The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Are there any die hard NIN's that have taken the plunge and made Dokoku yet.
Do we have any Numbers/parses under full buffs aria included.
I dont expect it to dethrone savage blade but it must be the best physical Katana WS, and Zesho Meppo's fusion property makes it a great sc partner for all the savage bladers around.
Copium can i have it XD

It is not very good. Every time I use mine I just end up disappointed. Is it the best physical Katana? Yes, but the best is still worse than Sword. Haven't found that it deals enough damage to use it in any sort of party situation where physical damage is the name of the game (better off on almost any other job), and for hybrids I still use Heishi. For solo it's... fine, it's not really making kills much faster but it makes skillchains pretty brainless.

If I could go back I'd stop myself from spending millions of gallimaufry on it. I don't think it's a stretch to say it's the worst prime.

Stage 4 or 5?

Lorg Mor enters the chat.

Diff between 4 and 5 doesn't really matter here, katana gets relatively little from the upgrade (only 8 base damage, miniscule amount of WSC because of how dogshit they decided to make WSC on prime 1h WS, 2% PDL) compared to the damage deficit compared to Naegling Savage Blade/Hybrids.

I want you to go look at the numbers for Ruthless Stroke, then look at the ones for Zesho Meppo. All will become clear


I'm willing to say that the club isn't even worse. At worst they're on the same level but I'd bet the Club has some pretty cool things that can be done with it.

Oh I get it, I just made stage 3 dagger the other day and was smashing out capped WS with cento offhand, it's disgustingly good.

Was more curious how hard you went in on the katana, not necessarily implying that stage 5 was going to be a game-changer for it.

I saw a guy walking around with the St5 Dokoku the other day but I didn't ask him any of this stuff. I think he might be JP? Thought there was someone posting on here, not on this thread but a different one, saying he had St5 and did...some stuff with it? He seemed to have at least a lukewarm opinion of it.

I definitely think it's extraordinarily niche and I think I would put it as the second or third worst prime.

Lorg Mor IDK...maybe if you can keep up AM3 with GEO it could be a good nuking piece, but cmon...Both those jobs have pretty compelling reasons to change their main hand on a very regular basis. Without AM up, it's very bad. Best thing I could say about it is it gives club users a way to make Darkness which is...technically a thing. I think the niche of Lorg Mor is even smaller than Dokoku, personally. They're definitely both very bad though when compared to their peers.

Have been using Stage 4 long enough (was my first prime) to confidently say I'd never bring it to Stage 5. I'm still not even sure I can convince myself to bring a good one like the GKT to 5 honestly. Having more toys to play with is more compelling to me in the long run. Have got most of the popular ones at stage 4 already and I was thinking about the axe or gaxe next.

FWIW Gaxe was one of the ones I was going to give as being at the bottom of the list. One of the members of my group made St5 Gaxe and he doesn't use it very much. He's been very disappointed with its performance in general.

I've heard the same from a St5 GAxe guy in our shell as well. Real bummer :(

I still like my St4 Helheim, but I've already gotten pretty bored with it tbh. I'll St4 the dagger, then I'm not sure I care about doing anything else after that.

I was afraid of this, i was hoping that there might be more concrete findings later on.
And if Proth has it no doubt it has been put through the ringer test wise. just sucks that a WS with 18fpt @3k (bg numbers) sucks this bad.
I guess base kat damage is just too low

Naegling is so insane lol. spend millions of gallimaufry and months of farming on a weapon that gets beaten by a pulse upgrade that can be made in a few hours. Make that make sense.

I feel like a great QOL/merit/job point/master adjustment should be the ability to increase your base WS damage for your job's native weapon class(es), because being 2.5 tiers above in katana skill vs sword skill and dealing much less damage on physical targets doesn't make sense at all. There should be some way to close that gap, similar to how they closed the gap in terms of race attributes slightly so there weren't huge advantages across races at higher levels.

Anybody found a decent use for Karambit on NIN other than super niche stuff like the Beastmen master trial?
I tried Karambit on NIN for the Blunt-weak/Slash-resistant mobs in Sheol C and was sorely disappointed.

