Junior Member
Shinobi is a controversial hero. With having the most broken things at launch to essentially being dirt due to his kick no longer having super armor and backflip.
The backflip nerf was needed, granted it did help keeping distance which was one of the hero's strength (though it was annoying that was an optimal way to play at the time along with slide tackle) the slide tackle nerf was also needed even though the stamina recovery delay is still insane to this day.
To be honest I think that these two moves should just be removed/replaced with different moves.
The backflip first of all should be scrapped and replaced with something similar to Berserker's Close Combat and Tiandi's Flow Like Water. This will cause Shinobi to still be offensive even when an attack is missed and it will discourage defensive behavior. Also It will give more opportunities with deflects which will be beneficial to offense. undodgable attacks. Due to Shinobi's stamina pool and consumption on double dodge, the dodge attacks won't be able to be spammed unless in revenge.
The slide tackle should be replaced with a kick like Shaolin's which wallsplats and guarantees a heavy when successful. It will be impractical during a 1v1 and could still be beneficial in team fights or ganks in order to ledge or whatnot.
The kick which was arguably the strongest thing in his kit (aside from double dodge), it was uninterruptible when in motion (about halfway through the animation) and could be used to trade attacks with both heavies and bashes alike. The obvious problem here was that it's a bash with super armor, but with the removal of the super armor and no compensation caused some problems with the hero at high level play. First off is the dodge bait, which was very effective at opening opponents and giving a guard break. Though it can be countered by stray attacks and waiting for the kick, it is now useless because the kick isn't threatening enough to warrant a dodge for hero's with fast lights. Do note that the kick was still interruptible in the beginning frames for it's animation (upon reading the patch notes for the kick, I went to test the kick against a bot doing dodge attacks and hilariously thought that the patch was applied).
I think at the very least the kick should have hyper armor to be able to trade attacks.
It would also be interesting to add some properties to the heavies out of dodge, perhaps make them have better tracking or be undodgable so they give Shinobi something else in his kit to work with.
The feat Yama Uba before the Wu Lin update was broken and you bet I abused that back in the day. Since the nerf, it isn't as useful in survivability and in some cases isn't worth running. I think that the perk should be replaced with Tiandi's fourth feat, or at least have the life steal percentage boosted by 5% so that it's at least half of what it was.
Those are somethings that I would like to change for Shinobi. If you have any other ideas for reworking the hero, please do post them. I am open to debate and conversation.
Junior Member
Hyper armor wouldn't be a bad idea on the backflip, but I'd rather it be scrapped and replaced with a dodge out of recovery passive. It can help with offense if it is paired with a kick with hyper armor at the least (or super so we can bully Sugokis again).The idea of an unblockable is a good one. Maybe it could replace the heavy out of double dodge or be easily accessible for OOS pressure or opening in general, and paired with a dodge out of recovery passive could make for some good pressure during fights. The increase to Shinobi's health is a good one too, due to the punishes to his ranged attacks and vulnerability during dodges. They should also decrease the knockdown time on ranged parries so that a light can be guaranteed and not a heavy. There was a Youtube Video talking about the idea, but I forgot what it was called nor who posted it. Not to mention, the flicker on the ranged attacks need to be addressed soon, those are annoying to deal with. Shinobi had a really strong defense before the nerfs and his defense can actually be stronger than most people know. (Maybe not as strong as Conq). He needs more options for offense.
