The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

I agree - if hybrids are viable don’t even bother with MB, just keep the TP and SCs flowing. You can probably do decent hybrids with non-Heishi katanas as well, it’ll still be better than anything else if the hybrids work on your target. If you are doing purely physical damage and don’t have the buffs, I’d personally, in the situation explained and options available, go with Kikoku SC+MB. Metsu metsu darkness or Shun Metsu light. Metsu is bestu was a meme here for a while but the katana really isn’t that bad at R15 and under buffed scenarios.

If none of hybrids work on the target, you have no option to MB on darkness skillchain, since hybrids cover water, ice and stone elements and there is no dark element ninjutsu nuke.

Gotta love naegling. Is this just firing off at eff. 1500~(moonshade/mpaca) or saving tp to 2k+/using tp bonus?

I don't think dropping 60-70M on the dynamis currency for a Kikoku is a good use of gil/time. Even if he farms it himself. 60-70M could get him an Aeneas, a Heishi and a bunch of detritus.

Spam at 1000TP with hitaki offhand. Ofc this wont be an option everywhere with just trusts buffs, because of accuracy.

This is a good perspecctive (full aeonic is like 25-30m on Asura) but we need to see if he's willing to pay mercs to get an Aeonic.
Judging from the fact that he's currently "busy" with Aeneas, doing it with friends, I'd be leaning to say he's not.

Furhtermore while Heishi Shorinken is undoubtely a much better Katana, if you're playing solo with no mules I'm not sure it's going to be the case.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kikoku outdpsing Heishi with generic gear and just trusts. I actually expect that to happen, honestly.

If you insist on SC+MB playstyle and hybrids are being resisted then maybe. If hybrids work, kikoku will be miles behind. I don't really know many things that you would want to solo and hybrids aren't working tbh.

Also like I have just wrote above. If hybrids aren't working than kikoku won't work too for SC + MB, because only nukes you have to mb on darkness are the same element as your hybrids.

In my experience those very few times I was solo on NIN, Kikoku's Metsu was generating more solid and reliable average damage than my Hybrids with R0 Heishi.
Don't think I was even bothering to MBs, was just spamming WSs iir.
If you want to try to guess why it was like that be my guest of course, I'm just reporting my personal experience.

Granted that back then my Nyame was probably just ~R15, I had no Kunimitsu and blah blah, but then again OP is in the same situation, so...



Either way, OP already made his decision and he started upgrading Kikoku, so I guess what's done is done! :-D

Not necessarily? You *could* still do, for example, Shun->Metsu for a light SC instead, and then burst fire/wind/thunder if there's a particular elemental resistance that makes NIN's hybrids not viable.

Is that a better approach than just focusing on purely physical WS and foregoing MBs? Maybe not (probably not). But Kikoku can do SCs other than Darkness.

Nyame is the real answer. Ninja becomes a different job once you have those MAB+WSD pieces to enable hybrids to be great. Even without Heishi (TP Bonus) or Nagi (AM3) to boost the WS damage more, any katana can use hybrids if you have the rest of the gear. r15 Nyame augment is fine to start seeing results, and obviously only improves as you add more rank points.

Now, if you ONLY have like, one minuet from a trust Bard, is that going to be good enough buffs for hybrids to do well? On most targets, I would not expect so. In that case, just the extra Atk on Kikoku is probably significant enough to make that weapon closer to Heishi or Nagi for hybrids. But I would not be confident that you're sufficiently buffed for either hybrids, or physical varies with TP WS (Savage Blade, Blade: Ten), to really be that great in such a situation. In that case, just spamming Metsu is likely to be better DPS from the WS damage + the darkness SCs.

Doesn't come into play so much for me since I usually have player max strength BRD songs or COR rolls even when I play by myself (dual box, second character on BRD or COR, or GEO). IMO that's enough to make hybrids viable even filling the rest of the aprty with 4 trusts. But someone relying solely on Joachim and Ulmia for their unreliable songs that might give you one song+0 strength Minuet (that they normally don't use), and maybe a RDM trust Dia III? Ehhhhhhhhh IDK about all that.

Like, default trust BRD song choices prioritize March/Madrigal over Minuet. You're probably not getting anything other than a single Minuet V from Joachim (for a total of 2 marches, 1 madrigal, 1 minuet), and that's IF Ulmia doesn't switch songs to something like a Ballad. And you really do need some Atk to make hybrids good.

