Ninja DPS Output(A possible Fix)

[Shurrikhan]

So long as jobs are balanced around 8-man content, portioning a job even more towards rDPS is really just nerfing its solo / light party potential. NIN has low enough aDPS relative to rDPS as is. We're not Bards. We don't need to be even more gutless when alone.

I'd rather just first buff potencies over what level spans it's most behind and then buff Raijuu potency for what level cap difference remains.

NIN should be a top-rDPS job (not referring to having the most support as some seem to mistake rDPS for of late, but simply personal damage dealt + bonus damage given to party - bonus damage received from party). It's both one of the busiest jobs and has literally no utility, at this point, not already accounted for in said rDPS.

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Some related notes:

• I don't think the old Raijuu combo was a problem, but at my low ping, the "self-stun" of Forked Raijuu was under a quarter-second so long as I was already at the edge of the enemy's hitbox or nearer, so take that with a grain of salt.
  In terms of flow and flair, I preferred having that combo over the single-GCD Raijuu now. I just would have preferred a slight bit more flexibility on them, such as by decreasing Forked Raijuu Ready's duration to 5 seconds (and 5s of Fleeting Raijuu Ready thereafter) but not having the proc be removed by other actions (nor, obviously, to break any other combo chains, etc.).
• I don't want to see Hide usable in combat if it keeps its CD refreshes. We already do some 5 Ninjutsu practically back-to-back every other minute. Added an extra two Mudra into each odd-minute window, opposite TCJ, would just make Ninjutsu feel beyond spammy. Nor do I want to see Hide as an alternative to trick attack such that we can do 3 gainful Suiton per minute (TA, Meisui, and Hide for 2 free Ninjutsu casts thereafter).
• I would want to see further rotational variance, such as by returning Shadowfang (as a rotational combo finisher, not a CD) to the mix.

[Kolsykol]

Snip

I like the idea of rDPS, imo it feels good to buff the party and debuffs the boss it makes it feel more directly impactful and meaningful to me.
But yeah the issue is too that people need to actually take advantage of it too, if you do your thing and the party isn't taking advantage of it then it essentially makes your performance worse too.

This is why I've suggested before to give Trick Attack a higher damage buff to the NIN, so keep it at 5% or so for the party but make it higher for the NIN personally.
I actually do like Trick Attack and I don't want it to go away, my personal preference tho would be to redesign it sorta like Cloak of Shadows or whatever it's called in WoW where you basically enter '' sneaky mode '' and can do more powerful attacks more stealth themed.
Maybe make it turn your basic combo into more powerful attacks with new animations sorta like Enshroud on RPR ( or bring back Sneak Attack in its stead ).

Buffing the Trick Attack % buff for the NIN on a personal level tho should also make it easier to balance too since you're working with a flat % buff.
I also kinda want Shadowfang back too altho we're still very busy in our Trick Attack window and can't always fit all of it inside it.

I miss both Shadowfang and Dancing Edge as combo actions tho, it was more fun than 123 imo it made it feel more busy.
But yeah some of this like the Cloak of Shadows suggestion would require a rework.
I still kinda want Trick Attack to feel a bit more impactful to the NIN themselves tho.
We're the tricky and sneaky ones.

[Shurrikhan]

This is why I've suggested before to give Trick Attack a higher damage buff to the NIN, so keep it at 5% or so for the party but make it higher for the NIN personally.

Thematically, I'd like that.

I actually do like Trick Attack and I don't want it to go away, my personal preference tho would be to redesign it sorta like Cloak of Shadows or whatever it's called in WoW where you basically enter '' sneaky mode '' and can do more powerful attacks more stealth themed.

Cloak of Shadows was just a magic damage immunity CD. Shadow Dance, then?

There were some suggestions going back as far as ARR to use a Blindside mechanic. Essentially, when an enemy isn't aware of your presence, such as by having broken line of sight against them (and Suiton's pillar of water, suggested to persist for a brief time, would break line of sight), your attacks are upgraded to more powerful versions (and perhaps gain a further effect, such as Trick Attack).

At the time (and still now, to some degree, though less so what with Sneak Attack being ancient history), I was a fan of both that idea and Jump being a single skill that takes you skyward and makes you briefly immune to most forms of damage before coming down via any of various Dive actions based on your GCDs.
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For now, in my opinion, the most lackluster NIN element is Huton, oddly enough. Its application just feels like clunk, the only redeeming quality of which is that it allows for (the least interesting possible use of) a further combo finisher (maintenance of a flat Haste buff). I'd be totally fine with either the Attack Speed being trait-ed and Huton's Ninjutsu itself being turned into something else or it actually needing to be recast roughly once per minute (70s max duration again) and would much rather Armor Crush (or any rebrand of Finisher #2) do something more interesting (and then add back Shadowfang atop that).

