The Mug change, predictably, feels like garbage.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

That said, again, the class did not need such a change in the first place. If the developers want to make classes focus around two minutes, that's fine. However, when it comes to the point of changing the usage of an iconic ability of a class, I think it goes a little too far. Ninja is not Ninja without a one-minute Trick Attack party buff. As many people have said time and time again, one minute fits neatly into two minutes. If the problem is balance, there are other solutions that do not come at the cost of class identity.

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I think this sums up the difference in our opinions (and that's fine) to me the identity of ninja isn't the 60 second trick attack, it's the ninjutsu system. Trick attack could be every 60 seconds, every 90 seconds, every 120 seconds, and to me, that wouldn't change the identity of the job.

But even then, the developers are also doing a lot of upending of job identities this expansion too, so I get the frustration there. When monk lost its identity of being fast paced and positional heavy to having the fewest positionals of the melees and had it's OGCDs moved into it's version of mudras, that hurt as someone who's always bounced back and forth between monk and ninja as my main jobs. Summoner had it's identity as a damage over time job removed too.

I do think we both agree there are better ways the changes to ninja could have been implemented, at least, even if we disagree on what those solutions should be.

Monk still feels Monk enough to me while they keep the opo opo, coeurl, raptor stance gcd combos. Things I like about the EW changes are multiple charges of zooming to ally/enemy and the collecting seals/chakra thing fits really well in my opinion.

The worst job killer change that comes to mind is when they made Ast cards all basically do the same thing. Also I was disappointed with Ast's dps kit from its very introduction in Heavensward; that was when I realized healers will always be DoT + spam one other button.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I think this sums up the difference in our opinions (and that's fine) to me the identity of ninja isn't the 60 second trick attack, it's the ninjutsu system. Trick attack could be every 60 seconds, every 90 seconds, every 120 seconds, and to me, that wouldn't change the identity of the job.

But even then, the developers are also doing a lot of upending of job identities this expansion too, so I get the frustration there. When monk lost its identity of being fast paced and positional heavy to having the fewest positionals of the melees and had it's OGCDs moved into it's version of mudras, that hurt as someone who's always bounced back and forth between monk and ninja as my main jobs. Summoner had it's identity as a damage over time job removed too.

I do think we both agree there are better ways the changes to ninja could have been implemented, at least, even if we disagree on what those solutions should be.

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Hmm, I see. For me, I agree completely -- mudras are the core of Ninja, but I consider Trick Attack to be an extension of the mudra system, based on its interactions with Suiton.

To me, it's very clear that the way mudras function centers around Suiton and Trick. You receive one mudra charge every twenty seconds, and coincidentally (or not) the Suiton buff lasts just as long. This is perfectly, and I believe intentionally, designed such that you can prepare Suiton 20s in advance, activate Trick just as Suiton's buff is about to run out, and then comfortably fit two mudras (usually Raiton) within Trick. To me, Trick and Mudras go hand in hand. You can change the potencies on Trick as you like, but changing Trick from a one-minute cooldown would throw the whole system into disarray. If Trick became a two-minute cooldown, you'd suddenly have to dump a Raiton during odd-minute windows (where you would previously have prepared Suiton), but prepare Suiton on the even windows. It would at the very least feel strange and somewhat clunky, I think, as that Raiton would just have nowhere to go, whereas before, all of your mudras were dedicated to enabling burst or being burst.

The fact that Trick and the mudras seem to be built so intentionally to work together is why I'm so adamant that Trick should stay as it was in 6.08. They are quite explicitly tied together, what with a whole mudra dedicated to enabling Trick, and separating them without destroying what makes Ninja, well, Ninja, is no simple task. I feel that the risks of changing that core far outweigh the benefits.

To me, ninja's core identity is both mudras and old trick. I don't want one without the other.

If the devs do have the urge to upend Job identity, mudras are clearly higher up on the priority list. Being very frustrating for people with lacklustre Internet, removal of bunny mudra or some sort of pity system would be very welcome. I would argue mudras aren't even that unique to ninja anymore, with monk already having a mudra knockoff with the nadi system. Modifying mudras will improve accessibility and ease, something the devs clearly have a hard on for. Changing mug does neither.

The trick gutting is sake for the sake of change. The class isn't easier, the class isn't more fun, and the class isn't more unique. I much rather the ninja devs only actually implement changes when they have good ideas, not something they just think of in a lazy afternoon. Furthermore, the ninja devs should spend their time actually playing ninja instead of thinking of half-baked ideas. I believe if they play the game they will have a better understanding of the job.

Before you check my player history, yes I am newbie. Yes I haven't experience old Ninja at it's peak being only level 52/53 with it. At the same time though I have a slightly different perspective on things and to be fair... Out of all ARR classes I played Ninja felt like they had least coherence in their kit. You Learn Mug at level 15 and Trick Attack at level 18 and let's be clear here, both of those skills are useless at the point you learn them and start doing obligatory duties. You can't hide in a boss room for long enough to land Trick Attack while Mug is 150 potency strike on 120s Cooldown. In fact I spent entire 2.0 content till CT raids and optional Hard Dungeons with 2 dead skills not worth gracing my Hotbar. Ninja Kit didn't felt like evolving as much as it was fixing their "awesome but impractical" parts of the kit. And Mug... Oh boy that's even funnier because pre 6.1 it takes 53 levels and progression to at least 4.0 MSQ (or close to an end if you don't get ahead of level curve) till it gets Ninki. That's kinda long time for a skill you get near the start of your journey to actually be useful. Anyway from my perspective Ninja feels more whole class at levels 50 to 60 as their entire Kit gets much more use throughout the game. I will admit that I will probably encounter issues when Mug will get Ninki (but since I just entered HW it's still a long time for it). Heck I'd gladly have Ninki Component cut out if it means I have the tool that's usable from getgo.

I'm still having a lot of fun with NIN and continuing to main it.

Sorry, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

Before you check my player history, yes I am newbie. Yes I haven't experience old Ninja at it's peak being only level 52/53 with it. At the same time though I have a slightly different perspective on things and to be fair... Out of all ARR classes I played Ninja felt like they had least coherence in their kit. You Learn Mug at level 15 and Trick Attack at level 18 and let's be clear here, both of those skills are useless at the point you learn them and start doing obligatory duties. You can't hide in a boss room for long enough to land Trick Attack while Mug is 150 potency strike on 120s Cooldown. In fact I spent entire 2.0 content till CT raids and optional Hard Dungeons with 2 dead skills not worth gracing my Hotbar. Ninja Kit didn't felt like evolving as much as it was fixing their "awesome but impractical" parts of the kit. And Mug... Oh boy that's even funnier because pre 6.1 it takes 53 levels and progression to at least 4.0 MSQ (or close to an end if you don't get ahead of level curve) till it gets Ninki. That's kinda long time for a skill you get near the start of your journey to actually be useful. Anyway from my perspective Ninja feels more whole class at levels 50 to 60 as their entire Kit gets much more use throughout the game. I will admit that I will probably encounter issues when Mug will get Ninki (but since I just entered HW it's still a long time for it). Heck I'd gladly have Ninki Component cut out if it means I have the tool that's usable from getgo.

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While I can't speak much to the current levelling experience, having levelled Ninja during Shadowbringers, it does strike me as odd that Mug receives its party buff so early. When I was levelling, unlocking Suiton (and thus my party buff) was exciting, because I finally got the 'core' ability of Ninja and was finally able to buff the party's damage. You get Mug unceremoniously at Level 18, and it's more powerful, technically, than Trick. It just feels weird.

It's been a month. I still want the party damage buff to be back on trick attack. In case any devs are reading.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

Black Mage will never suffer cause Yoshi P actually tests it, and would never finalize the changes if it sucks. But everything Yoshi P does not test or play is up for what ever.

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That reminds me when they first showed off Ley-Lines and they explained that "Ley-Lines will disappear once you leave the circle" and Yoshida was like "that kinda sucks"
and the Skill was never like that in the game

but regarding the NIN Changes, at least things just got switched around, I joked how they reduced NIN's Rotation to 2 Buttons (Huraijin>Mug>Death[Wait 2minutes] repeat) <- My First Run in Aglaia btw.
though in my Opinion it would make more sense if they give the personal DPS Buff to Mug.. I mean you steal things so it's yours and leave Trick Attack to be the Surprise Attack to stagger the Enemy and open them for a Deadly Barrage

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

What I struggle with is that so many people seem to want to compromise on the personal buff. Am I abnormal in thinking that it feels quite awful to play around? There's a reason I avoid classes like Monk or Dancer -- having to put up a personal buff and a party buff feels quite wretched to me. I'd much rather potencies be adjusted to account for the damage increase the personal buff gives. I don't think receiving a personal damage buff makes gameplay more exciting. Buffing the party, however, and lining up my big damage abilities -- that feels meaningful.

I just don't want Ninja to lose what made it enjoyable for me to play in the first place -- the fact that it wasn't like anything else. If they keep these changes, there's really nothing else I can move to.

It makes so much more sense in my mind to keep Ninja as it is, and adjust the potency on Trick Attack if it's so problematic. The developers could always approach it like Dragoon's Dragon Sight and have it buff the Ninja's damage by more than the party member's.

Frankly, I'm glad they couldn't do anything more major. The only 'major' change I want to see in Ninja right now is them reverting the changes to Trick and Mug.

