The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Ninja can use Tachi: Kagero for a fire hybrid option. Similar mods and easier to use. You would lose shuriken and Daken if you went with bow, in addition to subbing something non optimal. Unless the target is both piercing weak and weak to fire, can't see it being useful.

Are there really any targets that would fit this description where the other hybrids wouldn't work? Or is flaming arrow stronger than Kagero? (I have seen Flaming Arrow rip through certain targets in Odyssey)

Kagero should be stronger, but Hachimonji is weird for tp gain comparison, especially that it would be Hachimonji with Daken vs Katanas without Daken.

Hachimonji can be kind of neat if you have a good Crooked Sam Roll and are using STP pieces in your TP set. Though you won't be haste capped either from no Hasso, so it is kind of a toss up.

If you are comparing for flaming arrow which requires rng sub its only fair to compare to sam sub.

True. I was looking at RNG sub as more of a hindrance to NIN main, as it's a requirement to use the WS. So I wasn't thinking about changing subs with the compared weapon in mind. Since NIN can natively learn Kagero without a sub change, it loses less than using Archery hybrid ws would

slightly switching gears: is there a Samurai Roll Calculator or grid that shows the STP value of each roll, with roll+ bonus and job enhancement+ bonus? Something like the Geomancy grid. I can't find anything outside of Rolltracker addon. I wanted to calculate the number of STP I would need from Sam Roll with certain set to reach 100% DA build with Gkt.

Can it really?

Afaik if you have 100stp you have 100%da with it, with no other chance to proc MA and tp gain is calculated like with 0 store tp. So basically it's like you would have 100 store tp, but couldn't multihit at all, which is way weaker than having that or similar amount of store tp mixed with MA gear right?

Actually da procs first and blocks the proc from the gk so if you have 100 da and 100 store tp you you would just have 100 da with 100 store tp in this case and the ambu gk would make no difference. You only lose store tp when the gk procs although you also lose store tp for the possible daken proc that round.

You do get fixed TP (for multi-attack swings), but the wiki makes it see like you can have both an 100% DA rate and supplemental TA rate, if you have over 100 STP. So you should get both DA/TA swings (254/381 tp per round). Not including Daken procs.

Kaja Tachi is probably ahead on TP gain with a similar build.


Ok I didn't know this.

I'm having an issue with doing the katana trials. I farm up a colorful abyssite to kill Jyeshtha, kill it, then it switches to brown. I keep the brown and farm up a second colorful abbysite, but when I try and spawn Jyeshtha again the zone just gives me a message for the brown abyssite.

I thought by keeping the brown I could keep the new colorful from turning the next time I spawn Jyeshtha, but is this not a workaround?

You have to look at the message. It will always read the brown abyssite, but it won't always read the right tier.

Look for "solidly" that's the wrong one. search for "softly" that's the right one. It reads whichever mob is closer. Sometimes they're on top of each other and it's annoying.

Thank you, did not realize that!

So I have two gear questions. Here is my TP set for capped haste:

ItemSet 382095

Both Adhemar+1 are Path A, FYI.

1. Next month I will have +2 Mummu feet, but currently only have +1. I don't currently have enough for Kendatsuba +1, but would NQ Kendatsuba feet/legs/body be an upgrade over Mummu +2 gear in those slots?

2. At what point/rank(if ever) will Ninja Nodowa +1 outperform other neck options for weapon skills? More specifically Blade: Shun, but I also use Lacono +1 for Ten and also Fotia for Ku. My Ninja Nodowa +1 is currently Rank 6.

I know buffs and target and all those other factors come into play, but I'm curious if there's a simple answer here.

Herculean boots with TA augments is your best bet here. You can solo Belphegor easy on MNK (probably other jobs too, I just never tried).

I don't have MNK, but I do have Herculean Boots, just with terrible augments. Guess I'll try and get the TA augment on them.

Kendatsuba NQ should beat Mummu +2 for TPing. The Triple Attack stat is too important. Kendatsuba will have slightly less accuracy, but significantly more Magic Evasion to help deal with annoying status ailments.

