A few questions for experienced Nin/War's.

[Excel801]

Hello,

I have a few quick questions for the higher leveled nin/war's in the forum, if no one minds;

1.) Is it possible at all to hold hate well without the use of Shurikens, or do you see them as a requirement? Most of the Nin's I see only use Chakrams... (Even those crazy rank 9ner's.) To be honest, I've yet to examine a Nin with a shuriken above 65.

2.) Do you bother to use enmity equipments such as Nemesis Earrings, Mermaid's Rings, Rasetsu equipment, etc? I'm actually surprised to see that there's not one single nin that I've examined that uses enmity equipments besides rasetsu. (Or whatever that purple cloth was that gave a bit of enmity.)

Just being curious, thank you.

[Excel801]

Anyone at all? Please? :( I'm sure there's at least one high level ninja visiting the forum...

I really want to know before I try out the class.

[Faie]

In my experience, hate control isn't as bad as people make it sound. Sure the mob isn't going to be plastered on us like we were a pld, but we can still maintain decent aggro with provoke every 30 seconds and ninjutsu. I currently have no +enmity equipment and I am doing fine. I don't use shurikens either.

[Excel801]

Faie,

Oh, nice. That's quite reassuring, and I'm glad that my little hypothesis about all those high levels not using shurikens and enmity equipments are right from your view.

Initially, I wanted to use Eris' Earrings and Nemesis Earrings (I know one of them is rare.) after reading about how little difference added evasion would do. I think I still might, unless some miraculously uber and affordable earring comes up. I'm not sure whether AGI is that all beneficial to Nin's either.

I'm definately going to skip Mermaid's Ring though, in favor of some other offensive ring. (Maybe Sniper's, Sun, or Deft eventually?)

Anywho, thanks much for the reply.

[intranet69]

Faie, so your saying Enimity equipments are not necessary at all?
a BLM's ancient MB or ga MB can take the target very easily...no?

[Omni]

have a thf buddy to fuidama off you. i currently dont have my throwing where i want it, but once its there, ill be throwing a lot more. at 50, only problem i have in keeping hate is when the ranger uses barrage. but then, i just spam a few ninjutsu and provoke and its usually ok.

[Navia]

1) Yes you can hold hate without constantly chucking stars, but being able to hold hate solidly means opening with slow(16k a stack)+blind (7k a stack) as the pull comes in, provoking, tossing paralyze (9k+ a stack), followed with poison(6k a stack), and huton then hyoton( each 2-3k a stack).
Somewhere in there I let 1 ninja star loose or chakram. If starting the skillchain at the fight start where multiple people are going to magic burst, I activate berserk to edge up my damage.
Blink obviously recast in between all that stuff above :p
A main point with prices listed is to show that holding hate well costs gil, if its not in the form of ninja stars its in powders besides shihei.

You can get through the 30s without spamming this much ninjitsu, but later on jobs like RNG or DRK will downright emberass you by stealing hate easily if you dont start throwing this stuff around even with a THF fuidama.

The nonstop casting on a monster at the fight start makes it more angry at you, regardless of whether stuff sticks or not instead of spacing it out. If huton:Ni lands for only 9 damage, you still have to consider the amount of hate it builds because you lowered an elemental resistance as well.

If you try to be cheap and dont debuff, you will have all your shadows getting lost quickly, taking damage soon and losing hate.
The opening of a fight at higher levels really makes or breaks you, it is the part where ninja is the most busy (and most vulnerable) taking the most concentration.

2) I have seen some ninja with enmity earrings and a ring, but notice level 65+ ninja dont really wear this type of equipment.
I personally dont see the need for it yet and I dont pt with a THF for fuidama. I may get a mermaid ring but I found boosting my acc/dex and atk is a better way to keep hate.
Being able to consistently land hits on the monster helps alot, even if the damage is sometimes low.

[Excel801]

Navia,
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah, I was expecting to do something like that (Using all the more useful Ninjutsu debuffers). Before, I thought that even with all those debuffs, you would still need to use shurikens to hold hate. (A lot of people told me this, too.)

