Ninjutsu Review!

[Equitable_Remedy]

My mind needs a little distraction, so below is my quick review of the various ninjutsu available to NIN. This should go without saying, but I’m going to say it because this is the internet: these are merely my impressions rather than any attempt to get you, dear reader, to agree (or to induce the game designers to do anything differently). This is a discussion forum, so this is something to discuss.

I didn’t include any ninjutsu-adjacent abilities, like Ten Chi Jin, though maybe I’ll throw them in a follow-up post.

Fuma Shuriken

• Animation: The animation works for your first ninjutsu—it’s quick and simple, isn’t magical beyond summoning a giant shuriken, and the slashing animation when it connects is a nice touch.
• Function: I started FF14 last year, and Fuma Shuriken was baller when you get it. At level 30, it hits like a truck and using the mudra and ninjutsu buttons takes the weeb factor over 9000. The problem, of course, is Raiton. The second you get Raiton, Fuma Shuriken becomes that thing that happens at the start of Ten Chi Jin or when a murda sign doesn’t register while trying to do another ninjutsu.
• Suggestions: This one is honestly tricky, and I don’t quite know what to do with it. It’s great from levels 30 to 35, but completely replaced by Raiton. It could be given a DoT component, but hard to get around it being strictly better or worse than Raiton in a lot of cases. It could be replaced with some utility, but it would have to be strong enough to compete with Raiton in the burst window (more on this below with our friend, Hyoton). My suggestion might be to change this to a decent heal—niche for solo situations mostly—but I really don’t have a great answer here.
• Grade: D (Grade A from levels 30-34)

Katon

• Animation: The fireball itself is one of the better animations in the game and has been one of my favorites since I started playing. The casting animation is a little weak, particularly that the fireball arcs rather than going directly at the target—it feels like an underhand lob rather than overhand throw.
• Function: Your basic AoE ninjutsu—know it and love it.
• Suggestions: My only suggestion would be to give it a six-yalm radius to match Hellfrog Medium.
• Grade: A

Raiton

• Animation: Lightning attack animations in MMOs tend to be rough, but Raiton has a great one. The casting animation is great—10/10 weebs. The lightning itself looks good, though I’d personally tone down the purple a bit.
• Function: Your basic single-target ninjutsu—know it and love it.
• Suggestions: My only suggestion would be tone down the purple in the animation and use more blues/whites. That being said, I know that lightning gets associated with purple not infrequently, so I’m not mad at it.
• Grade: A

[Equitable_Remedy]

Hyoton

• Animation: The casting animation is the same as Katon except with frost effects rather than fire—it looks good. The spell effect is pretty good, especially with the addition of the ninjutsu glyphs, but I would make the shape of the ice a little more like ice shards (straighter edges, more orthogonal) rather than the current graphic, which feels more organic. (Imagine skinning it as wood and adding some leaves.)
• Function: Hyoton—poor, tragic Hyoton. The bind is useful approximately never, and the damage is strictly inferior to other options. Delete this ninjutsu.
• Suggestions: I love putting group/raid utility on DPS, and this is the best place to put it. The difficulty with a utility ninjutsu is that mudra charges are a precious resource, all the more so when their best and highest use is setting up the burst window and doing damage in the burst window—any utility would have to compete with a huge amount of a NIN’s damage. My radical suggestion: replace Hyoton with an ice-based resurrect. It would be inferior to RDM and SMN rez spells as the opportunity cost for NIN is much, much higher, but it would allow for clutch rezzes (which are fun), could compete with DPS ninjutsu without replacing them, and let me get that rez achievement in Bozja. Also, I could macro it to Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei!
• Grade: Kill It With (Somewhat Ironic) Fire

