The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Glanz would like to let you know that it is the best at being the worst.

yeah but it's two fists so twice as good

twice as bad?

I'd like to share a few conclusions I have reached from some testing I did tonight. I would like that someone with knowledge in enmity mechanics step in and check them all.

- All 3 tiers of Utsusemi generate the same amount of enmity. Yonin doesn't change this.
- Base Utsusemi enmity values are really wrong in wiki. They are 0 CE/~160 VE. Yes, ZERO CE.
- Yonin enmity is wrong too. It generates 0 CE/~450 VE when used. Again, ZERO CE.
- With Yonin active, Utsusemi generates ~160 CE/~450 VE before Yonin's enmity+ modifier.
- I'm not sure if those new Utsusemi enmity values also decay with Yonin but it seems they don't. Anyway, the numbers above are from the first 15 seconds after Yonin's activation, when it is at full power.

I'm a bit surprised with that Utsusemi enmity behavior and with those 0 CE values (I thought every action would generate at least 1 CE). Again, I'd like that someone could test them too because I'm very tired and not feeling very well.

It makes sense to me. It gives ninja the option to choose if they want utsusemi to cause enmity gain and other jobs using it defensively won't. Yonin not giving huge levels of enmity makes some sense too. It's a stance. Overall though ninja doesn't have much for generating hate, which is the biggest problem.

With as often as you're casting Utsu, I don't see it as too unreasonable that it gives about half the enmity of Foil (Foil: 320 CE/880 VE). That's in addition to the (decaying) enmity +10~30 from the Yonin stance itself, and it's interesting to see that decay appears not to affect the enmity generated from Yonin-up Utsusemi casting (i.e., only the Enm+ from the stance itself decays).

It also really highlights just how good Fudo Masamune C is for tanking, since popping Yonin and frequent Utsu casting is really the ideal way for NIN to get hate. Ninjutsu reduction -25% AND Enm+10 per shadow bonus really allows you to just keep tossing up Utsu San as soon as the timer is up to really hold hate. By casting early, well before shadows are about to wear, you also get more Enm+ per shadow bonus on each recast (in addition to just the quicker use of a VE generating ability). Yeah, sometimes you may want to be more cautious and hold San timer for safety's sake, but if hate is the primary concern you can just spam away with San and maybe hold onto Ni for survival purposes.

Makes me wonder whether Fudo main paired with Shigi offhand for its recast -3 might be ideal for hate due to San spamming early and often. Despite Shigi's Enmity-10, the recast reduction means that more likely than not, those extra seconds actually gain you enough additional shadows to more than counteract the Enm-10 by keeping the Utsu rolling. Unless you're just constantly getting all shadows wiped, or the opposite of never losing shadows regardless of whether you had the recast delay.

This is all consistent with what I've been seeing with Fudo tanking making it a lot easier to hold hate. And mine's only like rank 12-13 now (rank = % recast reduction, and I'm at like enm+4 or 5 per shadow currently)

Colour me surprised.

I'd love more people to perform the test. Can anybody let Ruaumoko tell about this ongoing discussion so he can participate in it?
In his recent NIN guide he mentions how good Utsu casting is for enmity during Yonin, but I suspect he was wrong and the enmity he noticed wasn't the "yonin bonus to utsusemi" but just the default Yonin enmity + Gekka enmity, just like I said in my previous post.


I suspect this "amazing" bonus that Yonin is supposed to give to Utsusemi either is miniscule or doesn't exist at all.
It happened in THIS PATCH in 2015.
Can anybody check the japanese counterpart to check if it says something different and we received a bad translation?

I also made a request HERE in the JP wiki thread on BG, but that hasn't been updated in quite some time.

Doesn't make sense to me.
As I kept saying for years they need to balance out Innin and Yonin.
From a theoretical game design point of view they should be two mutually exclusive stances that give big pros at the cost of some cons.
The cons are necessary to counterbalance stuff.
Say if Yonin was too good defensively, then someone could keep it up 100% of the time while doing DD to increase NIN's survivability in some fights and that would of course get exploited and rightfully SE doesn't want that, which makes sense.

