[Kagetsu]

Well after the update /NIN is going to start becoming tthe backburner for different subjobs that can unleash more damage such as /SAM or /WAR, and the possibility of the untested /DRK.

The old story with NIN was that it had the benefits of and AGI Boost, the incredible defensive capabilities of Utsusemi, and the ability to dual wield for more Racc. Many a time we would pull hate, so the usefullness of Utsusemi was unmatched, making all other subs pale in comparison.

The story now though is a sad one. Even with the accuracy from another Hawker's Knife (taking away our melee ability to do optimal damage make's Francisca useless in exp PTs unless you do the berserker strategy ) missing is still and issue and the damage isnt exploding off the mob like it use too. Our Slug/Sidewinders have also taken a hike downwards making the thought of pulling hate from the mob unlikely, meaning Utsusemi has lost its one amazing usefullness. The only way to remedy this damage problem is to look to new sub jobs that were once see as dangerous for they would get hate and have no escape from taking a beating. This is where we examine /WAR and /SAM.

/WAR has many a benefit. First off, we get the very useful Ability, Berserk. Keeping this up at all times will leave a wetness in our mouths for the taste of our old damage starts coming through again. Now dont get me wrong, its nothing like it use to be, but it is a positive improvement to what we were so very worried about. Another improvement is a slight increase in STR and the few Attack Bonuses you will receive with a Warrior Subjob. Again there is still no remedy for the Accuracy issue that still remains unexplained, but /WAR brings a refreshing edge back to RNGs.

Now lets take a look at /SAM. Samurais have the next highest rating in Archery next to Rangers, making them a beneficial sub, if the theory is working in my mind lol. This is the only sub job where I seemed to have hit more often from the optimal position, but I also havent done extensive testing with this sub yet, which I am very anxious to try in such situations as Exp PTs and God Battles. The main things we look at here are the Store TP Ability, and Meditate. With Store TP we get 2 More TP with every attacking, including our shots on Barrage making for a whopping 108 TP return if all shots hit with Barrage. Talk about useful ^^. And then when Barrage is down you can also take advantage of Meditate to get to use our weaponskills a little faster. /SAM is pretty diesel and I hope to be able to give you guys some more information soon. If you have your own, please post!

Finally we come to /DRK. Probably when people think about this they are like "Wtf are you talking about?" Well when I saw the damage I was doing, I was in a pretty similiar mindset. At this point, we need to try some extensive testing with all subs too see what we can come out with. /DRK has never been seen as a sub unless a RDM was going to make use of it, and since most melees choice more useful subjobs like /WAR and /THF. Since for some reason we can SATA Sidewinder (you know it would be sexy!), we must look to every possibility. Now I dont have this sub leveled, so quite frankly, I dont know much about it at all, but any positive feedback would be wonderful. They have Physcial Attack+ Abilities, and im not too sure what that entails, but im pretty sure it would be useless to use RNGs . Not sure how Last Resort and Soul Eater would work either, but if they worked as they should, I think we could see RNGs doing that crazy mofo damage we once all knew and loved. Also, we can use Absorb-Agi for that little extra uberness.

Please post you're thoughts, opinions, discrepancies, anything you like (keep it civil!) All input is another step forward out of the swamp we have been put in.

Also Ill get some parser data up as soon as I can, comparing that of RNG/NIN, RNG/WAR and RNG/SAM all in the same PT!

[Caspian]

The thought of lvling WAR again makes me queezy but if I have to do it then I guess it'll be done. I had heard that /WAR was better than /DRK b/c Berserk lasted for so much longer than soueater and last resort. /SAM could be really nice assuming you could land the extra Sidewinders. My guess is both will have a place, but will serve different purposes (one for xp, one for gods etc.).
Like you said, accuracy will be the biggest thing to worry about until something new can be figured out. I'm hoping the loss in accuracy is some sort of glitch that will be fixed, but until SE says for sure we should just keep operating like this will be the way things are from now on. No point in getting too optimistic and just being let down.
I'm interested to see your parser results. Let us know how things go.

[Sepukku]

How does /SAM increase your ranged accuracy? If im a WHM and I sub RDM does that improve my enfeebling magic skill besides the INT or MND I recieve? No, your subjob won't help you here.

A WAR/DRG wont become a godly polearm combo.
A WHM/RDM wont make a godly enfeebler.
A RNG/SAM wont increase your ranged accuracy (SAMs have poor AGI anyways), any results were luck or imagined in your head.

