To celebrate the one year anniversary of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Naoki Yoshida has shown first ever gameplay of the upcoming Ninja job. Put simply, it looks fantastic.
Seen above, the video reveals some not so shocking similarities to Final Fantasy XI‘s Ninja class. Agility and speed are naturally its greatest strength, but it also uses Ninjutsu for trickery. However, it’s not a tank class, and neither is Thief, its class equivalent. It is pure DPS, just as Ninja was originally intended in FFXI. New tank and healing classes will be announced in the future.
Although its pure DPS design may disappoint some Final Fantasy veterans, this is a very stylish job with some unique traits, which alone should make it popular with FFXIV players. It delivers its damage in a much different way to the other DPS in the game, providing some much needed variety to the endgame environment.
User DeliciousLunch on Reddit wrote several observations from the video:
GCD skills
- Most are 50/60 TP.
- Starter move combos into 2 moves. One ends the combo, the other combos further into another pair of moves. (Think WAR’s Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder, Heavy Swing > Maim > 2 Path Moves)
- One of the 3-hit combos applies a 20s debuff (the bar with strike debuff icon – hamstring? bleed?)
- A kunai? AoE around the character for 120 TP.
- A kunai? ranged single-target attack for 120 TP. Might be throwing knives and ROG.
- Kunai skills could be ROG throwing knife skills; hard to imagine using 2 of 5 job-skill slots for these.
Off-GCD Cooldowns:
- There’s a 1-second silence on a short cooldown, similar to Blunt Arrow.
- There’s 2 off-GCD moves that share a longish cooldown, and the one that was used applied a debuff. The debuff icon looks like the elemental ground effect DoT you get when you stand in hazards, except green.
- There’s the ground-targeted teleport.
- Unknown move with a Misery’s End looking icon that was on CD when the video started.
Mudras and Ninjutsu:
- There are 3 Mudras: Blue, Red and Yellow.
- The 3 Mudra skills and Ninjutsu skill are off-GCD and share their cooldown.
- Mudras have a very short cooldown; you can comfortably fit 2 in a GCD.
- Mudras do not break combos.
- The Ninjutsu skill changes its icon and action depending on active Mudras.
- Activating Ninjutsu triggers a 20-second cooldown for the 4 actions.
- Blue > Red > Ninjutsu does the lightning strike from the earlier video (inferred from skill icon changes)
- Blue > Red > Yellow > Ninjutsu does the waterspout move, which also grants what looks like a 5-second attack buff. Weave before a big combo hit?
- Red > Blue > Ninjutsu does the fireball move, appears to be an AoE (no buffs/debuffs)
- Both Blue > Ninjutsu and Red > Ninjutsu share the same green wind/shuriken Ninjutsu icon. Wonder what that’s about…
- Not clear if GCD moves interrupt a Mudra sequence – probably not.
Other:
- Ninja has a fancy jump animation.
- Unclear if positioning is important for any moves or combos, as he stuck to the rear.
- There’s still a whole bunch of icons on the hotbars that weren’t used in the clip.
Related: FFXIV Adds Recruit a Friend Campaign
In addition to this exciting new video, Square Enix have announced that FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is currently free to play for inactive accounts, but only for a limited time. This offer is available from Friday, August 22, 2014 at 4:00 a.m. to Monday, September 1, 2014 at 4:00 a.m. (PDT). You can read more here.
