The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Premise: very personal idea that will probably differ from most other people in this thread.

I don't really think there's a lot of mandatory Job specific gear to be taken for NIN, not anymore.
Piece by piece insight


Artifact Armor (119)
Head: Nope
Body: Used to be a nice no-buff TP body but the spikes are annoying, check Relic.
Hands: Nope
Legs: Decent sidegrade for builds where you want acc and DW, but not worth it anymore really
Feet: If you really want some feet that allow you to run faster from dusk to dawn...


Artifact Armor (+3)
Head: BiS for debuff ninjutsu, BiS for Blade: Ten and Blade: Hi, atm at least. Suffers from lack of accuracy (and attack?), you'll have to make up in other slots.
Body: Nope
Hands: Interesting but ultimately not worth piece
Legs: As the 119 default version, interesting sidegrade for strange highacc lowbuff (dualwield) pieces. Incredibly nichey and situational. Imo not worth the high price/effort
Feet: Same as above but they also are BiS for magicbursting elemental ninjutsu.


Relic Armor (119)
Head: Used to be BiS for nuking with 5/5 T3 Elemental Ninjutsu. Probably not the case anymore.
Body: Used to be a very nice TP body for low buff situations. Also used to be nice for the Sange augment. Arguably nice for precasting Utsusemi if you lack better options. In all honesty not worth it anymore imo.
Hands: Nice for midcasting Self-buff Ninjutsu, but that's it.
Legs: Used to be nice for DW TP sets, not anymore. The Mijin Augment is laughable. Not worth it!
Feet: Used to be nice for WS and for Ninjutsu debuff midcast but there are way better options nowadays. Not worth it anymore!


Empyrean Armor
Head: Yet another "used to be very good" piece. Not anymore. Can be a cheap option for your no-buff/highDW TP sets, but that's it.
Body: Yai yet another "used to be good" piece! This was lovely for the Migawari augment but you need to keep it equipped and nope, not worth it anymore.
Legs: Lots of acc/haste, but pretty meh piece. If you lack better options you could consider it as a fast to obtain/cheap placeholder to put in your acc sets as you wait to get better options.
Feet: One of the few, mandatory pieces. It increases your Utsusemi Shadows by +1. Arguably you could be using the +2 Abyssea version, but the 119 has better stats in case you get caught mid-casting by enemy attacks.


So tl;dr NIN used to have many hot pieces but that's no longer the case. There's ONE mandatory piece and a few of very situational things which are incredibly good in their niche, but it's also stuff you won't really find yourself doing, like, 90% of the time, especially if NIN is not your main job.

Hey all. I decided I am going to build an end game functional Ninja, deciding between Aeonic or Relic planned as my weapon of choice. Metsu+40% is looking pretty nice to me with all of the WSD available.

Thoughts?

blade:ten with heishi/moonshade has 9.75 ftp to metsu's 5.0, and any overflow past 1000 pushes the lead even further

if it's a question of budget(gil or time), kikoku is acceptable since nin is not ever expected to be a top dps job.. but if it's a question of performance the answer is clearly heishi

Heshi is more versatile because of SC, and heishi + ten has higher dps ceiling on my spreadsheet too.

Like many(most?) other jobs, if you can only pick one aeonic is the way to go, IMO.


Edit: beaten.

Ok odd question. I'm making my first nin cape I know I'll need 2 but what should I put on first one? AGI, DEX, WSD? Im using aeonic simply because when we did a bunch of them I just randomly made it so I am ahead in that aspect.

Thanks folks.

If you can only make two capes, you should do:

1) DEX+30, Acc/Att+20, DA+10 (can use this for TP and for Blade: Shun)
2) STR+30, Acc/Att+20, WSD+10 (this is gonna be BiS for Ten, and it's gonna be second best for Blade: Hi despite STR in place of AGI)

This is a good compromise if you can't make more than 2 capes.
In my opinion I wouldn't bother with a Blade: Hi specific cape unless you're done with capes for all of your other jobs or unless you're a Kannagi owner.

Yeah my kannagi is only like 85 I think with no chance of it going higher anytime soon.