To the point I'm still wondering if it's worth losing TP to swap to Karambit and then get disappointing numbers, or keep your TP and use slashing WSs and still get disappointing numbers lol

Only had like two, three times to test NIN in there and the outcome for me was that it's not really worth it.
Tested piercing as well with Tauret on similar situations and the result was still uhm, disheartening, but not as bad. That honestly wasn't THAT bad with Evisceration spam I guess, especially if you have a tank keeping hate and can Innin those mobs from behind for a nice Crit rate boost furtherly incresing the modest Evisceration damage.
I guess in itself it wouldn't be that bad, it's the comparison with WAR and SAM using shining-one that makes it feel like that.

I vote the latter. And yeah, my experience is basically as you said. H2H is really bad, even on blunt "weak" mobs. Dagger is also mediocre. Generally I'll just fight on through with slashing, skip the blunt weak/slash resist mobs, and if we're fighting those mobs anyway it's probably better for the NIN to just fight a different nearby family while people with better blunt options handle them.

Not that I've been blessed with the PRIVILEGE of being able to go NIN on Sheol C often, but the few times I did I sometimes found myself in a situation with slashing resistant mobs that's... annoying.

Like if there are multiple families, one is slash-resistant and the other isn't, then you can simply try to target the latter, bearing with the annoying FFXI targeting system and hoping the other DDs will let you do that, but that's another story lol

Some other times though you have 2 or 3 families where ALL are slashing-resistant, and at that point what do you do, really?
Swapping to Tauret MH is not as good as it could be I guess but I found it that for this sort of situations it's a slightly better option than just staying on Katanas.
YMMV and my experience is very limited so I don't claim this to be some absolute data, just sharing the little experience I had.

Agree with all of you that Karambit/Tauret aren't really worth swapping to in Sheol C, but I have used both in RP farm setups with NIN for piercing- and blunt-weak mobs like Gigelorum, Procne, Henwen, etc.

It's never going to be a REAL piercing or blunt DD in terms of doing a boss clear (IMO) but it can sub in when you need 18 jobs to do RP.

Only other thing would be mobs that are immune to the other damage types (Voidwatch, Warder, etc.) but under normal circumstances, those weapons suck.

I used to run Sheol C as NIN a lot and never had luck with H2H, just Heishi/Kuni (situationally great), Naegling (not bad), and Tauret (not great but still worth it IMO).

I'd prioritize groups that were weak to Chi, Teki, and To, the rest of the group would move on and let me clear groups that I could eat through faster if song timers were ok. I could pull decent numbers, I know some who went in on NIN and could do much better, but you do accept to a certain point that you are just going to suck against certain groups and some runs will be better than others.

This was during the v15/v20 era though and I think the hybrid damage stood out more then than it does now, other DD jobs have more flexibility with damage types that averages out to be better than NIN with higher ranks in Odyssey gear.

What might an Asuran Fists set look like on ninja?

I'll be throwing ninja into a Ngai RP setup with a Karambit. Not expecting the ninja to carry the fight or anything, but figure its better than nothing and will help break up the weapon skill wall at the very least.

If you’re subbing Warrior (you should be), the swap to make is Mafic cudgel/hitaki and judgment. Dagger WS on ninja sucks, H2H are even worse. Judgement is similar to Savage/Ten, and you don't need to make a set for it because Savage is exactly the same modifiers, just an extra hit. I'm surprised more people don't use Mafic on ninja. It's not great, but the WS alone is far better than anything Evisc/Karambit offers. It also destroys skeletons.

Alternatively, switch to a slashing neutral target while everyone else fights the resistant ones with their better weapon.

Don't ever use Karambit on ninja.

Also, it's probably not popular to say this, but sadly, Ninja has absolutely zero play in Gaol fights. Every job outperforms it on every NM. Ninja suffers from no support job a lot harder than other jobs/DPS/front line jobs, so they can't tank (no natural hate tools), DPS that great (low attack job with no native buffs, Hybrids don't work), or even play defensively because everything wipes shadows. It's a real shame.

We've used it in multi-KI Ongo fight as a SC starter / MBer. Other than that, I've never actually used NIN in a job setup to attempt to kill an NM.

You could probably fit it in a DD slot and still get away with a win on some of the lower-tier and/or lower-vengeance level bosses, but it will never be the job in an optimal strategy.

I think most anyone who's played NIN for a while already knows this though. It's not an effective DD job unless hybrids are relevant. Unfortunate, but true.

The only use case I've ever found for it, which we also used it for. And only because of abusing Gokotai's Regain/DW effect.

