The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Gekka is fine for momentary enmity. When I need to fill in as a "tank ad litem", I swap to Shuhansadamune and Gekka, which is somewhat decent for retaining hate. I personally feel like the Yonin Bonus should not be penalized by diminishing effect, and the re-use time should be lowered to 1 minute. Oftentimes, I find myself as NIN swapping between being a DD and a temporary tank, and the ability to change between Innin and Yonin is pretty important. Hasso/Seigan is the samurai counterpart, but they do not get diminished effects for either over time, nor are they limited by a 3-minute cooldown (yes they are penalized in other ways, like casting, but its not as severe).

NIN can tank just fine, even great, if the target only specializes in single-target magical or physical, or aoe physical. The one boss that comes to mind that NIN pretty much demolishes is Glazemane. Migawari can handle mistakes, and they can easily re-apply shadow wipes. Since he's such a physical threat, eating any of his physical attacks or TAs spell certain death. There aren't a whole lot of fights similar to that, so NIN does not stand out as much.

Really, anything else where the boss spams magical aoe (which is a good majority of the things in this game now), NIN is not an impressive tank anymore than DRK is tanking with arcane circle+crest+founders. They certainly have some neat tricks, like Issekigan to help boost your hate and survival, but IMO it doesn't last long enough to make a long enough impact on longer battles.

My biggest changes to NIN being a reasonable tank would be an "augmented" version of Utsusemi. Hopefully, empyrean +3 feet is not just Utsusemi+1/2 (though welcome, doesn't fix the problem) and does something like changes copy images to negate magical aoe damage, shadow absorption dependant on the amount of targets that were hit by the aoe (5 targets in range, utsusemi can block 5 hits of that aoe. If only the tank is in range, it's treated as a single target spell). The only real danger or weakness ninja has is magical aoe. You fix NIN being able to handle that, and people will make more Nagis because tanking would become a thing again. Now with everything wiping shadows, its literally useless to try to depend on a ninja to tank, when a RUN/PLD can do it the same and deal with both magical/physical reasonably.

One supplemental point, I think the "Augments Mijin Gakure" effect is pretty useless on Nagi. I agree with Sechs. If it was something that, perhaps, made the NIN immune to weakness period, that would be an amazing weapon, where they could just RR and continue tanking. But the auto-reraise effect isn't anything unique NIN can't do at least once, with Mijin/RR.

I would be fine with 3 minutes cooldown (or even more) if they made it undispellable and last long time like Afflatuses or Grimoire.
They both should be "stances" that offer pros and cons.
If we want to see the dichothomy between tanking and DPSing you should be the one to pick.
The diminishes over time too is crap.
Granted I feel like the "con" of Yonin should be something else though.
The -eva is pretty irrelevant for Innin, but the -enmity and the positional requirement are good enough to make tanking not really viable with Innin up.

Or NMs with moves that simply strip all your shadows instead of being absorbed by X+ shadows.
There's a lot of that as well, alas.

And when that happens NIN offers basically nothing over a normal DD, it's nowhere near comparable to the stuff PLD or RUN get, whether through Traits/Gifts or specific gear.
And don't let me get into situational defensive cooldowns or enmity generation tools, because NIN has nothing in that regard either.

Except Utsusemi when Yonin is up. They modified Utsusemi spells (this happened when they added Crusade and Gekka/Yain iir) so that they generate large quantity of Enmity if Yonin is up.
Altough I don't think anybody ever bothered to measure how much.
Logic-wise it should be kinda like Foil works, a self buff that generates enmity on everything that has you in their enmity list, which is in theory quite a good tool if the values are high enough. I kinda think that is not the case though.


Exactely. Plus I don't think Issekigan ignores level difference like Inquartata, does it now?

They could/should bind this behind Yonin though, because you don't really want to give such a powerful tool to NIN with no stance up or with Innin up, it would be quite unfair towards other DPSs and it would steer towards NIN-onry in several fights.