Tbh best to make Light SC would be doing Shun>Savage with weapon switching. That would be maybe more demanding playstyle, but then closing WS, skillchain and Magic Burst would be WAY stronger.

The more I think about it, it would be really the best by far. You can use gokotai/kunimitsu for shun and magic burst and Naegling/hitaki for Savage. This way you can have great weapon combo for strong magic burst and regain from gokotai will also build some tp during the nuke phase, while Savage is like at least 50% stronger than Metsu, especially if you want to use Nyame for skillchain bonus (it has low dex for Metsu). Savage can also use R25+ mpaca head for massive skillchain bonus with almost break even Savage damage (for Metsu it doesn't make sense because Metsu doesn't scale with tp).

Overall it will result in much higher damage than Kikoku Shun > Metsu and it doesn't even require a REMA.

More interesting comments, thanks guys. I will try the last suggestion of making light with SB. Not a problem for me switching weapons. I already have that gear plus 3 pieces of R15 Nyame.

Started Kikoku this weekend and got a shock at the price of Dyna currencynon Phoenix. 500K for a 100 piece now. Jadeshells a touch cheaper, but sods law the bulk isn't that currency.

I will never pay mercy to achieve stuff in game. Do it friends or not at all. I might as well buy gil to get relic done. Never happening.

In my (limited) experience of NIN completely solo with trusts, I found Naegling to be underperforming more often than not (but still okaysh)
I was instead pleasently surprised by how solid and reliable Kikoku's damage was. I think in these situations even Heishi spamming Shun was producing slightly better results than Naeg, if I remember correctly.

My WS dmg and overall DPS was noticeably higher than Naegling on Kikoku. Then again we're talking about a long time ago and my gear was certainly worse back then.


What others said is surely meaningful though.
In this type of content stuff is so easy that using one weapon or the other will not really create huge practical differences to you.
If we're talking about personal enjoymenr though, I can confirm what I said before, but it's of course a highly subjective topic.

I think I would probably start with mainhand Kunimitsu and offhand Hitaki, Gleti's Knife or Tsuru and see how you like Ninja. I would skip dropping 150M on a Kikoku and upgrade to a Heishi later.

This is some voodoo magic. Metsu is worse than Savage even without Hitaki and with Hitaki it smokes Metsu.

All gear is R15:

I think the difference is probably skillchains. When they are talking about Naegling vs Kikoku or Heishi Shun spam, I think they're saying 26k vs 17k -> 17k -> 40k SC or w/e.

He wrote WS damage and DPS, not just DPS.
Also if you switch weapon it would be 12k (shun) > 26k(Savage) > 62k Light.

Anyone mess with Jinpu? It's just another tool in the tool box. I made a Hachi just to tag stuff with Ageha at the start of a fight.

I was screwing with the Calc and it looks like I can get it close to 43,000 with ideal buffs.

Hybrids with Katana weren't hitting KRT bats as hard as I wanted.

Ageha -> Jinpu X4 is pretty decent.

I know it sounds gross, but if it helps me plow through bats quicker I'm up for it.

I need to make a Kaja Katana, because apparently the final version is a down grade for NIN ?

The low TP Return was messing with my skill chains since the effect eats all of your store to and gives you only base to per hit.

I believe only SAM can reach the store to threshold to constantly triple attack.

Also in regards to swapping weapons to skill chain. It's pretty fun. I often do it on DRK tbh. Screwing with Father Time/Raetic Algol/GAXE I was able to stupid stuff like:

For example:
Full Break + Insurgency + Reso+ Torcleaver for double light

NIN builds tp fast enough that losing to from weapon swaps should be negligible.

I did GKT NIN in Dynamis once with the ambu GKT, it was...alright. TP gain seemed very fast but still slower than katanas. WSD similarly was pretty decent, but nowhere near what SAM does with Jinpu and actually quite a bit weaker than katana hybrids.

Could be good for situations where the mob is resistant to your katana elements or weak to the GKT elements.

I had bought/acquired a few pieces of gear for this experiment and promptly stored them after this performance

Hi all, I've played around with MNK and BLU a bit with basic +2 Ambu gear and Kaja weapons to test their DPS in different circumstances.

BLU just felt like it was behind generally in DPS, and I didn't really vibe with the job much, (it's fun unlocking the abilities but not many of them are used in an actual DPS situation). MNK was fast paced and did quite well with damage, and I enjoy it quite a lot.