I actually made a second TP bonus weapon so that I could try it NIN on a multi-KI Arebati fight, using Ullr + 2 TP Bonus katanas spamming Empyereal Arrow, but never got the chance to try it out, because other jobs (DNC, DRG, WAR) are better at softening-KI fight than NIN is. Still have the sets and gear for the shooting/snapshot/ws builds made up too, just nobody ever wanted me to waste my time trying it out.

Karambit is probably not worth making unless you're using them for other jobs, but certainly something you could find use for. They aren't bridging the gap when you are facing damage penalties, but they can be clutch against 'all but' immunity (caturae, warder, ect.).


Definitely not breaking ninja into the seg farming meta. We're doomed to be situationally brilliant.

Despite what I've stated above, I still consider NIN to be very meta-relevant in Seg farms. If someone is looking for a R25 DD, Ninja does respectable. It's going to be under WAR/DRG/SAM/DRK in terms of damage on higher floors, but with MLs and using the correct Hybrids, it obliterates C1/2, and have Naegling/Hitaki for eveything else. It gets TP fast enough to stay competitive, and shadows are extremely useful in Segs, since almost nothing besides aoe magic strips shadows, making NIN one of the safest DDs to bring.

The point I was making wasn't that NIN is not relevant to Odyssey, but that Karambit is awful on NIN and nobody should waste their time building one for Segments/Gaol, because NIN has low usefulness in Gaol and better options in Segs.

I went NIN a fair bit when we were RPing Bumba at v15 and the SB damage was decent. I never got to confirm this either but I kept up Migawari at the time and there were a few times we'd get hit with Denounce and it would kill everyone but myself and the WHM. I'd always been curious if it was the defensive gear I was using or some other factor, but it's possible Migawari was eating it, I never got to test it and see.

I had also wanted to try using it at v20 to intentionally do all four procs, but never had the chance, folks were dead set on SB and roll dice on the procs. I never had the chance with any job to intentionally try and proc it.

There were also some folks using it vs Kalunga, NIN would try to stay 2nd on the hate list and shadow tank the add. It worked sometimes, but not others because it depended on the tank holding hate the entire time, which would get spicy if DDs were hate capping.

I'd agree it's useless in v25 and at lower tiers there are better options to take in its place, but v20 and below you could reasonably slot it in at times even before higher ranked gear was available, and it had some limited use.

I remember using Migawari on Mboze. It saved me from one of its moves, might have been Tiiimbeeer. Everyone else died, I lived. It was during an RP farm as well with a BRD buffing me, spamming Savage Blade.

100% to all of that. My three most used segment jobs are SAM WAR NIN, and NIN really doesn't lag too far behind. Depends a little more on luck of getting good Chi/To weak mobs, so not as consistent as a WAR that has good tools to deal with pretty much everything, but it's good. Also nice for stuff like grabbing a couple Agon mobs and using Utsusemi to to help ease the healer's load during the more hectic time when you have a bunch of aggroed Agons right after killing a fetter, blink tanking a pop NM, or avoiding dangerous TP moves from normal mobs (e.g., sickle slash).

Even when I get a family that resists hybrids, as long as it's not also resistant to slashing I sometimes don't bother swapping from Heishi and will just use Blade: Ten. Still good damage, and depending on how fast the mobs melt you can avoid having to lose some TP twice (swapping to Naegling or whatever, then back to Heishi).

For Gaol, NIN has some niche uses. It's pretty good on Aristaeus (solid slashing damage, Utsusemi helps a lot to mitigate damage from Tegmina Buffet).


Now that's some dedication! I think I'm lucky to have a strong RNG RUN GEO, so I would basically always be on one of those jobs for Arebati, and can convince myself it's definitely not worth my time to make a second Hitaki XD


Yonin up and casting shadows is a natural hate tool... Pair that with Fudo Masamune C or Nagi, offhand a Tsuru, keep Gekka on, and you can hold a lot of stuff effectively while adding more damage than, say, a PLD.

But yeah, shadow wiping NMs will make that worse, and NIN certainly isn't what I'd want to tank on for the T3 single element NMs, so that severely limits your choices during Gaol. But I think that's less due to lack of subjob than to the other factors.

