The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I just tanked a Unafraid of the Dark. Tons of fun! :D

Go Ninja~

Does any katana combo beat Kannagi/Shigi for solo play? Seems like a fantastic and obtainable set for pure damage, survivability, and utility.

I think the best OH for Kannagi is Taka, not Shigi (unless you need Acc of course but that shouldn't be the case for soloplay)

Also while I'm personally biased in favor for Kannagi, I don't think it's any better for "solo play" than other Katanas.

Shigi overrated piece in general.

Taka or vagary katana are best solo offhand depending on ws: taka for Hi

shigi is nice, easy to obtain, and caters to solo.

I have a tp set that maxes -enm, shigi is central to that, this set allows gessho to hold hate very well, which means less shadows, less times waste :D not to mention the other benefits.

But yes I mainly use aeonic/ochu now as I feel its overall the best combo is "most" situations, but i also carry taka/kikokuAG/shigi/kanarai/2nd ochu at all times on nin, because you never know when buffs or mobs will change. Plus I carry daggers also and sword, because you can!

Hell I dont even mess with mages in omen anymore, just get your own 15k/30k and say f blms. I swear no PUG blm knows how to hit objs its sad.

Why overrated?
Granted since the GEO nerf / Monster skill nerf the needs for accuracy are less severe (and as such the need of Shigi too) Shigi is still an excellent offhand.
It IS the BiS offhand when you need accuracy. When you don't of course there are better options which have been mentioned already (Kanaria with really good augs, Perf Ochu, Taka etc).

Thing is that aside from SC purposes and if you're not a Kannagi Owner, Hi shouldn't be used, which kinda reduces a lot the benefit of Taka.


Achiuchikapu (Vagary Katana) did produce good results when me, Capuchin and other people did detailed tests some time ago, but it was always behind the other ones honestly.
Now it's true we did those tests quite some time ago, but I can't think of anything that changed in-game since then that could've changed the tier lists we created.

I think the misunderstanding here is what is he soloing? I'm thinking of this like he's fighting smaller mobs solo where a full sc round isn't gonna be necessary to kill the mob.
Achui also performs better when there's no sam roll, but again depending on ws this varries.

Of course going up to bigger nms it's gonna change things around some. Achiu still performs strong depending on total buffs.
In this situation though I could also see the relic becoming the better mainhand due to being able to easily make light shun->metsu or dark metsu->metsu and the attack AM meaning more without support.

Hello master Nin ;), i have begin to work on my nin, but a single question, did Nagi is a waste of time and effort ?

ya nagi overall is a waste of time, the ONLY thing it really has over other ream is 30 enm (its dps is lowest of all 3), however think when the last time you were tanking something on nin that mattered where your dps dropping would have been a good trade off for 30 enm? I cant think of one and I tank master fights on nin.

For solo I would say Heishi is the best. You're going to have a hard time competing with Shun -> Shun Light and an extra attack +50% on Blade: Shun. Blade: Ten only pulls ahead in spammy haste capped situations. If making Light is a problem then Kikoku is probably your best bet, or maybe Kannagi (idk.) Nagi is useless.

While I don't think there's a big difference and while I don't own one, I've always seen Kikoku as the best Katana for soloing.

You have more attack baseline (which is gonna help in the situations you'll tipically find yourself into when soloing) plus 10% more from Aftermath.
The aftermath also offers slightly more Subtle Blow which won't be a make or break difference but will help into making your targets use even less TP moves.
Icing on the cake you got Metsu which by itself is already a nice WS and opens up new and efficient scenarios for Light/Darkness.

Just my two cents.

Sechs made some great points about kikoku. I'd like to throw a strong honorable mention to Heishi for self - radiance as well as SC & MB bonus.

Also - I'm mildly embarrassed to admit I finally got Mijin from Nosoi last night. Although we've kind of beat up nin- tanking at this point, what do you guys think of Mijin for tanking offhand? It has STR/DEX for WS's along with a little bit of acc/racc/ratk/eva but what really excites me is the enmity +4 and meva +20

At this point, you would have to go out of your way to NOT cap subtle blow in most TP sets- so the aftermath is pretty irrelevant in that regard.

Personally, I just gear offhand for normal DD purposes the vast majority of the time in a tanking scenario. The best defense is killing it faster, etc. The only time I switch to an offhand intentionally for tanking applications is Shigi for the ninjutsu recast on Migawari/Utsusemi - since really, THOSE are the key tools that allow a NIN to tank well in any situation tailored to our kind of tanking. You need to be able to swing Shigi's enmity-10, but depending on setup it might not be a serious issue keeping hate (mage-heavy group, anything with trusts, co-tanking, etc.)

