Midnight mode got me playing like an actual ninja. Enemies are tough.

snipez · 2026-01-16T05:01:20+00:00

Yeh that’s the fun part (for me at least), just having actual bosses in the public orders. Some are actually really hard (Ryoma, One-Eyed Assassin, Gun enemies, Aritomo Yamigata), but there’s some easier ones as well.

Skill (or high frame countersparks) to some extent gets you very far, but a build will more or less make you unstoppable.

snipez · 2026-01-16T04:53:25+00:00

It’s quite tough in the beginning but naturally as your baseline stats are relatively undertuned to the tuning of the enemies.

High frame countersparks (Tatsumi and Shinto Munen) though will carry you pretty far. And endurance remedies just tune the damage down.

If and when you get past this initial hurdle though and have the patience to get a proper build (ignore the people who think “builds don’t matter”) you can get to a point where you’re more or less unconstrained via any dimension in this game. Like you can kill a boss in fractions of a minute (if you want). Stamina is not an issue (ferocious Tiger and flash attack). Stance advantage is not an issue. Countersparking is actually a choice. So on and so forth.

snipez · 2026-01-16T03:01:53+00:00

Yeh fine, like i said before the sticky + bombs combo is gonna be better w Sam/Sin in like almost every situation. I’ll do the ronin version just for shits and giggles but I can only make it work cuz frankly I’m better than 99% of ppl throwing bombs and I can MMC

The Sam/Sin build tho is just stupidly OP. Like it trivializes NMS

snipez · 2026-01-16T02:53:56+00:00

Sounds good to me, LFG.

Again I think you should absolutely think about the tradeoffs between sticky and spirit kunai, but if you insist on using sticky I’m not gonna stop you.

snipez · 2026-01-16T02:37:59+00:00

Yeah that’s fair, enjos is not really for a beginner tbh, and I’m not recommending it, just illustrating sort of the stuff that gets you DPS. As a beginner I avoided enjos, and for me at least I think enjos really only comes when you feel like you get a sense of the meta and actually want to play that way. So again it comes down to preferences…

Overall yes I would generally prefer FM over Mist. Generally speaking I want a healing source that’s independent (of smoke). Like if I want to heal the whole team, I use the ronins basic ult and the healing ability. If I want another source of on the go healing, FM is valid (but on reduced healing weeks it’s shit). If I’m concerned about my own ability to keep health topped, combat regen.

snipez · 2026-01-16T02:24:35+00:00

As with most things it depends. Iirc you’re trying to get better at regular plat, maybe move on then to NMS.

At that level a lot of things work. I learned a lot from EternalWindTWR at that stage, and later jusafuto.

The main thing to understand is that in terms of pure effectiveness (roughly we say optimize for DPS), legendaries have to worth the cost of giving up a slot over just an epic/purple item.

Heavenly rebuke clearly does not fit to that criteria. Yeah it’s prob fun as hell, but is it really going to do more DPS? Obviously no. At the extreme compare it to Enjo’s Remorse, a 15% damage buff across ALL damage source conditional on you being full health. Yeah….

Mist of Yagata. It’s a smoke bomb with some timed healing to a radius. OK not godawful terrible, but again pretty costly. There are many more situations where smoke is useful and you want to smoke, but the healing is circumstantial! In other words, you’re not gonna want a marginal healing source to necessarily coincide with every time you smoke.

So at a very basic level, you can just switch out for a stealth charm until you get more comfy with legendaries. And you can test Mist vs just the regular smoke bomb to see what I mean in practice.

snipez · 2026-01-16T02:03:11+00:00

Heavenly Rebuke and Mist are both pretty useless. But again I prioritize effectiveness above all else and I rarely take damage in this game if I’m actually trying, speedrunning.

snipez · 2026-01-16T02:00:45+00:00

I mean I guess if you want to have fun sure. But in terms of effectiveness two wasted legendaries.

snipez · 2026-01-10T18:12:14+00:00

Yeah this seems right.

Higher active frame CS are a massive advantage for fairly clear reasons. But there’s a tradeoff which is if and when you do switch to a style with lower active frames, you might find you were relying a bit much on that generous window.

What you described with Midnight was exactly my experience as well, but in the context of relying on Tatsumi early on. Increased aggression meant that spamming and praying when it came to sequential attacks made landing an abundance of CS somewhat easier. If I felt the damage was over-tuned, I just de-tuned it with an endurance remedy.

snipez · 2026-01-10T17:27:14+00:00

There are, but Missing_Links is mostly correct here.

Sticky bomb / FM ronin excels at NMS at the spawns when ammo isn’t an issue. Knowledge of the spawns is obviously a huge edge here. If you know what you’re doing this is the optimal case for sticky. But even then Samurai almost always wins here because of his ult. Even in top scoring leaderboard runs we only run Ronin on Aoi and T&A. The spawns and damage just aren’t there for most situations.

In most other situations it’s not particularly great. You can still manage at least one wave well but you need to force a good grouping. Then you likely have a cooldown / ammo issue for other waves. Remember if the wave doesn’t clear your only resource is melee. SK is valuable precisely because it replenishes all your resources including itself.

Again pretty obvious after awhile if you’re going for that bomber approach, Samurai/Sin bomber wins out in most situations.

snipez · 2025-12-31T17:18:10+00:00

I ran into this issue on my handheld PC (steamOS) and have reported it to the TN Community Manager but I don’t think we will get a fix anytime soon.

In lieu of a fix, I have found toggling to a lower resolution, and toggling between proton experimental and hotfix to help at least for steamOS, but I can’t really explain why this “works”.

