The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

You're probably more than correct about Dedition being the best earring over Brutal, (I... actually have it in my max haste set in gearSwap but not listed on the front page. I'm trying to scour my memory why I left that out when that was re-done).

And as-well, Adhemar Path B will win out vs Malignance Hands. I'll be changing that note on that set (along with the earring) shortly.

Edit: your comment about changing the paths on adhemar .... made me go change mine to all path B because I hardly have issues with accuracy anymore, but I always do want the STR and attack usually. :D

Yeah by no means was I attempting to attack what you have done, you do a great service :D thats why when I saw the change it made me double take - also I have PathA winning over malignance with aeonic/taruet on your spreadsheet with the generic zerg buffs; chaos/sam, honor/min/min/mad capped haste geo fraility at +30dps and path B at +80 dps.

No worries, I happily take criticism and suggestion. It's not inherently bad. :)

I think it does depend on what offhand you're using.

And the only buffs I use when I look at the capped sets is capped pDif/Acc. I think things start to change a bit when you throw in things like sam roll/fighters/ or rogues.

Due to Langly's spreadsheet...I've also recently realized the power of Adhemar... especially on Path B. Found all kinds of DPS using them over other options in TP sets and WS Sets... always with the caveat of already having capped acc of course but wow... had no idea there was so much DPS to be gained with these at the higher end. Ended up making a gearswap just for these high DPS situations now and its' made a huge difference. Will always love my previous sets for durability and accuracy stats but when it comes to overall DPS Adhemar has surprised me and clearly has the lead. Finding even Adhemar boots are BiS on some sets which blows my mind.

I didnt find anything that beats Taruet in the spreadsheet and my real gameplay supports it being best, feel I can self sc more frequent and all. Could be placebo, probably is haha.

And yes makes full sense that sam roll would devalue the malignance hands and improve adhemar more, but thats also super realistic for my group play.

everything depends, but as a baseline I just use the max tp set you got listed on front page (hand difference as dicussed, and dedition), and when I need acc the obvious swap is malignance on basically any job listed on it now haha.

edit: Also find no real scenario where windbuffet+1 beats sailfi R15 for tp phase.

Also STP cape loses when Sam roll is on, although by only 10dps, however even when same roll is off its a large 62 dps diff. So I guess thats cool since if you know you always will have a roll cor (mule, pty etc) then you want DA cape, and if you want inv+1 you can also just DA cape and a small chunk of dps in your worst scenarios.

Yeah, starting to see that more and more with the Sailfi +1 Belt.

Its not obvious really.
Adhemar path A hands and legs has higher accuracy.
Same as Kendatsuba +1 head, hands, legs and feet.

I personally wouldn't use Adhemar because I prefer high meva set, but my pov doesn't change the above facts.

yeah and honestly at this point in the game anyhow full kenda+1 is only 3.7% overall dps loss from best tp set anyhow on the spreadsheet with zerg buffs.... It is really hard to justify in practical application even using a full out dps set. Heck even full Malignance is only 5.8% behind, and honestly the debuffs, evasion etc will probably have these two sets coming out ahead.... This only gets expanded even more when your soloing due to lower shadow use.

Yep, not many people even notice Evasion on Malignance. This set is so ridiculous from DT/MEVA/STP perspective that it's hard to notice its also evenly ridiculous for evasion/AGI. I am also not a fan of adhemar head for TP on NIN, especially path B, because of no or low racc.

Yeah honestly it has so much that on normal solo content its actually a bigger deal sometimes than that dt lol.

I also tend to not mind taking the relatively minor DPS hit from using Ken+1 or Malignance.

My default NIN TP set tends to be 5/5 Ken+1, despite Adhemar +1 head/hands usually being the better pure DPS choice (but not by a ton). I like the balance the Kendatsuba set strikes between offense (TA/Crit/Acc/Racc), and defense (Meva/Eva/MDB/DEF/HP). Really the sweet spot for me for most NIN applications.

Malignance is something I use a lot of for some other light DD jobs like THF DNC BLU COR PUP - but those jobs don't have a set that has quite the same "just right" mix of offense/defense that NIN (and MNK) gets with Ken+1, so Malignance is a much easier choice for me on those other non-Kendatsuba jobs.

For NIN, I do use Malignance for more defensive leaning sets. Definitely for pure DT- sets, or if I'm doing some DD-tanking. It's basically perfect gear for Fudo Masamune or Nagi sets (especially with Mythic AM3 working great with high STP/low multiattack sets).

