Liked purely for the intro paragraph . And I feel like we don’t see a lot of these ideas these days, so thank you for that! As for the class:
The MP bothers me. Weird number and just 19 more than most classes, not even a clean 20?? With 10 more dps stats than ninja, it is easily top damage of all Katana classe (I assume this is a leather, so I’m free to compare it more to ninja than Samurai?) and has the highest base spd in exchange for 20 less hp, 10 less vit, and 5 less wis than ninja?
Kusarigama:
First of all, sweet sprite and I adore the animation of scythe, so I would absolutely love to see this kind of concept as a mainstay for a class . I don’t want to judge the concept too hard based on the t0 alone, since the difference between t0s and t7s varies vastly depending on the ability.
Mechanically: Do you think the cripple might be something that gets added on and increases in duration as you go up the tiers (like expose on Samurai)? This seems like a lot for a t0 ability if you don’t plan on that kind of progression. What is the max range for a kusarigama? Something around 5.5 like scythe? And does that increase up the tiers? Will it have a bigger hook on the end? I assume the chain and hook would all have the same damage and effect regardless of where you hit (no sweetspot like scythe?). And it has infinite range once hooked? Will it break at a certain range or when obstructed by walls/obstacles? If it does break prematurely, will the cripple still happen? Bleed does 20 dps like it does on players? I feel like you could remove that effect while latched and just increase the latched damage.
I was initially against a dmg/s w/o a cost, but the inability to heal mp while held is an interesting way to balance this. Would enemies still take held damage when invulnerable (I assume you can hold it through invulnerable phases)? The dmg/s isn’t insane compared to poisons, so this feels ok. I’m very wary about how much total damage this does as it scales (with tiers) because the best part of this is definitely cripple. I’m glad you decided to go with projectile lifetime instead of speed. This seems cool and reasonably balanced. I don’t know the the debuff reduction is necessary, but it definitely makes cripple more universally appealing.
Conclusion: I would rather see slightly lower att on the class with high dex (something like 65/75) to oppose Samurai and let ninja keep the crown for the highest DPS katana since this has a useful debuff in its base kit . Also, give it a normal max mp please. The ability is unique and useful, but needs a small amount of fleshing out. 7/10
Edit: Most of my questions were addressed. Mp was adjusted and att was toned down. Ability looks great and looks to be much more balanced than it’s initial conception. Easily 9/10 great class would love to see this as the third katana class.