The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

The animations of single wield katana are pretty cool, it's a shame they are lost when you dw.

*backstab*

Have to admitt its been quite a while since I paid attention....eventhough I actually saw them alot during my Blade: Chi testings <.<,

With Haste Samba you can. Plenty of trusts provide 10% JA haste through that.

With a high delay weapon (like the level 1 katana from Dynamis, I guess?) you can calculate the exact TP return of each hit.
Plus attack rounds would be very slow so it would be very easy to discern one attack round from another (as long as you avoid additional magic haste etc)
Can't think of anything else other than TP return.
If you fight something that can't hit back you're also going to avoid your TP going up because of being hit.
Can also do that with Utsusemi shadows of course.

Otherwise the walls of Reives, or the Walls into the Lebros Caverns assault that only take 1-5 damage per hit from every source.
Good enough to get plenty of data if you parse everything.
The only issue with that is, of course, that you need to reset Mikage every time, unless you bring an army of pocket dualboxed Corsairs (or friends?) and ask for Wildcard everytime lol

But thats not sufficient isnt it? 43.75% (magical) + 25% (equip) + 10% (JA from Trust samba, /Dnc only gives 5% doesnt it?) is 78.75%. Ok only 1.25% missing though...but with /Dnc samba only its even 6.26 missing.

Hmm..ok so counting TP it is...but the problem is that this foces me to WS cause otherwise I dont see TP return right? That introduces additional delay which is taking from precious parsing time. When I have some time Ill try to run some experiments.

Gear sets on first page put Adhemar over perfect Dampening Tam for TP. Is that really true? Just wondering y it would be better cause Id guess the high Acc on Tam is hard to beat.

If you need the accuracy, then Dampening Tam will surely win. It depends on the situation. That said, Ainia Collar and Dedition Earring will definitely beat the options listed on the front page if you don't need the accuracy. I wouldn't consider any of the sets there perfectly optimized for any particular situation.

yes its a "guide" not a must follow. When acc is not needed the damp will not beat adhemar due to lack of 5% crit dmg and the attack more or less.

It does list damp in the acc section, and the note says to make adjustments too :D

I hate the collar/earring though (just dont like -stats). If mobs that low of lv you can use them, i doubt dps really even matters IMO. Its just more gear to lug around to already easy content, shurg :D but snaps is correct with that too :D

I think it's possible to use packets to get the single wield animations, either by forcing the single wield animations or by forcing it to not load the offhand visually. Barring that, hex editing the animation might work.

Does anybody have a copy of the ninja spreadsheet that supports a single katana and fencer? I've been messing around with the BLU DPS spreadsheet and I am curious if in very high buffed situations whether single Heishi will come out on top over dual wielding. My inclination is that it will, but I have no way of estimating it and I don't know if I have the cycles to add it myself (Mikage would be particularly relevant too.)

Single Wield Heishi? I'm a bit skeptic about that...
Now if we're talking about Single Wield Kannagi and AM3 up then yes, it might just be the case to be fair :D

dress up and lockstyle all true!
works well if you single weild a katana.
as a plus it's really cool to resolution spam in Apoc.

Why would you be skeptical? With good buffs, white damage becomes a very small part of your DoT. 500 TP Bonus on Blade: Ten is huge.

I'm also skeptical:

1) Aside from just the impact on delay, don't discount the additional stats from offhand. Shigi mega-acc is pretty awesome if you need the acc boost. Or something like Kanaria acc/atk/store tp/multiattack, etc.

2) Fencer from /WAR isn't 500 TP Bonus, lv45 WAR gets only tier 1 of the trait (+200 TP Bonus, +3% Crit Rate). Kind of a different story for something like WAR main single wielding a sword while getting Fencer V for +500 TP Bonus and +10% Crit rate.

3) You lose all benefits of DW (base trait AND additional gear) if you're using a single katana. Won't even be capping delay reduction with capped gear & magical haste, and most of the time you're not gonna have additional JA haste (Samba?), so may actually be gaining TP with 1 katana than with the additional delay added by a second weapon (which can be mitigated by its stats like STP and multi-attack).

It's an interesting thought though, and I'd be curious to see what testing revealed.

1) I did. You get faster TP gain single wielding if you have 10% Haste Samba because youre base TP per strike goes up. If you're using Kannagi instead of Heishi, then your white damage will also go up because AM3 will affect every strike.

2) The 500 TP Bonus remark was in regards to Heishi vs Kannagi, not Fencer.

3) With Haste Samba you can obtain 78.75 haste but your base TP per strike goes up quite a bit.

