Is the Ninja nerf really needed?

[ElHeggunte]

Ninja is getting tuned because they were doing damage a little out of scope compared to everyone else. It's the same reason Dragoon is getting buffed. Monk is remaining unchanged, because while they can do great single-target damage, there are very few fights where they are able to sit there and whale away a proper rotation uninterrupted (which is what leads to that great damage). I wont even get into the whole issue of ramp-up time and the loss of Greased Lightning in short fights and battles with frequent intermissions.

[Alukah]

It's a good nerf, they gave ninja a high max potential damage thinking it would be like monk, that only a few skilled individuals could reach it under certain circumstances, but they just were extremely clueless, ninja gameplay is quite easy and many people can reach that near max potential.

Quoting myself from another thread:

I think it's more of a theoretical DPS vs practical DPS, you know your DPS will vary greatly depending on the mechanics you have to deal with, perhaps on paper NIN has higher (or the highest) potential DPS.

Actually I'm pretty sure it's this, in the live letter pretty much said the potential DPS was set high because of gameplay difficulty, as in they didn't intend many people to achieve that (just like monk) but many people are achieving it, so they're lowering the upper limit.

It honestly didn't make any sense for NIN to be on par (or higher) than MNK even if it's on paper, when they have to do much less to maintain constant dmg, huton and venom uptime is 100% even during mechs, while MNKs can lose GL3, plus MNK needs GL3 for dmg buff while NIN already got the same dmg buff through increased base action potency.

That class was too unbalanced IMO.

I'm comparing similar abilities between NIN and MNK, so likewise twin snakes and GL3 (the equivalent of huton + venom + high combo potency) aren't the whole part of the story for MNK, but they do play a major role and you cannot deny MNK has a much harder time keeping GL3 and twin snakes up while dealing with mechs, compared to NIN being able to keep huton up pretty much always.

We could go further comparing blunt/slashing debuffs, other debuffs, dots and actions out of cooldown, but my main focus was damage and skill speed buff. Ninja has a lower skill cap than Monk and their theoretical max damage should represent this.

Also...

Raid groups would be more likely to run 2 monks rather then monk nin or monk drg, because they still are the strongest melee dps.

MNK was the strongest DPS from the moment it was buffed until NIN came out, how many statics did you see replacing DRG with MNK? There's no reason to believe that will happen now.