The only problems 6.08 Ninja had were a few unspired oGCDs (Mug, Meisui, Dream within a Dream) and poor Ninki generation. I don't think Ninja needs an overhaul to fix these problems -- nor were they more pressing than other job issues.

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It's a bit of a mixed bag for me, but I accept the idea of what they're trying to do. On one hand, I actually like ninjas having more personal damage on their burst. If their personal burst felt weak, then they just feel like a gimped "burst" job tied to Trick Attack in content outside of raiding because the RDPS gain locks them into a design for only being a Trick Attack buffer and lacking any job fantasy outside of support. In a way, opening the design for Trick Attack to be a personal buff allows more flexibility in design as you can only fit in so many skill changes in a 15 second burst window before everything crumbles apart by next expansion with the introduction of a new skill or two. We can already see that happening with the removal of Shadowfang and replacing it with Phantom Kamaitachi, but for ninjas where their damage is their initial burst window, it's even more damaging on the leveling process.

At the same time, because the game is designed under 60 second burst windows (WAR getting the 60 second timer on IR for example), mug feels VERY out of place now - because Ninja's second identity is raidwide damage burst buff every 60 seconds. Changing party buff to a 120 second window makes the window very inflexible in its own way.

Essentially, Ninja's been suffering from its 2 unique identities - job fantasy wise (a high initial personal burst damage job for its assassin-like gameplay + a support burst job with Trick Attack). Because the higher level you go % buffs actually increase significantly as more jobs get more skills + stats, the personal burst & future skill potencies for ninja had to be lowered to compensate. The developers had this problem with Trick Attack in the past (10% party buff but shorter buff duration) where ninja is usually left in this weird state of balancing which led Ninja to feel really weak or really strong in terms of its personal damage to its overall damage. Ninja would be 'overpowered' / acceptable with trick attack padding, but could feel like utter trash to level because all of its damage was based on rDPS and your hugely padded numbers of rDPS doesn't help you kill enemies faster in solo content stuff when your initial burst doesn't actually kill the enemy. Again, this is due to the way % based buffs work, the higher level you go, the larger their impact will be and the smaller the effect will be when you're not with a party - which runs counter to its other identity as an assassin-like job identity of directly killing the enemy at the very start of the fight because you just lack that personal damage to do so.

A big reason why I play PvP for Ninja now is exactly because it captures the assassin-like job fantasy while giving into some support flavor through debuffs & utility that can affect the battle (afflicting heavy, stun, able to shield + gain movement speed, healing, gap close + stealthing mid-combat + assassinate, etc.). Unfortunately, not all of that can be translated well in PvE due to balancing issues and debuffs largely being ignored. So yeah. Mixed bag for me.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

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I feel you, I do, even if I don't agree with some of your personal takes. Ninja feels like it's being tugged in two distinct directions right now, and it just feels like a mess as a result.



I'd feel like the levelling argument would hold more weight if not for two things:

1. Levelling is temporary, endgame is forever. While it's important to make sure the levelling process isn't outright awful, I strongly disagree with making sacrifices on the part of Level 90 content for the sake of making a temporary situation better. You spend so much more time at level cap than you do at any other point during the game. Levelling is faster than it's ever been, too.
2. Other jobs suffer worse! Dancer and Bard are even more reliant than NIN on party members feeding into buffs to make the most of their kit, so should we gut them as well? What about healers, with their incredibly low personal DPS? Sure, they can heal themselves, but doing any kind of solo duty takes twice as long.

I do really agree that levelling Ninja doesn't feel super great, but I just can't agree with gimping Trick and giving more personal damage for the sake of levelling. Rather, we should tune solo content such that it can be completed by any job.

I do see what you're saying about Ninja being either very strong or very weak, but even in 6.05, where Ninja was arguably at its weakest in a good long while, it was still very possible to complete content with the job. I cleared P4S during 6.05 on Ninja; as did many others. While I do empathise with not feeling like your job is strong or worthwhile if your numbers hit a little lower than other jobs in your role, I don't think Ninja has in recent times had the issue of being so weak it was excluded from parties. Of course, this is me speaking anecdotally, maybe others have had different experiences.

We've already kind of gone down the track of 'Ninja's personal damage is too weak, it's too reliant on others for DPS' with the move from 10% DMG up -> 5% DMG up in Shadowbringers, which is a pretty substantial nerf to rDPS! It's very difficult to argue making a personal buff much weaker; 5% is simultaneously not a lot of damage and also a huge amount of damage.

I guess my main question is, where do we draw the line? If we follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion, every job becomes selfish and party buffs cease to exist. I don't think anybody genuinely wants this, nor do I think we'd ever actually get to that point, because (at least in my opinion) party buffs are fun! It feels good to buff and be buffed. It's rewarding when you play into it. But -- the fact remains that if you continue to gnaw away at existing buffs, jobs become more and more selfish over time.


The biggest loss, however, is that NIN's party buff is no longer on the 1-minute cooldown, which is just heartbreaking for so many reasons. For many reasons, including what you pointed out.

I do disagree that moving Trick to a personal buff opens up more flexibility in design. You're still pressing the same buttons, and Trick is still a damage up ability, it just only affects you now. Trick becoming personal doesn't affect how many abilities you press inside of Trick. Rather, Mug becoming a party buff does, because it prevents you from pooling Ninki and means you have one fewer oGCD to hit inside Trick. While this does technically more oGCD weaving windows, I'd argue it's a regression because what kind of builder-spender job isn't able to build for burst? Ninja is uniquely punished at the moment for entering a two-minute burst window; you're in most situations forced to use a Bhava before you get your buffs up, which feels like such a waste. Removes the itty little bit of skill expression of drifting Mug into Trick, too.

I don't know, I just... mm. The solo experience shouldn't suck, but it just seems a little backwards to me to balance an MMO -- a multiplayer-focused game -- on a solo player experience. Make it not suck, absolutely! Make it reasonable and clearable. But -- shit, Ninja was one of three big buffing classes in the game. Now we just have Dancer and Bard as big buffers. Sure, many jobs have two-minute buffs (12/19, by my count), but when everyone has a two-minute buff, it's the same thing as nobody having a two-minute buff...

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

I don't know, I just... mm. The solo experience shouldn't suck, but it just seems a little backwards to me to balance an MMO -- a multiplayer-focused game -- on a solo player experience. Make it not suck, absolutely! Make it reasonable and clearable. But -- shit, Ninja was one of three big buffing classes in the game. Now we just have Dancer and Bard as big buffers. Sure, many jobs have two-minute buffs (12/19, by my count), but when everyone has a two-minute buff, it's the same thing as nobody having a two-minute buff...

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Don't you see an Irony here? Ninja - a job with a single party wide buff was relegated to the same role as Dancer and Bard despite the latter devoting half of their kit towards that goal. A single ability that created so many weird connections that Ninja has pretty much no room for personal growth without a risk of making it broken. Even Dancer and Bard have more room to growth since at worst all you need to do is ti weaken synergy with another class yet that doesn't really apply to one that synergizes on high level with almost every other party member.

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

Don't you see an Irony here? Ninja - a job with a single party wide buff was relegated to the same role as Dancer and Bard despite the latter devoting half of their kit towards that goal. A single ability that created so many weird connections that Ninja has pretty much no room for personal growth without a risk of making it broken. Even Dancer and Bard have more room to growth since at worst all you need to do is ti weaken synergy with another class yet that doesn't really apply to one that synergizes on high level with almost every other party member.

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You say 'relegated' here like being a buffing class is a bad thing. And yes, one ability can be that impactful. Old Trick's short cooldown and power (5% is the second-highest DMG buff iirc? might be wrong) means it is up 25% of the time - Mug's uptime is only 16.67%, and it's one of the better buffs out there at the moment.

Again, you say weird connections -- I'd call that synergy, personally -- but I don't think I'm understanding you when you say that it limits Ninja's personal growth. We've been growing just fine -- Raijus are a fun addition to the job, even if they took a bit of tweaking. There's plenty of room to add different mudras, add more Ninki spenders, add more oGCDs; hell, maybe we even get another gauge to manage so we have something to do during our downtime. We could bring DOT management back, have some different combo paths, there's really infinite possibilites.

You say Dancer and Bard have more room to grow, but I'm not quite understanding where you're coming from. Why do you need to weaken synergy between classes in order for them to experience 'growth'? That just sounds like we'd be headed towards a future where there's no party buffs at all - and at that point, we might as well be playing a single player game.

I do want what I do to impact other classes, y'know? I like buffing, and I want to keep doing it. As it stands, Ninja has gone from one of three (buffer-types) to one of twelve (classes with a two-minute buff). It's definitely gotten less unique.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

You say 'relegated' here like being a buffing class is a bad thing. And yes, one ability can be that impactful. Old Trick's short cooldown and power (5% is the second-highest DMG buff iirc? might be wrong) means it is up 25% of the time - Mug's uptime is only 16.67%, and it's one of the better buffs out there at the moment.

Again, you say weird connections -- I'd call that synergy, personally -- but I don't think I'm understanding you when you say that it limits Ninja's personal growth. We've been growing just fine -- Raijus are a fun addition to the job, even if they took a bit of tweaking. There's plenty of room to add different mudras, add more Ninki spenders, add more oGCDs; hell, maybe we even get another gauge to manage so we have something to do during our downtime. We could bring DOT management back, have some different combo paths, there's really infinite possibilites.

