Tips For New NIN's.

silly necromancers

ninja's aren't a tanking class, silly people.

I know.

I'm a WHM.

NIN rely too much on Uetsusumi. Once it's down and they try to cast it and always get interupted, it wastes my MP.

Enfeebling ninja is fun tho.

Just a random question: do Suiton, Doton, Huton, Raiton, Katon and Hyoton stack on each other? Because if they do, NIN really should use them more.

I'm being trolled, right?

im not really trying to troll, just stating my opinion as a WHM who've partied with ninjas who claim they're the best when in reality, they're just a waste of MP. (plus they need to pay 5k/99 shihei if they wanna get exp. it adds up to what 500k by the time you've capped?)

i'm a whm.

i really don't see what that says. utsu: ichi takes forever to cast. and either someone should be automatically pulling hate with damage, or voking. something YOU can do, as a whm, is cast flash.

and i really don't know what the cost of shihei has to do with anything.

also, if your NIN is a waste of mp, i dunno what the *** your dds are doing.

let me rephrase it:
NIN/WAR = Waste of MP unless there's a BRD in the party (which i have unlimited MP)
it's not that they take too many hits, but it's that the DDs take alot of hits too. If you've ever played other MMOs and other RPGs or even D&D, the Tank takes all the hits and should not lose hate on the mob. If the DDs take the hate away, that means more MP spent on healing the DDs as well as the NIN who can't take hits in the first place.

and the cost part was to show that people pay alot of gil for being a bad tanking job that they think they're good at.

and me as a whm taking hate? Okay. So when the Imp silences me, and that extra 2 seconds of using an echo drop while it's still attacking me and going down to red HP is okay? You want your healer to be vulerable to everything? We don't have that good DFP. We can't take hits as well as DDs. Keeping you alive is our job. Your job, as a tank, is to make sure the enemy doesn't go after us. DD's job is to deal the damn damage.
the hate calculator of this game is a bit messed up.

my point: Tanks have to keep hate and take beatings. Ninjas can't do either without the use Copy Image. Asking me to take the hate while they recast Utsusemi is telling me to die for the ninja. also DDs take the hate too and as i said, it's a waste of MP. The Hate on this game reallly needs to be worked on. Honestly, a WAR/DNC is a better tank than a NIN/WAR.

By that logic, if I had enough shitty whitemages that claim they're amazing then I can make this outrageous claim that whitemages are not meant to heal, right?

Also, rangers aren't damage dealers, all they do is pull hate and die when they try to do damage. They should sit back and debuff with their ammo because they have acid/blind bolts and paralysis arrows, right?

You cant make a good opinion about nin just by watching other people play the job really. Maybe the NIN's you have partied with really suck?

Granted that really good NIN's are rare, so even if you have partied with 50 NIN's and they all sucked donkey balls, doesnt mean that the job itself sucks and cant tank for ***.

And to whoever said they've main healed as BLM with nin tank and the NIN sucked. surprise? NIN w/o haste cant keep shadows up very good. And if you are mainhealing as BLM you're the one doing it wrong.

If NIN could take hate more (even those i know who claim to be a good tank as NIN don't keep hate well) i'd say otherwise. As a WHM (and i bet we've partied before) i don't claim i'm an awesome WHM because i know i'm not but unlike other WHM who also cast Banish and waste MP, i sit back, Cure/Haste/Dia and when i don't have to, i rest or buff myself (and when in a party of 70+ sync, sublimation cuz i go /sch)
yeah, we all have our own way of playing a job but 99% of nin/wars i'm with, can't take hate and can't take hits when utsusumi goes down.
now if there's 2x NIN/WAR, it's not that bad. (or 2 tanks i should say)

and OMG i know what you mean by Rangers. That's what i meant.Hate on this game is messed up. Also DRK has spikes, which keep hate very well. a NIN/DRK would prolly take more hate than a NIN/WAR now that i think about it.
i said WHM didn't i? I usually go WHM/SCH :P i have seen SMN/WHM and BLM/WHM be main healers with nin tanks (to where i go "jesus, this is gonna go bad" to myself) Yeah, of course i keep hastes on the NIN tanks but they still can't keep copy image up mainly because they got something beating on it still.