I have plenty of gil at the moment, but I want to read around a bit regarding the ninjutsu powder/tools that I'll eventually start using through crafting. I heard, however, you won't be saving much money until at higher crafting levels where you get to make HQ crafts more often.

Hope my Nin experience through the first few levels partying won't suck. :) Thanks, and have fun~

[Omni]

i think you just need to go out there yourself and get a feel for it. you dont HAVE to have shurikens though it makes ur job easier. i guess im saying this because i tend to run into a lot of people telling me how to play my job. the funny thing is they arent ninjas and/or they are some lvl 14 ninja thinking they kno everything already. find out for yourself is what i say.

personally i dont use shurikens at the moment b/c my throwing isnt at a lvl where i want it yet (92). the one benefit i see from this is that my backup provoker, can take the mob from me relatively easily so i can recast utsu if its ichi's turn and thf buddy to fuidama+viperbite off of me. now if i generated so much hate that he wasnt able to pull it off of me, these 2 things wouldnt be possible.

[Tab Key]

1) yes. I think most nin's (including myself) use a chakram to skill up throwing. hold hate is easier if you spam shruikens and jitsu, but you can hold hate w/o using shruikens.

2)I, myself use 2 eris's earrings. I find the dodge earrings aren't that helpful after 55. I'm considering of getting a mermaid ring, but I think I'll stick to fluorite rings. (sniper rings are overrated). IMO, equip is prefrence. if you think u need help holding hate, buy enmity +. Controlling aggro isn't that much of a concern to me since almost every PT I'm in, I make sure there's a thf or thf sub (60+). majority of my equip is either accuracy/dex or attack. that's just my prefrence, it can be totally different according to your own play style.




by the time you're in the 55 range, BLM's should know when to hard MB (ES + III or whatever) or regular MB. overnuking shouldn't be an issue at those levels.
at 60, if there's a thf, fuidama + dancing edge should keep the mob looking at the tank anyway.

The only time I had a tough time holding hate was in Boyada Tree around Lv57 taking the few Gobbues in the area after Aquarius with 2 rngs. renkei was 2 Distortion both lead by sidewinder. sidewinder > rampage was almost impossible to regain hate. but thankfully both rngs and the war were nin subbed so they being able take up to 6 hits gave me enuff time to regain the hate. That pt was possiblely the 2nd best PT I've ever been in considering there was no thf.

[Kiyosuki]

Shuriken are very nice, but they arn't a total necessity to holding hate.

If you keep up with throwing, Shuriken are very handy for the earlier levels of Ninja. You hit a lot more then if your skill is capped. At this point though they're starting to miss a lot more. If Shuriken accuracy was more reliable it'd be very much something all Ninja's shouldn't be without. But they're just a little bit unreliable in experience parties. What I do is just kind of go into mindsets where I mostly melee some of the time, then in little intervals I try to add in a throw with each of my melee turns.
My throwing's dragged a little lately though. I really want to use those Wind Katana's at the mid 50's range so I can use the fan and macro switch to shuriken during certain periods of time.

As you can see from previous posts, there's a method to using Ninjutsu. Just randomly throwing anything won't be as good. Hojo is the spell that by itself gets the most hate in one casting so its a good spell to start with. Blind and paralyze are nice to throw on because it makes you harder to hit, and it gets a little bit more hate. I think after Hojo that or the other are good. A little later when you get Kurayami Ni (Blind two) you'll tend to want to cast that after Hojo because its much faster. If we had Dokumori and Jubaku Ni hate keeping would be even better, but we don't have those for some stupid reason.

As for Dokumori, the poison spell, its useful because poison acumulates hate over time as it chips tiny little bits of hp away. Hardly dangerous, but its good to keep a small flow of hate.

There's a method to using the elemental Ninjutsu too. This is more for the Ni's, the Ichi's are way too slow. At the Ichi levels just using the enfeebling Ninjutsu should be enough, Save elemental for when you want to just lower defense, otherwise its pretty crappy.

