The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I trust your results, there's no reason to verify them again.

Maybe the JP wiki table is bonus damage for skillchains? I previously recorded more than 1700 Blade: Chi and used the magic damage formula to confirm that apex toads do not have Earth-specific damage resistance. I just today used the magic damage formula for apex bats and find no resistances/enhancements at all (outside of wind). The Kanji used in the table are certainly more complicated than needed if they wanted to just say 火 for "Fire" instead of 溶解 which Google Translates to "Dissolution."

Just to confirm, where did you pull the 1.5(mob damage taken) from for Darkness on apex crabs? The JP Wiki lists Apex Crabs at 130% so I just want to make sure I'm using the same source.

Skillchains will target the strongest element. So in the case of a darkness sc, it will target the ice weakness. This can be seen easily with an obi and ice weather too, since that will affect ice damage.

It is skillchain damage yeah. that's how the values were determined. it's not magic damage for nukes or Blade: Chi though.

You can read the JP guy's explantion here: https://w.atwiki.jp/bartlett3/pages/313.html
with google translate

It does affect resist rates though. 50% or lower generally forces a 1/2 resist or more but it depends on what you are using.

Oh right, thanks. I completely forgot about that property of multi-element skillchains.

It definitely makes sense to interpret the JP Wiki values as elemental skillchain damage only. Using Google Translate on all of the Kanji and comparing it to our English tier-1 skillchains, we get:

Fire - 溶解 - "Dissolution" - Liquefaction
Wind - 炸裂 - "Explosion" - Detonation
Thunder - 衝撃 - "Impact" - Impaction
Light - 貫通 - "Penetration" - Transfixion
Ice - 硬化 - "Curing" - Induration
Earth - 切断 - "Disconnect" - Scission
Water - 振動 - "Vibration" - Reverberation
Dark - 収縮 - "Shrinkage" - Compression



Thanks for clearing this up.

Sorry for derailing a bit for this.

Good to know then. I never nuke outside of MBs where I'm capping damage anyways. Still worth getting SC values to find specific resistances for the case of nuking, though.

I think I read in this thread that the addon Targetinfo is updated with elemental weaknesses for Sheol C targets, making it super easy to know which Hybrid WS to use (or not use) on NIN.

Am I right or did I just dream about it?

Was, but not sure if works after last update.

Was it TargetInfo or Infobar btw?
Because I wrote TargetInfo but I meant Infobar °-°

It was a post from Zigzagzig, and it's for InfoBar:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/37379/lua-addon-ideas/21#3607064

Ah I see, so it was a custom update and not "official".
You guys should submit those to the Windower github and have them implemented in the default Infobar then!

Houw would you all rank NIN in endgame? I want to level another job and its between NIN and DRG(I have multi jobs that meet endgame needs) I just want another project to work om.

22 of 22 lol

Absolute dead last. Maybe better than PUP because of the pup haters.

For low man and soloing NIN is really fun, lots of SC and MB you can play with, while also tanking.

If you're looking for pure DD, unfortunately savage blade does more damage than any other physical Katana WS, which sucks.
Hybrid WSs are really fun to play with and can do amazing damage, you just need to get the right buffs from GEO/BRD/COR to make the most of it.

Tanking as NIN is probably what I enjoy the most, lots of buffs to keep up with and also dishing out good damage at the same time, it's quite intense but it's fun and rewarding.
It's a lot easier if you play with DDs that maximise subtle blow sets to avoid too many AOE TP moves.
Unfortunately you can't really tank loads of mobs at the same time like PLD and RUN. NIN is mainly for single NMs and bosses. So you can't really tank as NIN much in now days endgame, some Ambuscades, Omen and a few Ody NMs.

NIN was really strong for some ambu months like the Iron giants, that one was brutal without NIN or ranged cheese (or hax)

Nobody will invite you on NIN for DPS (unless they are a friend or friendly)
Nobody will invite you on NIN to tank unless the flavor of the month is niche enough. No exceptions. You will never replace PLD or RUN anywhere.
Nobody will invite you on NIN to SC/MB, unless it's a cool MB party setup where the leader is you or you have a good rep of being a great Ninja.
Nearly nobody will invite you on NIN to use Hybrids, because SAM exists and it will destroy NIN comparably. Even for MLs, which it's fun to play on, but interchangeable with other DDs.

Overall, nearly nobody will give you strong endgame consideration for a party slot as Ninja, because it's not meta, but more of a fun job to mess around and do misc things on. DRG gets far more consideration as a DD than NIN, though Ninja can do a lot more. Still, nobody really cares.

