The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I'm kind of in the same realm as Cap here.

Firstly, as far as MB is concerned, it's clearly better than gokotai, but the original comparison was as an offhand option vs ternion+1, since that was the current best OH. So mention of Gleti's being inferior in a burst scenario is irrelevant since ternion has no magic nuke stats either. You still swapped to gokotai/tauret previously if you were looking for max damage.

Next, I agree that new katana a very nice all around weapon that covers a lot of areas. But I'm going along the line of what Capu said. Many jobs can use Gleti's, so it's technically a better investment long term than katana is. I'll still pick up the katana though since it gives some flexibility in nuke sets, but it's not wildly better than gokotai for my current DM augments, so the increase to nukes is not huge. Probably neither for Gleti's melee/WS damage. But the option to use on many jobs is more enticing. A lot of people would also prefer to buy Gleti's simply instead of upgrading ternion, since it's faster and cheaper. If someone came into this thread right now and asked which offhand to buy, I would suggest Gleti's before ternion since it's so close and still usable by a few overlap jobs

Now as far as augments and the system go, we don't know how they will address the issues going forward, so that's a determining factor of max potential. People have been constantly complaining of the lag, so I would not be surprised if it doesn't get addressed soon. They have invested a lot into Odyssey so let's see what happens. That doesn't change the potential behind the weapon on the top end. I can tell you right now that I w would definitely augment dagger before katana, but that's me.

They finally gave people high tier content, but we don't know how much RP we can expect at higher levels. It's possible it jumps a good bit, I can't see it taking a year to upgrade one piece. Either way, my initial point was just bringing attention to the dagger since I hadn't heard many people mention it.

Oh but I agreed that Gleti's dagger has potential. I wasnt saying not to buy it. I have it myself and use on THF already. I simply wanted to warn people that it's not some out of the box improvement over Ternion and might not beat it for a long time, since there is many things to prioritize in augmenting.

Are you saying base Gleti's does not beat Ternion +1 in total dps, or in a specific scenario? Can you elaborate?

As far as prioritizing, the RP are monster specific, but not every group of 6 would want to only do one monster over and over for the item YOU want to augment. It's a good idea to have something from every set to augment so you can participate in many bosses and still use the RP. So I have that in mind when considering it.

So I guess I can ask this: from Shark/Gleti's, which piece of gear would you prioritize first among any of the jobs that can use it?

Sorry just came across this. How are you getting to wave 3 tribox?

I meant heroism crystals from wave 1 and wave 2. Someone on this forum was explaining how he do wave 3 with 3 chars, but it was 3 people playing them, so I assume trioboxing would be possible, but hard.

I think Gleti's Knife v Kunimitsu in the offhand also depends on the mainhand you're using.
It's little wonder Capuchin is getting Gleti's pulling the most ahead with a mainhand Kannagi, TA+6% Crit Rate+5%... that's practically made for Empyrean AM. (though I'm not sure if that was a factor in the comparison... but if not, then it's even more lopsided in favor of offhand Gleti's)

Both Gleti's and Kunimitsu also offer another boon over offhand Ternion: that 2% Haste can free up your belt for something with more multiattack or store tp... Though this depends on what other gear you're using in your TP set.

I suspect Kunimitsu paired with either Heishi or Kikoku might be more equal than Kannagi in the comparrison to the offhands... Possibly even more than? but I don't think it would wind up like that but maybe with Kikoku main.

Surprised not more love for the katana so far from ody- I super dig it, granted it plays into stuff I enjoy most when playing nin sc/mb/hybrid ws action. But like others have said, ya just ws spam in group setting might be better options w/tern+1 etc.

Any thoughts on some of the new armor? Most seem like side grades.
The body looks kind of like a decent tanking piece w/counter & killer effects but at cost of decent chunk of m.eva (vs malig) but it does come with more mdb.

The boots fully aug'd might be nice for hybrid ws, I know no wsd on them but 45mattck (full herc mattck aug) + ton of attack which can/is pretty important to get good hybrid numbers.

