Ninja DPS Output(A possible Fix)

[Shurrikhan]

Virtually every job has damage windows into which to cram "anything and everything" and without TA that'd just turn into everyone else's 15 seconds buffs every other minute. Ninja will never not exploit damage windows to the best of its ability; every job is obliged to.

If you want TA to be a less invasive factor, that's just a matter of reducing NIN's ability to bank for and thereby exploit any and all raid damage windows. Such would be more helped by having a greater portion of CDs that would rarely sync to multipliers of 60, reverting Kassatsu to not give a free (non-charge-consuming) cast, or even by taking out our second charge of Ninjutsu than by removing TA.

[Satarn]

If you want TA to be a less invasive factor, that's just a matter of reducing NIN's ability to bank for and thereby exploit any and all raid damage windows. Such would be more helped by having a greater portion of CDs that would rarely sync to multipliers of 60, reverting Kassatsu to not give a free (non-charge-consuming) cast, or even by taking out our second charge of Ninjutsu than by removing TA.

This tbh, but it will not happen. SE has been deliberately aligning things more and more and killing any drifting possible since 5.0. I personally hate this direction, because it makes things more boring, but it is the direction we're going in.

5.0 NIN was quite the outlier, still retaining a very varied rotation and some (accidentally) big-brain optimization with Meisui, but got completely streamlined in the 5.1 rework. Had to hammer in that last remaining nail I guess.

[Shurrikhan]

This tbh, but it will not happen. SE has been deliberately aligning things more and more and killing any drifting possible since 5.0. I personally hate this direction, because it makes things more boring, but it is the direction we're going in.

5.0 NIN was quite the outlier, still retaining a very varied rotation and some (accidentally) big-brain optimization with Meisui, but got completely streamlined in the 5.1 rework. Had to hammer in that last remaining nail I guess.

Tbf, outside of boss jumps, the only big drift concern is, itself, TA, but so long as Ninjutsu continues to trigger its cooldown upon starting into the mudra sequence, instead of on release (as per the earlier design), and Suiton has a long prep period, drift remains basically a non-issue.

With both Kassatsu not giving a free charge and Ninjutsu having only one Charge, you'd have one fewer NJ cast per minute, of course, but the larger effect is simply that rather than the majority of Ninjutsu casts falling into TA, Ninjutsu casts under TA become basically proportionate to time spent under TA (well, 1 in 3 non-free casts, rather than 2 in 3).

There's also just the further matter of Ninjutsu's apparent potency -- as in, what the player perceives, more so than what they amount to, as portion of total damage, over time. When a given tool itself is overwhelming strong compared to typical actions, they overshadow those, diminishing the excitement that'd come from synergies (even such modest ones as manipulating the timing of this or that to get in one more strong GCD / one fewer weak GCD within a damage window). When Fuma Shuriken was an (admittedly still slightly undertuned) option for purposes of noticeably saving uptime (and especially when other timers like Dancing Blade, Mutilate, and Shadow Fang still played a part in anchoring play and changing the relative costs of uptime), Ninjutsu didn't so greatly push the normal combos out of interest. Equally notable, it also provided a soft manipulator against drift.

All in all, it's a shame how many "QoL" changes have managed to "solve" a given issue only by reducing agency and thereby creating new issues or constraints of their own. Reduced ping penalty on mudras, for instance, needed only the HW Empyreal Arrow treatment -- properly queueable weaponskills that would incur but not respect the global cooldown as triggered by other skills, with animation locks significantly shorter than their GCD periods. That'd have still allowed for the same protection against ping-based upside cost while moving all players nearer to the way NIN flowed for low-ping players before, rather than forcing all NIN to play like a 250-ping player over the course of their mudras and would not have deemphasized weaponskills nor pushed out other rotational elements.