Well, it's that time again.
It's time for an explanation on my view for how to play a job.
Unlike my other jobs, Ninja is not so straight forward on how it should be played.
Obviously, it's a tank, so let's get that out of the way. Ninja has the ability to through some levels be a great nuker, and some levels be a good DD, but from very early on, it's a tank.
Well, level 1-12 I suggest solo. You won't have much to offer to the party before Utsusemi. Ninja at low levels is rather weak as a DD.
If you throw up seek, you'll get invites. There's not too much you can do all that well. Until around level 25 you may think quite fairly ninja sucks.
And at low levels it kind of does.
There's one useful thing I found for it. Alone a ninja can't tank because Utsusemi Ichi just isn't going to be enough and it's defense is really low. Combine 2 ninjas however, and you can duo tank like a champ. One vokes while the other casts shadows. Get into a good pattern and you'll start to get a hand of blink tanking. If not, well just go for as much damage as possible and try and pretend to be a DD. At 24 War/Nins can also trade voke with you. You'll also get emperor's hairpin at this level. With this you should be able to get as much evasion as possible, use jackolatern for even more evasion, and solo tank slow hitting mobs.
Ninja gains another use at 30, with the addition of SATA into parties. Ninja can be a first voker for a paladin tank.
At this point all you have is Utsusemi: Ichi
Therefore the strategy is pretty basic.
Utsusemi: Ichi> 3 shadows.
Battle starts
Hit..
Hit..
Start Casting Utsusemi: Ichi
Hit..
Shadows down.
Utsusemi: Ichi finishes: 3 shadows
At this point you've got 3 more hits, because unless the mob is slow and misses you aren't getting Ichi back up again in time. It can happen.
At 37 you become a full tanking job.
Now Utsusemi Ni is added in.. there are a few tricks.
Ichi has a faster recast time than Ni. However Ni has 4 shadows instead of 3.
If you start with Ichi...
Ichi>Ichii>Ni>Ichi That's 13 shadows you'll get.
If you start with Ni...
Ni>Ni>Ichi That's 11 shadows.
Both of these methods require the crossover Ni>Ichi movement.
You start casting Ni... then you watch the spell bar go up. Hit the triangle key or plus on the keypad so you tab onto your buff bar. Then cancel Ni at exactly 55% of Ichi's cast.
If you do this, exactly as Ni's shadows are removed Ichi's will come in.
If you're too fast, you are vulnerable to an attack for a partial second(usually not a big deal). If you're too slow, you cancel your ni and then your ichi fails, leaving you shadowless and unable to cast any Utsusemi for a bit. This is very bad.
Also it's possible you take a hit, your shadow is removed and you cancel your Protect instead by accident.
To avoid time all this based on the mob's attack cycle.
Practice all this solo, til you get the hang of it. And practice on farming mobs as well. It will take a while til you don't have to think about it even.
Level 40 marks the next big step for Ninjas. The 2nd elemental wheel. This is the one worth casting... for a while.
If you read the directions for the spells, Raiton for example..
Deals lightning damage to an enemy and lowers its resistance against earth.
If you're a scholar of the elemental wheel you'll notice that lightning is weak to earth. And so the wheel is in fact in reverse. Starting however you please.. you can do the reverse wheel.
I start with Hyoton(Ice), because it's the cheapest ninja tool and distortion is the most common skillchain which it can burst.
Hyoton>Katon>Suiton>Raiton>Doton>Huton
Now at this point, you can actually do a very expensive and for some reason unpopular combination.
Nin/Blm. Full int gear basically. Ninjutsu skill if you can get your hands on it. Basically blm gear. If you're 51 then you can use elemental staves for additional damage.
I was skeptical until I tried it. This job is powerful and unlike BLM it has no downtime. You can just spam the wheel nonstop. If you are hasted by the time the wheel finishes you can start again on the next week.
Put evasion in the slots you can't fill with INT because you'll be tanking basically with the damage you do.
Even as Nin/war you can spam that ninjutsu. You should be holding great hate because of this.
Now we start to come to a few rifts in opinion here. For feet.. evasion versus haste. damage rings versus agi rings. DD food versus evasion food. It gets a bit hazy. I went for maximum evasion myself. I found it the easiest way to keep shadows up. I could go an entire chain without being hit once with evasion as my main concern.
