The Problems With Ninja In Endwalker

[SamSmoot]

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.

Why are the Raijus forced? If using them would land you in the fire, then just use something else.
The thing that confuses me about then is that they're both gap closers. If you just used Forked Raiju, then the gap is already closed, and there's no reason for the gap closer in Fleeting Raiju.
It might be more useful if the first one moved you away from the target like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ4VnBUqVAQ&t=33s then the second one back in. (I have no idea what does the jump back thing in the video link

[kackal_Jackal]

Why are the Raijus forced? If using them would land you in the fire, then just use something else.
The thing that confuses me about then is that they're both gap closers. If you just used Forked Raiju, then the gap is already closed, and there's no reason for the gap closer in Fleeting Raiju.
It might be more useful if the first one moved you away from the target like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ4VnBUqVAQ&t=33s then the second one back in. (I have no idea what does the jump back thing in the video link

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back. Only thing that doesn't is ninjutsus (excluding Raiton), but there's no optimal situation where you'd even do that without taking some sort of loss.

[SamSmoot]

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back.

But if using them will jump you into a harmful situation, then you just go use one of your weaponskill combos instead. It's not like Raijus execute automatically after a Raiton. They're not forced, just not beneficial to use in some situations.

I guess one case where they might be beneficial is of your have to back off to avoid an AOE, you could hit the boss with Raiton at range, then Raiju to get back into melee range quickly when the AOE is done.
Otherwise. if I'm already in melee range, and did a Raiton, then it's just two more single keys to do 850 worth of potency (with lower Ninki gain than a combo.)

[SamSmoot]

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back. Only thing that doesn't is ninjutsus (excluding Raiton), but there's no optimal situation where you'd even do that without taking some sort of loss.

It's not like Raiton makes you do the Raijus.. If using them would put you in the fire, then just play as you did before they were added, and use them later when you can.
Same as when you move away from the boss to avoid an AOE. You can't use melee distance actions without running back into the bad stuff, so you just don't use them.

[kackal_Jackal]

It's not like Raiton makes you do the Raijus.. If using them would put you in the fire, then just play as you did before they were added, and use them later when you can.
Same as when you move away from the boss to avoid an AOE. You can't use melee distance actions without running back into the bad stuff, so you just don't use them.

It's not like the Raiton makes you do the Raijus - sure, you don't have to if you don't really care for min-maxing. For every Savage fight in SHB, NIN can greed everything and keep their GCD rolling without taking a heavy loss. At worst its a Raiton out of Trick to dodge a mechanic, that's negligible. Like roughly 40p. If we choose to drop Raiju because we have no other choice, the loss is far more noticeable. Not using capstone skills in most cases is a loss. Since most mechanics happen during Trick, we're looking at the potential of dropping Raiju more often than once in a fight, which builds up, and gives NIN far less flexibility in prog, especially in Savage that have DPS checks within the first few days of release.

[SamSmoot]

It's not like the Raiton makes you do the Raijus - sure, you don't have to if you don't really care for min-maxing. For every Savage fight in SHB, NIN can greed everything and keep their GCD rolling without taking a heavy loss. At worst its a Raiton out of Trick to dodge a mechanic, that's negligible. Like roughly 40p. If we choose to drop Raiju because we have no other choice, the loss is far more noticeable. Not using capstone skills in most cases is a loss. Since most mechanics happen during Trick, we're looking at the potential of dropping Raiju more often than once in a fight, which builds up, and gives NIN far less flexibility in prog, especially in Savage that have DPS checks within the first few days of release.

I just see the raijus as something that you can't use all the time, so it's expected potency should take that into account. When you can use it, it's a bonus.
It's like Trick Attack which can't be kept up all the time, so I don't consider it a loss when it's not up.

[kackal_Jackal]

I just see the raijus as something that you can't use all the time, so it's expected potency should take that into account. When you can use it, it's a bonus.
It's like Trick Attack which can't be kept up all the time, so I don't consider it a loss when it's not up.

It's detrimental to our damage if we just felt like dropping/losing a Trick in the duration of a fight though. So an example is if you held Trick for 20s due to a 'hard' (but doable under burst) mechanic, but you kill the boss just as Trick is ready to be used. In that case, you'd use Trick Attack on cooldown so you can get another 15s of vulnerability on the boss. Of course you can't keep Trick Attack debuff on the boss 100% of the time, but the best thing we can do is have that debuff on the boss as much as possible, and prevent holding or drifting unless you don't lose a use.

The issue is that we're going into Endwalker losing Shadowfang (1100p every 60s), and getting Raiju and Phantom in return which is hardly comparable. But the idea of SE designing a job with the thought of "you can only use this ability 50-75% of the time" is really jarring in terms of design. Players are going to want to use Raiju, even in dangerous situations, and not having that option to hold it until later will feel extremely bad to play. I'm willing to pass with it being a gapcloser if it had some sort of Further Ruin stack system where you can store the Raiju charge for later.

[AnotherPerson]

But the idea of SE designing a job with the thought of "you can only use this ability 50-75% of the time" is really jarring in terms of design. Players are going to want to use Raiju, even in dangerous situations, and not having that option to hold it until later will feel extremely bad to play. I'm willing to pass with it being a gapcloser if it had some sort of Further Ruin stack system where you can store the Raiju charge for later.

This is what I say when I tell people Dissipation is bad but hey, apparently some people like not being able to use their skills on cooldown (due to how Dissipation can delay fairy skills or you use fairy skills but lose a Dissipation in prog) - which also directly translates to having an even longer cooldown than suggested.