Cast Time For Kurayami/Hojo Ni

Right now for my NIN's Kurayami/Hojo Ni Macro, I pile on +enmity gear for the heck of it. My macro is currently set up to change into my enmity gear, start casting the ninjutsu, wait 2 seconds, then switch into my regular tp gear again. I've been doing this from 44-65ish but am now wondering if in fact the gear is swapping into my tp gear before finishing its casting. The log message I feel like lags or is delayed and I doubt how trust worthy it is.

Lets assume that since I swap into my enmity gear prior to casting, I have no haste equipment/fast cast gear on, and that I have no outside haste or marches. Just in case anyone was wondering what i'm casting in, i'll post a link to my item set:



Does anyone who has played around with this in the past know a definitive wait time for /wait to have your equipment still on post cast? I could increase the time to 3 or 4 or even leave out the equip tp gear line and make myself manually hit my tp equip macro, but i'm trying to make my macros as lean/efficient as possible. Thanks.

Log messages are always behind the actual action. When your character starts to move their arm forward is when the cast is registered as complete, shortly before the cast % meter reaches 100%. I would never rely on the logs to tell you when something happened if you need to know down to the second, since logs wait until the animation is complete to show up (or until the animation is blinked out).

I would imagine two seconds is fine, but I would recommend switching into the other gear after you start the cast instead of beforehand (the only thing that should be swapped in beforehand would be any fast cast+, which you indicated that you have none of). Since the cast itself is supposed to be two seconds and you're switching the gear beforehand, it may be switching it out right before the cast goes off.

Aside from Loquacious Earring and mini-expansion gear (right now mine are being used for other jobs) what other options are available to NIN in terms of Fast Cast?

I contemplated rearranging the lines so that I equip the equipment after I start casting but casting spells also generates a certain amount of enmity, albeit very small. My goal was to squeeze out as much enmity through all my actions as possible. In collibri parties with decent drgs/rngs/sams i've still been able to maintain hate through most of the fight. It depends on how quickly mobs die and if I can provoke more than once (usually not since i wouldn't have timers up for the next mob).

nothing noteworthy

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Fast_Cast

You can see it there. The only other fast cast equip for nin is campaign and salvage only.

If you don't feel 2 secs is cutting it for you, try doing it manually then^^. 2 secs should be more than enough on ni spells though.

The act of beginning a spell does not generate any enmity, only the act of completing the spell. Easily tested by the simple fact that monsters are not claimed by spells until the spell is completed, because starting the spell did not generate any enmity.

(please forgive me, I don't know how to edit using these boards...)

I suppose the 'beginning a spellcast on an unclaimed target' is not a valid test, since by that logic, healing for hp/mp doesn't generate any enmity either, and it clearly does; however, I still do not believe that any enmity is generated by spells until the spell is completed.

I always used a /wait 5 in mine. I'd rather spend an extra second or two in the enmity gear to assure that my action had that extra enmity attached to it. /wait 2 is NOT going to be enough.

sure it will. One exemple i can give is the spellcast plugin which uses a spell casting time to specify when to reswap the equipment. So it reswaps ni ninjutsu after 1.5 secs.

With regards to your comment, I'd say that there have been times when enmity was bouncing around a lot, and the mere act of beginning to cast utsusemi ichi caused a mob to turn and hit me. For me, this has been evidence enough that initiating a cast generates enmity.


How are you monitoring when spellcast swaps in your regular tp gear? Based off timestamps?

Getting hit or losing a shadow causes someone to lose some amount of hate, I would imagine that is the reason a monster would turn to you mid-cast, but I'll leave it at that, since I don't have any concrete proof.

Starting to cast anything generates no enmity. My proof is almost 6 years of playing, and seeing how this game actually works. What happened was the person above you on the hate list got hit or lost a shadow, and you became the highest person on the hate list.