Playing the class through 33 levels (FFXIAH has to update cuz of last night's 3 level day =D) Copy image goes down very fast against AoE spells/abilities and of course colibri. Many enemies have AoE stuff and well waste of shihei. I do find a use of Copy Image tho. Pulling is so much easier lol.

go and see old ninja ppl and will understand it's saving mp job rather then wasting mp job but.. they gone or retired ; ;

@Kalyna

My post wasnt aimed at you, more aimed in general towards people who says x job suck because they have seen other people suck at it.

It would be like me saying sch suck, even though my sch is lv 1, just because i have seen other ppl suck while playing sch.

Nin isn't a HORRIBLE tank...but seeing as how they lose hate at an increased rate.....they don't make the best one. The only reason I would ever pick a Nin to tank would be for stuff on say....Charby

imo a good ninja will beat a pld most of the time.

SCH is a fun job but i wouldn't say the best healing or nuking job. (tho it's only 37, i do want to work on it more because i'm curious on things)

I've noticed that i'm in a losing battle, even tho i was just giving my opinions on things, on things like me saying "A tank takes hits and keeps hate" to someone saying "they shouldn't keep hate because they'd die" (when honestly, whoever has the hate will get the hits and die faster)

At least people agree with one thing: One tank is needed per party. I've been in parties where the tank didn't even provoke. I remember when i tried FFXI back in 2003, WAR/WHM was the best damn tank. (even tho i only got WHM to like 18 lol, i got too frustrated cuz it was hard as hell to get a party and when i did, it'd be to 30+ mobs and i'd get 1shotted.)

As i said, my mindset is of old MMOs like lolEvercrack and D&D where tank always kept hate, took the hits while the healer only healed and buffed and the others did the damage whether it was weapons or nuking.

Hard to say for that. Depends on what type of pld you mean :P

I actually like NINs, especially between 40 to 54 (Bird camp destroyed everything... though it's still possible).
Actually, I'd go as far as saying they're the one of the best DDs Pre-Pentas, while tanking too!

I remember a pt in Crawlers where the NIN subbed /RDM. Debuffs, then riding the elemental wheel. Hate was almost impossible to pull without 2hours.
And the mob was dying pretty fast!

As for SMN's mainhealing, that worked out well with a NIN too. Stoneskinga+Hastega = Winja.

Actually NIN was never meant to be a tanking class, it was forced to be since it could absorb hits(utsusemi) and had pretty good evasion.

If you level throwing skill and actually have the money to afford shurikens they have really good damage potential.

Well technically in any TP burn pt no matter what "tank" you have, they are only good for first voke anyway.

funny think you mention that:

when you think ninja, you don't think "lol i'm taking damage and let the mobs know i'm here by provoking"

you think silent and sneaky assassins. lol

i hope they make it so when you provoke, you lose shadows and blink effect automatically, because honestly, when you go "HEY I DID YOUR MOM" to someone, they hear you and know which image said it and go attack it right? =P

Which sadly puts PLD behind NINs in those situations lol (ie, non-gimp PTs).
Mobs shouldn't be living long enough to spam TP moves unless we have a kraken/mercurial wielder in the PT ><

Had a COR and RNG using those... in an Imp pt of all the places.

COR complained about the amnesia.
No Buffs.
No WSs.
Yay?

Silena spammage didn't help at all too...

I had a 55 bird pt like that a couple of months ago, NIN was tanking and mainhanding M kris wth? lol

Not like he got to keep his TP long enough to ws anyway because of feather tickle lol

sounds like there's a lot of phail around these days.

if you wanna argue about tank job phail due to the player not being able to fold utsusemi, you automatically say any end-game shadow tank sucks when in fact you're actually complaining that the shadow tanks you've played with don't know how to properly fold or that their support doesn't know how to cover their *** in 'oh ***' situations. true, pld's can totally negate interruptions with shield blocks, but even with a capped block rate they're still going to fail casting in those situations about half the time.

