This is going to be a long one, so bear with me...

Hi, I am Genyin ninja awakening player and this post is a short presentation of how the subject spec is being misinterpreted by the community and the devs alike. As well as a few paragraphs on it's current state in both pve and pvp.

For the almost past year now It has come to my attention (and probably even longer before me) that the direction the spec is going is completely against its own identity and what to do in order to avoid it.

* What is the identity of ninja awakening ?

If I were to ask the general community, they'd say something along the lines of "A stylish samurai, that moves around a lot and that is difficult to play"
If I were to ask the ninja community it'd be the following : A single target focused, medium mobility, fast paced, assassin with strong solo play potential.

Although the current consensus of the class's role is much more cinycal these days but that's besides the point.

The key here is the word assassin, this is the main thing that the class' community wants it to be... an assassin.

If you struggle to keep up with the skill names you can use the BDO codex skillbuilder as a crutch

* What exactly has happened that made ninja stray from its assassin identity ?

My take on it is that the class has become "slow" not slow in the terms of it's movement or threat range no no...
slow in the sense of : some of the changes that have happened to the class after the REBOOT have gone in a direction opposite to the class' role and fantasy.
Here are some examples to provide context :
Mach explosion and Sura Chaospree. Both had the structure of being 2 part skills (skills that have 2 animations and sets of particles attached). For a long time now the class's mains asked for a change to those skills to be only 1 part or to make them summons so that ninjas would be able to use them without losing alot of precious momentum for the very little damage they both offered, using them was akin to holding a sword by its blade (its painful but could work in certain scenarios).

Eventually after years of advocating they were finally changed. Sadly the changes were the complete opposite of what the mains wanted ; both skills didn't see ANY cast time reduction rather they saw their animations being extended and even delayed in the case of Chaospree. They did gain extra damage, range and mach explosion even received an added protection. The skills are by every metric BETTER now than what they used to be, however this is not what we asked for. Instead of receiving something that complemented the high agency fast and furious playstyle of an assassin, we got the exact opposite. The changes were received well by the mains initially because they looked very aesthetic and cool while being objectively stronger than before but I believe these changes went completely against the class's playstyle and identity.

this next part includes class balance talk so if you're not interested then you can skip straight to the comment section. I however, will try to be as neutral as possible and only speak about the objective issues of the spec with evidence in order to avoid this post being a simple boring rant

* Now regardless of the identity crisis, how does ninja currently perform in PvE and PvP ? 
In pve, the class has been for a long time regarded as one of the least favorable grinders in the game's history. The reasons ? a combination of lack of damage, reliance on pressing a LOT of buttons, low damage and most importantly very small AOE size (the range of the abilities). Every patch that aimed to improve the performance of ninja awakening in pve has only touched the damage and the cooldown of PvE exclusive skills (seamless and sudden decapitation). The patches did in fact help but they did not significantly improve the specs performance because they ignored the main problems being AOE size, low overall damage and reliance on pressing alot of buttons.

In pvp, in its current state, the class sees very little play in all levels of pvp because of a few main reasons. The reasons ? a combination of very low defensive stats, small AOE size (range of the abilities) and most importantly... abysmally low damage. Now please read the sections below where I go in detail explaining why and proving the points made above before going in the comments to argue, I swear its worth it.

Very low defensive stats, this weakness is not very clear at least not until you hit an awakening ninja. PA does not oppenly share a table with base stats but I'll give you this : awakening ninja starts off with one of the lowest hp pool in the game with 1842 hp at level 60, to compare with other classes in similar roles, Dark Knight and Hashashin start with 2042 hp and Tamer starts with 1945 hp. We are mostly comparable to classes like ranger and archer that start with 1833 hp. In the dr departement its the same issue but so does two thirds of specs in the game... HOWEVER an important distinction to make is that we do not have a single built in DP buff so this puts us on the bottom end of that department stat wise. We do however start with one of the highest base evasion and evasion rate in the game, so we can get alot of that stat if we so wish for but evasion is exclusively reserved for classes that can go hybrid or fully commit to a tank build. Sadly neither of these choices are viable for awakening ninja.

Small AOE size, I already went over this in the pve section but it's relevant to mention again, the class has very small AOEs. I would like to point out however that other specs such as awakening warrior and awakening tamer have very similar overall AOE size so it is not by any means an exceptional or unique weakness, simply something worth pointing out.

Finally abysmally low damage, this one is likely to be the most controversial despite it being quite well known for a while in the EU end game pvp scene so i'll make sure to explain thoroughly.

In simple terms the individual skill numbers are simply too low. Here's some numbers to give some context, I'll be using serpent as a baseline since most people outside of the class mains know about it and probably have a general idea of how much damage it does. Lets compare it to some other skills assuming 100% crit for skills with >50% base crit rate and 50% crit for skills that have 0% base crit rate. 

