The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Tate+1 adds no ranged accuracy. If you need accuracy to hit your target, surely Ninja needs ranged accuracy for Daken as well.

When you account for DEX, Tatenashi isn't even much more melee acc than Ken+1/Malignance. And as Buukki mentioned, Tatenashi lacks Racc for Daken - even with that only adding one possible additional hit per attack round, that alone is probably worth enough to accept the slightly lower melee acc (even without considering much better defensive stats of the other choices). For instance, body slot:

Tatenashi +1 R15: Acc+65/DEX+34 = Acc+90.5 (and only AGI+29 for Daken Racc)
Malignance: Acc+50/DEX+49 = Acc+86.75 (plus Racc+50/AGI+42 for Daken)
Kendatsuba +1: Acc+52/DEX+39 = Acc+81.25 (plus Racc+47/AGI+37 for Daken)

I use 3 Tatenashi +1 pieces when I play Ninja in Sheol B seg farms. The monsters are so much lower that you can afford to neglect ranged accuracy in favor of stp and triple attack, which is fantastic IMO. You don't really have to worry about anything from a defensive standpoint either (unless it's a magic caster), since Utsusemi works well on Nostos and they can't attack fast enough to break through your shadows before you kill them. That's about the only modern area I find myself using that set.

This is probably the most reasonable use case for Tatenashi as NIN TP gear... but even on lower level mobs, I personally have a bit of hesitation choosing Tatenashi over the very similar offensive performance of Mpaca. Tatenashi may be marginally better for offense based on target/buffs, but even Sheol B mobs hit hard. For pieces that are nearly sidegrade territory, I'll go with the one with significant defensive benefits across the board (PDT-, Eva, Meva, MDB, DEF, Killer Effect+).

I'm a little more inclined to mix in Tatenashi with a Nagi mainhand (versus Nagi/Malignance builds for defensive/hybrid/tanky stuff). But aside from that, I honestly find Tatenashi a lot more useful for SAM (somewhat glass cannon-ish TP sets) than NIN.

Updated Spreadsheet with all current gear as well as R30:
https://github.com/NextGames2000/Spreadsheets/blob/master/Ninja%20Spreadsheet.xlsx

I like that you mention the differences in the top 9 sets are like 6% difference best to least. And starter sets are still only a few% behind.

Unfortunately when someone sees 6% behind, all they see is 6%Behind. They don't generally consider any variables and only see 6%Behind.

It's never not going to be that way, just a comment on how silly it always gets.

Thanks and your absolutely right. So many have this idea that there is this HUGE difference between the sets but it's all in general relatively close. Close enough that you should be looking at the other stats as well to decide what works for what your doing.

Sometimes you gotta live (or cheat death) a little. Put those Utsusemi Macros to work.

You tough right?

Your tables show Kendatsuba+1 having less Ranged Accuracy than Mpaca, which has zero Ranged Accuracy... You're likely granting Mpaca armor +50 Ranged Accuracy per piece in place of the "Pet: Ranged Accuracy" stat. All stats after "Pet:" enhance the player's pet, not the player.

Mpaca's true Ranged Accuracy value comes only from its AGI stat and is 127*0.75=95.25, not the 95.25+250=345.25 that you're showing. This value is incredibly low compared to other sets and would drastically affect TP gain on sets using it.

I haven't checked the numbers for the other sets, but they're probably fine since the other sets have no "Pet:" stats.

Edit:
I checked your spreadsheet and noticed that the Mpaca pieces are correctly using 0 Ranged Accuracy. This means your final results should be correct, but your visual representation and analysis discussion for your video have small issues.

Ahh yes thanks for the note. I'm sure your right, I happened to look over when I was calculating all those numbers and must not have noticed at that moment that "Pet" was in front of it. Fortunately I did not make the same mistake when I added the gear to the actual spreadsheet so the actual DPS numbers shown and stuff are still accurate, was just a calculation error when making the chart for the vid. So when it comes to Ranged Accuracy the MPaca performs as poorly as the BiS Tatenashi and the Full Tatenashi, which is pretty awful. Further enforcing the idea I give in the video of it only being really useful as set to use when you are tanking and know shadows will be down for long periods of time, such as when tanking lots of adds.

good video, cant wait for the ws one to come out!

