This guide is out of date. See the All Jobs Guide for an up-to-date version.

For historical reasons, I'm leaving this page here.

Index
Introduction Hybrid WS Magical WS Nuking Sets Blade: Hi Blade: Kamu Blade: Ku Blade: Metsu Blade: Shun Blade: Ten Evisceration Savage Blade TP Sets Special Sets Algorithm Details

Recent Gearset Updates

2022 December 12

R30 Odyssey

2022 October 11

Hattori +3 (Empyrean +3)

2022 August 10

Sroda Ring
Hattori +2 (Empyrean +2)

2022 June 25

Added nuking sets

2022 January 28

ML20 NIN99/WAR53
R25 Odyssey
Slightly updated code for easier reading (see Github link below)

GitHub Code Links
Kastra_NIN.lua GearSwap file. gui_wsdist.py and code and executable. Ninjutsu damage testing data

While a simple average is nice and convenient for DPS spreadsheets, it does not tell the whole story for most weapon skills. To know exactly how your weapon skill damage will be distributed, you need detailed information about your stats, the enemy you're fighting, and the mechanics of weapon skill damage. As a side-project to learn a bit of basic Python3 programming and about the FFXI damage formulae, I've written a Python3 code to simulate weapon skills and obtain distributions of the damage being dealt given a set of gear and an enemy.

The code itself is available on my GitHub page (https://github.com/IzaKastra/wsdist_v2). I am slowly working on a user-friendly GUI version to streamline the process for users not comfortable with Python. The GitHub page for the "beta" version of "gui_wsdist.py" is linked at the top of this page.

Preview of current progress (Windows10 1920x1080 - PySimpleGUI)

The code is not meant to replace DPS spreadsheets, but the gear sets provided here should agree with the spreadsheets reasonably well. I believe the sets presented here are the best in slot sets currently available, but you may find marginally better sets for specific enemies. I therefore encourage you to play around with these sets using the spreadsheets to try to find potentially better or worse options that fit within your gear budget.

In addition to finding the best katana weapon skill sets, the code has the added benefit of working with all jobs and all physical and hybrid weapon skills (after minor modifications to adjust for different job stats). This allowed me to also check the best Evisceration, Savage Blade, and Tachi: Jinpu/Koki/Kagero/Goten/Kasha sets for Ninja.

I've tested the code's output against SimonSes' NIN Hybrid WS spreadsheet for Blade: Chi and find the difference to be within 0.5%-2% depending on the TP range and buffs used. For physical weapon skills, I tested the results against the Ninja DPS spreadsheet and found that Blade: Shun, Kamu, Hi, and Ku all agree within 5% or better, while Blade: Metsu shows 10% differences due to incorrect Aftermath: Attack+10% handling in the spreadsheet (see the spoiler below). This of course does not mean that I've done everything perfectly.

My Kikoku Attack+10% testing.

I've modified the code to automatically adjust a given gearset until it finds the "best" piece in each slot for a specified weapon skill. I then ran the code for 3 different buff states and 3 different TP ranges that I consider to be typical low/mid/high buff situations:

Buffs considered for each situation.

My earlier testing suggested that Hitaki is by far the best off-hand weapon for "damage varies with TP" weapon skills. However, Hitaki provides no accuracy or katana skill stat, which likely translates to significantly reduced TP gain and thus significantly reduced weapon skill frequency. Because of this, I do not consider Hitaki in my simulations. If you are able to make up for the significantly reduced accuracy and auto attack damage, then Hitaki should probably be your go-to for all "damage varies with TP" weapon skills.

Additionally, I did not test any Herculean gear since I believed it would be a waste of time given the accessibility of Nyame R10+ and the random nature of obtaining "good" augments behind multiple layers of RNG. I encourage you to input the sets I present here into the spreadsheets and see how your Herculean gear compares, though.

It should be noted that these sets are based raw weapon skill damage values. Stats such as Skillchain Bonus (see Nyame) are not considered. Swapping some pieces listed in these sets with Nyame will likely lower raw weapon skill damage, but increase skillchain damage by enough to result in a net DPS gain.