However, when playing NIN with a DD focus, I usually can't assume I will be buffed heavily enough to take advantage of the PDL+, so Ken+1 pulls far enough ahead on offense that I tend to prefer it to Malignance. That's especially the case when using Kannagi, where that sweet crit rate really helps play to Empy's strengths of boosting white damage through frequent AM3-enhanced triple damage crit procs.

I'll still whip out the "pure DPS" Adhemar +1 head/hands and Samnuha Tights TP set on occasion for laughs, but that's really only on stuff that's more trivial where I have very little concern about any defensive considerations at all. And quite frankly, on content that easy, you'll also face roll it with the Ken+1 or Malignance sets (which can more realistically make use of PDL+ in that situation) - so my normal thought is why even bother optimizing DPS for trash that dies in the blink of an eye with ANY of those sets?

Especially when I just can't stuff any more Andartia's Mantles into my damn wardrobes. I'm happy to roll with DEX/DA on my standard TP cape because it's so close to STP, and doubles as BiS Blade: Shun gear that I definitely want to have in my arsenal.

TBH, having one less cape is significantly more valuable to me than STP on my TP cape sometimes doing a little better than DA, considering I already have so many different NIN capes:

(1) DEX/DA for TP and Shun
(2) AGI/WSD for Hi
(3) DEX/WSD for Metsu (I know, non-Kikoku users won't care about this one)
(4) STR/WSD for Ten/hybrid
(5) INT/MAB/Macc for enfeebles/nukes
(6) FC+10 for casting
(7) DEX/DW for unbuffed DW capped delay TP sets (yeah, that's a somewhat niche one, but I actually do get some use out of it)

Yeah overall thats the key reason I assume AdhemarB now and use it myself, anything that I am going full DD on will probably not be very evasive, because if it is evasive it probably also has dangerous moves or crappy debuffs in which I will start off in Kenda+1 set and then if getting 1 shot is a posibility will probably just default to Malignance full set.

Honestly gear wise Nin has it very good, possibly one of the largest options in all dps. The issue is we need a mnk buff....not the nin nerf that happened.

Can anyone even hit 99k anymore with a Nin nuke?

A Guide To Ninja Elite Magic Attack and Magic Burst video is out.

Doesnt the samnuha coat/mujin band and the ochu all have mb2 on them so you can go above the 40% MB1 cap?

yep its expected that mb2 cap is 30, no tests and I cant remember where I read it years ago.

Also logical just so you know you can get 8 MBD and 35 mab/macc

I don't know if I agree with the commentary on ochu. Yes it had inferior mdmg but the mb goes beyond the cap, as was mentioned. It might not beat the other two options in absolute nuking power but it's worth considering the coat and the katanas for the purpose of bursting. Also, Mujin band is also MBII. You didn't mention that slight difference for any of the mb2 options

Also, fwiw, dark matter augments, though highly improbable, exist. I have two pieces of Herculean garb with +15% magic burst damage, with some additional mab/macc. In this case, using the artifact+3 feet caps me on MB1 Trait, rather than having to use merits for the relic+3 kyahan. Though the relic feet are significantly better for nuking, I only nuke on ninja when bursting (single nukes is usually a joke unless futae and malaise is ready), having to merit magic on ninja is so niche to unlock that augment. Not debating that point, just addressing a possible use for the artifact feet, which are quite useful for bursting if you're not interesting in merit swapping (it's not elite so np).

Another point I would like to mention is regarding the weapons. I don't deny that both ambuscade katana and dagger have great nuking power, but did you compare both of those to capped malevolence X2 in free nuke, futae, and bursting? They have 10 intelligence and 44mab each, though far less magic damage. Given how MAB and int affect ninja nukes differently, I think that would be a fair comparison to add too your video if you're looking for all of the possible nuke options.