Huton

• Animation: Similar to Raiton, the casting animation is great as is the swirling wind spell effect. Solid animation work!
• Function: This is where the magic happens. It is not easy going back to the normal GCD once you’ve had a taste of this wind life. 70 seconds is a long duration, but keeping it up without recasting Huton is a fun little bit of gameplay given the mechanics of some fights.
• Suggestions: It’s great! Don’t make it more complicated of finicky or whatever people might be suggesting. Some fights have intermissions long enough to make even the 70 seconds very awkward. The timings of E12N platforms seem designed to tilt Huton-using NIN.
• Grade: S

Doton

• Animation: The casting animation of slamming the ground is great. The ninjutsu glyphs and blue-flame points around the circle are great. The persistent doton animation, a sort of swirly sand thing that gets more opaque towards the edges, is great. Great animation work!
• Function: A persistent ground AoE. I love using this in dungeons (despite getting jebaited by tanks who occasionally avoid it like the plague), though mobs in all but the highest-level dungeons often die too fast for it to be useful over Katon, which is a shame.
• Suggestions: Somehow make it more functional between levels 45 and 70.
• Grade: S

[Equitable_Remedy]

Suiton

• Animation: Similar to Doton, the slamming animation for casting is great, and I like the addition of water elements to the slamming motion. The giant water spout over the target—don’t pretend like you don’t love it! This is a great way to do a water animation that communicates the skill—water, dousing the target—in a very short animation window (in terms of time). It’s also big enough that no one (with spell effects on) can miss it.
• Function: The Trick Attack enabler. I like the flexibility in terms of the 20-second window to use Trick Attack. (I recognize that it isn’t flexible relative to optimal rotation, but it’s flexible in the sense that you can use the window to adjust timings based on boss mechanics.)
• Suggestions: Not a suggestion for Suiton per se, but Meisui feels like a button that exists to justify the single-target Ten Chi Jin combination ending in Suiton, which is not a good enough reason for a button, in my humble opinion. Frankly, I’d like to see Meisui deleted and its functionality either wrapped into something else (probably not feasible given how NIN flows) or obviated through changing Ten Chi Jin (which is tough as I quite like Ten Chi Jin).
• Grade: S (A with Meisui)

Goka Mekkyaku

• Animation: I have yet to find a spell animation that I like more in the game than the Goka Mekkyaku fireball—THAT’S an explosion. (BLMs don’t @ me). I also like that the casting animation has the character jump in the air, wind up, and spit hot fire. In contrast to Katon, the fire travels in more of a straight line to the target, communicating the force of the cast.
• Function: The big daddy AoE ninjutsu. Dropping this on the biggest pulls is immensely satisfying. This does everything that you want a one-minute cooldown (in conjunction with Kassatsu) to do.
• Suggestions: Let me use this more often?
• Grade: S

Hyosho Ranryu

• Animation: Get ready to get tilted—I hate this animation. Let me break that down: I like the casting animation (point and pull), I hate the ice shuriken (both the actual shuriken and their lackadaisical motion, and I hate the weak shuriken motion for our hardest-hitting single-target ninjutsu.
• Function: Basically our hard-hitting secret technique that we bust out when it’s time to finally defeat out enemy (after several episodes of powering up). The damage… the crits…
• Suggestions: Give this the animation that it deserves! Also, make this a lightning attack using the same mudra signs as Raiton to maintain symmetry with Katon/ Goka Mekkyaku—keying off of Hyoton srikes me as obtuse. (I feel much more strongly about the animation than I do about ice/lightning.)
• Grade: D (S with a worthy animation and being lightning rather than ice.)

[ItMe]

Raiton
Animation: Lightning attack animations in MMOs tend to be rough, but Raiton has a great one. The casting animation is great—10/10 weebs. The lightning itself looks good, though I’d personally tone down the purple a bit.

Yo I love raiton too.
If I'm doing some casual content, even if another Ninjutsu would make more sense, I'll sometimes throw a Raiton out instead.
I love the way it looks and the ways it feels to use it. Personally, I love the purple, but to each their own.

[AdagiumKairos]

This was well put together. I agree with every aspect of this, including my extreme dislike of the Ice Shuriken animation for our biggest hitting spell.