The specifics of the code's algorithm are explained in a bit of detail below, but the process is likely very well known to most of you. For now, here is the list of "best average" gear sets for each buff state for the most commonly-used weapon skills available to Ninja. A representative distribution image is presented in each section. The list of all sets can also be found on my FFXIAH item sets page. The comments within each gear set may provide swaps for varying TP ranges.

Hybrids

ItemSet 384080	ItemSet 384076
• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B • Epona ~= Epami	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B • Epona ~= Epami • TP<2000: Fotia Belt • Koki: Weather. Ring

Blade: Chi damage distribution.
With the release of augmented Nyame, hybrid weapon skills have become viable in many situations. Damage varies with TP, but in general it's best to use these weapon skills at around 2000 TP (after TP Bonus). It's worth noting that outside damage bonuses apply to both the physical and magical portion of hybrid weapon skills, essentially triple-dipping into the bonus damage. One of the most potent of these bonuses is provided in Dynamis Jeuno [D] on enemies spawned by the green-eyed statues, where hybrid weapon skills gain a 2.2x damage multiplier (see Jakey's video). There are quite a few interesting skillchain sequences that utilize hybrids. However, because these deal elemental damage, some hybrids will perform poorly, even if others perform well on a specific enemy due to elemental resistances. Example skillchains utilizing Ninja katana hybrid weapon skills. To-Chi-To Chi-Teki-Chi-To Chi-Teki-To-Chi-To To-Teki-Shun-Shun Chi-Retsu-Ten-Hi/Metsu Chi-Retsu-Shun-Ten-Kamu-Shun-Shun(Heishi) Since the intermediate steps create level-1 skillchains, any sub-sequence within these sequences should also create a skillchain.

Magical

ItemSet 384081	ItemSet 384087
• Andartia: WSD+INT+Mdmg • Nyame B • 2000-2300 TP	• Andartia: WSD+INT+Mdmg • Nyame B


I've added magic weapon skills to the code (December 09 2022). Blade: Ei and Aeolian edge sets are presented above. The above sets do not consider Hitaki, which is the obvious choice for "damage varies with TP" weapon skills.

Ninjutsu Nuking

ItemSet 385121	ItemSet 385120	ItemSet 385119	ItemSet 386372
• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, mDMG • Any path Nyame	• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, mDMG • Any path Nyame	• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, INT • Any path Nyame	• Futae free nuke swaps

ItemSet 385122	ItemSet 385123	ItemSet 385124	ItemSet 386373
• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, mDMG • Any path Nyame	• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, mDMG • Any path Nyame	• Andartia: INT, mAtk, mAcc/mDMG, INT • Any path Nyame	• There are no Futae burst swaps.

I've performed a detailed analysis to determine how Ninjutsu damage is affected by INT and used the results to find the "best" nuking sets seen above. The details of my analysis can be found in my other FFXIAH thread: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56749/updated-ninjutsu-damage-formulae/.

When using Futae, simply swap out the Nyame Gauntlets for Hattori Tekko +3 for free nukes. There are no additional swaps for magic bursting with Futae.

The sets above were obtained assuming no resists, resulting in sets that have the highest damage potential. The reality is that magic accuracy is an incredibly important stat that can not be ignored. A single resist will cut your damage by a minimum of 50%. With this in mind, I do not recommend using Gyve armor against high tier content since it provides zero magic accuracy. Nyame (any path, any rank) should be about as good as Gyve, but provides an additional +40 magic accuracy per piece.

The above sets assume that the player has 5/5 merits in "Ninjutsu Magic Attack" group2 merits. These merits give +5% Ninjutsu Damage per merit when wearing the Mochizuki Kyahan +3 (Relic+3 feet) for +25% damage total. If you do not have 5/5 merits in "Ninjutsu Magic Attack", then your magic burst sets should use Nyame Sollerets (any path, any rank) and your free nuke sets should use Nyame Sollerets (any path, any rank) for "Ni"/"San" nukes and Mpaca's Boots R25 for "Ichi" nukes.