Anyway, I have NIN at 80 and wondered how it feels in the current day? I've read the guides, seen Rua's videos, and got a general gist of how the job plays, but I've also heard that the damage is just too low, and a lot of people that enjoy the job also complain about this.

I'm trying to kind of get a feel of just exactly how low are we talking? I'm personally fine if the damage passes a certain threshold, but if it's very underwhelming, I might be a bit worried. Also, note I mostly play alone or in duo/triple teams, or with trusts.

(Thanks)

The damage is too low for minmaxing zealots who lament theoretical numbers.

When in reality they're losing their ***over 30 seconds extra fight time. Which IS a difference. But it's also quite silly. If you're not using 9 songs 4 rolls and 2 geos don't listen to any of the zealotry.

For you, in that scenario monks numbers are going to be the best. BLU shouldn't feel that much worse it has it's own buffs that you'd be missing.

Ninja damage is not low. Whoever told you that lied.

It's not the tip top DPS like SAM/DRK/WAR/DRG so it is therefor bottom tier, in reality though its plenty fine outside of some zerg scenerios which the job aint really built for. Its more than sufficent for most things though so if you wanted a solid DD with the ability to burst as well as basically avoid anything phys based(unless its the kind of phys that wipes everything) then nins a perfectly job that you can do quite a bit on

NIN's best dmg is Savage Blade for general purpose, sadly, and with lack of self-buffs, it's just going to do slightly less than BLU and most other Savage jobs for that matter. Not enough to matter, if you enjoy NIN, play it, but since you already have BLU, I can't think of a reason to bring NIN over it for the most part. MNK would also do similar or more dmg than them depending on the mob and situation.

The only change in that is on Hybrid-friendly WS mobs, on W3 Dynamid for example, NIN can hit 99k on their Blade: Chi just like COR and SAM and are almost as good as them there, but most other places, not so much. BLU and MNK are largely going to be the same in most places they go, or in MNK's case, even outright bad due to blunt-only dmg.

None of them are extremely meta jobs, and all of them are fine in terms of soloing, so it's best to just pick the one you find the most fun. I know that's a *** answer and not what you want to hear, but none of them are exceptional or meta, and as with all things in this game, what is best is situational.

Ninja does really well for itself, it has ridiculous TP gain due to Daken. Innin, offhand TP Bonus katana and just spam Savage Blade. Toss tons of buffs like we do with everything else and you have a very good DD, if bit boring from pressing the same WS button.

I've been EPing on crabs and Chi does more than Savage, but I haven't got TP bonus offhand.

Hybrid WS are NIN's most significant niche these days, IMO. That does require some gear though, typically Heishi Shorinken + Kunimitsu, and 5/5 Nyame B path armor with some augments (at least R15, and obviously more is better). Nagi is pretty good mainhand too (Mythic AM procs on WS, and is great for hybrids), and TP bonus+1000 offhand can be a good offhand for hybrid-focused situations too.

But if you have the equipment to make them shine, Blade: Chi/To/Teki are really good. I frequently bring that to Sheol segment farming these days even though I also have more "meta" jobs for that like SAM with Masa/Doji/Shining One, or WAR with Chango/Naegling/Shining One/Loxotic (both of which are arguably better due to more versatility in damage types, and WAR with nice Warcry party buff - but my NIN doesn't lag that far behind in damage and I have fun with it without it being a massive liability). Also very good in Dyna Divergence, some utility in Sortie, viable for EP/ML grinding.

Which WS/element you're using will vary by mob (Chi > To > Teki in order of the most commonly used), and of course some mobs you won't get good performance out of any of them. But that's not really too bad either, since if physical/slashing damage is OK you can always just switch over to something like Blade: Ten (or swap weapon entirely to Naegling) for those mobs.

I have Heishi/Kuni (not wasting RP on this any time soon) and R25 Nyame. Only Chi was doing good damage vs crabs, maybe 30k average while SB was 20k average. Don't think I will make TP bonus offhand any time soon, just decided to ML it to 20 because my MNK is at 32 and it is slow as hell to ML after that solo.

I did up to 15 on crabs in Dho Gates, not sure where I wanna do 15-20 but I think Bibiki Bay would be too hard.

tp bonus is just as good for hybrids as it is for savage or ten. if you're happy with those numbers cool, but they go a lot higher.

i will amend that to say though that with aeonic it might be overkill if you're stuck holding tp for any reason.