The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Shuriken Tosses have the advantage of larger TP return compared to melee hits, they can do more damage on targets with different weakness to slash/pierce/ranged etc.

You're still bound to the fact that TA can proc twice per attack round (once on every hand) granting double the benefit it would give to a 2H job.
Daken can only proc max once per attack round no matter what.

(the experience you shared about double daken I'm pretty sure it was just chatlog lag or a packetloss)

Sorry I might just misunderstand what you r sayn here but to avoid others having the same problem: Kannagi AM (and Empy AM in general) can proc on all swings of the main hand (i.e. the empy weapon) but NOT off hand. So a DW with Kannagi and another Katana procing 2 TAs can proc OTD on all the 3 Kannagi swings, but none of the off hand swings. So with Mikage up (which currently is assumed to provide a maximum of 5 additional hits to the main hand) you can have 6 OTD procs in one attack round + 2 normal swings from the off hand.

Srry you might have said the same but I was a bit confused.

But yea I agree that we should finally test whether Daken counts as one of the swings towards the 8hit/round limit.

Maybe I'm confusing it with the Relic aftermath where it procs on first hit of the round only. Just never really noticed Kannagi proc'ing outside of those instances (first attack of the round), Again, like Sechs mentioned: probably just my error as I'm dumb. Either packetloss or not paying close enough attention. Swing so fast!

Wasn't it tested already a few months ago and the outcome was that, as obviously expected, Daken couldn't go above the 8 attacks per round limit either?

Hmm...cannot remember such a test and cannot find it right now. I tried to answer that question a while back along with other Mikage questions (need to continue that ;_;) but ended up not finding the time for it. If you have any data could you post a link to it?

If anything I remembered you doing the test! lol
I must have been thinking about your partial Mikage test.

I really see no valid reason for Daken to go what is otherwise a limit for every single melee thing in this game and probably hardcoded in a way that it would be way more complicated for them to overcome even if they wanted to.

I think they just used KA's logic for Daken, and that's it.

You were thinking of the Relic hidden damage proccing only on first swings of an attack round. Remember this vividly from my Ragnarok Drk days.

Empyrean AM definitely works on all swings with that particular weapon, but that said its not like you aren't getting the normal TA benefits in your offhand as well as increased aftermath swings.

Lead me to want to play ninja with Taka offhand and as much multihit as possible to force as many AM swings as I can. Gloves in particular I'm using Herculean with Dex+10,Acc+25,Att+30,TA+4. I've used thousands of stones trying to replicate that on the vest...

Same as others, the 8hit cap has me very skeptical of gearing for Daken.

I tested Daken a while back. Can confirm it's subject to the 8 hits/round cap and occurs last, meaning that a double QA proc would prevent Daken from proccing.

Being limited to 8 hits per round has almost no impact on Daken (and whether you should consider it when gearing) outside of Mikage. The odds that you'll get 2 QA procs on a single round is low.

Also in regards to Shun vs Ten. Even with Heishi, Ten only outperforms Shun in high attack situations. The attack bonus from Shun is very prominent.

So if QA procs you get no Daken proc, but how does this interact with Sange? QA just takes priority over Daken so even though Sange guarentees the Daken proc you still lose it because of the maximum number of attack rounds?

Yeah, I would imagine that's the case and you just fail to get the Daken proc on the attack round in that extremely rare situation. Basically, Sange would cause the Daken check to be 100% proc rate, but the game wouldn't even perform the check since the 8-hit per round cap was already reached. Analogous to defensive stuff like the priorities of evasion > parry > shadows > guard/shield block > counter, if a higher priority one happens the checks for lower priority ones never even take place. I'd be shocked if it worked differently for Daken, multiattack is just an earlier check than Daken.

Has so little impact that it's probably not worth someone going out of their way to perform verification testing, other than for pure curiosity. But if anyone happens to have evidence, cool.

What are your thoughts on Moonbeam Nodowa? Not sure if its really worth the money... seems nice for a high Acc build but it lacks either multi attack or RAcc for Daken.

