The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Absolutely this. There's no good reason to gear for ranged stats at the expense of melee (excluding obvious unusual stuff like skilling up throwing).

Even the 119 shuriken are a slightly weaker hit than a single katana hit. And they can't proc 2~4 times like DA/TA/QA/OAT on melee weapons can.

I think it's wise to look at ranged stats as simply a bonus on a piece you might otherwise want to use anyway. Mochi+1 body or Yokaze Mantle. Or Ej/Iqabi Necklaces and Hachi+1 legs in an Acc set. But using pieces that are a substantial loss of melee stats just to buff a weaker and less frequent Daken hit isn't a good idea. Stuff like Hachiya+1 hands falls into this category for me.


DNC isn't getting hurt at all. Haste Samba is JA Haste and (like equipment and magical haste) does not further reduce TP/hit if you exceed the delay reduction cap - unlike DW. In fact, DNC is hurt less than other DW jobs as far as TP/hit is concerned, because 10% JA haste from Samba (DNC main) means they need less DW to reach capped reduction.

So, just don't use DW gear on your DNC (or other DW job) when you're already at capped delay reduction. No TP/hit penalty. Besides, you don't want to be using DW gear ANYWAY when you're already capping reduction, since it's not adding a thing and there are valuable stats on other pieces.

Again, S-E never even hinted that they were going to just buff TP/hit for DW jobs. They were focused on removing the penalty which is easy enough to avoid anyway by gearing intelligently. Rough guideline: if you're getting party haste buffs (Marches+Haste), swap your DW gear out for something else.

For DW jobs, they seem to have wanted to buff them in different aspects:

NIN: damage/TP directly from extra attacks

DNC: major adjustments to debuffing ability, substantial B+ to A+ main weapon skill change

BLU: continued addition of more spells/traits

THF: um... yeah, they'll get to that maybe. They did say something about looking at more powerful enmity tools (for instance a Decoy Shot like ability for melee hits, as opposed to a 1-hit TA). But THF does get the most invites to group content of any of the native DW jobs thanks to TH, so maybe it was prioritized lower due to that.

unfortunately scoreboard doesn't seem to be recognizing daken ranged attack procs during sange which makes this a huge pain the butt to parse so I did some work manually tallying it from combat log.

25% gearhaste, pure solo no trusts, target Cliffhanger Toad in marjami.

332 throwing skill
761 racc , 833 Ratk (hedgehog pie)
Nin/Rng
96+93 Str
112+107 Dex
99+132 Agi

Single wield OaT taikogane with activated Sange, ~16 Daken hits, all pummeling for 175->186 damage over elapsed time ~45 seconds deals average ~2950 total Daken damage.
Which makes Daken damage during sange an extra 65dps in this test.

This is a small data set from a couple targets when sange was up. Fully buffed the daken sange damage would be way higher, but it seems to be a nice chunk of burst dps solo nonetheless.
Maybe kparse or something else can measure correctly. I don't think I can reliably measure this with trusts since the buffs aren't consistent using Koru/Ulmia/Joachim.

KParser?

A preliminary parse regarding the Daken Accuracy bonus shows it to be pretty significant. Adjusted my gear so that my main-hand accuracy and ranged accuracy were the same at 803. Removed my off-hand just to remove that differing accuracy from the equation. Also removed any multi-hit gear. So can easily see the proc rate.

Starting examining a THF Skeleton in Outer Ra'Kaznar. Messing with sets until I could move it from 'high evasion', somewhere between 866 and 873. And somewhere between 897 and 908 to get it to 'low evasion'. It was EM at 114, and I was 116 in the testing set.

My melee hit:miss ratio was 11:24 or 31.43%, and ranged was 11:1 or 91.67%. And the proc rate is about 34.28%.

Again this was preliminary testing and just one mob. Grain of salt. I'll update with more as I get it. :p

I checked mine with /checkparam and I don't think Daken's acc trait was factored into the result. So I'm not thinking that's going to be a method to test daken's acc bonus.

