The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

At least among groups i ran with, empy weapons were often preferred for DD's. I don't have kannagi but I can tell you from experience that there are situations where blade: hi can be monstrous - against Warder of Courage for example.

As for AM - it's really not that hard to maintain. I even keep it when it's convenient with Heishi, for the extra SC/burst dmg and the occasional radiance or umbra. You can start most fights at 3k tp. A lot of those fights can/ will be over before it wears. Especially for the ones that aren't over that fast, there are usually times when you're forced to over TP which gets your AM back anyway.

Once again I think it's important to stress that WS's should be used as the situation demands. Furthermore, while REAM weapons can make a big difference, the larger factor will be the quality of the player.

That said, the biggest limit to hi, imo, is not necessarily its performance or the weapon it's attached to, but the abundance of mobs in endgame that heavily resist or outright absorb darkness. ... though killing WoC in under a minute was definitely a strong positive.

If I can steer the conversation a bit, I think it'd be cool to see knowledge sharing about times when it's best to use what, like exploiting an earth weakness with chi etc., as opposed to a "THIS WS R T3H BEST ALL TIME" debate.

Warder of Courage, if you're going ninja, is definitely a Ten situation.

Before I had a cool guy REAM i used hi with my kanaria w/ good results. Post Heishi - yes Ten is good in that situation but mileage varied with allied DD synergy.

Our best setup was dual cor rolls pre-pt, then idris geo, all- the -REAM brd, epeolatry RUN, mythic & empy thf, empy sam, mythic & empy blu, and me on ninja with heishi. Don't remember my offhand :t

Hehe, I appreciate the civil discussion at least.


Hi isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. It's no well buffed Ten, but it's a LOT better than it was thanks to relatively recent Mummu+2/AF+3 head/Ken+1 options. If people haven't used it seriously or updated a Hi set recently, I could understand some lingering misconceptions based on what Hi had been until the gear that came out in the past year or so.

Even on my Kikoku, Hi with an up-to-date WS set now tends to perform better than or very close to Metsu. I've parsed actual WS avg over time with both to see, it's pretty consistently true. Tack on another AGI+50 from Empy, and Kannagi/Hi is far better than an ideal Kikoku/Metsu.

Like I've said a bunch though, Metsu is sometimes nice in that it has really good Darkness/Fragmentation SC properties. But Hi's Darkness/Grav properties aren't too shabby either.


Offhand Almace and Twashtar are a thing because they have a DEX+50 mod that also contributes to crit rate and acc. And Twash is very low delay. AGI+50 mod on Kannagi is less valuable. It DOES provide some help with TP generation through Racc, which is nice since it's sometimes harder to work Racc into TP sets anyway. But AGI is just not as useful as a DEX mod from a typical melee TP perspective, and it doesn't add any crit rate&acc to WS like DEX does to stuff like CdC and Rudra. If Hi/Kannagi were both DEX instead of AGI, things would be different and it would be a lot more realistic to see it as an NIN offhand much like Twash and Almace for THF DNC BLU.

And again, even if Hi WAS a thing to the point you'd consider using it as your primary WS with Heishi/Kannagi offhand, your DPS would be far better on Kannagi/Taka (or several other offhands). I just can't see any conceivable situation where that wouldn't be true (barring major changes to Hi TP mod structure).

Heishi and Hi just aren't really made for each other. TP Bonus +500, one of the main features of Heishi that make it so good for Ten/Shun/hybrid, is extremely unimpressive with Hi. Hi scaling is 15/20/25 crit rate for 1000/2000/3000 TP, so that 500 TP Bonus only equates to about 2.5% crit rate for Hi. That's a blip on the overall DPS, versus Ten and Shun (or the hybrid WS) gaining a TON from TP Bonus.

Even assuming mediocre use of Empy AM3, ability to use AM3 plus whatever stats you get from your Kannagi offhand offer MUCH higher value than STP+10/WS Crit rate+2.5%/slightly higher mainhand DMG.


This is ideal use of Heishi, yeah. And Heishi does have the luxury of "stepping down" to Shun for a short period of time on the fly as needed.

But I think a lot of people here really have been mistakenly thinking that the only consideration should be changing your WS on Heishi, and it's still the best mainhand choice even when you're forced into using Shun regularly. That's not really true.

I just want to make it more clear to people that if your buffs are bad enough that you're regularly having to use Shun over Ten, you really are in a situation where your buffs are low enough that Heishi isn't the best mainhand. As we've beaten to death, this is more a YMMV situation that depends on what buffs you usually have on NIN. But it's something to think about if you find yourself needing to shift to Heishi/Shun on a pretty regular basis.

Ideally, sure, fix your buffs by making three other people come on buff jobs so you can go nuts with Ten. To me, most parties in that situation are going to call you a princess NIN and tell you that if they're going to roll with 3 buffers in a melee party, those melees are gonna be jobs that aren't NIN.

Reality, in my experience:
"Fine Capuchin, you want us to make sure the DD party has 3 buffers? You get on COR or RUN or WAR then, because we're gonna fill the two DD slots with [Masa/Doji SAM, Chango or GS WAR, Caladbolg DRK, etc.] - not your Ninja."