What if.....instead of losing enmity when our shadow took a hit...we GAINED ENMITY

I did forget this part. "Ignores shadows", then subsequently "strips" them. Super annoying, but not sure how they would address this.


Fine. Fair enough. I don't care what they do, as long as NIN gains some benefit for having shadows active in an end-game environment. Would not be fair if NIN could negate everything physical, magical, and migawari for when they are unlucky. So i'd even settle for the ability for Utsusemi to "occasionally ignore area of effect damage", with something like a 10% proc rate if casted with the feet on/Yonin bonus up. Knowing SE, they'd botch it to where we'd be required to fulltime the augment piece (or worse, an empyrean set bonus similar to Rune Fencer empy), basically hurting our dps to an extent. If NIN had a set that was strictly for tanking, I wouldn't actually be upset about that. Currently, NIN has nothing af/relic/empyrean-wise that remotely resembles tanking, unless you factor in empy+1 miga bonus (which needs to be worn during consumption of miga to get bonus).

I just think SE just never knew what they wanted NIN to actually do, which is why you see weapons like Nagi, but no abilities to compliment it. They don't know if they want NIN to be a throwing god, a tank, a dd, a nuker, or a debuffer. They kind of just threw several tricks at the job and theoretically jested "they'll figure it out"

With a game mechanic that was already in-game like what, 14 or 15 years ago?
Back then Utsusemi: Ni would absorb even AoE spells.
They would need to update it and make so Utsusemi shadows, with yonin up, can absorb even AoE spells or abilities that would normally strip all shadows.
Make a few moves (A FEW) immune to that, give this feature to the rest, balance so the number of shadows deleted is big enough.

Alternatively make it a chance to happen, altough relying on a chance is not really... reliable for a tank lol I guess.
Meh I dunno whatever, not like any of this is ever gonna happen, their plans for NIN as a tank are clear and it's staying where it has been these past years.
Which is not a completely ugly position but it's not where I would like it to be either.

Or just give Ninja a Turms mittens-type piece with high Enmity and "Recover HP+100 for each shadow applied with Ustusemi." #mindblown

I kind of despise the idea of locking cool tanking tricks behind gear, since NIN is more of a DD/Hybrid situational tank and not a permanent solution atm. Creating gear just for NIN to idle in while swinging in will inevitably lower its dps, which will make holding hate a mess.

NIN enmity tools are horrible as-is, locked behind either /RUN flash or just plain old /war voke. I've heard of people using /pld, but again, that's limited to flash (sentinel is long timer), and you still need to retain MP to spam it consecutively. Enmity set with warcry works just as well for the interim, but that aside, zero hate tools compared to RUN/PLD.

Perhaps a boost to enmity from the debuff line of slow2/para/blind2/poison would prove helpful in the enmity department, since they used to be viable for low level hate-grabbing tactics back when NIN main tanking was a thing. Could even improve Gekka to something more than +10 enmity.

I'm still waiting on my REMA Shurikens dispensible from the appropriate weapons. In that case, Nagi dispensing an enm+20 stackable ex shuriken would be interesting to say the least.

Man, I am dreaming here huh?

Still does not solve the shadow wipe problem, which, in any real sense of tanking, just turns NIN into a THF, defensively speaking. Too many check boxes to address in order to make NIN a viable tank, so it is going to stay where it is right now.

You definitely want any adjustments made to gear you can choose to wear or not wear as opposed to the job itself. See MNK.

Utsusemi was meta-defining. Also, it is unlikely the current team has the time, money, resources or knowledge to go back and look at the original code. It is likely they have no documentation or back-up and have no idea.

NIN lacks a way for it to cure itself. If in a battle that a target is constantly stripping shadows to the point they are useless anyway, a piece of gear macro'd in to change Utsusemi to a cure-type action would at least give you a reason to keep casting.

Not that defending my idea makes it any more likely to be implemented, but that is the logic behind my reasoning.

