The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Considering dusting off NIN for fun. At R15, with BRD/GEO/COR buffs, does either Kannagi or Kikoku beat the other by a large margin? This would only be single-party stuff (no idea what exactly), either with me being the only one engaged (so self-SC would be relevant), or maybe having a COR fighting as well. Unfortunately, Aeonic isn't really an option.

Trying to decide between:
1) Throwing gil at my 90 Kannagi, which I could also R15 immediately.
2) Building Kikoku from scratch, with a couple months before I could augment it.

Completing Kannagi is by far the path of least resistance, but based on reading some search results from this thread (i.e. Kannagi shining at low buffs), I can't help but wonder if I'd be disappointed.

Neither did you, nor did I just now.

Jettatura is a positioning nightmare. It's hardly a reliable way to grab erratic monsters' attention if they're running all over the place

I hate to say it, but save your gil and build a Naegling, do the Magian trials for Hitaki (TP Bonus +1000), and build a Savage Blade set. I have yet to see my r15 Kikoku or r15 Heishi beat Savage Blade in any content below i140, for both solo play and in parties. If you must self-skillchain, then trust buffs are usually plenty to Blade: Shun -> Savage Blade for a powerful Light.

I do not have r15 Kannagi yet, but I would recommend Kikoku over Kannagi simply for the enparalyze and skillchain properties of Metsu.

Aww man, that's sad to hear, but thanks for the info. Just doesn't feel like Ninja w/o katanas. Maybe I'll mess around w/o REMA for awhile, see if I enjoy it enough to put more energy into it.

I have never liked the idea of having to use an inferior weapon type just to deal more damage on any job. It's completely counter-intuitive and that should illustrate just how poor katana(ninja's) overall damage is. Imagine DRG having to use a dagger to deal acceptable damage because Polearm WS + DMG is terrible. There was a point where PUP could DW and deal higher damage with daggers than they could with their own H2h... Just pitiful. And NIN having to rely so much on ninjutsu magic and positioning requirements to deal slightly higher damage just makes it even more insulting.

Ninja needs a fix in the worst way soon. Not quite to the level of MNK, but similar. Hoping it comes next few months.

Don't hold your utsusemi's. :(

That was when PUP didn't have stringing pummel, a C something H2H skill, and everyone got exp on piercing mobs especially level synced in the past before raging fists was even an option

I know I was illustrating a point. The PUP box art showed it using H2H and it was a poor option at the time. Only until an update was it useful. Katana will rise one day

Yonin Utsusemi DOES give hate on every mob that has you on their hate list, so you can maintain it just fine with NIN's native skills instead of repeatedly casting Jetta/Blank Gaze/Geist Wall.

It's actually a pretty powerful tool when paired with Gekka and Su4/Su5 katana (which, in addition to increasing enmity per shadow, also reduces ninjutsu recast... so you can just keep spamming away with low recast Utsusemi solely for the enmity, even if you aren't about to run out of shadows). It's also a lot more sustainable than needing some form of refresh to keep spamming spells that cost MP, on a job with no native MP.

Realistically, the potentially practical use case for holding more than 1 mob on NIN is when you have like, a couple mobs, or an add pops and you need to grab it while continuing to tank the main target. And you can do that with any subjob; as long as you can maintain shadows well enough to survive, knock yourself out.

I mean, if you're really trying to grab 8 mobs for some weird reason, yeah, maybe an AoE spell from /BLU or some other subjob is better. But that's just not a very realistic scenario for almost any NIN. If you are really that obsessed with keeping your options open for that ultra-niche scenario, great - you've found your impractical use case for /BLU. Otherwise, why would you use THE blink tank job to just get beat on by a horde of mobs that wipe your shadows right away? Almost any other job would tank that situation just as well (probably better).

NIN tanking is also nice in that you can hop in at a moment's notice and switch from being DD-oriented to tank. Maybe it's for a particular NM during a lengthy event like Divergence, maybe a main tank dies or D/Cs, etc. In that case, it's nice to have a better offensive subjob (that you will get considerably more use out of for lots of the event) instead of having to deal with gimp /BLU.


As a dedicated PUP since ToAU day 1, gonna have to call this out as a bit of an exaggeration.