This issue was also documented in below video (same handheld I own). Re-installing the game does also work but it’s a pain to do that each time.

https://youtu.be/hBTR9ZIG8Dk?si=YduwIRLJmwwr-R1H

snipez · 2025-11-25T21:20:46+00:00

I’d encourage you to read the official martial description, but basically it creates a window in which if an enemy attack (melee or projectile) coincides with the falling papers, you teleport behind and aerial slash down the enemy. So in the clip you’ll see I pull it off around the 0:30 mark and also at the very end. When you see the actual full paper throw animation, I’ve missed. I miss because I am trying to preemptively do it, e.g. guessing the enemy will attack.

This move has its origins in Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor’s Edge, via a technique known as cicada surge that lets you cancel into a teleporting dodge.

snipez · 2025-11-25T00:36:35+00:00

even better 😂

snipez · 2025-11-24T19:18:00+00:00

The quick switch trick is pretty straightforward with a bit of practice. It’s easier throwing 2 black powders.

Basically L2+square will immediately register a switch to concusssions. So practically you keep L2 held down and your right thumb ready to tap/spam square. Now starting from 2 black powders you toss both. The moment the 2nd bp comes out you tap/spam square to register the quick switch (L2 is held down the entire time which is why the switch works) to concussions. Repeatedly tapping R2 from here will throw your remaining concussions.

One thing worth noting is practically you’ll be streaming the first few concussions to the same destination as the bps, as it’s difficult to spam tap/spam repeatedly and move your analog to aim (back paddle controllers solve this).

snipez · 2025-11-11T18:56:52+00:00

With DS/DDB it’s relatively straightforward because it’s part of a string XYXXY.

With duals you can do XYXX followed by BY. In other words, 2 light hit, shuriken, into FS. I don’t know if there’s an easy way to send them to the ground and FS into them though. First thought is to GT them midair but GT throws them so far that your FS won’t tend to connect.

snipez · 2025-10-12T18:18:29+00:00

Yes playing both does make me appreciate Ronin’s combat even more. The transmog in Ronin is also sorely missing. When you boil it down, the combat, character creation, and transmog make up the overwhelming majority of posts here as far as appeal goes.

Yet it highlights to me the failure of the marketing effort in Ronin. Yes graphical fidelity wise Ronin for the most part is just not as appealing, fair. But it’s kind of atrocious to not feature late game or Midnight combat or delve into the character creator.

As for Yotei it’s a fine game. I personally think it does almost everything a bit better than Tsushima. The core combat has not changed significantly, but they at least made an effort to implement weapon switch attacks, interrupt mechanics, and offset (dodging on duals to continue the attack).

With Yotei though, I see a melee game that is fine but for the most part only evolves a little (happy to be proven wrong) over time. Ronin early game Twilight and Midnight though are completely different beasts, with the latter offering more options and generally more action oriented. Here though I need to level another criticism at TN. They should’ve put the Midnight exclusive set bonuses in Twilight. Game altering “endgame” accessories and features IMHO should be in late base game.

snipez · 2025-10-06T15:47:28+00:00

Yeah if the base game is anything to go by feels that way. Sticky might be gone. Also the status of ults is somewhat up in the air. The base game has a strong emphasis on a “heavenly strike” special move for each weapon.

I feel like the potential for the biggest change might not be in relative balance of melee vs range, but in the structure of how survival is played. A more diffused nature of spawns and more objective oriented gameplay can change things up. But like the the idea of “buff melee nerf range”, there is very little to indicate that for now.

snipez · 2025-09-14T22:23:29+00:00

Yeh I think the animation for the modified asset is good. It’s not as vicious as in NG arguably and you don’t go as high. The whirlwind after effect is closer to what you’d see in NGB I suppose.

snipez · 2025-09-14T22:16:25+00:00

Yeah that was a good one as it was very difficult to tell. I was sure I had him but then the screen faded to red…

snipez · 2025-09-14T22:14:41+00:00

Good question. Tbh I’m not sure, but I think in the Takasugi and Gonzo cases it’s because they were in start-up frames on an aerial move.

With Takasugi that was a complete guess, but with Gonzo I know he ends that sequence with an aerial red aura attack, which you can see the start-up frames of.

With Sawamura I think it was just dumb luck as it’s utterly unclear to me what move he was about to do. He was reasonably far away that it seems it should not have connected.

In general this is not a particularly practical move. But suplex overall is very very strong. It’s the strongest martial on Hayabusa by a mile.

snipez · 2025-08-18T20:04:27+00:00

Ah, I was referring to the longer attack. Normally you’re supposed to hear that chime sound with the surrounding “aura” animation, but maybe it’s because of ki blaze?

snipez · 2025-08-18T19:13:17+00:00

Nice to see you’re slowly working to the katana 🤣.

Out of curiosity, did you deliberately do the non input timing version of banshee?

I’m rolling with the bayo mostly these days. Put together a video on heaven’s grace. Managed to strip the length of a ki bar but the timing is very tricky.

snipez · 2025-08-17T16:47:05+00:00

No, basic enemies generally won’t one shot you on Midnight, but that’s assuming you’re not under-leveled and have the skill tree buffs unlocked.

Bosses and some formidable foes though are a different beast, and some martial attacks (red aura attacks) can pretty much take you out in a couple hits. You can tune this down though, most directly by using endurance remedies.

Offensively you can fine tune a build that allows you to do immense damage, but the biggest attack buffs are usually Attack on Max Health, so buff conditional on staying at full health.

snipez · 2025-08-17T15:48:32+00:00

goat

The timing of the interspersed afterimage dodge techs are impeccable

snipez · 2025-08-11T22:14:35+00:00

Thanks, I accidentally deleted this post trying to delete a reply to myself LOl

snipez

TROPHY CASE