The legs are Ninja's only subtle blow 2 piece that isn't a Superior 5 weapon. The head is probably better for ten than the artifact head (which has no accuracy or attack on it). I would still use af head for metsu, though.

Ah yes, why isn't nin on Sherida earring again? and that AF+3 head piece...that had to have been a mistake right? wsd and no acc/attack.

Good point on head & Ten potential

SE is legitimately confused as hell when it comes to NIN and what they want it to be. A magic casting hybrid WS using blink tank that can’t really tank anything meaningful because they don’t want it to tank but it has tank-y things going for it and also gives it physical damage limit gear but also mostly gear with magical properties but not enough because lolwut

Before people freak out I mean this in jest. (...kind of)

This will forever be one of the biggest ninja snubs. I can't see any respectable reason why they decided to give that to RNG, RDM and BST, but that one was a clear flub. Artifact head makes zero sense to add WSD, especially when you factor in the innin merit bonus augment from relic head. They put wsd on the wrong piece for Ninja, no doubt about it.

The problem is not that WSD is in the wrong place in the AF.
Head is fine, but they should've put some physical acc there.

Different thing for the Relic. The Feet and Head Augs should've been swapped but they suck.

Edit:
"They suck" = They as in Squareenix folks, it's them who sucks! XD

I'm always worried about using the wrong Shuriken with Sange. How do you guys handle swapping between them?

Yes I think we’re all butt hurt about SE doing dumb sh!t to our relic and artifact lol

I developed the most safe of lua code, with plenty of /disable and /enable and multiple checks to avoid tossing Happo+1 during Sange.

Results? In extreme laggy situations and packetloss, I managed to toss Happo+1 either way.

Then I gave up and removed Sange after years of promoting it (it's our only DPS cooldown after all).
*** it.
*** SE
*** lolnin etc.

(yes I'm still very butthurt about SE doin nothing for NIN)

I just finished the alexandrite portion of Nagi tis my hope that eventually I don’t feel so bad about making it in the end

I just buy Date Shuriken and call it a day. Never have to worry about losing my shuriken and it's usually the best DPS shuriken (Seki is better unbuffed but its so minimal idc to keep stacks of those on hand) to use and low DI points to re-acquire. Though, I don't find myself using Sange very often.

I was doing this:



My throwing set would just be a regular melee/hybrid toggle

dont use it, lag will screw you over.

Gleti's offhand looks to easily beat out Kunimitsu (ignoring nukes) regardless of mainhand. I mentioned Kannagi the other day because that's what I happened to have up on a sheet when I made that reply, but it's a pretty similar advantage for Kikoku and Heishi too.

Like, we're talking about these kind of numbers with the following setup: Apex Toad lv131, Moderate buffs (Honor/Victory March and Minuet 4&5, Chaos/Samurai rolls, Dia II, and no Berserk or GEO), high end but not necessarily max DPS TP/WS sets (i.e., I tossed in 5/5 Kendatsuba+1 as a baseline TP set, used my own good Herc aug pieces for WS where appropriate)

Kannagi MH/Blade:Hi
4217 Gleti R30
4145 Ternion+1 R15
4094 Gleti R0
4046 Kunimitsu R30
3930 Kunimitsu R0

Kikoku MH/Blade:Metsu
4460 Gleti R30
4317 Gleti R0
4303 Kunimitsu R30
4272 Ternion+1 R15
4169 Kunimitsu R0

Heishi MH/Blade:Ten
4683 Gleti R30
4562 Ternion+1 R15
4561 Kunimitsu R30
4542 Gleti R0
4426 Kunimitsu R0

Note that Ternion +1 remains way up there too, holds up really well to all but a highly augmented Gleti - which is honestly the main reason why I'm not going that crazy over the Odyssey weapons. Again, this is ignoring potential nuke/MB damage, where Kunimitsu is gonna be at its best when you're doing a lot of ninjutsu MBs (but then again, you're losing a lot of TP time while casting, so take that into account too...). I really see Kunimitsu acting more like an Ambu offhand (Gokotai or Tauret) +1, something to pull out when you want to pump up nukes while retaining solid physical damage - but not really the choice when you're just focused on TP/WS. Nice enough niche, but not a game changer.