It will need a lot more samples but you're finding what I've found. Daken has a huge accuracy bonus. It feels so NICE to get love for Ninja again... this is a forgotten sensation.

If any NIN know how/are able to, I could really use a packet cap of a Daken attack round. Packet type is probably 0x28.

5/5 Sange is capping Daken ranged acc on everything in Marjami with only 750ish base racc and 340ish throwing.
Having to turn off filters to get kparser makes me lag to hell getting data.
I think i'd prefer to wait until scoreboard works again since that works off packets and I can keep my filters on.

Yeah sample size is small but good to know! Will definitely have to do some testing/parses this coming weekend. It's great to hear that Daken has such a big acc buff. I feel NIN has been on a steady climb in terms of gear/buffs/and now this update.

Yeah, I'm working on it on the sample size. :p Here's what I have so far.

It's like it's got a native 100 Racc to it. HA.

Is that from skeletons in Ra'kaz? you should try something weak to piercing like the twitherym camp.

On less hard stuff (or piercing weak) the crit and average damage should look more like this marjami data.

Of course on piercing weak we'll see a nicer return on dmg, but honestly it's nice to have 2 different damage types now! Even if one is pretty limited (piercing).

Edit: (Can you tell I'm stupid excited to get home from work and play around with it without having to remote in?)

The marjami targets are just frog and jagil so far, I didn't go after butterflies or birds yet which might be even better.

I'm just testing Accuracy. But yeah on the skeletons.

Going on a Stryx killing spree, 1004 ratk + dia3 , Daken does easily 300 damage a hit now.
Need to cap skill and borrow a geomancer to see what peak damage is for this.

chances are it follows the same formula as other ranged attacks: ratio caps at 3.0 and doesn't have varying damage - so it does base damage x3 with capped attack before damage type modifiers

Gonna call it for testing, at least for now, but these are my final results.


So yeah, as Langly said, it's looking like about Ranged Accuracy +100 on Daken procs. I'm curious if it stacks with the +100 on Sange. I'm assuming so, and I really don't want to spend stacks and stacks of shurikens to find out. lol. Proc rate matches with what they said at about 39.12% proc rate.

Oh, and I just saw someone asked what our Ranged Accuracy was on the last page. In my normal fodder TP set with the Hoppa Shuriken(+215skill, +10racc), it's 782(effectively about 882 with Daken, and I'm assuming 982 with Sange). For reference off-hand is 774, main is 822.

I would like to point out that the below assertion is slightly incorrect in terms of comparing shurikens versus katana base damage.

versus piercing:
Daken from a D92 shuriken beats a single noncritical white damage hit from a Raimitsukane (D122) in a tp phase set with no +ratk gearing on butterflies/birds.
Raimitsukane hits with 1100atk on stryx targets have to crit to roughly match daken damage with ~900 ratk.
If you use a weaker katana like OaT taikogane and are atk starved, daken strikes are 2x the damage of noncrit katana hits on piercing weak targets.

The piercing advantage of the shuriken is obvious versus those targets, but significant to point out that makes ninjas even more buff versus piercing weak targets than before.

versus normal target that do not exhibit piercing weakness, with same atk/ratk values as above and dia3, d92 shuriken hits slightly harder than weaker katanas like taikogane when comparing hits that don't crit (D 110)

Yes katana white damage for a given combat round is a lion's share of the damage even with sange active, I was just bothered by the generalization that a single daken hit is weaker than a single katana hit when there is plenty of scenarios where that isn't the case at all.

I'm well aware of this. However, I don't think you are fully grasping what is being said.


Magic haste cap: 43.75%
Equipment: 25%
JA cap: 25%

Total cap: 80%

For the DNC in question, assume 10% JA, 25% Equipment, 43.75% magic haste.

10+43.75+25= 78.75%

So even before counting DW attack speed bonuses, a DNC with buffs is already only 1.25% from the cap.

Consider that the DNC in question has 30% DW that he or she cannot remove.

