Current state of Ninja?

[Cythil]

So I see a lot of people talking about how Ninja is undertuned and how with Ninja you put in more work for less results. Is it's dps unbearably low or is it fine? And is it fun to play currently? I am really interested in the Ninjitsu system.

[Powercow]

It's most likely going to be buffed on Tuesday, so don't sweat the numbers right now. If you like it, play it. Even in its current state it's not so low that it can't be brought to a raid.

[Darkstride]

I love Ninja, I've been playing it since it was released. I played through the Shadowbringers MSQ as Ninja all the way to 80. It's fun, and it's still my favorite job.

However, Ninja is certainly undertuned. Yes we have Trick Attack, but it doesn't compensate for our lack of personal DPS. The biggest issue is that Shadowbringers' Ninja has become even more complex but for all that work in the rotation, it still feels weaker than it's former self.

I'm sure it will be corrected. The job is still fun and it isn't problematic at all for solo play anyway. If you like it, play it.

[Marc-Vigar]

Gameplay wise I like NIN, it's fast paced, has easy rotation but still interesting due to ninjutsu and different situations, and of course there's also trick attack for rDPS but as everyone says the damage is too low for the efford you put into it.

[Taranok]

Ninja has 2 major problems and a collection of minor issues. 1 is that Trick Attack is so powerful that they robbed the class of a lot of personal DPS to compensate for such a powerful group steroid that also happens to be way too short lived to comfortably use in your own personal rotation, the second is that it has way too much to do in way too short a time for its opener. It has a ton of bloat that admittedly will slow down with time, but it feels bad initially, at least on paper.

Less major issues are that 3-step ninjutsus still will feel bad to actually cast if clipping the GCD bothers you, Meisui on paper looks awkward to use and might need to be used on cooldown, meaning 2 GCD clips every minute instead of 1 guaranteed, and Ten-Chi-Jin is still going to be just as clunky in practice as it was in SB because having to press ninjutsu after every mudra is dumb.

These are either major issues for you, or they're not. All there is to it.

[Remonade]

Although I'm not the greatest ninja by any means, I really am enjoying the class and am highly considering maining it although i only started playing it less than 2 weeks ago.

I keep reading about how their DPS is much lower than the rest of the jobs but I honestly feel like the gap from highest dps to lowest can't be more than 20%. I feel like i'm still plenty strong switching from summoner to bard to ninja and my solo extreme clears are all very close no matter which job I play.

My advice is play ninja if you feel and don't be scared about having lower damage because fun is much more important than what's currently best.

[Taranok]

If you took Trick Attack's contribution to the raid and threw it into ninja's DPS, you'd find it's very comparable to other classes. Possibly a bit undertuned, but not nearly as bad as its personal DPS would suggest. Even a Dancer when you throw its raid contribution into its personal DPS shoots up near the top, so don't let its personal DPS fool you.

[Laur1x]

If you took Trick Attack's contribution to the raid and threw it into ninja's DPS, you'd find it's very comparable to other classes. Possibly a bit undertuned, but not nearly as bad as its personal DPS would suggest. Even a Dancer when you throw its raid contribution into its personal DPS shoots up near the top, so don't let its personal DPS fool you.

I'd say it's more than just "a bit" undertuned. If a NIN's are now pulling the low ~10K's and SAM/MNK/DRG are at ~12-13K, TA doesn't make up for 2-3K DPS.

I agree with what you and others here have said though. It's HIGHLY likely to receive some love this Tuesday, and besides the Kassatsu -> Hyosho X2 in TA window galaxy brain opener clipping, it plays smooth and fun. And it's better than ever for dungeons. Just play it if you enjoy it, the numbers hardly matter unless you're in a hardcore static doing bleeding edge progression.

[ern815]

Still love ninja on its gameplay but the DPS is indeed on the lower end.

Btw, is there a guide now for Ninja 5.0?

[Nezia]

To me Ninja has 2 major problems right now:

-2 stacks of Kassatsu makes the opener extremely clunky and unintuitive: to solve this maybe they could bring kassatsu to being a 1 stack only spell and increase the bonus damage value to compensate(maybe rise it to 60 or 80%);

-Kenki spenders costing too much: There's no room for play or decision making here, the kenki spenders simply waste pretty much your entire bar, so most of the time you simply press the button as soon as the bar is filled so saving kenki for trick attack windows will pretty much always cause you to overcap which simply feels terrible. To solve this they could decrease the cost of Kenki spenders to 50 or 40(and maybe even completely remove the kenki cost from Bunshin.)


I can also see other flaws at Ninja's design, but they are either minor or would require a new expansion to be fixed, so for now as long as they make changes similar to these I'd be a happy ninja.