[Intensity]

Originally Posted by Sepukku

How does /SAM increase your ranged accuracy? If im a WHM and I sub RDM does that improve my enfeebling magic skill besides the INT or MND I recieve? No, your subjob won't help you here.

I think what he means is that with SAM subbed, since it inherently has a better racc+ than any other job besides RNG, subbing it will give you more racc than if you were subbing anything else.

IE: RNG/SAM > RNG/WAR as far as racc stats concerned.

[Icemage]

Thing is, though, your subjob skills don't matter if they overlap with your main. The only time a subjob's skill level comes into play is when your main job does not possess that skill, so the C- rating for archery that Samurai have doesn't impact a RNG/SAM at all since RNG already have A rank archery. This is why you would get Great Katana skill on this combination even though you can't wield GKTs on RNG - that's the default skill received from your subjob.

/SAM does have some other nice perks though. Third Eye is a nice defensive ability. It's not Utsusemi, but it's both free and uninterruptible, as well as very fast to activate. Additionally, Meditate can give you the edge when your Barrage doesn't land it's full complement of hits. It also has the marginal ability to Resist Blind (which all Rangers know is probably THE most annoying status effect for rangers)

/WAR gives Berserk, Defender, ATK up, DEF up, and Warcry. Double Attack doesn't really come into play if you're shooting from distance, but the others are nice. Berserk/Warcry when you're on offense, Defender if you pull hate. It also gives you Provoke which you can use to set up SATA skillchains, something which a lot of RNGs have been noting is very hard and fickle to do with /NIN these days.

/DRK.. I dunno about this one. Stun is useful even when subbed, but it's only usable at 74/37+. You'd get 2 ATK+ traits, but that's only one more than /WAR will give you. Magic isn't going to be effective at all, Souleater garners huge amounts of enmity (but it DOES grant a very sizeable hidden ACC boost). Might be worth testing, though I suspect the pros aren't going to be worth the cons.


Icemage

[Intensity]

Meh, I'm prolly just gonna play sam til SE works it out. Even with war subbed, rng isn't the same. I don't mind the distance stuff, but the major dmg nerf is depressing. Plus, I've missed my sam since I lost it and have been wanting to play with it since gettin' it back through the welcome home program.

[Mithrael]

Souleater has no effect on ranged attacks, and has only 1/2 effect while subbed. Because rangers cannot stand in melee range for optimum effect anymore, souleater becomes nothing but a provoke. Last Resort offers less of an Attack Bonus than Berserk, and lasts for 1/6 of the time. It also has roughly the same enmity as Sentinel. As far as I can tell in my testing, Attack Bonus has no effect on Ranged Attack. While it's true that stun can be used without dark magic skill, your mp wouldn't really be high enough for it to be useful and it has roughly the same enmity as Flash.

DRK has the same base STR as WAR, and slightly higher base AGI than WAR. Overall, for the gain of 2-3 points of AGI, you'll have considerably more enmity generation without an increase in damage to match.

[Jei]

After some levelling session in Sky last night, Ranger in my PT was still pulling hate every other WS and got beat down to oragner life pretty often. That's with 2 utsusemi already. I guess for a levelling PT /nin is still a good choice if the PT isn't going against some super high level mobs.

The ranger was using crossbow with darksteel bolts, he shot his normal shot and WS from different distance is all I know.

[Kagetsu]

Haha, sorry for that misunderstanding with what I said with RNG. I should have stated that it was a coincidence that I was hitting more with /SAM (I did say "If the theory is working in my mine" by the way!). /SAM hitting more often was just a coincidence but it was in the right place! As far as its seen so far, /WAR seems to be taking all presedence as it does will most other melee, keep it up ^^.

[xXx]

as far as sub gos..i'll stick with /nin for party and Gods etc and maybe time to time switching to /sam for farming or some sort....with /nin you still pull hate because you can now kinda determind what dmg you want to do depend on the distant so you just gotta test it out and go to the different position to figure it out i guess..tho i can be wrong =P

[Lmnop]

though it's not at all what was alluded to earlier, SAM would at least increase your Sidewinder accuracy via having more tp, right? So I suppose that'd be one way to play rng/sam -- WSing just as much as /nin but with more tp every time. Not sure it'd really be superior to /nin with offhand +R.Acc though. :/