The Problems With Ninja In Endwalker

Hey Ninja enthusiasts! I'm a highly experienced Ninja player and would consider it to be my main. I've cleared all Eden Savage tiers, EX trials, and Ultimates with Ninja and after spending a good amount of time with other Ninja players analyzing the tooltips, we have found some glaring problems with the job's identity going forward.
I think the team did a wonderful job with the aesthetic of the new job actions, but we also have to look at them in a real gameplay environment, so let's begin.

DISCLAIMER: Most of the posts within the first pages of this thread were made BEFORE the release of the expansion as results of the media tour. Please continue further through the thread and check the date on the posts. Posts after december 3rd are up to date. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ MY UPDATED THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS, PLEASE CONTINUE ON TO PAGE 11, thank you very much for reading!

Strange decisions:

Huton

Though Huraijin will eventually find moments of use, it is too niche of a skill to warrant an entire ability slot. If you were to apply this skill to encounters in Shadowbringers, you would most often finish complete 10min+ encounters without using it once.

But besides the niche applications of Huraijin, the change of Huton from 70s to 60s is still a mystery to me and many others. It all but limits the way Ninjas might use Armor Crush effectively, and has no purpose but make maintaining Huton throughout extended sections of downtime more frustrating.

Lastly I have to mention Phantom Kamaitachi because we've found that there are cases where you will want to avoid using this skill entirely under Bunshin. This is because the ability does not appear to benefit from the Bunshin buff, and has a fixed amount of potency, that is actually (as of right now) beaten by using either Aeolian Edge or Armor Crush whilst under the effect of Bunshin, resulting in cases where you would prefer to neglect this skill in pursuit of higher damage. This skill should most definitely also be affected by the additional potency Bunshin adds to other weaponskills.

Removing Ninjas utility, the addition of limitations:

Forked/Fleeting Raiju

No I'm not talking about the utility of trick, but one of Ninjas even greater strengths, the Mudra system. What makes Ninja so engaging to play at a high level is it's ability to use Jutsus to your advantage, and dodge around mechanics whilst maintaining uptime that would be impossible for other melees to do. The new Raiju actions feel like nothing but a nerf to this power. This ability is one of the few weaponskill gapcloser in the entire game, and unfortunately anything but flexible. This skill limits Ninjas movement severely, forcing you to engage in a 2-step gapcloser combo, with no alternative options, as pressing any other button will cause you to lose the buff to execute your Raiju abilities.

This means that if you require to be at a relatively good distance away from the boss, or to continually move around the boss in order to avoid AOEs, this skill will force you to dash to the boss twice in a row, severely limiting Ninjas movement to a point where it makes Dragoons jumps seem reasonable (You'll hear about floor Ninjas very soon).

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

This problem is probably the one most Ninjas seem to take issue with as of now. Not being given an alternative to dashing into the boss and murdering yourself. This action should be opened up to return some flexibility to the Ninja rotation, by either removing one or both of Raijus gapclosers, and/or allow us to execute other actions before either Raiju action without losing the Raiju Ready buff for it.

A sidenote: the buff obtained by executing Raiton, which allows for the execution of Raiju, is listed as lasting 30 seconds. This is inherently counterintuitive, as there is no point to the buff lasting this long when you have no option but to press Forked Raiju following a Raiton anyways, leading me to believe that this may be a bug. But if this is meant to be intentional, I would wish for this to be highly prioritized when it comes to changes that may yet still be made to the Ninja job.

I could see this action work more fluently inside a Ninja rotation by allowing us to hold Forked Raiju/Fleeting Raiju and not forcing us to use them after each Raiton.

Highly optimized scenarios

On top of these issues, Raiju is actually used quite frequently, about 4-6 times every minute, thus replacing a lot of Spinning Edges, Gust Slashes, and Aeolian Edges/Armor Crushes. The actions potency is quite close to the amount that both combo finishers provide, yet only grants 5 Ninki upon execution, where the finishers grant a great 15 Ninki. Considering the amount of combo finishers that Raiju will replace over the course of an encounter, this will result in a lower Ninki gain than you would otherwise have by simply using your 1-2-3 combo, and eventually leading to a loss of Bhavacakra casts throughout the encounter. This would lead high level Ninja players to consider entirely dropping Raiju casts in specified locations throughout their rotation in favor of a greater DPS gain. To want to avoid using a essential skill in Ninjas Endwalker rotation in favor of damage output makes me and lots of other players greatly worried.

Verdict:

The additions to Doton with Hollow Nozuchi, as well as the Meisui buff are the only additions to Ninja so far that I can confidently view as truly beneficial. The limitations and restrictions Raiju adds to Ninja are a very glaring problem and will lead to lots of frustrating experiences with players of this job. What is now a highly engaging, flexible job, seems to be no more come Endwalker. This job feels like it was neglected in comparison to the other Melee DPS for Endwalker. I very much hope that within the coming days before the release of the expansion, or following the patch cycle throughout its life, we will see adjustments coming to our favourite rabbit mage to make it fun to play.