Blade: Hi

ItemSet 380758	ItemSet 380759	ItemSet 380760
• Andartia: Crit+AGI • Nyame B	• Andartia: Crit+AGI • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+AGI • Nyame B

Blade: Hi damage distribution.
Critical hit weapon skill damage can vary wildly depending on the AGI stat of your target. This is because up to 15% of your Crit Rate comes from dDEX. Unfortunately, Blade: Hi has an 80% AGI modifier, which does not benefit its chance to crit. Because of this, it is usually better to build Blade: Hi using Weapon Skill Damage over Critical Hit Rate. The low and mid buff sets use Critical Hit Rate on their Andartia's Mantles, while the high buff set uses Weapon Skill Damage. I'm convinced that the developers accidentally swapped the modifiers for Jishnu's Radiance (80% DEX) and Blade: Hi (80% AGI) and refuse to admit it. Note that adjusting the modifier for Blade: Hi from 80% AGI to 80% DEX and swapping AGI+50 with DEX+50 on Kannagi increases Blade: Hi damage by about 10% in all cases.

Blade: Kamu

ItemSet 380761	ItemSet 384079	ItemSet 380762
• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B

Blade: Kamu damage distribution.
Blade: Kamu provides a +125% Attack boost and a -25% Defense penalty to the enemy (effectively +200% Attack), making it a decent weapon skill to use when severely underbuffed. With typical buffs, Blade: Kamu is generally used only for its Fragmentation skillchain property.

Blade: Ku

ItemSet 380763	ItemSet 380764	ItemSet 380765
• Andartia: DA+STR	• Andartia: DA+STR • Adhemar B	• Andartia: DA+STR

Blade: Ku damage distribution.
Blade: Ku is surprisingly powerful when compared to Blade: Shun. The +60% damage on Gokotai, 1.25 FTP, and 30% STR+DEX modifier put in a lot of work to boost the damage. Unfortunately the skillchain properties are not great compared to Blade: Shun with Heishi. Blade: Ku is a good option for Gravitation on an evasive enemy where Blade: Ten risks missing.

Blade: Metsu

ItemSet 380766	ItemSet 384078	ItemSet 380768
• Andartia: WSD+DEX • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+DEX • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+DEX • Nyame B

Blade: Metsu damage distribution.
Blade: Metsu has excellent skillchain properties (Darkness+Fragmentation). Since Blade: Metsu does not benefit from more TP, try to weapon skill immediately after reaching 1000 TP.

Blade: Shun

ItemSet 380774	ItemSet 380775	ItemSet 380776
• Andartia: DA+DEX • Adhemar Jacket B	• Andartia: DA+DEX	• Andartia: DA+DEX

Blade: Shun damage distribution.
Blade: Shun provides a large multiplier to your Attack that varies with your TP, generally making TP Bonus equipment the best choice when below attack cap. Because of this Attack multiplier, Blade: Shun is a powerful weapon skill when below attack cap.

Blade: Ten

ItemSet 380787	ItemSet 384077	ItemSet 380789
• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B

Blade: Ten damage distribution.
Blade: Ten is the Savage Blade of katana weapon skills. Unfortunately, Savage Blade is still better for Ninja. Damage varies with TP most efficiently up to 2000 TP, so be sure to weapon skill around 2000 TP (after TP Bonuses).

Evisceration

ItemSet 380942	ItemSet 380770	ItemSet 380943
• Andartia: DEX+Crit • Ryuo Tekko A or D • Kendatsuba Samue +1 is fine	• Andartia: DEX+Crit • Ryuo Tekko A or D • Kendatsuba Samue +1 is fine	• Andartia: DEX+Crit • Ryuo Tekko A or D

Similar to Blade: Hi, Evisceration is a critical hit weapon skill, which means its damage depends on your DEX vs the enemy's AGI. Luckily, Evisceration has a 50% DEX modifier so you'll be stacking DEX anyway.

Evisceration for Ninja is most frequently used in Odyssey Sheol C against Lamia and other piercing-weak enemies. With Innin's +10~30% Critical Hit Rate when behind the enemy, and Ninja's high TP rate, Evisceration is a surprisingly powerful tool for Ninja to use.

Evisceration vs Odyssey Sheol C Agon Lamia - MA+Crit

Evisceration damage distribution.

