Ninja QoL Raiju Ready

Let me preface with: I'm a NIN casual. I prefer to play melee dps classes, but NIN isn't my main one. So, NIN mains, if this idea is stupid, shoot it down!

My Issue
I find it kinda annoying to have to use Forked/Fleeting Raiju after Raiton, and losing them if I happen to hit any of the normal weaponskills between. Especially since Forked Raiju is a gap closer, but we have very little control over when we use it unless we bank a ninjutsu to spend a lot of time to Raiton then Forked Raiju in, which is often long enough that we have already just ran back in.

First Idea
This is the simplest one, I think. Just let us bank up to 2 stacks of Raiju Ready, and weaponskills don't make us lose them. This solves the "Forked Raiju isn't a reliable gap closer" problem, and the "I accidentally lost my Raiju Ready because I suck," problem. Fairly straightforward, though it does have one problem: optimal rotation means we probably have to bank them for burst windows, which may not be what the devs want.

Second Idea
Instead of having abilities on our hot bars for Forked/Fleeting Raiju, whenever we gain Raiju Ready, our Spinning Edge/Gust Slash/Aeolian Edge/Armor Crush change into Raiju variants of those attacks. All variants have 560 potency and build 5 kenki, but then have something else to it. Something like:

• Spinning Edge becomes Raiju, which builds 5 more kenki than the others, but has no movement associated with it.
• Gust Slash becomes Forked Raiju, and is unchanged.
• Aeolian Edge becomes Fleeting Raiju, which gains its 10y skip back again.
• Armor Crush could turn into Blitzing Raiju, which has no movement associated with it, but adds 30 seconds to our Huton.*

I like this idea, but it doesn't solve the "Forked Raiju isn't a reliable gap closer" issue, which is probably okay because with still have Shukuchi. But it doesn't introduce any "hold stacks for burst problems," and definitely solves the "I suck" problem, while also reducing the number of abilities on our hot bars.

Good idea? Bad idea?

*Alternatively, it could turn Armor Crush into Huraijin (which no longer is a hot bar button), which would have its potency increased to 560. But that would eliminate access to Huraijin as a post-raise ability without spending a ninjutsu, which I think was part of the point. Though, we spend the ninjutsu on a Raiton, which we normally do, so it isn't a big dps loss like Huton is.

I'll be honest I'm not the biggest fan of raiju.

It kinda feels.like assassinate did last expansion an awkward button that only got pressed after dream within a dream taking up unnecessary space.

Only now there's 2 of them and I guess my biggest issue is finding somewhere to put them that makes sense on my hotbars.

Find the range to be a bit naff as well. Raiton is nice to use when you have to disengage but the range on raiju is terrible. Should at least be equal to raiton.

They already allow us to bank charges (3 of them in fact!), because we use more than one Raiton between weaponskills in the opener. They just need to make it so other weaponskills don't cancel the charges. It's mindnumbingly stupid they haven't done that yet.

I agree, in 6.0 many people including me stated in threads that all they needed to do to fix the raijus was to not let them break from weaposkills but they decided to keep it that way but make them two separate skills instead. I enjoyed the back to back raijus animations just wished it wasnt use it or loose it but more like Palidins Resquisct move. Now I play the other melees now hoping one day this will change so I can switch back to ninja.

Plainly, it's a replacement of shadowfang

Movement wise, it's w/e, because shukuchi exist.

First point, I'm okay with this, because it also serves as a bandaid for poor latency/packet loss, as in, somehow managing to fire off a raiton and not receiving raiju ready because it coincidentally decides to give said player a packet loss at that moment and be doing nothing for a moment, losing gcd uptime. Rare, shouldn't be an issue, but happens anyway in the right moment because basic combo gcds still work during this period.
(Would be nice if the supposed change to PLD's requiescat allowed for freedom in case of needing to disengage, but turns out it still cancels combo anyway gets to not lose it either)

Second point, no.

With the numorus Sam threads, the momentum of this change for NIN dieing down after 6.08, and everybody probably switching to reaper or another class I feel this change may never be taken seriously. I switched to Sam and now Monk myself. Hopefully one day, hopefully one day.

Can you give me examples of scenarios in which you could use raiju (you're either in melee or could gap close) but you'd rather use a lower-potency weaponskill?

(We're assuming no potency gain - if you want to delay/bank them for a trick/mug window, assume that potencies would be reduced to account for this.)

