ninja tanks

[Tsubame]

That was actually one of the most well thought out posts I've read on these forums in a while Kiyosuki. You have actually inspired me to potentially give Nin/War a try, if it's true that there really is that much to it, it could be really fun to balance the blink-tanking with all the other...Ninja-y things in a party.

Of course, I still wouldn't trust myself being the main tank in a party, but I suppose levelling War as a sub would give me experience with that.

In the meantime, I'm keeping WHM levelled til I can at least unlock Ninja.

[Kiyosuki]

Oh yeah, Ninja/Warrior is the Redmage of the melee's. Like Red Mage your *always* busy because of your versatlity as a tank who happens to be a crafty character to boot.

If you can, try and observe High level JP and importer Ninja/Warrior's doing they're thing. I think a lot of people who talk about Nin/War tend to scare people with promises of mediocrity with Nin/War. But if all a Ninja did was Blink, blink, provoke, repeat they wouldn't be as popular as they are today. What defines a tank often is more than just merely taking hits well and spamming provoke. More than any other melee class Tank's have to use ALL the tools at they're disposal, and use them well to be the best focus point they can be. Although being a Ninja tank is the most challenging of the 3 tank types because of the very fact your so versatile a character. But the reward of really getting into this class is being a tank which negates 80-90 % of the damage taken, and with the right strategy can do really decent damage once Duel III is learned and you have more options.

Blink, provoke, blink will not keep hate well unless your mages do absolutely nothing. But a Ninja using every trick in his bag at the right moments (Don't cripple yourself financially though) can keep hate well and do decent damage. Aside from that, the respect you get from this job far outweighs the cost. Sometimes some may even go as far as to buy you a free Shihei stack to compensate for a job well done, yes these players do exist, not everyone's selfish. :D (Ofcourse, don't you dare demand the pt buy you stack or you're popularity will drop fast. w)

Nin/War, and the Ninja job in general isn't for everyone though. Although invites become really numorous later when tanks are in high demand, you especially, a bad pt can waste not only your time but your precious money as well. Learn how to respectfully steer a party towards the riight strategy, or better yet, get good at being a pt leader and make one yourself. The benefits of a patient mind and knowledge of what makes a pt work and where do go can reward you in spades.

The path of a Ninja is cool and rewarding so far for me, but as I begin to use this class again I realize how important it is to take care of yourself too. Any Paladin can be forgiving and just let it go by, but if things don't go too well for you it costs you thousands. Be smart, patient, and understanding and know when you should stick out for the party, and when they haven't deserved your service. Be in character, a Ninja is cunning and a planner. You wear the right equipment and try to alter your situation instead of accepting it all the time.

In short, the greatest advice I can give you as a Ninja is to protect your parties with all your might, but if that party isn't willing to be polite to you in return and at least listen to *polite*(Not know it all) advice, then consider moving on. Its not costing them tens of thousands of gil for they're mistakes.

No matter what path you choose, Nin/War or /whatever this is a challenging job. But thats part of the charm of the Ninja, they're charisma. Its a job you really have to try at to be the best, but if you can do it, you'll be one of the most highly regarded, and wanted classes on your server.

[hocuspocus]

yeah i agree with this post and all but there is no way in hell a ninja/thf would get an invite and actually be usefull in the PT especially after 50 ..... listening to his advice would be more like listening to a level 1 warrior with no subjob tellin u how to make $ lol.


not gonna happen

[Vivid]

Originally posted by hocuspocus
yeah i agree with this post and all but there is no way in hell a ninja/thf would get an invite and actually be usefull in the PT especially after 50 ..... listening to his advice would be more like listening to a level 1 warrior with no subjob tellin u how to make $ lol.


not gonna happen

Well......... I don't really know what to say to this one.. I could say that I was useful to my set PT, but... that'd be me saying I was useful. It's for them to say whether I was or not... I have a feeling I wasn't.. but meh.. (sorry guys for sucking)

[bunta]

It's okay we still love you for sharing your insights with us!

Btw are you from hawaii? Just curious...

[Kirk]

Originally posted by Kiyosuki
Oh yeah, Ninja/Warrior is the Redmage of the melee's. Like Red Mage your *always* busy because of your versatlity as a tank who happens to be a crafty character to boot.

If you can, try and observe High level JP and importer Ninja/Warrior's doing they're thing. I think a lot of people who talk about Nin/War tend to scare people with promises of mediocrity with Nin/War. But if all a Ninja did was Blink, blink, provoke, repeat they wouldn't be as popular as they are today. What defines a tank often is more than just merely taking hits well and spamming provoke. More than any other melee class Tank's have to use ALL the tools at they're disposal, and use them well to be the best focus point they can be. Although being a Ninja tank is the most challenging of the 3 tank types because of the very fact your so versatile a character. But the reward of really getting into this class is being a tank which negates 80-90 % of the damage taken, and with the right strategy can do really decent damage once Duel III is learned and you have more options.