Also, there's the ever constant caveat that spreadsheets aren't reality, modeling errors are a thing, etc. But I don't really see a reason that adjusting for differences between theoretical and actual performance with the same Mainhand/TP/WS sets (no changes aside from offhand) is going to change offhand analysis much. The more realistic change is going to be different mainhand katanas' performance relative to each other based on your actual situation (e.g., in practice, Kikoku gets hurt the most from TP overflow and rarely achieves its theoretical potential, Heishi takes best advantage of TP overflow for WS, Kannagi AM3 crits add more white damage if you are slow to WS but you have to deal with maintaining aftermath, SC damage comes into play, etc.)

I mean I will put it this way. Gleti's is little ahead of Kunimitsu for pure physical WS damage. Its 2-3% difference. Now if you skillchain with those WS, all that 2-3% difference is lost, because skillchain bonus on Kunimitsu should make them equal. Now Kunimitsu on the other hand is rather big improvement for WS+MB setup and for hybrid WSs. When are you using NIN when you dont self skillchain and/or MB and/or use hybrid WSs (btw hybrid WSs are probably huge underused by NIN community)? Less than 5% scenarios? So you would rather do the dagger to improve 2-3% in those 5% scenarios or do Katana to improve more significantly in other 95% scenarios? Ofc you can make both, but considering doign one will probably take a month of daily grind and you probably have more important pieces to make for NIN and other jobs, you probably shouldnt augment Gleti's dagger anytime soon.

The worst I've done is waste 5 shurikens over the course of months. I figure that is an acceptable loss, especially since Domain Invasion Shurikens are so cheap.

If something goes wrong though, yeah you'll be out quite a few.

I'd avoid using it in Omen on the Ou Path, or new Sheoul. Due to how laggy it can be.

Can anyone share with me an up to date Shun set? Every NIN I know raves about Shun and Heishi But I cant seem to pump out anywhere near as much dmg as i do with Kikoku/Metsu.

Perhaps, but it might be simpler than this. Hybrids require a lot of buffs. Most of the time when you use ninja, it's solo for survival etc and not in a group giving that kind of support (otherwise you would probably come some other DD), so you rarely get the chance to use hybrid WS and take advantage of the damage. I can count on my hands the past six months where I went somewhere as ninja and it was like Ambuscade where hybrid WS didn't even work, or just solo stuff, so you can't really use hybrids there. It's good to see the damage advantage is something that isn't blade chi, since you don't get many opportunities to use that effectively, but you can always spam metsu or Shun

That's another thing that I think is stereotyped. Hybrid WS requires buffs to be totally OP, not to be good. Ambuscade is usually a wall, but solo? I'm not so sure about that.

Which trust buffs can make hybrids better than using blade Shun or metsu with SC damage?

The answer to that is absolutely zero. (Star Sybil)

Oh Arci I does MAB+ ATT+, Lili I has MAB/ATT+, Moberaux has an MAB mix

Qultada is the only trust worth buffing that kind of WS, and he's unreliable since he'll replace chaos with evokers almost immediately. Sylvie won't do any buffs besides haste and Regen for Ninja main, and the two bards are basically useless if you have access to Sylvie. Excenmille [S] has a 15% attack bonus stags call, but that's limited along with the other trusts. I just don't see many trusts that can help improve hybrid WS damage solo to the degree where it would be better than simply SC and MB. Let me know, it's been a while since I tried it on Apex and i was not impressed too much.

whynotboth.gif do hybrids w/sc dmg?

to > teki (frag)> shun > shun

add another step (likely unnecessary)

teki> to (induration) > teki (frag) > shun > shun


As for trust just anything to boost attack but like others said problems w/qultada etc, and already mentioned star sybil for mattck.

King of hearts is nice since he'll prioritize dia III which helps a ton with -defense.

With a good hybrid ws set you dont really need crazy buffs for it to do better damage than most ws, usually just as much attack as possible to help phys portion. But all depends on content.