On the way to 75, there were some very limited level ranges where H2H options were so poor that daggers could have been the slightly better option. But that wasn't some universal truth, nor was it ever the case at lv75 (good ol' Hades Sainti and Wagh Baghnaks days, which still beat any lv75 dagger options at any time in PUP's history).

Point taken though, that you'd think that for any standard melee situations for a DD (or hybrid DD) job, the weapon type(s) associated with that job should be the best performance. There are always situational exceptions (SAM using a polearm for piercing weak mobs, etc.), but it does feel kind of 'wrong' to be using something like a sword or dagger (Tauret is usually my offhand of choice) on NIN.

How exactly is Kannagi the path of least resistance? I just did the math a couple weeks ago based on my server's then-current prices:

• Kikoku from scratch to 119 rank 0 costs about 115mil (~61m currency, ~7.5m marrow, ~46m plutons).
  

• Kannagi from 90 to 119 rank 0 costs about 183mil (~97.5m HMP, ~24m Riftdross, ~62m Riftborn Boulders).

• Any RMEA is the same cost/items from R0 to R15.

Maybe you're saying you already have the HMP/Dross/Boulders, but you could just sell those to fund a Kikoku (with a nice chunk of gil left over)? Or maybe you're just saying you care less about the gil but don't want to do the kinda annoying Blade: Metsu killshot trials and you've already done the annoying NM piece for Empy which, I guess that's fair.

As for whether to do it: if you want to mess around with NIN, sure, go for it! For your use case of single party/lowman stuff where you care about solo SCs, I'd recommend Kikoku over Kannagi. If we're just talking spamming simple 2-steps, Metsu-Metsu darkness and Metsu-Shun light are both easy and effective. Kannagi Hi-Hi darkness works fine too, but you'd be stuck using Blade: Kamu (gross) for any self light SC (assuming you aren't switching weapon types to a non-katana). Though, with a COR partner to open, as previously noted, Savage>Shun is a good light SC.

I love my Kannagi, and think that Empy AM3 is very underrated on NIN, but for your particular stated use case I'd prob switch to my Kikoku.

Worth noting that Kannagi will trash Kikoku at R0 for DPS. But upgrading Kikoku to R15 gives it a very nice boost, and with both at R15 they'll be pretty comparable for overall DPS (but with Kikoku having more flexibility for SC).

I wouldn't discount the suggestions to try some Naegling builds on NIN too, but building either Relic/Empy katana is fine if you want to feel like a Ninja! And they seem to me to be more likely to hold up over time in the event we see katana/katana WS adjustments (which doesn't feel like a particularly unrealistic expectation).

Bold part is what I meant by path of least resistance (for me specifically). Not overly concerned with the gil, and Kannagi could be done in an hour pending AH stock. Kikoku would need trials, not that that's all that bad -- I'd be willing to do it.

Thanks for the input, was all very helpful!

Edit: Also, I didn't spell it out, but I'm actually trading job points to unlock augments. Empy is done, but Relic is only ~50% done.

At some point NIN/Katanas are going to get the MNK/H2H treatment or at least something like it and then all of us who have invested in NIN will be laughing at the rest of everyone else scrambling to gear up the job/build REMAs :)

And then twenty pages of people asking what's the best REMA, TP, WS sets

If you're not concerned with the gil, why not just buy a Heishi Shorinken from mercs then?
That's the best Katana for pure damage, at least atm and has been for a long time.

with no context

That won't stop it from being "BiS".

Pretty sure that would require a server transfer - not aware of any mercs on my server. Plus my Lionheart is only 2/3 complete. And I multibox, so having characters split on multiple servers for a few days (or longer if the mercs are slow or have to reschedule) kinda throws a wrench in things. It's something I'd do for a must-have weapon for my most used / favorite job(s), but as mentioned, this is mostly just for fun.

But you do need a base to determine what gear constitutes "BIS". Dozens of variables determine what is BIS, which helps when giving advice

Haste capped?
Zerg?
Attack/accuracy/buffs?
Target?