A self cure ninjutsu (or ability) was something I suggested way way way back.

They gave it to RUN instead. RUN steals everything.

This took off quickly...

Nagi is quite correctly regarded as trash - and I say this as someone who is slowly working on one now (what can I say, I want to collect them all...). NIN's flaws as a main tank are for reasons that can't be solved by just dropping Enm+40 on a subpar DD weapon. The only time Nagi was good was when it had significant offensive benefit in the days when Mythic OAx was still strong for DW jobs, but with all of the existing multi-attack we now have, those days are far in the past.

Nagi doesn't somehow open up the ability to effectively use /BLU and /RUN. Any mainhand can use either one, and NIN still has to deal with a mediocre MP pool.

I'd go so far as to say that even in the vast majority of cases where you intentionally want to NIN tank, using any of Kikoku/Kannagi/Heishi would still be the better call. Far more damage (faster mob kills), far easier to hit VE cap, and the loss of Nagi's Enm+40 in gear is probably not as vital as you think it is. In fact, in any zones/instanced fights using the pre-ilevel enmity system (UNM, Master Trials, HTBF, etc.), doing more damage is going to be far BETTER for keeping hate than just enm+40 on weapon.


Why would I/my group want to take a tank that has a much larger margin for error and risk of wipes for the whole group? No thanks, I'll stick to PLD RUN PUP tanks.

NIN is not a primary tank now, hasn't been for years, and is probably never going to be again. It does have its uses for tanking particular niche fights (Glazemane was a good example), but these are the significant minority. It's also nice to be able to pop some defensive tools on the fly to do something like recover from an emergency main tank death, but that's a very different purpose than setting up a strategy with NIN as the main tank. And, of course, it's VERY nice to be able to go all-out DD with a little less worry than other DDs when you can benefit from the Utsusemi/Migawari security blanket.

TL;DR version: Nagi is bad, NIN as a significant main tank isn't ever gonna happen again.

I this case, NIN is entirely useless as a tank and shouldn't be considered as an option. That's like an automaton tanking an NM that constantly spams doom. It's literally useless to use that as an option.

I don't see NIN being able to cure itself as a fundamental improvement for anything the job is good for, actually. The point of NIN/shadows is to not get hit. Between San + Ni, you can keep shadows up fairly easily (san consistently when haste is capped). In fact, if NIN is the only DD (or other NINs or MNKs with SB), you hardly have to worry about the mob TPing too much.

Even on Omen Bosses where nearly every TP move is aoe (and predictable), NIN tanks can use a hybrid DT set to mitigate damage. Migawari results in 0 dmg take from things like that strong knockback move, and the other ones aren't so bad. Just tanking with Fade+NIN I pretty much am at zero threat of dying to an Omen boss. Being able to self-cure wouldn't change a thing, and if it would, /dnc would be the ideal sub of choice? We swing fast enough anyways to accommodate the tp costs.

I still think the issue is

enmity generation
shadows being wiped

Just giving NINs a reasonable hate collection mechanic would make it much easier to tankhybridDD on stuff. I do not disagree wholly in your point about enmity gear. I just think having a hate-grabbing tool that is NIN-unique (like foil, flash, sentinel, etc) would be a huge improvement vs gear. There is zero chance a NIN can hold hate off of any half decent DD currently, being locked behind provoke. You can't tank anything if you can't garner consistent hate on the monster.

Yeah, /WAR provoke as your only real hate tool is simply not viable for a tank.

In theory, you *could* still use NIN/BLU and spam the typical RUN/BLU enmity spells - Jettatura, Blank Gaze, Geist Wall, etc. You have to deal with crappy MP pool, though TBF, in a short fight you're prob fine (I sit at nearly 400mp with no vorseals). If you were OK on MP, /BLU enmity retention really shouldn't be a big problem.

