The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Magic burst question... best slots to use to hit 40MBB cap? Contenders include:

Kunimitsu: MBB+10
Warder's Charm +1 (R15): MBB+10
Static Earring: MBB+5
Locus Ring: MBB+5
Hachiya Kyahan +3: MBB+10
*Nyame Helm/Gauntlets/Sollerets: MBB+5 each
*Nyame Mail: MBB+7
*Nyame Flanchard: MBB+6
Herculean gear: MBB+8 max (Fern stones), higher with DM augs
Anything else I'm overlooking?

*Nyame C path is obviously good, but I wouldn't assume anyone has that so just working off of the base stats - which are still quite strong for INT/Macc/MAB/MBB.

One unknown for me is whether Aeonic Aftermath's "Increases magic burst potency" counts toward the 40MBB cap. I thiiiiink the answer is no and am currently assuming that, but not entirely sure. If anyone can verify, please do.

The fairly straightforward calls:
1) Kunimitsu (MBB+10) - the easiest decision
2) Warder's +1 (MBB+10) - also seems like a straightforward choice
3) Nyame legs (MBB+6). The combo of MBB+6 MAB+30 Macc+40 INT+44 seems pretty damn hard to beat even with a fantastic Herculean augment, since even with fantastic MBB+ augment you still have no MAB/Macc without augment (and INT-15 versus Nyame).
4) Locus Ring (MBB+5)

And then it gets more challenging for that last 9~10 to cap (or close to it)...
- Nyame body MBB+7 and additional INT+22 means giving up Samnuha's MBB II +8. Similar Macc/MAB (Nyame INT+42/MAB+30/Macc+40, Samnuha max augs: INT+20/MAB+35/Macc+38)
- Nyame Hands +5 looks like a good pick, with the exception of Futae nukes (where Empy +1 hands make for some really good magic bursts).
- Hachiya +3 feet would mean giving up the godly Mochi+3 feet, so no thanks.
- Am I gonna have to go get a new Apocalypse Nigh earring on my non-mage character? I still occasionally use Ethereal on like... RUN PLD, but maybe I'll change it out.

Kinda feeling like something like this may be ideal:
ItemSet 383766
MBB+41 (slightly overcapped), MBB II+13

And if using Futae, swap in Empy+1 hands... Kinda feel like being uncapped at MBB+36/MBB II+13 (so basically, total MBB of 49) is the better call here over Nyame (MBB+40/MBB II+5, with INT+22 and slightly less MAB/Macc).

I'm also sort of assuming/hoping Empy+3 hands become the end-all nuking piece, perhaps making this decision a lot less relevant. Bump that 14% (which is actually MAB+14 on ninjutsu) up to like MAB/Macc+40~50, stick some MBB or MBB II on there, keep the Futae bonus and maybe give that a small bump, and yeeeeeeahhh I like the sound of that.

I posted this few months ago and updated for R25.

You can probably use it to answer your questions.

Nyame Body with Metamorph Ring R15 seems to be better than Samnuha with Locus.
Also Ghastly Tathlum R15 is way better.

I did a bunch of testing with this la
I did a bunch of testing with this while I did my parsing for the REMA's. You are very close with the above. Few notes. 1. As Simon says the Tathlum +1 is by far the best option. The boost from INT is very strong. 2. DO NOT use an Ochu. I know you didn't but I have been told many times in the last few weeks that people are swapping Kuni out for Ochu for the MBII damage, this is NOT a good idea as I'm sure your aware. 3. This leaves the coat and ring option, which are really the only two choices here. Now I've been remiss in sharing these results as I'm sure people are going to argue with them but I've done the test over and over and in every single test these are the results I get. The INT Boost form Nyame and Meta is apparently too much for the Magic Boost Bonus to overcome as I find the most potent set with only 36% of Bonus 1 and only 5% of bonus II. Now as you can see below, the combinations are all VERY close to each other, but it appears from my results that Meta is by far better then locus and that Samn is slightly behind Nyame. All test were run on Apex bats repeatedly of the exact same level (130) with Sylvie and Star Sibyl as only trust.