The elemental Ni's though are different. Because they're much faster in casting you can pull them in at a much more efficient rate.
You could randomly throw them in, but if you lower elemental defense in a sequential order you can get a lot more hate from it.
Such as:
Hyoton > (Ice damage, lower to Fire) > Katon (Fire to Water) >Suiton (Water to Lightning) >Raiton (Lightning to Earth) > Doton (Earth to Wind) > Huton (Wind to Ice)

As you can see you've lowered every elemental defense in a perfect circle. Each one did elemental damage and lowered to another element, which the next did damage to and so on. You can start at any point on this pattern but you have to go in a sequential order. You don't have to do this whole thing at once, it can be done over a period of time.

Like after you cast Hojo, Kurayami, and twiggle around with the monster a bit cast Hyoton then Katon. Then next chance you get cast Suiton then Raiton. It has to be in the right order over time but if you lower elemental defense like this, it generates a higher amount of hate over time than if you just randomly threw them in.

If you want a quicker, less effective but more cost efficient way, you can just rely on Hyoton and Katon (Fire and Ice) They're the most basic of the elements and tend to piss off the most amount of enemies. I usually tend to cast Hyoton and Katon most of the time, and if hate doesn't feel as comfortable I start the rest of the chain.

Its a really nice strategy very few english speaking Ninja's seem to know about.

It can only be done with the Ni elementals though, don't even try it with the Ichi's. Far too slow.

[Serial Rain]

Hello again,
This is Excel; I did not notice I was using my friend's user name until now.

Anyway, first of all, I'd like to thank everyone who've posted so far. I really appreciate the information you guys have added in, I really do. :handsdown Even though I haven't even reached the level to party yet (I will by the end of tonight for sure.), I'm hoping I'll end up liking Ninja as much as I did Paladin.

Omni-Ragnarok,
I know what you mean. I myself when I started the game, didn't even had the slightest idea what Paladins were truly meant to do. :rolleyes: When I reached higher levels, some people even bothered to praise me for my tanking. 66 and 2/3 levels later, here I am. :thumbsup:

Tab-Key,
As I've said before, I'm also leaning towards using +enmity equipments. I'm still thinking about the ring equipment sides though, but I guess I should concentrate on what and how I should do obtaining ninjutsu powders from crafting, and concentrating on learning to tank as a Nin. And I know what you mean by blm over-nuking... A few nights ago with my Pld, a blm in the party kept mass-casting level III spells, even when all my JA's were still under timer. Fortunately the Sam generated enough hate + provoke so I could cover for him. :sweat:

Kiyosuki,
As of right now, my gil flow is actually quite pathetic, so I'm glad that someone else thinks shurikens aren't a necessity. :sweat: But, if I do get to like Nin as much as I did Pld, I'll definately get into smithing and see if I can make some of my own.

I was thinking about the pattern a while ago, too. I don't know the /recast times for any of the Ninjutsu spells as of yet, so I don't really have a good idea on how the pattern will go. Hoping I can get my guilds high enough for those blind/para/slow/blink powders. :confused:

Lastly, I'm quite intrigued about the elemental ni pattern you've posted. Do you usually do them in pairs (Like the Hyoton and Katon) for most of the fights, or in larger consecutives? I've never heard of this strategy before. (Before, I've always thought that the elemental ni's were there to weaken the monster's resistence for better magic bursting.)

For guilding, does anyone have any suggestion on what to start off with first? As everyone probably knows, the ninjutsu powders require a variety of guilds to be able to make most of them. For starters, I'm thinking of doing woodworking first, and then alchemy, hopefully to levels that I'll be able to make a few occasional HQ Shihei's now and then. I believe I need to get my fishing up as well, for a certain ingredient for Black Ink. (An ingredient for shihei.) I think the fish is called Nebimonite or something. I haven't really checked the AH prices for my server for it yet, but I'm thinking I could save more time and money if I fish them myself in the long run.

Thanks~ I hope this thread will be of use to anyone else viewing besides myself.