It's better than other necks thanks to the StoreTP and acc. Iskur gorget you can still make an argument for if you're in a situation where your acc is capped but racc is not as it has a similar STP.

The HQ should handily be the goto neck for any scenario. I'd welcome any input to the contrary.

I think it's good for floored accuracy situations or situations where you're totally accuracy starved and basically have to give up on Daken. Otherwise Iskur seems better. It lets you maintain similar levels of acc/racc without ending up with stupid swaps. I didn't actually use a spreadsheet though so idk.

obviously if your acc/racc is capped Iskur wins due to the 30 ra attack, causing your thorws to do a few extra dmg per proc (mostly insignificant). If your acc is capped but racc not, then iskur wins again. If your not acc capped (meaning your probably WAY under racc capped) then you probably dont care about daken and moonbeam will win.

The question is which scenario applies to you most? I personally am using moonbeam atm as I dont rely on daken much, but thats just my play style. I find the large sacrifices in DD gear to get extra ranged acc is just not worth it generally. I also tend to do high lv content where acc is a concern, so it will depend on you mostly.

Hmmm for low Acc situations sounds about right. For now Ill invest the money rather in finishing my Kannagi (finally 119 I btw ^-^) though and keep using erudition necklace. Its not that far off.

In cases where you're acc starved (40-50% is where I looked in the spreadsheet) Nodowa will up your dps considerably over erudition. And will still beat out Iskur (let's face it, a lot more of our damage and TP generation comes from katanas than daken.)

Iskur seems like the fringe case to me. Only useful when you don't need the accuracy from Nodowa but could use the Racc/Rattk. This is probably only under absolutely overwhelming buffs/debuffs where you're missing a fraction of racc/rattk to cap there also.

The NIN spreadsheet does not account for Zanshin. So I can't say how that will really effect anything either. If anything it rewards you for having ***acc, protecting your TP generation a bit. Ha ha.

Anyone want to gift me mils to go get the HQ nodowa? :D

zanshin can only for on 2h weapons from my knowledge. meaning its useless for nin unless using gkt :D

It would work on single-wielding as well, not that that's a frequent thing on NIN.

The ranged attack on Iskur is only a small bonus, I wouldn't ever choose it for that. You need to look at the bigger picture with all of your swaps. I think it's best to use a set that just barely caps your melee hit rate and hopefully your Daken hit rate too. Using Nodowa means losing 30 ranged accuracy and gaining 20~25 melee accuracy. This widens the hit rate delta between melee strikes and Daken by 25~27.5%. In order to maintain capped Daken hit rate, you're either going to end up with 1) overcapped melee hit rate and suboptimal swaps (defeating the point of Nodowa) 2) really bad swaps in other slots. I would only ever use it where Draken hit rate is already capped anyways (assuming you have HQ for the +2 Store TP over Iskur) or where you're so starved for accuracy that it you can't cap hit rate without Nodowa.

All very valid points. Both necks provide everything we really want as Ninjas.

In my max haste set (this set assumes building TP as quickly as possible with no accuracy checks, similar to the set on page 1 of this thread), my checkparam shows something similar to:

Primary Accuracy 1138
Aux Acc: 1113
Ranged Acc: 943

Daken procs have an innate +100 acc bonus thanks to gdiShun's testing in 2014 so my daken procs would be at 1043 racc. Not too bad. If I'm being a good ninja and spamming sange, then 1/3 of my fight time daken has another +100 racc (thanks to sange 5/5, yes I do sange 5/5). Which brings it to 1143 RAcc for 33% of my fight time.

If I'm chowing on sushi and keeping myself in my lowest accuracy set for quickest TP gain, then the final results (without any outside influence) sits at

Primary Acc 1231
Aux Acc 1213
Ranged Acc 1143 (1243 under Sange)

When I count geo/rdm debuffs I can't find the racc on Iskur to be the shining star. I could quantify it completely with proc rate on daken in and outside of sange on certain targets (WoC, Ou, Kin, Teles etc) but I don't think I even need to go down that path.