Nyame/Locus = 39570
Samn/Locus = 40676
Samn/Meta = 40959
Nyame/Meta = 41337

Very detailed video for fighting apex bats.
Why squid sushi?
Are hybrid WS really not best for killing apex for NIN?

Also is CP really endgame?

Good stuff, thanks guys. It also appears that Static earring is never worth it for non-Futae MBs. Lugra+1 is not something I often see in suggested NIN nuke sets, but played with that after your helpful Ghastly Tathlum/Metamorph Ring INT comments... and using Simon's sheet, Lugra+1 is showing up as the single best earring from dusk-dawn, and 3rd place (and only slightly behind Crematio) from dawn-dusk. For simplicity's sake, if you aren't automating a dawn-dusk set and want to just go Friomisi/Lugra+1 full time, it's a pretty minor loss during the 10 dawn-dusk hours... and it's far better to use Lugra at night.

1) Lugra +1 (INT+16 dusk-dawn)
2) Friomisi
3) Crematio
4) Lugra +1 (INT+8, dawn-dusk)
5) Static


Also gonna have to play more with Futae sets. I thiiiink I'm properly reflecting Hattori+1 hands in Simon's sheet by plugging in INT+14 MAB+14 and "Misc" 24% (the Futae+24 is a multiplier added after MAB and basically works like Relic+3 feet, right?). Anyway, if that is the case it's interesting in that it makes MBB more valuable in other slots... such as, Static beating Friomisi (though perhaps there are more optimal swaps, like I said will have to mess with that set a bit to see).

You need to keep in mind that this sheet is not exactly made to compare gear. More to estimate NIN nukes potency on various things. For example non MB set has hard coded +values for INT, MAB and MDMG for Crematio/Shiva+1/Baetyl. So if you want to compare items in non MB nukes, you probably should remove it.

If you want to simulate Hattori Tekko I think Misc 24% is probably wrong.

It this calculation:

Futtae +50% is that bolded (cant bold code :D) *1.5
I think Hattori Tekko adds to that multiplier and make it 1.74

Point taken. Still seems that Lugra +1's INT+16 is a winner on MBs, and even during dawn-dusk INT+8 is gonna be fairly competitive with the slightly stronger alternative of Crematio. With Metamorph Ring +1 having the same INT+16 (plus some Macc) and performing so well, that's what made me even think to try Lugra+1, which I really just overlooked before.

Think I'm gonna move to Fromisi/Lugra+1 fulltime (I don't automate game hour specific sets), will go play with it a bit when I get a chance though.

"Why squid sushi?" Do you mean why in the spreadsheets did I use Sublime Sushi? Because for apex bats its needed for capping accuracy and ranged accuracy.

"Are hybrid WS really not best for killing apex for NIN?" No not even close in the situation we are showing here. Chi damage remains fairly low on these without proper gear and most importantly buffs from other people. That's before you even take into account all the damage loss from not Skill chaining and Magic Bursting. Now if you have Full Nyame R30 and had perfect buffs, it's might be possible that you could keep up with the damage shown here which includes skillchain and magic burst damage that you would not be doing with chi spam but your also talking about an entirely different situation with a party of people buffing you instead of you just haste capped with Sylvie.

"Also is CP really end game?" Not entirely sure what your asking here but if your saying Apex Bats aren't "End Game", than I agree. But this wasn't a video going over how these perform in "End Game" content as that is going to be entirely subjective to the event your in, mob your fighting and buffs you have. This was a video comparing all of the end game weapons using the two clearest methods we have, the spreadsheet and a direct parse comparisons with the exact same buffs (haste cap only) on the exact same mobs (Apex bats).

The ones you are fighting in the video certainly don't require sushi.

In the video you say squid and as others pointed out I would be surprised you need it to cap on apex bats.

Have you played around with R25 Nyame and hybrids on apex?