Totally agreed with the top two capes Sechs listed. While those are certainly the priorities for a Heishi user:

Kannagi & Kikoku users would also be be interested in AGI/WSD (best for Hi, still quite good for Ten which you wouldn't use as much anyway with that weapon) and DEX/WSD (which doubles for Metsu & Ten), respectively.

Non-RMEA NINs would probably be well served making one WSD cape too - honestly, I'd probably go AGI/WSD since you'll get a lot of mileage out of Hi for SC purposes and Ten isn't quite as useful without Aeonic - but STR/WSD is a reasonable choice too (especially if you think you'll eventually end up with a Heishi).

Beyond those to cover your TP and WS needs, NIN makes good use of several "utility" capes.

(1) Dual Wield: DEX/Acc&Atk/DW+10% cape is very useful if you regularly find yourself in low buff situations.

(2) Fast Cast: Fast Cast+10% is pretty nice (I have no other augments on mine)

(3) Ninjutsu: Macc+30 is obvious for any foe-targeted ninjutsu, BiS Macc piece for enfeebles AND nukes. For nuking, you'd want to pair it with MAB+10 from the Sap slot and INT+20 from Thread, but since neither slot has anything relevant for enfeebling ninjutsu you could conceivably toss FC+10% on to combine (2) and (3) if making a nuke-oriented cape is a low priority for you.

I did use kik some in this months ambu and it performed fairly well, metsu still ez 99k cap. it appears about 8-10% behind aeonic though, so sidra, go for aeonic imo its 'free'

Capuchin, and you don't bringup the MEva cape? For shame! :D

I would rank a fast cast cape as 3rd most important (after melee/WS). I am a big fan of floored recast timers and less time spent casting.

I wonder how well kannagi performs in ambu. From my experience parsing with several DDs empyrean melee DDs are way ahead (than they normally are)

If your pt has enough buffs (doesn't take much!) to make so Hi always hits for 99k, then of course a Kannagi NIN will outperform other NINs.
I think Kikoku NINs would outperform all other (non Kannagi) NINs as well, thanks to the Relic procs during white damage.

But that's if you take a decontestualized approach. In reality other than the single player DPS you need to check the overall DPS.
A single player using a WS that will break the SCs from the other DDs might create a huge loss.

For instance let's make it simple, let's imagine a setup with 3 NINs. Two have Heishi Shorinken and spam Shun, the third has Kannagi and spams Hi.
Supposing same level gear of course the Kanangi user will output a better DPS than the other two, but his Blade: Hi will break the constant Light SC from the other two, ultimately creating a DPS loss for the party.
In a scenario like this it would be better if the Heishi NINs were to spam Blade: Hi instead, that way you can get constant Dark SC and no party loss.


It's the same with any setup. Ideally you should take DPS that have a same-element Level 3 SC property WS, and spam only that one so that no matter the order, there's always gonna be a SC and nobody will interrupt anybody.

Naive question since I didn't test it myself on the spreadsheet, but does 1250TP Blade: Hi perform better than 1250 Blade: Ten?
A non RMEA NIN should spam Shun regardless, shouldn't he? I think Shun is the best performing WS in all (?) situations without a RMEA.

STR/WSD cape will always be the second best choice for any single hit non-STR based WS.

For Instance for Metsu (DEX based), STR/WSD cape will perform (slightly) better than an AGI/WSD cape.
And for Hi a STR/WSD cape will perform (slightly) better than a DEX/WSD cape.

So if you don't wanna make 3 different WSD capes one with STR, one with DEX and one with AGI (each would of course perform best with its respective WS) then I think STR/WSD is the best compromise.


Going back to the initial question: maybe 1250 Ten is better than 1250 Hi, but the thing is that there's no reason to use Ten without Heishi.
There's no reason to NOT use Shun for non RMEA users. Only reason being SC purposes, and Ten sucks for that.
So YES, non RMEA NINs need only one cape for WS (Shun!) and if they really want to make a second WS one, might as well make it a Hi cape, like Capuchin said.
(yes! I just asked a question and then answered myself, I'm that bad! xD)

So last last cleared zitah and rua (minus kirin/woc) on nin with a group. avg 23.5k ten over the course of all zitah and 20k~ in rua (more dispells, invincible bad timing etc, they have alot more gimmicks). I however could not get much better than a 14k Hi and my avg was actually 11.5k, however my shuns avg 16k..... so....