(1-30%)(1-78.75%)= (.7)(.2125)= .14875 delay %, or 85.125% Haste

That's ~5.125% past the cap, meaning some of just that innate DW is hurting their TP/hit in a way that they can do nothing about. They could adjust buffs, but that may not interact well with other the other melees in the party. Or their buff types just don't allow removing smaller quantities for something else equally beneficially as gaining TP/hit at capped haste.

I think dw jobs just need to realize, you dont need 25% gear haste. dropping gear haste as you approach cap.

That's pretty hard now with all iLvl gear having plenty of Haste on it. lol.

Yeah, this isn't 2010.

getting down to 19/20% is viable in ilvl. theres even an example in the OP specifically for this situation.

You're aware you don't HAVE to get haste spell, right? Just ask your mage not to cast it on you if it's messing you up that badly and you're over cap due to DW trait you can't remove. With 2x Marches (+5), 25% equipment, and 5/5 Haste Samba, you're still under cap after DW IV trait (30% DW). Need ~10-11 DW to cap.

I'm not arguing that it isn't still kind of dumb that DW in excess of delay reduction cap reduces TP. It is silly, and probably should be changed anyway. Doesn't do anything for "balance" to keep it in and certainly wouldn't do anything to make DW jobs overpowered by correcting the issue.

But it's equally silly to seriously argue that the very minor TP/hit reduction that DNC (or any DW job) might get hit with is really that significant, and that it's some huge burden on the job that the discussed changes didn't happen. DNC got a MUCH larger boost by the fantastic debuffing utility the last couple updates have brought, and the B+ to A+ skill change, than they would have seen if they ended up getting a tiny bit more TP per swing in heavily buffed situations (and let's be honest, even when you are bringing a DNC to group content it doesn't exactly get priority slots in DD parties if your DDs are any good).

I think you guys are in the wrong job forum :x

Worst part about this change is that swapping back to a Shuriken takes off your lockstyle :/ Also does the AF2 body need to be worn on activation for Sange or while it's up?

Ratk modification is not reflected in /checkparam when you activate sange with the body on unfortunately when I tried it in town.
With all my damage tests on monsters I only used Mochi. chainmail +1 since I don't own any better ninja body (like mesy haubergeon).

If it does need to be worn during sange for the extra 100ratk, and there is some buff/target scenario where 1 minute out of every 3 can't be spent wearing a mochi. body +1 i'd love to know what it is (129+ incursion?)

Given my experience in BLU... An easy way to fix DNC would be to give it store-TP (up to 3 if need be) at similar levels THF gains DW. THF doesn't really need the fix since TA procing so much WAY over compensates.
And BLU can set both TA AND store TP.
DNC at the moment is the only other DW that needs a fixer and store TP is a fast and easy solution.
Daken seems to be a decent "that's one way to do it" "fix" for DW gimping TP returns.

But most importantly, Santi's right. This be NIN. Not THF, BLU, or DNC.

This is true. But a NIN has the exact same DW concern (which is why I think it's odd to say DNC is "hurt more" by a change not happening).

Assuming capped equipment haste, a NIN with 2x Ghorn marches and haste has 79.69% delay reduction after accounting for DW trait. One point of DW brings you to 80% cap, Haste Samba from either a DNC or /DNC would put you over cap, any additional DW gear negatively impacts your TP/hit for no gain in attack speed, etc. (by the way, now with Koru-Maru trust you cap magic haste with Haste II plus 2x trust BRD March+0... so you don't even need DW gear to essentially cap delay - again 79.69% so allllmost capped - when solo with trusts).

Honestly, my whole point is that it's really a fairly minor negative and not too much to worry about. Even if you happen to be using some DW pieces that have otherwise good stats (Mochi body, for instance), fine. Maybe worth it for the very small decrease in TP/hit, thanks to all the other great stats. Just be smart and don't use stuff like DW earrings/waist in those buffed scenarios, swap it out for pieces that are actually going to benefit you (DA earrings, Windbuffet or an Acc waist, etc.)

I'm definitely glad I got Daken in the state it is rather than a neutered version along with DW changes that wouldn't make a significant impact on anything. It's still dumb that extra DW beyond delay cap is punitive, but it's easy enough to work around.