Which is exactely why Yonin should do something to make it undesireable when all you wanna do is not tank but doing damage.
At the moment its only negative aspect is an Accuracy-30 decaying over time.
It used to be a bigger deal back then than now (-30 at lv75 was a much bigger % of our overall acc, compared to now) but it's still stupid.

Yonin should do something different as well imo. First of all they should remove the stupid decay over time. Then they should make it undispellable (if it's "necessary" to tank, then of course you need to make so a stupid move from an enemy can remove it randomly) and then they should give a trait that slows down enmity decay over time and over damage received.
Then they should give a *working* enmity bonus to Utsusemi spells, so that they can really work like Foil.

With a non decaying enmity bonus, with Gekka up, with a working Utsusemi specific bonus and with a reduce enmity loss thing, the enmity generation should be so good that at that point we could affort a negative stat other than acc-. Something like a straight "damage done - X%". That way you make Yonin undesireable for DDing, but extremely interesting for tanking.



Someone in the past also made the suggestion to make Utsusemi work differently when Yonin up. To make it work like Utsusemi used to work in like, what, 2005? 2004?
Back then Utsusemi could absorb AoE spells and TP moves that normally strip shadows.
Making so those moves/spell only absorb PART of your shadows (number of shadows required being different according to the move/spell) would be a really neat idea, altough it's kinda difficult to balance it... I'm afraid it could become too powerful for some fights, and still nowhere near enough for some others.
So probably not a really good idea. Personally I love it but I'm skeptic at the same time.



Edit:
As for Innin I dunno.
It's not the best but then again it's sorta nice.
I'd personally remove the decay over time from it as well but the positional requirement is a con good enough imo.

Oh sorry Sechs, I think my wording was a bit confusing. What I did say was "there's no difference between all 3 Utsusemi in regards to enmity generated". As I pointed out above, all Utsusemi magic (no matter if it's Ichi, Ni or San) generate 0 CE/~160 VE w/o Yonin and ~160 CE/~450 VE with Yonin. I've changed my OP to avoid confusion.

Nvm then, I guess your test is absolutely conclusive then.

It's a bonus of ~160 CE / and ~290 VE.
I wouldn't call that massive, but definitely not negligible either though! Quite something actually.


Thanks Alex!
Can anybody please update BG-Wiki? I can try myself but I usually suck with these things...
Think I've done it... I've udpated the Yonin page, the general Utsusemi page and the three pages for Ichi, Ni and San, if someone wants to doublecheck wether or not I *** something up.

EDIT: of course I left this post open and wandered away, and by the time I finished writing and hit submit it was answered already!

I think you might be misinterpreting this, Sechs (if you're not, I don't know that some of your other comments make sense...)

I believe Alex is saying that for hate purposes, doesn't really matter which tier of Utsusemi you use, all of them generate the same amount. And that amount is small for all three if Yonin is not up, and much larger when Yonin IS up. To put it another way:

Yonin down: Ichi/Ni/San all give the same 0 CE/~160 VE
Yonin up: Ichi/Ni/San all give the same ~160 CE/~450 VE

One caveat: divergence katana does gives more hate the more shadows you have, so you would indeed be more inclined to use San>Ni>Ichi to maximize hate if you have that weapon... but only because it's modified by the weapon, and not because of any inherent difference in enmity strength by spell level.


These findings sound perfectly consistent with Ruau's comment, both support the idea that you get a very significant boost to the enmity generated by Utsusemi once you put Yonin up. About half a Foil's worth of CE/VE, which seems pretty sensible for a spell like Utsu which you can cast very frequently. With no Yonin up, it's no CE and merely a token amount of VE (about 18% of a Foil).


Totally disagree, there's no inherent need for downsides to JAs, including stances. If it's not giving some broken advantage (which NIN obviously isn't for most content, or else it would be exploited a lot more), why push the idea that we have to be punished and can't just get a buff?

The more significant downside to Yonin is that you can't use Innin's significant offensive benefit. 10%~30% crit rate is pretty substantial, and I don't really understand why you dismiss that as "not the best but then again it's sorta nice"


You CAN run Yonin fulltime while still doing DD. The kinda dumb accuracy down penalty is fairly easily overcome in lots of content, so Yonin just means you can keep hate when you want. And Innin means you can more easily avoid hate while getting a nice crit rate buff.