The only real issue is that you lose the stack if you use a weapon skill.
NIN has a lot of weirdly punishing stuff others don't have to deal with, TCJ is another example of this where even a micro-movement cancels it.
What other DPS loses that much damage from such a small mistake?

But Raiton and Raiju are both baked into TA so I don't see the point of stocking them.
Why are you pressing other buttons after Raiton or rather why would you want to?
If you have to move away then you've already kinda screwed up your TA window too to begin with and won't have full uptime on it, and you still have your teleport or alternatively another Raiton + Raiju.

TCJ as a sort of mini-ley lines ability might be an interesting QoL. It puts you in a box anyway. Make it so you can move around in the box so you don't accidentally screw yourself over if you have like a nervous twitch and smash strafe/slap your joystick, but still get punished if an AoE drops on you or something.

Raiju used to be a major problem.

Back in 6.0 launch, it was entirely possible to get into a situation where it was impossible to refresh Huton without overcapping it or losing damage. The six forced Raiton GCDs meant you'd potentially end up in a situation where you wouldn't be able to Armor Crush before Huton ran out, as you needed to fit a Hyosho, 2 Raiton, TCJ into Trick and then expend a whopping 6 more GCDs into Raiju. This problem was twofold; you had a ton of GCDs you needed to use or lose, and Huton's maximum duration was dropped from 70s to 60s.

Thankfully, 6.05 reduced the Raijus into a single combo, halving the number of Raijus but providing much more leeway to refresh Huton. Unfortunately, this did make our Ninki generation line up terribly with Trick, but you can't have it all I guess...

While being able to use weaponskills between Raijus would be nice, I'd much prefer to see Huton reverted to 70s. It would make long cutscenes like in e8s or Perfect Alex a bit nicer. I'm not sure if they'd do that, and be comfier to refresh with. Not sure if they'd do that, though. Introducing Huraijin seems to be their apology gift.

That said, I suppose it would be decent QOL to save Raiju in the event that you're forced to Raiton during a disconnect. Being able to save that Raiju for Trick would be nice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YukiB

They already allow us to bank charges (3 of them in fact!), because we use more than one Raiton between weaponskills in the opener. They just need to make it so other weaponskills don't cancel the charges. It's mindnumbingly stupid they haven't done that yet.

---

Yeah, they had time to change trick attack but not actually fix the one thing that definitely needed fixing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aloneatsea

While being able to use weaponskills between Raijus would be nice, I'd much prefer to see Huton reverted to 70s. It would make long cutscenes like in e8s or Perfect Alex a bit nicer. I'm not sure if they'd do that, and be comfier to refresh with. Not sure if they'd do that, though. Introducing Huraijin seems to be their apology gift.

---

Yeah, it makes no sense to me why they bothered to change Huton's duration. It's like whoever was working on NIN heard about how all the big cooldowns were being changed to 60s or 120s, and thought he needed in on the action even though Huton's not a cooldown. I guess he forgot about Bunshin. I think it's the only example of a skill or buff that was changed in EW to be less convenient. And doing so while also introducing a new skill that could cause an additional ~12-13 second delay in refreshing the buff is bizarre.

God, I'm glad I'm not the only one that has a problem with Raiju Ready, lol! It really ruins the flow of the Job for me with how its stacks fall off with any weapinskill usage. :<

Yeah, I pretty much agree with this. In an ideal scenario, the Raiju-breaking doesn't matter much, but in non-ideal scenarios, Things Happen™, and it's just annoying to get boxed into the "Lose Raiju vs. Lose Combo vs. Lose Huton vs. Lose Buff-Window Bhava vs. etc" decision. The very fact that it's often hard to actually get into this kind of situation makes it even weirder that it's a punishment at all, since it seems like not much would be affected either way by removing the restriction.

Also while it's technically off-topic, I also agree that 60s Huton feels... wrong. The Ninja rotation "snags" in weird places that it didn't used to, and in general, the entire combo rhythm just feels "off" compared to how it's been since HW.

To be honest, it may be time to take Huton out behind the Raincatcher Gully Docks and have it think about the Mysidian Rabbits, anyway. It's reached the point of "formal nuisance" compared to the primacy it once held rotationally in ARR, or at least the "Don't die, lol" ominousness that it still had after Armor Crush was introduced, before Huraijin showed up and basically kicked Huton off the planet, except as part of the time-honored and clunky "Please please please don't randomly pull before I Hide" ritual.

Also, the fact that you don't have Armor Crush or Huraijin when synced into Level 50 content by things like Praetorium Roulette and Syrcus Tower Roulette is... yeah. I think that Ninja really needs the levels that its actions are granted at re-thought.

