Prior to level 40 the most effective hate gaining tool a ninja has is shuriken. You do not see many use them, b/c they are rather expensive, but if your throwing is capped you will hit often and for lots of damage, and they have super low delay. IF you choose not to use them, be sure to use blind, para, and slow jutsu. Poison kinda sucks, but you can use it too. The problem is until level 44 and 48 the cast on these spells is pretty long, so i believe shuriken are far better to use.
Equipment should focus on acc and evasion and some agi (it helps with parrying). Attack + isn't bad but i find that acc and evasion usually end up with better results, i personally prefer acc+ gloves over the kote b/c i feel it is best not to sacrifice evasion, but many ninja use them regardless.
Also, ninja af is pretty bad... the pants are nice at night, the shoes are nice in towns at night, and you can switch out the head piece for when you are debuffing... other then that though, they are pretty useless. Even the katana suck ; ;
At level fourty you gain the Elemental Ni spells, which are nice b/c of the short cast time and decent damage on bursts. Also, you can cycle through them (they weaken the mob to another element) to help hold hate. This is generally very effective. at level 49 using them and blind/slow/para i was able to hold hate pretty well against a rng who was using a gun at the time with silver bullets, and with no thief. Jutsu is really the main fall back for ninja.
/recast will send you a message that tells you how much longer you have until you can reuse a skill or ability. You can have up to 6 /recasts in 1 macro. They are VERY useful. for my ninja i have
/recast "Provoke"
/recast "Utsusemi: Ichi"
/recast "Utsusemi: Ni"
as a macro, and i spam it all the time (the recast msg comes up as an echo to yourself) By doing this you rarely miss vokes, and avoid spamming the party with different ability messages, all in all many jobs should use it more often, but it is espeacially useful for ninja.
Oh, and, at least at early levels, you should try to use retsu as much as you can. Its paralyze is rather strong, and proves to be very helpful in general.
Mobs to avoid include monks, weapons, bones and scorpions. the haste + boots are the best thing you can get for your ninja until the higher level version (72 i think ^^;
, and it is very important to have haste in your party in some form. Even bard's march will do well, and if you have a nice bard you can get both march and haste and have close to a 25 second recast on utsusemi ni which is awsome ^^;;;
Uhhh, i hope this helped. If you have any questions send me a pm or something
