The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I had Dread Jupon for a while but just recently upgraded to Taeon Tabard. It's the best you can get besides Adhemar Jacket +1, but really who uses an Adhemar Jacket +1 for the Fast Cast. I don't think your statement about Passion Jacket is true. I tried testing it just now. I was able to get floored recast using Taeon (FC + 9%) but not Passion Jacket. I think passion/reforged only work for precast.

Also, to floor Migawari: Ichi recast with capped Haste, you need 68 Fast Cast. This is easier to do that Utsusemi recast because you can use the feet that aren't Hattori.

verda could you try filming some radience kills with aeonic? it would be cool to see you solo in a sc some stuff like reisn t1 nms etc ;D inspire me to replace my AG kik.

Sure :D just have to get my recording setup again.


Hm I was told by a source I trust it does work, so I did some testing.
I found out it doesn't work, but I also found out the lua I was using made my prior testing not good because I tested using San and for some reason GS doesn't recognize it as an utsusemi spell yet so I had to make these changes:


It's not the most elegant fix and I'll probably revisit it later but man I been running around without 2 more shadows I feel dumb :D It also had the effect of making my prior testing not work, so you're right.

I cant remember the file, its the one all the spells for mote are listed, you just needed to add it there and no extra coding needed, just fyi :D Ill post more in depth later for you on it.

Mote-Mappings.lua

There's a line in there that should look like this.



Also my remark about Migawari recast being easier to floor is incorrect. It's actually more difficult because the difference in required Fast Cast between Utsusemi: San and Migawari: Ichi is 6, which means you need maxed Herculean Boots and the same gear. If you're using Shigi you need 64 Fast Cast.

I was reviewing the NQ 0% set on the front page. It shows a total of 41 DW on the set, when only 39 DW is required to reach cap. Why choose the Mochi. Chainmail +1 when Adhemar Jacket will put you exactly at DW cap with better stats?

Is Kakka a worthy endeavour? Or is there maybe a delay/gear/buff ratio to when it's worth using? Or, idk, something else I should know about it?

Well, I mean... obviously worth it buffing before a fight but I'm sure you realize that. Honestly though, I find that's usually enough: something like Ambuscade, UNM, most escha NMs (pre T3/4 Reisenjima), a SR NM - it probably lasts the whole fight anyway. There aren't that many situations where I'm meleeing on NIN in really long duration fights anyway.

During fight though, if it might be close on timer I tend to only recast if there's some reason I am otherwise prevented from WSing at will. Amnesia, some mob special move up, waiting on a SC partner or holding WS to not screw up someone else's SC, etc. In that case I'll often recast even with some time remaining just because it's a good opportunity to reset my buffs (though I'll follow the same logic on like, BLU recasting Nat. Meditation or a defensive buff).

I suspect it's more situational though. Might be reasonable to recast mid-fight is if you're TPing at a rate where you often come really close to SC window before reaching 1000tp (especially self SC scenarios, or involved in a multistep - say, Hi > CdC > Metsu double darkness). In that case, maybe better off with the extra store TP to give a little more confidence you'll hit an important SC in time, even if it does otherwise slow down DPS due to the casting time.

EDIT: Oh, one other relevant point is to remember that the 550 JP gift gives 10%+ ninjutsu effect duration so has some impact. 5:30 Kakka tends to be enough time for me to kill most stuff on NIN without really worrying about recast.

The more I think of it, I guess if I was doing something longer it's probably worth recasting - not a big loss with a decent FC set and some Ninjutsu cast time JPs. Though like I said, I tend not to run into those situations a ton, and it's still smart to try to time your mid-fight buffing at opportune moments.

Before fight, why not!

During... idk for me I never do UNLESS there is a down time window, aka you are turned, mob has death spikes on, hate is going everywhere and dds have to lay off a sec (rare/never on nin), or the real reason is when your fighting PLD and it does Invincible.

So hope that helps like capuchin said too. Has to be a real reason, aka you cant be dding, or its before fight.

Did anyone ever post a ninjutsu magic acc set? Tired of my debuffs being resisted :D

In the OP, actually.

