The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Ptica is an excellent acc piece, probably one of the best. You can also swap in more multi-hit on your ACC build with it if you're creative. Are you a terrible NIN without it? of course not.

Is it worth the Gessho struggle? It's a matter of perspective. I play a career NIN and work on it above all other jobs, so this was a natural choice to pursue. If NIN was more just a fun job for me and not something I invested as much time/gil into, I'd just hope for the drop one day and not worry about it.

All that being said, since the release of the new AA battles, I think myself and our little group have learned a great deal and developed a lot of skill and new strategies by spamming things like gessho and working our way up the difficulty tiers, so there are other benefits apart from gear to be gained by your perseverance.

Oh, last - Uk'uxkaj cap augmented for agi+8 does way better on Hi that Ptica, at the very least it's more consistent.

I have Ptica, and honestly the thing I like it for the most is that it's a FREAKING YAGUDO HEAD (p.s. "Ptica" means "bird" in some Slavic languages, so... BIRD HAT!). Definitely gonna stay in my /lockstyle set, like, forever. I don't really run into *that* many situaions where it's the best piece though.

My main use is for the combination of DW/crit when I can actually take advantage of the DW. That means very low buffs though. Not gonna really happen most any time you have marches from a real BRD, and even many times with only Trust marches/haste and a couple other pieces of DW gear. If you're truly solo though (say, when I do Salvage solo), sure, it's great.

Otherwise, I usually have better choices:

- Have buffs? Felistris.
- Need acc? Whirlpool.
- WS? Uk'uxkaj (either AGI or STR augs). Lithelimb's not bad either.

I guess for WS when you need Acc too, it's probably best. Or a nice hybrid of acc/crit. But it's not so much difference from the other options that's it's worth beating yourself up over.

Now, the REALLY frustrating thing: when non-NIN want to lot it for their MNK PUP SAM who get poor use out of it. Boooo. This is so totally a NIN piece.

Sounds like some pretty good news for NIN. Faster TP return with the DW update, and a new job trait for more DOT.

It will help. Certainly.

I'm still waiting on:

1) Remove directional requirements from Innin/Yonin.
2) Improved Shadow Block Rates for NIN Mains.
3) Removing WS Penalties (fTP, Attack-%) on some of our WS.


But that's just me being greedy. :D

Don't hope on the WS thing. They just rehauled them all, if they really wanted to do something more than they did for NIN WSs they would have already =/
And yeah, it's pretty disappointing but what can we do?!

If they really want NIN tanking to come back they seriously need to do something about Yonin.
I can be fine with Innin as it is, in an environment where tanking is more or less working, Innon would be fine as it is.
But Yonin cannot possibly be useful that way.

They should remove the decay over time thing, they should remove the -acc thing from Yonin too, and make it Undispellable just like they did for Vallation on RUN.
Honestly the -acc was to "compensate" the pros from Yonin (additional evasion, NTE, additional enmity etc), but they don't really need compensation...
In a world were Tanking works like it should, you would NEVER use Yonin unless you REALLY want to tank, so really, in such a scenario it wouldn't need any compensation, the +30 enmity alone would be more than enough to demotivate people from keeping it up unless they want to tank.


What do you mean with 2)? What's a "shadow block"?
Once enmity is fixed I think NIN would be already an awesome tank for physical stuff. They should give it another "oh ***" tool maybe, Issekigan alone clearly isn't enough.
PLD and RUN have a lot of those tools already, NIN has none.
They're probably afraid to go crazy with that stuff because it could make NIN (as a DD) too good because of the ohshit tools?
But that could be easily solved by tying these tools to Yonin, and make so if you remove Yonin, you remove the ohshit temp buffs as well.

But yeah, I guess there is no easy solution here, the fact that NIN has two roles makes everything more complicated =/

2) is in regards to our shadows not blocking jack all if you are a mob that does not have a standard single hit attack round.

yes yes, they made 'changes' to it in the past so your shadow performance was based on skill or some ***. My impression? Nonexistent. They still suck.

I'm still not sure what you mean. Maybe it's my problem, english is not my mother language.
Do you mean mobs with TP attacks (or basic attacks!) that strip shadows everytime? We used to have a lot of these during the VW/Legion era, but since they added AAs we have a lot of stuff where Utsusemi actually works.
And yes, I agree they should limit/avoid giving 900000 TP moves like that to mobs, becauase that makes them basically untankable on NIN.