One last thing, unless I missed it, I did not see you mention Donar Gun for Raiton. That should easily be BIS for fragmentation/light bursts unless you need macc. It's 15% affinity damage which should be equal to an Orpheus sash in terms of damage increase. And on anything with really high meva, Ullr is still considered an option

The issue with the gun swap is loss of tp will probably mean overall less dmg than what you get off the burst... sad but true

That might be true if the Burst damage didn't account for the whole chunk of at least 2 of NIN WSs. You can see that very clearly illustrated above with Apex Bats. In the video, his WS did around 7-10k dmg, and his burst was 30k in a Gokotai/Tauret setup. That's 3x damage from bursting vs just your starting WS. A 2-3 sec DPS loss from swapping is insignificant when compared to the damage you would have gained from just TPing into your next WS cycle, because if you're bursting (at the end of your chain), your first WS to restart would not be a SC and thus the burst swap damage would be better overall. Plus, in this video, Logical was using Gokotai + Tauret to produce those numbers. No real top-end NIN would be using those weapons as a practical matter, it would be closer to Heishi (or Kikoku)/Tauret. But if you were going for max damage, you would change back into these weapons anyhow. Thus, if you change the main/sub slot, you may as well increase your damage further by swapping the Ranged slot.

Unless you were to do something like:
Shun -> SavageBlade -> MB (with Donar + Burst weapons) or
SavageBlade -> Shun -> Shun -> MB (with Donar + Burst Weapons)

My initial test the other day definitely put weapon swaps for Savage Blade ahead of not swapping weapons. I'd like to do proper testing, but my gear isn't BiS and I'm missing a few pieces locked behind wardrobes 3 and 4 during free login...

Just did 99k nuke to plouton last night

Whats your set like?

Plouton takes extra MB damage from whatever his current weakness is.

Nothing impressive.

Gokotai/Ochu/Pemphredo(Donar)
Relic+3/Sanctity/Novio/Friomisi
Samnuha (not capped)/Herculean Gloves MBD+15% MAB+21/Dingir Ring/Metamorph+1 R15
Andartia's 30INT 20 10MAB macc+20mdmg+20/Eschan Stone/Herculean Trousers Macc+8 MAB+35 MBD+13%/Artifact +1

Can stand to make some improvements since video is showing clear upgrades on stuff I already had. And yeah, Plouton increased MB damage I didn't know of. Idris Malaise. I don't have any macc/mab merits for feet, but I do use Innin 5/5 for the extra damage. Might have also been Futae, not sure. Have not done 99k nuke since the nerf, though I haven't optimized my set in maybe a year or longer. And no Orph

Yup. I got a burst +15% Herc Boots this week. IDGAF about it though (and feet is certainly not the ideal slot for that augment to pop up on for NIN)... so I continued trading the same piece to Oseem. Ended up swapping it out the next day when I rolled a Phalanx +5 feet for RUN, no regrets.


Yeah, my go-to if I ever care about only about nukes is Malevolence x2. I'm not sure if that's absolutely ideal, perhaps I'll mess around with it. Think I'll take the time to watch Logical's newest video right now, since maintenance just kicked me off FFXI ~20min after I logged on in the mood to get something done.

imgur link to image

I'm honestly not sure how to test these things properly, but since nobody even commented on weapon swaps last time, I at least tried to get some experimental results on my own to share rather than simply claim that Savage Blade is worth it without any numbers to back it up. Here is my 'proof of concept' towards weapon swapping for Savage Blade. I'd appreciate it if somebody with more experience (and proper gearsets) could perform their own, more detailed, analysis.

I performed short tests on the DPS of r15 Heishi, r15 Kikoku, and Naegling+Hitaki with the following weaponskill combinations: Shun-Shun, Metsu-Metsu, Shun-Savage, Savage-Shun-Shun. These resulted in 20 Light skillchains, 20 Light skillchains, 20 Darkness skillchains, and 26 Light Skillchains, respectively. Both Savage Blade combos beat ShunShun and MetsuMetsu combos by about 15%. Surprisingly, SavageShunShun was lower DPS than ShunSavage. This may be an artifact of a relatively short duration parse, or perhaps damage lost when the monster died before the 2nd Shun+Light damage had a chance to go off. I expected SavageShunShun to result in the most damage. ShunShun beats MetsuMetsu by about 7% in these trials after normalizing Darkness damage to account for monster elemental resistances (-15%). I do not test Blade: Hi spam because my Kannagi is only r1.

I decided to fight Apex Toads in Woh Gates back-to-back until 5 minutes in combat elapsed for these tests. This ended up being 5 kills for all trials except ShunShun, which was 4 due to slightly slower kill times. A longer parse is desirable, but after about 5 minutes of combat the parse seemed to be relatively steady. I was going to do Doh Gates Jagil or Bats, but both of them have abilities that can strongly influence results (Attack Down debuff or Defense+ buff) and are heavily plagued with bots on Asura. I used Yoran-Oran (UC), Koru-Moru, Ulmia, and Joachim as trusts.