Quite right, been there for a little while actually. :)

Cool thanks :D

Hey I have a couple questions regarding NIN. I have not played it in 6 years!

Can you land enfeeble ninjitsu on hard stuff now? Like aisha? Or is nearly everything immune again?

Did they buff the nuke ninjitsu or at least san nukes? Do they do respectable damage worth casting for anything? Or at least MBing?

Why can't you evasion tank anymore, or, why can't ninja tank?

Is kikoku the best NIN RME? It seems really strong, especially since it comes with 60 attk and metsu has a really good 80% dex modifier. What's more than 1000% TP do for it?

Is ninja a good DD? Do you just sit there and auto-attack then WS with nearly zero JA's as a DD?

biggest issue on tanking is that all endgame stuff spams aoe, and you wont hit stuff enough/accurately while tanking to generate much hate off dps. Nin is a great tank for non-endgame stuff.

nin is great on anything lower than 135, at 135 you can dd is all, but there better dps job now. This is why nin as a useful job kind of dies at apex cp mobs nd things of that lv, which btw it excels at, and may be the MVP of apex cp due to tanking, pulling, self sc, and MB for 50k+ easily.

You can land debuffs, with an amazing set (seriously need top gear), but in group play someone will do it better. For solo though have fun :D I normally solo apex crabs and pull with slow.

No need to evasion tank because san = 7 shadows every 12 sec, and ni by now in near instant cast too and is 6 every 9. With capped haste of course which you will have solo with trusts, and never when in pty because mages forgot they can cast haste lol.

REAM is tricky, all are good, for different things. Aeonic atm is looking BiS since most stuff done as nin is solo at this point, att which point doing your own 5 step radience sc + mb will probably kill most anything below 128 at this point lol.

Nin is a good dd, not the best but id put it well over the average, Its a good time to be nin and once they add a haste2 ninjitsu and change shun to crit ws with no attack penalty we will rival/beat blu dps.

Thanks a lot azagarth!

How interactive is playing NIN as a DD though? I've always found it really boring if you aren't tanking/voking/offtanking since it doesn't really have to do anything because it has no JA's.

Also are Aisha/yurin not unique enfeebles that stack with everything? Can you land them on stuff? They're really strong imo.

You also said you MB, so san spells do good damage now? They got buffed somehow? That's really fun if so!

you will almost never use aisha/yurin.... cant remember last time I did tbh.

Nin is fast paces still bc you will be solo scing, its basically spam ws button and watch shadows. If that bores you then most dd will at this point in game. Nin is still faster paces than most.

so the thing about nuking is this. It is amazing on stuff that doesnt matter haha. Apex crabs i use as a base because most player base will not be doing endgame helms at all. This means that apex is kind of their top out in terms of lv. Nin under right circumstances can pop out 99k san nukes. In practice though thats rare, however seeing 40-60k is not rare on apex and is a worthy goal to attain.

Most nms today have either -pdt resistance bad, or -mdt bad and really pigeonholes what jobs can do them well. Nin will be invited to said nms to dd because they are magic resistant and thus your nuke will not perform. No one will invite a nin to just nuke, and our timers really dont allow for it to be done well either on san nukes. I have done a few 20k nukes on T1 stuff though, its not impossible, but normally said NM's will also take a 10k~ metsu to the face in the same time, meaning the nuking probably wasnt worth it (unless futea is up ;D)

if your interested in nin lv it. Its a great job with a lot of utility still, its one of the few accepted jobs in game still. It however cannot perform endgame (Reis Helms etc) at the lv other dds can. I have been to Woc melee burns on my drk lots and have seen some nins in action on stuff like that, the nin did 1/4th my dmg, hes not the best though and i know I could easily double his dps on my nin. However you see that is still far behind my drk.... But if you only had that as a dd, like he did, then theres not much choice :D

play what you like but also be realistic too is my motto. Its why I play 5 jobs actively, and may lv 2 more. I am no slouch at any of them, but each one has its place the others dont :D

There isn't a spell that directly lowers attack, only things I can think of are the imbued effects of special weapons or some weapon skills.
Not sure Aisha stacks with them.
Oh there's Geo-Wilt but of course Aisha surely stacks with that.

