The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

The problem is always keeping the RDM and Ulmia trust alive so your recasts aren't terrible.

It might be possible to solo VD AA GK with only trusts. You need to set gessho up as having hate on the wyvren though to make your shadows last longer, position apu properly, and if you can find a way to keep RDM and Ulmia alive through dragonfall, or get very very good at timing Utsusemi: Ichi and canceling higher tier shadows. It will also be a pretty long fight without attack buffs/def downs I think. That or getting sylvie to last through dragonfall somehow. She uses indi-haste if you're on nin and will cast haste on you the problem is she stands close and so isn't too reliable on anything dangerous, her cures are also slow and only tier IV. If you use height advantage and make them stand on the opposite side of you too, I have had qultada live before through waterja maybe koru-moru could too.

Basically though that I know of nope, if you want reliable fast wins on VD BCNM it either takes pushing the job much further than I have or dual/triboxing, or very tricksy things with trust placements. I'd say if you want "fast" attached to as an adjective to clear times then it's extremely hard to achieve that on NIN. Though if you can solo big skillchains it's not exactly slow either but I feel like any dd that can self chain 5 step chains in a fight will be doing good damage so it's not like it's special to ninja, though NIN does get some skillchain and magic burst bonus traits, and my next project on NIN is to see if I can get Blade: Ten to do anything like the spreadsheet says as that might be our biggest closer, it just has bad skillchain properties since NIN has no distortion ws. My best clear time on levi triboxing is only like 3mins 18s and I know some blu that solo faster than that and if I can't get my 5 step off which is most the time, my clear times are usually more like 5-7 mins. Shun seems pretty consistent but I only do like 8-15k with it (depending on pdif and how many multi hits) compared to say cdc which can top out closer to 30k.

What's killing your RDM trusts off when doing levi? Qultada definitely dies all the time but Koru-Moru normally manages to stick around the whole fight when I do it on blu. The only thing he gets hit by is waterja when I don't move away.

What are the WS of choice for a ninja now?

Blade: Hi or Blade: Shun at low TP if you wield a normal Katana or a Kannagi.
Blade: Ten at high values of TP.
Added variation of Kamu to activate AM3 if you wield a Nagi.
Situational use of Metsu if you wield a Kikoku.

If you have a Heishi Shorinken just spam Ten, unless you want to make use of the AM and/or the Umbra/Radiance, in which case use Shun.

Do you need blade: hi? Or is shun just as strong as Hi?

They are different.
Shun provides a bit more solid damage but aside from MA procs it's less damage than Hi, which can spike pretty high but it's a bit inconsistent because it depends from crit rate (both scale pretty bad with TP)

Blade Hi synergizes particularly well with Innin, which grants you a pretty consistant Crit Rate bonus, which is useless on most of your other weaponskills.

Last but not least you kinda want Blade: Hi for SC purposes (Lv3 Dark Element)

Blade Ten, Ku and Shun are going to average the best. Blade Hi is good if you can use Innin. It's problem is bad WSC and fTP scaling. AGI does jack ***for your crit rate so your stuck at low dDEX values. It's a situation where if the first hit crits then it's good, otherwise it's crap.

Blade: Hi (Single-hit)(AGI / Critical / Accuracy Based WS) is nicer with a Kannagi 119 However....... Its still a MUST Have on the Arsenal of any good NIN as its VERY VERY Situational during some NM fights / Mobs.

I personally see
Blade: Shun (Multi-hit)(DEX / Attack Based WS) being Better DMG output (5 hits tho so that is why)

Also Blade:Ku (Multi-hit)(STR / DEX / Attack Based WS) , Blade:Ten (Single-Hit)(STR / DEX / Attack Based WS) Have their DMG Up'd so they are pretty descent as well :D

Blade:Kamu (Single-hit) (INT / STR / MAB Based WS) is nice for when you are Main Tanking due to its Effect (Lower Mob ACC) and it stacks on top of "Kurayami" or "Blind"

Blade: Metsu (Multi-hit)(STR / DEX / Attack Based WS) is for Skillchain / Aftermath ONLY ! DMG output on this WS is not Great but also not bad however you might be better using one of the previous WS.

^^/

Wait what? I thought Kamu was physical. (New to NIN so reading up on stuff.) Nothing anywhere has Kamu being hybrid or magical.

Do I need to keep Iga Zukin +2(and reforged version) on fulltime for the innin bonus?
Or the legs for the yonin counter bonus?

Most likely Shun deals more dmg than Hi. But the reason why Id say Hi is neccessary is because of multi-stepping solo or SCing in general.
A very good multi-step is Shun -> Hi -> Kamu -> Shun (->Shun with Aeonic) for either 4 step light or 5 step Radiance. While this is possible with Ten and Ku instead of Hi during the mutli-step your TP will be around 1k (+ moonshade) after the first and I personally see best Dmg with Hi at this point. With aeonic Ten might actually pull ahead without Innin but not sure.

Another thing is: if you can solo SC but not reliably mutli-step you should keep in mind that Hi -> Hi makes dark while Shun -> Shun makes nothing (without aeonic). So when Im buffed enough to solo SC but not sure whether the whole 4 step will go through I tend to stick to Hi -> Hi to get a darkness SC out of it which will make up for the lower WS dmg compared to Shun.

Blade: Ten is stronger than any other NIN WS if you have Heishi unless you are severely attacked starved, then Shun may pull ahead. Even without Heishi, it's a serious contender and may still pull ahead.