Its not to brag but my nin is nearing BiS on nearly everything now, while my Hi set is the 'least geared' of them, its still better than easily 90% of nins.

The spreedsheet just over inflates high due to innin bonus being messed up, or some other issue. Its grossly overestimating it in my eyes, someone else can try to prove different, but honestly just go out and solo a few apex crabs for example and you will see within 15 mins that its lacking. However IF you dont have metsu and you NEED a spammable darkness ws, Hi is very good for that since ten can suffer big with low tp bonus and/or low attack.

In terms of Kannagi for ambu, In theory it could do great. I thought the same thing, but you quickly realize that shun being multi hit plus the extra stp is actually a very big deal, very often it means 1 less round to a ws, and that ws is 99k +99k light, your kannagi isnt making that up probably in the run if you get it off even ONE extra time. I tried relic too and while its proc is nice when it happens, my ws frequency noticeably dropped (still 99k ws dmg full runs though).

All are good, though and if you would like to 'duke it out' with your kannagi or kik this month. Id love to ambu with ya! I always love to test stuff and have fun.

How about start with 3000 tp Hi to activate AM 3 for 3 min then just spam shun(fusion) or kamu (frag) for SC depending on other DDs?

Idk, I'm just sharing ideas here and idk how easy or hard to hit 99999 with other ws.

But truth to be told, empyrean melees are damn strong in this month's ambu. We were spamming VD the other day with cor/nin (me, used demersal degen x2 + aeonic gun last stand for SC light), nin (aeonic), blu (almace/seq). Despite I ws 5 times more than blu and had highest ws avg (we didn't avg 99999 on parse but close) I was still 20% behind blu on parse. NIN also had more ws than blu but even if he 99999 every ws he wouldn't win.

Blus ws:tp ratio was 45:55 and COR was 76:24, nin was 58:42. SC actually wasn't THAT high on parse despite our ws all SC with each other. Blus white damage was almost equal to light SC from all 3 person and if his white damage subtracts NINs white damage it'd still worth 90% of his own SC damage lol.

I haven't done a lot of ambu this month so I don't have enough parse data to be absolutely sure, but from what Ive observed empy is just insane, and I only ever get close to Almace if I start with 3 min of triple shot with lucky random deal + shooting with Armageddon AM3 in N.

Unless you only have 2 DDs in total (yourself included) that's not viable.
The only viable scenario to maximize dmg from SC is spamming LV3 property WSs, of the same element of course.
Any other solution requires going in a specific Order (WS A > WS B or WS B > WS A, if you go WS A > WS A for whatever reason, or WS B > WS B, then the SC will be broken already, and bye bye 99k damage).

To avoid that you'd need to time WSs but that means holding TP and since WSs do 99k at 1000TP already any overTP is basically lost DPS.

In a scenario where you have NINs who don't have Heishi, Shun is not a solution because it's gonna lack the LV3 Light property.
In that situation I feel it's best to spam Hi.
I had this PUG the other day and we were getting better times when they listened to me and started spamming Hi instead of spamming Shun (one of the NINs didn't have Heishi but Kannagi, which means his Shun were interrupting the constant Light from the other 2 NINs)

Hitting 99k with Hi requires better gear/debuffs/buffs than Shun of course, but even when you don't hit it the AVG is still gonna be high.
This other NIN I was running with the other day had pretty average (even worse than mine!) gear and his WSAVG Hi was still ~89k iir.
That's still pretty good, considering you're not wasting the SC damage.
In that setup SC damage total was ~20% of overall DPS.
It was basically like having a 4th DD even though we were in 3.


And I agree with the rest of what you said.
When you think about it it's pretty obvious.
Empy weapons sometimes are inferior to other options simply because to activate the AM you need to use a WS you wouldn't normally use (and because weapon itself has worse stats than others).
This creates a DPS loss that the white damage itself with the AM bonus cannot compensate, given how the damage ratio of WhiteDMG/WSDMG is seriously skewed towards the latter in nowadays' game meta.
This is not the case in this month's ambu because WS are gonna hit 99k regardless (or close to that) making so that any big boost to white damage will be the factor allowing to do more dmg than you could possibly do otherwise.
I mean, when your ws are already doing 99k using a better ws or a higher damage/better stats weapon won't do ***to it, would it?