Likewise with Yurin, not much stuff that lowers TP gain out there.
JA-wise the only thing I can think of is "Penance", and I seem to recall Aisha didn't stack with that, but good luck finding a MNK with Penance merited these days.


^ this.
But to be fair they're good spells.
IF you can land it and IF it's worth for you to sacriface the DD time in exchange for the casting time, then why not?
If you're gonna play defensively for whatever reason or are unable to WS because of Amnesia or something else, then sure why not?
They surely are interesting and often underestimated spells.

Personal opinion of course, but I greatly disagree with that.
I would change the word "great" with the word "viable".
Yes, NIN is a perfectly viable tank for lower level content (I'd say a bit under 135 tbh).

Thing is that to tank on NIN you have to STRUGGLE, and I mean A LOT.
On some mobs it's simply not possible.

You can obtain much better results with a PLD tank or a RUN tank, sometimes even August trust to be completely honest. That says a lot about NIN's "greatness" as a tank.
On RUN I can tank better and more often than not even do more damage (if I equip Lionheart) than on my NIN.

I don't like this situation at all, used to love tanking on NIN, but at the moment NIN is all but a "great" tank for ANY content.
But if we were talking about "viable" then sure, can use it on pretty much everything under a certain ilevel.

several blu and smn things lower atk but no one uses those

yes the word viable is more accurate ;D

anyhow basically sums it up, at this point lv nin if you like to solo on it, and you enjoy doing DD. Tank wise lv pld or run atm (pup too i guess).

So much that haha I always point out that I know for a fact which mages in my pt are capable of casting Haste and still they igore it...

Anyways^^ While in general I agree to what he said I wanted to add to a bit to Azagarth.Which is true, but imho you dont need it anymore. The enmity buff of Utsu spells with Yonin up was actually quite nice. You ll be spaming it anyways. Together with /Run with flash and a FC/Enmity set you r looking at a Flash lvl enmity spell every couple of sec that is boosed bei Gekka and Yonins enmity boost. So if its just about holding hate I think Nin is in a better position that many ppl think.

Adding to that, the reverse is true as well: Innin and Yain will supress your enmity gain which is a tool not many DDs have. Its no TA or Decoy Shot lvl suppression/transfere of hate but still, when considering Nin as DD I think this should be taken into account.

As Az mentioned there is no clear winner for a RMEA Katana. But I still wonder how Kannagi performes with Mikage.

About Ninjutsu....tbh never casted Aisha much but cannot really say why. Probably should try^^ but Yurin is only really useful when you r the only DD on something. Otherwise the TP gain of the enemy caused by the others will be so high that yurin adds nothing.
Nukes are tricky. Biggest prob for Nin is probably MAcc. There is another thread with the different formulas and a calculation sheet as well. Nin can reach very high numbers by exploiting the many additional multiplierers it gets. This requires Innin and San nukes to activate the Relic Hat. Futae (especially together with JPs) adds a lot indeed but as Az mentioned, recast is a big issue. SE should finally unluck all San spells and just boost them with merits or something...

Also Id be careful to compare a medium equiped Nin to maxed out Drk and say Nin is inferior. I do agree that Nins dmg output with similar lvl of gear is probably lower (as it should be, Nin is kind of a hybrid job after all) but the gap is much closer than many think. With my mediocre gear I was able to outparse Blus and everything in Intense Ambu VD which is about 135 isnt it? And e.g. when using Mikage the margine was huge (~40% to ~15% done by the next highest DD [without SCdmg]).
Again same issue: you dont know my gear and/or the gear of the others. So it doesnt say anything.
My point is just: its situational and depends a lot on gear and setup and mob and whatsoever. You can screw numbers in favor of Nin if you want.

tldr: Play nin if you like playing it ^^

Yeah but the "lower effect" is the side effect of a damaging BloodPact/Attack, right?
Kinda the same as side effect of some WS.
There isn't a spell that does nothing but lower attack other than Aisha and Wilt, that I can think of at least?