I'm not sure which I find more disappointing, Blade: Hi or your crew...

This is absolutely a common and unfortunate reality. I say unfortunate because while a certain level of tactical reasoning is essential, it's this attitude that has been and is ruining the game. Certain jobs have certain potentials- yes; but just b/c your drk has sweet gear and a caladbolg that doesn't mean it's not trash. I've seen this ideology since day one as NIN and crushed a strong +80% of "NIN can't do dmg/tank/etc. just come as x- job with x- weapon instead" kind of premadonnas in whatever realm it was they said i couldn't compete. It dissuades creative thinking, diminishes appreciability, and makes people quit b/c they can't play the job they like ... usually because they need to facilitate someone who's doing EXACTLY what's being criticized.

Did not want to start a new thread for this so I will ask in this one.

Has anyone overcome the issue where when you switch from shuriken to say like bomb-let in gearswap, that your character unlocks from target?

It is really annoying me in battle when I cast shadows/ws and what not it unlocks me from target. I have tried lockstyle and bmn and it still does it.

Known issue for vanilla NINs. On any typical day, I blink between TP, casting, ws, and MAB sets. Shuriken is a different type of ammo from non-throwing, so you'll always blink unless you (1) don't change your ammo between sets or (2) use a plugin/addon to prevent blinking. I deal with this every day and healers and support hate me for it. I have no choice but to tell them to either deal with it, or i'll remove the casting and ws ammo options as a compromise.

Tried blink me not but it still blinks. (had a old file laying around. Dress up isn't helping either.

I tried using Dressup. I must not be configuring it properly because mine doesn't work either.

This should work "//du blinking self always on" for GearSwap anyways. That will stay on until you turn it off(just change 'on' to 'off' in the above command), even through job changes.

You might be able to have it set as a load and unload command on your Lua file if you don't want it up full time (I've been meaning to try this just haven't gotten around to it). One reason I can think of against leaving it up full-time is that any Lockstyle changes won't be displayed until you change zones.

Edit: I had the wrong command, it should be fixed now

Is there a resource out there to show powerful nin SOLO skillchains? I have searched through the official forums on i think like page 76 and it talks about skillchains but no solo. I have aeonic and looking at best ways to solo ultimate's.

i can do shun -> hi for gravitation then shun -> shun after that for radialance

i seem to remember an better one solo

Shun > Ten > Kamu > Shun > Shun

http://www.ffxicalculator.com


Of course if you have Heishi try to end in radiance or umbra. The rest is just knowing the mob and maximizing burst potential.

That moment when you cry because SE never unlocked the Relic WS for all weapons...

How you do that with mythic ws using aeonic?

Mythic ws are all unlocked with the mythic base weapon quest.

Do nyzul, talk to guy in lower j, do 250 ws points

Oh I forgot about that. Sorry its been years.

Do solo lights count as 6? Sorry I have not unlocked a weaponskill in like 3-4 years. I am guessing radiance does not count either

Yeah 1 for any open, 5 for light close. I believe you still have to main the sasuke so you can't radiance.

Yeah forgive me today I do not have a clear head.

What would be an optimal Blade: Chi set barring crazy DM augments?

Wsd, mab, str/int, acc/att in that order

Af+3 head
Herc body hands feet with above augments
Relic+3 legs
Str/wsd cape
Seething+1
Regal shiva+1
Moonshade friomisi
I think fotia belt gorget works. If not, caro grunfeld
Offhand ochu

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Engraved_Belt

Which reminds me
Let me go unlock summoner so I can finally do carbuncle fight for that belt. What grown man doesn't have summoner unlocked yet.....

Alternatively, Chi > Teki > To > Teki > Shun > Shun works as well, if you happen to be getting fighters/malaise/frailty/chaos and can manage to land the strict timing. I cut it down to To > Teki > Shun > Shun and just MB'd the rest down for Apex. With Sange up, the standard 5 step radiance destroys anything.

Wanion Belt? Should be better with 1 more STR/INT than Engraved, lacks Engraved's Acc/Atk+10. If you never did VW and got Wanion back in the day, might be less annoying to get Engraved though.

Caudata Belt is a viable option too (slight downgrade), and AH-able. STR/INT+6, Atk+15, WS Acc+10.

Engraved is worth it, if nothing else for an mdt/meva set. Unlocking SMN is a pain, but as NIN you should be able to pretty reliably solo Carby on difficult, or at least normal. It's doable on VD too but far from easy. For fast & easy results I wound up grabbing a whm buddy and just duoing him as nin on vd.

Yeah, Engraved is a nice defensive belt and worth picking up. I use it all the time on RUN in particular. If you go NIN to the fight, /RUN and Tenebrae can be a pretty good idea (personally, I've done that fight way more on RUN main).

Still slightly worse than Wanion for hybrid WS on NIN. Might not be a big enough deal for some people to bother with the inventory-1 to get 1 more STR/INT though.

Did we ever figure out what Utsusemi's enmity values become under Yonin?