You say Dancer and Bard have more room to grow, but I'm not quite understanding where you're coming from. Why do you need to weaken synergy between classes in order for them to experience 'growth'? That just sounds like we'd be headed towards a future where there's no party buffs at all - and at that point, we might as well be playing a single player game.

I do want what I do to impact other classes, y'know? I like buffing, and I want to keep doing it. As it stands, Ninja has gone from one of three (buffer-types) to one of twelve (classes with a two-minute buff). It's definitely gotten less unique.

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I'm afraid we're not reaching an agreement here (which is fine). For me the fact that the supposed "buff oriented party player" Ninja for entirety of their kit holds only one skill from that area feels more like an accident. An accident that held Ninja's personal damage hostage since any adjustment that would increase it would skew the meta in their favor. No matter how many mechanics Ninja would have their damage potential would be held back cementing its opinion of "Too much work for too little gains" which was something I could rather easily find when looking up info about pre 6.1 Ninja. All the synergies feel more like an accident considering that not a single skill in Ninja Kit after learning Suiton ever expands on it instead trying to pretend they focus on Ninja's own damage.

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

I'm afraid we're not reaching an agreement here (which is fine). For me the fact that the supposed "buff oriented party player" Ninja for entirety of their kit holds only one skill from that area feels more like an accident. An accident that held Ninja's personal damage hostage since any adjustment that would increase it would skew the meta in their favor. No matter how many mechanics Ninja would have their damage potential would be held back cementing its opinion of "Too much work for too little gains" which was something I could rather easily find when looking up info about pre 6.1 Ninja. All the synergies feel more like an accident considering that not a single skill in Ninja Kit after learning Suiton ever expands on it instead trying to pretend they focus on Ninja's own damage.

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what is wrong with Ninja not having the highest aDPS? It never stopped the job from being meta.

And yet if you look at opinions about Ninja the common one I found on Reddit and few other places was once again too much work required for too little of gains. Also I probably have to learn how to use data better because... I don't think 6.0 Ninja was that meta in Asphodelos considering in submitted data the Ninja usage was between 10 - 20% depending on a boss.

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

And yet if you look at opinions about Ninja the common one I found on Reddit and few other places was once again too much work required for too little of gains. Also I probably have to learn how to use data better because... I don't think 6.0 Ninja was that meta in Asphodelos considering in submitted data the Ninja usage was between 10 - 20% depending on a boss.

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You're cherrypicking here. Ninja is nowhere near as complicated as some people on the forums would have you believe, take that from a Ninja player. It's been extremely meta since Shadowbringers, and was only weak at Endwalker launch, which was quickly fixed in 6.05 and 6.08.

Oh then please excuse me. I
Didn't notice the fact it received any changes before 6.1, my bad. I still feel it's better for the job to have venue to get stronger on it's own and if the single skill kept them from reaching it I'm more than fine with it.

Though looking at data it does seem that Ninja is now more popular pick than ever and I can't say it's only because of SAM eating hard nerfs

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

Oh then please excuse me. I
Didn't notice the fact it received any changes before 6.1, my bad. I still feel it's better for the job to have venue to get stronger on it's own and if the single skill kept them from reaching it I'm more than fine with it.

Though looking at data it does seem that Ninja is now more popular pick than ever and I can't say it's only because of SAM eating hard nerfs

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The common opinion that Ninja is difficult stems from the fact that you have to learn three mudras in order to get functional with the job. I've never heard anyone who's spent a significant amount of time on the job call it difficult or complicated. I'd say Ninja is problem one of the easiest jobs to play at a high level -- it's very rote.

As butchersblock has pointed out, it's also been absurdly strong since....5.1? The only time between then and now where it's been anything close to weak was 6.0 release - 6.05. 6.05 left it in a very reasonable state of balance (the problem at the time, iirc, is that Monk and Reaper were absurdly strong), and 6.08 buffed it to all high hell, where it became the single job with the highest DPS output.

6.1 then made the changes, which pushed its DPS to absolutely ridiculous heights. It was already absurdly strong, it absolutely did not need more buffs. You can look at the statistics from 6.0; Ninja had the highest overall damage throughout it all. The argument that Ninja didn't deal enough damage or needed to be stronger just doesn't hold up. So I ask -- what about Ninja needs to be 'stronger'? It certainly isn't -- and wasn't -- damage.

That 'single skill' was kind of the identity of the job. Should we remove Dance Partner so that Dancers can deal some better personal DPS? Why is a buffing class less valid if it does one thing and does it well? I just don't understand your arguments. Trick Attack was supremely powerful, what more did it need to be?

As for why Ninja hasn't been popular until now -- let me break down the contributing factors. Looking back at Shadowbringers, at least for Eden's Promise, Ninja was about the second most popular melee to bring to a fight, behind Samurai. What's changed since then?


1. Reaper came out, and is by far the most popular melee class. It's still the most popular melee class. A lot of Ninja mains will have jumped ship.
2. Ninja was released in an absolute state. A lot of people really hated Raijus on release, and for good reason -- it made playing the job in Zodiark EX incredibly painful at best. Not only that but the job was... really weak. This isn't an issue in general, given any class can clear any content, however...
3. Week 1 savage was fast approaching, and Ninja wasn't in a good state. With new abilities to learn and new rotations to memorise, would you stake your bet on the overpowered melee Reaper (who SE stated they wouldn't nerf) or the weak, poor-playing Ninja? Anyone who cared about clearing quickly is going to pick Reaper, and that's precisely what many groups did. after Week One, of course, you've used your gear on the classes you initially cleared with -- and the only thing more powerful than meta is gear. Why play your Ninja at 580 ilvl when your Reaper has 591 ilvl? Until 6.08, Ninja wasn't seeing much play at all aside from die-hard mains, because why would you pick it when Reaper/Monk were so much better? As much as I'd like to say meta doesn't matter, it does matter for Week 1, and many more people care much more about meta than they realistically should. Ninja numbers started picking up from 6.05, and by late 6.08 it had actually overtaken Machinist in terms of raw play numbers. It was on the rise; it just takes time.
4. Then comes DSR. DSR comes out a patch after 6.1, which means people have had time to play with the new, less-than-improved Ninja, and realised it is absolutely broken. Because it is! If there's anywhere meta is going to matter, it's in the race to world first an ultimate. Which is exactly why we saw so many statics having one of their melees swap to Ninja. It's the job with the most clears on the new Ultimate by a pretty large margin, and it will continue to be for some time. Bringing a job that shits out damage is going to be an inherent advantage no matter what when it comes to progging difficult content.

With these things in mind, I think it's really easy to see why Ninja's numbers have jerked around so much. It went being obscenely weak to reasonable, to very strong to utterly broken. Why wouldn't you play a broken class to help your static clear the hardest fight in the game?

It's very telling to me that a lot of the enthusiasm around 6.1 Ninja comes from people who don't main the class, whereas a lot of the vitriol comes from those who've played it a while now. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't pick up Ninja; it just means that Ninja was

1. Not strong enough to justify picking up for meta reasons
2. Fulfilled a different fantasy than than subset of players wanted

Now, it's absurdly strong, more than enough to justify swapping to adhere to the 'meta', and the fantasy it brings has changed to be more in line with other melee. Which is great, if you were tired of playing the other four melee, but sucks if you really enjoyed the unique job fantasy that Ninja provided. Given that we already have four melees that deal a ton of personal damage, I think it's fine if we have just the one that plays a little differently.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

I’m not a monk but wasn’t their rework fairly well received?

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Compared to being left a gutted mess for the latter half of Shadowbringers, sure.

But that's like being shocked that someone preferred having one arm to none.

The Blitz system itself is fine. It isn't anything especially great, but it's a solid enough base. The problem is how much else went missing over since late Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

I feel you, I do, even if I don't agree with some of your personal takes. Ninja feels like it's being tugged in two distinct directions right now, and it just feels like a mess as a result.

I'd feel like the levelling argument would hold more weight if not for two things:

1. Levelling is temporary, endgame is forever. While it's important to make sure the levelling process isn't outright awful, I strongly disagree with making sacrifices on the part of Level 90 content for the sake of making a temporary situation better. You spend so much more time at level cap than you do at any other point during the game. Levelling is faster than it's ever been, too.
2. Other jobs suffer worse! Dancer and Bard are even more reliant than NIN on party members feeding into buffs to make the most of their kit, so should we gut them as well? What about healers, with their incredibly low personal DPS? Sure, they can heal themselves, but doing any kind of solo duty takes twice as long.

I do really agree that levelling Ninja doesn't feel super great, but I just can't agree with gimping Trick and giving more personal damage for the sake of levelling. Rather, we should tune solo content such that it can be completed by any job.

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The thing is that Leveling is actually forever because level sync exists. This is especially true for any player still using the Duty Finder for roulettes. Players don't stop running the Duty Finder even if they finish leveling up because they run roulette for tomestone gear and rewards, which means level syncing down will always be prevalent even at endgame. Therefore, they can still queue up to their main job (ninja in this case) and be level synced down - thus reduced to the experience of "leveling".

Level syncing down will mean the leveling process will become more common than any - especially for any new player or veterans who haven't done old content and want to experience them as close as possible. I strongly disagree that this is a temporary situation. In content where your level sync is not at the endgame level cap, you will always be playing with a worse toolkit as a result (Palace of the Dead, Heaven on High, Bozja, old Extremes, old Ultimates, etc.). Endgame content is temporary, because the current endgame will always be old endgame by the time new endgame content comes out. However, old endgame content will always exist and in greater amounts - which means leveling will always be forever.

