Ninja: Forked and Fleeting Raiju made the job so restrictive and boring to play

[Craftymind]

I'm relatively new to FFXIV. I joined around 4 months ago and I finished all of the MSQ + side PvE content, EW included. I mained Ninja from the start and the reason I chose NIN as a main here is because of how flexible he turned out to be. This flexibility made it fun for me to play this game and enjoy every content in it.

Alas, this fun has dried out since EW started. The job plays in such a monotone and unidirectional way, with a lot of spamming Raijus like I'm doing an Active Time Maneuver in a Trial or something... It's so boring and strips my favorite job of all its flexibility that made it fun to begin with.

And to add salt to injury, the Raiju weaponskills have high potency, which makes not using them feel even worse. I'm stuck spamming these spells mindlessly for no other reason than because they exists, basically. The Raiton synergy doesn't make any sense, neither does the restriction of Raijus being conditioned by the use of Raiton. And why are both Raijus gapclosers, again?

I've done quite a few lvl 90 content already and most often than not I either find myself spamming Raijus and yawning or being away from bosses that are channeling AoEs with only having Raiju spells ready to use when I don't wanna use them since I'll either get hit by said AoEs or die...

Also, somehow the Raiju spam made the 60s Huton change feel even worse! The whole rotation and gameplay feels so wrong and clanky and so unsatisfying to play. I really want to know Yoshi-P's take on the Ninja change because nothing makes sense for me and a lot of NIN mains, too. I really wanna know why they felt the need to make NIN play like this...

I don't know if the devs of FFXIV look at the forum but, if they do, I want to say " Please, either remove these Raijus completely or rework them, by next patch. It's uncharacteristically really bad design. "

[SleepyNeko]

There are so many changes to ninja that doesn't make sense in EW. After farming the EXs I can tell you that raiju is so clunky that it is detrimental to the class.

Being a gcd combo that will break is bad enough, but this is made worse when they decide to put bind mechanics into fights so you end up either losing all your raiju stacks or you have to hope you have mudras lying around to fill the gcd ( you don't because you just used them to pop your raiju in the first place)

This one skill that unlocks at lvl 90 totally changes your rotation and makes ninja insanely clunky. It is a double gcd gap closer that can be broken and you don't get this skill unless it's a lvl 90 content.

[VentVanitas]

Don't know why Raiju just can't be a Kassatsu version of Raiton. That'd require changing Kassatsu so Hyosho isn't the only one used, but it'd be better than spamming it every Trick phase.

[Grimoire-M]

All I really want is to be able to hold onto the Raijus until I choose to use them. Not whenever I decide to end my ninjutsu usage. They would actually accomplish the former complaint of breaking up our filler, by, you know, actually being able to be used in it.

Phantom isn't exactly a stellar button either, but at the very least it's limited to one use, so it's not an active detriment the way it appeared to be in the preview tooltips.

There's also kind of a minor issue (could become major in the long run), but I'm not noticing really any new low cooldown (ie. less than one minute) oGCDs on any job that wasn't either 1) reworked, 2) added to an existing button, 3) a healer getting another random healing cooldown. You'd think with the complaints that combat feels slow that they'd want to add stuff like that. Yet they seem extremely averse to the idea, given the changes to existing buttons. And a lot of DPS button consolidation targeted oGCDs too.

What the hell are they thinking? That people don't like pressing DPS buttons often? It just seems baffling to me.

[Kolsykol]

All I really want is to be able to hold onto the Raijus until I choose to use them.

Wouldn't you still want to use them asap regardless because they're meant to fit inside the trick attack window?

I don't t hink that anything would change even with that.
With that said tho I do think you should be able to attack and not lose the Raiju's.
I don't think anything would change tho in effect.

What the hell are they thinking? That people don't like pressing DPS buttons often? It just seems baffling to me.

Actually... Lol.
It doesn't seem so because I see people endlessly complain about button bloat.
It almost feels at times as if people want everything to fit on 1 2 and 3.

[Grimoire-M]

Wouldn't you still want to use them asap regardless because they're meant to fit inside the trick attack window?

I don't t hink that anything would change even with that.
With that said tho I do think you should be able to attack and not lose the Raiju's.
I don't think anything would change tho in effect.



Actually... Lol.
It doesn't seem so because I see people endlessly complain about button bloat.
It almost feels at times as if people want everything to fit on 1 2 and 3.

Over the baseline melee combo sure, but not over TCJ or mudras without Bunshin, and even with Bunshin Phantom's still a priority over them, which requires specific sequencing to avoid dropping the Raiju stacks that I could see SE wanting to fix. You should consistently get one Raiju combo off during TA. The only time the combos are really heavily used is in the windows where you have Bunshin but not TCJ, which starts on the third minute and happens every six thereafter. Raiton's use as an uptime tool is also the primary reason you wouldn't want to have to use the Raiju combo in filler either. If given the option, you'd 100% use Raiton to maintain uptime and bank the Raijus for TA to make up some of that loss. Having to use the Raiju combo immediately afterward prevents you from doing that, but being able to bank them would allow you to use the occasional excess Raijus to dash to an add or back to the boss. But that's conditional.

Basically removing the line of text that says they're gone after using another weaponskill offers a lot of potential gain, both in uptime and in TA optimization per fight. I think it's frankly a good idea even if the dashes weren't removed. I'd happily accept the removal of the dashes in light of the Ground AoE targeting changes though.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Has an accepted 90 opener been established? Would anyone point me in the right direction?

Hard to judge these complaints without context (and my NIN isn't 90 yet).

[Craftymind]

Has an accepted 90 opener been established? Would anyone point me in the right direction?

Hard to judge these complaints without context (and my NIN isn't 90 yet).

An opener has been established, yes.
Check the The Balance discord: https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv for more infos.

[SamSmoot]

I'm finding them useful in a single target opener, starting out of melee distance, which will generally take down a level 89 mob easily at ilevel 551. (Can't find any lvl 90 mobs to test on.

TCJ Ten CHi Jin (enables Meisui, TA, Bunshin, Fork)
Meisui (if no Ninki, else TA)
Bunshin
Phantom
Kassatsu filler, or just wait GCD
Forked Raiju (Moves in)
DWOD
Mug Filler + Ninki
Fleeting Raiju
Bhava (Meisui or TA buff still up)
Raiton + Raijus (if solo, if in a dungeon or raid, you probably have to move by now..)

[Equitable_Remedy]

An opener has been established, yes.
Check the The Balance discord: https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv for more infos.

Can you be more specific as to where on The Balance? Thanks.