Buffs:
Kakka: Ichi (ninjutsu)
Haste2 (Koru-Moru)
Blade Madrigal (Ulmia or Joachim)
Sword Madrigal (Ulmia or Joachim)
Advancing March (Ulmia or Joachim)
Victory March (Ulmia or Joachim)

Debuffs:
Dia3

Because Qultada's buffs are variable, I exclude him from these tests to prevent one trial having a significant advantage over another. I expect the loss of Chaos Roll to bias the results slightly towards Blade: Shun damage because of its bonus to Attack based on TP.

In the event that Fotia proc'd after Blade: Shun use, I only took advantage of it if my next weaponskill was Blade: Shun. If I was performing ShunSavage when it proc'd, I swapped weapons with 1000+ TP anyway to ensure the only skillchain damage came from Savage Blade. Finally, because I am losing TP on weapon swaps, if I did not have at least Haste2 up while performing ShunSavage, I held TP until Koru-Moru reapplied Haste2 so that I do not risk failing Light with Savage Blade. I expect that this slightly lowered the DPS of ShunSavage considering that Blade: Shun isn't the majority of the damage on the ShunSavage trial, so holding TP before using Shun simply reduces how often I can Savage Blade.

In order to prevent blinking so that all skillchain and weaponskill damage are recorded into a log file properly, I locked ammo slot to Seki Shuriken and never swapped ammo for weaponskills. In addition, a few pieces of gear are locked behind restricted wardrobes because I'm playing on free login right now. For example: Savage Blade uses Epona's Ring and Kendatsuba+1 Samue, rather than Shukuyu ring and WSD body, while Blade: Shun uses Regal Ring, rather than Gere Ring. Finally, I did not bother magic bursting at all since almost all of my nuking gear is locked behind wardrobes I can't access.

Thanks for your comments as they touch upon many of the "myths" I was trying to dispel with this video. Things like ochu, malevolence and Artifact Feet are huge hits to damage if you use them... so much so that I tried to make people understand that they shouldn't even be considered. This was afterall supposed to be the Elite video for these sets and not the Intermediate video. However, I apparently didn't do a good job explaining my results so I'll try again and see if possibly you can find a error with my process. I encourage you to try to test these items yourself as testing these sets is about as easy as it gets. Just put one piece on...do a MB... change one piece... do another. Elemental Ninjutsu is very consistent unlike things such as weapon skills so as long as you don't get resisted it usually only takes a casting or two to determine the actual difference between the pieces.

Lets talk about the loss for using those pieces first.

So lets not take the extreme example of when using Gokatai/Tauret which gets us over 30k, as the difference will be even more pronounced there. Going to use my Heishi/Tauret as an example.

Heishi/Tauret MB Damage: 26574
Heishi/Ochu MB Damage: 23562
Heishi/Malevolence MB Damage: 23438
Heishi/Tauret with Relic Feet MB Damage: 22176
Heishi/Ochu with Relic Feet MB Damage: 20046

So above are the numbers you will get if you use those weapons you speak of. You literally lose 3k in damage by making that choice. I simply do not understand why anyone would choose this over say... a Kaja Dagger or Kaja Katana which you can literally get in an afternoon of ambuscade and will greatly outdamage any of the options listed by thousands of damage per MB. This is why one of my main points of the video was to discourage people form using these ever again. If you can find a real life example of these weapons performing anywhere close to the damage of the 10 other options I suggest (including Kaga items) please correct me! Now onto the feet. Again this was supposed to be the elite video so I didn't even consider that people wouldn't have merits into there but I guess your right. Some people may choose not to. However, people should understand the huge hit in MB damage that they take when they do so. As you can see above doing so loses you 4.5k in Damage from you MB! Combined with selecting an Ochu my MB's were now doing 20k (actually doing 10k in many instances due to resist due to the missing magic acc). When looking at the possible merit options, I'm not sure why you wouldn't merit magic attack. You obviously won't spend merits on Sange or Ninja Tool Expertise. Personally I'm in Yonin mode 80% of the time or more and I almost never get to take advantage of Innin's boost which is certainly situational as you have to be with a group that is doing sc and mb's for it to benefit you AND you have to not be the tank. So I put 5 merits into Yonin and I quite rarely have magic accuracy issues on Ninja, especially with my magic accuracy set so this makes the default decision for me the 20Magic Attack boost from merits. Which by the way isn't taking into account in the above numbers so if you did choose another merit path your numbers would be even lower. So in my mind I wasn't picturing anyone else making a different decision. However, I'm sure people will have their reasons so if they do NOT use merit's in Ninjutsu Magic Attack Bonus then yes the Artifact Feet... just keep in mind your probably losing upwards of 5k in damage from your MB's when doing so when you take into account the Magic Attack Bonus from mertis.