Ninja Serpent ascension (comparison value) : 11702.192 21,649.05

Kunoichi's Prime : Wheel of Wrath : 13046.16 (11.5% more damage than serpent)

Dark Knight's Prime Kama Strike (uncharged) : 12147 (3.8% more damage than serpent) (42.6% more damage if charged)

Warrior Slashing The Dead : 16090 (37.5% more damage than serpent) (18.7% more damage than serpent if we assume air attack on serpent)

Dosa's Prime : Taeguk : 22,888.12 (95.6% more damage than serpent) (69.1% more damage than serpent if we assume air attack on serpent)

Tamer's Beast Rampage : 29030.4 (148% more damage than serpent) (114% more damage than serpent if we assume air attack on serpent)

Drakania's Prime : Blazing Strike : 15096 (29% more damage than serpent) (11.5% more damage than serpent if we assume air attack on serpent)

Feel free to argue in the comments if those arent fair comparison points. Albeit we see a pattern emerge above on paper as well as in practice, the awakening ninja's unprotected "nuke" skill is severely outclassed by alot of other skills, regardless of their purpose and that is even if we include air attack which me might not get in alot of different combos. One argument I'd see as viable is that ninja can chain a lot of skills rapidly and that compensates for its low damage numbers. However that is more of a weakness than a strength at least in any scenario that isn't an isolated 1v1 fight. Having to chain alot of skill together (most of which are stationary and the rest are unprotected) is a grave downside of the spec, especially considering how squishy (easy to kill) the class is and how most of these flow options are unprotected ; this sort of playstyle was viable a long time ago when CCs and protections were more sparse, not anymore.

Point being, the class has been outdated and misunderstood in terms of kit and numbers for the past 3 years and is in dire need of a little refreshing especially after the patch of 19th of June that introduced a lot of additional defensive stats to the game as well as substantial nerfs to ninja awakening a double nerf in a single patch on an already subpar class is wild. The saddest part about this is that the lack of damage also affects the class' identity ; If an assassin can't kill people, can he really be called an assassin ?

* What I suggest from the Pearl Abyss team ?

Take a good look at alot of the skills on ninja awakening's kit that just don't fit the playstyle of an assassin due to being overly clunky and/or have ridiculously long animations, improperly balanced or simply never used. Skills such as : "Mach explosion", "Katana shower", "Sura Chaospree", "Sudden Decapitation" as well as "Ninjutsu Decapitation". Look into rewarding players for being fast and fluid rather than standing still. Also look into increasing the overall damage numbers of the class in critical skills like Drastic Measure, Flashing Light, Serpent Ascension, Absolute : Bladespin, Absolute : Shadow Stomp, Shadow Slash (the awakening one). We don't need the spec to be strong, just good enough to be able to fulfill its role which it currently can't.

* Conclusion 

Simply said, I believe that the class suffers heavily from a lack of understanding from both the general community and the devs alike. The mains want it to be one thing, an assassin. Meanwhile the general community just wants it to look aesthetic and cool and as for the devs.... It's not really clear, we don't really have a clear line of communication so we can't know what they wish for the class to become. Despite everything, this post simply serves as a way for me to get my voice out there. Although I do not expect anything to change. I sincerely hope that this spec gets the love and attention it deserves from PA and the general community. If you've read this far, you have my sincere thanks, I do not expect for anyone to read this much especially if it's not a class you pay attention to. Thank you and have a nice day.

I played ninja once in 2018 and I could oneshot a double cadry valk so clearly your are wrong.

I grinded once on awk ninja in 2018 and I was making crazy money at ghahaz, you are clearly wrong

Ninja is broken and you are just bad

hamza oneshots me standing 820 dr with his 269ap 1450 korean eva build

Good write up.
Mechanically I fear ninjas when I'm playing my class, but when it comes to damage, especially in say AoS, there are few classes I fear less. (This is all assuming awakening. Succession remains incredibly scary to a class as mine).

Key takeaway imo for PA is that they have to:
A. recognise that classes have identities, and that these must be preserved above all else, even if that makes "buffing" them difficult

B. if indeed buffing a class proves near-impossible as it would reduce its class identity (eg; giving Ninja long animation locked SA dmg skills), then instead of buffing this class they must universally nerf all other classes. This is a very, very unpopular take. But its been done before (2018 CC-protection rebalancing). We've had power creep for far too long. We need the game's core identity back and by extension every classes' identity. If that means awakening maegu cannot be afforded a multi-distance dash-teleport multi-cc hit nuke all-in-one... so be it. Rework her to have an acceptable identity, or delete her.

Ninja is great. Stop crying.

Bro, you're a roleplayer living in a fantasy land. Stop acting like you know anything.

This looks like the same state awk ranger is in although I would say awk ranger grinds a bit better but even still.  This game really hates old melee heavy assassin classes. We don't exist we just get blown up especially after the evasion changes the only thing we could do was build evasion dp sacrificing AP for a chance to survive chip damage from all the aoe spam lol RIP.

I notice that a lot of classes have really low PvP penalties (- ##% damage in pvp) on their BSRs, but ninja's are all absolute garbage.

Maybe they could take a note out of the Valkyrie handbook and make ninja's 100% (or even the 200%) "-35% in PvP"

As of the updates today, 100% Drastic Measure is still a bound instead of a knock down.

Pretty much agree on all parts. Not only this but the direction the game has gone, full protected movement and damage in the form of SA, has hurt classes that have always tried to exploit small gaps. As of 8/14/2024 patch we have protected ccs too, however we are so poor defensively that using them is a major risk depending on the classes we fight. In part because of abyssmal damage we compensate with full damage crystals, meaning our defensives are even more lackluster. 

Class needs major tuning to even become close to being able to play in NW/Siege again, which we were never good but at least playable. Gleague we are unwelcome as well for similar reasons to NW/Siege. AoS being the only place we are even allowed to pvp is not a very good feeling for anyone that has played this class for a long period of time, let alone wanting to pick it up seriously.