SE has already shown they know how to very effectively avoid NIN exploiting potential defensive advantages by their approach to monster design in the vast majority of meaningful fights in the past 5 or so years: just reduce the impact of shadows by AoE wiping them all at once (or making tanks handle multiple mobs, which kinda has the same effect of tearing through shadows like mad). That's clearly why NIN tends to be a niche tank, but when there actually is a mob that relies more on easily blinkable moves that might be rough on a more traditional tank that takes hits... NIN fills the niche exceptionally and can become REALLY useful.


Yes to removing the decay over time, it's just overly complicated and not really necessary. HELL yes to undispellable. And I'd add just scrap the positional requirements. More of a hassle for Innin, but ditch it for both stances IMO.


NIN already isn't super desirable for DDing (I mean, we can be competent enough, but even when trying our best to act as a DD it's not comparable to the heaviest hitters). You don't really have to nerf the defensive stance to put it at even more of an offensive disadvantage.

But the big thing is this: when you actually want to use the tanking tools available to you, if you're doing it to your maximum enmity generating potential it's becoming pretty clear that it is best to spend even more time casting and generating hate (i.e., recasting Yonin shadows even when you have 4+ left, just for enmity purposes). All of that casting time drops your DPS quite a lot, even without JA-related stat penalties. Simply by doing the thing that allows NIN to tank best and keep hate, Yonin becomes undesireable for DDing since the NIN is inherently encouraged to do other stuff during time when they could be hitting the mob.

I kinda feel like most of us, myself included, really just haven't been taking the best advantage of what does seem to be a pretty beefy hate tool since the update you cited. And hey, I don't blame any of us... because blink tanking just hasn't been that appealing in these past several years, mostly due to AoE shadow wiping in so much content. So we didn't get much chance to really try it out, aside from weird niche mobs like a Glazemane, Halphas, en-death stuff (Wrathare, perhaps), etc.

Hell, knowing what we do now, an opening sequence to generate a lot of hate right away might go like this:
- Have shadows up at the start of the fight, Gekka/Yonin too
- Grab the mob (Voke, ninjutsu pull, whatever)
- Pop Issekigan right away for a good spike of hate from parries
- Cast Utsu Ni again, even if ALL of your shadows are still up. You're not doing it for survival, you're doing it to generate hate.
- Cast Utsu San immediately after that and overwrite however many Ni shadows you have remaining; again you're doing this just to generate more enmity
- Cast Utsu again quickly. Maybe in a lot of situations you might wait for San timer and just recast it, but if you REALLY want hate you might even drop 6~7 San shadows and just start all the way from Ichi>Ni>San overwriting each other and generating a lot of enmity.

Makes a lot more sense that Utsu (Yonin version) is half the CE/VE of Foil when you look at it that way, since you can cycle Ichi>Ni>San in quick succession and actually generate 150% of the hate of a Foil.

And again, the job-specific C path on the Divergence katana seems to indicate SE actually did have an idea based on real mechanics that a lot of us probably overlooked. What a helpful tanking tool they added by giving you two important stats in ninjutsu recast and enmity+ per shadow, which really PUSH you to cast frequently while tanking (more frequently than just casting Utsu the minimum amount needed to survive)... which is exactly what you should be doing to generate high levels of enmity solely with NIN's job-native tools. Messing around with Fudo definitely gave me a nudge in that direction without me even putting it all together, but once I got going I've been surprised at how effective Utsu as an enmity generator really can be.

I can write on wiki myself, but I'd like to test it more because I'm not totally sure about a few things like Yonin Utsusemi VE and how Yonin's enmity+ and Utsusemi bonus work together.

Premise: I agree NIN in general needs a buff, who would disagree with that?

I was talking specifically about Yonin as it what it was supposed to be. I'm talking about the game design concept of "stances".
The idea behind having a dichotomy of stances is that each grants benefits at the cost of something, usually they do the opposite.
Think about Light Arts and Dark Arts for SCH. Both are a basic part of the SCH gameplay and, as a matter of fact, they cannot be dispelled.
This is a key concept of game design in several other games, not particularly present in FFXI I guess.

