[Autumn]

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.

See I don't think Wazabane is actually much of a problem, sure its 15 hit and crit but the FP cost is insane on it for that bonus, 22 FP for a basic attack like that is usually not worth it, if anything Wazabane is in need of a buff to its FP Cost.

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.

I agree here, sacred art's never really been appealing for the damage itself, not only that but the elemental damage effect is actually resisted by armor somehow, making it nigh useless.

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.

I feel as though with its cooldown, absolute fear has a decent amount of counterplay, including just being out of range of it, on top of other duelist counters currently present like sporting crit evade or slash/pierce resist, there should be a lot of threat present when a duelist is sitting in your face, thats sort of what mages have to plan for and prevent, instead of sitting there twiddling their thumbs like the hexer standard.

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.

When it comes to evade the only class in the game to be able to reliably run it right now -IS- Kensei, and thats simutaniously both a good and bad thing, its bad because evade can be unreliable, its good because that gives not too many classes checks to hit stacking, except Kensei, where it has a slightly higher than normal chance to avoid a basic attack, and only on certain conditions which are preventable. (IE: Having fear immunity/cures, and your first hit can be followed by autohits instead too if the hit penalty is too much.)

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.

I can't actually agree with this because it erases class synergy which is super important for duelist to actually have builds outside of SWARD builds, why can't I be a gunner who excels in 1v1s, or critical hit checks like a deadeye? not to name other builds.

I'd like to hear Dev's idea on Kensei mechanics like its specific type of ki, but when it comes to kensei passives currently I believe they're actually fine where they are somehow, kensei still runs into average duelist counters, and the only reason its picked over ghost is because of the diversity its passives cover, unlike fitting form and ghost's lack of actual dodge.