Getting a good pair of augmented Herculean Boots is important too. Since TA is the most important stat, you'll likely want to strictly use Fern Stones and aim for TA+4, DEX+8, Accuracy+20 for a good base pair. You may also want Kendatsuba Sune-Ate for your high accuracy set as well as Blade: Shun and Evisceration.


Ninja Nodowa +2 (and +1) mostly gets used in WS for the PDL+10% (+8%) stat, which only takes effect when you're attack capped. The main neck options currently available for Ninja are Caro Necklace, Ninja Nodowa, and Fotia Gorget.

• Caro Necklace is used for weapon skills that use STR as a modifier (Savage Blade, Blade: Ten, and Blade: Kamu) since the STR triple-dips into fSTR, WSC, and Attack, which all increase damage. For comparison: DEX triple-dips into dDEX(crit rate), WSC, and Accuracy, but only WSC consistently affects damage.

• Ninja Nodowa's main stat for weapon skills is the Physical Damage Limit, which only has an effect when attack capped. When attack capped, you can estimate your damage to be +PDL% higher than without it (PDL+8% would be about +8% damage). There is no easy way to determine at what rank Ninja Nodowa beats other options since there are other stats at play in your other gear slots. I'd guess that as long as you have PDL+3% on your neck, then it's worth using when attack capped. When not attack capped, the DEX on Ninja Nodowa is nice for DEX-based weapon skills, but I recommend sticking with Caro Necklace until your Nodowa has at least +10 DEX on it since Caro provides STR for fSTR.

• Fotia Gorget is used for multi-hit weapon skills that replicate ftp across all hits (Blade: Shun, Blade: Ku, and Evisceration). Fotia Gorget essentially adds +9.8% damage to these weapon skills Blade: Shun specifically (see SimonSes' comment below). Because of this, the PDL on an augmented Ninja Nodowa would likely not begin to win (for Blade: Shun) until the PDL augment is about +8% or higher (when also considering the DEX+ on the Nodowa).

The amount Fotia adds is not fixed and depends on fTP .

:Shun is 1.0, so it's 10% (9% when using Fotia belt too)
:Ku and Evisceration is 1.25, so it's 8%/7.4%
*not including 1% chance to not lose TP

Oops. That is true. I should've refreshed myself on Evisceration and Blade: Ku FTP values first. I assumed they were 1.0 like Shun so I used 10% as a quick example.

Awesome! This is extremely helpful. I did some augmenting on my Herc. Boots and TA+2%, DEX+8, ACC+8 and ATK+14 was my best aug. Good, not great. I'm wondering how many more stones I should pump into this thing for the chance at 1-2 more TA% and 12 more ACC. I'll probably forgo Kendatsuba NQ feet and look into getting body and legs instead.

I'll definitely look into picking up Caro Necklace. Until then I'll keep using Fotia for Shun and Ku until I hit those PDL numbers you mentioned. Since I use a Ninja Nodowa +1, it probably won't be until max rank or close to it.

Thanks!

I see you were working on some Herculean Boots, which are good. Couple other feet suggestions(and armor sets, really):

1. Do Lilith high tier fight whenever you get a chance and try for some Malignance gear! It's pretty good offensively with STP/Acc/PDL+, but you'll want it regardless for a long time due to the amazing defensive benefits (tons of DT- and Meva). You should be able to do the fight on Very Easy without a lot of issue, just load up on healing and support trusts and don't do darkness SCs on her.

Specific to feet slot, Malignance are roughly in the same tier on offense as stuff like NQ Kendatsuba or a mid-range augment on Herculean Boots (but they give you so much more with the defensive perks).

2. Do Odyssey if you haven't started, even if only to solo with trusts and start building up points (segments). You'll need a lot to get into NM fights, and you can get pulled into higher tier NM fights if the party leader has access (killed all previous tier NMs).

If you're ever able to get the win for Mpaca's armor unlock, that's excellent for NIN TP and is more or less an offensive sidegrade to Kendatsuba +1 - either set is perfectly viable as top endgame TP gear. Defensive differences are that Ken set has a lot of Meva, Mpaca gets PDT- (and Counter and Killer for intimidation procs).