For short fights in particular, /PLD also isn't insane. Relies a lot on Sentinel's huge hate spike and Enmity+100 for its 30sec duration (and at least you get Flash?). But, I mean, you can hit enmity+200 cap without much issue when Sent is up. Can get the other 100 without much trouble: Gekka+30, Yonin+30 (for much of the duration of Sentinel, decreasing to 10), Shuhansadamune offhand +10, Moonbeam neck +10 (or +15 for the HQ), could do an enmity+10 cape... Then stick like, IDK, a Trux Earring +5, maybe do enmity+ merits or stick some other random piece in there as needed for the last few.

But really, these are ways to address the enmity issue and do nothing to address the shadow wiping problem (same as Nagi, which also features a huge dropoff in DPS).

This 'shadow wiping problem' is a huge overstatement. You can floor your Utsusemi recast timers to 6/9/12 seconds. There are almost no mobs in the game that will wipe your shadows so fast you'll be waiting on recast. There are a few mobs whose autos will wipe your shadows, and in those situations Utsusemi is not useful at all, but for the most part it still does what it has always done. Whether that's even considered useful these days is up for debate. I don't feel like it brings much to the table compared to RUN or PLD when you're actually 'tanking'. Those jobs keep hate much better, and RUN has extra helpful moves/SPs, but NIN still functions well as a lower support hybrid tank.

Oh wow, this is a thing? I didn't know that.

While you're right that timers can get pretty low, it's still kind problematic when shadows go down leaving you basically helpless for a very short period of time. A badly timed AoE + follow up attack (especially if you get some status effect like silence/para/slow that takes even more time to remove) can turn any NIN tank from 100% HP with full shadows to dead in an instant, and that's just not nearly as big of a concern for PLD RUN PUP.


I can agree with that. And S-E has kinda developed current content that usually specifically counters the once abused Utsusemi blink tanking strategies. Multiple mobs (with no AoE hate tools), frequent AoE that specifically shuts down Utsusemi's usefulness, etc.

I still think it's sort of misguided to try to force NIN into a main tank role in current FFXI, but for anyone who really wants to try to optimize it...

I don't think /BLU is a crazy proposal to address the enmity issues (and Cocoon is nice). You're gonna need to account for MP, but if you have that covered, it's probably the best subjob to address NIN's enmity deficiencies. And in the case of /BLU, if you can manage to keep the spells going you really shouldn't have much issue keeping hate regardless of weapon... so why use Nagi when you can choose a weapon that actually does some additional damage and kills the mob faster? Hell, Kannagi might add the most defensive value of the RMEA via the AGI+50 (evasion, reduce enemy crit rate, reduce enemy TP gain from dAGI in addition to Subtle Blow) while still being a top tier offensive choice.


None of my comments are meant to imply that NIN can't serve a niche tanking role for specific mobs where shadows are really effective (despite the relative rarity of those mobs these days), or on the fly as a backup/emergency tank or a secondary tank. I just don't see the allure in trying to force the job into being a general purpose main tank when you're at such a disadvantage over significantly better tanks in PLD RUN and even PUP (where the situation allows - e.g. nuke setups where the automaton will keep hate easily off magic bursts and is virtually unkillable aside from death/doom/OHKO moves).

I tested it not long ago. It's actually +50 only for /PLD.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/47174-Freshly-Picked-Vana-diel-18-Digest?p=550491&viewfull=1#post550491

It's in the may 2015 patch update.

Nobody tested it thoroughfully to know the exact enmity values.
Personally it always felt very weak to me, compared to the usual enmity tools I deploy on RUN, where you can clearly notice a pretty huge difference.

Logic-wise Utsusemi during Yonin should work the same way Foil does, once you're in some targets' enmity list, so in theory it would be quite a powerful tool for tanking.
Thing is that, as I said before, I suspect the enmity values are really low.

