The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

My friend had Hume AA successfully tank wave 2 boss, while he killed it mainly with helix. Does that count as ninja tanking? :D

On the topic of ninja tanking, when casting Utsusemi: San with Fudo Masamune path C while you currently have 0 shadows up, will you gain an additional +70 enmity or +0 enmity on the spell from the Su5? Or am I mistaking the description of the augment and is it just +10 Enmity to each Utsusemi spell?

you understand it good, but to answer your question, someone would need to do a specific test using SCH or at least 2nd job to check enmity against with and without Fudo Masamune to know that. I have no idea what is the order of calculation for that bonus. I would guess you get +0 enmity if you go from 0 shadows to 7, but afaik AM3 on mythics works for WS that activates it, so everything is possible.

Thats still because tp is consumed before a ws activates. That makes perfect sense. Burn 3k tp, aftermath becomes active, ws activates while under aftermath. Simple.

As far as the enmity on fudo masamune, it could literally be anything.
It could be a translation error.
It could be +10 for each shadow created.

This is how it should work, as worded.
+10 enmity for every shadow currently up. You should gain zero enmity+ with zero shadows up. The spell ends before the shadows get counted.

I have R25 Path C Fudo Masamune. I have a second character with SCH. I'm willing to test this for the knowledge of all NINkind - I just don't really understand how to test enmity.

Can anyone explain exactly what I need to do to collect conclusive data? Feel free to assume I am a total idiot, and give me a full step-by-step, please!

- Can I do this with just my NIN+SCH?
- Do I need another player besides my two to compare to (and can that be a trust, so I don't have to drag someone out who doesn't give a damn about this test)?
- Does it matter at all what target I pick?
- When exactly do I use Libra?

Crazy busy this week so might not get a chance until the weekend, but if I can get someone to help me understand what to do I would happily go out and do the testing.

Well Im not an expert, but it should be enough to:

1.
- Go NIN/whm and SCH/WAR
- Cast Utsusemi: SAN before you engage
- Find some fresh mob
- pull it with sleep on SCH
- Cast cure with NIN on SCH, just to put yourself on hate list
- Wait a little (10+ sec should be enough) for VE enmity to drop to minimum
- Voke on SCH and cast Utsusemi on NIN in about the same time
- Use Libra to check hate

2. Do everything the same but without having shadows up before pull

I've been doing some extensive testing with all three Fudo's at R25. I have not done the specific test you are referring to above with SCH and think it would be good to do that to verify that results I've seen. However, based on what I've witnessed during events it calculates the Enmity generation at the time the ability is used. So if you use Provoke with 6 Shadows up you get +60 Enmity. If you recast Utsusemi: San with 2 shadows up you get an extra +20 Enmity on that casting... not +70 as you only get those shadows AFTER the ability is used. The only real question in my mind is when the Calculation is done in the casting process. Whether it's pre-cast or mid-cast. What I mean is if you start to cast Utsusemi: Ni with 4 shadows up and then through your macro cancel those shadows before Utsusemi: Ni completes... do you get +40 because you had those shadows active when you started to cast Utsusemi: Ni or do you get +0 as you had 0 active when the spell was cast. I'm guessing it's what shadows you have up when the actual spell is used (midcast) but it would be good to verify.

Looks like no love for ninjas this month....

You know, maybe just my humble opinion, if they would go back to AoE not wiping all shadows like it used to that would be great, or at the least let it wipe all the shadows, but let them actually absorb a decent amount of the damage would also work. That is literally the only thing holding ninja back, all the AoE spam... Ugh

When was this? Could have sworn aoe (like stonega diaga etc) has always wiped blink/utsusemi. Or is my memory failing me?

It's the horrendous TP moves that have "act like an aoe magical spell and strip everything" that is more recent (still always existed afaik, but it was much less common). You used to be able to use Shadows for literally everything (kiting kirin pld/nin with shadows was fun), and no physical TP moves could touch you. I would be cool with direct aoe spells wiping shadows if TP moves that are physical lost the "strips utsusemi" trait that they have.

Was changed in the September 2004 patch. A patch or two earlier was when enmity loss when Utsu shadows absorbed damage was introduced as well.

Maybe more frequent full shadow loss from TP moves is the result of ilevel implementation or something.