You talk about "Endgame weapons" so I just find it odd to compare them on something that is not really endgame. The video opens up talking about different situations but then everything is compared on apex bats or am I missing something?

That's because in the video I'm fighting them in my Malignance set which makes Accuracy and Ranged Accuracy an non-issue. In the spreadsheet (which is where we are talking about using the sublime sushi) we are using the ideal TP sets for DPS. For some this will include the adhemarx2, kendat, samuh and Hec Feet combo that has been BiS for TP for the past years. In this set you absolutely need sushi to cap both accuracy and boost your ranged accuracy. Now if you are using the more present day BiS set including Tatenashi, you are right you can cap your accuracy with that set, however your ranged accuracy is still 250+ below cap which is going to kill the tp gain from Daken throws with that tp set, hence the recommendation to use ranged accuracy food in this situation.

As I explained above, you actually do need sushi to cap ranged accuracy when using BiS tp sets.

Have you played around with R25 Nyame and hybrids on apex?[/quote]

No I don't have augmented Nyame yet. I welcome any video you have showing unbuffed sustained DPS on apex bats that beats the results shown here of what these weapons achieve.

You talk about "Endgame weapons" so I just find it odd to compare them on something that is not really endgame. The video opens up talking about different situations but then everything is compared on apex bats or am I missing something?[/quote]

I think you are missing something yes. I specifically explain at 14:35 that I won't be going into End Game Parse results as those are entirely dependent on the buffs you have, what your fighting, skillchain/mb strategy, etc. And that in those situations you should be relaying on the max buff spreadsheet data that we had just gone over and then working with your group to come up with the best overall dps for that situation.

This was simply a video showing how these End Game weapons compared on an even playing field both on the spreadsheet in unbuffed and max buff situations as well as parse results of an unbuffed situation on apex bats.

Either you're not using the same stats for the mob in the spreadsheet or you just don't know how little is required.

I can cap acc on both melee and ranged without using any food, rings, earrings, or a waist. I am using ken+1 feet though in place of herc because I don't own any herc. my bonnet and hands are both path B. ML0 as well and I'm still 73 accuracy over what I need for ranged cap.

Even with an set of Heishi(R15)/Kunimitsu(R0) with Adhemar +1 B head/hands, Samnuha Tights, Ken+1 feet (for argument's sake, to avoid randomness of Herc augs), and Acc-10 from Dedition Earring I get 1232/1214 on main/offhand, and 1054 Racc (which gets an additional ~Racc+100 boost for Daken procs). That's before any food/buffs.

These days that's a set I would normally only use on nearly trash tier content though, more realistically I'd probably go with some combo of Ken+1/Malignance on anything of consequence. Some examples:

5/5 Ken+1: 1356/1338 melee Acc, 1199 Racc
4/5 Malignance and Adhemar+1 hands (Lilith refuses to give me gloves): 1329/1311 melee Acc, 1221 Racc (so, basically the same as melee acc when accounting for Daken Racc bonus)

And again, that's with no food or buffs, and I'm only ML3 right now (been preoccupied with other jobs for leveling lately lol).

I don't know if it's a mistake but he says 136 Apex bats for the spreadsheet part then goes to 128-130 Apex Bats in Dho Gates later in the video.

That is correct the spreadsheet calculates the level of the bats at 136 which is what those results are ran against.

As you say the bats done for parse results where I'm at are level 128-130.

This is also why I drew no direct comparisons between the spreadsheet data and the parse data and compared each only to it's own situation.

This may be partly why you need more ranged accuracy in the spreadsheet than people are expecting when fighting their normal apex bats in Dho, they are being calculated at 6-8 levels higher in the spreadsheet.

The stats in the sheet are also incorrect for those bats.

You have these stats for the 136 bats:

They should be:

The ones in gates should be:

The 130 bats are of the triple family and the others are single family.

the 136 bats are in Outer Ra'Kaznar.