Blink, provoke, blink will not keep hate well unless your mages do absolutely nothing. But a Ninja using every trick in his bag at the right moments (Don't cripple yourself financially though) can keep hate well and do decent damage. Aside from that, the respect you get from this job far outweighs the cost. Sometimes some may even go as far as to buy you a free Shihei stack to compensate for a job well done, yes these players do exist, not everyone's selfish. :D (Ofcourse, don't you dare demand the pt buy you stack or you're popularity will drop fast. w)

Nin/War, and the Ninja job in general isn't for everyone though. Although invites become really numorous later when tanks are in high demand, you especially, a bad pt can waste not only your time but your precious money as well. Learn how to respectfully steer a party towards the riight strategy, or better yet, get good at being a pt leader and make one yourself. The benefits of a patient mind and knowledge of what makes a pt work and where do go can reward you in spades.

The path of a Ninja is cool and rewarding so far for me, but as I begin to use this class again I realize how important it is to take care of yourself too. Any Paladin can be forgiving and just let it go by, but if things don't go too well for you it costs you thousands. Be smart, patient, and understanding and know when you should stick out for the party, and when they haven't deserved your service. Be in character, a Ninja is cunning and a planner. You wear the right equipment and try to alter your situation instead of accepting it all the time.

In short, the greatest advice I can give you as a Ninja is to protect your parties with all your might, but if that party isn't willing to be polite to you in return and at least listen to *polite*(Not know it all) advice, then consider moving on. Its not costing them tens of thousands of gil for they're mistakes.

No matter what path you choose, Nin/War or /whatever this is a challenging job. But thats part of the charm of the Ninja, they're charisma. Its a job you really have to try at to be the best, but if you can do it, you'll be one of the most highly regarded, and wanted classes on your server.

Awesome post! Truly awesome! This is the truth about nin/war. Yes you have to work hard, but the respect gained is tremendous. A party will literaly wait an hour for you to come join them. And yeah tanking is not at all boring, i'm hitting commands every round and dazzling my other PT members. I got thieves asking _Me_ how do get so much gil for ninjutsu. You really do amaze your fellow players and hey isn't _that_ what being an awesome ninja is all about? I've gained more respect and understanding for you guys who really wanna play other ninja subs too, heck maybe ill even give it a try at high levels just for fun. But i'm glad for Kiyo's excellent posts. They really bridged the gap of the argument and let us all see how much fun a ninja can be.

/cheer Kiyo!

[Tsubame]

See, that gives me a really good insight into Nin/War.

The blink-tanking still doesn't appeal to me, I don't think it ever will. But if that's only a PART of being a Nin, and not the entire part of it, it won't bother me. Of course, I'd still like to try Nin/other combos at high levels, but if I have to use a Nin/War to get there, then that's fine with me, if they really do have to do as much as people say they do. I like hectic jobs like that (That's one reason I'm levelling WHM for Bard, I like the idea of frantically running around the combat zone to maximize the efficiency of my song buggs)

I probably won't even starting levelling War for my sub though until I have made a significant amount of gil capital from levelling my other jobs.

[Oro]

Originally posted by tonka


Quite honestly, both NIN and PAL are weaker tanks to a WAR at those early levels. Defender is +25% defense, and that's a HUGE defensive bonus that PALs don't get til 50.

Heya, PLD get a defense passive at lv10, I dont know the exact figure, but its enough to compete with defender.

For NIN tankers
One thing I'd like to point out with NIN tanking, wether you are using Ichi or Ni series of Ninjitsu, the debufs are amazing, but as a reccomendation, its quite a good idea to use the elemental stuff too, not for actually producing damage, but NIN tanks will probably notice they draw signifcant hate using these, not the same way a PLD cure tanking draws hate, but sometimes a Hoton: Ni is enough to draw an enemy away from some taru trigger happy BLM. Its the same as a BST using dia, any BST who uses Dia while their charmed pet is fighting something, they know that something as petty as Dia can produce alot of hate, damage isnt everything, the monster will normally try to attempt to hit you once because of one dia :sweat:

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, I pretty much read all posts. I use that tactic occasionally when im leveling NIN (now 51). Infact if you ever loose alot of hate, throw all the ninjitsu you got over actually meeling, there is a very good chance the enemy will hate you after

[Kiyosuki]

