[Poruku]

Although kensei is an awesome class with some arguably strong tools, there are many things holding it back that are difficult to get around.

1: Swords are bad at crit.
The issue isn't that sword crit builds can't work, it's just that you're never gonna get the damage of a dagger or axe. Many kensei players end up getting 40+ luck but only about 15 guile, sometimes a bit more. And it makes sense when the only real reason you need crit at all is so that your wazabane, riposte and sidecut can proc fleur. The crits of a sword user are just never gonna compare unless they build good guile, which is really rough on the stats. For Kensei, this simply means their damage is not gonna be as high as it could be. Of course, swords are pretty good for SWA skills, like hirazuki. So that's a strength of kensei. But kensei can't really afford to go non-crit without feeling terrible. At that point just build some kind of DH or BK.

2: Kensei lacks evade.
Despite the addition of a +10 evade buff, Kensei is still unable to get enough evade on its own. This wouldn't be so bad if Kensei wasn't so demanding on your momentum. This ties into the next point.

3: Kensei offensive skills.
Much of Kensei's power lies in its combos. Wazabane into a hirazuki into anything is some pretty spicy damage on a single target. It's nowhere near as good as the average twin dance user or even the average crit build, and the problem is that it's very specific. Basically, you need the enemy to be in the right place at the start of your turn in order to get much done. The addition of some flexibility to these skills with the recent update definitely helped, but I feel like the issue with those is that you're consuming a really useful buff to get it (except when you have perfect poise). Flottement especially is so amazing on sidecut you don't really wanna waste it on something else. All in all, this means that Kensei's main strength (its combos) isn't always possible to pull off. You can be the best Kensei player on planet earth, you can't exactly engage a dude who's over there in a weird diagonal. Your best option is perhaps rabbit leap wazabane, but if you miss the crit you just lost your whole turn dealing like 94 damage.

4: Kensei is so much better with evade
Duelist is a weird class. Because it benefits so massively from evade due to flottement and poise, but it has no way of boosting it. Kensei is also a class that benefits from evade, and the evade stance is genuinely amazing. But this locks Kensei evaders into picking up rogue or bonder if they want to cap evade due to lack of duelist/kensei evade buffs. Meaning kensei build variety is quite limited. Personally I think any class should have some sort of evade buffs in this economy (and a few hit buffs too) but that's not really the discussion here.

All in all the point being made is that Kensei's weaknesses outweigh its strengths far too much. It's a clunky class that requires you to have an enemy in front of you to do anything decent, while other classes just use their skills or attack in whatever way works best. And their damage is also not amazing due to sword crit, so that weakness doesn't make that much sense.

Here's a list of my suggestions. No need to implement all of them:
- Give a skill similar to Ruler's Patient Scourge, giving them a buff to crit and crit damage when they land combos. Since the Kensei gameplay encourages using combos, this would mean your wazabane would do actually good damage even though you only use it once per turn.
- Give them a small active evade buff they can pop at battle start. Or incorporate an extra evade buff into their kit somehow.
- Shunpo: A long range movement option similar to haunting but also allows you to trigger kensei combo with the next move. Could even apply sakki if you land behind someone. However, it would have a 3 round cooldown.
- +1 range to all their moves would honestly be such a great boost to their playability.
- Perhaps another means to buff the range of their moves would be nice too. For instance, sheathe sword could give another buff that makes kagekiri a flexible line but with extra range too.
- Maybe we could make kensei better at deflecting ranged attacks. In anime, swordsmen can deflect literally anything with a sword. So why not change bullet barrier into a more general skill that can reduce the damage of all ranged attacks? This would give Kensei a much needed edge against builds that can easily kite them.