I did the comparison for BLU. Both white damage and WS frequency increased, but the hit to CDC was too great (at least by how we model it) for it to pull ahead. Blade: Ten damage is much less sensative to losing your offhand. I wouldn't be surprised if it increased because of Fencer.

Also I should have stated, this is in the context of a melee zerg situation where you would have a lot of buffs, not for regular usage.

Interesting.

I never gave a serious look at Heishi with Kujaku+1 offhand (~40% OAT) either, mainly cause I don't personally have a Heishi. Maybe that is also competitive for your scenario? Same general idea that you're sacrificing otherwise better stats on offhand for faster TP generation and greater WS frequency. Kujaku would skew more toward pure TP generation than single handing it, at the expense of losing Fencer I's TP bonus+200... But I'm still struggling accepting that TP Bonus+200 is enough to really make it worth building around.

I know I never really get Kujaku+1 being that competitive DPS wise in more "normal" situations, and it's more about using it for super fast TP gain for WS spamming for stuff like self-SC purposes (i.e. opening a ton of SC for people to MB on). But for what you're looking at, perhaps... Though, yeah, if they're really close it may be easier to just use nothing at all in offhand rather than something that's rare/expensive!

Anyway... aside from Old Shuck, what sort of stuff are people melee zerging with mega buffs these days? Especially with NIN spamming Ten, which isn't quite as easy to use with accidental SC spam playing nice with other commonly used jobs/WS.

I'm not totally discounting it, does sound a little odd though! But hey, you might be right and I'd be interested to see more.

WoC/Kirin/Teles are some NMs we'll probably never do mage style again. Albumen and Vinipata might be added to that list depending on how our attempts go. We've been using mostly BLU but even fully decked out I feel it's okay but not amazing for zergs and I'm curious as to where other jobs stand. I don't think NIN is going to be top tier either, but I am interested to see how it can do (especially with Mikage) under ideal circumstances.

Also, on the Mikage note, has there ever been testng to see if it procs on weaponskill?

Daken helps make single wielding more attractive for NIN, for whatever that's worth.

It's also probably already known but worth restating, the daken hit tp return isn't reduced at all by delay reduction, this can be easily observed by equipping and unequipping your offhand weapon, then engaging and doing one attack round and disengaging till you get a single hit in both hands and a daken proc with no DW gear, recording the tp total, and using the tp calculations on the wiki. Then repeating this with a lot of DW gear equipped. The daken hit tp return remains constant and is a large contributor to tp gain. I didn't write the numbers down but did that experiment a while back just to confirm.

I'm pretty sure from the fact mikage doesn't make blade:teki, to and chi do consistent amazing damage that it doesn't apply to weaponskills, however that's not a certain more an educated guess.

Also people are probably interested in single wielding mostly because of the Omega and Ultima master trial.

Have some questions about the sets on the first page. Not aware that any of these have been discussed before. Sorry if I missed something:

1) Would lissome necklace be so much worse than
erudition necklace? Intuitively Id take 1 DA over 2 Stp and 2Acc. Agreed the RAcc is missing as well...but tryn to get a feeling how much worse it would be.

2) What earrings to use for WS outside of Dusk - Dawn. lugra earring is all that is mentioned in the sets. Well, Moonshade for sure but not sure about the other. So far Ive been using that WSD+ Earring from Escha whichs name just eludes me. trux earring has no place in any of the sets (not only WS but TP as well)?

I'm a new ninja. Hopefully someone can come along and school me in the ways of the shrouded one :D

1. Personally, I use Combatant's Torque for TP, as I don't have Erudition Necklace. It lacks 2 stp, and its not nearly as high in straight accuracy, but its about 12-13 attack/acc/racc/ratt between throwing skill and katana skill, so its a good replacement. I imagine the NIN sets always tried to incorporate every stat the NIN would be able to fit in that slot that would be best for their TP rounds (so racc/ratt for Daken is always good for pushing DPS). Lissome adds no racc and is only 8 acc. I chose not to use this, because I'm always looking to sub war, so the double attack is inconsequential at that point. STP is the same.

2. I use Ishvara (wsd+2%) for one hit ws like Hi, and Mache Earring for Shun, since its a 5-hit DEX modded WS (dex+5 acc+7 da+1%). Can always use added acc for multi-hits. I use Trux Earring in my voke set, as well as my TP set over Brutal. Its probably a silly idea, but I like the added acc/att over the 2da and 1 stp Brutal adds. It's probably killing my dps, but I haven't mathed it out totally and I just threw this set together.

Ishvara is a great choice for some of those WS's, otherwise ears like Cessance or Telos are great as well depending on the WS.

