[Syveril]

I will concede that pointing to other classes and saying they have it is sort of weak. But I stand by the skills I suggested; I believe for balance, playability, and stylistic reasons, ninjas should get

1. redirect - ninjas should be known for their deadly accuracy, not for being unable to hit the target of their choosing. In fact, I believe ninjas should get something better than redirect; something with less lag.
2. trail concealment - in terms of the various "hide" abilities, there are five categories, two of which do the same thing but operate in different spheres:
- blended
- cloak/invis
- sneak (unseen motion)
- tracklessness (trail concealment or winded passage)
In ninja movies, when have you seen ninja tracks all over the place? Isn't it crazy that ninjas don't have this? It totally doesn't affect their combat viability, but it's has a small role in the hide and seek of pk, and ninjas should be hard to track down. This is a style question, and I stand by my statement that ninjas deserve trail concealment, even if we were the only class to have it.
3. haste - this is a balance question and a style issue. If hurricane kick had normal lag of 2000, I wouldn't bring this up, but because it incurs greater lag than a round of attacks, it means that we're at a disadvantage running. Hurricane kick does more damage than skills like holy light and radiant strike of the guard, but then again you won't see us with a ton of extra stats and high defense/healing and hot +damage. It almost balances out, except that the extra lag negates the damage of hurricane kick (except for consistent 1-rounding). On top of that, I noticed in comparing running speed that ninjas tend to end fights with 1000 lag a lot more often than other classes. It shows up often when fighting mobs that last 2-3 rounds, and I believe has a significant impact on run speed, which is a major disadvantage.

Stylistically, it feels wrong to have ninjas be slower than other classes. Ninjas, sorcs, barbarians, monks and valkyries (although valkyries get 3 bonus attacks fully practiced), are the only classes without any speed bonuses. Monks suffer much of the same problems that ninjas do in terms of running and in terms of pk viability. Monks will always have a place in group pk thanks to temple touch, but their stances suffer from the same poor scaling as antei of formation.

Antei of Formation: I specifically avoided comparing infusion with antei, because one is the strongest subclass ability ever and awesomesauce, and one is available to all ninjas. The thing is, I think all "stances" are outdated. I think they need to be rebalanced to take into account the endurance penalty for using stances/in combat skills, and in light of increased battle lengths. Only certain fighter classes suffer from this lack, and I believe it to be a design oversight rather than deliberate balancing. I don't use antei of formation while running because it doesn't increase my run speed, not because I'm saving the prevent. You don't see marauders not using ephemeral discord of speed. You don't see witches not use witching frostband, or warlocks not using temporal gate, or poliirs not using radiant awakening. This is ridiculous and an obvious case of a need for rebalancing. If antei shouldn't be usable for running, then it should be awesome in pk like infuse. If it shouldn't be awesome like infuse (and I don't think it should be), then it needs to be usable for running. Right now it's sort of stupid; I feel like it's not useful over a 2 minute fight, it's only useful for converting some of your overall damage into up-front damage. It should add to your overall damage.

Non-ninja specific issues:
Also, do you agree that glancing pierce needs its prevention dropped to 10 seconds? It should be 15 seconds tops, and would be a slight boost to valkyries, ninjas and footpads only. I think in terms of the position it occupies in terms of running and pk, these are classes that deserve to use this kung fu more often.

Keiiken isn't a useful skill as is. It's shared by monks/warlocks/ninjas. What can be done with keiiken?