Something I'm surprised people don't try more often is taking into account the fact your Katana WS's are Elementally heavy based, and that you have abilities to lower Elemental defense to a certain type. I suppose with most WS's you tend to use the latest, or most physically damaging one all the time but I don't think the Nin was designed like that. If you know what Blade WS has what Elemental Attribute and know before hand, what your enemy's elemental weakness is you could enfeeble it to that element and match it up sometimes. The damage does increase a bit, its probably much more evident with The Ni debuffs than the Ichi ones. If Katana's don't have the right element WS you could always take advantage of Duel Wield's ability to mix it up, and carry another weapon to use alongside incase. Like Sword's have Fire for use, Dagger's have a Wind elemental WS etc.
Here's some Elements I know of:
Katana:
Retsu=Earth
Teki=Water
To=Ice
Chi=Earth
(The rest are far off so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself)
Sword:
Burning Blade=Hm...could it be something that burns? :D
Red Lotus=Fire
The rest are Light, there really should be a Light and Dark debuff, I don't know why there isn't.
Dagger:Gust Slash=Wind

Great Katana : Although I wouldn't want to give up Duel Wield just so I can have a Thunder elemental WS.
Tachi: Goten:Thunder
Tachi:Kagero=Fire
Tachi: Jinpu=Wind

I think that extra little bit of damage from matching up an Elemental Debuff and your Weapon skill isn't a central, essential thing to know but its good to keep the knowledge of it at hand at least. If your tanking though, and you plan your strategy before your pt starts that little bit of extra damage if its at all meaningful could maybe help you. So far I've found as a Ninja that carrying more than one weapon type is a good thing to do. Like using Duel Katana's normally, but you have a nice Great Katana in your inventory, or a Sword which is even better in most cases. Duel Wielding's a really nice ability for variation, Think assassin style, with multiple tools to use. Ninja's are A in Katana and lower in everything else besides throwing too, so remember that Switching one hand to another weapon would purely be for an indirect reason like a weapon ability of the above strategy.

No matter what though, weapon effects like Effectoison, or Effect:Silence, or any other nifty effect like plus to parrying or some stat, or anything is more important than elemental matching, and Elemental debuffs are more important to any attacker mage out there. But its certainly something I think is nice to add to a smart Ninja's bag of potential tricks while tanking, or doing anything else really. Think of Nin/Rdm's concept but for more conservative use with Nin/War or any Nin/ anything really.

[Oro]

Originally posted by Kiyosuki
Something I'm surprised people don't try more often is taking into account the fact your Katana WS's are Elementally heavy based, and that you have abilities to lower Elemental defense to a certain type.

Dam right! I still use Blade:Retsu a good few times, the paralysis on it is very strong. Im considering taking Yoto+1s all the way to 61, the def that gets lowerd is unreal, helps the damage dealers and even I have pulled off 500damage WSs to help lock hate down til near the end. The dex+3 katana doesn't appeal to me, and I will probably not bother, even feel like keeping a Yoto+1 one hand all the time (depends how hard I find keeping hate past 63 with the hate gi). Might hunt the Cooking one lol...

Only thing I must admit I haven't done personally Kiyo is use another type of weapon, haven't found the need/desire to yet but I might experiment, thanks to RDM dagger and sword will be capped forever but great katana needs some work :sweat:

At one point I was nearing the cap for throwing, and was going to invest in some shrikens, or farm the lv48 ones in rancors... but I think its a waste of time for hate control, they do good damage, but whack haste on past lv50 and sometimes NIN doesnt stop hitting.. unreal. Got my Ninjitsu Chaimail in the inventory. cant wait (>_<)

[Kiyosuki]

Blade: Retsu is really underestimated. Most people look for the physical, big damage number's for Ninja weapon skills and they're attacks in general, but thats not how they work. So they assume they're offensive is weak, but thats just because a Ninja's offensive is unusual. Its judged based off of the damage of one hit. Instead of one hit for big damage its all about a barrage of tiny bitchy hits. :D Crissigrim style Status Ailments can be a very powerful thing to have, its becoming very welcome now as I get higher. And the elemental matching thing really does work. I don't have Duel Wield III just yet, but I've seen it in action and its quite fast, with haste its just like you said. Before that its so so I agree, so I can see how some would judge this class pre DWIII as being damage light. Although I can see that it won't be able to match the insanity of Drg/Sam or Rng/anything's damage, and for most of the levels Drk and Mnk, I think much later on this class's damage *overall* in a fight can easilly pass a Warrior (Unless they start duel wielding Axes with DWII later) and be on par with a Dark Knight. They're single damage may be only just above a Red Mage and on par with a Paladin, but its not the quality of one hit but the quantity I think is supposed to count, plus the status ailments which are more important.

All this and you can still sub War to tank at the same time. This is a really interesting job so far. I really want to see how I can mess around with it later.

Oh Atroxx, I wanted to try Yoto. Does the Defense down % weapon ability stack repeatedly? Or does it only happen once? If it stacks Duel Wielding those things could be insane. o.o Those, and the Parry plus Rare/Ex katana are top of my list right now. The later Katana's are going to be so hard to get. I agree to, a mere dex or agility bonus for weapons I don't think is very good.