Or did you mean instead stuff that attacks so fast each attack round that it makes shadows useless?


Either way I don't think they should empower Utsusemi even more than it already is. 5 shadows with AF3+2 feet is a lot.
And empowering the base spell is dangerous because it indrectly empowers anybody going /NIN too.
If they want to do anything to Utsusemi it should be in the form of a Job Trait they give to lv50+ NIN.

What I've been seeing suggested several times and I think it might be a cool idea is a trait that gives you a X% chance to conserve Shadows when you get hit by a spell/TPmove/attack that would normally strip multiple/all shadows. If this trait procs, only one shadow will get consumed.
Make so the % is not too high but not too low either, and it could be a cool thing.
To make so it doesn't make DD NIN overpowered they could make so this trait is acive only when Yonin is up.

Honestly, lets not bring up Utsusemi. It is already powerful...

Dual Wield adjustments and the throwing job trait sound promising. If done right.

The throwing stuff sounds downright fantastic. Free extra hits a la KA with no shuriken consumed? I'm down with this for sure, pure DoT boost.

What remains to be seen is how Sange is modified. I could see it being really nice if it interacts with the auto-throw stuff. Say, 5min JA timer and 2min duration, added % chance of a auto-throw proc each attack round (maybe higher rate based on # of shadows up). If they make it worth anything, I'd be happy to drop my 5/5 Huton (LOL elemental ninjutsu) for maxed NTE and Sange. At any rate, guess I'll go cap my throwing in the coming month in case I need skill to be ready for this change.

DW adjustments... I'm honestly not expecting anything huge, and I'm well prepared for it to be underwhelming. Changing to not reduce TP/hit for additional DW past the cumulative delay cap seems like a given with previous S-E comments, and is a relatively minor change (cause there's no real need to overload on that excess DW in the first place, so it shouldn't come into play often). If this change turns out to be something more, perhaps it could get interesting.

How/where you gonna do that?
I have a Throwing skill of... 1.

Same place we level anything. Castle Z in the past, on the fortilices. Bring a Lamiabane and set an auto-RA macro

I'm glad I was bored enough to cap Throwing earlier this month. lol. Yay for boredom.

Fortalices go up to 200 iir?

I think you guys are missing a very important issue.

If this new job trait is based on throwing skill, it will actually be a DPS loss. On higher tier content where you have to equip some ACC, the shuriken trait will already be lacking Ranged ACC.

I hope SE has thought about this since it will seriously break NIN if we would have to start equipping Ranged ACC to current TP sets just for the job trait.

It should be based on Katana skill.


edit: correction not dps loss since same attack round, but i still think its dumb if its based off throwing :P

They go to your what your cap is at level 82. For NIN A- throwing, that would be skill level 306

So... Bestas Bane would or wouldn't be super awesome?

Probably needs to be an Ammo throwing items(like Shurikens/Pebbles/etc.), like with Sange. Even if not, you'll probably still want it to be so you could swap in something for WS. Ammo>Ammo you don't lose TP.

EDIT: They have mentioned new shurikens coming in the past. It would be kind of stupid if they didn't introduce new iLvl shurikens to coincide with their 'Throwing overhauls'. But SE after all.

Eh, there are ways around that:

1) Maybe Throwing Skill doesn't affect accuracy (if the auto-throw procs, it's 100% accuracy), but could affect damage... a reason for them to make us grind for something, which sounds like a very S-E thing to do.

2) If skill does matter, perhaps just add a lot of throwing skill+ and/or R.acc to new i-level non-consumable shuriken. Maybe more skill+ than a typical ilevel weapon of the same level, to account for a lot of TP gear not having ranged stats.

3) Or of course, don't require throwing skill at all. Base it on katana skill or something, or even just have the proc not have any accuracy check and be 100%, but add stats on various gear or shuriken themselves like Shuriken DMG +"x" (like KA), or Shuriken proc rate+ (again, like KA now).

If Sange becomes a burst ability that does require throwing/racc/AGI/etc... well, that's not really an issue to just macro stuff in for the JA. We have a surprisingly large amount of good ranged gear, despite much of it not being stuff you'd want to TP in.


