NIN is undertuned.

[Carstien]

Obviously lol why say that like I don’t know it exist. It was more on the joking side of things positional arnt an issue it’s really in the demand of uptime.

Said it like that because positional is what you complained about. I get it though, uptime is tough and that's why bard and machinist have it easier to get that damage. Still, machinist doesn't have any damage buffs and bard only has the one which is worse than trick now so buffing ninja isn't going to be easy. It is something they have to do.

I personally think bunshin not hitting combo bonuses is an error. A bug, fixing that will help, and maybe a 5% damage buff to huton. See how that flies then go from there.

[Honoraint]

I'm just gonna include a couple issues with ninja that really make the job conflict with itself in a way that just feels bad.

• -fastest gcd speed, longest ogcd casts.
  > clocking in at probably 2 seconds +/- .1 seconds for their gcds. mudras are locked to about 1 second per mudra for up to close to 4 seconds for a single ninjutsu cast.
• -most buttons pressed for an ogcd, least amount of damage per ogcd button press.
  > even fuma shuriken is a 2 ogcd process (Ten + Ninjustu), for a grand total of 280 potency, while dragoons are sitting on jump, with the exact same cooldown, for a 310 potency, 400 potency with the lvl 74 trait for 1 button
  > TCJ comes in at a whopping 7 buttons, and even with the potency increase to the skills, it really doesn't feel worth it, especially since all of the 3 mudra skills are all utility skills rather than damage skills.
• -a 1 mudra cast (fuma) is a better choice to use than a 2 mudra cast (raiton)
  > basically using fuma shuriken cut down on the amount you would clip into your gcd combo and the amount of extra damage you got from raiton (+150 potency) simply did not make up for it.
  > this depends on ping. once upon a time mudra cast rate used to be tied to fps, so people were actually able to use 3 mudra skills within that 2 second gcd window. but that was unfair, so they made it so nobody can now.
• -increased mobility, TCJ has you stand still for like 8 seconds?
  > we have a passive run speed upgrade, its great! even though it never reeeeaaaally matters, but it really felt like it encapsulated what ninja was all about. move fast, hit a lot. but our level 70 job quest skill just makes us stand still.
  > in fact, between using assassinate and TCJ, ninja actually has issues with animation lock now. new floor tank meta.
• -mug steals extra item drops from monsters when used as last or second to last skill, procs like once every 20 kills.
  > I think this is super cool and unique, but it almost never procs, and mug is on a 2 minute cooldown. I actually would like a buff to the drop rate just because its neat.

TL;DR Ninja is a poorly designed job that is fun to play, but not worth playing at the moment. They could use some tuning, but that's just to act as a band-aid. It needs an overhaul rather than 'tuning' but I have to admit most of the problems they have aren't easily fixed and probably won't be fixed anytime soon since most of the listed issues have been around forever. There's just no payout while playing ninja. No triplecast foul, no barrage refulgent, no inner release fell cleave. It wears down enemies, and it does it slowly, and poorly. Ninja is basically a bad DoT that spans the entire fight.

[Drayos]

I\\

TL;DR Ninja is a poorly designed job that is fun to play, but not worth playing at the moment. They could use some tuning, but that\\'s just to act as a band-aid. It needs an overhaul rather than \\'tuning\\' but I have to admit most of the problems they have aren\\'t easily fixed and probably won\\'t be fixed anytime soon since most of the listed issues have been around forever. There\\'s just no payout while playing ninja. No triplecast foul, no barrage refulgent, no inner release fell cleave. It wears down enemies, and it does it slowly, and poorly. Ninja is basically a bad DoT that spans the entire fight.

In my honest opinon, ninja isn’t badly designed, the problem is it’s a very difficult job to master yet fulfills a support job so the dps does not feel rewarding when u make such comparisons to other jobs.

That isn’t a poor design choice, that’s a players mentality, they feel they are doing something more complex then the player next to them therefore feels their entitled to being higher dps. But this is not how a mmorpg works, you aren’t balanced based on the difficulty of your job, this is why MMORPGs split things like parses against their own job and not all jobs.

Imho what they should do is, remove trick attack. Implement a few types of smaller support into the job and then raise it to be summoner level dps.

Ofcourse it will need some unique utility. But Im sure there are things it could take on,

Ofcourse you could argue not everyone can manage ninja due to ping problems. And that’s where sadly the issue isn’t fixable, without stripping double weaving, lower GCD capabilities and more from the game they can’t make every job in the game applicable to every player. They can merely condense these options into a minority of the jobs to ensure the majority are able to.

Machinist and ninja are really the only two jobs which ping problems come, and given the only promise made as simply u could play the game uptoo 200MS indicates these sorts of things will be tolerated. As he has already made it clear high pings will cause a limitation in this game.

MMORPGs have to fit all, which means something’s are rewarded less then players feel. It comes with the territory, so I think ninjas need some adjustments? Yes, I feel trick attack is a weight on the job, and on the meta itself and removing it would allow for more flexibility not only in ninja but also the compositions in the meta.

I don’t agree any buff should have such a impact on every player in the raid and it’s unheathy for the job because balancing the job around its existence simply causes so many problems.

They need to drop it realistically.

[Kaitoo]

They need to get rid of TA or rework it, its a balancing headache

[Laur1x]

That isn’t a poor design choice, that’s a players mentality, they feel they are doing something more complex then the player next to them therefore feels their entitled to being higher dps. But this is not how a mmorpg works, you aren’t balanced based on the difficulty of your job.