It's not worth making one now, but when Gaol was still fresh and people hadn't figured out how to kill higher Veng bosses in one go, I read about a Thief who did the same thing with two TP bonus daggers. Decided to make one in case the group I was in ever struggled with job comp or clearing with standard jobs, but we never needed to dig that deep into the bag of gimmicks to get our clear, so it died there xD

This was way back at V15, but our group would kill an NM first KI, and then kill Arebati second KI with RNG, COR, RDM, PLD, and then any 2 of SAM (TP bonus GKT), NIN, or THF (2x TP bonus weapon).

I even went out and made Snap/Rapid shot Arco set for my sam.

Nin was pretty sick, apparently Innin procs on ranged attacks.

I always assumed NIN to have 0 club skill (lies! Same skill as H2H) and Mafic is an awful club so I never considered the option.
I can easily see it working better than Karambit though, Judgement is nice and Asuran Fists sucks despite the 50% damage bonus aug.
Now you got me curious about this, I wanna try it!

Eeeeeeh, Evis is not THAT bad with Tauret, especially if you're riding Innin.
I mean it's not good but when you're against multiple families who are slash resistant and piercing weak, it's still a noticeable DPS improvement over staying on Slashing.
For which, btw, it's pretty sad that we're bound to use Naegling which produces much better results than Blade: Ten, alas.
Now this might be different with Zessho Meppo I dunno, I've got no Stage 5 Prime for NIN.


I agree though that when the stars & planets allign and you get good families in your Sheol C run, NIN can provide VERY interesting damage thanks to Hybrids.
It's kind of a lottery though, sadly.

You've got better results on /WAR btw? I don't honestly remember but I'm pretty confident I used to go /DRG

I found Tauret to be pretty mediocre on NIN. Between 18k-22k Evisceration, which is not great, though you can spam it. At worst, it's tied with Naegling on single-penalty Slashing Resist monsters, but on double Slashing Resistance mobs like Skeletons, Tauret would be stronger. But that's irrelevant anyhow, because Mafic+Judgment is way stronger on Skeletons and even Blunt-neutral mobs like crabs or jagils (also irrelevant, crabs and jagils take +50% ice damage, so :T0 destroys them). I haven't found Tauret to be worth using anymore since I started bringing a club a long time ago, which is why I prefer warrior sub to unlock additional WS. Also, Innin is practically worthless in Sheol since it's annoying to be positioned properly for every monster.

Can you be more specific which "multiple families who are slash resistant and piercing weak"? The only monsters in Gaol I can recall that are piercing weak are birds or flying monsters like Flies or Puks, neither of which are resistant to slashing. So you are never in a situation where monsters are both resistant to slashing yet weak to piercing (outside of normal familiy weaknesses unrelated to Odyssey, there is no "piercing weakness" per se; it's just neutral). Advise me on which monsters you see a "noticeable DPS improvement over Slashing" that Piercing gains an inherent advantage, because I can't think of any (its possible I misinterpreted this line).

There are only a handful of monster groupings I have found that Ninja has to switch weapons for: Usually Aquans - crabs/jagils (though on lower floors, don't bother, just hybrid and power through them), Lamiae -> Mafic or Tauret (imo target something else), Trolls -> Naegling, maybe Clots (these have a weakness to Ninja's hybrid line, or multi-step them), anything that resists Hybrids. I consider Naegling to not really be considered a "swap" though since the damage is consistent or better and losing TP on NIN is meaningless since it's gotten back in 2 seconds. "Swapping" on NIN to me means downgrading from your two main damaging types to something weaker to deal acceptable damage temporarily, then swapping back to your primary damage sources. These are my personal semantics because Naegling/Hybrids are so strong

The only problematic group I have found on NIN are skeletons, which is why I mentioned it above. Mafic is your swap here since you gain additional damage due to Skeletons taking additional blunt damage even though Mafic Cudgel is a bad club.

I'm sure /drg at ML50 is more damage than /war, but I am not ML50, and I happen to prefer provoke, Berserk, the additional DA (which is probably nothing impressive) and the additional WS over the Jumps and WSD. NIN already deals very high WS damage, doesn't need to reset hate with Super Jumps because it's protected by shadows, and Jump/High Jump are slower than swinging for TP. It's a trade-off between acc + wsd traits, and Berserk/DA/Provoke, so just pick what works for you. Idk, I hate when mobs run off to follow the tank and I have to chase them, voke is nice to kill stuff in transit (sometimes I run and voke and bring a helper with me if we are low on time, killing it on the way lol). I'm not advocating for one over the other; I won't bother using Tauret or Karambit on NIN, so the decision for me is clear.