u/ProperMastodon

At higher levels of Stone of Penance, bosses seem to get enhanced ailment resistance, making it harder to inflict Confusion with Thundering + Glacial Calamity (which was my go-to through most of the game), so I'm looking to see what other things can be done for fun.

I'm asking for things that aren't obvious and can increase the skill ceiling in the game. If something only works with certain build options, make sure to say what it is (a set, jutsu-related accessory mods, certain weapon skills, passive skills, etc).

One thing that might help is an analysis of how much ki damage the various jutsus do. I don't have a good way to analyze that (other than going to the training dojo and just kind of eyeballing it).

Here are some things I'm aware of:

• Against most humans, you can follow up a grapple with a quick shuriken / kunai to force a knockdown, allowing a final blow opportunity (fire shuriken can sometimes interfere with this, and storm kunai are too slow to take advantage)
• With most (if not all) weapons, you can speed up jutsu casting speed by casting from the air and following each jutsu with a quick attack.
• Using a jutsu starts your ki recovery, so you can use them in between attacks (particularly in the air) to keep up pressure without running out of ki (particularly good with ranged jutsus that let you move, so you can attack while recovering ki and avoiding the enemy's attacks)
• The passive skill Streamflow should allow you to mix aerial MAs with jutsus to keep long aerial uptime (as long as 3 MAs is enough to refill one use of each of your jutsus, you should be able to have infinite airtime). Add Ascension so that your jutsus get stronger as you do this.
• Hatchets can use Boulder Breaker to disengage (or any weapon can flash attack to hatchets for the same effect) and follow up with any ranged jutsu to keep up the pressure and get back some ki before using Piercing Hurl -> Wild Surge (and potentially flash attack back to your preferred weapon) to get back into melee. You can also toss in a ranged GS skill somewhere for added fun.
• Poison Mist and Flame Breath have much shorter animations from the air. With the Shadowclad passive, they also imbue your weapon.
• Shadowclad can be used to trigger Inari's damage buff without having to worry about elemental talisman onmyo / consumables or locking yourself to Tengen Kujaku.
• Shadowstitch doesn't actually apply an ailment, so it doesn't seem to have a shorter duration no matter how many times you use it on a given enemy. That makes it exceptional in coop, where 3 players can take advantage of the mini-paralysis it causes. It's even better with an accessory that gives additional Shadowstitch stock, letting one ninja apply it two or three times in a row before the enemy gets to do anything.
• The ninja passive skill Physical Art Strike (when used with the common passive skills Flexibility and Tourbillon) lets you use Lightning Step -> Style Shift -> [any strong samurai MA] in a small window from a pretty big range.
• You can also use Physical Art Strike with Pheasant Leap / Cicada Shell to dodge attacks and retaliate with a bit more oomph.
• Ninja passive skills Patience of the Gods + Venomfang Technique + Snakebite Technique should allow you to keep using Poison Mist to keep a boss poisoned most of the fight. Add on Shadowclad so your attacks also apply poison buildup for further poison-induced pain.
• The passive skill Ninjutsu Link works great for Thundering / Tempestuous Calamity and Enhanced Shrapnel Bomb since you can hit multiple enemies and refund the cast even if only a single trash mob dies.
• The Sinister Tyrant set makes Thundering / Glacial Calamity (in particular, but all elemental damage, really) hit like a truck, so long as you have enough spirit force.

Here are some things I'm aware of, but not sure how to capitalize on:

• You can use the various traps from the air, which drops the trap directly beneath you. I don't know if groundfire / toxic groundfire are better than using shrapnel bombs / poison mist directly, but this might be the best way of applying paralysis via jutsu.
• You can flood the zone with caltrops by using Caltrop Ball in your aerial combos. Not sure if this is good vs anything, but its fun to have the floor covered in glowing red spikes.