With that being said, I would level NIN and work on that because its pretty fun compared to other stuff. If all you want to do is Savage Blade with a blue flying rat, have at it. That's what people will ask you to do if you DRG, which is also annoying. I would play NIN instead because it's somewhat unique and has an interesting feel to it, but I also enjoy DRG a lot if you like a high dps/hateless job. Also depends on what you have gear for already.

I've been farming with NIN in Sheol C for a few months now and it's pretty effective farming segments provided you are geared properly, mainly have an O.Sash and r15+ Path B Nyame.

At worst, you can Savage Blade and keep average DPS. You won't keep up with a well geared heavy DD job doing that, but your output won't be awful and you have the ability to avoid taking damage. Where you really get benefits is when you start hitting with hybrids against mobs weak to them, you can pretty consistently TP quickly, not take damage, and tear through certain mobs. The key is knowing which to use against what mobs, which takes time and experimentation. There are lists here that you can start with, although I've had mixed results with them (some more proficient than I say they are pretty accurate, so I'd default to them over myself since I have more variables than they do between runs).

The issue for me is the same as going in as DNC, your output really depends on the floors you get. For both jobs, I've been able to do well during segment farms, but I've also had runs where my output wasn't as good because we rolled crappy floors or the party didn't want to fight mobs that I do more damage against (e.g. Puks). So your output is dependent on several factors.

You won't see shouts for a NIN to C farm. You likely won't get into a PUG group with it unless they know about it. It's a lot of work to gear to do this effectively and it's a chicken/egg problem since you need segments to farm Bumba RP but need Nyame ranked to be effective at segment farms. I don't think there are may Gaol fights where NIN provides much value either. There are ambus where it's been effective in a tanking role and as a DD, but they are few and far between.

I swore I wouldn't play NIN again when I started this char, because it was my main job going back many years and I wanted something different. Yet, here I am, because it's such an engaging and fun job to play. I leveled it for one fight and it felt like wearing familiar old shoes. Just don't go in expecting a ton of love from the endgame community. It's better than people think it is, but what people think matters because that is what gets you into content, and it is still situational.

I'll always welcome more people playing Ninja, especially if they're already well-geared from their other jobs. While Ninja isn't necessarily the best at anything, it's easily one of the most fun jobs to play in 2022 due to its versatility and high attack rate. There are still a lot of problems with Ninja, though.

Ninja has a relatively high skill floor, meaning it requires a higher investment to perform well on Ninja than it does for other DD jobs. Ninja is a fairly popular job, but because of this large investment requirement, Ninja's damage potential is poorly-represented in the mid- and end-game pug community and it is rarely considered for content where Migawari or Utsusemi don't allow players to skip mechanics.

While the high skill floor is a turn-off for many players, the high skill ceiling is what makes Ninja so fun to play. Off the top of my head, an experienced Ninja can provide consistent multi-step skillchains, moderate magic bursts, moderate enfeebles, low TP feed, emergency evasion+parry tanking, and powerful hybrid weapon skills that generate low enmity. Additionally, Ninja performs relatively well with low/trust buffs due to the number of Dual Wield options we have. But for the average player, it's a safer bet to bring a pug Samurai or Dark Knight than a pug Ninja so we're often excluded from parties.

Ninja's physical katana weapon skills are relatively weak, causing us to rely on Savage Blade for maximum physical damage output in typical weapon skill spam situations. I believe Dragoon relies heavily on Savage Blade these days as well, though. Blades: Chi/Teki/To are darkness-based hybrid weapon skills and are the exception to Ninja's weapon skill damage problem. In a situation where these hybrid weapon skills work, Ninja should not lose to any other DD except Samurai, who has access to the light-based hybrids. When these weapon skills work, they can easily hit for 80k or more damage and return little enmity generation due to most of their damage being magical.

Because Ninja can build glass-canon TP sets when maintaining shadows, it can achieve 100% Critical Hit Rate while behind an enemy with Innin, which can be pretty fun with Kannagi AM3. Unfortunately, Blade: Hi is a bad weapon skill so Kannagi doesn't have many other applications. Outside of the Qutrub v1 Ambuscade, I'm not sure where this would be used.


In terms of end-game DPS, I'd place a well-geared (and properly buffed) Ninja moderately high.
Odyssey
The English-speaking community hasn't found a place for Ninja in Atonements 3 and 4 Odyssey Gaol yet, but it can be one of the best jobs for segment runs. Knowing when to use Savage Blade for 50k damage and when to use Hybrids for 50k-100k damage in Odyssey C can facilitate 11k-13k segment runs consistently, provided that the rest of your party is contributing appropriately.