Yes, it's a good neck. There's nothing bad about it. Nodowa happens to be AHable and gives the same benefit Iskur does but also helps in other situations with less support where you start to want the acc bump. My racc isn't as bad off as I feared. Though I still won't be asking for preludes or anything. Certainly keep Iskur for the situation where your Racc/Rattk isn't capped but your acc is.

So I suppose part of me wished the Hachiya body +3 had some new fancy business with it's shock spikes effects.

I was wrong.

Level 100 Mandy's outside Adoulin.

706 hits
175 Spike activations (~25%)
16 Stuns (~10% of the spike activations for the macc I wore)

It really hasn't changed from the previous version of the body.

Bleh. Spike dmg still contingent on MAB and INT. (Damage didn't seem to have changed from previous versions)

so like thought pretty much all of the af+3 is crap outiside of feet for nukes, head for low acc ws sets. Lets just hope SE redeems themselves on nin relic! I actually expect big things here.

Head is also insane for Macc ninjutsu and non-San nukes (and arguably San nukes when you need the Macc). Macc+54/Skill+19, plus another Macc+15 from 2/5 set bonus if you're using with +2/+3 feet.


Really? I'm tempering my expectations big time based on the +1 set stats and what we saw from AF+2/+3. I'd expect a very good nuke head at least for San. Then I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see more unnecessary DW gear from body/legs, and garbage hands.

Didn't we say AF hands had some potential for acc builds, with that Daken bonus?

Relic-wise Body is gonna be a nice TP body for DW sets and for Sange.
Legs too, another DW swap piece.
Hands and Feet could be interesting high acc WS pieces. They lack MA but could end up with pretty high base stats.
Head is gonna be BiS for nuking with SAN.

Calling it now. Head will get the +5/10% MBB in the +2/3.

Let's just hope they don't go full retard again and make the relic head be a nuking piece with physical accuracy like the artifact's WS head with magic accuracy....
Are we 100% that's not a typo or a mistranslation?
Cause....
That's really dumb... even for SE.

Maybe replace some other current DW options. But jeez, do we really need more DW gear? I don't even use DW legs in my typical delay-capped ZERO HASTE set now... Even when you do need DW, it's gonna be tough to beat Adhemar for a body option, though maybe legs could be worthwhile and free up other slots to not require DW gear you're currently using.

I'd actually be more hopeful that Relic body could end up as a decent WS piece if it gets enough attributes/acc/atk. In the past, the original/reforged body always was a pretty solid acc/atk option compared to pieces of the same era.

Can't say I'm all that optimistic about hands/feet getting worthwhile stats, based on the kind of boosts we saw with the AF updates, but I'd be pleased to end up wrong.


I would hope that aside from San, it gets enough MAB or burst to make it also tops for Ni. But yeah, the logical guess is that it should at least be far and away best for San nukes.


I don't find it that dumb. Hachiya+2/+3 head is overwhelmingly best in slot for enfeebling ninjutsu. And that's in keeping with the biggest strength of the piece back in original AF and reforged 109/119 AF days.

The WSD is just a newly introduced additional bonus, and makes for a very strong low-acc WS option on single hit WS (Hi, Ten, Metsu). +2 is decent, and +3 is really strong (again, assuming you have satisfactory acc).

If anything, that makes me SOMEWHAT optimistic that we may continue to get brand new stats on pieces that otherwise didn't have anything similar. Triple Attack or Store TP somewhere that those stats weren't present on previous versions, more WSD pieces, more Magic Burst II, etc.

No bug legs might end up with really high values, which means less slots taken to cap DW even at low haste values.
I'm not saying every NIN has to get every possible DW piece, but with so many options you can pick the one that's best for you, i.e. avoiding to use DW pieces on slots where you have concurrent gear that's really awesome.
It's an... option?

Like for instance AF legs are also nice because of the accuracy, but their DW value is (supposedly) much lower than the value you'll get from the relic legs.

And if we're talking still about personal options, between AF body and Relic body, I prefer the second because:
1) no stupid spikes
2) more att/acc than Hachiya
3) Sange augment

Could say Adhemar is arguably better regardless since it has DW *and* MA, but stiiiill, options options options!