The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Still waiting on them to refund my draumstafir.

Do NINs even tank anymore? Think they'd drop the whole Yonin/Innin thing or retool them to be abilities that give bonuses instead of stances?

Off tank for Divergence farming (PLD, RUN, or PUP pulls).
There's some Ambuscades where it's a suitable tank. (The Qutrub month for example.)
Some merit fights.... the iLv nerf to shadows has never really recovered for tanking like it used to.

It's very risky atm, but situationally effective.
Lotsa fun and different from the others.

On a couple of situations it's actually incredibly effective but normally it's either not viable or viable but very risky.
No half measures sadly lol

If they make it so that utsusemi can absorb any specific moves based on remaining shadows, or grants ninja a damage taken mechanic based on how many shadows are removed, I'd be content with that as an adjustment.

AoE needs to stop wiping shadows. I don't know how you accomplish that without breaking the game. But it needs to happen.

So many things completely invalidate shadows.

Oh, and too many things ignore migawari too.

Right now Ninja is not a tank or dps if they give them cure maybe SE can make another healer with shadows.

-aoe damage soak based on # of shadows
-nin debuff ninjutsu elemental specific type malaise/gambit effect
-and a Shuriken with defense down add. effect

(*'-')V

What we'll get:
-shifting of merits so we can merit NTE
-more mijin gakure dmg gear / +7% WSD "while under the effects of mijin gakure"


Need to bump tank-ability or dd damage or give us some useful support options to add/contribute to a party.

This sounds GREAT to me! Got my Nagi and reacton arm READY TO BLOW SOME ***UP

Ninja can be a respectable DD, the issue is the player base refuses to play it like a DD, then wonders why it can't DD. If your DDing don't cast magic while engaged, focus on keeping Innin up and stay behind the mob. Try to have Kakka / Yain up before the fight and only reapply if they fall, and for the love of god don't spam Utsusemi. Casting ~any~ magic, including Shadows, nets a casting time + 3s period where you don't attack, meaning no TP gain, meaning no WS's. Monsters like to use TP moves that wipe shadows or -ga spells, just leave them down. I've seen NIN do pretty damn well when they focus on being a DD and not trying to be some sort of hybrid tank DD.

Agree with this.

When I am DD'ing on Ninja the ONLY time I stop to cast Utsusemi is if Mikage is up and something just wiped my shadows.

Re: the update.
I'd like to see the Elemental Ninjutsu San-tier spells get put onto scrolls and replaced by some other spells which are in game, we just can't use them yet. I'd also like to see three other categories added to round out the 5 now vacant slots.

Hojo: San
Kurayami: San
Jubaku: San (yes, skip Ni and go right to San)
Ninjutsu Enmity Increase (+10% per level)
Innin Effect (Increases WSD when attacking from behind, +5% per level, inverse of Samurai's Overwhelm)
Yonin Effect (Increases Magic Evasion when facing your target, +20 per level)

...I can wish.

nin/dnc

If they were really going to release new spells for NIN (which clearly they are not. The reason they're removing T2 merits is to make so all spells are accessible and not bound behind merits, would be crazy to do that and then replace them... with other spells) I'd rather have other stuff than Hojo and Jubaku.
Like, I dunno, Aisha: Ni, Kakka: Ni, Yurin: Ni, Gekka: Ni.
Nomnomnom.

Hojo, Kurayami and Jubaku are all nice and everything but really I'd rather get powered up unique stuff.
Got a new idea about the 6 new merits categories btw, imho it's gonna be:

1) San spells Macc
2) San spells Mab
3) San spells MBB
4) San spells cast/recast time
5) San spells MDMG
6) Ninjutsu duration time

Doubt theyll have a mdmg category, hopefully not a cast/recast section either as thats just as pointless. Rep those with yonin/innin and thats probably close to it

Pretty confident they will waste one slot on cast/recast, since that was the augment on the Relic Feet and they will be forced to change it, unless they add a new similar category.

