NIN is undertuned.

[Laur1x]

Looks like no changes from this patch. They said "further changes" are coming for 5.05, is that the savage patch then I assume?

[KageTokage]

I want to like NIN, but I' have to agree the damage payoff really doesn't feel worth how convoluted their rotation can feel at times right now.

I think my main issue is managing ninki to ensure Bunshin aligns with Trick Attack.

[Laur1x]

I want to like NIN, but I' have to agree the damage payoff really doesn't feel worth how convoluted their rotation can feel at times right now.

I think my main issue is managing ninki to ensure Bunshin aligns with Trick Attack.

Yeah, it can be a little rough when trying to manage ninki while doing mechanics.

As bad as it sounds, I'd rather just overcap ninki and have it sitting at ~100 for a bit than dumping it on one Bhava and Bunshin not aligning with TA. Doesn't happen super often, but yeah.

[Gallagos]

Agreed, aligning bushin with trick is pretty difficult, and tend to overcap.

[ElenaL]

I've been a main NIN since 2.4, and honestly none of the changes bothered me until ShB. Like, NIN always had the lowest PDPS of the melee DPS, which I was fine with as it came with a lot of utility which has slowly been phased out and now its practically none existant. However, the GAP between them I'm absolutely not fine with considering their only utility now is Trick Attack which makes me wonder really, is Trick alone so game breaking that they knocked NIN down so much? I don't think it was warranted. I'm going to list a few suggestions that I hope people would agree with me somewhat:

Aeolian Edge - I think its Potency should be buffed to 440 at least. While minor, I think it would work better than it currently does for our own PDPS.
Shadow Fang - Keep the potency of the DoT and initial damage the same, but increase the duration to 30 seconds instead of 24, this way we can squeeze in more Aeolian Edge's/Armour crushes.
Shukuchi - Most of this is fine especially with the traits and charges and the speed increase they did in SB, but I don't get why its 20 yalms? 25 yalms would be a nice change.
Assassinate - I think this should be 250 potency at least. It was 260 on the media tour, not sure why the decreased it by so much...
Bhavachakra - It having a potency of 550 would be super nice. It would definitely help with everything.
Bunshin - I haven't really noticed myself, but from what I'm hearing the shadow only does base damage and not the combo damage? I would be fine with it doing half the potency of what combo action I'm doing instead else its just been really underwhelming or just make every shadow hit for 200 potency each time. Also, the recast should be 90 seconds too, the 110s I find to be steep for what it currently is.
Fuma Shuriken - At first I was happy with them finally nerfing Fuma, but in retrospect, they didn't fix the clipping issue with Raiton so ultimately its just an overall nerf, so I propose making this a potency of 320. That way, its about as strong as it used to be.
Last but not least, Suiton - Just put the potency back up to 180...again, with all the clipping issues this just makes Suiton far weaker than it needs to be.

I would be especially happy with at least the change to Bunshin but really it feels so underpowered and underwhelming at the moment.

[Nakkir]

It's also be nice if Shukuchi's range could be "leashed" to its maximum distance. It's a bit finicky trying to poof ahead and having to mouse around for the proper distance.

[Nezia]

What if the ninjutsu was a weaponskill just like Dancer's standard step? hides behind couch

[Zikh]

I definitely love how ninja plays, the more buttons the merrier. Helps the old senile me keep my hand to eye coordination high, even if my mind is otherwise slipping. (I'm not really that old, just a joke.)

I've been away for a long time, and for some reason decided to play Ninja. I do love the way the class plays, but there are a few things that boggle my mind:

Lots of buttons, low dmg. Naturally this will be fixed by removing half of the Ninja's skills in the near future. You know it will happen.

Why ninjutsu fails if you use your basic attacks combos? That basically destroys ninjutsu. Add to that the very low potency of ninjutsu in general, when you consider it can fail and interrupts your basic attacks. To hyberbolize a bit: I have Blasting Zone macroed into my basic attack combo on my Gunbreaker, that macro alone does more damage than the entirety of ninjutsu on my Ninja, with zero effort. 1760 potency of damage per minute, that's what Blasting Zone does when used on every CD. Is this a fair comparison? Dunno, but it sure does give one something to think about.

Shukuchi is super clunky to use. Dancer's En Avant is simply said the super Shukuchi, better in every way possible. The reason why Shukuchi is bad is because you have a delay once you cast it, you have to target it. If there was a macro to make it instantly Shukuchi you onto your mouse pointer location or towards it, it would be awesome. It isn't at the moment. Macroing it with <t>, helps, but makes it even clunkier to use.

Assassinate is a pointless skill. Completely and utterly pointless. And what's funnier, it's probably the only melee attack in the entire game that roots you into place, so if you use it at a wrong time, you're dead, for a lousy ~300 potency attack. Remove it and increase DwaD potency per hit by 100.

I'm not a pro, but I don't understand Meisui. Why does it exist? Why does it have a cd, if it has to exist?

Why does every Ninki spender cost 80?

Ten Chi Jin is... poop. Why does it root you? For AoE it's good, dishing out some nice potency, but the fact that there is no valid 3 Mudra single target finisher for Ten Chi Jin makes it poop. And when you use it for aoe, the tank moves the enemies while you're there sitting, casting your Mudra combos and your double potency Doton is completely wasted. Sure, you can skip and go straight to Doton, but that kinda defeats the entire point of Ten Chi Jin.

Why is Bunshin so bad?

Clunky seems to be my favourite word when it comes to criticising the Ninja. Though that seems to be part of the FFXIV charm, I guess. Though I'd recommend for Naoki Yoshida to contact the people who programmed the engine for Wildstar or WoW, I'm sure some of them are unemployed at the moment. The responsiviness of controls in those is simply amazing so having them to take a look at how FFXIV runs things under the hood wouldn't hurt.

[Renkei]

Ya it's really dumb how gimp ninja is right now, Honestly i don't think the casters should out damage melee due to limited up time. but ninjas damage is very close to dancer and it's just not fair at all considering the APM of ninja is mega high compared to dancer. most ninja's are saying that drg should be nerfed, but the problem is ninja needs to be buffed.

[Laur1x]

Ya it's really dumb how gimp ninja is right now, Honestly i don't think the casters should out damage melee due to limited up time. but ninjas damage is very close to dancer and it's just not fair at all considering the APM of ninja is mega high compared to dancer. most ninja's are saying that drg should be nerfed, but the problem is ninja needs to be buffed.

That's one thing I'll never understand in this game. Okay, sure -- You can have one "nuke" caster that tops charts (aka mage) in every MMO if they get to stand still and free-cast, but other than that, every single melee should be competing within 1-2% of each other for the "Top DPS" spot.

Melee is always at a bigger disadvantage than ranged, and if there are ever Patchwerk fights (for those who haven't played WoW, where a boss basically barely moves aka melee friendly), the melee should reign supreme. Why should this be the case? Because majority of fights melee have downtime, and they should be rewarded for perfect execution/uptime.

They're doing great by removing things like slashing/piercing, but I'd rather them just obliterate these "support" crutches like TA and let Ninja thrive for once. Let the raid scene grow into bringing the player than the job/class. Too much homogenization can be bad, but the way things are now, especially with the skill ceiling of NIN, is absurd. I'm hoping they just straight up remove the 10% raid buff from TA, but I have my doubts. It'll probably minor band-aid potency fixes. If that's the case, I'll continue my fun on SAM, and NIN can take a backseat until next expansion when they finally decide what to do with this job.