I think this is what they wanted (but partially failed) to achieve when they created Yonin and Innin.
They wanted the first to boost NIN's tanking abilities, making NIN a better tank at the cost of damage.
With the second they wanted to boost NIN's damage, at the cost of being able to mantain hate on something.
May like it or not, but it's a cool concept imo.

With that said, my point is that Yonin is imo not doing enough to boost NIN's tanking abilities.
I would love to see Yonin buffed in many ways.
I personally feel that Yonin would need a lot. This "lot" though could become too juicy to the point of making players want to use it 100%, making NIN able to deal damage safely ignoring many mechanics (in some fights) that others DDs cannot ignore.
This is potentially exploitable and dangerous, which is why I think that a powered up Yonin (which I feel we deserve to get) should be compensated by something so it can't be exploited for DD purposes but only used for tanking.

SE's idea of this was Acc-30 (decaying over time), which as I said had a much larger impact at level 75, but it still means something even today.
My idea is that it should be something else that simply reduces the damage output without reducing NIN's ability to mantain hate (through the changes I suggestd, or many other similar ones).

Just that. If we want to consider Yonin and Innin two mutually exclusive, dichotomic "stances" to boost Tanking and DPSing, I think they should work this way.

Of course they could completely rehaul the concept and transform them from "stances" to simple JAs.
I find the idea much less inspiring but I guess to each his own :x


Edit:
Of course I'm not promoting adding even more cons to Yonin without greatly boosting the ability itself lol xD


Of course you can!
But you're talking about current day Yonin, which doesn't really grant anything overpowered to survivability. +Enmity,+30Evasion and -30Acc Decaying over time? Lulz.
How does that help with survivability.

I was talking about a new, possible, more powerful Yonin. Certainly not the current version xD


To sum up my point in another way:
I think Yonin deserves to be powered up a lot.
This could be dangerous for the reasons explained above though, which is why it would need a more balanced countereffect in place of -30 acc.
So that the ending point is: Wanna tank as good as a PLD/RUN while still doing some interesting damage? Go Yonin.
Wanna focus exclusively on pure DPS with the addition of making it harder to steal hate from a tank? Go Innin.

It's still annoying but I agree with you.
-30 acc represent quite a small % of our overall acc bonuses, compared to how huge it was back at level 75 :D
This is one of many cases of stuff that hasn't been properly updated after they suddenly raised the cap from 75 to 99 first, and then from 99 to ilevel after.


I'm not saying this doesn't happen, it so does! But it's such a niche.
I mean, many other jobs can be competent Niche tanks.
WAR? MNK? DNC?
That's not what I'm asking for, what I'm dreaming for.

What I'm dreaming for is for NIN to be almost as good as RUN and PLD and be able to tank if not all at least the majority of content. So that you have a PLD? You have a RUN? You have a NIN? Different pros and cons but all three are pretty much viable.


Positional requirement not really a big deal for Yonin. Aside of situation with dualtanks exchanging hates, you ARE in front of the mob if you're tanking lol.
For Innin it's quite an annoyance, but it's better after the "tank rehaul" patch they gave us some years ago.
I'd love if they would remove it honestly, but then again I don't think it's a priority over other changes :x

Yes yes, but that's beyond the point of what I was discussing (see the premise I made: NIN needs a buff period).
I was exclusively talking about NIN as a tank.

NIN could also use a buff as a DD and I'm sure we can all agree with that but I wasn't tryin to discuss that xD


Again: I was talking about a superbuff to the defensive stance, not a nerf! A buff so powerful that of course it would have to be compensated somehow. How? We can discuss about that of course :D


I wonder... would Utsusemi generate the same enmity regardless? Or only if it succeeds?
For instance let's say you have Utsusemi: San shadows up and you cast Utsusemi: Ichi, which would take no effect because San shadows can't be overwrited by Ichi ones.
Would you still be granted the enmity?
I think so... but then again I'm not sure.

Your numbers of default enmity (without Yonin) are almost in line with the Values on BG-wiki which, if I recall, were pulled out from some official gudie/data.

BG-wiki says 1 CE / 300 VE, you reported 0 CE / 290 VE.
I think we're set for the VE.
The CE is... uhm, 0-1 might seem a small numerical difference, but it's a difference between "nothing" (which wouldn't be multiplied by enmity+ bonuses) and "something" (which, while small, WOULD be multipled by enmity+ bonuses).

