Blink Tank Equipment Levels 1-30 <-- NEED INPUT

[Narru]

Originally posted by Omni-Ragnarok
u cant really blink tank till 37. at best youll be a good puller, back up tank. 4second cast time, 30second cool down. i really hate utsusemi: ichi :\.

I believe that with the best gear out there (basically the ones I listed in my list), you are able to blink tank fully (meaning without a provoke buddy taking it off of you when your blink goes down) even at level 12. The only problem I might see is that you may/may not be able to keep aggro at those lower levels.

I love this quote I read once on these boards (sorry for the person who posted it, I forgot your name) "You gotta get into the mindset that Utsusemi is used only as a BACKUP when blink tanking. You need to have your evasion so rediculously high that you evade a majority of the hits anyway, and Utsusemi is there only when you failed to evade - not the other way around."

We'll see, I'll let you know if I can fully have blink up at level 24ish (when I get high enough to use Emp. Hairpin) even with only :Ichi.

[ninvampire]

What food are you using Narru? While leveling ninja up to 21, I was always trying to pick up Navarin (+20 HP +3 STR +1 AGI -1 INT +5 evasion +10% attack 1hr duration)

[Narru]

Originally posted by ninvampire
What food are you using Narru? While leveling ninja up to 21, I was always trying to pick up Navarin (+20 HP +3 STR +1 AGI -1 INT +5 evasion +10% attack 1hr duration)

Good call, I forgot to list food. Gonna make the change.

[Cylus]

I've never seen any blink tank ninjas use bowls of Navarin, and neither have I so I can't attest to it's usefulness. I personally think the extra damage you get from Mithkabob is important to help keep hate.

After playing Ninja for a while, I found that guns were not a good choice IMO. You only have a C ranking in them if I remember correctly, and even with macros to switch out to ranged acc rings every time I shoot, I still found myself missing far too much.

Using Shurikens, I tend to hit a lot more often now and I think overall do more damage, thus keeping hate better. Overall, much more expensive, but I never expected Ninja to be cheap.

As far as ninjutsu goes, I only use it if we don't have anyone else enfeebling, or maybe take care of one of the less important ones that has higher hate (blind is good). The more important ones like Paralyze and slow, even with maxed Ninjutsu skill, I have trouble getting to stick consistently. That's precious time I could be using to chuck shurikens at the mob.

The elemental debuffs are ok, but imo not as important as I originally thought. I generally only use them if blm is getting resisted too much on magic bursts.

Emperor hairpin helps a lot with the evasion, and it's really the first time blink tanking is viable without a backup voker, and by 29 I was able to do dodge and parry enough to generally to be ready to take only a few hits before utsusemi was ready again.

Still, having a second tank before 37 is always good, granted they can keep enough hate themselves to take the hate off you when needed. There are always the instances where everything just goes wrong and you can't get another utsusemi up at a crucial moment.

I was in on pt with myself, another JP Ninja, 2 samurais, 1 brd, and one blm in Garlaige. Stuff died so fast and there was at least 2 skillchains used per battle and there was almost no damage taken by the party (so little that the brd/rdm and blm/whm could do any necessary healing). It's funny the crazy parties you can do at lower levels . I am fairly sure we couldn't get away with that at higher levels.

[greysenn]

I've got probably about 4 less evasion than the list on there, and it really depends on the mob as to whether or not you'll be able to tank it. (The list is really good btw, thanks for posting it.) Some stuff I can tank np, but usually the stuff you fight will hit you consistantly enough to knock blink down. I still need a backup to really be able to tank properly.

Will the extra 4 make enough of a difference? Maybe. There was a noticeable hit rate reduction at 12 (the mantle) and 14 (headband, earrings and rings). Particularly with tough and below mobs, but it really wasn't there with the IT's.

As for a belt, I would go with the lvl 8 Obi +1, It's 2 defense, but it has an 8% reduction in spell interrupts. (Ninjitsu takes a loong time to skill up in an xp party setting)

Edit: Blah, didn't consider the evasion from all the +1 armor. So it's probably more of a difference than I listed.

[Tythera]

You're probably right with the food until 63 when you can drop the Kote/Navarin for Mithkabobs/Arhat. Good guide, wish I would have found it before I hit 30 (I couldn't decide on what to get).

[Kousai]

well.. last night was my 1st time pt'ing with a blink tank, he was a japanese lvl 26 nin/war.. we were fighting IT mandragora's outside of kazham, and i must say that was the best pt i've had in months, we were constantly chain 3 and 4'ing mandragora's for 250+ exp, with -0- downtime, he was constantly spamming ninjitsu to keep hate, he barely ever lost agro and he wasnt taking much dmg at all..

our whm was constantly over 3/4mp, as soon as the mob got to about 1/8th health i'd disengage to go find another mandragora... went really well and i now love ninja's ^^

[Tsubame]

What about Jack-O-Lanterns for a food item? They give +25 DRK Defense, -10 Charm, +10 Accuracy and +10 Evasion.

Not as good for your attack, so may limit your hate gaining abilities, but you'll be hitting and dodging more, so I think it'd make up for it. Not to mention, it's cheap as anything, I see them for sale in Windy for 100 gil each. (Don't stack).

[Aero]

For earrings over longtime use...

Should I keep my dodge earrings from level 29 or switch to drone earrings at 35?