now if you want to argue about hate gain while end-game tanking, pld/nin can probably get the best initial spike through the use of sentinel + other hate tools. after the initial spike rdm/nin will destroy any other job on steady hate gain because of the sheer number of spammable tools and fast cast trait, followed by nin/drk and finally pld/nin.

here's where things get tricky. geared with the appropriate gear sets and given proper support, the only thing that separates nin/drk, pld/nin and rdm/nin is the amount of player skill needed to play the job properly. pld/nin is by far the simplest of the three, it's low stress as you can survive damage for a prolonged duration w/o shadows and there aren't a lot of actions that you need to worry about handling in order to do your job. nin/drk takes the middle ground, it involves more tools to utilize and can get stressful when you're w/o shadows for a prolonged period, you must also be more aware of how the flow of the battle is going so you can prepare your action timings. rdm/nin takes the most skill as you have even more tools to use than nin/drk, timing the use of actions becomes more critical, you need to be aware of the status on additional buffs (stoneskin+phailanx mostly), and you need to be aware of your hate compared to your co-tanks hate (pld/nin and nin/drk are on a much more similar hate gain rate when compared to rdm/nin which leaves both in the dust).

now about merit range enemies. I'm not sure how many good nin/wars you've ever seen, but a good one with optimized builds will keep up with other DD/nins overly well (if your DDs are subbing sam during merit range events they either; have enough buffs where taking damage isn't an issue, are HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, or are dead gods, lol). hell, the only real time I tend to lose hate as nin/war is when a DD tosses out a high damage move (good WS or T4+ nuke) upon engagement. but, it's really not an issue, if the enemy lasts long enough I usually end up with hate through pure dmg or it dies (sure there are a few other times where the DD just dies instead, but that's their fault for not being able to survive hate, lol).

to sum it up, player phail and job limitations are different, learn to recognize them before you state a weak opinion (I don't mind feeding trolls when I'm bored if their argument is easily stomped, lol).

just because ninja wasn't originally intended to tank doesn't mean they can't tank.

nin can't tank for ***below 37. between 37 and 50-something, they can do well if they can cast ichi-- but not everyone knows to flash or voke at this point. when dds start doing more damage, like others have said, they're just a first voke IF that.

regarding imps, i found that stacking -enmity really helps at that level. i switched from af hat to crow beret, and it helped a lot. i also tried to avoid cure IV.

nin can require a lot of support to tank in xp situations. how many dds can you really say will voke when they see someone getting hit while casting ichi? how many whms can you say will flash? it's not something you have to worry about with a pld tank, just like lining up is something you don't have to worry about when there's no thf. but when people make it work, it's pretty good.

at higher levels, i don't think a nin/war should be able to hold hate against dds worth a ***, but i dunno how well yonin deals with that-- most of my toau parties don't use a tank, anyway. nin/war is definitely not an endgame tank. nin/drk, however, is a different story.

Lol. Please keep your mouth shut, as you clearly don't know what you're talking about

Ninja is pretty much the best tank 40~54. Starting out on Colibri can be rough for NIN unless they have someone to bounce hate with. Before anything, I have both jobs at 75, and I'd choose NIN over PLD if the option presents itself anytime.

At 40, Ninja is pretty much untouchable. Yonin is incredibly broken. The other night I sync'd to 41 NIN/WAR, since it was the first time me ever trying to exp on NIN since Yonin was released. Keeping hate was so easy, I didn't even need to pay attention most of the time. In fact, I didn't even need provoke. My friend who I exp'd with made a challenge with me, seeing if I could keep hate without voking. I did with relative ease just spamming the elemental wheel.

NIN's number one advantage over PLD is that it relies on doing damage to tank. Yes at times you'll be found defenseless without shadows, but it happens. That's why you have a mage in your party. I'm sorry that you have to actually cast Cure. Holy *** what a thought!

NIN relies on shadows as much as PLD relies on MP. Without the proper support, PLD tanking can be rough in some situations. For example, its incredibly hard to keep a chain up with a PLD that isn't balancing MP efficiently, where as a NIN can keep a chain going with absolutely no problems whatsoever, especially with Haste.