I think, if you think about it for a couple seconds you'll know the answer.

One boosted ws every 60 seconds (1/10?) is pretty meh, plus ja activation

TA can be attractive, but SA/TA remain pretty unremarkable subbed, if ml gets high enough and /thf gives accomp/collab theres some potential utility in that, but that's about it

Which Katana has more total Magic Accuracy: Gokotai (40 macc, 250 macc skill, 15 int) or R25 Kunimitsu (50 macc, 248 skill), or are they about even? Unsure how much magic accuracy INT adds to Ninjutsu, is it 1= .5?. Between the 2 magic accuracy skill difference and the INT, they look about equal, but not sure if someone knows for sure which one is higher.

Currently using Gokotai in the OH slot for Macc.

NIN is spoiled with the content you bring. I wish there were people that put this kind of effort into other jobs the way you do for NIN, or the way Martel does for PLD. It's incredible.

So, to follow up on this... BG "Magic Accuracy" page specifically says ninjutsu accuracy is not affected by any dSTAT. I haven't dug through the links on that page to see any relevant testing, but am assuming this was appropriately tested.


As previously noted, INT *does* affect ninjutsu damage. Just not accuracy. I always had this in my head from long ago without really remembering why, but it seems there is evidence of that being correct. That being said, as a practical matter it doesn't really change much for NIN gearing aside from Relic+3 feet (w/ enfeebling merits) being slightly more Macc than AF+3 feet (w/ set bonus with AF head). As discussed here.

Didn't a guy called Bhadir (?) perform a somewhat large test a long time ago on the effects of Ninjutsu Skill and INT on both Acc and DMG for Ninjutsu damage spells?

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/49638/%E5%BF%8D%E8%A1%93%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%84-the-secret-art-of-ninjutsu-technique/

is what you're referring to i think, which gave a formula for damage but macc was never confirmed

/SAM

iirc, on the Japanese side, they confirmed that INT derives into Macc for ninjutsu (or it might have been a dev post on the JP side).
There shouldn't be anything weird about it, so 1 INT = 0.5~1 Macc depending on the target; same as any other base stat to Macc conversion.
I could be misremembering given how long ago it was.

Main handing an Aeonic, what’s the rank for off hand weapons?

Kunimitsu and gokotai are solid katanas, while for daggers you got ternion r15 and gleti's knife

The augments on R25 Kunimitsu plus the base stats are disgustingly good. IMHO, it's the best OH Ninja could dream for and you don't need to swap out of it for practically anything (unless you're using Savage Blade or Ten exclusively and want high numbers, then Hitaki). You can use it for enfeebling, nuking, and all of the REMA MHs. Even the base weapon is very good out of the box.

If not nuking, Gleti's Knife is generally better, but agreed that Kunimitsu is up there in the top echelon of offhand choices. I use Gleti's when I can't reliably magic burst, Kunimitsu if I'm able to MB regularly. In theory, Kunimitsu is also better if you're really struggling for Accuracy/Racc... though I don't really find many practical situations in the current game where that ends up being the case.

Other than those, I pretty much only use the following offhands:
* Tsuru for tanking
* Hitaki for Savage/Ten like Buukki said... though I think Hitaki is usually overkill with a Heishi mainhand and leads to wasted TP Bonus (and doesn't actually perform as well as the alternatives, or optimal spreadsheet values due to fluctuation in WS timing). I normally only pull it out when I'm using Nagi or Naegling MH; it can work surprisingly well with Nagi though.

Just wondering: how is Gleti's Knife "generally better"; for what specifically? Hybrids? Frequency? Overall usefulness? Which role is it better for?

