6.1 Ninja just doesn't feel good to play.

[Grimoire-M]

I'd really hate it if they detached Suiton and Trick Attack, personally. Suiton in preparation for Trick feels good, to me. It's when you add even more conditions that I feel Ninja starts to feel uncompromising and rigid.

That’s specifically why I mentioned buffing mudra and Raiju/Phantom with it, as it still fits the same burst window oriented gameplay, which I also enjoy. It actually kind of justifies adding Raijus to account for the problem you’re rightfully worried about. TCJ already has a pretty natural flow and a single Raiton combo backed up by geysers kinda gives off Dissidia Zidane Shift Break vibes to me. And I do kinda like the idea of upgrading Raiton itself to fit alongside the Kassatsu upgrades, but, again, thoughts for 7.0. Not changing how the rotation operates around it is something I want to preserve in the long run.

The thing we agree on is that Suiton should remain a setup move for the TA burst window. But in that frame of reference, I do think that Trick doesn’t need Suiton as much as much as Suiton needs Trick, if that makes any sense.

An easy and sensible route would just let TCJ give a suiton upgrade (similar to how kassatsu upgrades raiton and katon) that deals more upfront damage, eliminating the need of ninki conversion to another bhava.

While I understand the sentiment, the reason I prefer reworking baseline Suiton over upgrading it inside TCJ is slapping a tidal wave inside TCJ doesn’t solve the minor problems with baseline Suiton. It’s the first thing you want to prioritize between TA windows for ranged uptime if you can get away with it. Sometimes you can’t due to drift, downtime, or the Raiju dash. But the main limiting factor is when you plan to use TA itself. Fixing that minor hiccup to make your options easier to parse in the moment seems reasonable to me and doesn’t alter higher level play as much as people might think.