Thanks for reading, both Ninja players and others!

As a fellow NIN player with a lot of experience, I too am feeling the pain from this. Taking a job with the mobility and flexibility it currently has and turning it into something that has to spam gapcloser GCDs to play optimally, but can also end up losing damage from doing so with current potencies, seems like a complete turnaround of job/rotation identity, not identical to but certainly comparable to how Tsubame's fixed 60s CD as a GCD for Samurai turned them from a Shinten-spamming machine into a job with a fixed looping rotation every minute because, optimally, Tsubame would never drift and the entire rotation was built around that.

I can see many of the fixes you put forward being viable, though removing the forced gapclosing from the Raiju skills doesn't change anything if we still need to be in melee range for 2 GCDs after Raiton in order to use them. One possible remedy I can see is turning both forked Raiju and Fleeting Raiju into oGCDs that can be used under a stack of something like Summoner's Further Ruin but from Raiton. So you'd Raiton to gain a buff to use Forked, which would give you a buff allowing you to use Fleeting. At their current potencies as GCDs, as well as current Ninki gain as you said, they're barely worth using and the same goes for Phantom.

60s Huton also doesn't make sense as a change for me. It's been 70s since the job released, and shortening it does nothing but hurt us in fights with long cutscene-style downtime segments like E1S, E8S and TEA, where we can currently carry Huton through the transition but would be unable to do so if the maximum duration was reduced to 60s as is currently planned. Huraijin as a button seems like a patch for the Huton duration decrease and nothing else, If Huton was kept at 70s I can't think of any situations where I would choose to use Huraijin over an Armour Crush combo.

I can only hope that some of these additions to the job are re-considered before release, or at least as soon after release as is comfortable. If they go live with what's currently planned, even if Phantom and Raiju potencies are adjusted so that they can't be a loss to use over a regular combo finisher, I simply can't see myself enjoying this iteration of the job compared to how I enjoyed the Stormblood version or either of the Shadowbringers (5.0 and 5.1+) versions, and might end up having to change to another job once the first tier becomes available since no matter how much I like NIN as it is now I'd prefer not to raid on something that uses 4-6 gapclosers every minute at fixed times and likely die to mechanics as a result of that.

Couldn't have worded it better. I've played a lot of classes, but I'm dedicated to NIN so after finding out how *inflexible* we've become with 2 back-to-back gapclosers after each Raiton, I have to admit I'm disappointed and a little worried.

Honestly, I'm hoping the job gets some changes for the release of Endwalker. Like:
• Forked Ready and Fleeting Ready possibly coexist as buffs, so I'm not forced to do Forked -> Fleeting before I can Raiton again. They share the same button, sure, but I can see how Fleeting could take priority over Forked for button ownership.
• Perhaps Forked is a gapclosing GCD, but I think it could be cool if Fleeting was an OGCD. Maybe follows the same logic as my previous point.
• Please, don't let out 1-2-3 combos break our Raiju buffs. I have no clue why that is even a thing that can happen, especially with the buff lasting 15s. Not having the option to use a non-gapclosing weaponskill is so restricting.

Not to mention that Phantom Kamaitachi not being affected by Bunshin. The fact there's a gain by just not using the button for a Bunshin window is pretty awful.

If we do actually gapclose 4-6 times per minute, then I may find myself switching jobs despite being convinced I would continue it in EW ):

I fully agree with all the thoughts above. I'm a NIN main (really a NIN one-trick) and was hoping to continue that trend into EW. The greatest draw of this class, especially as a prog class, is how flexible NIN typically is.

In just this tier alone, I can think of so many ways that the forced double GCD gap closer would have caused so many pain points. As many others have stated before me, I would love for Forked/Fleeting to be used as oGCDs under buffs. I'd also be happy if they stayed the way they are, but with weapon skills not breaking the Raiju buffs. As it is, any instance where we'd need to stay max melee would be forcing us to choose between death or losing those procs. This issue alone seems to be completely game-breaking for Ninjas.

Raiju is just going to slow down APM I think. I think it's for sure a thing that other weaponskills will cancel Raiju combo. Might get lucky and be able to weave in Mudras. Otherwise weaving oGCDs is a must during Raiju.

Mudras are abilities and not WS's so that might be plausible.

It's looking like Raiju combo will require Bhavacakra weaves or oGCDS. And the Bunshin finisher is a Weaponskill too so that will cancel Raiju.

But Raiju is always available every Raiton at 90 so this is going to throw a wrench into Ninja rotations.

Don't see the purpose of Hiraijin. Will probably be Ninja version of Anatman.