The problem of tuning solo content such that it can be completed by any job is that all jobs can already complete solo content. However, is it fun for healers with their single attack skill to take forever to beat up the enemies because incoming damage is so low that they can't use their healing toolkit fully at all? No. Not at all. This is a core problem of job fantasy when it doesn't align to the job & to the encounter. You wanted to play as a healer but you became relegated to gimped DPS pressing the same attack button over and over until the instance ends. If you can't get the flavor of your job fantasy, no amount of retuning will feel good. The same applies to ninjas with their assassin job fantasy here. It feels like utter garbage to play as an assassin role that is known for going solo, but not have the ability to properly assassinate the enemy because a large portion is just made up from having allies to do it for you.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

The common opinion that Ninja is difficult stems from the fact that you have to learn three mudras in order to get functional with the job. I've never heard anyone who's spent a significant amount of time on the job call it difficult or complicated. I'd say Ninja is problem one of the easiest jobs to play at a high level -- it's very rote.

As butchersblock has pointed out, it's also been absurdly strong since....5.1? The only time between then and now where it's been anything close to weak was 6.0 release - 6.05. 6.05 left it in a very reasonable state of balance (the problem at the time, iirc, is that Monk and Reaper were absurdly strong), and 6.08 buffed it to all high hell, where it became the single job with the highest DPS output.

6.1 then made the changes, which pushed its DPS to absolutely ridiculous heights. It was already absurdly strong, it absolutely did not need more buffs. You can look at the statistics from 6.0; Ninja had the highest overall damage throughout it all. The argument that Ninja didn't deal enough damage or needed to be stronger just doesn't hold up. So I ask -- what about Ninja needs to be 'stronger'? It certainly isn't -- and wasn't -- damage.

That 'single skill' was kind of the identity of the job. Should we remove Dance Partner so that Dancers can deal some better personal DPS? Why is a buffing class less valid if it does one thing and does it well? I just don't understand your arguments. Trick Attack was supremely powerful, what more did it need to be?

As for why Ninja hasn't been popular until now -- let me break down the contributing factors. Looking back at Shadowbringers, at least for Eden's Promise, Ninja was about the second most popular melee to bring to a fight, behind Samurai. What's changed since then?

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5.0 ninja was actually very weak. They got buffed heavily in 5.08 5.1 ninja was when it felt strong because Trick Attack overall rDPS got nerfed (10% to 5%) and the overall toolkit had been buffed to compensate. - Aka rebalancing Trick Attack to increase ninja's personal damage.

And that's the thing. Because of how prominent Trick Attack was to raiding, Ninja ended up developing a trick attack identity. People hated ninja when ninja wasn't a trick attack identity. However that's not the only identity that makes up a ninja. It's two core identities were always - support + fast paced high burst DPS via through melee or ranged (due to assassin job fantasy). If Trick Attack became too impactful, ninjas basically put in a ton of work on their core rotation for low DPS. That's why there were plenty of problems with balancing ninja to not just be a "trick attack" job for raiding and to make their own damage toolkit still impactful. I don't play ninja for trick attack only, I play it because I want that assassin job fantasy outside of raiding. I might want to support my teammates sometimes, but I also want to feel impactful when I'm doing solo stuff because this is a job that is supposed to be able to annihilate an enemy instantly when they use their entire burst. And honestly, sometimes it doesn't feel like that. Sometimes I use my entire burst and the enemy's still kicking, hale and hearty. It really puts ninja's job fantasy in a weird place for that reason because of how much Trick Attack makes up for ninja's damage. Raiding should not be the only thing that influences a job identity if the job fantasy doesn't align with the identity.

It's why I think PvP makes ninja exactly that good. You still get lots of support utility (Raiju stun, Doton heavy + Goka Mekkyaku synergy, Huton shield + movement speed buff, Meisui healing buff, damage up via mug) but your utility is all focused on enhancing yourself and becoming more impactful / flexible to adjust to the situation. It captures the essence of the job fantasy without losing any value as a support-based job. The problem is that this can't translate well into PvE due to how static and inflexible job design & encounter design has been.

Dancer and Bard are known for being a support ranged job that supports their allies' DPS in particular, which is why their personal DPS is generally much lower as a result. They have multiple skills designed to be support oriented for a team setting. However, ninja doesn't fall into this category of being a job that solely supports their team. Ninja is the only job that holds two unique identities that counteract each other. In the past, Ninjas focused on support - yes, but that support also aligned to their personal DPS. In the past, they had Slashing debuff and dripping blades. While some jobs can take advantage to their slashing debuff, their debuff solely exists to help them - with Fuma Shuriken being used often over Raiton for clipping as it benefitted from both slashing debuff and dripping blades. Their whole toolkit - from support to damage all amalgamated to give that quick and high burst DPS job fantasy, which is what made it fun to play in a party setting and in solo instances. No matter where, they always had a toolkit that fit their job fantasy.

If you asked me what changed from ARR to Shadowbringers, it's that ninja became more streamlined and removed a lot of personal support buffs to directly increase their overall DPS per skill. Trick Attack was the only support buff that still exist as a result. However, Shadowbringers still kept their core job fantasy of being a high damage assassin via Hyosho Ranryu. Even then, it took some work to adjust ninja to feel powerful. On its initial release, ninja was actually undertuned again when mudras moved over to a GCD-centric gameplay and went through multiple patches and buffs to make it feel good again for leveling - without just trick attack padding.

From Shadowbringers to Endwalker, we just lost flexibility to account for the big DPS gains other jobs have (raiju being lost upon using another weaponskill and Phantom Kamaitachi being an underwhelming skill on release). It honestly felt like they were trying to balance Ninja's rDPS because of how much stronger Trick Attack was, but our overall DPS didn't change much. It was after multiple adjustments on these skills that we got ninja's overall DPS back to where it was again - which is also due to its dual identity as an high burst DPS assassin. On Dragon Song Reprise release though, Trick Attack's damage got moved to mug - which I believe is exactly because of the issue of how impactful their RDPS was in relation to its personal DPS.

I would be fine if there was a job that was more support oriented than personal DPS oriented, but that's not what ninja's job fantasy is. It would be great if it can have both, but it becomes an issue later down the line, I am more willing to move the trick attack's raidwide debuff and have another job be what ninja couldn't if it becomes too much of an issue with its job fantasy.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I don't play ninja for trick attack only, I play it because I want that assassin job fantasy outside of raiding.

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Let's be clear, though. Changing the buff to Mug didn't allow for any amount more "Assassin job fantasy". It literally just stripped many a job of having anything to align their odd-minute outputs to in parties that previously had NINs.

The effect on what percentage of its rDPS was dealt instead through bonuses to its party was miniscule; the effect on a NIN party's gameplay, by comparison, was pretty damn significant.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

whole lotta good stuff

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I mainly played NIN and SAM in Shadowbringers and was very happy about both jobs. When Endwalker dropped the state of Ninja turned me away from it for a while. Not just because of Raijus but it felt like unlike the other jobs Ninja got nothing new. Just an extra GCD after Raitons. Great. Wonderful. I played the job to death in Shadowbringers so it was really disappointing to not get anything new to play with, so I swapped to Samurai for the savage tier and while I had some complaints, it felt good to play. Then comes 6.1 and its Kaiten removal - Ninja was absolutely broken so it was a no-brainer for me to swap back to it for the Ultimate when Samurai is no longer an option.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

The thing is that Leveling is actually forever because level sync exists.

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This is honestly a very good point! I don't make a habit of running sub-level content often beyond Ultimates, but it'd be remiss of me to dismiss the fact that roulettes exist, and of course old Ultimates will always be 'relevant' content synced to 70/80/90.

That said, I still think the focus of balancing should be towards level 90 content or 'relevant' content. I think it's fine if a fight that is no longer endgame becomes somewhat unbalanced. Like I said, obviously, don't ruin the experience, but I still don't think that making huge sacrifices on the part of current content is fair, when those who run older content (with the exception of, say, min-ilvl no echo runs of old savage/extremes) are not likely looking for tightly tuned content, which is what the purpose of balancing serves. When I go into levelling roulette, I want my tomestomes ASAP and then I want out.

To make it super clear, I'm not advocating for ignoring balancing during levelling, not at all. I just think that balancing for the current endgame should always be the priority.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

If you can't get the flavor of your job fantasy, no amount of retuning will feel good. The same applies to ninjas with their assassin job fantasy here. It feels like utter garbage to play as an assassin role that is known for going solo, but not have the ability to properly assassinate the enemy because a large portion is just made up from having allies to do it for you.

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I think is the core of our disagreement. You believe (if I'm not misunderstanding you, in which case please correct me if I am) that 14's Ninja job fantasy is about being a solo assassin that can take down a target from the shadows? I believe the 14's Ninja job fantasy is about hitting a target's weak spot, and following up with high burst damage.

I don't understand where your notion of 'going solo' is coming from. FF14 Ninja is notably heavily inspired by Naruto, and while I've never seen the show, my impression from years of osmosis is that they operate both in teams and solo sometimes. Even historical Ninjas often worked in teams. The Hollywood notion of a Ninja is definitely assassin-like, but my impression of Ninjas is japan is that they functioned more as spies -- support roles, if you would.