But katana itself is in a really interesting spot: they no doubt HAVE TO update either it directly or the Ninja job; how nobody knows. We also know they plan to upgrade all relic weapon skills, given the fact the purposely omitted it from Monkdate WS patch Soo you really can't advise someone to make one ninja weapon over another on the sole basis of damage, because they are all close and situation dependent. All it takes is for them to buff blade ten or ku or metsu kamu whatever and things change. So if you're going to make a ninja weapon for "pure damage" right now it's a hard sell since you don't know where things will line up later on down the road. Could end up dropping millions of Gil into something that tumbles right to the bottom. So you just have to decide which one you want to play around with most, since there is no weapon that completely blows away the others.

It would be hilarious if they made Kamu amazing and Nagi became the new hotness.

curious, when they rolled out the ws changes the 1st time way back in i wanna say delve era, they never changed the TP effects applied to them right? Just the base ftp/anchor amounts and such, matter of fact have they ever changed a WS TP effect? Made a crit rate into dmg varies or the like?

I'm not aware of that kind of change to a WS TP effect, but perhaps useful to note that I was recently reminded that at least one WS (can't recall which - might have been a polearm WS?) had its related attribute/modifier changed at some point in the past.

Would be cool to see relic WS (especially Metsu!) get some changes to those TP effect though.

Penta Thrust, back with the initial 2H update in 2007, got changed from Damage varies with TP to Accuracy varies with TP.

Raging Rush got Damage varies with TP > Chance of critical hit varies with TP.

Skewer got Accuracy varies with TP > Chance of critical hit varies with TP.

In the same update. Other changes were just fTP values.

Did SE say when the second NIN related patch would be coming? I know all jobs are two parts as far as updates go...holding out hope that February might be the month.

Their responses to making changes to our reforged Relic seemed like they were pretty done with NIN job updates to me...

They aren't done. The first "patch" was just a correction to (1) merit spells and (2) relic gear augments associated with merit categories, the same they've done to all jobs with meritable spells. They haven't made any fundamental improvements to anything Ninja related yet, so they clearly have it lined up sooner or later. whether its Katana, shuriken, or WS Damage, I expect something for NIN soon.

It's just a timing thing. They've mentioned Unity 2.0 lately, so I imagine their focus may just be on that for now.

I don't recall any discussion of all jobs getting 'x' number of updates, but it's apparent that they have been continuing to make adjustments and there is no limit on how many times a job might get changes in the monthly updates, for example:
- DRG had two different fairly significant updates in 2019 (the Jan 2019 decoupled jump timers, the Oct 2019 one with new traits),
- RDM had two updates (Feb 2019 Saboteur/Composure, and Aug 2019 merit spell changes),
- PUP had two job-specific updates in March and August 2019 (and arguably a third with the H2H WS changes in Oct 2019)
- BST had two updates (Nov 2019 and Jan 2020)

Some jobs - in general, the ones that are seen as not needing as much of a buff - still haven't seen any job-specific updates since Jan 2019 when they started the monthly cadence of adjusting at least one job per update. No updates yet for WAR THF SAM SMN[EDIT: HI SIREN!] BLU GEO RUN etc... (DRK not included only because the December scythe update arguably impacted that job more than any other)

I think the reasons that NIN gets a decent amount of discussion are:
(1) There is a perception that it needs adjustment more than most jobs (not too controversial to say as a DPS job it could use a boost), and the devs' approach has been to address the jobs more in need of enhancement.
(2) Like Buukki said, the NIN adjustment in the July 2019 update was just to turn merited spells into scrolls and replace those with different merit JAs, along with adjusting the related relic armor augments (same thing they did for RDM BLM WHM BRD). That seems to be viewed as a somewhat different/separate thing than additional job adjustments.

So much optimism :3

Ninja happens to be one of my mains and I recently came back to the game from a long break. Looking at the front page, some of the gear seems to be outdated. I have been back about a month and have Kikoku and Kannagi AG'd. I also have Heishi. Currently debating which one I want to R15. My ls will be finishing off my mask for Jeuno tomorrow. But my question is where can I look in the thread for a reliable set for both Hi and Shun? I have slight preference for Hi atm but don't think i'll be getting a sandy win for some time. Any input would be appreciated.

The sets dont look outdated to me. Unless malignance plays a roll in any of those sets now. And the ammo piece from Cait sith, not sure if that has a place?

No clue which to r15. I personally took relic to r15 and it's a monster. I'm sure empy is probably equally as great with its white damage.