Dynamis [D]
Due to the nature of hybrid weapon skills, Ninja easily holds a top2 spot for DPS in Dynamis Jeuno (green statues) and Dynamis Bastok (blue statues; Samurai gets green statues), with Samurai holding the other top2 spot. Ninja hybrids perform well in Dynamis Windurst (green statues) as well, but Dynamis San d'Oria is unforgiving for jobs that dual wield due to Orcish Counterstance. For Dynamis Wave 3 (all zones): if your party brings a Red Mage for Frazzle and a Geomancer for Malaise, then Ninja and Samurai will easily be outputting 70k-100k hybrid weapon skills every 1500 TP with no risk of pulling hate off the tank.

Ambuscade
There are a handful of Ambuscade v1 fights where Ninja performs well enough to be given a spot regularly. I can't remember many off the top of my head, but any of them where Utsusemi or Migawari work (Iron Giants, 6x Mamool mages, Dullahan, etc) or where hybrid weapon skills work, like Ramuh.

Omen
Omen hasn't been end-game content for a long time, but a well-geared Ninja will have little trouble soloing Gin, Fu, Kin, and Kei with five trusts. Kyou (and Ou) require trusts with over ~1700 HP to survive the 10k damage split. You'll need some specific Stewpot food and the Great Adamantoise cheer effect from Monster Rearing to consistently defeat Fu/Ou outside of trust campaigns. Ninja is not unique to soloing Omen. I believe any well-geared DD should have little trouble with trusts against Omen bosses these days.

Only if you want slashing damage.


NIN probably shouldn't run with main group, but go solo mobs that are weak to hybrids. You don't need healer assist for them. You should only group for buffs.

Didn't expect so many varying answers lol. Nin for me is more a solo thing then taking it with groups. I pretty much banished to the IGEO REMABRD realm.


Do the Hybrid WS require(need) the tp bonus offhand? Also I've been told the Aeonic/relic is the way to go is this true? Thirdly is Nagi worth making? I've seen quite a few nins mainhanding it.

This is why you're not supposed to tell people you have BRD.

On modern content, hybrids should use Kunimitsu off-hand for the extra stats, especially Accuracy, Magic Accuracy, and Weapon skill damage. I only use Hitaki for Savage Blade spam with Naegling.

Heishi is Ninja's best main-hand katana by far. Kikoku is a good starter weapon if you don't have access to Heishi, but you'll likely rarely use Kikoku after you become comfortable multi-stepping with Heishi. If you have the gil lying around, an R15 Kikoku costs about 103M on Asura right now. Even if you rarely use it, I think Kikoku is a good weapon and worth having. If you don't have access to Heishi, then definitely buy an R15 Kikoku.

No. From my experience, Nagi is only good if you are below Haste cap. The AM3 effect helps TP generation, but the TP Bonus stat on Heishi increases weapon skill damage by too much for Nagi to keep up with when haste capped.

A Nagi currently costs about 182M (244M for R15) on Asura. If you've got that kind of gil lying around, I recommend you first buy an Orpheus's Sash and/or an R15 Kikoku instead.

Since people were talking about hybrids with nyame 25 here's a parse on apex crabs/pugils in Dho Gates with trusts. I stopped at 10 million damage.



Average WS: 49066

NIN/DRG
Master Level 21
Sylvie, Qultada, King, Ygnas, Monber
Food: Popo. con Queso
Main: Heishi R15
Sub: Kunimitsu R25

Blade: To>Blade: Chi (>Raiton: San or Blade: To if the mob survived depending on HP.)

TP:
WS:
Kakka: Yes
Utsusemi: No
Innin: No

Thanks for doing this! I know people were saying it was higher but providing numbers really helps me see by just how much... 2-3 times better than what I would expect with my best Physical WS's. Wow... staggering DPS! Can't get my Nyame upgraded fast enough! Thx again for taking the time to do the test for those that can't Reign!

I'm going to head out today and see what numbers I get with my current setup on R0 for comparison... I know they will be far lower but I'm really interested to see just how much difference those 25 Levels make... Expecting it to be in the 3k-4k DPS range so staggering doesn't even begin to explain what difference those 4 pieces of gear make!

Thanks for helping show me the light as DPS is actually far more than I expected when using the specific setup above, even with Nyame R0. I'm still tinkering with timing on weaponskills and such but getting 6-7k average DPS on crabs, fish and bats which is well more than I was expecting. I needed something to tinker with while getting master level 21-30 so thanks! :)

Anyone have a good gearset for aeolian edge on NIN they can share? Been trying to put one together and I’d like to pick your brains here.

Thank you

Thanks for this. Capped malevolence is a myth for me. Lol. What other daggers can you recommend? I’m off handing TP bonus.

Funny thing. I went to make some SR yesterday and got capped Malevolence, Taming Sari, Witching Robe, Leyline Gloves, Fanatic Gloves, Ochu and Jumalik Helm..

EDIT: while writing this, I got another max aug Fanatic Gloves...