The Ninja hybrid weapon skills skillchain decently well with each other. If I remember correctly, most Apex enemies have relatively low magic evasion, so I'm not entirely convinced that any of the examples in your video beat a proper Hybrid skillchain (To-Chi-To or To-Teki-Shun-Shun for example), especially if you wanted to magic burst off of them. What kind of numbers are you putting out for Blade: Chi/To on those Lv130 bats?

I'm not able to easily obtain a long parse at the camp you used due to the bots on Asura claiming everything, but, with my small sample size of about ~20 bats, even with only 0%-15% haste and no food, I was consistently defeating those same bats within 25-35 seconds with To-Chi-To + Chi. This kill time appears to actually be better than what I'm seeing in the few kills you show in your video in all examples, and would be even shorter with capped haste.

For reference, I was doing about 20k-35k damage per Blade:To/Chi, with spikes over 45k, and 11k-17k Blade: Shun. The damage is definitely there when completely unbuffed on Apex bats.

Yes even without buffs hybrids can be very good against apex mobs as long as the elements work out... but they get so much better with buffs that if I don't have a geo with me I will come as any other DD job

I feel like its a waste not to take advantage of malaise/frailty allowing easy capped damage with hybrids on most apex mobs they die before SC even goes off most of the time, only do the SC in case you get the occasional uncapped damage ws to make sure it dies after 2nd ws.

That is why I was confused by the lack of talk for apex, even with just trust buffs I would think should get good numbers.

I'll happily go ahead and give this a test but I won't be going by time it takes to kill, I'll be going by actual sustained dps over 1+M DPS. Also just to note the multistep skillchain with shun kills them in 25-30 seconds, check the last example in the vid, that's a bit slow for the norm. Will be interested to see if any of the combo's you mention keep up because I will also have to use TP Katana in offhand to even consider making this work which is going to hurt MB damage substantially. This was also a large reason why it was left out of this comparison, in order to make hybrid work you have to change several of the constants I was using for comparison such as offhand weapon and food. I also don't have augmented Nyame, meaning any comparison would only draw criticism that it wasn't done on the proper gear but none the less here I go apparently.

Will report back results with vids in a few days as I have family in for the weekend.

Agreed. Izanami's point though, was that Logical made the video excluding hybrids, where there's good reason to believe hybrid WS outperforms standard NIN multistep. At the very least, it should be included in the sims.

In a fair comparison, you should swap OH to a MAB katana, even if it means losing TP. I mean, mobs die in one SC+MB, right? The TP loss should not be that significant. It's just for MB and then swap back for TP. But if it dies from the MB anyways, it matters not, since you should be going by kill speed and not virtual dps.

I wouldn't be surprised if the kills in the video are your slower kills, but the last Ten-Kamu-Shun-Shun-Raiton-Raiton example at timestamp 24:53 starts with 535 pre-TP and still takes 33 seconds. The final example of the video at timestamp 25:28 takes 45 seconds, but uses a worse skillchain.

I don't mean to sound rude, but please don't waste your time with in-game testing the hybrids if you don't have augmented Nyame. The damage difference between R0 and R25 is just too large to ignore. I see a single Blade: Chi at timestamp 25:28 in your video doing 10.4k damage, which is half of my minimum damage using R25 Nyame and R25 Kunimitsu. I used Kunimitsu for my earlier testing because it is in these no/low-buff scenarios that you can't afford to lose accuracy with Hitaki.

Edit: I just noticed you used Kannagi as your main-hand for the Blade: Chi I mentioned earlier. This would lower your damage dealt by a significant amount and makes my previous comparison unfair. Your true Blade: Chi damage would likely be much higher than 10.4k when using Heishi, but not by enough to consider it a worthwhile test with unaugmented Nyame.

Hybrids can fall of pretty fast on some mobs, though. Apex Bats take 130% of Earth, so they are a fine target, but Apex Toads take 85% from Earth and also have a 25% MDT for a total of 63.75% taken.

And just to nitpick, but a spreadsheet isn't a simulation. And I don't think the sheet has hybrids anyways.