While the fantasy of a solo assassin is cool, I don't think it really fits a multiplayer game either, and I think the developers are aware of that -- which is why hitting a weak spot, doing a lot of burst, and letting your allies follow up is a bit more fitting to an MMO whilst still holding true to that Ninja job fantasy.

Something closer to a 'solo' job sounds more like a Samurai to me - a job that can consistently output high damage, and will generally win in both short-term and sustained fights. They have a ton of burst, too.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

5.0 ninja was actually very weak. They got buffed heavily in 5.08 5.1 ninja was when it felt strong because Trick Attack overall rDPS got nerfed (10% to 5%) and the overall toolkit had been buffed to compensate. - Aka rebalancing Trick Attack to increase ninja's personal damage.

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Ah, yes. You'll note I specifically said Ninja has been strong since 5.1, not 5.0, which lines up perfectly with what you're saying. I don't think we have any disagreements here?

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

And that's the thing. Because of how prominent Trick Attack was to raiding, Ninja ended up developing a trick attack identity. People hated ninja when ninja wasn't a trick attack identity.

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Do you have a bit more supporting evidence for this? Trick Attack has been a part of the kit since Day 1. We haven't had a Ninja without Trick. The job is very literally designed around its existence.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

However that's not the only identity that makes up a ninja. It's two core identities were always - support + fast paced high burst DPS via through melee or ranged (due to assassin job fantasy).

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I think we're in agreement here!

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

If Trick Attack became too impactful, ninjas basically put in a ton of work on their core rotation for low DPS. That's why there were plenty of problems with balancing ninja to not just be a "trick attack" job for raiding and to make their own damage toolkit still impactful.

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This is a problem that will always exist so long as any job has any buff. Currently, only two jobs provide meaningful buffing outside of the obligatory 2-minute button press. There's 17 whole other jobs which don't need to do that. I personally don't see the problem with letting those who enjoy buffing continue to buff, and those who enjoy playing selfish DPS to go and play jobs like Machinist, or Samurai, or Black Mage.

The thing that gets me about arguments about how much damage you're dealing overall is that... at least for me, personally, how much damage I deal doesn't impact how much I enjoy the class? I liked Ninja in Shadowbringers, I liked it in 6.0, I liked it in 6.05, and I liked it in 6.08, too. I was playing a class that had powerful burst that played well into raid buffs, and I was bringing along the king of all raid buffs to boot. I don't consider Ninja having high APM to be 'working harder' for 'less DPS'. Ninja hasn't been weak except in 6.0, and maybe 6.05.

The thing is, is that everyone definition of 'work hard' is different. For some people, jobs with high APM mean 'working hard'. I disagree. I'm just pressing the same buttons over and over, but faster. Ninja is not a hard job, despite what people who don't play Ninja will tell you. I think jobs with a flexible rotation that needs to adapt and change to maximise their DPS, such as Black Mage, is a good example of 'being rewarded for working hard'. You can play a very standard Black Mage, where you Blizzard 3 -> Blizzard 4 -> Thunder 4 -> Fire 4 x3 -> Paradox -> Fire 4 x3 -> Despair -> Repeat, but you can also do crazy stuff with different lines, making use of Transpose. Ninja just doesn't have that level of complexity. It would be amazing if it did, but currently it doesn't.

Ninja is an easy job. That's the way it is. I would say, in fact, Ninja is probably the easiest DPS to play at a high level. It has infinite disconnect options, an incredibly static rotation, and all the recovery tools you could possibly need. The only things that might be hard about it could be getting used to the pace you need to hit your mudras, because that is, admittedly, pretty janky. You're always going to dump the same abilities into Trick, the order in which you do so doesn't really matter, and all you need to do is hit your cooldowns on time, and don't overcap on Ninki.

And that's ignoring the fact that Ninja already deals shittons of damage. Your rDPS is your DPS. It's not worth less because you made your teammates stronger. If we balanced the game around every job having a 'satisfactory' amount of DPS that doesn't come from raid buffs, nobody would have raid buffs. Or, everyone would have the same raid buff, which is a reality we are getting scarily close to, what with 12/19 jobs have a 2-minute buff of some variety. The other 9 jobs? Don't have raid buffs.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I don't play ninja for trick attack only, I play it because I want that assassin job fantasy outside of raiding.

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PVP is pretty much the only place in this game where an assassin job fantasy is going to make sense. I would say 'assassin' is the role of Ninjas, Samurais, and maybe Dragoons in PVP. It works, because you have a lot of high-value targets to kill, with a limited amount of HP.



I already went over why I don't think Ninja has or has even had an 'assassin' fantasy in PVE content, so I'll that there.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I might want to support my teammates sometimes, but I also want to feel impactful when I'm doing solo stuff because this is a job that is supposed to be able to annihilate an enemy instantly when they use their entire burst.

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I mean, what aren't you killing in solo with Trick + your full burst? Ninja has some of, if not the single highest burst in the game. If you're not killing it with Ninja, it wasn't designed to be assassinated.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

And honestly, sometimes it doesn't feel like that. Sometimes I use my entire burst and the enemy's still kicking, hale and hearty. It really puts ninja's job fantasy in a weird place for that reason because of how much Trick Attack makes up for ninja's damage. Raiding should not be the only thing that influences a job identity if the job fantasy doesn't align with the identity.

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You keep saying that Trick 'makes up for' Ninja's damage, but Ninja once again, already has good damage. It has incredible burst, and once that burst is over, it has low sustained damage until you can burst again, which is about as close to an assassin as you can really get in a game with elongated PVE encounters.

The only way to fix the problem you're describing would be to increase Ninja's sustained damage, at which point it's not really a Ninja anymore, or to increase Ninja's burst -- which would be absolutely catastrophic for game balance. Ninja is, as it stands, is the single best job for feeding into two-minute raid buffs. It is absurdly broken. I cannot emphasize enough to you how gross Ninja's burst is. Making it burst even harder (presumably at the cost of sustained damage) would make it a must-pick on every single team because the value it brings during in raid buffs would be astronomical.

Once again -- Ninja already has the strongest burst in the game. If you can't burst something down with a Ninja, you can't burst it down period.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

It's why I think PvP makes ninja exactly that good. You still get lots of support utility (Raiju stun, Doton heavy + Goka Mekkyaku synergy, Huton shield + movement speed buff, Meisui healing buff, damage up via mug) but your utility is all focused on enhancing yourself and becoming more impactful / flexible to adjust to the situation. It captures the essence of the job fantasy without losing any value as a support-based job. The problem is that this can't translate well into PvE due to how static and inflexible job design & encounter design has been.

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Completely agree! PVP Ninja is super fun, and I love the versatility of your kit. I will say that none of your support options feel super impactful, but the fact is is that they're there! PVP Ninja is the closest to a true 'assassin' with their ult -- being able to finish off any low-HP is very assassin-like, in my opinion. Like you said, though, this is impossible to translate over to PVP.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Dancer and Bard are known for being a support ranged job that supports their allies' DPS in particular, which is why their personal DPS is generally much lower as a result. They have multiple skills designed to be support oriented for a team setting. However, ninja doesn't fall into this category of being a job that solely supports their team.

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I don't see why you're making this distinction between Dancer, Bard and Ninja. Dancer and Bard press a few more buttons and buff a little harder, but Ninja still has to (or used, to) Suiton -> Trick to buff the team. It also does that every minute on the minute. Dancer and Bard do have sustained buffs, but they're unique to them. Ninja's team support makes completely for a Ninja. Hit a weak spot, open up a vulnerability for your team, and burst hard until your opponent recovers, then repeat when you next can hit a weak spot. Why does the number of abilities matter? Should not the impact or value these abilities bring be a bigger deciding factor?

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Ninja is the only job that holds two unique identities that counteract each other. In the past, Ninjas focused on support - yes, but that support also aligned to their personal DPS. In the past, they had Slashing debuff and dripping blades. While some jobs can take advantage to their slashing debuff, their debuff solely exists to help them - with Fuma Shuriken being used often over Raiton for clipping as it benefitted from both slashing debuff and dripping blades. Their whole toolkit - from support to damage all amalgamated to give that quick and high burst DPS job fantasy, which is what made it fun to play in a party setting and in solo instances. No matter where, they always had a toolkit that fit their job fantasy.

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Ninja definitely has two identities in a sense, but I disagree that they counteract. I think they complement each other, as I've detailed up above.

You could argue that Ninja used to support more with Slashing debuffs, but many, many jobs had a way to apply a debuff that supported the team. Not to mention, WAR could also apply Slashing, couldn't it? It's technically more ways to support your team, but this isn't exactly unique to Ninja. I do empathise mourning a job gone by, and I personally think these types of debuffs are interesting, but unfortunately SE has stated their intent to be rid of them entirely. I'd be very surprised to see them come back :(.

Outside of the Slashing debuff, what else did Ninja have that made them feel better in solo instances? If anything, Trick Attack was even more powerful than it was back, so wouldn't Ninja personal DPS have been lower? You said so yourself -- in 5.1 Ninja's personal damage was increased, and Trick's potency was lowered. So -- what, exactly made it better in solo content? To me it just sounds like the problem you're describing would have been even worse, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

If you asked me what changed from ARR to Shadowbringers, it's that ninja became more streamlined and removed a lot of personal support buffs to directly increase their overall DPS per skill. Trick Attack was the only support buff that still exist as a result. However, Shadowbringers still kept their core job fantasy of being a high damage assassin via Hyosho Ranryu.

