The Problems With Ninja In Endwalker

[Victalis]

Agree with almost all of the above-stated concerns. Just wanted to add that it's incredibly strange job design given that it flies in the face of everything SE is doing with the rest of the jobs' gap-closers. All are either having their potency removed or given charges (i.e. spineshatter dive) in order to not make players forced to choose between using their gap closer for potency or for movement, as well as removing the need to hold them in cases of needing to stay max melee for a mechanic.

Then Ninja gets not one, but two gap closers that it is ostensibly forced to use immediately regardless of mechanics or simply lose them, and cannot use anything aside from a non-raiton ninjutsu after using raiton otherwise they are simply lost.

And on TOP of that, these gap closers are on the GCD, giving literally zero flexibility in terms of timing for when to use them. This design feels entirely antithetical to the rest of the philosophy for job changes in EW.

This could all be very easily solved, however. Simply removing the restriction that weaponskills break this combo would be the easiest fix. Ideally, in my opinion at least, one or both of them should be made OGCDs. Not only does this remove the insane restriction placed on using them in their current iteration, but would actually give interesting mobility choices and allow ninjas to have a proper gap closer that takes us to the boss instead of shukuchi with a target macro that takes us dead center like we currently have. Not only would this make the job more interesting and (again, in my opinion) more fun to play, it would actually fit the stated design philosophy for Endwalker.

I, like the others in this thread, was planning on maining Ninja through the new expansion, and am now, unfortunately, strongly considering completely abandoning my favorite job in the game on release if these job changes persist into the expansion launch.

[SamSmoot]

Then Ninja gets not one, but two gap closers that it is ostensibly forced to use immediately regardless of mechanics or simply lose them, and cannot use anything aside from a non-raiton ninjutsu after using raiton otherwise they are simply lost.

Why are the Raijus forced? If using them would land you in the fire, then just use something else.
The thing that confuses me about then is that they're both gap closers. If you just used Forked Raiju, then the gap is already closed, and there's no reason for the gap closer in Fleeting Raiju.
It might be more useful if the first one moved you away from the target like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ4VnBUqVAQ&t=33s then the second one back in. (I have no idea what does the jump back thing in the video link

[kackal_Jackal]

Why are the Raijus forced? If using them would land you in the fire, then just use something else.
The thing that confuses me about then is that they're both gap closers. If you just used Forked Raiju, then the gap is already closed, and there's no reason for the gap closer in Fleeting Raiju.
It might be more useful if the first one moved you away from the target like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ4VnBUqVAQ&t=33s then the second one back in. (I have no idea what does the jump back thing in the video link

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back. Only thing that doesn't is ninjutsus (excluding Raiton), but there's no optimal situation where you'd even do that without taking some sort of loss.

[SamSmoot]

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back.

But if using them will jump you into a harmful situation, then you just go use one of your weaponskill combos instead. It's not like Raijus execute automatically after a Raiton. They're not forced, just not beneficial to use in some situations.

I guess one case where they might be beneficial is of your have to back off to avoid an AOE, you could hit the boss with Raiton at range, then Raiju to get back into melee range quickly when the AOE is done.
Otherwise. if I'm already in melee range, and did a Raiton, then it's just two more single keys to do 850 worth of potency (with lower Ninki gain than a combo.)

[SamSmoot]

How it is based off the Media Tour is that if you were to execute Raiton, then proceed to do any other weaponskill (Gust, Aeolian, etc), you WILL lose your Forked Raiju Ready buff. If any weaponskill breaks Raiju Ready, then you're absolutely forced to use them back-to-back. Only thing that doesn't is ninjutsus (excluding Raiton), but there's no optimal situation where you'd even do that without taking some sort of loss.

It's not like Raiton makes you do the Raijus.. If using them would put you in the fire, then just play as you did before they were added, and use them later when you can.
Same as when you move away from the boss to avoid an AOE. You can't use melee distance actions without running back into the bad stuff, so you just don't use them.

