Ninja In Endgame

I came back about six months ago from something like a six year break. Having always been a career Ninja (it was my only job at 75 and even the only one over 50), I had a blast gearing myself up in Abyssea. Now, though, having largely finished with that content, I've begun to discover that Ninja is lackluster in most other content (and this was the case before Adoulin, as well--I still have to figure out how I'm going to get through NNI to get Thaumas).

Undoubtedly, no job is going to be useful 100% of the time, and I'm working on Monk to use in situations where Ninja isn't viable. That being said, all things being equal, I'd really just like to play Ninja again, as it's always the job I want to gear first (though that's becoming difficult to justify, especially with the new "content tier" structure for gearing).

So, my first question is: what experiences have folks had with Ninjas in Adoulin? I've not done everything, as I don't have a solid job for Delve yet, but I can't see much of a role for Ninja in the new expansion, as the job lacks the raw damage of other jobs and doesn't seem ideal from a tanking standpoint on anything yet.

My second question, just for the heck of it, is: what do you think Ninja needs to be competitive in the endgame? I've been pondering that myself as a LSmate posed the question to me after I brought similar thoughts up, but I'm not really familiar enough with the game anymore to have concrete ideas one way or the other.

I think ninja needs to go back to it's roots - it still strongly excels at what it was meant to do: Stealth Pulling.

Of course, that said, there isn't a whole lot of that happening. If You do a search of threads for ninja, I think Prothescar has a ninja quide somewhere.

Hm, even if there were more pulling being done these days, it's still a very small portion of any given battle. Ninja's still great for it though, that much is true.

I've got the Ninja (Sealed Dagger, I think) guide bookmarked and end up checking it about every day for something or other. It's somewhat dated in terms of content, though, unless you're thinking of another guide I don't know about.

I haven't really updated the content stuff because honestly, Ninja has been a loljob ever since Abyssea ended. The only reason you take Ninja is if your LS/group lets you. When you get into high level content there just isn't much to be said about how to play NIN- you're either putting up Innin and playing it like a poor-man's Warrior or you're putting up Yonin and you're pretending to tank. Ninja's debuffs are useless.

I don't see anything Ninja has that allows it to pull better aside from Utsusemi, which can be used by other jobs or be substituted with Stoneskin/Blink/etc as necessary. That aside, pulling is such a narrow use it should never be a major point in any job's description.

Ninja is running into the same problem as Rune Fencer- the devs don't want either of these jobs to be particularly strong at anything else because their main function is supposed to be that of a tank. But even if we ignore everything else for a second and assume enmity wasn't a mess, it still wouldn't matter because they made the mistake of making Paladin nigh-invincible.

Nobody is going to get a NIN or RUN in cases that tanking actually matter because PLD will perform it better and more consistently. A Ninja can die in a split second from bad AoEs even if they're getting tons of support and a Rune Fencer has abilities that have long recasts (Though the latter has a better chance of getting a lot of new stuff over the next few updates), whereas a half-afk Paladin with a Ochain will almost never die. Their only choices are to nerf Paladin in some way or make it so that NINs and RUNs also have access to something that makes them nearly invincible.

The other choice is to forget about NIN's tanking role altogether and make it a DPS by giving it a bunch of JAs and JTs.

EDIT:

To expand on the whole "AoE, oops you're dead" thing, Migawari was supposed to be the spell that fixed that, but most endgame monsters will use death attacks a lot more often than once...however low you're able to get the recast (Probably like 40 seconds or something if you're fully hasted). The cast time is very long, causing you to shed hate like crazy while casting it. Well, that's the other thing; Holding hate. When they reduced the amount of enmity generated by Ninjutsu spells they said they would add more ways of holding hate for Ninja, but I haven't heard a hoot about it yet.

Didn't SE just reduce most of RUN's recasts by half though? And there are more situations where RUN is useful than nin at this point, however, the playerbase continues to use it as a DD.

Then again, some of the elemental debuffs from ninja may be useful now that SE has edited/changed the usefulness of elemental spells to hit harder.