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Okay, what? You talk about how Ninja lost all its support skills, and then you say it managed to 'maintain' its high damage assassin fantasy via Hyosho? You just finished saying it used to be more supportive. It's not keeping anything, my guy. It's losing its support identity piece by piece.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Even then, it took some work to adjust ninja to feel powerful. On its initial release, ninja was actually undertuned again when mudras moved over to a GCD-centric gameplay and went through multiple patches and buffs to make it feel good again for leveling - without just trick attack padding.

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I mean, 5.0 Ninja was just horrendously undertuned across the board. It did less rDPS than Bard.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

From Shadowbringers to Endwalker, we just lost flexibility to account for the big DPS gains other jobs have (raiju being lost upon using another weaponskill and Phantom Kamaitachi being an underwhelming skill on release).

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Hard disagree. Raijus are fine as they are -- it would be nice QOL if they didn't drop, but all other similar GCDs do (reaper's gallows/gibbet, for example), so I don't see the issue. Phantom has always been an amazing ability -- not having to spend a Raiton outside of Trick to handle disconnects means that even if it only had the potency of Spinning Edge, it would still be fantastic.

Ninja is more flexible than it's ever been, what with all of our disconnect options. The only place we've lost flexibility is with our burst windows. We have to press Mug on cooldown now, which means we can't stock up Bhavacakras for burst. Feels pretty awful, quite frankly.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

It honestly felt like they were trying to balance Ninja's rDPS because of how much stronger Trick Attack was, but our overall DPS didn't change much. It was after multiple adjustments on these skills that we got ninja's overall DPS back to where it was again - which is also due to its dual identity as an high burst DPS assassin. On Dragon Song Reprise release though, Trick Attack's damage got moved to mug - which I believe is exactly because of the issue of how impactful their RDPS was in relation to its personal DPS.

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I'm not really sure what argument you're making here? Ninja was weak and underperforming, so it got buffed. The skills that were buffed were Hyosho and our core GCDs. One ability we use in burst, and four we typically only use outside of burst.

It also wasn't on DSR release, it was with 6.1. DSR came out with 6.11. I know myself and other Ninja mains were hoping for more meaningful changes to fix its current gameplay, but nothing came.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I would be fine if there was a job that was more support oriented than personal DPS oriented, but that's not what ninja's job fantasy is.

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According to who? You've said yourself multiple times that Ninja has had a 'dual identity' of being a support and a high-burst job. You've said yourself that Ninja used to have many more support options.

Forgive if I'm misunderstanding you, but to me it just sounds like you want Ninja to be something it's never been.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

It would be great if it can have both, but it becomes an issue later down the line, I am more willing to move the trick attack's raidwide debuff and have another job be what ninja couldn't if it becomes too much of an issue with its job fantasy.

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It can have both. It's historically had both, and been very successfully. It performed well all through SHB post 5.1, without being absurdly broken. It also performed well in 6.05 and 6.08 without being absurdly broken.

My final hard disagree is that -- actually, no. Ninja should be a support job. It should revolve around Trick and its mudras (which are pretty inseparable). We already have four other melee DPS with high personal damage. We don't need to force Ninja to fit into personal DPS mold, when it's never fit there before.

You can't have an assassin in content where the point is to kill a boss with a huge HP pool over the course of 6-10 minutes. Assassination is just incompatible with this sort of context. You can, however, have a high-burst job which deals good damage, and can hit a weak point to support their teammates -- which is what Ninja has always been, and what I would it to continue to be.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

The thing is, is that everyone definition of 'work hard' is different. For some people, jobs with high APM mean 'working hard'. I disagree. I'm just pressing the same buttons over and over, but faster. Ninja is not a hard job, despite what people who don't play Ninja will tell you. I think jobs with a flexible rotation that needs to adapt and change to maximise their DPS, such as Black Mage, is a good example of 'being rewarded for working hard'. You can play a very standard Black Mage, where you Blizzard 3 -> Blizzard 4 -> Thunder 4 -> Fire 4 x3 -> Paradox -> Fire 4 x3 -> Despair -> Repeat, but you can also do crazy stuff with different lines, making use of Transpose. Ninja just doesn't have that level of complexity. It would be amazing if it did, but currently it doesn't.

Ninja is an easy job. That's the way it is. I would say, in fact, Ninja is probably the easiest DPS to play at a high level. It has infinite disconnect options, an incredibly static rotation, and all the recovery tools you could possibly need. The only things that might be hard about it could be getting used to the pace you need to hit your mudras, because that is, admittedly, pretty janky. You're always going to dump the same abilities into Trick, the order in which you do so doesn't really matter, and all you need to do is hit your cooldowns on time, and don't overcap on Ninki.

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Having played a fair bit of every tank and most melees, I'll have to disagree here. Xenos often likes to say something to the effect of, "GNB isn't harder than WAR. it's just busier." Against a target dummy perhaps, but busy will always be far more difficult, having to press more than an oGCD or two while having to reposition boss, do the mechanic, keep uptime, etc.

I've stated before that I don't believe Ninja is anywhere near as difficult as people that don't play it much would have you believe. This probably comes from Ninja having more of a high skill floor and entry barrier than other jobs because of Mudras and very high APM during burst. Meanwhile jobs such as current Black Mage, ShB Samurai and Summoner had an insanely high skill ceiling tied to encounter design that I found much more difficult to fully optimise than Ninja. That being said, NIN still has enough going for it in terms of gameplay to not put me to slumber, unlike certain other Endwalker DPS jobs.

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Originally Posted by butchersblock

Having played a fair bit of every tank and most melees, I'll have to disagree here. Xenos often likes to say something to the effect of, "GNB isn't harder than WAR. it's just busier." Against a target dummy perhaps, but busy will always be far more difficult, having to press more than an oGCD or two while having to reposition boss, do the mechanic, keep uptime, etc.

I've stated before that I don't believe Ninja is anywhere near as difficult as people that don't play it much would have you believe. This probably comes from Ninja having more of a high skill floor and entry barrier than other jobs because of Mudras and very high APM during burst. Meanwhile jobs such as current Black Mage, ShB Samurai and Summoner had an insanely high skill ceiling tied to encounter design that I found much more difficult to fully optimise than Ninja. That being said, NIN still has enough going for it in terms of gameplay to not put me to slumber, unlike certain other Endwalker DPS jobs.

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I guess I'll have to agree to disagree with you on this!

For me, having played a fair bit of Ninja in EW, I don't need to put any thought into the buttons I'm pressing, because it's so rote, and pretty much every fight this tier is full melee uptime, unless you get a handful of specific mechanics (i.e. odd number tethers in p2s, dark tether in p4sp2 act 4) which force you to eat some downtime. Even then, Ninja has great tools to deal with this downtime.

I definitely think that something like moving a boss whilst bursting as GNB is genuinely difficult, because you're pulling a balancing act where you disconnect from the boss to position it, but get back within max melee to land your abilities. I wouldn't say Ninja has to do things like that, but I will concede that eating some downtime and properly squeezing in your oGCDs can be a little tough in certain circumstances. My personal stance is just that the huge numbers of tools you have as a Ninja to handle disconnects over other jobs more than makes up for this.

But, my experiences are of course not universal!

First off, thanks for taking the time to read my responses. I do feel like I can get very wordy at times, so I'll try my best to cut down on word count and summarize things. Please do let me know if I missed anything.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

I think is the core of our disagreement. You believe (if I'm not misunderstanding you, in which case please correct me if I am) that 14's Ninja job fantasy is about being a solo assassin that can take down a target from the shadows? I believe the 14's Ninja job fantasy is about hitting a target's weak spot, and following up with high burst damage.

I don't understand where your notion of 'going solo' is coming from. FF14 Ninja is notably heavily inspired by Naruto, and while I've never seen the show, my impression from years of osmosis is that they operate both in teams and solo sometimes. Even historical Ninjas often worked in teams. The Hollywood notion of a Ninja is definitely assassin-like, but my impression of Ninjas is japan is that they functioned more as spies -- support roles, if you would.


While the fantasy of a solo assassin is cool, I don't think it really fits a multiplayer game either, and I think the developers are aware of that -- which is why hitting a weak spot, doing a lot of burst, and letting your allies follow up is a bit more fitting to an MMO whilst still holding true to that Ninja job fantasy.

Something closer to a 'solo' job sounds more like a Samurai to me - a job that can consistently output high damage, and will generally win in both short-term and sustained fights. They have a ton of burst, too.

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Yeah, I think that's part of the core of our disagreement. I think a big part of the job flavor is tied to both its class gameplay and lore. People have been expecting ninja to be more of an assassin based on class to job storyline advancement (especially where we're always supposed to move in the Shadows / learning to kill our enemies silently / doing ambushes in job quests) and doubling as a magic-melee DPS. From the feel to the execution, the job is heavily designed to be using everything in their arsenal to kill your opponents quickly. I'd say this is probably also because I am running PotD, HoH, Eureka, and Bozja a lot too lately, which is where that feeling of solo play happens. The effect of Hide becomes much more pronounced in content where stealth matters / can be used more often, which directly influences solo play.

DPS is definitely not the biggest contribution to whether a job is fun, but it definitely does matter when your job fantasy revolves around throwing everything you have at the enemy to supposedly delete them, and you just can't do that because the big part of your damage is tied to relying on buffs instead to support other players. I'm not talking about boss-levels of HP in burst, but ... I guess the feeling of the amount of reliance to a party? I'm not completely sure how to describe it. Even if their DPS isn't as high as the other jobs, the impact of their initial burst should be high enough to offset that feeling.