[qweezy]

The defense down status on the Katana does stack, I've taken an enemy from high defense to me to low defense after the Katana processed a few times. I really liked that Katana, was using the +1 till lvl 61, but after that I'm not sure...the dmg on it is starting to get low even for our off hand.

I never use Retsu unless I have to, the dmg on it isn't great. And my set PT RDM deosn't like me using it cause it has low duration and kills his Paralyze spell or something.

As for Dual Wield 3, don't expect too much from it. I'm at lvl 65, right at Dual Wield IV, the speed increase is not really noticable but it's there. Just like slapping our AF BP on, you can't really tell if you're swinging faster but you know the haste is there.

Finally, I wouldn't count on us outdmging Warriors just yet, maybe after we get the 5-hitter...I don't know, not something I look foward to. If you've watched Thief do Dancing Edge without Sneak or Trick, you'll know what I mean, dmg is totally pathetic. Our Katanas have terrible stats, go check out the Great Axes, I've grouped with Warrior using Great Axes closing to 100 dmg 500 delay :sweat: . Next weapon upgrade is gonna hurt, the lvl 70 Katana is 2 million gils each on my server, and I want a pair :confused: .

[Kiyosuki]

Oh I never said we'd ever be on par with a Thief. I can tell from my level without Cylone that Thieves, Monks, Rangers, and eventually Dragoons using Pentathrust and Sam as a sub are in a league of they're own. None of the tanks could even come close to matching that kind of melee power, I've long accepted that. :D

I think in an overall battle though, depending on how the Ninja is played they could be on par with a Warrior's damage, Warrior's have higher attack power per hit but hit much slower, Ninja's have they're puny attack power but hit so much more, so if a Ninja uses they're WS's in a certain way they could be on par with a Warrior. But I think it also depends on the situation since Warrior's are Renkei whores, and that takes in to consideration. But Ninja's can use highly damaging Shurikens to increase it, as well as haste so I think its a constant trade off that depends on the nature of the fight. Either way though, Any kind of constant, reliable damage is a god send for a Tank. Not damage dealer calibur but a Defensive job that can do balanced damage is a prized thing I think. Then again Warrior's are starting to become more of a Damage Dealer class that just happens to be able to tank alright about now, which I hear they become somewhat later on anyways.

It seems Ninja's one of those jobs whose output greatly depends on how you particularly plan out your attack, not necessarilly using the same strategy most of the time. But damage is just a bonus, as long as you can keep hate to you really well thats whats more important.

Man, I really want to try Yoto now. It sounds like Emperor's Hairpin, its just one of those items you'll have trouble ever not having in your inventory at least, even at higher levels.

I wonder depending on how you use it, just how powerful that 5 hit WS is... Since Ninja's hit a fair amount and 5 Hits tend to give you a head start on the tp meter that could be a wonderful hate keeper. Thats all so high in level to me now though...; ;

You could also try to find the Katana's themselves. Although thats probably just as challenging, but what isn't challenging at that level.

You could always do BCNM70 when you get there, I hear you can make really quick and high profit if you know what your doing. At least...according to the brags of Level 70+'s.

[stray]

i *love* the paralyze effect retsu gives when it goes off... and as thf the defense downs i get off my corrosive baselard are priceless so if there is a katana that does that i'm getting it.

i've been having alot of fun with ninja lately... i'm having no real problem tanking with just ichi but it's either my blink gets eaten and i'm getting plowed waiting for refresh or it comes off right as i'm casting... no real inbetween. held hate on par with a paladin but this is in the mid 20's.

as far as elemental ninjitsu i've been carrying the 4 easiest powders to get (maki-bishi is like impossible to find and uchitake is absurdly expensive) and macro'ing notification for my mages as far as element weakened to... with about 7s delay for cast and connect. i don't like them as a blind hate holding tool which alot of people suggest... maybe i'm missing something but i'm trying to sync on that level.

[Masenken]

I found tanking to be hellishly fun. Though at the same time I like sitting in the back in just gay auto attacking sometimes. For some reason I never exactly expected to tank. I read on boards and heard all througout my LS and various people that that's what ninjas are, and for the most part I thought that was absurd. I didnt' doubt the validity of the statement, I just didn't (still don't) believe that that's their main purpose.

Up until 32 no one's ever made me tank, and oddly enough at 32 is when I personally chose to just do it since i was tired of getting retarded xp. What I gained was 3 lvls a day, an easy 250+ xp a fight due to monster chains and an overall new lvl of fun.

I've been a nin/war since I unlocked the job, and playing as an elvaan at low lvls was its own challenge, but now that I'm 40 I'm at the point where I need to take a break, plan out the equipment I may buy and if I have to tank my happy self all the way to 60. It's odd to note, but I don't join that many pt's to lvl in. But when I do, I'm there to lvl, and if you wanna horse around... do it while smacking that gob around a few time >=D