PLD has an advantage over NIN on Colibri simply because birds aren't NIN friendly. However this changes 60+, or at least its what I noticed. 60+ both NIN and PLD are pretty much equal. 66-75 NIN beats PLD in the standard exp party.

you don't really need a tank on birds anyway :D

but yeah, i leveled nin to 58 before yonin/innin, so it's good to hear that it does a lot for those levels and may not require as much support as i mentioned. something i kind of forgot about.

Pretty much, but your standard pick-up party will have a 1~2 people that are going to be adamant about needing a tank.

NIN stops being a "tank" after certain levels anyway, and it just becomes about "first voke". It becomes more about battle speed than anything else (i.e, if a mob is lasting more than a minute, your party won't be getting that great exp anyway), which is another reason why NIN excels over PLD.

The best advice so far in this thread for aspiring Ninjas.

The lolNIN stereotype is there for a reason. People expecting the Ninja job to play like other jobs are in for disappointment. For those wanting to play Ninja to the max, need to realize that Ninja is extremely gear dependent along with needing the will to play on another plane to stand out.

Here are a few of my itemsets I use for Ninja.
*Note* The links provide details on the itemsets ie multiple swaps, reasoning, items still needed, etc.

Enmity


Utsusemi: Ichi


Utsusemi: Ni


Ninjutsu Skill


Physical Damage Down


Maximum Evasion


Yes, most of these gears are very difficult to obtain. The good news is that Ninjas can get NQ gears to make a difference. Just be prepared to carry many item sets with you.


There is one omission to the HNM tanking which Fenrir.Nightfyre pointed to earlier.
Full evasion tanking is possible on Ninja for most HNM in the game. For all the naysayers that point out enmity issues for evasion Ninjas need to realize that once you cap hate, it is just a matter of recapping quick enough to hold solid hate.

As a NIN/DRK or NIN/RDM, the spell Poison allows you to keep VE for a low MP cost and low cast/recast timer. The spell Sleep is also needed for CE diminishing as shadows absorb your damage and you take damage from time to time. The full evasion setup allows one to ride out shadows for a long time offsetting the lowering of CE.

Examples of where this is MP saving for the mages... comes from being able to hold monsters solo for significant amounts of time before friends show up.

A sample list of NMs that are evasion tankable:

Bahamut, Cerberus, Khimaira, King Vinegarroon, Oupire (as NIN/DRK for Stun; yes I know this is not an HNM but try holding this solo for 15 mins), Sandworm, Tiamat (needs a RDM/WHM with Enhancing Magic Skill 300+ for Barfira), etc.

Someone mentioned that a good guide is needed to steer beginning Ninjas in the right direction. I think there are already good enough guides; we just need more emphasis on maximizing gear sets.

Wut? PLD is gear dependent also, whats your point? If anything, NIN tanking endgame requires less gear, and easier to get gear than a PLD does. i.e, a NIN/DRK can do pretty well with strictly AH gear on most mobs in this game. Notice I said well, not excellent.

There's so many things I've tanked on NIN/DRK with mediocre gear its ridiculous. One of my most notable accomplishments is 100%'ing Byakko solo tank, which is extremely hard to do. Was my gear perfect? Faaaaaaaaaaaar from it, but it did the trick. Of course, NIN is nothing without the proper support. This is where it is very different from PLD imo.

A PLD has a lot of ***in their reserves in case ***hits the fan. If a NIN has shadows and not a proper physical/magic reduction set, that NIN is pretty much ***. From what I've noticed, NIN needs a lot more support than PLD for some mobs.

Notice my key words!

So, why wouldnt you idle in evasion gear and switch to DD gear for ws, haste/eva gear for shadows.. etc... kinda like plds do, for their dd/tank/haste setups.. idle and then dd gear... or post 60's would you totally scrap all eva gear period for nin..

Note: i dont plan on taking nin past 49 for sub purposes.. just curious on this point..

Why the Ninjutsu torque for Utsu: Ni?

higher ninjitsu skill- less chance of being interrupted.