Now haste gear will lower your shadow timers. In addition you'll be attacking more often. You'll deal more damage, keep better hate as a result. However when tanking IT mobs, if you can evade more than absorb, you can keep your shadows up better that way. You'll hold hate by taking no damage. This works fairly well leveling up. However at 60+ your ninjutsu nuke damage takes a big dive and you should shift towards attack and haste setups. Your melee damage starts to get decent now, and you can hold hate by dealing damage. As well for fast chains your added damage will be welcome.
Of course scorpion harness at 57. I highly recommend, because it will help with both your melee and your evasion. It's just an awesome piece, and nobody except Ninja gets the full benefit out of it in an exp party.
Around 60+ when I stopped using elemental ninjutsu, I started using more debuffs. Blind and slow is great, Supposedly they are more powerful than a Rdm's debuffs. They also give great hate.
Nin and Brd work awesome together. Nin can do the debuffs you'll miss out by not having a rdm. Then Nin can use melody earrings, giving extra evasion skill with songs.
Some important pieces of gear you'll want as Ninja.
Leaping Boots.
Emperor's Hairpin.
Evasion earring. (expensive)
Scorpion Harness.(expensive)
Evasion Torque
Optical hat.
Ninja/Ranger
Ninja ranger is supposed to be an intense DD based off throwing very expensive shurikens nonstop. I've never actually seen this, but I might recommend using a boomerang of some type to pull to keep your throwing skill decent if you want to try ever.
Many people bitch about ninja's expense. While I don't deny it, for me the biggest pain is to level ninja you need huge amounts of space for all the tools.
Ninja is one of the more difficult jobs to play. I have found it requires your full attention unless you're tanking a particulary inaccurate mob and you can just keep casting ni over yourself. I'd recommend it for a player who likes to be very active. You will ALWAYS be doing something.
Just my opinion, but I recommend if you're PC some sort of controller for ninja similar to the ps2 controller. I leveled my Nin ps2 and I've found using a gamepad is more precise for Ni > Ichi than trying to time it off a keyboard. Maybe that's just me personally.
Just remember> Paladin's job to never lose hate. Ninja's job to never get hit.
Hopefully some will find this helpful.
It's time for an explanation on my view for how to play a job.
Unlike my other jobs, Ninja is not so straight forward on how it should be played.
Obviously, it's a tank, so let's get that out of the way. Ninja has the ability to through some levels be a great nuker, and some levels be a good DD, but from very early on, it's a tank.
Well, level 1-12 I suggest solo. You won't have much to offer to the party before Utsusemi. Ninja at low levels is rather weak as a DD.
If you throw up seek, you'll get invites. There's not too much you can do all that well. Until around level 25 you may think quite fairly ninja sucks.
And at low levels it kind of does.
There's one useful thing I found for it. Alone a ninja can't tank because Utsusemi Ichi just isn't going to be enough and it's defense is really low. Combine 2 ninjas however, and you can duo tank like a champ. One vokes while the other casts shadows. Get into a good pattern and you'll start to get a hand of blink tanking. If not, well just go for as much damage as possible and try and pretend to be a DD. At 24 War/Nins can also trade voke with you. You'll also get emperor's hairpin at this level. With this you should be able to get as much evasion as possible, use jackolatern for even more evasion, and solo tank slow hitting mobs.
Ninja gains another use at 30, with the addition of SATA into parties. Ninja can be a first voker for a paladin tank.
At this point all you have is Utsusemi: Ichi
Therefore the strategy is pretty basic.
Utsusemi: Ichi> 3 shadows.
Battle starts
Hit..
Hit..
Start Casting Utsusemi: Ichi
Hit..
Shadows down.
Utsusemi: Ichi finishes: 3 shadows
At this point you've got 3 more hits, because unless the mob is slow and misses you aren't getting Ichi back up again in time. It can happen.
At 37 you become a full tanking job.
Now Utsusemi Ni is added in.. there are a few tricks.
Ichi has a faster recast time than Ni. However Ni has 4 shadows instead of 3.
If you start with Ichi...
Ichi>Ichii>Ni>Ichi That's 13 shadows you'll get.
If you start with Ni...
Ni>Ni>Ichi That's 11 shadows.
Both of these methods require the crossover Ni>Ichi movement.