I think this is probably the biggest misunderstanding. When I say "lacking any job fantasy outside of support" I mean the current effect of support seems to lock them in because it heavily favors supporting the party like a ranged support does. Whereas I love to play a support role at times, I don't think ninja is completely suited to being a support role by directly buffing others like a Bard or Dancer does. Don't get me wrong, I love Trick Attack and how it can strengthen others in the party to do more damage, but I feel that the main focus of ninja's support relies on enhancing themselves first and the secondary effect would be to support their allies as an extra condition when the party can take advantage of it. I think this has been always the core tenant of ninja is that the support utility will always be useful for them, and useful to their allies at a lesser effect. This applies to Trick Attack and ninja's old slashing debuff. However, it also synergies very well to their own toolkit (ex: Duality - an old self support buff which worked in synergy to their support to party, and now Bunshin). I think this is what made ninja's support utility feel good in a party setting without taking anything away from their solo gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the focus has always felt like ninja's support bolstered their "personal DPS" and gave a high burst gameplay, but their support just worked to align with everyone else, making them feel like a powerful support without taking much flexibility away outside a party setting.

We are both in agreement that ninja's job fantasy is about hitting a target's weak spot and following up with high burst damage, but I think the disagreement is how much of that burst damage should be attributed to personal - and how much should be attributed to party damage. I feel both support and personal DPS matter and exist in the ninja toolkit as this would be much more in-line with their job fantasy, but the problem is how the ninja's toolkit goes about doing that without compromising on too much on their solo play job fantasy.

I believe that's why the biggest problem with ninja is how much burst synergy it has with other jobs. This dual identity of being 'the highest burst damage' job and the strongest 'low cooldown buff synergy' makes ninja in a very weird place to be for balancing issues. I agree with you that it's great synergy, but it's also a problem because this synergy is so strong that the dual identity becomes a headache for balancing. For Shadowbringers, I'd say ninja felt great after a bit of patching. Trick Attack felt strong but ninja did not feel overwhelmingly reliant on party's damage as they had other tools for powerful burst (Hyosho Ranryu + Bunshin in this case). Endwalker ninja felt off as a result because we didn't feel like we got any powerful support utility for ourselves or any high damaging skill (Phantom feeling like it replaced Shadow Fang) while we lost some DPS abilities instead (Assassinate oGCD combo action from Dream within a Dream). Numerically, ninja is strong in Endwalker, but that's not what it feels like to me because I was referring to the job fantasy gameplay here. We got more flexibility, but it felt like Trick Attack became more powerful with more jobs aligning to the 60 second window and getting a lot of stronger skills. Then it felt like Mug and Trick attack was changed to weaken that burst synergy (with some debatable effect), but it overall returned Ninja's gameplay to "supporting themselves first" and then supporting the party second with both effects overlapping on the ninja (except our Ninki generation went out of the window). It felt like ninja was designed in a corner due to Trick Attack and balancing. If you say it can have both, then that would be great. But honestly, it felt like Trick Attack was the problem here while it was under a 60 second window, but I'll gladly eat my words if this wasn't the case.

I'd say the difference between the 4 other melees with ninja is not personal damage, but gameplay difference. Dragoon, Reaper, and Samurai are all sustained DPS jobs (consistently high DPS), but each has their own flavor. Monk, Reaper and Samurai are close combat sustained DPS jobs with various levels of burst. Dragoon and ninja are the two jobs with ranged DPS - Dragoon is more of a gapcloser job than ninja due to multiple jump attacks on a relatively low cooldown tied into their rotation (Dragonfire dive, Spineshatter dive, Stardriver) and ninja has mudras for ranged attacks. Dragoon, Monk, Reaper, and Ninja are DPS jobs with various support utility to the team. Ninja should be the job with a high burst and low sustained output in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

I guess I'll have to agree to disagree with you on this!

For me, having played a fair bit of Ninja in EW, I don't need to put any thought into the buttons I'm pressing, because it's so rote, and pretty much every fight this tier is full melee uptime, unless you get a handful of specific mechanics (i.e. odd number tethers in p2s, dark tether in p4sp2 act 4) which force you to eat some downtime. Even then, Ninja has great tools to deal with this downtime.

I definitely think that something like moving a boss whilst bursting as GNB is genuinely difficult, because you're pulling a balancing act where you disconnect from the boss to position it, but get back within max melee to land your abilities. I wouldn't say Ninja has to do things like that, but I will concede that eating some downtime and properly squeezing in your oGCDs can be a little tough in certain circumstances. My personal stance is just that the huge numbers of tools you have as a Ninja to handle disconnects over other jobs more than makes up for this.

But, my experiences are of course not universal!

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I don't think we're in disagreement here, my stance is based on comparison of this job to the others I've played (Reaper, Monk, SMN, MCH, DNC, WAR). You're correct that, unfortunately this tier has had almost no downtime, and whatever downtime we had was purely based on RNG. This kinda devalues Ninja's tools for disengagement.
I generally prefer jobs to be a little bit more complex, and while I wish the same for Ninja I don't think the job needs complexity as much as some of the other jobs I've mentioned that feel incredibly dull with barely thought process behind them.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

First off, thanks for taking the time to read my responses. I do feel like I can get very wordy at times, so I'll try my best to cut down on word count and summarize things. Please do let me know if I missed anything.

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No problem :)! Thank you for reading my whole response. Even if we're not in agreement, so long as we're both arguing in good faith, I actually really enjoy debating the finer aspects of Ninja. Playing that job is pretty much my whole reason for playing this game.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

People have been expecting ninja to be more of an assassin based on class to job storyline advancement (especially where we're always supposed to move in the Shadows / learning to kill our enemies silently / doing ambushes in job quests) and doubling as a magic-melee DPS.

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Have they? I got that impression much more from the Rogue quests. The Ninja job quests, from memory, felt pretty goofy most of the time, and focused a lot on Ninja magic, the secret fourth mudra, etc etc. I do know there was disappointment expressed that Ninja didn't continue to follow Rogue's path, but there's always the potential for another scouting job which aligns a little more closely to that particular job fantasy. I think nowadays, most people have a good understanding of what Ninja is -- a heavily ranged, hybrid-damage dealing burst job with the best party buff in the game. Or, well, it used to be. :,,) rip

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

From the feel to the execution, the job is heavily designed to be using everything in their arsenal to kill your opponents quickly.

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I mean, yeah? It still does that. Like I said, biggest burst job in the game. Especially after the 6.1 changes. No other job does it better!

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I'd say this is probably also because I am running PotD, HoH, Eureka, and Bozja a lot too lately, which is where that feeling of solo play happens. The effect of Hide becomes much more pronounced in content where stealth matters / can be used more often, which directly influences solo play.

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Yeah, there we go. I am pretty gutted that Hide was nerfed to remove Doton - that felt super unnecessary, and a bit of an unfair nerf to Ninja not doing raiding content, all for the sake making sure the Tank doesn't have to -- god forbid -- pull the boss south for a few seconds.

Side note, before the changes, Ninja was actually the 3rd strongest job for running PoTD solo, almost entirely because of its burst and Hide. Suiton (when Trick is up) is your strongest mudra by far, with an effective 1000 potency up front, and then whatever other bonus potency you can shove into Trick. Plus, given how much downtime there it, you can be almost constantly bursting by refreshing your mudras. Not sure if it's quite the same in HoH, I think Tanks are very strong there? Eureka/Bozja I tend not to consider too much, because they're effectively really messy Alliance raids, what with the sheer number of people in there. You can, in theory, do it solo (and those duels are a thing), but most people mob NMs or FATEs or CEs to get by.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

DPS is definitely not the biggest contribution to whether a job is fun, but it definitely does matter when your job fantasy revolves around throwing everything you have at the enemy to supposedly delete them, and you just can't do that because the big part of your damage is tied to relying on buffs instead to support other players. I'm not talking about boss-levels of HP in burst, but ... I guess the feeling of the amount of reliance to a party? I'm not completely sure how to describe it. Even if their DPS isn't as high as the other jobs, the impact of their initial burst should be high enough to offset that feeling.

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I actually run some numbers of this, because I just completely disagree that Ninja's burst feels lacking. I mentioned before that if it got any stronger, it would make the job absolutely broken, and most likely necessary in most parties.

Before the changes (obviously this varies based on your party comp/skill of the party), roughly ~8% of your rDPS was contributions from Trick. Pretty big number, all things considered, but still not that big. 92% of your damage is your own.

Then, in 6.1, with the Mug changes -- Mug contributes about ~6% of your rDPS. Which is still quite a lot, but not as much. That said, these numbers are only 2% apart.

To me, losing out on the immense value of Trick for gameplay variance, class synergy, and dare I say fun, is not comparable in value to dealing 2% more personal damage and 2% less party damage. Ninja still has a huge chunk of their damage come from raid buffs -- it's just a lot less interesting now.

With that in mind, the only real solution to the problem you describe would to remove party buffs from Ninja entirely. Or, nerf Mug over and over until it meets some arbitrary level of personal DPS vs party contribution DPS.