Regardless I already updated the BG wiki pages with the 2 sources, I'm sure we would all love if you could updated it even further with your incoming new tests!

"every" action generates 1, how could you possibly tell the difference between 1 and 0 CE

Some actions generate exactely zero. Like if I recall RUN's runes and PUP's maneuvers?
Probably something else I can't remember.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something here?

Exactly the same way as Kaeko's: make two players use spells/skills until both are tied in CE, then make one cast a 0 HP Cure to generate 1 CE. Then the 2nd player cast the ability questioned. If it generates 0 CE, the mob won't stay on him after VE dissipates.

I suppose I'd say I somewhat disagree with that, since we're collectively realizing that Yonin is probably a lot more powerful for enmity purposes than most people have given it credit for. I've seen many complaints over the years that NIN can't generate enough enmity with the tools native to the job. That argument kinda gets torpedoed when you realize you really COULD spam Utsu with Yonin up and maintain a pretty significant amount of hate.

That doesn't mean your premise is illogical though, if you're seeking to make all jobs that you want to define as "tanks" (PLD RUN NIN PUP?) viable for the majority of content. That being said, I'm kind of fine with each "tank" having its strengths and weaknesses:

* PLD is the all-around tank that works in most any situation, but is not necessarily the best in all areas (RUN is better at magic mitigation, PUP is better at just soaking up damage, NIN is better at evading moves entirely via shadows). Perhaps the best at holding multiple mobs at once.

* RUN is the magic evasion/element defense tank, with some perks to better help teammates resist (or add more) magic damage, and the ability to switch on the fly to more offense-oriented gear generate some pretty good DPS (very dependent on gear/weapon).

* PUP is the one that's damn near indestructible on a single target and requires minimal support, but it's bad for holding multiple targets and somewhat limited on generating enmity. Certain niches like ignoring charm, and certain unique weaknesses like getting murdered by Doom with no cure.

* NIN is the master of holding a single mob where you can viably blink away the dangerous moves (and generally has a higher melee damage potential, higher than any of the other tanks save a buffed Lionheart RUN).


It doesn't help with survivability, but that's only one of the two major components of tanking: survivability and enmity.

It's pretty hard to argue that Yonin isn't very helpful for the enmity portion, and it's not unreasonable to assert that NIN already has strong survivability tools through multiple shadows and Migawari. Combined, you have both ingredients you need to tank well.

Now, like we all know, the real limitation is that SE got scared of NIN abuse from shadows giving TOO MUCH survivability, and made it a regular occurrence that your shadows would get wiped. Perhaps you can argue they went too far decreasing the utility of shadow survivability and therefore could give Yonin more of a boost in that phase... but IDK, I just don't see it happening. For instance, no way in hell they're bringing back shadows soaking up AoE moves - that's a change they previously made specifically to prevent NIN abuse. But watch me say that and then Empy +3 shoes will modify Utsusemi to let 3 shadows eat most AoE spells/moves


If you really wanted to buff Yonin even more, to help SURVIVAL as well as enmity, then yeah I guess building in more offensive downside makes sense. If you wanna do that, I'd maybe suggest something like a DT- boost at the expense of some offensive stats, or a Defender-like DEF+/Atk- balance, etc...

A couple issues though:

1) I do think that tanking is already such a drain on DPS just by virtue of the frequent casting. If you're having trouble keeping hate on NIN (a complaint I seem to see a lot), there's a significant chance you just aren't casting enough and taking advantage of Yonin's real advantages. Analogous to what I see often enough on RUN when I spam a bunch of JAs and /BLU spells: I do pitiful damage just by virtue of all my time being taken up with other actions. Kinda the same on NIN if you're really spamming spells for hate.

2) Really, NIN doesn't need MECHANICS changes to be a more common tank so much as it needs game design that doesn't say "LOL UTSUSEMI WIPED YOU'RE DEAD", which is what we've usually had in the past ~5+ years. NIN could again become a common tank overnight if new content is made a bit more blink-tank friendly - we could somewhat realistically be the trendy tank for [event associated with reforged Empyrean armor]. Look at Ambuscade this month: NIN's pretty popular due to wanting to avoid really deadly blinkable hits.