I definitely need to do Lilith, yeah. That has been on my list and I just keep putting it off. I need to finish WotG, which I'm really not a fan of and the reason I haven't done any Lilith yet. But yeah, it's important gear so I guess I just need to bite the bullet. Thanks!

Also worth finishing WotG just because the earring is pretty amazing for many WS, including some important ones for NIN. Particularly Blade: Ten, hybrid WS, or Savage Blade if rocking a Naegling.

I get the procrastinating on mission grind though. It can be tough to force yourself to work on this old content and running around (I finally took an alt through WotG relatively recently, like in the past year or so... and really had a hard time motivating myself to do it lol)

EDIT: Oh, and check your PMs. Just noticed you're on Phoenix, may be able to help out if you need some Mpaca unlocks.

WotG especially is just grueling. So much running around and the zones are so annoying to traverse, but I forgot about the earring. Another good reason to finally get it done.

Anyone have an updated Blade: Hi set? I just recently started making a Kannagi.

Blade: Hi is in a bad spot due to it being a Critical Hit weapon skill that uses AGI as a modifier (potentially in error; compare with Jishnu's Radiance DEX modifier). This means that the best set will likely change significantly depending on the AGI of your target (since you are not gaining DEX for dDEX from your WS modifier). I personally recommend against making Kannagi or using Blade: Hi unless you have nothing else to spend the gil and time on. With that said, see below for roughly the best in slot sets for Blade: Hi, determined through simulations with Python3.

Assuming you weapon skill between 1000 and 1300 TP, then these will be roughly the best in slot sets for low-buff, mid-buff, and high-buff situations:

Low Buff (Grape Daifuku + Dia2):
Mid Buff (BRD+COR + Grape Daifuku + Dia2):
High Buff (GEO+BRD+COR + Grape Daifuku + Dia2):
I've created a list of Ninja weapon skill gearsets using my Python3 code here. The sets haven't been updated since before I shared my updated code, but they should still be within a few percent of the best sets.

Again, Blade: Hi sets are no good in general due to its AGI modifier and how critical hit rate scales with your DEX and the AGI of your target. Depending on what you're fighting, you'll likely want different sets than what I've presented here.

Yeah, basically just collecting ultimate weapons at this point. The only situation I could really see it shine is the Qutrub Ambuscade with the extra white damage. Thanks for posting the sets.

A handful of Kannagi points:

1. As noted, fights where white damage is more relevant play to Kannagi's strengths. Anything that uses frequent amnesia is one obvious situation, but a less mentioned (and very practical) situation would be events/fights where you are intentionally holding off on WS to avoid interrupting SCs.

2. If you need darkness SCs, especially solo SC, Kannagi is a great option for that with easy Hi > Hi Darkness. Kikoku is also a good call for such situations (Metsu > Metsu), but I tend to use one of those two when Darkness SCs are particularly important.

3. Kannagi really shines if you aren't getting very good attack buffs/debuffs (or the mob is just so strong that you're significantly uncapped), just due to the nature of crits having more of an impact in those situations (and Empy AM = big effect on crit damage). Very underrated when the typical evaluation in the community often tends to assume strong buffs every time you use a job.

4. Sorta niche, but for the multiboxers out there... Empy AM3 crits/white damage also become somewhat more valuable if you're in situations where you might not be paying 100% attention to your NIN and WSing at optimal timing. Hitting some Empy AM-enhanced crits while you get back to your NIN can be helpful if you're in such a situation and a bit more skewed toward white damage. To be fair, using a WS that scales well with additional TP is also a good way to make use of that "extra" TP. I often like Heishi mainhand in similar situations, and just toss out a Ten/Shun when possible (same thing works with Naegling SB builds).

Also notable that Kannagi TP phase synergizes particularly well with Kendatsuba or Mpaca gear (crit/multihit focused). If you're in a situation where you feel the need to TP in Malignance/Nyame more often, that will hurt Kannagi more than the other RMEAs. NIN doesn't always run into that concern as much as some jobs thanks to the defensive strength of Utsu/Migawari, but it happens sometimes in fights with dangerous shadow-stripping AoEs. Personally, I tend to use Nagi with a Malignance-heavy set in that kind of situation.