Yea pretty much this, nerfed the crap out of nin, didn't do too much for /nin utsusemi on everyone. It was intended to nerf it as a sub, iirc, but had the opposite effect, ninjas left out, everyone else still subbed nin.

Edit: also if iirc it would only take one shadow to absord AoE or multi hit type attacks. Leaving you with some breathing room after the attack. Now multihits strip as many shadows as the hit count. Which is not aweful. It's the AoE magic that's killing all the shadows. Which is dumb according to the logic of the game, AoE is supposed to be a single hit, to everyone. Not a single hit to non utus users, yet hits for however many shadows a utus user has + the *** thing lands for full damage also. It's dumb, for further example of the frustration, you don't see Diaga spam completely decimating the main defensive features of PLD, sure if it lands it is a little bit lower def, but for a nin that just cast a fresh San, and waiting on timers, it's a huge setback. Huge.

I started in 2004 and CoP was my first expansion, which explains why I never knew this was changed. Yikes, did they seriously spell out all of the reasons they purposely nerfed utsusemi for damage reduction? :/

Basically because everyone could go /nin, have access to ichi and ni, and the mob could never hit them.

Which they still used it anyway, because when not the tank, it still helped reduce damage as a SJ. Timers would keep up with the spam. It screwed ninja tanking though, because besides an occasional AoE, they were still expected to defend against regular attacks also, something other jobs weren't affected by, because they had a tank. They should have nerfed the sub only, and left the main job alone. "Oh everybody is able to take advantage of the gimmick of the main job by subbing it? Just nerf the main, and that'll take care of everyone exploiting it as a sub job, problem solved...."

Main problem there, I think, is that damage mitigation at that stage of the game just wasn't great in general. Even post-nerf, Utsusemi remained far more effective than just about anything else players could do, and NIN or /NIN was still used heavily for years afterward. Utsu just wasn't quite as broken as it was originally.

Yea true, but all said and done, it did nothing for their intended purpose, and they never thought to make further tweaks, which just left us out in limbo a little. The old utsu wasn't very broken for nin main to begin with. It was broken AF as a sub though, war/nin or as mentioned above pld/nin was stupid. And the nerf did nothing for that.

Guys, let me get this straight...
Is Tauret the best offhand weapon for ninja at this very moment?
Better than Kanaria 4DEX, 15ACC, 18ATT, 3%tripple att?

Due to its delay, the short answer is "Yes".

I would say yes and no. It's between Tauret and Achiuchikapu which both have the same delay. If your MB'ing hands down Tauret wins, if your just spamming WS's I prefer Achiuchikapu. The Kanaria you mention is slightly better for Multihit then Achiuchikapu with the same store TP but the delay is where it makes the Kanaria fall behind.

I have not seen any quantifiable data behind "Tauret is the best offhand" besides people just saying that. Given it's attack, delay, and accuracy, it's not hard to see why, but given everything is driven by spreadsheets and math, I would be interested in seeing some data behind it. I have all but stored my Kanaria, and I swap between Gokotai + Tauret, but I have been using Fudo Masamune most of the time for that beefy attack.

Would like to see some hard numbers (white damage + WS Frequency) of all weapons involved. Not that it makes much of a difference, but would be cool to know numerically. Like, how fast on average does Tauret offhand produce TP vs - Kanaria, Gokotai, Achiuchikapu, Fudo Masamune.

I'm in the middle of doing this now in my A Guide To Ninja series videos. I'm comparing Kannagi R15, Kikoku R15, heishi R15, All 3 Fudo paths on R25, Gokatai, Tauret, Kanaria and Achi.. and later in the year Nagi R15 when I'm finished with it. Its' mainly the MB damage where tauret excels. Tons of data to go over so these will be released in individual video's over the coming weeks all with real time parser data to show how each is doing and then comparing it vs previous weapons. Will also be comparing different gear setups for ninja from beginner to BiS. Hopefully that will help with the answers your looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7VUf7er90RYUVgAJwv3x3Q

I watch and am subscribed to you on Youtube, so I'll be on the lookout for them.

I think there's a lot of good offhand options to be honest. More than there are for main hand. Tauret is a great all-rounder if you can afford the acc loss from C+ skill and no ranged accuracy.