You bring to mind kind of why I'm so confused that all of this is even being discussed. Not by you but by so many today. I've said this many times but I'll say it again in case it was missed. This video was meant to compare REMA and SU5 weapons and how they compare directly in two different scenario's that I could create.
1. A spreadsheet comparison comparing each WEAPON and how it performs in ideal unbuffed and buffed situations against apex bats level 136.
2. A parse comparison comparing each WEAPON and how it compares to the others. Since we are only comparing the REMA and SU5 weapons I specifically keep the TP set and offhand weapon the same so only the main weapon and it's ws set vs level 128-130 apex bats is what changes.

Now in response to this video on end game weapons and how they compare in those two situations I've been questioned primarily on why
1. I didn't cover the weapons against different "end game" enemies.
2. I didn't cover other Hybrid weaponskill/skillchain combinations that include different situations (such as TP katana) and nyame gear I don't have.

Neither of those are the situation I was testing in this video, which is what's leading to my confusion. I mean the spreadsheet doesn't' even calculate Hybrid ws's.

It seems people seem to think this was some kind of end all be all for weapons and weaponskills and end game play on Ninja. It's NOT. It's just as it says, a video directly comparing end game weapons in these two situations. That is all.

All that being said. Let's just take all that out of it though and still consider what's being said by you and many about this video. That if I use Heishi used with Hitaki (and even swapping to MAB Katana and back again for each bat for extra crazyness) with Nyame R25 that it's going to to lead to overall more DPS. Based on what others who have Nyame R25 have said I can see this as entirely possible. What does this change about the video I made though? Again leading to my confusion... is the point that in this different situation that Heishi is even more in first place then the video shows? Um... ok I agree.

Just a quick correction on this point in terms of apex bats and toads specifically, and potentially all apex in general. You are correct that there are many other situations where all or specific hybrids are just not feasible due to enemy magic damage taken and elemental resistance tiers, but since we're specifically discussing apex enemies here, I felt I should make this post.

I showed in this post that Apex Toads do have MDT-25%, but don't have any additional Earth elemental damage mitigation. The post by Reain immediately following mine suggests that the table on the Japanese wiki provides something related to resist tiers, not damage multipliers directly.

I just tested this on the Lv128-130 Apex Bats using the equation and coefficients provided on BG Wiki for elemental damage. I found that Lv128-130 Apex Bats have no enhanced/reduced elemental damage taken for Earth, Ice, Water, Fire, or Thunder elements. This means that the Ninja Hybrids are not directly affected by elemental damage multipliers for for Apex Bats. My observed Aero spell damage was not matching my calculation, but this was likely due some combination of me not including Marin Staff properly in my old spreadsheet and Bat Trio's species weakness to Wind damage.

Image of parameters used in the calculations for verification if needed:
Bonus information: A well-prepared ML0 Ninja with the standard COR+BRD+GEO(malaise) at Apex Idle Drifters is incredibly powerful as long as you pay attention to the colors (elements) of your target. If you plan your 3-step hybrid skillchain based on the enemy's element, then you can easily 3-shot all drifters that get tagged with Malaise and aren't super resistant to your hybrid's element. This does require that your GEO uses a bubble specifically for hybrids, so it is best done with another NIN or a SAM in the party.

They certainly take less from skill chains and they line up perfectly with 85% earth and 25% MDT reduction for the 63.75% total.

Here is a result of a third step darkness SC on DRK, so no traits, with 7 SC damage in gear on an apex crab that had just put up shell TP move. Which is not +100 MDB wiki used to have, it's a 50% MDT. So in the case of skillchains, they most certainly take more damage.

Closing damage was 13510
(13510 * 1.5 * 1.07 + 217) * 1.5(mob damage taken) * 0.5 = 16425.4125
my closing SC damage was 16425

I even specifically checked with a scission SC the other day on toads to verify it, but I can go do it again.

Apex Toads. Closing ws did 4166, skillchain did 1466

(4166 * 0.5 + 217) * 0.85 * 0.75 = 1466.25