Advantages of Gleti's I am only seeing 6 TA, 27 delay and 5 Critical Hit Rate, so TP frequency is slightly higher and spike damage?

Kunimitsu has MAB, Magic Damage, and WSD (which Gleti's has none of), which should put it solidly ahead of Gleti's Knife for Hybrid WS, right? It also has STP, Skillchain Bonus (so SCD is higher). Ranged acc, katana skill (which equals higher offhand attack and accuracy than Gleti's Knife), and higher Magic Accuracy Skill (248 vs 242), which still translates to a better debuffing offhand. They even threw on 75 HP, which is nothing to write home about, but it's a solid addition to go with Yonin merits.

I am just looking at it from a /checkparam and practicality perspective, not SS. If you have solid numbers/data to back that up, please share it. I just don't see it right away that Gleti's is generally better. Both look relatively close, just curious how you came out with Gleti's being better.

Gleti's normally wins pretty consistently on spreadsheets, for example Logical's recently updated ones on his Github. That aligns with my actual in game parses of my own DPS with same buffs (which I did many months ago and never saved, so feel free to test em yourself). IDK how much more there is to say. Though, Kunimitsu is certainly still one of the top offhand options in any situation, and absolutely worth having especially for any situations where you melee & add regular MBs.

Stat comparison:
Gleti/Kunimitsu have identical DEX/AGI/Acc/Atk/Macc/augments, so the relevant differences are as follows (bolded ones are IMO the most important non-nuke distinctions):
*Gleti's: lower dmg/delay (133 dmg, 200 delay), TA+6%, Crit rate +5%
*Kunimitsu: higher dmg/delay (151 dmg, 227 delay), Racc+40, STP+5, WSD+5%, nuke stats (M.Dmg+217/MAB+20/MB damage+10%), SC Bonus+5
* And for offhand hits only, Kunimitsu has more acc/atk from katana skill+248 (on a base lv99 skill of 424) versus Gleti dagger skill+255 (on a base lv99 skill of 378). So, looking at acc+35 (39 skill difference x 0.9) and atk+39 difference on just the offhand hits. I don't feel that offhand accuracy is often a problem for NIN though - even with Gleti's my offhand accuracy is around 1300 (when using Heishi or Nagi MH) before buffs/food in my typical Ken+1 or Malignance-based TP sets.

It's not really that hard for me to accept that lower delay and TA+6% beat WSD+5%/STP+5. Either one of TA+6% or 27 lower offhand delay is very close to the additional DPS from WSD+5% plus STP+5. So when you get both of those stats on one knife...

To get a good sense of the impact of those stats, go mess with spreadsheets and make two identical Kunimitsu offhand TP/WS sets - then play with only adding TA+6% to one set (don't forget to apply to both TP and WS) versus the other set adding WSD/STP. Or test a hypothetical Kunimitsu with 27 less delay (it's a bigger impact than you might think) versus the real 227 delay version + WSD/STP.

Caveats:
1) Like I said, if I'm tacking on magic bursts (which are not considered on spreadsheets) I use Kunimitsu. If it's mostly a physical WS spam situation without consistent/well coordinated SC/MB, Gleti's.

2) SC Bonus is another factor not reflected on spreadsheets, and I could see that 5% pushing the advantage slightly to Kunimitsu if closing a lot of SCs... though in that situation, I'm likely adding nukes so I'd already be using Kunimitsu. Double good then!

3) If strained for Acc, the Racc and offhand TP accuracy advantage can swing things to Kunimitsu.

4) Buukki makes a good point about Kunimitsu boosting Hybrid WS damage, which I don't have much data to support (though I'd be interested to see how the additional WS damage compares to delay/TA+6%). I'd be curious to see comparison with Hitaki for that use case too, if you can manage the acc. Interested if anyone has a more detailed analysis specifically in the context of hybrids. In particular, I don't really have a great understanding of M.Dmg's impact on hybrid WS.