Tax'et seems to really be the only mob that ninja debuffs don't mean anything. Aside from Katanas like Nakajiramai +1, which has DEX+7 Acc+14 DMG:53 and lowers defence by 18.75%. On my server it's only about a 3mil purchase, but even the NQ is helpful.

keep in mind, i really don't disregard anything Kincard is saying, since it's true.

If Ninja elementals reduced magic defense, maybe they'd be useful, but they reduce elemental evasion by like 30, which is nice but hardly worth a slot (And IIRC it wears off after a single cast).

RUN has more uses right now because it can buff the entire party, but it's still a pretty "meh" job. It has the same problems as NIN (and DRG actually) while meleeing in that it has no ability that greatly raises its attack, instead relying on subjob for that. It doesn't help NINs that Katanas have some of the worst DPS in the game and the best (Or rather, only good) katana WS is only good when you get a lot of inflated critical stats (IE in Abyssea).

That's about what I've found so far. I miss the tanking aspect of Ninja most, but I'd be happy enough just being able to DPS on it on a level that wasn't made irrelevant by better jobs.

It seems to me they'd need to do quite a bit to make Ninja a viable DPS, and as you said, they probably won't do it because of its potential (even if only theoretical) as a tank. On that front, Utsusemi used to sort of function as the Ninja's Ochain, but shadow wipes seem to be incredibly common these days, making it only useful on very specific sorts of fights. There are be ways around that (like reverting Utsusemi to the days when AoE didn't wipe it) but I can't see them doing that either.

I'm struggling, in general, to even come up with the sort of content Ninja would be useful for. Red Mages seem to be regaining some ground with the importance of enfeebling on several of the Delve NMs, but Ninja doesn't really seem to have a comparable niche that could be focused on through content development.

The specific monsters that people recommend NIN for these days have abilities that ignore invincibility shields like ???? Needles or Disgorge. Nobody uses NIN for Odin 2 though, they'll soak up needle damage through large numbers and Kai can be healed through- the only reason NIN finds use on Odin 1 is laziness (Don't want to find a bunch of people for Geirrothr).

Fix enmity, fix enmity, fix enmity. Give NIN more/better enmity generating moves and add more monsters like Glavoid, maybe. That's one way of doing it, the game would end up with monsters tanked by PLDs and monsters tanked by NINs. Dunno how to fix things for RUN when Aegis exists, though.

I'd kill for an enmity fix. Last time I played before coming back to Abyssea was sometime during ToAU, so the difference in enmity took a lot of getting used to (though early symptoms of what we see now were showing up then in merit parties).

I've only done Glavoid a couple times (with pre-nerf Embrava), though: what about Glavoid makes NIN work well for it, compared to PLD?

Actually I guess Disgorge can sometimes be blocked by Aegis in an MDT set so maybe that example doesn't work. Mostly it's the fact that Disgorge can randomly do like 20k damage or something dumb like that so an easy way around it is to have a NIN just put up Migawari. The general idea is there though- have an attack that can one-shot anyone, including a Paladin, and make blocking that attack with Migawari a key part of the fight. That's about the only unique thing NIN tanking offers now.

That alone won't fix things if they don't fix enmity though. They need to do this by either giving NIN some ridiculously powerful enmity JAs or (I prefer this) increasing their damage output significantly. If they do the latter at least if you're dragging a NIN along in your group they're doing something on the fights they arn't designed to tank.

Ah, it's a Migawari fight, gotcha.

They could honestly probably expand on that aspect of NIN tanking if they wanted to. We were always more of the "active" tank anyway (or so it felt to me--PLDs may disagree). Giving us more abilities to respond to fight mechanics would be one way to go. A JA or Ninjutsu that let us empower shadows to survive AoE attacks (or actually absorb them again, like they did in ancient times) could go a long way to making NIN viable as a tank outside of Migawari niche-fights. It'd have to have a relatively short duration to make it something that requires timing, I'd think, sort of like using a stun to stop AoE in the first place.

But yes, without enmity fixes, none of it would matter. If they do keep us in a niche tanking role, increased damage would hopefully come along with it.

Honestly, if you enjoy NIN, play it. If you play it well and put some effort into gearing correctly you can pull off some decent numbers.