[Kolsykol]

For now, in my opinion, the most lackluster NIN element is Huton, oddly enough. Its application just feels like clunk, the only redeeming quality of which is that it allows for (the least interesting possible use of) a further combo finisher (maintenance of a flat Haste buff). I'd be totally fine with either the Attack Speed being trait-ed and Huton's Ninjutsu itself being turned into something else or it actually needing to be recast roughly once per minute (70s max duration again) and would much rather Armor Crush (or any rebrand of Finisher #2) do something more interesting (and then add back Shadowfang atop that).

Yeah especially with GL becoming a passive it feels a bit like it doesn't belong in the way the game plays anymore.
They could bring Shadowfang back as a combo and make Huton a passive.
It's kinda strange to me that Huraijin didn't replace Armor Crush to begin with, why does crushing someones armor refresh my Huton lol?
If not replace it with Shadowfang they could bring back Dancing Edge and make it buff Aeolian Edge or something so you're swapping between the two.

But regardless of what they do, Huton only makes for irritation in that often times tanks will insta pull in duty finder and welp your opener is messed up and you've just wasted a Ninjutsu in lower lvl content and even so in higher level content using Huraijin honestly just feels like an annoyance it's not as exciting as just leading in with your Mudras.
And keeping it up with Armor Crush isn't rly all that fun.
At least Shadowfang taking its place it'd feel a little more interesting than just '' guess imma do my lower dmg combo now to refresh Huton ''.
The damage difference isn't even big which makes it feel even more pointless.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah especially with GL becoming a passive it feels a bit like it doesn't belong in the way the game plays anymore.
They could bring Shadowfang back as a combo and make Huton a passive.

I'd be fine with that. But, again, there are also other things we could do with Armor Crush / finishers besides just "DoT" or "More Direct Damage / Filler".

It's kinda strange to me that Huraijin didn't replace Armor Crush to begin with, why does crushing someones armor refresh my Huton lol?

On that note, they needed only change AC from "refreshing" to "granting" GL, move that from a "Combo Bonus" to "Additional Effect", and raise its potency floor and voila, you've got all the QoL of having Huraijin without needing to waste a button on it.

If not replace it with Shadowfang they could bring back Dancing Edge and make it buff Aeolian Edge or something so you're swapping between the two.

Honestly, I'm not at all a fan of rigid combo alternation, especially if you can't manipulate the timing in order to cause one to get in more of the buffed attacks (and fewer of the buffing attacks) under damage bonus windows.

I don't much like it in Leaden Fist, and that at least has Perfect Balance, a not-quite synced Demolish, and other manipulables to try to manage some actual complexity from what would otherwise just be convolution.

But regardless of what they do, Huton only makes for irritation in that often times tanks will insta pull in duty finder and welp your opener is messed up and you've just wasted a Ninjutsu.
And keeping it up with Armor Crush isn't rly all that fun.
At least Shadowfang taking its place it'd feel a little more interesting than just '' guess imma do my lower dmg combo now to refresh Huton ''.
The damage difference isn't even big which makes it feel even more pointless.

The saddest part is just that, even with Dancing Blade, Shadow Fang, and the (anti-synergy of) Duality making Armor Crush feel more vital, I preferred Huton being just a Ninjutsu than an ever-maintainable mechanic. At least, back then, if you got greedy at the wrong time, you would need to replace it, and the damage loss from Armor Crush was proportionately larger, so it more or less worked. But now? It's no more interesting than Storm's Eye, all while depending on a weird, clunky vulnerability.

:: Final note: I'm not a fan of the Hide mudra resets, regardless. I wish that, if they must insist on leaving Huton a cast, they'd just had Huton not trigger its cooldown if used outside of combat or within 3 seconds of entering combat (as a tank pulling a trial boss will put you into combat anyways), had Huton duration not drain outside of combat, and/or had one enter an instance with Huton already fully charged (a la Addersgall). And/or, again, just get rid of Armor Crush so there's much little point in a pre-combat Huton. Any combination of those solutions would be simpler and cleaner. (Of course, I'd also want adjustments to just about any mechanic that obliges more than a 5-second pull timer, so....)

tl;dr: In general, I kind of despise any buff that you'd want to keep 100% uptime on unless it's damn hard to do so and doing so would cause you to interact with more factors of complexity than, by outweighing other options, it'd remove. Since HW, Huton has been one such 100% uptime buff with little if any net gain to complexity. It was still basically fine to me, though, until we lost other our finishers (and Duality). Now it has basically no complexity, no real required effort, and has no times in which it'd ever be favorable to let it drop. That just pointlessly shallow, compared to other ways the capacity could be handled if it's supposed to be actively generated. Alternatively, we could just make that passive, have X-X-Ten perform some other effect (e.g., Bunshin, though such that it's only a potency gain over Raiton if used during downtime, before Trick Attack, or when Phantom Kamitachi [the remaining cooldown] can be cast), and change the purpose of Armor Crush to something more interesting.