Current state of Ninja?

So I see a lot of people talking about how Ninja is undertuned and how with Ninja you put in more work for less results. Is it's dps unbearably low or is it fine? And is it fun to play currently? I am really interested in the Ninjitsu system.

It's most likely going to be buffed on Tuesday, so don't sweat the numbers right now. If you like it, play it. Even in its current state it's not so low that it can't be brought to a raid.

I love Ninja, I've been playing it since it was released. I played through the Shadowbringers MSQ as Ninja all the way to 80. It's fun, and it's still my favorite job.

However, Ninja is certainly undertuned. Yes we have Trick Attack, but it doesn't compensate for our lack of personal DPS. The biggest issue is that Shadowbringers' Ninja has become even more complex but for all that work in the rotation, it still feels weaker than it's former self.

I'm sure it will be corrected. The job is still fun and it isn't problematic at all for solo play anyway. If you like it, play it.

Gameplay wise I like NIN, it's fast paced, has easy rotation but still interesting due to ninjutsu and different situations, and of course there's also trick attack for rDPS but as everyone says the damage is too low for the efford you put into it.

Ninja has 2 major problems and a collection of minor issues. 1 is that Trick Attack is so powerful that they robbed the class of a lot of personal DPS to compensate for such a powerful group steroid that also happens to be way too short lived to comfortably use in your own personal rotation, the second is that it has way too much to do in way too short a time for its opener. It has a ton of bloat that admittedly will slow down with time, but it feels bad initially, at least on paper.

Less major issues are that 3-step ninjutsus still will feel bad to actually cast if clipping the GCD bothers you, Meisui on paper looks awkward to use and might need to be used on cooldown, meaning 2 GCD clips every minute instead of 1 guaranteed, and Ten-Chi-Jin is still going to be just as clunky in practice as it was in SB because having to press ninjutsu after every mudra is dumb.

These are either major issues for you, or they're not. All there is to it.

Although I'm not the greatest ninja by any means, I really am enjoying the class and am highly considering maining it although i only started playing it less than 2 weeks ago.

I keep reading about how their DPS is much lower than the rest of the jobs but I honestly feel like the gap from highest dps to lowest can't be more than 20%. I feel like i'm still plenty strong switching from summoner to bard to ninja and my solo extreme clears are all very close no matter which job I play.

My advice is play ninja if you feel and don't be scared about having lower damage because fun is much more important than what's currently best.

If you took Trick Attack's contribution to the raid and threw it into ninja's DPS, you'd find it's very comparable to other classes. Possibly a bit undertuned, but not nearly as bad as its personal DPS would suggest. Even a Dancer when you throw its raid contribution into its personal DPS shoots up near the top, so don't let its personal DPS fool you.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

If you took Trick Attack's contribution to the raid and threw it into ninja's DPS, you'd find it's very comparable to other classes. Possibly a bit undertuned, but not nearly as bad as its personal DPS would suggest. Even a Dancer when you throw its raid contribution into its personal DPS shoots up near the top, so don't let its personal DPS fool you.

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I'd say it's more than just "a bit" undertuned. If a NIN's are now pulling the low ~10K's and SAM/MNK/DRG are at ~12-13K, TA doesn't make up for 2-3K DPS.

I agree with what you and others here have said though. It's HIGHLY likely to receive some love this Tuesday, and besides the Kassatsu -> Hyosho X2 in TA window galaxy brain opener clipping, it plays smooth and fun. And it's better than ever for dungeons. Just play it if you enjoy it, the numbers hardly matter unless you're in a hardcore static doing bleeding edge progression.

Still love ninja on its gameplay but the DPS is indeed on the lower end.

Btw, is there a guide now for Ninja 5.0?

To me Ninja has 2 major problems right now:

-2 stacks of Kassatsu makes the opener extremely clunky and unintuitive: to solve this maybe they could bring kassatsu to being a 1 stack only spell and increase the bonus damage value to compensate(maybe rise it to 60 or 80%);

-Kenki spenders costing too much: There's no room for play or decision making here, the kenki spenders simply waste pretty much your entire bar, so most of the time you simply press the button as soon as the bar is filled so saving kenki for trick attack windows will pretty much always cause you to overcap which simply feels terrible. To solve this they could decrease the cost of Kenki spenders to 50 or 40(and maybe even completely remove the kenki cost from Bunshin.)


