[EenKogNeeto]

Kensei. The problem child that everyone has a pretty heated opinion about for various reasons.
I'm going to be that guy who gives their ideas for how to fix it here.

We're going to start with the active skills and work our way across.

Or should I say the one active skill that sees any use: Wazabane. A skill that is just a basic attack but better. 15 Hit, 15 Crit. If you're airborne then it doubles to 30/30. Honestly? I think it's fine for balance but for one thing. I think it should require Sacred Art to be active to use. Meaning you need to actually use another Kensei skill first instead of just burning up.

The other assorted Kensei active skills are fairly solid at a universal 140% SWA and hefty but manageable FP costs when factoring in the class mechanic that is Sacred Art. All I would suggest adding to make them more appealing is...Buff sacred art's damage to be 10-20% of your SWA rather than 10%(?) of your Elemental Atk. All it does currently is occasionally make you lose momentum due to resist for negligible 1-4 water damage on hit.

Moving on across the list we get to Sheath Sword. Which is...Perfectly fine honestly, it's a source of your class mechanic and generally has some cool fluff and mechanical uses. Buffing Sacred Art or putting more focus on it will encourage people to use it more instead of always dumping it to the side.

Next we get to the Absolute Three. And honestly? Absolute Death and Absolute Pace are both fairly balanced in my opinion. They are impactful without being a super 'I win' button to push. The real problem child and the number one complaint most people have with Kensei is Absolute Fear. The no roll 'I win' button against other melee, mages, anyone really. It's oppressive as hell to get three big debuffs slapped on you at the push of a button no matter what your resistances are. But it doesn't need a massive rework or anything: It just needs to be inflict based. Most Kensei will have skill so they will still be able to pull it off on people who have no resistance. But it will be as a *result* of them not building status resistance. It gives counterplay in the form of preparation like a paper doll as an option for mages and other melees.

Passives...The balanced ones.
Blade Barrier seems oppressive at first but once you realize you can flank them to negate it you can usually work around it.
Sacred Art is what the class SHOULD be using, yet its so rarely taken right now sadly.
The remaining ones are either balanced or not worth mentioning.

And now we get to the crux of the issue that is Kensei Meta. The innate passives that work with every build and you would be foolish not to take.

First off we have the big three: Sakki, Touki, and Kenki. -15 To hit, -15 to Evade, -15 to crit evade. Each getting buffed by one of the earlier mentioned Absolutes for -30 to the respective stat. No matter what against a Kensei you have 15 less evade, hit and crit evade just baseline. A huge deal.

Then we have the stealthiest part of why Kensei is so oppressive to play against. The one nobody really notices. Yomidori. This is the real strongest part of Kensei Evasion builds. This is what deletes your hopes and dreams. After you deal ANY damage to the Kensei you get -30 to your Hit for the rest of the round. Potentially stacked on top of the -60 from fear. A grand total of a 90 reduction to your hit entirely from passive effects. This is why you need over 350% hit chance to reliably hit Kensei. This is the biggest thing that needs tweaking with the class.

Now all of this is explaining the problem, not suggesting a way to fix it yeah? Well. I think it's pretty easy: Make it so they only apply while Sacred Art is active. Encourage the use of a Kensei Skill like Kagekiri or ending your turn with sheath sword, so that on your next attack/turn you'll have all these wonderful debuffs. No more will you be able to take Kensei as a Ranger/DH/MG/etc and just enjoy all the benefits despite not actually using a sword at all.

TLDR: Make sacred art the focus of the class, rather than universal passives. Hopefully leading to people actually using things like Kagekiri, Sheath sword, Sharenzan, and so on. As a side effect, it will tie everything to using a blade. No more Kensei Gunners without at least packing a sword in their offhand.