But I guess this hardly matters in the end. I mean why should we care wether the att down is a sideffect of something else or the only purpose of a ja/spell? What matters is the result I guess.

Uhm, different situations make different weapons better, absolutely agree, but overall?
I'd say Heishi Shorinken is in a pretty good position overall. Allows you to spam TEN for pretty tough damage, and grants you access to niche-setups with Radiance and stuff.

Kikoku has potential in underbuffed situations, the AM is nice (and it's my favourite aesthetically :D) but when you're attack capped (or close to that) because of the buffs, I don't think Kikoku can compare to other weapons.

Kannagi I'm not sure, I'm biased for her.
Keeping AM up 100% of the time is gonna make Kannagi quite something, but in a scenario where you're constantly spamming WS and hardly hitting the monster (every WS produces a ~1 sec cooldown on melee) the benefit from it is gonna get reduced.
Plus Hi is quite a random WS, even with Innin up, it produces really unreliable numbers compared to, say, the damage output of Heishi's TEN spam.

Nagi can be nice on fights that aren't too short or too long where you can make a *perfect* use of AM3 and store it beforehand.
In all other situations I'm afraid Heishi, Kannagi and possibly Kikoku too might pull ahead.


So we're back to the starting point: different situations make different weapons the best.
But if I had to pick ONE weapon and only ONE out of those 4, I'd probably bet my money on Heishi Shorinken. Plus it's also the easiest of the 4 to make, which is just icing on the cake? Lol

Im just very curious what numbers Kannagi can pull with Mikage. I could imagine a setup like Nin Tank Heal Geo Cor Smn. Thf and Chaos roll, Ramuh favor. Should easily push Nins Crit rate to 100% with Innin. get AM3 up and pop mikage. dont WS. As low DA/TA in gear as possible to allow mikage to push the number of hits in main hand (or does that trigger after(!) mikage in multi hit calculation?).
Variance would be huge but up to 22 times the crit dmg of a melee hit in one attack round.

I'm not even sure AM would work with Mikage honestly. Depends how Mikage's additional effect gets calculated. Empy AM only counts for Main Hand hits and, I think, Multiattack procs of the Mainhand.
Doesn't work of course for OH hits and MA procs of OH.

Where does Mikage MA effect fits in all of this? I wonder.
Wouldn't be surprised if to maximize damage it's gonna be better to forgo Dualwield and just MH Kannagi with AM3 up during Mikage XD XD


I think Kannagi is really awesome in general, I'm biased for her, totally.
Not sure I'd use that over Heishi but... I love it yeah.
Is shun's spreadsheet updated to handle Kannagi AM perfect? Could test a few things there.
I can already imagine some scenarios where Kannagi would totally win, I'm just not sure that overall it would provide to be as easy/practical to use as an Heishi.
And let's not talk about how you can complete Heishi in a few days and it takes a loooooong grind to AG a Kannagi.

Um...didnt even think about that. That would be a bummer......I ll still finish my Kannagi to try and let you know ^^ (donations in HMP or Riftdoss or boulders to support that reasearch *couch* project are highly welcome :p)

IF it works I think to optimize the damage you would have to:
1) Prepare 3k TP and WS just before Mikage, to get AM3
2) When Mikage is up, let the white damage flow and only WS when at 3k TP
3) Might be best to singlewield Kannagi with no offhand

All of this under the hypothesys that Empy AM actually works on Mikage Multiattack procs.

Not even sure how Mikage MA synergizes with other forms of MA. Does it work in addition to DA/TA/QA? Or in place of them?
If it works in place of them I think it's pretty likely AM works on it.
If it works in addition of them then I'm afraid there's a high chance those additional hits won't benefit from AM.

Yea thought about that before as well. Just feels so.... wrong xD to equip only one Katana as Nin. Feels so nacked :p
But regardless...one would have to math it out but no dual wield means no attack delay cap anymore. No way Nin can cap that witout dual wield.

About MA...so far my assumtpion was that it works like Mythic AM, i.e. after but in addition to other forms of AM. But have no proof whatsoever. Someone would have to test. Is there a good way to count the hits/attack round?