I can also see other flaws at Ninja's design, but they are either minor or would require a new expansion to be fixed, so for now as long as they make changes similar to these I'd be a happy ninja.

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Originally Posted by Laur1x

I'd say it's more than just "a bit" undertuned. If a NIN's are now pulling the low ~10K's and SAM/MNK/DRG are at ~12-13K, TA doesn't make up for 2-3K DPS.

I agree with what you and others here have said though. It's HIGHLY likely to receive some love this Tuesday, and besides the Kassatsu -> Hyosho X2 in TA window galaxy brain opener clipping, it plays smooth and fun. And it's better than ever for dungeons. Just play it if you enjoy it, the numbers hardly matter unless you're in a hardcore static doing bleeding edge progression.

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The big thing is that Trick Attack is huge for the class. Absolutely, insanely, unbelievably huge, and Monk/Dragoon are probably horribly, horrifically overperforming. Compared to the average DPS, Trick Attack makes up the difference (it's about 1000 dps pending group), but once you compare to Monk and Dragoon, everything goes to hell because Dragoon is likely overperforming.

So "a bit" seems pretty fair as a descriptor.

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Originally Posted by Nezia

-2 stacks of Kassatsu makes the opener extremely clunky and unintuitive: to solve this maybe they could bring kassatsu to being a 1 stack only spell and increase the bonus damage value to compensate(maybe rise it to 60 or 80%);

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It was changed to be 2 charge so you could store kassatsu until your next burst window without losing uptime of the ability, and to just give you more activations in general. The godawful opener is a problem many classes have, Summoner being one of the worst offenders (Ninja probably being the worst outright though). Kassatsu shouldn't be changed, per se, but the class does need help.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

The big thing is that Trick Attack is huge for the class. Absolutely, insanely, unbelievably huge, and Monk/Dragoon are probably horribly, horrifically overperforming. Compared to the average DPS, Trick Attack makes up the difference (it's about 1000 dps pending group), but once you compare to Monk and Dragoon, everything goes to hell because Dragoon is likely overperforming.

So "a bit" seems pretty fair as a descriptor.

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You really think MNK/DRG are overperforming? I assumed they were fine, as well as MCH, and SAM just needs to be brought up closer to BLM levels. I'm not a dev though, it just seemed like the "bottom three" were too low if anything.

Also on the TA note, if a NIN is doing 10k pDPS with 1K rDPS =~11k total, it does seem MNK/DRG are doing an "unfair amount" being nearly 2k ahead. I really am curious if they're going to bring both of them down, push SAM up, and have BLM/SAM/MCH be the real top 3, and then NIN more in line or ahead of BRD or the other potentially nerfed melee. For some reason I'm doubting MNK nerfs since it's so underplayed anyways, but DRG definitely seems to be doing too much, and SAM too little. All I know is BLM is insane this expansion, can't touch them on any job.

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Originally Posted by Laur1x

You really think MNK/DRG are overperforming? I assumed they were fine, as well as MCH, and SAM just needs to be brought up closer to BLM levels. I'm not a dev though, it just seemed like the "bottom three" were too low if anything.

Also on the TA note, if a NIN is doing 10k pDPS with 1K rDPS =~11k total, it does seem MNK/DRG are doing an "unfair amount" being nearly 2k ahead. I really am curious if they're going to bring both of them down, push SAM up, and have BLM/SAM/MCH be the real top 3, and then NIN more in line or ahead of BRD or the other potentially nerfed melee. For some reason I'm doubting MNK nerfs since it's so underplayed anyways, but DRG definitely seems to be doing too much, and SAM too little. All I know is BLM is insane this expansion, can't touch them on any job.

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Yes. They seem far above and beyond what is reasonable.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Yes. They seem far above and beyond what is reasonable.

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I'm so god damn excited for Tuesday. It's going to be an early Christmas. I hope.

EDIT: Kill me.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Yes. They seem far above and beyond what is reasonable.

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You also need to consider that Monk is comp dependent for it's raid buffs and the difference in brotherhood varies by around 250 (400 for ideal comp, 150 for non ideal) the non ideal comp also directly impacts the Monk's personal dps because chakra procs are only affected by weaponskills. In an ideal comp a monk could hope for maybe 2-3 TFC each BH with good rng. On a bad one i've got not even one TFC a few times and at best 1. That's a potency loss of about 1,110 give or take a TFC. I love DRG, but it is overperforming considering it's buffs will always benefit everyone and are not comp dependent.