I agree with everything you said except this little comment.

Classes with high skill ceilings and/or high skill cap almost always do, and should be rewarded with bigger numbers.

Otherwise, you have the issue of "you must play this absolutely perfectly just to be viable, and the middle-to-lower tier players become utterly worthless", which is 100% the case with the current NIN iteration. Players who just aren't competent to do the galaxy brain opener, micro the ninki gauge perfectly, and preemptively not waste mesui/mug to line up everything perfectly are in for a rough time. I'm not one of those players by any means, but what are they supposed to do if they love the job, just re-roll to something more mindless with bigger numbers like SAM?

There needs to be a happy medium somewhere, and I'd love for them to completely obliterate TA and for the actual "assassin class" to shine and be rewarded for mastering the complexity by being able to outshine other mediocre players. The only exception would probably be BLM/SAM since those deservedly should be top 2 since they bring absolutely nothing to the party. NIN would be great in that MNK/DRG/MCH/RDM/SMN tier. Below the two "gods", but somewhere in the middle. And who knows, if you play phenomenally with perfect execution and everyone else is just the average run of the mill player, then yeah, you will be top DPS.

[Honoraint]

I don't mind the lower damage, if anything I expect it at this point. I don't poo-poo black mage for having great dps, because playing black mage in raid is work. I've watched some black mages do some crazy positioning so they can squeeze in those casts with minimal movement. Black mages don't get special telegraphs before everybody else; they need to learn those fights, they need to do mechanics differently than other people (even if those different mechanics is just shouting "healers adjust"). They do the work, and they do the damage.

Ninja is work.
Best case scenario. Ninja does the work, it makes the fight harder for other people (timing with trick), but other people do the damage for you. I'm okay with that.
Worst case scenario. Ninja does the work, it makes the fight harder for other people, and they don't get enough extra damage out of their extra work to justify their extra work.
We're pretty close to the worst case scenario right now.

As it is now, bringing a ninja is extra work for everybody if you want to even come close to having trick attack pay for itself. Its discouraging and its not fun, and it makes me sad because I love the job. I consider myself a ninja main and I'm currently leveling up dragoon for use in the upcoming raid tier because even though ninja might be a viable job to 'bring along', I think its going to overall be easier to just not have a ninja (as much as it pains me to admit). I would love to play ninja in the next raid tier but I actually cannot justify it because I value the time of my static members over my want to play ninja.

[Alistaire]

Honestly at this point we've pruned enough skills they should just give us the ability to put the ninjutsu skills on our hotbar already.

[Arkenne]

Well, this is a wagon I'll have to hop on...

I've done my absolute best at Titania EX and even when I manage to perfectly sync in everything from beginning to end, I get a non-note-worthy damage contribution.
Pretty much I feel like Im handicapping the group just by being there.

Yes, TA is a thing... and I actually would like for it to be removed if the job is meant to stay as complex as it is.

I mean, I feel the intention of the NIN mechanics is for its DPS to revolve around oGCDs, specially the Mudra System. But right now, TA is overshadowing the value of the whole NIN gameplay.

It should be a very competent DPS that sometimes debuffs the enemy.
But right now is a TA bot with everything else being a filler...

[whiskeybravo]

Unfortunately, I do not foresee any significant Ninja buffs. The devs seem very apprehensive towards raid utility right now and unless Trick Attack gets nerfed, I just cannot see them doing more than a mild buff to Bunshin. If they brought Ninja up by 500-800 DPS, it instantly becomes the best melee again. At this point, the clear linchpin is Trick. And it's why I'm leaning more towards that being nerfed and Ninja compensated accordingly. Conversely, I would also rather they focus on reducing the clipping and somewhat awkward implementation of Ninja's rotation. Meisui is a huge trap given how it's only a gain in select situations; Mudras clipping is a serious problem and Bunshin, well... it's underwhelming to say nothing else.

It's hard to say what direction they'll go, really.

I didn't see much consideration outside of this post, but the thought occurred to me over the weekend after talking with the boys.

It seems like maybe NIN is weak to help avoid NIN+DNC comps? Here was my thought experiment (maybe math could prove otherwise but idk how to math):

DNC boosts (can boost) your highest damage contributor (ie, BLM, SAM, MNK, DRG, MCH), and slightly boosts the group overall.

IF you have NIN/DNC/(1 strong DPS)/(something else) half your dps already is several K lower

But what if you had a group of say, BLM/DRG/MCH/NIN. Then you have 3 of the highest DPS jobs all benefiting from Trick, compared to just one being boosted by DNC.

I don't know, but it seems somewhat plausible that it could be the case where they just wanted to discourage DNC/NIN meta. If NIN wants to roll with the big melee boys they're probably going to have to change Trick.

[Caitsithhh]

coming from a gold parser....ninja needs a 1.2k increase in dps period. Trick is only a 1.6% increase to raid dps. Literally nothing to write home about. And can only be taken full advantage of when the team aligns to it. I can post the trick formula at the end of pug logs and get a consistent 1.3% or lower contribution to their dps. Ninja is by faaaar the hardest class. Leaps and bounds beyond next in difficulty. You need to look ahead 90-120secs to use your toolkit appropriately and if you don’t then you’re better off playing any other dps class. All that said it’s still my favorite class. It’s very fulfilling. BUT all that work needs to be rewarded accordingly. Not god tier but 99th on logs should be worth more than 10k lmao. 99th needs to be around 11.2k(Titania since Inno is a striking dummy)