Heavenly Strike is not even draining enough chakra to be a threat anymore and the same could be said for its damage. The armor reduction debuff sounds good in theory, but in Shinobi Story's current low-medium armor culture, a 4% armor reduction debuff per stack leaves much to be desired. In addition to that, a big caveat with Heavenly Strike is that it's surprisingly difficult to get 5 stacks of the armor penetration debuff on a target, even more so if you have to switch targets at any point. If the armor penetration was a bit higher, like 15-20% per stack, the damage boost from 5 stacks would be significant and I could see it start to tie into Left Ken's new identity as a bruiser-type mastery that is viable for both PvE and PvP. Think of it like a Samurai being able to bring anyone down to size by wearing someone down with cuts to the body over the course of a long fight. 

Final Glimmer of Evening Light - Damage is kind of low now, but fine enough. A crit with this will still certainly live up to its name.

Soul of the Swordsman - Probably too strong for its own good. The toxic relationship Soul has with how effectively it works with other masteries means the rest of the kit will take a hit if paired with over-performing masteries. 

Edited December 24, 2022 by GreatWhite