The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I did by triggering your longer helpful post ;]

Newbie Ninja here. I have a pair of Ryuo Hakama that I'd like to use for my NIN since it's a fresh 99.　The rest of my gear is still pretty garbage as I'm a new player and trying to work my way up the gear chain. These pants are upgrades from the i119 Bayld set (Schneddick +1), so I kind of have no choice but to upgrade and figured I might as well make the most of them through augmentation. I just don't know what will benefit me the most. I figure it's between path A and path D. I imagine the accuracy is about the same on both due to the DEX+10 on path A. I could also use these for WS pants (for SAM as well) until I come across something better. Anyone have a strong argument for going path D instead? Here are the base stats as a reminder:

DEF:127 HP+50 STR+29 VIT+15 AGI+21 INT+30 MND+17 CHR+11 Attack+23 Ranged Attack+23 Evasion+24 Magic Evasion+80 "Magic Def. Bonus"+3 Haste+5% "Double Attack"+3% "Store TP"+7 "Skillchain Bonus"+10

A:
STR+10
DEX+10
Accuracy+15

D:
Accuracy+20
"Store TP"+4
Physical Damage Taken -3%

Thanks for humoring me ._.

lol... well played ;)

It's difficult to be 100% sure without knowing your full gearsets, but I'd imagine you'd usually want Path A for use as a general piece. You can swap the paths on the Eschalixer gear once you've fully upgraded it without losing your total Rank, as well, so you won't have to commit to any one path.

They'd maybe make ok starting pants for shun ws because dex 10 on a leg slot isnt awful esp w/ STR and DA, but if you'd like them for tp id just straight up do path D.
But like he said hard to say w/o knowing what you're already TPing in

As a new ninja, and even as a top-tier ninja you will always struggle with accuracy. I would absolutely use path D (and did!), so that you have enough accuracy to do things like hit mobs that drop gear, and cp. the STP is a plus especially if you pair it with DW gear; and the PDT is useful if ever your shadows drop.

Do any of you think its worth or do you already try to start fights w/ Ageha when you're soloing or multi?

When I'm doing something like Omen I try to sometimes but it feels like a waste to do it sometimes, especially more than once.

Second Q:
Starting to favor NIN BRD RDM instead of NIN WHM GEO since haste II and 1 march caps you out and Dia III 2 MIN is also nice.
I guess main question +x5 geo frail/haste < dia III minx2 in your opinions?

I bought a Hepatizon katana thingy for Gekko once. It sucked. Was fun trying.

Hard pass on Ageha. im 80/80 on inventory slots and have to throw away ninja tools every time something i want drops. NO room for that nonsense.

Haxxor's right on for the buff portion.

If anything necessitates legitimate healing I'd take whm over rdm all day, if only just for Solace. Cureskin may as well be an extra shadow.

FWIW, I regularly park my RDM mule at the Ambuscade entrance outside of party and toss an 8:30+ Haste II on my NIN and other party members pre-entry (or Flurry II on ranged), it stays when you zone. So you don't even actually have choose in that scenario to get one of the biggest benefits of using a RDM. Yeah, you lose Dia III and Enfeeble IIs, but if you're not getting dispelled you can keep the haste for the whole fight (assuming win time is fast enough) and free up some different buffs from a GEO or BRD.

Absolutely agree on hushmonkey's point about WHM Solace too.

Rdm is totally legit healer since cureskin isn't necessary a requirement to keep a pt alive if your pt has good synergy.

Basically it's like using a DD tank like RUN/DRK tank with lionheart in zero DT, the better pt is, the more room you can give up on safety for offensive benefits. And rdm provides a bit more offensive benefits than whm.

I could care less about the healing part honestly, I do alot more SCH + BRD than anything now.

Basically one mule is WHM/ghorn brd other mule is SCH/RDM/GEO so I switch it up every now and then.

Starting to favor RDM BRD NIN more just because how easy it is to cripple 90% of the mobs. Elegy + Slow II all in one send macro, both light and dark based dispels and easy EVA down from distract.

Not to say whm geo isnt just as great especially if I need cure bombs but when I'm just doing gin or fu a cure IV will suffice even w/o cureskin, just sucks /sch doesnt give red stona

Can Migawari block Kyou's Unfaltering Bravado?

No. Nor can it block Kei's Dancing Fullers.

I've heard people outrunning Unfaltering Bravado but that doesn't seem possible I thought? Its distance is extremely far.

Well it's distance is 30~ yalms so if they are then they are pos hacking.

I think you're confusing it with Dancing Fullers. Unfaltering can't be avoided because it being 30 yalms and if tank runs off more than 20 it will trigger draw in. Fullers is 10 yalms and has a bit of a cast time, so it can be easily avoided.

I'm almost certain they said Unfaltering Bravado, I've tanked Kei/Ou plenty of times and outran Fuellers. I'll try to look for it.

Edit: Found the thread https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/52393/kyou-issues/2/. Could have sworn someone said they side-stepped it but that seemed very unlikely. If I remember right, I was hit at 30 yalms by Bravado during early days of Omen when RNG was used as a safe 6-man setup. Sorry for the confusion everyone.