The discussion here has really highlighted that NIN does have enmity tools (that many of us probably haven't been using to their best potential), and it also has survivability... as long as you can actually use shadows somewhat reliably.

Make kikoku give you DT-3% per shadow up. Nin = win

What are people putting on the NIN melee/tanking cape for the defensive augment? I have MDT-10%, but I was wondering if people were using Parrying instead? I know DT-5% is pretty standard on most melee capes.

This month's ambuscade got me thinking about putting either parry+5 or counter +10 on it, due to Tactical Parry's ability to counter an attack (works with shadows up). Does anyone know if normal counter+ gear stacks with Tactical Parry counter bonus, or if they are applied separately. The difference would be that one works with shadows up, the other does not.

That doesn't fix the blink problem since your shadows get wiped and you lose the -DT. Make it so it has -DT that diminishes based upon the number of shadows you have up? That seems more balanced and fair. You don't need the -DT when you have shadows to absorb damage, it's when you're caught with all your Utsusemi spells on recast that you need the -DT (which if you're spamming them for hate generation can happen). I do think Yonin need tweaking. Maybe give it to Yonin instead of Kikoku.

Things go through shadows. I've been killed twice (so far) in this months ambuscade by spinal cleave that did a TA crit for 2500 lol.

I'd prefer a better fix to Utsusemi in general. Empyrean Feet "Augments Utsusemi" effect, where the adjusted version has a chance of not wiping upon aoe spells or abilities. Or something to the move itself for Ninja main. It makes no sense that a move as simple as Diaga can wipe all a Ninja's shadows, even if it's from a level 20 monster. I'd like to see something adjusted to Migawari possibly. Too many things don't work with Miga. "Augments Migawari" on Empyrean +3 body would be nice if it occasionally absorbed the effects of moves that don't meet the damage threshhold of Miga.

The potential for Yonin and all of NINs abilities are there, it just needs to be implemented in more tanky ways. ex. There is no reason why there is a directional restriction with Innin and Yonin. Especially Innin. In a zerg or random fight, the monster moves to much, it's nearly impossible to capitalize on the bonus to crit rate and accuracy. And I don't quite get why Yonin decreases the enemy's critical hit rate. If you're protected with shadows to begin with, what purpose does that actually serve the ninja?

No matter how good you are with shadows you still get physically hit after aoes, while stoned/slept/terror. and things go through shadows (again) It would also still work for something that is multihit crit or aoe crit. Like Rampage.

I get that it can have a use. Its just the vast majority of the time, that little perk is not benefiting the NIN while it is tanking because they are constantly keeping their shadows up, so they won't get hit with a crit very often. I understand how painful a crit could be if it ever landed on a Ninja, but that's sorta the point of always keeping your shadows up. I know it's inevitable though.

In some cases with abilities/spells with a windup, you can anticipate your shadows dropping and re-apply (even a lower tier) Utsusemi without ever getting hit the next round of enemy attacks. I do this often when going from San --> Ichi/Ni if the monster is doing single-attack rounds (or this month's ambu: see the move, start casting, get shadows after hit lands and before melee attacks resume. Requires good timing). Especially useful if you're using Battlemod and can see the monster's attack the moment he uses it. Felt they could have gone with something a little more generic that could be useful all the time while Yonin is active, like how the Evasion, NTE, and Enmity is.

One danger that happens occasionally is when a monster wipes your shadows (whether via spell or abil), and your attack round immediately kicks in, and they counter that string of attacks and you die from your own swings. Kind of funny that happens that way, but annoying since it's literally impossible to anticipate it.

I've suggested this in the past (to Yonin, not to empy feet, but same stuff).
In hindsight though, while cool and potentially overpowered, it's still a "chance".
When someone is tanking I like to rely on stuff more solid than a "chance".
It's like if PLD and RUN had "chances" to reduce DT instead of DT.
there's a couple of items like those but of course you use them once DT is capped, not before, if you see what I mean.

From this PoV what Mhoo said makes a lot of sense. Don't power up your DT when shadows are up. If anything you should power it up when shadows are down!
In a way that is useful for tanking but doesn't make NIN too sturdy of a DD when you don't want to tank, otherwise we're back at square one.