Yes it does, and so what?
The fact PLD can cast cure spells is more for the enmity they generate than for the fact you have to rely on those to keep yourself up.
And RUNfencer surely doesn't rely on self regen4 or Vivacious Pulse with its 1min cooldown and low values.
Or Magic Fruit, or whatever you wanna call.
No, let's not consider Turm Mittens please, RUN was already an outstanding tank before they got introduced in game.

I don't see how the lack of self cures is the key factor why NIN is having issues being on par with RUN or PLD here.


Yes. They got asked several times about RMEA shurikens and they already replied why it will never happen and why instead it had to happen for guns and bows.

They could always change their minds of course but I wouldn't count on it.

Wow, everyone just wants to pick a fight today.
Because PLD can cast cure spells for enmity more than for keeping themselves up is precisely why my pipe dream suggestion was for high enmity on the hands in addition to adding a useful function to Utsusemi while the spell itself was doing little benefit. You aren't going to use Yonin unless you want to be tanking. You aren't going to benefit from the added enmity of Utsusemi if you aren't casting it. If having shadows wiped from AOEs and taking damage repeatedly is reducing your enmity, what is the harm of getting some HP back per shadow wiped? I mean, it is purely hypothetical, so why fight about it?

Utsusemi really doesn't need HP cured, but why not get X amount of cumulative enmity for each shadow casted. Or, if you want to stay away from enmity, but help with AoE damage, have each shadow give a set amount of Stoneskin

Sure, anything is better than nothing. I was just proposing that even something that already exists (Turms-like) + enmity would be interesting. The recovered HP was just a borrowed feature. Anything with more enmity and a unique bonus to Ustusemi would be interesting to use.

I'll see if I can do some testing on Utsusemi enmity under Yonin and get back to you all. It'd be nice to have some concrete data.

I actually would rather know the enmity values of jubaku , hojo, kurayami. I've never used them when tanking, but I didn't know yonin enhanced enmity of other stuff. Might be worth checking

I don't think your suggestion is any more unlikely than S-E making any other NIN changes to better facilitate tanking, so I'm all for wishful thinking hypothetical scenarios :)

Another change that would require minimal development effort and would allow for NIN to easily maintain high enmity is just to change the enmity values of some of the offensive ninjutsu (the last few comments about ninjutsu spell enmity values got me thinking). Just give a serious bump in VE/CE to the Ni/San elemental spells, and spinning the elemental wheel would have an actual purpose again. Would also allow S-E to keep the foe-targeting casting component of NIN that they seem insistent on maintaining despite the relatively low value it brings to the job.

If you want to go all out and combine this with Innin/Yonin "stances", maybe don't touch the enmity for the spells as a default, but have them modified by Innin/Yonin (and probably make those un-dispellable):

(1) Innin: elemental ninjutsu gets a substantial MAB/Macc/Magic Burst/etc. bonus for an offensive casting focus (the idea being enough of a buff to actually allow NIN to do some more significant magic damage)

(2) Yonin: elemental ninjutsu doesn't get any offensive boost, but instead generates much more enmity.

Just removing the positional front/behind requirements for yonin and innin I would be happy with.

At least we can cover all abyssea proc now for people like me who has not won master trial

Wat D:
I wasn't tryin to pick a fight with anyone, especially not with you.
I was just arguing against the logic of "NIN being a bad tank because it lacks self cures" because it looks quite clear to me that's not the reason why NIN is not as good as a tank as PLD and RUN.
Wasn't saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, just that it's not the missing key factor at play here.

Wut.
How are Abyssea proc weapon categories useful for someone who still hasn't conquered Master Trials?
Serious question, not gettin it D:

It's not "other stuff", it's just Utsusemi.
I mean Yonin of course gives +enmity so it's gonna boost the enmity values of everything, but what we were talking about was a spell-specific boost and that only happens to Utsusemi, according to SE at least.

I am referring to the mog bonanza rank 5 award which could net you a great sword. Currently only the shadowlord master trial give you the iridiance greatsword, only gswd wieldable by ninja