[Tab Key]

Originally posted by Kiyosuki

The elemental Ni's though are different. Because they're much faster in casting you can pull them in at a much more efficient rate.
You could randomly throw them in, but if you lower elemental defense in a sequential order you can get a lot more hate from it.
Such as:
Hyoton > (Ice damage, lower to Fire) > Katon (Fire to Water) >Suiton (Water to Lightning) >Raiton (Lightning to Earth) > Doton (Earth to Wind) > Huton (Wind to Ice)

As you can see you've lowered every elemental defense in a perfect circle. Each one did elemental damage and lowered to another element, which the next did damage to and so on. You can start at any point on this pattern but you have to go in a sequential order. You don't have to do this whole thing at once, it can be done over a period of time.

Like after you cast Hojo, Kurayami, and twiggle around with the monster a bit cast Hyoton then Katon. Then next chance you get cast Suiton then Raiton. It has to be in the right order over time but if you lower elemental defense like this, it generates a higher amount of hate over time than if you just randomly threw them in.

If you want a quicker, less effective but more cost efficient way, you can just rely on Hyoton and Katon (Fire and Ice) They're the most basic of the elements and tend to piss off the most amount of enemies. I usually tend to cast Hyoton and Katon most of the time, and if hate doesn't feel as comfortable I start the rest of the chain.

Its a really nice strategy very few english speaking Ninja's seem to know about.

It can only be done with the Ni elementals though, don't even try it with the Ichi's. Far too slow. IMO that's way too excessive. the majoirty of mobs you find when you are able cast the Ni jitsu are crabs, crawlers, pugils, and raptors (gobbues and peryadons on occasion). cast the big 3 (kurayami, hojo, jubaku - unless a mage sucessfully paralyzes the mob, jubaku can be left out) then Huton and Hyoton (Dokumori if I feel like it :o ). I can't imagine fighting a mob where I have enough time to cast every single DD jitsu, take part in renkei and get back at least 50% tp for the next mob.


going through the entire ninjitsu cycle (if you have enough time to cast every single one on 1 mob) wouldn't be that efficient. IMO, it just adds more distraction to the Utsusemi cycle. I don't know one JP nin tank who spams the entire Ni level jitsu in any pt.


another thing you have to consider when casting DD jitsu is that it's a team game. ok, so you debuffed the mob with every single element known in the game. what if the mages are nuking primarily ice and water elements? that makes the cast of 90% of your DD jitsu useless. cast Huton: Ni and/or Huton: Ichi before a Distortion renkei and the mage has a bit more dmg on his/her mb.

[Kiyosuki]

The purpose of it isn't to do damage or to lower the elemental defense, its that if you do it in order you attract more hate to you.
You can use the Ninjutsu thats just used for the respective monster's elemental, but that one Ninjutsu won't really attract as much hate as this technique. Attracting hate is the center goal for this technique.

Most of the time the mob is dead before you can finish the cycle, but if you do cast the elemental debuff's in order rather than at random it generates more hate gain. Its like a guideline to follow what order to cast them in. You don't have to waste time doing it all at once, you can follow the cycle all through the battle when you get the chance to cast it. Once you cast the enfeebles this is honestly a great way to keep the monster at you, it works pretty nice. Its mostly a tanking tool since lowering the monster's elemental weakness for a mage is only icing, its not the the main purpose of cycling.

You can say its inefficient all you want, lots of the highest level Ninja's use this technique. :sweat: Its kind of a trade secret, I honestly hope Ninja's like Mitsu, Stan, and Vivid don't like..assasxxxxte me for posting this at least once. :biggrin: Then again its not even that obscure..though I'm surprised at the amount of English speaking Ninja's that don't know the technique.

God forbid there's enough Ninja's who don't know how to use the class properly as it is..

I've met about 2 Japanese Ninja player's that have/had been using the class a while(I miss you Starless... ; ; ), that I can communicate with a little more fluidly. They use this technique often too. Thats how I first found out about it. If you ever hear a high level Ninja say "Cycle Ninjutsu" in they're strategies this is what they're talking about. Even at higher levels where the Elemental Ni's start to lag in damage, its still a very efficient way to pull the enemy in for hate alone. God forbid we one day get Elemental San's, then we can cycle like...double elementals. Oh man...a double cycle, I swear to you if we ever got that Ninja's that use that would scare Paladin's.

Maybe thats why Square's reluctant to release them now that I think about it..bah, silly devs.