If you're talking about max DPS though, there isn't a clear answer. The lack of self skill chaining is often a deteriment. If you're solo with good buffs then you should consider 4 stepping if you have good gear. If you're grouping, Ten can still be good (CDC <-> Ten is Darkness) but you may want to consider other weaponskills too. You should make sets for all of them and try to figure out what is best for your situation.

As much as CDC <-> Ten = Darkness when playing with another NIN in pt Hi > Hi = Darkness as well as faster to do as well as more efficient as CDC <-> HI = Darkness as well and In case of Aeonic:
Shun > Hi > Kamu > Shun > Shun for Radiance !

What?

CDC is a sword WS, so I dunno where that's coming from. I just mean in general if you want to optimize DPS you should be able to adapt. 2 step level 3 skillchains aren't optimal for DPS but they may be the most practical when grouping (this way, each player can just spam their WS).

My ws of choice is Metsu. I am unsure why the metsu hate/ignoring on this board!!! Please post your metsu/shun sets so i can see why you all are getting better shun number, it baffles me tbh.

metsu <> metsu = darkness
metsu <> shun = light

pretty fing awesome to be able to 2 step both dark/light with a very good ws, and if your solo this means you can rotate them and be dropping a 20k+ san nuke every sc too. On apex raptors for example I can take over 50% of their hp in one ws+mb round, or I can kill them in 3 sc of metsu>shun for light (no mb). Both work well and i was clocking solo last night before event 1200kcp/hr solo.

Either my metsu set is way good, or my shun set sucs haha!! I doubt it though. I have parsed it for hours and my metsu avg is nearly always 700~ more than shun. Shun will spike well on multihit procs, but its not huge like other ws's.

Key to make metsu great is getting +wsd gear, I run +30 wsd and +260~ dex on metsu. This gets me higher avg returns than any other ws, bar ten at 2000tp.

Ten is another ws I dont see many nins utilize. There are many occasions where your tp overflow gets you super close to 2k tp. Heck even when I fire off a regular ten at 1500~ tp with moonshade I am still getting numbers close to hi/shun/metsu. In these events I will 3 step a light for fun, Ten>metsu>shun.

Nin is fun because it has so many ws that are very close in dmg. The only thing keeping nin back from being a very potent dd like blu is atm is self haste ninjitsu and making shun crit based like cdc is. With those changes we would then go from B grade dd to A grade.

I have never really used ku/kamu on my nin.... maybe this is bad of me, but I just never saw a point to it. Also I use hi ONLY for sc purposes since I feel its dmg is lacking overall. I do realize that for new nin's though this can be very potent because its less gear dependent and more luck on crit hit dependent.

my favorite 4 step I do is shun>ten>metsu>shun.

Fulltime

Azagarth's entire post is loaded with truth, very well said. The Metsu stuff (WSD for sure), the SC stuff, all of it. Seconded big time.

I mean, obviously not relevant if you're using a Heishi/Kannagi/other, but Kikoku holds up well and if you're using that you should definitely be able to get way more use out of Metsu than just an aftermath trigger. I use all of Metsu/Shun/Ten regularly for damage, and Hi as needed for SC purposes.

People ignore Metsu because they like going to the spreadsheet and say oh look it shows its better so it must be! I actually own 3 of the AGs and Kannagi isn't as good as how people with spreadsheets put it out to be. Blade hi is pretty garbage due to it natively being 1 hit critical ws with inconsistency numbers. Sure the AM3 might be nice but I find myself dealing more damage from ws than melee for it to make up for the loss of damage from hi.

Metsu on the other hand, very consistent, reliable, able to make light and darkness and 160 attack. But I assume the judgement just comes from people who don't actually own the weapon(s)

People go fullretard when it comes to spreadsheets. They completely ignore that it's a scenario and never close to what actually happens. (with the notable exceptions of the obvious people).

I am not far from getting aeonic katana now, for those of you who have them. How have you found to maximize dmg? I assume radience stepping, but I was curious on that. Can we just shun spam like drg can just stardiver? With shuns attack penalty moved with aeonic, will shun become your bread and butter ws or should ten be primarily spammed when NOT aiming for specific sc?

Ten is the highest damage dealing WS with Heishi.
Shun is nice but it's usually higher dps only when you're messing around with SCs and Radiance

So I am thinking to possibly try and make myself a Kujaku+1 since they are non existent on my server... if i can go 1/16 will cost me around 40m. Thats a pretty steep price tag if im even lucky lol (im 0/30+ on dagger atm).

I want to make sure before I devote so much gil to this offhand weapon that it will be worth it. I am mainly looking ahead to when I have aeonic and trying to self solo 5 step sc. Right now my nin gains tp fast, but occasionally just a bit to slow for a 5 step, I want to fix this but the only real way I can see potentially is this katana.

My questions for those that have it.

Is it worth it? is tp gain truly fast enough with it to assure 5 step possibility solo? Also haste effect proc rate? DA proc rate?

I've been having my smithing pal do up a few. I'm not very far in at all. But I forsee a lot of NQ's...

Kujaku +1 is worth it. The DA is probably about 40%? and haste proc is around 10~15% probably. I went 1/1 on mine a while ago and I still use it in all situations unless its something really high level, then something with better accuracy comes in.

so you would say overall its best nin offhand when acc isnt an issue (then shigi)? If thats so im making one asap lol :D