Savage Blade

ItemSet 380771	ItemSet 380772	ItemSet 380773
• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B	• Andartia: WSD+STR • Nyame B

Savage Blade is, unfortunately, Ninja's most powerful physical weapon skill. In party situations, Ninja will see its highest physical DPS when spamming Savage Blade. However, it generally falls short in solo situations when relying on self-skillchaining to produce maximum DPS. The exception is performing weapon swaps between weapon skills to make use of Savage Blade's damage to augment your favorite skillchain sequence. Simply replace Blade: Kamu with Savage Blade to see a significant increase in damage.

For Naegling's "Weaponskill: Attack bonus based on number of upgrades" stat, I assumed the player had at least eight buffs up (protect, shell, haste, utsusemi, kakka, yonin, food, signet) for all sets. Standard buffs added 4 songs and 2 rolls for 14 total buffs, and high buffs added a single GEO bubble for 15 total buffs. The player's base attack then received +1% per buff present. This bonus attack was added to the player's base attack before any other buffs were added.

Savage Blade damage distribution.

Standard TP Sets

ItemSet 384097	ItemSet 384096	ItemSet 384095	ItemSet 383426
• Andartia: DW+DEX • Ryuo Somen C	• Andartia: DW+DEX • Ryuo Somen C • Adhemar A or B	• Andartia: STP+DEX • Ryuo Somen C • Adhemar A or B	• Andartia: STP+DEX • Adhemar A or B

ItemSet 384093	ItemSet 384092	ItemSet 384091	ItemSet 383875
• Andartia: DW+DEX • Ryuo Somen A	• Andartia: DW+DEX • Ryuo Somen A or C	• Andartia:STP+DEX • Ryuo Somen C • Adhemar A	• Andartia: STP+DEX • Adhemar A or B

TP sets for varying Haste levels were obtained by finding the combination of gear that acquires 1500 TP in the fewest number of attack rounds on average. There are many simple swaps in each set that would provide significantly better defensive capabilities without losing a noticeable amount of offensive capabilities.

The algorithm essentially only considers Dual Wield, Haste, Store TP, multi-attack, Accuracy, and Ranged Accuracy when determining the best sets. White damage is not considered in the above sets, but should play a role in properly determining TP sets, especially when using Kannagi with Lv3 Aftermath. The algorithm appears to favor Store TP much more than multi-attack, but only after hit rate reaches about 95% or higher (main-hand caps at 99%).

Special Sets

ItemSet 384098	ItemSet 384094	ItemSet 384099	ItemSet 384113
• Andartia: STP+DEX	• Andartia: Crit+DEX • Gear: +62% • Base Crit: +5% • Merits: +5% • dDEX: +0%-15% • Innin: +10%-30% • Total = 82%-117% • Mpaca are good defensive swaps	• Andartia: AGI, FastCast, Evasion, PDT, Eva/MEva • +1359 Evasion pre-buff • ~+70 with Yonin • Pair with Salt Ramen	• Standard Idle/DT set.

Based on the sets listed above, we can make a short list of gear priority for a newer Ninja to reference.

Spoiler Alert! Click to view.

However, just because an item didn't show up here doesn't mean it doesn't hold a best-in-slot position in some situation. The 2021 Ninja Gearsets thread provides excellent gear to use for many weapon skills without considering Odyssey gear.

Here I give a "brief," but relatively detailed, description of how the damage was calculated within the code. Let me know if there are any mistakes or inaccuracies that need to be corrected. I'm confident in the algorithm, but I may have done a poor job explaining in some places.

Damage calculation algorithm.

The simulations were based on the average level Apex Toad, excluding its innate -25% MDT. Taken directly from my code, the stats used were:

Code

# Woh Gates toads
apex_toad = {'Level': 132,
             'Defense': 1239,
             'Evasion': 1133,
             'VIT': 270,
             'AGI': 356, # AGI roughly measured using scoreboard.lua on two different toads.
             'MND': 224,
             'INT': 293,
             'CHR': 277,
             'Magic Defense': 0}

For Physical weapon skills, I used the standard BG-wiki formula to calculate damage:

Spoiler Alert! Click to view.

Due to the random nature of PDIF, a new value was calculated for each hit individually.

Additional hits after the first main-hand hit, whether they be from multi-hit weapon skills or multi-attacks, were performed in the order suggested by the testing of Austar. In the case of multi-attack procs on weapon skills, testing by Saevel and Austar showed that there can be no more than two multi-attack checks of any kind per weapon skill and that the off-hand weapon will always get one of these two checks if you have an off-hand weapon equipped, otherwise the main-hand will get both checks only if the weapon skill has at least two natural hits.

