KF3 Ninja Build - Best Skills and Katana Loadout

The Ninja is one of the most stylish and most lethal perks in Killing Floor 3. It can work at range with throwing weapons that you pick back up, which gives you practically unlimited ammo, or it can carve through every Mire creature and ZED up close with the Kiba or the Katana. The perk supports several archetypes: support, tank, horde-clearing DPS or boss killer. This guide covers an aggressive hack-and-slash build that holds up in every situation. For the wider picture of KF3 builds see best builds and loadouts.

Killing Floor 3 promotional screenshot (Tripwire Interactive).

How the Ninja plays

The Ninja has a very distinct rhythm. It does not move faster than other perks (arguably it should), but movement is still the foundation of everything you do.

• Ranged (Kunai, Shuriken): you throw your weapons at enemies and must pick them up again to get the ammo back. That forces you to plan your route while kiting a horde.
• Melee: you need to know when to step in and when to back off, and side-stepping matters. A common technique is to hold or charge an attack, then use sprint plus left or right strafe to dodge past an enemy and cut it on the way.

The dodge-and-slice timing becomes second nature with practice, but you have to watch more things than most perks because you are always in the ZEDs' faces. The build below is about strong sustain, high single-target damage and clearing hordes with very little help from the team.

The Ninja at work in Killing Floor 3.

Best Ninja skill build

The skill screen has three columns (Passives, Throwable, Gadget), each unlocking a new row every few perk levels. Pick one skill per row.

The Ninja skill screen: Passives, Throwable and Gadget columns. Ninja proficiency also adds bonuses such as faster movement and melee attack speed during Zed Time.

Passive skills

Pick	Why	Alternative
Kenko	More health and 10 HP restored over 5 seconds on a perfect parry. You live in melee range, and Bloat explosions and acid eat armor fast, so raw health is worth more.	Yoroi: more armor and less stamina lost when blocking.
Roaring Tiger	The only choice for a shredding offensive Ninja: big extra damage against bosses and tough ZEDs such as Fleshpounds and Scrakes.	-
Demon Stance	The obvious pick for a melee build.	Skirmisher, for ranged builds with the Kunai or Yumi.
Chi Kai Ri	Adds natural crowd control to your attacks, so you are almost unstoppable when you are not fully surrounded.	Sakki-jutsu: a support pick; perfect parries make everything in a large radius stumble.
Unyielding	More damage plus the health sustain this build needs.	-

Throwable skills

Pick	Why	Alternative
Blunt Force	Easy way to apply Shock, especially to a big group or the boss.	-
Hard Rain	More Caltrops in a smaller radius, mainly to burst bosses down.	-
Devil's Circuit	Extra damage and burst for the boss.	Raijin (Inazuma) or Thunderclap for mass crowd control.

Gadget skills

Pick	Why	Alternative
Eagle Strike	Boosts your first weapon attack after a grapple. Easy to forget, but a heavy attack right after a hook, stacked with the damage skills above, hits very hard. The best boss skill in the tree.	-
Dead Calm	Always open boss fights with the grappling hook to deal extra damage immediately.	Warrior of the Wind, a strong all-round option.
Red Calm	The other options are weak for this build; reducing damage taken helps in boss fights and maps with a lot of environmental damage.	-
Lightning Incarnate	Adds damage and style to your Hebi-Ken.	Iron Castle, if you land perfect parries constantly.
Leopard Fist	Huge utility: the target becomes vulnerable to three damage types for 10 seconds. Once teammates start hitting the debuffed boss, it melts.	-

Knowing which damage types each enemy resists makes Leopard Fist and the coatings even better; see the KF3 specimen weaknesses chart.

Best Ninja weapon build

You will use both blades. The Kiba is the starting weapon; save Dosh and buy the Katana at around wave 3. Dosh basics are covered in Dosh economy.

Katana in the workbench with the recommended mods and a Toxic Coating. The stat panel lists Cut damage on primary attacks and Electrical plus Cut on the secondary mode.

Katana mods

• Lightweight Grip
• Lightweight Blade
• Light Guard
• Balanced Pommel

All four push attack speed, damage and handling while giving up as much Block Stamina as possible. The idea is simple: you attack faster than the enemy can hit you, so blocking matters less.

Coatings

The coating depends on taste and on what the wave throws at you. It is worth having all three available:

Coating	Affliction	Best use
Enfeebling Venom	Enfeeble	Bosses, to cut their overall damage
Toxic Coating	Toxic	Single-target damage on Scrakes, Fleshpounds and bosses
Stunning Coating	Stun	Hordes

Bonus ability

Bonus abilities on crafted mods vary; for this build you want Melee Master for extra damage. Rolling it can be fiddly, so do not chase bonus abilities until your other weapon mods are maxed out.

Playing the build

The whole plan is to rush the Katana and then sustain yourself by one-shotting everything that is not a large ZED like a Fleshpound or Scrake. Keep your buff active and keep healing off kills. It is easy to get surrounded, so never stop moving; when things go wrong, your Hebi-Ken and utility skills are your way out.

• Rush the Katana by wave 3, then mod it for speed.
• Swap coatings to match the wave: Stun for trash, Toxic for big ZEDs, Enfeeble for the boss.
• Open boss fights with the grappling hook and a heavy attack (Dead Calm plus Eagle Strike).
• Apply Leopard Fist to the boss and let the team cash in on the vulnerability.