The Problems With Ninja In Endwalker

[Raidoser]

Your regular weaponskills work as long as you are in within maximum melee range and allow you to move while attacking. So for example if a boss uses a point blank aoe that's about as large as max melee range that would allow a melee player to continue attacking EXCEPT with Raiju. Another example would be a mechanic where your party first needs to stack and then spread, or where you for some other reason need to be able to evade quickly, the animation lock on Raiju can make the difference between dodging or not. Both of these issues are the exact same that dragoons have to deal with when using jumps but there is one last major difference between DRG jumps and Raiju; that Raiju is both on the GCD as a weaponskill and that Raiju is lost if not used immediately. So where you can simply choose to delay your DRG jumps a few seconds (not optimal but also not a giant loss) while continuing your regular rotations, these same situations cause lvl 90 NIN to grind to a complete halt. It's incredibly frustrating to be within max melee range but still have to use throwing daggers because Raiju would move you out of your safe spot and does not tolerate you using any other melee weaponskill until you have burnt through all 6 stacks of Raiju.
And as a small bonus, a certain currently relevant trial fight (both normal and extreme mode) does include quite a few times where your character is temporarily bound. This also prevents you from using Raiju even though you are within melee range, due to it being a gap closer. It's not very fun.

If Raiju was changed to either not drop off when using melee weaponskills or to not be a gap closer (preferably the first option) then that would make a world of difference in how enjoyable NIN is to play.

I'm in the minority then, did a bunch of expert dungeons + the final days trial had no problem to use raiju without wasting stacks, maintain dps uptime and not dying (the animation lock is very short), every time i couldn't use raiju it was because a mechanic was coming and i just had to use throwing dagger or mudra while waiting for the opportunity to go back to melee, the Forked raiju - Fleeting Raiju combo doesn't even break if you use anything except melee weaponskill between them : you can do Forked Raiju - Shukuchi to Dodge - Throwing dagger/Mudra - Fleeting Raiju back to melee.

i have more of a problem with hollow nozuchi animation making sometimes hard to see aoe on the ground on thrash pack in dungeon.