Lissome would work but I always found Erudition to be better in those higher buffed situations where acc and the 1 extra DA won't make up for extra store TP (that applies to every hit). And in that case where acc is completely negligible due to capping easily, use Ainias (spelling)

anyone with aeonic willing to post some cool nin aeonic action?

How is Ninja these days, I haven't been back to the job in a long while. Haven't seen them anywhere really :S I was working on Kikoku III before i left, came back recently.

still not top dd but performs well. If you where working on AG already means you didnt quit long ago, its exactly what it was when you left.

I still haven't setup my screencapture stuff Azagarth. Also my nin sets still lacking and I'm still not master. I have taken a liking to triboxing VD Leviathan on NIN though, as well as VD AA GK. It's also pretty easy to DD a lot of T1 reisenjima as NIN. Not sure any of that is what you're looking for though.

I will say this, with enough attack buffs, Shun -> Ten -> Kamu -> Shun -> Shun will take about 52% of Leviathan's HP. Whether you get to do that or not depends entirely on Leviathan's random choices on TP moves. If it does Waterja, Tidal Wave, Poisonga, or Grand Fall you have to stop your chain to reapply Utsusemi or Miga or Both. Flood II, Spring Water, Spinning Dive, Water V etc all your friend. Sometimes it will do Grand Fall -> Grand Fall -> Waterja -> Grand Fall just to really upset your day. I've taken to just going into a full DT set if Miga is down for maximum consistency and safety as sometimes you hit your DT set before grand fall goes off but due to network lag end up taking it in your tp set and get one shot.

Whether NIN could solo this with just trusts or not would depend entirely on if you could find a way to keep a RDM trust alive, which I never could. They don't stand back far enough to be free from waterja, and a tidal wave -> waterja combo is dangerous. So I do tribox now :( Entrust haste will last pretty mucht he entire fight even if your geo dies, but sometimes it doesn't and I have to recast it (I reset it with Random Deal before I go in). So here's my NIN Tribox setup if you care to see it:

NIN - Yonin, Gakka, Utsusemi: San, Myoshu, Kakka, Berserk, Miga
GEO - Indi-Vex, Entrust Indi-Haste, Blaze Ecliptic Dematerialize Life Cycle Geo-Fury, Dia II
COR - Crooked Samurai Roll, Magus Roll
Qultada - Light Shots, Chaos, Fighters
Apururu - WHMing
Brygid - More safety

Qultada often dies but his rolls are long enough to still be useful, and incoming morbid sentiment, it's probably better if he does then he won't override your DD rolls with evokers or mess up skillchains with savage blade. If WHM dies it's game over so you have to both position her right and stagger your procs (blue, yellow, red) in order to give Apu enough time to pro/shell entire party and run off make sure she is not behind you to avoid dying to waterja also try to use some height advantage having her either higher or lower than you.

If miga wears stay in full DT set. Especially triboxing your reaction times won't always be good enough.

Proccing has to occur while leviathan is mid tp move or it won't do anything:
Yellow: Dia II or Yurin:Ichi
Blue: Provoke, I do this first as I run in, Levi doesn't always start a tp move at the start if he doesn't wait to use voke till you see the action lines around him.
Red: WS, usually after Blue, then 2-3 seconds pass and do Yellow, I"ll let 2-3 seconds pass and use WS for red. This is more than enough time to let apu do her stuff.

Shun will do about 3-5k if yellow proc isn't done but if yellow proc is done it will do about 8-14k. Radiance can do over 33k with a 5 step chain. With sam roll and daken your TP gain is almost faster than you can use it sometimes, especially if reapplying utsusemi/miga.

Unless SE gives a survivable Haste II trust and Bard then I don't see this fight as easily soloable in any short period of time on NIN, at least not consistently. Recasts are life for a NIN and without them, Miga rarely up, and even San and Ni can both be down at the same time and apu doesn't cure fast enough sometimes to let you live through 2-3 grand falls or waterjas in a row unless at least one of them was Miga'd. Triboxing or dualboxing it is really doable tho, as with most DD so this post isn't too special but figured I'd share anyway since you wanted people doing stuff with aeonics on NIN.

thank you! Hum! * throws some more plutons at oboron *

Got jokushu legs tonight, on the fence about when to use them. Seem pretty awesome for metsu sets, not sure about shun and ten though (assume ambuscade pants beat them by a good stretch).

Thx for sharing Verda. Are you aware of any HTB VD fight Nin can solo with trusts? The one that comes to my mind is Hume but not havent tried on VD. N is no problem. I tried it on D back then before we got 7 shadows and even though I failed I think it was doable but very risky.