Is so Bad, i love my Nin and got neatly nest gear (no Hexed-1). But for Adoulin is nin not good and total space waist in Ally.
I Hope anytime nin got a Abyiliti for eat Aoe Damage, like use Ability and these Abi Eat 100% 3 Shadows. I wish me they got otehr nice abilitys in Future for nin <3

PS: srry for my bad english (^^*)

Nin's problem:

Lack of damage, this is saying heavy DD can keep hate while having a large hp.
Mob's tp are all AOE, making shadow pointless.
I'm looking at you Delve, zerg zerg zerg in 20mins or epic fail. people will only invite the top DDs.
Parry, since SE is making RUN in the parry direction then most likely they can't super charge nin's parry rate though ability. I know there are already parry enhancement ability but it still too low to make it a worth while tank job.

I do play it, when given the opportunity. The trick is bringing NIN to content where people don't want NINs. I don't have a large linkshell so in general I do a lot of PUGs.

Yea, and its that same *** who wont invite you to anything significant...simply because you are playing NIN. dont let them lie to you, if you enjoy playing nin, play SAM or war...simply saying.

P.S: take the words of a person who has/geared/ and tried playing NIN...you will ask/seek forever unless its a NIN specific event where you like NINJARS are the only ones that can tank.

The only thing I can think of NIN being used for in Adoulin (so far at least) is for pulling in plasm farming groups.

And even that, a COR or BRD who can reapply Blink is more worthy of a spot.

RUN is presently stuck DDing mostly because there's no merits, AF, or RME to make it astoundingly good at tanking much of anything. And, well.. SE sorta itemized themselves into a corner with giving paladins Ochain/Aegis. Unless you can *surpass* a PLD with one of those, why would anyone ever want you to tank? It's bad design on SE's part for sure.

It also doesn't help giving RUN a high rating in some pretty damaging weapons, especially with Bereaver, some good gear, lunge, etc. Not to mention enspell from runes is some 50+ per hit, which adds up. Not stellar, but they gave 'em some definite DD tools despite not being a heavy DD job.

Even if they add more mobs with one shot type moves, unless its just an absolute 1 shot death attack that migawari blocks, you'd still probably be better off mitigating with something like Scherzo/EA and a PLD

The vast majority of pick up group shouts for fracture farming I see get stuck at 16~17/18. They are more often than not looking for 1 (or 2) pld to finish out the group. Brd and Cor are a close second I'd say.

If RUN, or NIN for that matter, could come close to filling a pld role in holding NMs with support the way pld does it would open up what leaders can recruit and get some of these groups moving.

So, the task isn't to "surpass" pld really, just to serve as a workable replacement when a pld isn't immediately forthcoming. A much more surmountable task.

It's frustrating to me, but NIN is outcast from a lot of content that the job is perfectly viable in when well geared. From what I've seen, PUP is more likely to get invited to Delve than NIN.

With the proper gear, food, tactics (like, hey, actually using Innin), and buffs that other DDs get, NINs can perform respectably. I've come in the top 5 parse (and that's understating the situation) on my NIN consistently.

Sadly, I feel like there are a LOT of crappy NINs out there. I don't know if it's because people spent their effort bandwagoning their way to another job, geared NIN for Abyssea and left it there, or if they are just lazy.

I wish NIN was accepted into more events, but hey, at the end of the day it's still my favorite job that I can take into Salvage, Dynamis, or whatever other lowman stuff I want to do. So, yay for that.

My NIN is far from perfect, but I hate sloppily geared NINs. >.> Abyssea has a lot to do with it though, if I had to guess. NIN's great for a ton there, and I know several people that leveled it for red procs while working on Empyreans for another job. Most of them have only a rudimentary understanding of gear, though. LS-mates, at least, I give hell if they haven't done their AF quests. But I can't do anything about all the ones TPing in Toci's Harness for some reason.

I haven't tried tanking all of the NMs, but for the ones I've gotten hate on and had to hold, NIN isn't a very viable tank. They never miss, and they have no shortage of moves that wipe shadows. I feel like in Delve that NIN is a more viable DD than it is a tank.