Simply echoing what has already been said above and adding on my own two cents, NIN has been my chosen job of interest since before I even began playing. I started near the end of the 5.3 patch and found myself to thoroughly enjoy NIN and even self-identifying it as my "main" job, vehemently taking it into and clearing all endgame Savage and Ultimate content in order to prove to myself that I was capable at a consistent level on the job. With that said...

As of the current state of how the job's playstyle looks with the addition of Forked and Fleeting Raiju, on top of all the information granted to us in the playerbase via the content creators that participated in the media tour, I find myself also doubting to be able or even want to play 6.0 NIN at a consistent level of comfort for progression in upcoming Savage and Ultimate level content: having to understand and execute the mechanics of the new fights whilst maintaining a rotation and having to consider "I might die if I press Forked or Fleeting Raiju here" up to 6 times in 1 minute is discouraging to say the least. It is simply too restricting, and not in a "healthy weakness" way. This is without even thinking about the amount of times I actually want to use Huraijin over Armor Crush, which should be none in most if not all fights unless I either die or there is 60 seconds of downtime.

For me personally, my grievances with 6.0 NIN / Forked & Fleeting Raijus are:
1. the fact that we are effectively forced to use them one after the other after any Raiton... strange, considering we have the "option" to delay them for 30 seconds. Counterintuitive, as stated already. Even stranger considering Mudra recharge is 20 seconds.
2. any weaponskill breaks the Forked > Fleeting Raiju combo. Considering the fact they dash us onto the target, therefore putting us into melee range, why, then, does our 1-2-3 melee combo also then break this combo? It doesn't seem like the intent was to reduce the effectiveness of NIN's ranged capabilities, but that is exactly what it will turn out to be.

Any suggested solutions I would've had myself are already mentioned, especially the coexistence of the Raiju Ready buffs; or perhaps even separating the two skills into different keys.

I'm more so annoyed they took off the auto DH/crit from assassinate . I know it's getting replaced but they could of just carried the auto DH/crit to DwaD . I like basically all the other changes but if they're pretty much taking away 2 of ours skills at least make one of our last rogue type skills alittle more worth while , it's not even an upgrade but more so just being replaced . Everything is basically Ninjutsu's now . I can only imagine how bare nin is gonna be for newer players leveling up after EW releases .

I don't think that's really an issue, Ilyn. Skills get changed every expac. Assassinate back in Stormblood was a...40s? CD that you could only use when the boss was below 20% HP. Then it became a combo action from DWAD that was a guaranteed CDH. And now DWAD is an upgrade to it. These types of changes happen every cycle and the potency that Assassinate has will be spread among other actions or put onto new ones. It wasn't even a powerful CDH hit, base 200 potency when stuff like Machinist's Reassembled Drill or Warrior's IR Fell Cleaves actually benefitted from it, Hyosho Ranryu is much more satisfying to land.

You're also complaining about something that's a major part of the job, Ninjutsu. Why would Ninja not use Ninjutsu? 'Everything is Ninjutsu' for NIN like 'everything is jumps' for DRG or 'everything is everything is summons' for new Summoner. It's not currently bare while levelling and it still won't be, the only part of the current rotation that actually got removed is Shadow Fang which isn't even that engaging to begin with, you press it once a minute under Huton or once every 70s before level 45. The levelling experience is there to teach you how to play a job and what each button does, the game has to assume that any job can be the first job a player levels and has to be prepared for that fact.

Agree with almost all of the above-stated concerns. Just wanted to add that it's incredibly strange job design given that it flies in the face of everything SE is doing with the rest of the jobs' gap-closers. All are either having their potency removed or given charges (i.e. spineshatter dive) in order to not make players forced to choose between using their gap closer for potency or for movement, as well as removing the need to hold them in cases of needing to stay max melee for a mechanic.

Then Ninja gets not one, but two gap closers that it is ostensibly forced to use immediately regardless of mechanics or simply lose them, and cannot use anything aside from a non-raiton ninjutsu after using raiton otherwise they are simply lost.

And on TOP of that, these gap closers are on the GCD, giving literally zero flexibility in terms of timing for when to use them. This design feels entirely antithetical to the rest of the philosophy for job changes in EW.

This could all be very easily solved, however. Simply removing the restriction that weaponskills break this combo would be the easiest fix. Ideally, in my opinion at least, one or both of them should be made OGCDs. Not only does this remove the insane restriction placed on using them in their current iteration, but would actually give interesting mobility choices and allow ninjas to have a proper gap closer that takes us to the boss instead of shukuchi with a target macro that takes us dead center like we currently have. Not only would this make the job more interesting and (again, in my opinion) more fun to play, it would actually fit the stated design philosophy for Endwalker.

I, like the others in this thread, was planning on maining Ninja through the new expansion, and am now, unfortunately, strongly considering completely abandoning my favorite job in the game on release if these job changes persist into the expansion launch.