Now onto the caps. I specifically didn't go into MBII vs MBI etc as I didn't see the caps really coming into play as you are not hitting the cap in this set. Now I know that I mention it during feet but my mind at the time was trying to explain why I thought those Relic ninja feet were performing SO much better then the Artifact ninja feet. However, when I did that quick calculation in my head I did forget that one of the rings was MBII and not MBI so indeed you would get 7% of the 10% from those boots before hitting cap. (7 from Job Gifts, 8 From Hands, 8 From feet, 5 from ring, 5 from earring gives you 33 with 7 to go until cap). So it looks like the Relic Boots are just really that powerful.

Next, Dark Matter. I hadn't included Dark Matter augments in any of my video's as they really aren't realistic for me to ask my subscribers to achieve anything I could get from Dark Matter as it's just so random and expensive. That being said, yes you can absolutely get lucky and get one of those pieces and if you get it in your hands or legs slot it will beat those options, such a piece wouldn't even come close to beating head and feet options and getting it on body would be useless as you would be hitting cap. Now, it's critical when you consider this that you consider all of the options on the piece. I say this as I also have MB+15 with no other stat pants and they are much lower in damage then my MB8 INT8 MB24 MA24 pants. This makes it so coming away with a "useful" piece from a dark matter augment is even more challenging. If you indeed do have a piece with MB+15 that has high int and magic attack on it then wow you have certainly hit the jackpot! Personally after thousands of attempts I can't even get my augment the way I want it on my hands and feet using NON dark matter augments so I certainly can't expect people to achieve a dark matter augment I suggest.

Lastly, Donor Gun... wow I had never heard of this being anything that would be useful to us. So we would obviously lose some tp when we swap to it but that's not going to be much of a problem if this really is Affinity +15% like the belt and not just straight magic attack bonus. Would definitely help out on my Heishi light sc's. I'll grab one today and do some testing with it, thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks for the comments. Please let me know if my answers don't make sense or if you think I'm off base on what I'm saying.
I'll be adding the following notes to the top pinned comment in the video:

1. Sorry I left Malevolence out of the discussion. It performs a little worse then the Ochu so I do NOT recommend you use it.
2. I forgot one of the rings was MBII damage when I was calculating how much the Artifact feet would help. We actually get 7% of the 10% boost in this setup if we use them. However, you will still lose 4k+ damage over using Relic Feet.
3. I didn't touch upon Dark Matter augments as I don't do that in this series but know that with Dark Matter Augments you can go as high as 15% Magic Burst Damage Bonus. If you get one of these pants make sure it comes with a good amount of INT and Magic Attack or a pair of pants with stats such as Magic Burst Damage 8, INT 10, Magic Attack 25, Magic Accuracy 25 will beat it.
4. I left out Donor Gun which can apparently add 15% to your light mb's. I will be getting this and testing it out. It should add similar damage to the Orpheus Sash.
5. I didn't really go into caps in this video but just so that it's clear. Magic Burst Damage caps at 40% so keep this in mind when adding Magic Burst Damage gear. Magic Burst Damage II gear does NOT count toward this cap. Note that you have a 7% trait from Job Gifts if you are mastered.

yes but the caps don't really come into play with either of these sets. I mention it during the feet as i was trying to wrap my head around why the Relic feet were so much better and when I did the calculation had forgotten one of the rings was MBII. So if you choose to use feet you are indeed getting 7% of their bonus and not 2%. That being said... they still perform 4-5k WORSE then the Relic boots so please keep this in mind.

Yea please try Gokatai/Tauret or kannagi/tauret vs malevolence x2 for MB's... you should be very pleasantly surprised. :)

Purely for bursting, wouldn't Perf Ochux2 beat other options thanks to their extremely juicy multiplier which gets calculated at the end of the damage formula and breaks the MBB cap??

Malevolence x2 offer the highest potential damage I think, but they're only viable when Macc isn't a concern, whereas Gokotai, Tauret etc offer damage and also a noticeable boost in Macc.
Granted that on some targets not even that macc boost will be enough, but in those situations you simply do not bother with Ninjutsu nuking and that's it, I guess.