[Autumn]

When it comes down to Kensei the class is pretty balanced overall, but dodgy kenseis tend to fall behind the curb pretty often, they simply lack a bit of firepower when compared to other classes having special damage buffs such as claret call, checkmate etc.

This could be rectified in my opinion without buffing the tank variant of the class directly by giving them crit damage associated to a passive, whether as attached to Katana Master or to a new passive shouldn't matter much, but I do think the crit damage bonus should be around 15/20%.

[Sawrock]

Considering the crit damage of swords, I think this would be perfect.

[Balor]

I think this would work well, I also know after playing Kensei that critting and fleur is more often used as refreshes for your kensei combos. As all of Kensei's POWER is packed into their autohits. Examples of crit refreshes being as follows.

Sidecut>Kakegiri>Hirazuki

Move>Wazabane>Hirazuki/Kakegiri

Being the most popular of these combos. An alternative suggestion would be to take Kensei's 25% damage buff, or rather all of the Absolute skills and making them worthwhile. As at the moment Pace & Death are traps that are either not used, or are at the best 2 round damage buffs you would be better off foregoing and just hitting someone with a full combo.

Fear is incredibly useful against mages, otherwise there are better ways to inflict fear for less FP, and better Kensei skills to use in the meantime.

Alternative take would be to allow main class Kensei to apply Absolute Pace/Death/Fear with a refund momentum as part of a kensei combo or to cost no momentum if it's main class but lower the duration of their debuffs. Opening up situations where Death/Fear would be more viable options.

While Pace is just... It's best for dodging basic attackers and nuking them back, could change it to proc on evasion.

TLDR: I like the suggestion. However here is an alternative that would make the tools we already have more viable considering apart from Absolute Fear, NONE of the absolutes get used, and considering Kensei is just Vergil. We need some absolute power.

P.S. Most optimal tank Kensei are going to benefit from whatever dodge Kenseis benefit from in terms of damage. There isn't much to dodge that other than tank kensei having to allot the points to actually hit their basic attacks/going BK. Apart from that there is no point trying to sidestep it apart from being worried about buffing niche Matcha builds.

[Snake]

I dunno what would be more simple yet effective to make agile Kensei superior. Maybe something like this for each of the Absolutes:

- (Absolute Death) Kensei's damage is increased by a percentage based on their own CEL vs the enemy's CEL.
- (Absolute Fear) Critical Hits will extend the duration of Fear and Silence statuses by 1, to a maximum of 2.
- (Absolute Pace) Attacking a slower opponent (I.E, someone with 7M+) will allow you to perform an additional Kensei skill for no Momentum nor Repeat Action costs.

[Syeburn]

I dunno what would be more simple yet effective to make agile Kensei superior. Maybe something like this for each of the Absolutes:

- (Absolute Death) Kensei's damage is increased by a percentage based on their own CEL vs the enemy's CEL.
- (Absolute Fear) Critical Hits will extend the duration of Fear and Silence statuses by 1, to a maximum of 2.
- (Absolute Pace) Attacking a slower opponent (I.E, someone with 7M+) will allow you to perform an additional Kensei skill for no Momentum nor Repeat Action costs.

this i can get behind.

[Autumn]

I dunno what would be more simple yet effective to make agile Kensei superior. Maybe something like this for each of the Absolutes:

- (Absolute Death) Kensei's damage is increased by a percentage based on their own CEL vs the enemy's CEL.
- (Absolute Fear) Critical Hits will extend the duration of Fear and Silence statuses by 1, to a maximum of 2.
- (Absolute Pace) Attacking a slower opponent (I.E, someone with 7M+) will allow you to perform an additional Kensei skill for no Momentum nor Repeat Action costs.

Permanent upkeep on silence potentially sounds miserable and I'd rather not see Tsukikage/Shizumare's effect on a class passive, the fear and hesitation both are fine, the silence however would not be.

Absolute Death scaling from CEL sounds like an odd design decision and would likely get out of hand in in huge differentials, which is 99% of them given how few tanks actually build

What I suggested is simple and effective, nothing more nothing less, this isn't a kensei rework thread, this is just a thread to give them a bump that a dodge kensei surely needs stand alone.

[FatherCrixius]

Doesn't go against drez's point of it not really being helpful for Kensei's. Optimal rotation right now is one basic into two autohits, and you've probably noticed the basic hit exists solely to proc fleur + volcanic. 20% More crit damage? Like a whole thirty mitigatable damage. This isn't a solution to much, in my opinion.

[Autumn]

Doesn't go against drez's point of it not really being helpful for Kensei's. Optimal rotation right now is one basic into two autohits, and you've probably noticed the basic hit exists solely to proc fleur + volcanic. 20% More crit damage? Like a whole thirty mitigatable damage. This isn't a solution to much, in my opinion.

I am currently aware of how Kensei usually plays out as I was probably one of the first ones to state as such given its rework, the change brought up could potentially change how it interacts with duelist as a base class a little bit differently, or with other classes such as Black Knight which have nothing at all to do with Kensei's combo system, the fact of the matter is that even with Fleur a full tank kensei is still fully capable of beating a dodge kensei who scores their critical hits and gains action economy over them.

This change wouldn't happen to be game changing and is instead supposed to be a minor boost to their performance which could be monitored pretty easily to see if it actually does change how the current matchup plays out, however seeing the classic tank autohit kensei vs dodge basic attacker kensei matchup always is disheartening in its current state.

+% Critical damage almost always ends up being more valuable the lower your critical damage actually is, how armor interacts with critical damage currently kind of sets it behind raw tank value as a result, leaving the stat weaker than it could be if it boosted damage pre-armor rather than post (Think of how Matador's "Know no pain" actually makes you take more critical damage)

To say it doesn't change anything is outright untrue however, +20% global critical damage would absolutely be a pretty decent shift in the damage you deal, the fact volcanic is so strong currently and is the meta for basic attackers is mostly due to an overbuff that will almost assuredly be changed as well if/when people get sick of seeing how much damage its capable of dealing every round.

On top of all of this, I thought it was a mighty fitting change in the end of things, given that katanas are a center point of the class and you could absolutely see a katana weapon dealing more critical damage than its normal sword counterpart.

[Balor]

Aight, les fucking GO BOYZ!

(At this point I think further discussion about what Kensei needs or wants would be better suited for full reworks. I am more than happy with more crit damage, and offered my alternative for discussion or consideration as these are typically unused skills. But minor changes/Big Changes. All are welcome.)

[Shujin]

how about armor pierce instead of Crit increase, I feel that results in more damage on a crit, than flat out increasing crit while at the same time keeping its damage lower versus people its not a problem against. Aka people that do not stack armor to high levels.

I feel we often attempt to increase its total damage, which creates new problems with fast basic hitter versus fast basic hitter. While the problem is the laughable damage against tanks which mainly comes from the part of the calculation were armor is calculated before your multi. So why not combat that specific part?

For an extra layer of possible balancing, the armor pierce could only happen on a crit, so building alot of crit evade is still desireable to coutneract this.