You start casting Ni... then you watch the spell bar go up. Hit the triangle key or plus on the keypad so you tab onto your buff bar. Then cancel Ni at exactly 55% of Ichi's cast.
If you do this, exactly as Ni's shadows are removed Ichi's will come in.
If you're too fast, you are vulnerable to an attack for a partial second(usually not a big deal). If you're too slow, you cancel your ni and then your ichi fails, leaving you shadowless and unable to cast any Utsusemi for a bit. This is very bad.
Also it's possible you take a hit, your shadow is removed and you cancel your Protect instead by accident.
To avoid time all this based on the mob's attack cycle.
Practice all this solo, til you get the hang of it. And practice on farming mobs as well. It will take a while til you don't have to think about it even.
Level 40 marks the next big step for Ninjas. The 2nd elemental wheel. This is the one worth casting... for a while.
If you read the directions for the spells, Raiton for example..
Deals lightning damage to an enemy and lowers its resistance against earth.
If you're a scholar of the elemental wheel you'll notice that lightning is weak to earth. And so the wheel is in fact in reverse. Starting however you please.. you can do the reverse wheel.
I start with Hyoton(Ice), because it's the cheapest ninja tool and distortion is the most common skillchain which it can burst.
Hyoton>Katon>Suiton>Raiton>Doton>Huton
Now at this point, you can actually do a very expensive and for some reason unpopular combination.
Nin/Blm. Full int gear basically. Ninjutsu skill if you can get your hands on it. Basically blm gear. If you're 51 then you can use elemental staves for additional damage.
I was skeptical until I tried it. This job is powerful and unlike BLM it has no downtime. You can just spam the wheel nonstop. If you are hasted by the time the wheel finishes you can start again on the next week.
Put evasion in the slots you can't fill with INT because you'll be tanking basically with the damage you do.
Even as Nin/war you can spam that ninjutsu. You should be holding great hate because of this.
Now we start to come to a few rifts in opinion here. For feet.. evasion versus haste. damage rings versus agi rings. DD food versus evasion food. It gets a bit hazy. I went for maximum evasion myself. I found it the easiest way to keep shadows up. I could go an entire chain without being hit once with evasion as my main concern.
Now haste gear will lower your shadow timers. In addition you'll be attacking more often. You'll deal more damage, keep better hate as a result. However when tanking IT mobs, if you can evade more than absorb, you can keep your shadows up better that way. You'll hold hate by taking no damage. This works fairly well leveling up. However at 60+ your ninjutsu nuke damage takes a big dive and you should shift towards attack and haste setups. Your melee damage starts to get decent now, and you can hold hate by dealing damage. As well for fast chains your added damage will be welcome.
Of course scorpion harness at 57. I highly recommend, because it will help with both your melee and your evasion. It's just an awesome piece, and nobody except Ninja gets the full benefit out of it in an exp party.
Around 60+ when I stopped using elemental ninjutsu, I started using more debuffs. Blind and slow is great, Supposedly they are more powerful than a Rdm's debuffs. They also give great hate.
Nin and Brd work awesome together. Nin can do the debuffs you'll miss out by not having a rdm. Then Nin can use melody earrings, giving extra evasion skill with songs.
Some important pieces of gear you'll want as Ninja.
Leaping Boots.
Emperor's Hairpin.
Evasion earring. (expensive)
Scorpion Harness.(expensive)
Evasion Torque
Optical hat.
Ninja/Ranger
Ninja ranger is supposed to be an intense DD based off throwing very expensive shurikens nonstop. I've never actually seen this, but I might recommend using a boomerang of some type to pull to keep your throwing skill decent if you want to try ever.
Many people bitch about ninja's expense. While I don't deny it, for me the biggest pain is to level ninja you need huge amounts of space for all the tools.
Ninja is one of the more difficult jobs to play. I have found it requires your full attention unless you're tanking a particulary inaccurate mob and you can just keep casting ni over yourself. I'd recommend it for a player who likes to be very active. You will ALWAYS be doing something.
Just my opinion, but I recommend if you're PC some sort of controller for ninja similar to the ps2 controller. I leveled my Nin ps2 and I've found using a gamepad is more precise for Ni > Ichi than trying to time it off a keyboard. Maybe that's just me personally.
Just remember> Paladin's job to never lose hate. Ninja's job to never get hit.
Hopefully some will find this helpful.
i am going to paste it onto my pc when home