Also, totally supporting the approach of collecting ultimate weapons for the heck of it. I truly enjoy using all of NIN's RMEAs (and Su5). You might be surprised too... I made my Nagi as essentially a joke (and just for completion's sake), but I was very pleasantly surprised to find it really fun to use, and far better performance than I would have expected based on the generally held community opinions. Have fun - if you feel like you want to make a Kannagi, make it!

Logic would say it could be true, but I reduced attack for all builds (Kikoku/Metsu, Kannagi/Hi, Heishi/Shun, Naegling/Savage) to slightly below 2.0 pDIF and Kanangi/Hi was last. Kikoku was 5% ahead, Heishi almost 18% ahead and Naegling 55% ahead (yes, fifty five percent). Then I reduced attack even more (to around 1.2-1.3 pDIF) and Kannagi jumped 6% ahead of Kikoku, but Naegling still 37% ahead and Heishi advantage jumped to almost 38% (yes, Heishi jumped to 1st place).

I only assumed +10% attack on Savage from Naegling. If its higher (and it probably is), then Naegling would be even more ahead. The only thing breaking Naegling is that when lacking attack buffs, you might be lacking accuracy buffs too and you won't be able to use Hitaki, but even with Gleti's offhand, Naegling is significantly ahead of Kannagi. Still better than everything around 2.0 pDIF and loosing to Heishi around 1.25 pdif, but with solid 14.5% lead over Kannagi.

Taking Naegling out of the picture for the moment, I don't see that for comparisons between Kannagi/Hi, Kikoku/Metsu, and Heishi/Shun or Ten. Either in practice or on a spreadsheet. See the following linked spreadsheets with gear/buffs already plugged in. This sheet is basically the same as the current version that Logical last updated (FFXIAH main post: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51198/currently-maintained-dps-spreadsheets/), though I've made a couple minor Herculean stat edits for some of my own augments. No impact to any of this discussion though.

Kikoku/Kannagi
Heishi

Setup assumptions and gear:
1) TP set: same 5/5 Kendatsuba+1 set for all 3. Yes, I know it isn't max DPS - but for argument's sake, let's assume you feel the Meva is important and go with this still very good TP set.

2) WS sets: used reasonable options excluding (1) Herculean augments (which I don't love using for comparisons in forum discussion, since it forces assumption of stellar Oseem/DM augs), and (2) limited myself to choosing R0 Mpaca/Nyame gear (since most people aren't rocking R20 augmented Nyame yet). Obviously Ten, Metsu, Hi do have some slots where they can get more gains with WSD augmented pieces, but it's not a world of difference relative to one another if we open it up to all of them having access to the same WSD augmented gear.

3) /WAR, Sushi, Apex Bat target (which I think is the closest to something practical like Odyssey Sheol C mobs)

4) Buffs/debuffs are only Kakka, Dia II, and typical 4-song player-strength songs+8 BRD buffs (Minuet x2, Victory/Honor March); i.e., You aren't getting BRD songs that strong with trusts.

Results
With the gear I have plugged in, that comes out as:
Heishi/Shun (2940 dps) > Kannagi/Hi (2557 dps) > Kikoku/Metsu (2508 dps) > Heishi/Ten (2393 dps)

Now, just turn on Berserk and Chaos Roll (which is set to 80%; i.e., rounding up from 0.792 and is the absolute maximum possible roll, requiring Crooked Cards, XI roll (need some luck), DRK 10% job bonus (need a DRK or some luck with Relic head proc), AND Rostam C r25 for Phantom Roll +8... so again, obviously a much stronger buff than you're gonna have from a trust, mule, or casual COR - but for purposes here of just adding a truckload of attack, it's fine). Anyway, adding that large chunk of additional attack causes some rather dramatic changes:
Kikoku/Metsu (4564 dps) > Heishi/Ten (4523 dps) > Kannagi/Hi (4334 dps) > Heishi/Shun (3469 dps)

This is all pretty much in line with my actual in-game experience, didn't surprise me at all. Specific to Heishi/Shun, makes total sense to me that Shun would benefit more from weak buffs thanks to its innate attack bonus, and then fall off due to the diminishing returns in the higher buffed scenarios.