[Raikai]

I hate the fact that Fuma Shuriken is mostly useless after Raiton... I agree that it could be nice if they'd just turn Shadow Fang into something else and gave a bleeding dot to Fuma Shuriken.

Actually the current Shadow Fang design is pretty bad. A dot with a recast time longer than the dot duration basically removes the principle of a dot play, which is to keep monitoring the debuff and reapply at the best time possible, usually just before it expires. You basicallt don't have to worry - at all - for the debuff.

[wereotter]

I hate the fact that Fuma Shuriken is mostly useless after Raiton... I agree that it could be nice if they'd just turn Shadow Fang into something else and gave a bleeding dot to Fuma Shuriken.

Actually the current Shadow Fang design is pretty bad. A dot with a recast time longer than the dot duration basically removes the principle of a dot play, which is to keep monitoring the debuff and reapply at the best time possible, usually just before it expires. You basicallt don't have to worry - at all - for the debuff.

This is the problem with having multiple choices for the same kind of attack. You have four options for single target damage using your ninjutsu, and one is strictly better in most cases than the other three. We had the same thing happen in reverse in previous expansions where due to the bonuses from slashing damage resist down, poisons, and ninjutsu clipping you GCD, it was always better to use fuma instead of raiton. The only way to eliminate this issue is to eliminate one of the attacks entirely.

Even if we took your suggestion of adding a DOT to fuma, there will be an objectively better and objectively worse choice. If the initial damage + DOT is the same or more than the damage on fuma over raiton, then raiton will never get used. If it's lower (or too much lower because of the 1 second to use a second mudra) then fuma still will never get used.

[ItMe]

This is the problem with having multiple choices for the same kind of attack. You have four options for single target damage using your ninjutsu, and one is strictly better in most cases than the other three.
[...]
Even if we took your suggestion of adding a DOT to fuma, there will be an objectively better and objectively worse choice. If the initial damage + DOT is the same or more than the damage on fuma over raiton, then raiton will never get used. If it's lower (or too much lower because of the 1 second to use a second mudra) then fuma still will never get used.

Multiple options can lead to redundant options, that's true. Though Raikai's suggestion could still be a way to get the player to use both. Use Fuma to refresh it's DoT, and use Raiton the rest of the time.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Multiple options can lead to redundant options, that's true. Though Raikai's suggestion could still be a way to get the player to use both. Use Fuma to refresh it's DoT, and use Raiton the rest of the time.

In practice, this would probably amount to adding a 60 second DoT to Fuma Shuriken, right? In practice, we're trying to cram two Raitons into the burst window, so a 60-second DoT on Fuma Shuriken would change one of those Raitons to a Fuma Shuriken whenever the DoT would tick long enough to outdo Raiton. That... sounds ok to me

Make it so!

[AnotherPerson]

My personal opinion? Replace or change Hyoton to:
1. an ability for solo content that gives survivability
2.Turn it into a situational ability that makes using Fuma Shuriken or other ninjutsu worthwhile under certain conditions.
3. Make it a party utility skill - Ex: enemy incoming damage reduced by 10%

I am leaning towards options 1 and 3 since they are more for situational usage of mudras - this is because we already have our main damaging single target mudras in the form of Suiton and Raiton, and our AoE mudras in the form of Doton and Katon. With only 2 charges, Hyoton is hard pressed to fight for a place in their kit, especially when one of the mudras is set to Suiton every 60 seconds. However, it doesn't other mudras don't have a place either - Huton being the obvious ninjutsu to use prepull and maintain, but is worth refreshing if the Huton timer runs out. I use this example because in non-ideal situations such as fight progression or when everyone starts dying for whatever reason, it wouldn't be such a bad choice to sacrifice some damage for that extra layer of survivability. Ideally, it would act like vercure and verraise where you shouldn't use it because it'll hurt your damage output as a DPS, but the option to give some survival utility exists if it doesn't look good.