Seems like a skillup weapon only. Added 119 skill helps accuracy to hit, but it sounds like you need a shuriken (and not a chakram/boomerang) to actually do damage with these new changes.

Can't you skillup on reives as well these days?

Yep, sure can. Can get all the way to cap at 99 in fact, so as long as someone isn't fighting a colo reive and you can get in a safe spot... throw away.

Does anyone know if ninja got a boost to skillchain bonus? I remember bgwiki had it at tier 2 =12% bonus. I was in Kmir Drifts recently sillchaining with my trusts and i noticed the SC damage was way more than 12%, so i did a little napkin math. Turns out doing light SC on rams was 125% of closing WS, so that looks like a 25% bonus to me. Then i Changed to a Darkness SC which was 145% of closing WS. I did it on the nearby sheep too and the results were the same. Any thoughts on why bonus is so pumped up now?

Hello everyone, in preparation of future shuriken adjuction, i'm working in a perfect ranged set, any modification ?

ItemSet 327880

For using /ra or /throw, that looks great.

But the change is an auto-fire shuriken, like Kick Attacks. So unless you plan on TPing in that set, it wont work.

Maybe more for a "sange" set so, throw 5 shuriken every 5 min, not so bad, if shuriken come with some ilevel.

Would actually be up to 6 shurikens, since is number of remaining shadows +1. It could be useful. I would maybe go 5/5 on the merits, so you dont lose shadows at all, since the rest of that tier for merits sucks.

I'm really glad they're giving a purpose to throwing, and despite me being the avatar of lazyness I don't mind skilling it up.
But *** getting my inventory clogged with more situational NIN-only gear, sigh :(

/cry


Edit:
Does sange still consume the shurikens? Will it consume these new special ilevel ones? If it doesn't it might be a good idea to remove my Hyoton San and get 5/5 Sange I suppose.

Just quickly tested this(because I seemed to remember having conflicting experiences), and it seems to cap at 5.

Did it on the mandies outside Adoulin. Started with 17 Koga Shurikens. Did a throw without Sange, 188. Down to 16. Then went to another mandy and used Utsusemi: Ni, Sange, did 1207. Now at 11 shurikens. Then used Ichi, 1175. 6 shurikens remaining. Did it one last time with Ni, trying to eliminate the possibility of a miss(although I think the equal damage kind of eliminates that.), 1321 damage(crit). 1 shuriken left. Remembered to look at TP gain that last time and was at 345. Threw the last. 183, 69 TP. 69*5=345. So all 5 hit, and a 6th wasn't thrown.

EDIT: Bolded the only real important part of the rambling. lol.

That's pretty good, just a couple small tweaks:

Neck: Ej Necklace/+1 > Iqabi Necklace > Huani

Waist: if I'm not mistaken Buccaneer's Belt is best R.Acc in slot for NIN (Racc+7, STR+4)

For feet, since Vanir is eaily the hardest to obtain piece in that set, a couple other options would be Aetosaur (NQ are Racc+10/AGI+34) and even Mochi+1 would do (AGI+38) and you likely have or want those anyway.

Assuming Sange continues to work like Barrage (miss one hit, and none of the following attacks are attempted), it's clearly the priority to maximize hit rate over all else. I understand that's how it works now, though I've never even unlocked Sange myself...

Hurling Belt will slightly beat it in terms of RAcc(4RAcc, 5Throwing Skill).

But I really wouldn't recommend building a Sange set(or reallocating merits into Sange) or a ranged set yet(unless for skilling). As Throwing itself will probably still remain useless. The only change they've mentioned is the Kick Attacks-like trait.

You're probably right, but for players who also use RNG or COR you may well have most of the multi-job ranged gear anyway. I know I did.

Also interesting just to show that NIN JSE gear you may already have actually has some pretty good ranged stats. Relic body is great (and the Enhance Sange effect giving Ratk+20 per Sange merit would be absolutely amazing if Sange becomes good), AF hands/legs, JSE back, Ej necklace, etc.

We'll see what actually happens, but I'm cautiously optimistic that Sange changes might make it worth using (though it's a pretty low bar to at least be more useful than San ninjutsu these days). And the free KA-like throws sound great to me, other than realizing I might actually need to cap throwing if that has any effect... Wouldn't really be surprising if throwing skill at least impacts damage.