I think for this month it's Empy > Relic >= Mythic > Aeonic.
Jobs who can easily manage AM3 from Mythic (SAM? DNC?) could probably get good results from Mythic. Less time between WSs => more WSs => more 99k damage over the same amount of time!
I put relic in second spot because of similar reasons: there's the relic proc and then there's the Aftermath. Some weapons have cool aftermaths that normally requires you to use shitty WS to activate but in this month even shitty WS can get to 99k with proper buffs, making them way more viable/attractive.

my Kik parses vs myself about 10-15% less a run compared to aeonic, I parse every run and am nearing 100k hallmarks already doing D and only 3 with seal. That's a lot of runs; so its not like I don't understand the mechanics

The reason is quick to see, your ws frequency is a lot lower. Metsu is "1 hit" (you wouldnt spam shun bc no light sc), so you will end up missing a main hit every once in awhile or get unlucky on san shadows from the boss. Shun doesnt suffer from this issue as greatly since it's multihit. Secondly, your tp return on metsu vs shun, coupled with the 10 stp on aeonic makes for an even wider gap. While that relic proc is nice, it will not overcome the dmg your extra ws, and thus extra light sc will do. Kanngi would suffer identical problems, and thats why I have yet to see one perform near the dps my aeonic has. you cant really 'spreedsheet' this months ambu, user experience is probably a better gauge if the players are good.

I didn't spreadsheet this month, lol. I simply said empy DDs parse wayyyyyyy higher than they normally are, and how their white dmg help them beating someone else ws 5-7 times more.

Also mages can Diaga if NM shadows are up.

Can just silence him. At least on D, guess that would be hard on VD though. Never had shadows issue with a good group

That's not true; if persons A and B are both using a a Fusion/Light WS and person C is using a Fragmentation WS, then the chain will never be interrupted sans a Save TP proc where person C goes twice in a row (which is unlikely). However, if person C's WS happens to have a Darkness attribute (aka Metsu), then that actually won't matter either.

I haven't yet ran my Kikoku vs my Heishi but on VD I'm doing pretty well with Heishi. Are you using Sange every time it's up? I usually get about 3 activations worth in our fights. I find many NIN's don't rock the extra ammo for it but while it's active the excess TP gain should make the 10STP on heishi moot. (I admit this is only for sange's duration)

Nah I do magic merits. I enjoy nuking on nin to much to replace them long term. However, that extra tp would benefit any weapon equally, and a weapon with stp more. So maybe I misunderstood?

shun and metsu both do pretty little with extra tp(metsu gets nothing besides better am duration and shun is likely already attack capped so further attack doesn't matter).. so a faster time to 1000 tp devalues stp a bit

still not going to make kiko better than heishi, though

I don't follow the logic. Sange means more of your white damage/TP comes from ranged attack. DA/TA/QA don't affect this, but Store TP does, thus Store TP becomes relatively more useful with Sange up. If Store TP didn't affect Sange hits then I would agree.

Nice, another NIN that likes to MB. :)

Of course, but the scenarios we were talking about were more about people spamming Shun and how using Shun without Heishi would interrupt the perma Light SC coming from the other two Heishi NINs.

I've been told that several times by non-heishi NINs in PUGs: "I can use Shun too!"
Well yeah, without the light property, it's no bueno.
For those situations I found everybody spamming Blade: Hi was the best route to go to cut time on wins.
(Plus it allowed the Kannagi owner to keep their AM up, which greatly helped his DPS according to Scoreboard).

Never met a NIN with Kikoku this month, but if I were in a situation with 2x Heishi and 1x Kikoku then yeah, he could totally spam Metsu while the Heishi NINs keep spamming their Shun!

If you get to 1000 in two rounds with kikoku or heishi because of Sange, and your WS is doing 99999 no matter your TP total... then what is the SToreTP 10 doing for you? Not a whole lot...

I'm ready to admit this is a fringe case (While sange is active), but damnit if I don't think sange is great. :D

If that were strictly the case it wouldn't do anything. It's not though. It's going to reduce the number of attack rounds you need to get to 1000.