What is the Ninja role?

[Lewkowski]

Damage? Tank? What?

I mean I've never heard of massive ninja damage (other then 2 hour I guess), and everyone says paladin = best tank period...

So what is the ninja role? I mean it sounds cool... but will you get groups?

[Aldo]

role is a variety of things, mainly a tank, but there are a few things nin can provide that other tank classes can't, vice versa. the 3 main tanks in the game are pld, war and nin. both nin and pld have low attack, i think nin may be a tad higher, depends on equips. warr has higher attack. difference is how each job tanks. nin learns blink magic at lv12, although the casting time is long and easily interrupted while casting, each blink will allow the ninja to make a copy image of himself, which absorbs everything, except for area and special attacks, from the enemy - it lasts for up to 3 hits. its a bit inefficient at first, so PTs will usually get someone else who can taunt, so the mosnter will be temporarily pulled off the nin so he can reblink himself and retaunt. after lv37, however, the 2nd level blink magic casts surpisingly faster, and you can use the lv1 blink in conjuction so the PT only needs 1 nin who can tank continously, casting blink on himself and never getting hit. disadvantages over pld i guess, nin cannot cure anyone whereas pld can. both pld and nin are at a disadvantage to warrior because war's can use weaponskills that help the party (like lower monsters evasion and defence etc, not that noticebale at lower levels, but it can make or break a good pt at lv60+) and also warriors weapon skill at lv200 and regular attacks are admirable.

now what nin's have that could give them the edge over plds is their ninjutsu magics. the 1st level of these are rather weak, the elemental ninjutsus do no good damage, even though you can magic burst with them on renkeis. the lv2 series which can be learned at lv40 (i hear) is more powerful and less of a waste of gil to use. nevertheless, all the elemental magics, in addition to dealing damage, lower the monsters resistance to the oppposite element (ex: fire ninjutsu deals fire damage, and lowers monsters resistance to ice). in addition to these, ninjutsu has slow/blind/poison and curse magics which are equally helpful, sometimes in my experience, my magics have been able to connect on monsters who resisted the rdm's enfeebling magics :D. In addition to these status effects, the 1h katana series, exclusive to the job, have many versions which have status effects embedded inside them (ex: lv16 katans that silence, lv26 katana that poison, lv43 katana that blind, lv46 katana that lower defence), giving more of an edge to the job as a whole.

[Lewkowski]

Ok so basically its another tank.

In Damage

Warrior > Ninja > PLD?

In ability to take damage

Ninja > PLD > Warrior?

And for party helping(heals or silence or defense down)

PLD > Ninja > Warrior?


And are there any other roles other then tank? I mean if a party has a paladin will it bother getting a ninja for damage, or is it too small compared to Drk and ranger?

Also what is the point of subbing a Ninja.

[Aldo]

ya at higher levels there is always one tank. so nin and pld wouldn't mix well cuz the mosnter would live too long, they're attack is both weak. and pld can't use any offensive magics, only cure series, well they can dia i think or banish i forget, but both are weak white magics. warrior and ninja can't heal, and war can't use any magic. the only job that can benefit from subbing nin (in my opinion) is a ranger. this is for 2 purposes, so they can cast blink on themeselves before they use their WS (cuz it does so much damage the monster will be on them no matter what, atleast for a few seconds before tank can get things under control) and also so they can use the dual weapon ability to equip 2 archer knives (cuz the knives give ranged accuracy+ so they get double the accuracy w/ 2 daggers equipped).

[qweezy]

From my experience(35 Ninja/17 war), I feel we do pretty good damage. When grouping, I can pull aggro from Warriors that are using Greataxes, and sometimes I even outdo Thieves. Well this might change at higher lvls, but right now I feel that my damage is comparable to a Warrior if not higher. Ninja do not have as much STR as a Warrior, but we have much more DEX, and DEX > STR in this game.

Katanas have lower damage per second compared to the Greataxes, but dual wielding makes up for it. A ninja's dual wield speed becomes increasingly faster as they lvl, I think they get a speed boost lvl 25 and 45 if I remember correctly.

Warriors get double attack much earlier, but if you sub your Ninja with a Warrior job, he'll eventually get it too, at lvl 50.

The only issue with ninja not doing damage is when they keep casting blink. A ninja have to give up damage to be an effective tank, because they will spend most of thier time casting. A Warrior or Paladin can keep attacking and tank at the same time.

[Aldo]

dunno about dual weild becoming "faster". the delay is based on multiple of both weapons in your hand, not an ability. and nin deals little to no damage, even though their str may be higher than a pld, because like you said, 90% of the time, we're casting blink.

[NowherMan]

I believe (from what I've heard) that DW does get speed boosts as the ninja levels, so the delay formula would change form (Weapon 1+Weapon 2) to (Weapon 1+Weapon 2) x 0.9 and so on. Its also one of the reasons that subbing ninja generally sucks so hard, you miss out on the abilites that actually make it useful.