If anyone thinks there's some major flaw in the setup logic, or the spreadsheet calculations, please share. I get that modifying a few gear pieces (particularly augmentable WSD options) may impact any of these sets a little bit, but I'm not seeing massive differences in the relative ranking.

Additional notes:
* I'm not even touching the Naegling discussion at this point, aside from saying that your theoretical 37~55% advantage absolutely does not match what I see in actual play with good gear. Naegling/SB is certainly a viable thing for NIN and often a competitive or best option. But it isn't THAT good.

* Assuming you're self SCing, spamming Heishi/Ten is obviously the worst with 0 SC damage (Naegling/SB also has weak SC ability and won't chain with itself, and no particularly strong alternate sword WS options for NIN using Naegling - whereas with any katana there are more viable alternate WS you could use. The addition of a simple self 2-step SC from the others is a significant increase. Hi (darkness), Metsu (darkness), and Shun (light, if using Heishi).

* I've assumed Dia II on everything, which is significant if you don't immediately have Dia II on every mob from the start. For example, think of someone doing some solo/lowman Odyssey farming (obviously not MAXIMUM SEGMENTS, but it's a thing a lot of people might do) - you obviously aren't getting Dia on every single mob for 100% of the fight.

* Also did assume Empy AM3 up for Kannagi, which is significant as another thing to need to manage and increases the difficultly of using Kannagi well.

TL;DR
So... if you can just grab one RMEA, maybe make it a Heishi? It can pretty much do it all, by focusing on Shun when getting mediocre buffs, switching to Ten when getting better buffs, and it's obviously great for hybrid WS (a bit beyond the scope of this particular discussion). Really the most significant downside is the lack of great darkness SCs, which are a lot easier for Kikoku or Kannagi.

But some people have limited connections to get Aeonics, or are prioritizing other weapons in that party-required content. If you're in that situation, maybe Kikoku is the next best all-around choice. It's right up there in DPS for either situation, it's the cheapest RME option, and Metsu has great SC utility. Again, nothing particularly new for the general stance most people here have taken for quite a while now. But the point is that Kannagi isn't exactly worthless either, and does have some situations (like low buffs) where it performs pretty well relative to the other RMEAs.

I don't really want to join the debate for or against Kannagi or Blade: Hi anymore than I have. I just can't recommend that a newer Ninja invest in Kannagi given its current Asura price tag of 101M Gil (or 161M Gil at R15) and required Abyssea Magian trial path for Apademak. If the developers gave Kannagi +50 DEX instead of +50 AGI, and allowed Blade: Hi to scale with DEX instead of AGI, then Kannagi would be in a much better position. At the very least the lockstyle looks great.


I do want to mention that the spreadsheet you're using still isn't calculating Kikoku's aftermath correctly. Specifically looking at your first situation with Kannagi in 2nd place: the spreadsheet is only applying the 100/1024 Kikoku aftermath attack bonus to Attack=8+Skill+STR+Gear (Sheet: "Data" - Cells B/C/D/E65 and B/C/D/E130), ignoring Minuet (+702 attack), /WAR (+10 attack), and mastered job gifts (+70 attack). A few months ago I showed that Kikoku's aftermath is calculated additively with other percentage-based attack buffs (Chaos Roll, Berserk, etc). The equation would then read: attack = (8+Skill+STR+Gear+BRD+Traits+Gifts)*(1+Kikoku+Berserk+Warcry+ChaosRoll+Fury)+Food. Correcting this increases Kikoku's attack bonus by +76 attack for WS set and +80 attack for TP set and puts Kikoku an insignificant amount ahead of Kannagi (2610 vs 2557) with the sets you're using in the spreadsheet.

I do agree that Heishi is Ninja's top priority for REMA weapons. Kikoku is a good weapon and useful to have, but Nagi and Kannagi can be safely ignored unless you're working on completion or lockstyle.

Edit: I removed part of my original post that unintentionally made it sound somewhat provocative. I only wanted to point out the issue with the spreadsheet and how to fix it. Sorry for the confusion.