Yes, the technique is expensive, but I'd think people playing this job realize your not going to get away with holding back.
But like I said, you can also use Hyoton and Katon alone for a kind of mini cycle. Its not as effective as cycling the whole series but it gets the job done for those who want to try to save some gil. Something I do too, is I carry all of the elemental powders with me, but Hyoton and Katon are the ones that'll be used the most since you open with them. I cast the rest of the cycle afterwards but I don't usually do it at the same pace as the first two, so really the other powders won't be used at nearly the same rate as Tsurara and Uchitake.

The cycling Ninjutsu technique certainly isn't essential, but its a very powerful tanking strategy. Honestly when it comes to hate gain, I think proper use of the second Elemental Ninjutsu's can make or break a Ninja tank. Magic Bursting and cycling are wonderful ways to keep the enemy at you when you stack that with the Enfeebles, some sort of consistent damage, and provoking.

Plus if you ever study any kind of actual Ninjutsu concepts (I mean the real stuff), the spelling out the elements is actually a really Ninja esque technique. The idea of associating the Elements to everything around you..

Weither one chooses to use the technique or not,..its totally up to you. But its a pretty good technique to know.

[Mitsu]

LOL..Cycling Elementa Ninjutsu is not a trade secret. Also remember where most of your hate comes from....Melee and WS.
Although it will help you ESTABLISH hate, always taunt every 30 sec and hit as much as possible. NIN really dont have that hard a time with hate, just takes EXTRA effort thats all. Also Sniper Rings are NOT for ninja. Just as DRK miss alot...ninja miss less. As far as what i prefer..I use AGI/EVADE with alot more emphasis on AGI. You will be AMAZED at the results, increased parry AND evade along with the ability to hit mobs and do decent damage WS (LOVE Blade: Ten:biggrin: ) But because you dont need 360k rings doesnt mean you have it cheap, you MUST get the best katanas available. Just 1 D increase in weapons will improve ocerall damage and improves hate. YES, HQ katanas are worth it 55-75

[Kiyosuki]

Heh, guess my neck's safe then.
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[Sasarai]

Level 32.. have a question, am I gimping because I use a strider sword instead of a Kodachi? (In one hand)

[Skie_chan]

In my experience so far as a Ninja and trust me I've had a decent amount of experience.. thank you very much. ^^ It's often that in a PT a ninja shouldn't do without a thief to sneak attack and trick attack off of you so that obviously you've become the main focus of the hate.
E
ssentially, having the white mage cast haste allows you to be able to attack much faster and be able to add up your hate collection with damage, eating food, berserk, and hate generated from all of the misses and parries that the monster will be experiencing just helps you. ^^

It works for me and I've always gotten good experience when I party.. whether it be japanese, american, european, or chinese parties I've done well and I've never had a complaint.. but needless to say I'm also a rare elvaan ninja so.. maybe I'm just different. ^^

As to the question about enmity gear.. I've seen many ninja's wear the nemesis earring.. and I think arhat's gi, and the rest of the set is becoming the lastest trend in not only fashion but grouping so.. I think it's going to be pretty vital in that level range(63+) but I'm just happy now with my Ninja AF gear.. I look so cool in it! >.<

Anyway.. I hoped I've answered some questions or at least gave another opinion that can be taken seriously.. >.<

[Navia]

Update: I bought a nemesis earring last night to try it out, and I did see improvement in holding hate.

PT was war,rng,nin,brd,blm,whm - ranger was using gun with silver bullets, skillchain was keen edge > hot shot >blade:retsu
Not using the enmity earring the knight crawler would sometimes turn to the ranger when he used barrage after the skillchain closed and the magic bursts went off.

Ranger was getting prelude sung on him in addition to accuracy song so he was rarely missing, that and he was 1 level above me ><. Ranger is the only job I can have pull hate off me easily, I guess if we brought a thf for fuidama it wouldnt have been a problem :sweat:

For now i'm keeping the enmity earring, dont think ill get 2 though. I think being able to upgrade to a new katana at 54(+1 version that has hp drain effect) and equip my hototogisu at 55 will help my ability to keep hate more than anything^^