Some offhand options if all-out mitigation of non-blinkable magical threats is your goal, at the expense of DPS:
- Izuna might be the best overall option, with max Meva+15 (Snowdim) AND MDT-5% (Leafdim) augments. That's a pretty niche piece to make though, idk if I'd ever use it enough to make it worthwhile.
- Mijin is probably less hassle than augmenting an Alluvion weapon, and certainly viable as the BiS option if we're only considering Meva.
- Odium is another Meva alternative option (Meva +13), with better offensive performance due to the all attributes +13.
- Raicho+1 MDT-7% is a solid possibility too, freeing you up to need less DT in armor slots where you might be able to fit more overall Meva anyway, and giving a little leeway if for whatever reason you take a nuke outside of your MDT set.

I don't think I'd ever really feel comfortable NIN tanking something intense that relies on a strong NIN Meva setup though. Still too random for my liking since no matter how much Meva you stack, there's a chance of eating an unresisted nuke. For the rare fight with significant enough magical AoE which aren't adequately handled with Migwari and swapping into a Meva/DT set, I'm doubtful that taking a significant hit to offense for a relatively small additional chunk of Meva/MDT on a weaker offhand weapon significantly improves your chance of survival. And really, I think it's sort of forcing a flawed strategy in the first place if you're choosing to try to NIN tank in that kind of situation which is likely a total non-issue for a RUN, Aegis PLD, or automaton.


Yeah, I'm not complaining too much since S-E changed Kikoku AM to give Atk+10% (thank you!) AND the essentially useless Subtle Blow, but the SB part is pretty redundant in nearly all situations. After NIN trait, you only need 23% Subtle Blow to cap. That's not very hard in most TP sets (e.g., NQ Kendatsuba body is already SB+9% in one slot). And if you still need it, Myoshu for another 10% that should cap you in almost any conceivable TP set.

This did remind me that I sometimes cast Myoshu out of habit and don't even need to waste my time to do that though...

Great job man! Did you go /RUN?? What was pt setup like?

I was /WAR. It was ... dare I say it, shockingly straightforward. I was DD'ing with a Tizona BLU and we shared hate between all the targets. I really only had to keep up San > San the entire battle. There were only a handful of times where I needed to use Ni. We went 1/1 using the information that's out there from the likes of Mischief and others.

Yagudo, use daggers and Evisceration spam with the BLU on CDC. He goes down fast.

Orc was a pain in the ***, he invincibled probably 6-8 times. But on the orc you're back to Blade: Shun with Heishi with the BLU CDC'ing.

On to the quadav, still on Shun spam with the BLU beating it up with clubs. Not too crazy still. Some rough patches where his AoE's and Mighty Strikes would hit a support coming in to rebuff. But it was handled fine.

And then SL. What a pushover. SL takes tons of damage and if it wasn't for his copy/clone bs you have to kill he would have been the fastest of the bunch, close to Yagudo speed as it was.

I never really felt in 'danger' with the good support we had. BRD kept stuff slept. GEO did their thing. WHM kicked ***. It was like one 48 minute long merit party. I'm not going to say it was 'easy' but there sure weren't a lot of moving parts for the NIN's role. Pretty laid back for me. Hell, I kept up berserk whenever it was available because I didn't feel like I could die easily.

Would heavily recommend the event. It was a lot of fun.

You hurt the corsair's feelings leaving him out! He still loves you though ;)

Oh my god how could I! :P

Falkirk, the master bst, took time out of his bst schedule to COR it up for us on that run. :D Ha ha ha ha.

I barely remember what any of you all did. I was a bit self-absorbed with things going on in about 5' yalms from me. Heh heh. :D

What is best offhand non REMA Katana to Pair with Aeonic?
If Augmented reisenjima one, what are the Ideal augments to go for?

Does anyone have a Set for Shun aside from 1st page that is more up to date?

Perfect Ochu is my typical go-to.

If i had one, cuz I'm sure i tossed long time ago.
wound up taking Kanaria Augmented with: Dmg+15, Agi+2 acc16/att3 Crit hit damage +5% would love to have it with dex and more acc/att but meh 55 fern gets me only so far.

Kanaria is my choice although I have some good augments for it.

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51152/returning-ninja-gearing/ covers that petty in depth

Where can I find the latest version of Langly's Spreadsheet, and why is it not present in this list?

While I don't have a good answer for you. I know he's out of town for the next week or so, so may be a few days before he can reply - just FYI.

Total noob question: Why is the kendatsuba gear listed for Blade: Shun? I know it has good acc and triple attack, but isn't the lack of attack bad?

blade shun tp scaling is attack+%

Usually blade Shun is the weapon of choice for Heishi spammers where at 1.25k tp you get +100% attack

it also has really good dex

Yeah, hands have an absurd 62 DEX. Damn hard to beat.