Anyway, maybe just give Huton the Greased Lightning "I'm a Trait now, mom!" treatment, then convert Huton Gauge into Bunshin Gauge, and you instead use Armor Crush to maintain your Shadow Clone. I think that would be more entertaining...

...Oh yeah, the topic. Raiju.

It's also kind of... obnoxious, visually? I mean it's big, and flashy, and cool, yes, but it's also almost annoying to constantly spam giant blobs of purple electric spaghetti that almost prevent me from even seeing my character. I know that I'm usually a wet-blanket about "fun" visuals like this, but, I could personally do with something a little less overdone aesthetically if it's going to be used so many times in a row every burst cycle. It kind of becomes "stagnant spectacle" and stops being impressive after a while, just because there's too much of it.

While I'm meandering incoherently back and forth, I'll also add that I actually kind of like OP's "Just convert Spinning Edge Combo to Raijus" solution. If they're going to make Weaponskills break Raiju stacks anyway, they could at least help compress buttons by converting Weaponskills into Raiju. That's... actually a kind-of elegant solution to the design. The more I think about it, the more sensible it seems, if Raiju-breaking isn't going away.

It's could be an great QoL change actually.

One thing I notice about Raiju is the mecanics of the skill, which is really similar to the Reaper's Glutony allowing you to use 2 weaponskill (Which are not usuable any more if you use any other weapon skills).

If dev do that for Ninja, I hope they will do it for reaper too, otherwise it will be unfair

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

While I'm meandering incoherently back and forth, I'll also add that I actually kind of like OP's "Just convert Spinning Edge Combo to Raijus" solution. If they're going to make Weaponskills break Raiju stacks anyway, they could at least help compress buttons by converting Weaponskills into Raiju. That's... actually a kind-of elegant solution to the design. The more I think about it, the more sensible it seems, if Raiju-breaking isn't going away.

---

\


The main issue I see with this is that because Raiju are technically two different actions, you end up with this weird situation where you have two buttons for each Raiju, and not really any clear contenders for what goes where. Is it just Spinning Edge, just combo enders, or is it the full combo?

This solution also means that if you mess up and need to quickly refresh Huton with Armour Crush, you're unable to until after you consume your Raiju stacks, which could mean being forced into using Huraijin. I haven't done the math, but depending on which GCD you're on, dropping a single Raiju stack is better than dropping Huton and being forced into using Huraijin. I could be completely wrong on this, of course, this is just me estimating based on a few stray calculations.

In any case, I like the concept here, but I'm not sure it's quite the right one. I briefly considered putting it on the Ninjutsu cast button -- it could simply be overwritten if you started casting another mudra -- but I worry that would feel at best samey to spam the same button, and at worst clunky. Not sure on a better ideas, here.

I think just letting Raijus persist without dropping the stacks is a fine enough solution. It doesn't affect higher-end players (i.e. doesn't lower the ceiling), and it raises the floor a little.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

It's could be an great QoL change actually.

One thing I notice about Raiju is the mecanics of the skill, which is really similar to the Reaper's Glutony allowing you to use 2 weaponskill (Which are not usuable any more if you use any other weapon skills).

If dev do that for Ninja, I hope they will do it for reaper too, otherwise it will be unfair

---

It's part of the basic design of RPR to have to use those skills immediately following the oGCD. It's also, like, the only thing that requires any thought in the job. You can pool up to 100 gauge before using the oGCD, if it's not a good time to use the GCDs because you have to move away or refresh your debuff.

NIN uses several Raiton in their burst window as part of a fixed rotation. They don't have as much flexibility in when they gain and spend Raiju stacks. Their buff refresher is also the last skill in a 3 GCD combo, not a one button skill like RPR's, and has a higher DPS cost involved with letting it drop. It's much more important that NIN has the flexibility to hold their stacks than RPR.

If Raiju gets converted as a temp transformation skill for our 1-2-3 rotation, then I'd like a "Raiju combo" of sorts where our rotation is turned into a different Raiju that increases the damage of the next one.

Forked Raiju can stay as it is as a seperate ability from the other Raiju, as it only needs an extension on how far you can be away from an enemy before using it and an increased speed of the activation and execution of the move, like how Dragoon's Jump got recently. It'd feel far less clunky to use and the animation lock won't mess you up as badly if you hit it at the wrong time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soge01

If Raiju gets converted as a temp transformation skill for our 1-2-3 rotation, then I'd like a "Raiju combo" of sorts where our rotation is turned into a different Raiju that increases the damage of the next one.