In addition to the testing of Saevel and Austar, I tested this by using 404 Blade: Retsu while dual-wielding (2+1 hits) with 29% DA and 31% TA on Apex Toads. The observed TP return distribution from 404 Blade: Retsu closely matched the expected distribution assuming that only the first two hits (the first main hit and the one sub hit in this case) can multi-attack. Any assumptions that all weapon skill hits can multi-attack (6 chances for Blade: Shun for example) quickly caused the expected distribution to diverge from the observed distribution.

For Hybrid weapon skills, I used the equation provided by Bahadir's Blade: Chi testing, Jakey's YouTube video, and SimonSes' NIN Hybrid Damage calculator, which splits the weapon skill damage into two parts: Hybrid = Physical + Magical

The physical damage is calculated using the exact same method as mentioned previously for purely physical weapon skills, with the important change that FTP is 1.0 and non-replicating for the physical portion of Hybrid weapon skills (see Bahadir's testing). The magical damage is calculated using the physical damage and the player's "Magic Damage" stat as a base:

Spoiler Alert! Click to view.

In addition to the basic formula for damage, it is important to explicitly mention the following special cases that are included in the damage calculations:

Unlike the first main-hand hit, the first off-hand hit does not gain the bonus from the standard weapon skill damage stat.
Certain "weapon skill damage" stats apply to all hits. Examples of this include Naegling Savage Blade Damage +15%, augmented REMA weapons, and the hidden weapon skill damage bonus on Mythics and Relics.
Weapon skills gain a hidden ~+100 accuracy to their first hit. My testing of 1745 unbuffed (Brygid+KuyinHathdenna+YoranUC) Blade: Chi on Apex Toads heavily suggested that this bonus applies to the first off-hand hit as well.
Buffs to player Attack are applied in a specific order:
Attack = (8+Gear+Traits+Gifts+Skill+STR+STR(food)+STR(buffs)+BRD)*(1+COR+GEO+Kikoku10%+Berserk)+Attack(food)
The player's secondary/auxiliary/off-hand attack is calculated using only half of their STR stat (see BG-wiki: "Attack")
STR from food is immediately used to calculate base attack, but "Attack+" from food is not applied until all other buffs have taken effect.

To allow the output of my code be easily compared to the spreadsheets, the code calculates a gearset's average damage to determine which piece of gear is "better" than another. It should be noted that the average is not a good summary statistic for multi-peaked distributions, though. Once the "best" set has been found, the code runs 100,000 simulated weapon skills in that set to build the final distribution for visualization. The algorithm itself is simple:

1) For each item slot (or for each pair of two/three item slots simultaneously), cycle through all selected equipment and calculate the average weapon skill damage from that test gear set.
2) If the average damage is higher than the previous highest, then keep that item equipped, otherwise ignore it and try another combination of gear.
3) After all slots (or all combination of two/three slots simultaneously) have been tested and the best item in each slot determined, restart from the beginning with the previous best set as the starting place, checking each slot (or combination of two/three slots simultaneously) again, up to 20 times. This allows for some gear to change based on changes to already tested slots.
4) Stop early (before 20 iterations) if gear changes result in an average damage increase less than 0.5% after within two consecutive iterations. This is the convergence criterion and it usually triggered before iteration 3.

The list of gear tested in each slot can be viewed in the gear.py file. All weapon skills used the same pool of gear. All UNM gear is R15. All Odyssey gear is R25. This file contains gear for many jobs, but only the items with "Jobs"="NIN" were included in the NIN testing.

Finally, since this post is already pretty long, I may as well link my official forum post from last year. This post details my requested Ninja job adjustments. Feel free to give it a like/comment.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57263-2020-2021-Ninja-Job-Adjustment-and-Feedback?s=66c8aaed6a12e3a576c9ee8f403e1174

FFXIAH.com

This guide is out of date. See the All Jobs Guide for an up-to-date version. For historical reasons, I'm leaving this page here.

This guide is out of date. See the All Jobs Guide for an up-to-date version.

For historical reasons, I'm leaving this page here.