In my opinion, that's more than just one step too far. At that point, I don't know if the job is recognizeable. We both agree that Ninja has always been a support class.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I think this is probably the biggest misunderstanding. When I say "lacking any job fantasy outside of support" I mean the current effect of support seems to lock them in because it heavily favors supporting the party like a ranged support does. Whereas I love to play a support role at times, I don't think ninja is completely suited to being a support role by directly buffing others like a Bard or Dancer does. Don't get me wrong, I love Trick Attack and how it can strengthen others in the party to do more damage, but I feel that the main focus of ninja's support relies on enhancing themselves first and the secondary effect would be to support their allies as an extra condition when the party can take advantage of it. I think this has been always the core tenant of ninja is that the support utility will always be useful for them, and useful to their allies at a lesser effect. This applies to Trick Attack and ninja's old slashing debuff. However, it also synergies very well to their own toolkit (ex: Duality - an old self support buff which worked in synergy to their support to party, and now Bunshin). I think this is what made ninja's support utility feel good in a party setting without taking anything away from their solo gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the focus has always felt like ninja's support bolstered their "personal DPS" and gave a high burst gameplay, but their support just worked to align with everyone else, making them feel like a powerful support without taking much flexibility away outside a party setting.

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Like, I can kinda see where you're coming from but I just disagree. Slashing debuffs do benefit the Ninja, but they also benefit the party -- just a smaller subset. I've spent a decent amount of time trawling through older videos and forum posts from Heavensward/Stormblood, and it seems like Ninja's value was because it would provide a Slashing debuff to the party -- every tank, as well as half of the melee DPS benefited from Slashing. At that point, Slashing is just a permanent buff you provide that only targets half the party. By the same token, Trick benefits the party, but it also benefits the Ninja. It's not like buffing the party stops the Ninja from benefiting from their own buff. You also say Duality worked in synergy to their party support, but all it did was double the base damage on your next weaponskill. Didn't include combo damage or effects applied. It only affected NIN. I'm not really seeing the synergy there, nor do I see how Bunshin synergises in particular with our party support. I mean, yeah, more damage into raid buffs is great, but there's nothing special about it relative to other abilities that deal damage.


With this in mind, aside from enmity management (which no longer exists, as enmity management has been greatly simplified), all of Ninja's "party utility" has been in the form of damage taken debuffs on the enemy, benefitting the party. Both the Slashing debuff and Trick work like this. Mug even still works like this. So, I just don't get why that's suddenly changed in 6.0. 6.0 release Ninja was Shadowbringers Ninja with extra steps (hi, Raijus) and some extra convenience (no more Asssasinate animation lock, free disconnect button in Phantom).

What we have now is a step further away from the support Ninja of old.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

We are both in agreement that ninja's job fantasy is about hitting a target's weak spot and following up with high burst damage, but I think the disagreement is how much of that burst damage should be attributed to personal - and how much should be attributed to party damage. I feel both support and personal DPS matter and exist in the ninja toolkit as this would be much more in-line with their job fantasy, but the problem is how the ninja's toolkit goes about doing that without compromising on too much on their solo play job fantasy.

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Mm, see, here I disagree again. Currently, there's no real endgame 'solo content'. It would be cool if that changed, but matter of fact is, currently there is no content that fits that description.



The closest we have to that would be solo POTD and HOH, and -- at least for POTD -- Ninja is already extremely good at that content. The only reason Red Mage and Machinist are better is because Red Mage can self-heal and Machinist can kite infinitely. Ninja is third in line, with excellent on-demand burst that you don't need to wait for cooldown for, excellent ranged options, and the ability to explode all of its burst inside of Trick.

Ninja already does extremely well in existing solo content. Extremely well! I just don't see why you think it needs to be any better?

Not to mention, even if they did make 'solo savage' somewhere down the line, it doesn't exist now, and it just seems foolish to balance around content that doesn't exist. What we have are Savage fights and Ultimate fights -- 8-man content that is intentionally tuned to be hard. We should be focussing on balancing around this type of content, because this is where it matters.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I believe that's why the biggest problem with ninja is how much burst synergy it has with other jobs. This dual identity of being 'the highest burst damage' job and the strongest 'low cooldown buff synergy' makes ninja in a very weird place to be for balancing issues. I agree with you that it's great synergy, but it's also a problem because this synergy is so strong that the dual identity becomes a headache for balancing.

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I almost completely agree with you! The only thing I don't agree with is that this is a Ninja problem. I think this is an introduced problem created by the forced two-minute meta Square Enix is intent on bringing in. If we relaxed raid buffs back to their Shadowbringers timers, Ninja's burst being strong each minute would be much less of an issue. However, Square Enix continues to make questionable decisions for the sake of 'balancing'.

I don't think it's impossible to balance Ninja with a one-minute party buff in this two-minute world. 6.05 and 6.08 demonstrated that Ninja, before the changes, was perfectly viable. I cleared the tier on it, damn it!

It's not fair to Ninja players to completely ruin how their job works because they wanted to...make everything two minutes, despite Yoshi-P saying it would make everything boring if they did that (and he was right!). Square Enix should revert the changes, and tune the numbers appropriately. If that means Ninja gets potency changes every patch, so be it. At least it'll feel good to play again, and adhere to that job fantasy.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

For Shadowbringers, I'd say ninja felt great after a bit of patching. Trick Attack felt strong but ninja did not feel overwhelmingly reliant on party's damage as they had other tools for powerful burst (Hyosho Ranryu + Bunshin in this case).

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I completely agree! Shadowbringers Ninja was simply excellent.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Endwalker ninja felt off as a result because we didn't feel like we got any powerful support utility for ourselves or any high damaging skill (Phantom feeling like it replaced Shadow Fang) while we lost some DPS abilities instead (Assassinate oGCD combo action from Dream within a Dream).

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I miss Shadowfang too, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it was anything other than raw damage, because it wasn't. Ninja didn't lose a lick of party support until 6.1. It was literally the exact same job, with Raijus, one less oGCD, no more Shadowfang, and a great disconnect ability instead. It was very much the same job, with slightly different damage buttons. That's all.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Numerically, ninja is strong in Endwalker, but that's not what it feels like to me because I was referring to the job fantasy gameplay here. We got more flexibility, but it felt like Trick Attack became more powerful with more jobs aligning to the 60 second window and getting a lot of stronger skills. Then it felt like Mug and Trick attack was changed to weaken that burst synergy (with some debatable effect), but it overall returned Ninja's gameplay to "supporting themselves first" and then supporting the party second with both effects overlapping on the ninja (except our Ninki generation went out of the window).

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Trick Attack did get slightly more powerful because more jobs align to it, yes. That said, this just means more party synergy across the board -- and let me remind you that the stated reason for the Mug change was not balance, but to increase party synergy. Which is demonstratively untrue, so uh, lol? The thing is is that until Ninja's base GCDs (and Hyosho) were buffed, it was also just superbly weak.

Remember how I said before the 6.1 changes, Trick contributed ~8% of the Ninja's total damage? In Shadowbringers (specifically looking at Eden's promise), Trick contributed around ~9%. This means that despite moving to a two-minute meta, Trick was actually a smaller portion of Ninja's overall damage in 6.0, relative to Shadowbringers. I can't explain it, but numbers are numbers.

With that in mind, knowing Trick isn't any more powerful than it was in Shadowbringers, do you still feel that way?

(n.b. my numbers aren't official/confirmed to be legit, i just looked at a handful of ~90 ish percentile numbers from both 5.4 and 6.0 and did the math, and it seemed pretty consistent)


Also, as I mentioned before, even Ninja's Slashing debuff was party value first. You can decide on your own that it felt like that, but what I've seen seems to reflect the idea that Slashing/Piercing/Blunt debuffs were a party-buff thing, not a personal-buff-that-also-happens-to-benefit-the-party thing. Which means Ninja has always been a support.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

It felt like ninja was designed in a corner due to Trick Attack and balancing. If you say it can have both, then that would be great. But honestly, it felt like Trick Attack was the problem here while it was under a 60 second window, but I'll gladly eat my words if this wasn't the case.

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We can have both! Square Enix just doesn't want us to. Ninja was fine in 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.55, 6.05, and 6.08 with Trick as it was. The only time it wasn't fine was in 6.0, where it was undertuned and had Raiju issues, but this was hardly a Trick problem.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I'd say the difference between the 4 other melees with ninja is not personal damage, but gameplay difference. Dragoon, Reaper, and Samurai are all sustained DPS jobs (consistently high DPS), but each has their own flavor. Monk, Reaper and Samurai are close combat sustained DPS jobs with various levels of burst. Dragoon and ninja are the two jobs with ranged DPS - Dragoon is more of a gapcloser job than ninja due to multiple jump attacks on a relatively low cooldown tied into their rotation (Dragonfire dive, Spineshatter dive, Stardriver) and ninja has mudras for ranged attacks. Dragoon, Monk, Reaper, and Ninja are DPS jobs with various support utility to the team.

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Yeah, I guess I agree. I was mainly speaking from the perspective that Ninja is the supportive melee, rather than trying to imply the other melee DPS don't bring anything at all - they just all happen to bring much higher personal damage, and weaker buffs. They do sometimes bring unique utility, like Monk's Mantra or Reaper's Arcane Crest, but I've found those two abilities to be a bit lacking. Even so, I'd love to see more of them. It'd be cool if Ninja could get, like, a single-target mitigation ability, where you can send a Shadow to soak 10% of your HP's worth of damage on something, or something. I dunno.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Ninja should be the job with a high burst and low sustained output in my opinion.

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Big agree! And that's what 6.08 Ninja was.