Fleeting Raiju can stay as it is as a seperate ability from the other Raiju, as it only needs an extension on how far you can be away from an enemy before using it and an increased speed of the activation and execution of the move, like how Dragoon's Jump got recently. It'd feel far less clunky to use and the animation lock won't mess you up as badly if you hit it at the wrong time.

---

And thus we return to the (likely) intended design on 6.0, coming full circle once again. If we revert the Trick Attack changes too, I'm all for it. This would, hilariously, fix the Ninki generation problem as well.


Maybe we didn't know how good we had it. I know you specified that the combo need not have a dash on it (and this would be for the best), but it does amuse me how similar your suggestion is to... exactly what 6.0 was.

The problem with this is that we return to the Huton upkeep issues of 6.0, unfortunately. One of the issues with that particular design is that because our burst lasts a bit longer than 15s with the multiple Raijus (it was 6 in/after Trick), it's possible to get into a situation where you're forced to drop Huton (or Huraijin mid-burst), which feels pretty bad, I think.


Though, if they just restored Huton's max duration to 70, this problem would go away entirely, and we could have our cake (Raijus) and eat it too (good Ninki generation)...

Im %100 for Raujus not breaking from weapon skills, making them one button again, and changing huiton back to 70's.

The best fix would be to implement for Raiju Ready is:
1. Make Raiju Ready not lose a stack when using other weaponskills.
2. Allow stacking of Raiju Ready up to 3 ---> Fleeting Raiju (hold indefinitely until used) -> Forked Raiju (30 seconds). The skill will become Forked Raiju until the skill is used or expires, and then becomes Fleeting Raiju when the Fleeting Raiju is available.

The two aforementioned effects allow the consolidation of 2 separate Raiju skills as one combo and allow players to flexibly choose how to spend their Raiju ability without having issues with refreshing Huton in the event Huton falls off or is about to fall off, but you're also about to overcap on Ninjutsu charges - and thereby delaying another 3 full GCDs as a result. Plus, if ninjas get any additional changes that affect their GCD rotation in the future, having more skills that doesn't lock them out from using other GCD skills allows a wider development potential for the ninja to take.

Simply put, the current implementation of Raiju is a band-aid fix, but it still causes problems in the toolkit in terms of recovery or flexibility in the long run. The main strength of a ninja is that it has the flexibility to move and attack from afar if it cannot go into melee range. Having Raiju disappear if another weaponskill is used limits this freedom of flexibility and movement, especially with the introduction of Hurajin for refreshing weaponskills.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

The best fix would be to implement for Raiju Ready is:
1. Make Raiju Ready not lose a stack when using other weaponskills.
2. Allow stacking of Raiju Ready up to 3 ---> Fleeting Raiju (hold indefinitely until used) -> Forked Raiju (30 seconds). The skill will become Forked Raiju until the skill is used or expires, and then becomes Fleeting Raiju when the Fleeting Raiju is available.

The two aforementioned effects allow the consolidation of 2 separate Raiju skills as one combo and allow players to flexibly choose how to spend their Raiju ability without having issues with refreshing Huton in the event Huton falls off or is about to fall off, but you're also about to overcap on Ninjutsu charges - and thereby delaying another 3 full GCDs as a result. Plus, if ninjas get any additional changes that affect their GCD rotation in the future, having more skills that doesn't lock them out from using other GCD skills allows a wider development potential for the ninja to take.

Simply put, the current implementation of Raiju is a band-aid fix, but it still causes problems in the toolkit in terms of recovery or flexibility in the long run. The main strength of a ninja is that it has the flexibility to move and attack from afar if it cannot go into melee range. Having Raiju disappear if another weaponskill is used limits this freedom of flexibility and movement, especially with the introduction of Hurajin for refreshing weaponskills.

---

This would solve our Ninki generation issue for sure, but unless I'm misunderstanding you, this would lead to the same problems as 6.0. Raijus are more powerful than your weaponskills, so it is a damage loss to not use them in Trick Attack. When these abilities have a forced dash to go with them, this can make things very sticky.

I prefer our current system, where you just have three stacks and can either dash or just use a powerful melee weaponskill. It lacks a bit of the flavour Raijus originally had, but fits much more neatly into the Ninja playstyle.

I love the idea of having something like Raijus than you could spend whenever, but we'd need another more powerful GCD(s) to replace the 3-4 Raijus we use inside of Trick.