DD as Nin in Abyssea - numbers surprised meFollow

Yea it works well. My past 3-4 abyssea invites were for DD instead of voke and i could hold my own. Its really fun but would be even better if i coud get hold off some decent atma.

Just a shame im capped on everything i want atm =(

When I leveled my ninja in Abyssea I found it slightly ridiculous how powerful it was. Parsed highest overall at level 78, with the closest person being an 80WAR, 2% behind me. Though this WAR was really not slacking. Haub+1, Byakkos, Perdu axe, etc. all quite nice gear. Probably better than my slightly shabby NIN (Byakkos and Mirke and such but was using Senj/Fudo). Plus, they were actually trying (as evidenced by the WS-amount).

The rest of the DD's were at about half of either of us so they don't really count for much, but as a 78 NIN I was impressed with the damage output. Course the next day is when all this stuff started popping up in Zam forums about how Ninja is worthless and such. Just kinda been going 'wat'.

Of course it's not often we get to just sit on Innin the whole time - and not be expected to pull.

NIN has always been a strong DD as long as you gear well enough, get enough buffs from your mages, and don't spend too much time casting spells and using abilities (it's a bit of an irony that NIN gets a lot of its damage from auto-attacking, specifically from haste and dual wield, yet NIN is most expected to use JAs and spells which keep you standing still and piss away the aforementioned benefits). never underestimate DoT.

only thing holding us back imo is lacking of throwing option and lack of inventory space.
at the press of a few buttons i could go from DD, to Tank, to magic damage, to ranged attack, to kiter, but i am increasingly finding it harder and harder to keep all my gear on me. and have room for drops.

take into account
Your playstyle - are you a aggressive player, or are you the kind of person that sits in the back and waits for the puller to bring the mob to you....do you sit there and hold tp?,do you use Auto target and start going for the next mob as soon as current target dies, do you hold back because you are a scared lil girl and afraid everytime the mob looks in your directon. These are the things I see in a lot of players these days and I belive it is why I can tend to out parse them.
The reason im such an aggressive player is because on ninja.....you have to be. I learned back at the colibri camp that if you not up on it, your gonna get dusted. People seem to have slacked off since we left colibri behind from what I seen.

The other thing I see people getting hung up on is food. Some people just seem to not have any idea of what food they need to be eating with their current gear setup.

Upon seeing the damage number, I started to work on my katana trials. Yeah, it'd be nice to see them finished. I am not after the uber one (I hate NM), just WS damage one and the acc+14 dex+8 ones.

Had a LS NM run, both PLD died to that soulflayer NM (for key to pop Durrin), and I as nin was put up to tank on the spot. Tanked very well, and I managed a 1K WS on it too ( and kept hate on with occasional voke). I noticed the SAM in my party did 1.4k. But, I did not pop berserk because I was tanking, and SAM had finished trial weapon, me not. (He's a very good sam)

I have to say, I am loving NIN so much more now.

I'm also wondering about those but another thing to point for now is the available food.
It's correct to say that with Pizza we can get some nice Atk and the acc that we need to be caped or at least more than decent.

But in counterpart there’s other (and older) food option that are becoming more and more interesting like Red Curry. Yes they’re still quite expensive for a common use but Dragon Meat looks like more and more available with all those new NM that drops it (and older one that became more and more weak against us).

The thing with Red Curry is that it cap at 150 with a 652 base attack (+23%). Most of you (I didn’t get back yet) should have by now more than 400 atk easly meaning +100 atk bonus straight with this kind of food. Comparing with Pizza that is only 50atk, if you manage to live without the 40 acc from it, beside price, there’s no reason to not use this kind of food. Well this is where those weapons (and other equipments) will have a purpose.

Well since I’m still on my break, and further don’t know what will happen in near and not so near future I could be wrong =P That’s just a point of view being outside of the game for now.


Edited, Oct 28th 2010 1:40pm by Neraya

True, but you need a lot more attack to cap it unles you always have atma/minuet/chaos/dia etc.

Its obviously all build specific, but it'd be a shame if have to still have to eat pizza once you've made the sekka.