To my experience Unfaltering Bravado is of course conic but with a pretty narrow range (maybe like August's move in Sinister Reign? That's pretty narrow too).
If people aren't properly lined up together they risk not being hit by it despite being very close to other players in front of Kyou.

Happened to us several times, at least during our first runs, long time ago.
Not sure if anything changed since then.

Ninja Neck NQ is DEX/AGI +10, Daken +15, and Physical Damage Limit +6%. Going based off of other necks, +1 would be DEX/AGI+12, Daken+20, Phy Dmg Lim +8%, and +2 would be DEX/AGI+15, Daken+25%, and Phy Dmg Lim +10%.

I added them to spreadsheet and even without the Phy. Dmg. Limit, I'm getting a NQ beating Moonlight.

Daken+25 is huge, and probably worth dropping the stp from Moon+1. What is that, +85% Daken rate if you use tekko+3?

Tekko not worth using most of the time though.

Daken is hot but it presents two issues:
1) it still falls under the 8 attacks per round cap, diminished returns for people with very high Multiattack in their TP builds
2) in content with very high accuracy checks (wave 3 dyna?) it suffers from the fact it's gonna miss a lot of the time (madrigals do not give ranged accuracy, for instance)

The only way to not get something from a daken is to proc a QA + QA that's... quite rare.

Until emp+3 set bonus

In what set is NIN hitting 8 attacks/round? Unless Mikage or using QA augments, don't think it's possible?

Idk, an 80%+ chance at an additional follow-up attack (using a loose term). Diminishing Returns yes, but the rate of that additional attack possibly outweighs the STP from adhemar hands. Maybe it doesn't since, Adhemar also adds a good bit of RACC. Honor March adds ranged accuracy, though. Tekko+3 adds throwing skill and racc along with that Daken. Regal Ring can be thrown on if that becomes a major problem.

Just saying, at some point, the diminishing returns argument favors using Daken over MA, the same way it does for Monk and Kick Attacks. At what point is just stacking so much MA gear not that more noticeable? Its no shock SE sees that as well, they've added "chance for follow up attack" stat that adds on top of the MA proc (subject to 8 hits). STP is the only stat I can see valuing very high, and that's where I would draw the line (not intelligent to take out too much stp in favor of an additional attack "chance" stat).

Yeah Tekko are pretty garbage for TP generation, even if you really like Daken (which I do). Too much loss in other areas versus Adhemar+1 or Kendatsuba+1 (which are also both still pretty good for Daken Racc purposes, even if they do lose the Daken proc rate+10%).

As for Sech's Daken issues...

1) Eiryl covered this. Supremely low rate of double QA proc in an attack round makes this basically a non-issue for current gear.

2) I mean, yeah, it's true Racc is going to suffer somewhat for content with high acc requirements. But you CAN mitigate it more than a lot of NIN do by paying attention to gear that has both Acc and Racc - which is basically everything fairly current, since they're been doing a much better job of putting Racc on relevant NIN gear lately. Kendatsuba set, Divergence katanas, JSE neck, Mummu set, etc.

On a different note, some of you may have seen in the monthly update thread that I checked the Divergence katana augments - HQ1 Mochizuki Shinobi-gatana shown below. LOL at a tank path for the "unique" route C augments. The HQ2 Fuma Masamune gets higher augment stats (i.e. probably 50%/stat+25 on path A/B, probably recast-25%/Enm+10 on path C).

Is that utsusemi enmity for each SHADOW or per each utsusemi cast? If it's the former, 56 enmity per cast would be pretty insane.

I would assume each shadow, which isn't that far out of line with Nagi's static Enm+40. Since you're actually tanking and shadows will be fluctuating, on average you're probably going to be relatively close to where you are with Nagi - sometimes more, sometimes less. Also, on Fudo Masamune I'm guessing the value is +10/shadow for a pretty beefy +70 total at the high end, since +8 enm/utsu is the HQ1 katana (and i'd guess it's likely +5 for the NQ).

However, maybe notable that when talking to Oboro the lines are written exactly as I quoted above, with a potentially suspicious possible cut off line. Compare to the weapon's base atk/shadow stat, which is written as follows (line break as shown below):

Attack+10 for each Utsusemi
shadow image


I'm sure as hell not locking my weapon in on path C though, unless I learn that it's easy to switch paths - personally, I still find focusing on NIN tanking kinda low priority. Want to see what the Route B follow-up attack is all about before I pick for my katana, but I'm leaning toward that. That being said, if it doesn't win for mainhand, maybe I WOULD do the tanking path for my offhand... it's still the best offhand for Kikoku/Kannagi/Heishi without augs, so even though the augs don't apply when offhanded, I'd have a utility toy to swap to mainhand for times I may want to tank.

Does Nagi enmity work on offhand? +110 enmity during utsusemi is amazing, not even factoring yonin bonuses. Could this bring back a return to blink tanking? I'm think specifically about something like wave 3 bosses where they don't have excessive moves that wipe shadows.

Been asked multiple times, nobody tested it afaik.