In no order and some are situational:

Fudo Masamune
(Mochizuki Shinobi-gatana)
Gokotai
Ochu
Hitaki
Shigi
Kanaria
Tauret
(Kaja Knife)
Raetic Kris +1
Blurred Knife +1
Malevolence

In Domain Invasion
Voluspa Katana (also a good main hand)

I think you'd need pretty spectacular augments to make Kanaria competitive though. Taka is probably worth mentioning too but I think you'd only use it temporarily until you got something better (which doesn't make sense cause it's a HELM drop). But I've never used it personally. I think Achiuchikapu and Ternion Dagger +1 have probably been eclipsed by Tauret but may be useful if you can't do ambu.

Gokotai as an offhand, why if I may ask?
I used to think that but kinda re-evaluated it over other options like Shigi and Fudo Masamune.

Taka used to be (still is?) a nice offhand for Kannagi MH users.
Back in the days it used to be the best for them, not anymore though probably.

For Hybrid WS it's not a bad offhand cause the offhand damage gets mirrored (if you aren't hitting 99k already that is).

Also an accuracy swap if you don't have the others.

FWIW, I've compared offhands extensively with spreadsheets in a variety of target/buff situations to get a pretty good sense that has, in my experience, translated pretty accurately to real in-game play.

I tend to go for Fudo Masamune offhand for most situations as my default (but if you don't have that and don't wanna buy one, Gokotai or Su4 are pretty good for the same kinds of situations). But Tauret is definitely my #2 choice.

Comparing Fudo to Gokotai, both have high acc for both hands (Gokotai's Acc/Racc+40 plus DEX/AGI+15 is almost the same as Acc/Racc+50), but Fudo wins for offhand acc/atk thanks to skill+19, and has a LOT more atk when you have shadows up. It isn't entirely unrealistic that the extra atk can help you in legitimate scenarios like:
(1) For some reason you're capped on acc but not atk - which could be the case if, say, your GEO BRD have switched out some atk buffs in favor of Torpor, Vex, Carols, whatever
(2) You're uncapped on both acc and atk. In that case, both are good acc weapons and that's the priority. But Fudo also gets atk, and you can make good use of it in that kind of situation.

Tauret is my go-to for stuff where I am totally confident I will be acc&atk capped. In that case the delay reduction is more valuable, and the DEX+15 doesn't hurt for Shun, Ten, Metsu.

Stuff that's getting a little outdated, IMO
Kanaria: a good TA+3 Kanaria can get close to the top options, but I rarely (if ever?) find a situation where my TA+3/DMG+11/STR+5/Acc&Atk+20ish one beats Fudo or Tauret. At best, it sometimes ends up as basically a sidegrade... but in other situations it drops off quite a bit (Fudo stomps it when the acc/atk are needed). I'd rather err on the side of the weapon that is never substantially worse, and often a heck of a lot better.

Taka: even before Su5/Ambu weapons, it was only really hanging on as a good offhand for Kannagi (AGI for Hi, crit rate isn't bad for Empy AM3 white damage, and good delay). As an offhand for other weapons, it fell behind. Now it's no longer even a Kannagi offhand thanks to the newer options.

Achiuchikapu: Tauret pretty much beats it in any situation as a low delay offhand (hell, Ternion+1 does too). I can't find a use any more.

Shigi (Aug): I never see it beating Fudo/Gokotai any more. (edit: though Mho brings up a good point about DT-5% still having some niche uses)

Stuff that's niche at best
Ochu has a place for MBs

Malevolence for free nukes/Aeolian Edge farming

Shuhansadamune is arguably the best tanking offhand with a little bit of several tanking stats (Enm+10, Counter+5, FC+5%, PDT-3%) - but at the expense of a lot of DPS, if you're trying to do damage while tanking.

Tancho+1/Raicho+1 are super-niche tanking options for SIRD and MDT-, respectively. But I'm interested to see if they get any relevant boosts from Unity Reforged gear (Ternion Dagger +1 also worth keeping an eye on)

Voluspa Katana I guess is worth it for DI/Mireu. Personally, I haven't bothered picking one up yet since normal DI is super easy anyway and I don't waste my time with Mireu.

Hitaki (TP Bonus) has a place in some low-acc requirement Naegling/Savage Blade builds. I'm skeptical of practical utility for katana/katana setups, of which Heishi Blade:Ten spam is the best case scenario for a TP Bonus offhand.

Thank you very much for all this information!!

I'll be on the lookout for the video!