[kackal_Jackal]

It's not like Raiton makes you do the Raijus.. If using them would put you in the fire, then just play as you did before they were added, and use them later when you can.
Same as when you move away from the boss to avoid an AOE. You can't use melee distance actions without running back into the bad stuff, so you just don't use them.

It's not like the Raiton makes you do the Raijus - sure, you don't have to if you don't really care for min-maxing. For every Savage fight in SHB, NIN can greed everything and keep their GCD rolling without taking a heavy loss. At worst its a Raiton out of Trick to dodge a mechanic, that's negligible. Like roughly 40p. If we choose to drop Raiju because we have no other choice, the loss is far more noticeable. Not using capstone skills in most cases is a loss. Since most mechanics happen during Trick, we're looking at the potential of dropping Raiju more often than once in a fight, which builds up, and gives NIN far less flexibility in prog, especially in Savage that have DPS checks within the first few days of release.

[SamSmoot]

It's not like the Raiton makes you do the Raijus - sure, you don't have to if you don't really care for min-maxing. For every Savage fight in SHB, NIN can greed everything and keep their GCD rolling without taking a heavy loss. At worst its a Raiton out of Trick to dodge a mechanic, that's negligible. Like roughly 40p. If we choose to drop Raiju because we have no other choice, the loss is far more noticeable. Not using capstone skills in most cases is a loss. Since most mechanics happen during Trick, we're looking at the potential of dropping Raiju more often than once in a fight, which builds up, and gives NIN far less flexibility in prog, especially in Savage that have DPS checks within the first few days of release.

I just see the raijus as something that you can't use all the time, so it's expected potency should take that into account. When you can use it, it's a bonus.
It's like Trick Attack which can't be kept up all the time, so I don't consider it a loss when it's not up.

[kackal_Jackal]

I just see the raijus as something that you can't use all the time, so it's expected potency should take that into account. When you can use it, it's a bonus.
It's like Trick Attack which can't be kept up all the time, so I don't consider it a loss when it's not up.

It's detrimental to our damage if we just felt like dropping/losing a Trick in the duration of a fight though. So an example is if you held Trick for 20s due to a 'hard' (but doable under burst) mechanic, but you kill the boss just as Trick is ready to be used. In that case, you'd use Trick Attack on cooldown so you can get another 15s of vulnerability on the boss. Of course you can't keep Trick Attack debuff on the boss 100% of the time, but the best thing we can do is have that debuff on the boss as much as possible, and prevent holding or drifting unless you don't lose a use.

The issue is that we're going into Endwalker losing Shadowfang (1100p every 60s), and getting Raiju and Phantom in return which is hardly comparable. But the idea of SE designing a job with the thought of "you can only use this ability 50-75% of the time" is really jarring in terms of design. Players are going to want to use Raiju, even in dangerous situations, and not having that option to hold it until later will feel extremely bad to play. I'm willing to pass with it being a gapcloser if it had some sort of Further Ruin stack system where you can store the Raiju charge for later.

[SamSmoot]

Hollow Nozuchi is a bit confusing, in that it can't be assigned to a hotbar, and must follow Hakke Mujinsatsu. Does the Hakke button change to Hollow after being used in a Doton?

If it happens simultaneously with Hakke, it wouldn't need it's own 1.5 sec CD, which implies that it's a separate action. If it is, it's damage falloff after first target would mean a DPS loss over just looping back to Death Blossom after Hakke.

[Warlyx]

Hollow Nozuchi is a bit confusing, in that it can't be assigned to a hotbar, and must follow Hakke Mujinsatsu. Does the Hakke button change to Hollow after being used in a Doton?

If it happens simultaneously with Hakke, it wouldn't need it's own 1.5 sec CD, which implies that it's a separate action. If it is, it's damage falloff after first target would mean a DPS loss over just looping back to Death Blossom after Hakke.

no hakke is just a proc

it works like that > put doton down , use death blossom> hakke and hollow procs here, on all the mobs that are on doton aoe its free aoe dmg while u do your aoe rotation