If you use spellcast, sure. Go ahead. I still think it's not long enough, because there's lag between you and the server. You might see the action go off, but I highly doubt the server's registered it yet. Do your thing though.

pretty much timestamp + animation going off on the mob


oh yeah there was this on topic too...Indeed the start of casting does not generate enmity. But there is no reason not to put enm at the start anyway. You will blink like a christmas tree due the low casting time of ni spells but who doesnt love that? lol

A tip i would give you though is actually using enm only where you cant place +ninjutsu skill, macc or even int. Both hojo and kura ni have more potency than slow and blind while leveling. Well hojo not so much, chances are they are going to be tied (if you trust your rdm that is). But kura is simply way better than blind. I wouldnt trade these spells sticking for more enmity.

VE also decrease every second, no matter what.

As it is now, I have close to capped ninjutsu skill so I don't get resisted much. Some improvements to my set once I get high enough are cutting out useless pieces (such as the sniper ring that is left in from the tp set for an omega ring) or taking out pieces with lower enmity numbers (the astral rope or neck piece i have for example, and swapping in something with +int or ninjutsu skill). Its just annoying to have to make so many adjustments to my gear set as you're leveling since you level up so quickly and sync down so much so half your gear doesn't work anyway.

For casting not generating enmity, I don't remember what actions were happening on whoever else was holding hate, so I guess I could have interpretted my casting as generating hate, but it was in actuality the other person's shadows/or taking phys dmg.

Enmity decay should be equal for everyone on the list though? so it should only come into play if you're wondering how someone relatively low on the list pulled hate. Meaning if I was just looking at hate bouncing between me and a sam, hate should be decaying for the sam and myself at the same rate, so it doesn't really factor in.

Alright, I guess I got my question answered. I'll stick to 2 seconds (since thats what spellcast seems to deem fitting for casting) and when I get around to it edit my sets to adjust for int/ninjutsu skill. also I'll move around the equip line to just after the casting line for that extra fraction of a second. I'm sure with marches/haste spell/haste gear this will be a non-issue in most situations anyway. If i'm doing pages with some other nin, maybe i'll try setting up a test run with someone aggro'ing a crab or something in vollbow, with me and another nin casting kurayami (me with enmity set and 2 sec wait) and see if it changes target to me consistently.

As a final thought though, I'll probably go back to full enmity set if I'm in a situation where a RDM is doing Paralyze II/Slow II or am doing nin/drk. Does landing an enfeeble generate the same enmity as getting resisted?

Since you brought it up, was INT ever proven to enhance the potency or accuracy of NIN debuffs? It can't hurt to go ahead and swap it in, but I am curious.

yeah resist still generates the same enmity.

A merited rdm should have np even if you cast your debuffs cause those spells overwrite ninjutsu (and by so ninjutsu have no effect when they are up). The tip i gave is pretty much while leveling, when tanking hnm capping recast/enm is better (although focusing on /drk spells is still more effective than ninjutsu). There is even less reason to use ninjutsu if you are going to merit as nin.

I'm not so experienced with end game tanking as nin cause i pretty much abandoned it around the time i finished the job. I mean by so that i don't know how resisty are most targets, but if you are able to land ninjutsu on them (specially kurayami cause no rdm merits blind 2) i say do it lol.

edit: i'm sure ninjutsu potency is constant. At least that's what i got from the wiki.

Oh yeah, int should affect their accuracy still. I think this is correct cause our nukes are affected by int (damage and macc), so int should have an effect on debuffs.

I believe I was told that +int if your int is below the mob's int is equivalent to 1 magic acc? (I had this conversation while debating whether to get an uthalum's ring or balrahn's ring for my drk, in the end I opted for a cheap +4 int ring since drk's don't have much +int gear available to them). I'd imagine the same applies for ninjutsu.

yeah if it is anything like elemental magic, which i like to think it is lol, this must be how it goes. You get 1 macc from 1 int until your int is above your targets by 10.

I've also been intending to pick up Raiton and Huton tools to lower a mobs resistance to earth and ice (so rdms can land enfeebles better). I guess a mob can only be made weak to one element at a time?

So I'd have to cast Raiton: Ni, wait for the rdm to cast slow II, then cast Huton: Ni, so he could have an easier time landing Paralyze II as well? Or could i stack both and have both elemental weaknesses?

yep lol, thats what i always based on