My point was: if they add a new category for that, they can basically leave the feet as they are now.
If they don't, they're gonna have to invent a new augment for the feet, just like what they did for WHM pants/feet.
MDMG for the same reason, it was the augment on Head for the San spells, if memory serves me right.


It's definitely NOT what I'm dreaming of, more like what I'm expecting them to do.
I'd totally take Yonin/Innin augs over those.

Pretty sure they took away AMs cast/recast thing, may be misremembering there though

So after having pulled out my NIN after a good few months, I am quite unsure of the best off hand which isn't Fudo Masamune.
At the moment I am using Heishi/Kaja Knife, but not sure if anything is better.
Any recommendations?

edit: I actually read like 5 pages back looking for one and somehow missed lol. My bad.

It's like that same thing comes up every new page

I can see
1)San or ninjutsu Macc being one. Mabey roll Mab and macc into same merit
2) San or ninjutsu Mab
3) San or ninjutsu MBB
4) Daken +1-2 per upgrade
5) ninjutsu Cast time- (I would find this a waste thou unless it effects recast time as well.)
6) ninjutsu duration time mabey. I'd like to ninjutsu enhancing effect in this one. +1-2 Or just Kakka effect +1-2.
I like ruas innin stance suggesting alot to.

would be a real shame if the search function got fixed on this forum sometime so ppl could search thru a topic.
real shame.

Wild idea that probably won't happen: wouldn't mind if Ninja Tool Expertise worked on shurikens. Or give ninja a natural recycle trait to pair it with sange. extend Sange duration a fair bit as well (3 minutes). Would be a nice DPS increase for the latter, and an appropriate QOL update to go along with it. Things like seki shuriken would stay around longer. Not thinking of anything that's game breaking.

Add ranged attack to sange merits in the same amount as the ranged accuracy. +100 racc/ratt when capped.

Vote up

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/forum.php#threads/53746

Yeah, that's annoying as ***.

Just got my Gere Ring last night and looked into the 2nd ring selection in more detail:

I pretty much always get Gere/Epona as best TP set. Hetairoi isn't too far off, but it seems pretty consistent that Epona beats it - tested wide variety of buffs/targets, different weapons (whether an Empy TA/crit build or Relic/Aeonic build, things broke down the same).

As for WS...
Gere also holds up as a very good option even for our physical WS that don't have a STR mod. We're basically looking at BiS (or at worst, sidegrade) for Ten, Shun, Metsu... and it's a viable choice even for Hi. While results may vary based on buffs/target/other gear, looks like things break down more or less as follows:

Blade: Ten - roughly, Epam > Gere > Karieyh +1 > Regal

Blade: Metsu -
(a) I get Epam/Gere as tops, with Gere's TA edging out Kariyeh +1's WSD.
(b) If no Epam: Gere/Kari+1
(c) If no Epam or Kari+1: Gere/Regal
(d) If no Epam/Kari+1/Regal: Gere/Ilabrat

Blade: Shun - at the very least one of the top 3 options. I generally see Regal/Gere winning, followed by Regal/Ilabrat and Gere/Ilabrat. Those combinations are relatively close - but Gere is a nice improvement for those without a Regal Ring.

Blade: Hi - I generally get Regal/Epam winning, but if you don't have those, Gere is in the mix (part of a close cluster with Ilabrat and Kariyeh +1 that can change based on buffs). Some might be surprised to see Gere up there on a single-hit non-STR WS, but the TA on Gere is pretty strong.

From the latest news it seems we won't be getting anything else on Ninja other than :San Ninjutsu turned into scrolls and FOUR new merits categories.
Which I bet will be San Mab, San Macc, San MBB, San casting/recast?

Uuuuh... I mean, it's a welcome change and I'm gonna greet it with open arms, but clearly there's so much more they could've done at very little expense :x

Well, why not? I mean DNC and RDM adjustments have been super fine for instance.

I wasn't really expecting too much, but something beyond just making SAN spells into scrolls? Yes, I was expecting more than that.


Regardless, we should be happy. As little much as this patch will be, it's still good stuff, nothing we can complain about, quite the other way around!

At this point, I'm skeptic on them doing anything about them, but we'll know in a week!