The Problems With Ninja In Endwalker

[Elena_Farron]

This problem is probably the one most Ninjas seem to take issue with as of now. Not being given an alternative to dashing into the boss and murdering yourself. This action should be opened up to return some flexibility to the Ninja rotation, by either removing one or both of Raijus gapclosers, and/or allow us to execute other actions before either Raiju action without losing the Raiju Ready buff for it.

A sidenote: the buff obtained by executing Raiton, which allows for the execution of Raiju, is listed as lasting 30 seconds. This is inherently counterintuitive, as there is no point to the buff lasting this long when you have no option but to press Forked Raiju following a Raiton anyways, leading me to believe that this may be a bug. But if this is meant to be intentional, I would wish for this to be highly prioritized when it comes to changes that may yet still be made to the Ninja job.

I could see this action work more fluently inside a Ninja rotation by allowing us to hold Forked Raiju/Fleeting Raiju and not forcing us to use them after each Raiton.

Highly optimized scenarios

On top of these issues, Raiju is actually used quite frequently, about 4-6 times every minute, thus replacing a lot of Spinning Edges, Gust Slashes, and Aeolian Edges/Armor Crushes. The actions potency is quite close to the amount that both combo finishers provide, yet only grants 5 Ninki upon execution, where the finishers grant a great 15 Ninki. Considering the amount of combo finishers that Raiju will replace over the course of an encounter, this will result in a lower Ninki gain than you would otherwise have by simply using your 1-2-3 combo, and eventually leading to a loss of Bhavacakra casts throughout the encounter. This would lead high level Ninja players to consider entirely dropping Raiju casts in specified locations throughout their rotation in favor of a greater DPS gain. To want to avoid using a essential skill in Ninjas Endwalker rotation in favor of damage output makes me and lots of other players greatly worried.

Verdict:

The additions to Doton with Hollow Nozuchi, as well as the Meisui buff are the only additions to Ninja so far that I can confidently view as truly beneficial. The limitations and restrictions Raiju adds to Ninja are a very glaring problem and will lead to lots of frustrating experiences with players of this job. What is now a highly engaging, flexible job, seems to be no more come Endwalker. This job feels like it was neglected in comparison to the other Melee DPS for Endwalker. I very much hope that within the coming days before the release of the expansion, or following the patch cycle throughout its life, we will see adjustments coming to our favourite rabbit mage to make it fun to play.

Thanks for reading, both Ninja players and others!