While I get your point, I have no real problem with enemy crit rate down on Yonin since at least it protects against a valid risk of one slip up leading to a crit that possibly kills the tank.

If Magic Evasion had been a thing when Yonin was introduced, that would have been nice. For other more meaningful defensive stats... um... IDK, we've seen FC and Ninjutsu delay- on other tanky pieces. Could also do something more boring like DEF or xDT-, though those don't necessarily do anything when you're hiding behind shadows either (but hey at least they help defend against AOEs).


MDT-10% is pretty reasonable, IMO. I skipped DT- and PDT- on my NIN capes mainly because Physical damage is so frequently mitigated by shadows, so for me the Resin slot was down to MDT-, Meva, or Parry.

I actually use Magic Evasion+15 and I just stuck it on my normal TP cape, since NIN can actually pull off stacking the additional Meva gear to make building for it worthwhile. I tend to use Kendatsuba +1 body/legs/feet in most situations anyway, and you can swap out Adehmar+1 head/hands for Ken+1 if you're interested in a hybrid build with a ton of Meva that still retains strong DD stats.

I considered Parry, but decided not to because of the 5% value and actual impact being something even lower, due to needing to face the mob and fail evasion check in order to proc (whereas xDT-/Meva would help even if you're TPing at the mob's back or something). To be fair though, Parry does potentially help you for straight up face tanking by mitigating a few hits to survive or save shadows, and helping add some enmity when Issekigan is up.

Wasn't parrying proved to be very unefficient against NMs?
Inquartata is the "good" parrying, but default one is pretty meh on NMs?
I mean if you have no other better options sure, but don't expect to suddenly start parrying like a RUN!

Speaking of which, /RUN gives Foil, Flash, Runes and one tier of Inquartata if I recall.
It's nice and goes well with Issekigan!
Need someone to refresh you with such a setup though. I think? Tbf I've never tried it myself, yet.

I'm in agreement with all of your assessments. But the Crit rate down thing requires a few things to happen against the Ninjas favor to actually kick in. It's a last ditch effort, I get it. A lot of "bad" things can happen. You can eat a crit ws or crit hit in between casts, or a severely damaging multi-hit attack round that crits, or a string of shadow-wiping abilities and then get crit-countered. A lot of "but what if..." scenarios.



The reason I say "chance" is because the RUN/PLD empyrean set bonus gave a "chance" that they could absorb damage. They've gone with that theme before, and NIN lacks a few interesting tanking pieces. What good is empyrean+3 feet adding 1-2 more shadows per cast when the fundamental issue is really just them getting wiped from certain moves? I would think a chance of not getting them stripped would prove somewhat useful in a tanking (and dps, Fudo Masamune) scenario. Even Mikage is linked to shadows active. A focus on making it so that you could keep your shadows up would make sense, especially since they are attaching gear to the idea of it. But if it was 100% solid, would be overpowered if nothing in the game could get through to a NIN.

Foil can't be subbed, level is too high. A lot of people also ignore the enmity from Ninjutsu debuff spells. It's small and not spike in nature, but you can spam them in succession if needed. One change I was always interested in was in Futae. Currently, it only operates with Offensive Ninjutsu in doubling damage. I think it should be broadened to extent to all Ninjutsu, and have varying effects based on the spell used.

i.e.
Futae + Hojo/Kurayami/Dokumori/Jubaku/Aisha/Yurin = enhanced tiers of the spells, with either doubled potency, duration, or macc.

Futae + Elemental = stay the same

Futae + Gekka/Yain/Myoshu/Kakka = Doubled Enmity UP/DOWN SUBBL/STP

Futae + Miga = Always negates next attack, regardless of damage

Futae + Utsusemi = Could vary based on tier used.


I always thought it was crazy how NM ninjas can get 20+ shadows or so from casting San, but we can't ever get something cool like that. Would be a neat trick surviving a Monk's HF in dynamis if you could pop Futae + San and get 14 shadows once every 3 minutes, to help you get back on your feet (with the aid of the other tools/spells). Futae can't be used unless you're nuking, which is kind of a letdown for the modern day NIN.