Your Atk is capped when is equal or above 2 times your opponent Def.
If the monster has 327 Def (old Greater Colibri Lv82) then your Atk is capped at 654.

One idea is to keep your Acc the closest possible to the cap (95% hit rate) or at least above 85% hit rate and the fully increase your Atk (and haste) afterward.

Back before the level cap increase and those magian weapons, Pizza changed this quite a bite allowing more flexibility in our gear setup to get those 2 stats high enough to compete with 2handers and their cheated acc/atk =P

But with new gear and cap increase there’s probably some change to do, see my post above ;)

Personally if I was a dual wielding melee I'd go with the STR options. STR means more to faster weapons then to slower ones because it doesn't factor in delay. 8 STR is +2 D value if your dSTR is over 12 and is applied on every hit.

Main: Sekka +1 D43 STR +8 ATK + 18 (really +22 after STR) Delay 201
Off: Enchu+1 OAT 40% Delay D39 Delay 232 (232/1.4 = 165.7 average delay)
DW: 40% (DW 35 + Suppa), you guys could prolly throw mirke or other things in here ontop of this.

201 + 165.7 = 366.7 * 0.6 = 220.02 [220] /2 = 110 delay per attack before haste is factored.

An increase of 2 "D" will have the following effects,
43+2 = 45/43 = 1.0465, 4.65% increase in DoT on main hand.

39+2 = 41/39 = 1.0512m 5.12% increase in DoT on of hand

Now compare this to something like a GAXE

Atlas +1 D108 Delay 482 STR + 8 Atk + 22 (32 Atk after STR)

+2 fSTR is,
108 + 2 = 110/108 = 1.0185, 1.85% increase in DoT

That bonus is applied once per 482 delay units.

482/110 = 4.381 or 428% slower.

Basically you've hit the monster four times and got the fSTR bonus four times in the time it takes the GAXE to swing once. For every 1fSTR bonus the WAR gets the NIN gets 4.38 fSTR bonus. So you can see that for fast weapon users capping fSTR really helps out in your damage total, where as for the slower 2H weapon users it doesn't do much. This fSTR disparity was the entire reason SE had to do the "2H update" patch, NIN's and MNKs were crushing people if they took advantage of this.

I completely agree that atma changes lots of things. I lean towards the fire ones because while its easy to cap acc, especially with pizza+1, its not so easy to cap ratio / attack. With VV/RR your fSTR should be capped or near capped along with dDex crit rate, capping acc is trivial so that leaves you with attack. Your aiming at maybe 800 attack for cap depending on target, less for ash / trash mobs but more for NMs, this strongly favors the attack katanas. Yeah I can totally see the two MAB katana's being useful as optional weapons. Good for when you need magic type damage, especially mixed with two maxed SAN spells.

I plan on using /WAR and /MNK counter tanking mainly.


Sj's DD power has been minimised in abyss

I know the title of the thread was made 3month back, but makes me smile now.

Considering almost every NM you fight has a 50% double attack rate or higher, has decently high accuracy, can instantly strip all your shadows with TP spamming attacks, and cast Aga 3-4's on you, you're god damn right I want something to fall back on.

Unless you tank in evasion gear, which kind of kills the point of /WAR because your damage will suck.

Counterstance is amazing, the extra HP is also something that's really nice for tanking, as with Cruor buffs I get about 200 more then /WAR gives me.

Aggressor is useless in Abyssea unless you're fighting a THF mob. Some NM's I don't even have to use anything other than Utsu ni because i'll just counter spam it.

Berserk and Double attack is nice, which is why WAR is always going to be my SJ of choice if I can get away with it, but if i'm tanking things with a lowman group of 3-4 people, /MNK all the way. It's the safest choice.

Edited, Jan 3rd 2011 5:54am by Zafire

You say that like Voke actually does something useful for tanks.

Mobs with lots of AoEs (especially magical) or frequent and accurate attacks may benefit from the use of Counterstance just because you won't always have shadows up. Is it needed? No, I'd say it rarely if ever is "needed" if you're competent and your backline is too. Is it potentially useful? Certainly.