[hatey]

When I did ninja 1-25. I went def gear all the way and I was a mithra and tanked very well. I have never found evasion to be reliable at all and I don't think you should rely on it either. Saving money on tools isn't really important in your case, it seems like your rich anyways. Also if evasion is a viable option I would think that even with all that evasion gear, that at low levels you could never boost it enough to have it really be viable. Even as thf/nin with 2 evasion boost job traits and +13 evasion +18 agl, I still rarely evade vs IT. I also think the main problem with ninja is keeping hate. Even if you have a thf in PT I bet you still are making a ranger hold back a lot more than a pld with a thf. Is it possible to keep blink up infinitely if you have ichi and ni at 37? If so I would go all out in attack gear and maybe have +def gear to toggle in during emergencies. This would reduce downtime and improve your hate.

Edit : Please note I 1-25 I did use mithkabob along with my def gear. Everytime I ate fish I regretted it a lot. Not cause of hate, but because my dmg output wasn't enough. Even vs pugils I wanted to use mithkabobs.

[Narru]

Just a quick update (I'll post a full report later when I hit 30+)

Currently level 25. At level 24 I had a huge +evasion bonus cause of Emperor's Hairpin and Nomad's Mantle +1. Also can switch to mithril earrings, and other items (which I can't remember off the top of my head, refer to the list on the first page). Then at level 25 yet another +evasion bonus (think it was +4 difference between 24 and 25).

Anyways I'm approaching the point where I might start blink tanking alone without a voke buddy. I say might because I haven't had too much time to test since I recently just hit 25. Level 25 was my testing point because I'm currently at +29 evasion from all my bonuses. If you look at the skill cap tables, that would translate into roughly an IT mob conning Tough to me (in terms of evading it).

Right now I was only in one PT since I hit 25, and for safety sakes we kept with the usual buddy voker. Bah I'm rambling...


OK point being, if I had to estimate how many attacks I dodge/parry right now vs IT (talking barely IT's here, not IT+ or IT++), I would have to seriously say at least 40% of all attacks. With Paralyze, Slow, and Blind I can definetely solo blink tank.

Just wanted to say something before hatey manages to convince everyone following this thread that +evasion is not the route to take.

Oh, and it's not about saving powders, it's about saving time. If I go all +defense gear, sure I'll take less damage, but then the whm needs to waste mana healing me. With my approach, no one takes damage (except for AOEs) and no mana is wasted healing - faster exp.

Btw I got from 20-25 in 7 hours in Qufim. This was a straight leveling with THE SAME PT for 7 hours straight (practically unheard of). Was a pickup PT too, lol. When the members saw what I was doing, they immediately canceled what they had to do for the day and decided to stick with me til I had to go.

Nin/War, Pld/War, Thf/Mnk, Rng/Rdm, Brd/Whm, Whm/Blm

Edit: Just wanted to add a quote: "The PLD's 'bottleneck' is a whm, while the NIN's 'bottleneck' is a blm..."

The whm's in my PTs always had 70%+ mana all the time. I had to ask them to start using Banish/Banishga cause they were bored.

[Narru]

Thoughts, Ideas, Conclusions about Ninja after the first 30 levels of blink tanking:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that all my experiences are for the lower levels (1-30) and what follows is in no way shape or form represents higher level play/tactics. Certain aspects will change at higher levels, and others will not. But this is just to give those people who are interested in playing a blink tank ninja an overview so that can can decide for themselves if they want to take on this career path.

The one strong quote that I got out of all this blink tanking was:

"A Paladin's main bottleneck is the whm's mana, while the Ninja's main bottleneck is the blm's mana."

I shall try to explain this quote later on...


Locations to Level:
---------------------------

1-8 Fight anywhere
8-12 Worms in Kos. Highlands using bow + arrow (solo)
12-19 Valk Dunes
19-25 Qufim
25-30 Khazam (moved to second jungle at 27)


Evasion Equipment:
----------------

The first post in this thread was my equipment path. Obviously I chose to go all out +evasion gear.

With this gear setup I was NOT able to solo blink tank at level 12. There is no way for me to avoid enough hits to recast Utsusemi: Ichi, and last the 45 seconds it takes for the spell timer to reset. A buddy voker is absolutely necessary at this level, otherwise you really slow down the PT since the whm has to spend a lot more mana to heal you (as compared to a better defensively equiped Paladin who will take hits for less than you). As I leveled though, and was able to equip some of the other items, I slowly got better and better at evading hits...

I would consider level 25 the first level where I can seriously "think" of solo blink tanking. Yes you heard me, level 25 - NOT level 37 like most people think (when you get Utsusemi: Ni). The reason I say "think" rather than "oh you can definetely solo blink tank," is because there are arguments on both sides of this. Please refer to my Keeping Aggro section for more info. At level 12, you would evade maybe only 10% of all hits. Definetely not reliable to try to get blink up again. But as you'd expect, when you keep adding more and more +evasion gear to your arsenal, you could slowly see that you evade more and more. There could be lucky battles where I wouldn't get hit at all for the entire fight, while being the only one who had aggro. This was around the level 20 mark. But it really changes at 24 and 25.

24 was the level where a huge increase in evasion came along. Emperor's Hairpin, Nomad's Mantle+1, Mithril Earrings. Then at 25 you can wear Kingdom Trousers and Fed. Gi. If you count the formula of 2 Agi = 1 Evasion (which for some reason I'm starting to believe less and less that this formula is true), at level 25 I have +29 Evasion from my gear. As a friend of mine points out by looking at skill charts, this is similar to reducing an IT mob into a T con mob in terms of evading it. This is huge. At this point, I can actually rely on my evasion keeping me alive until I get my blink up again. Also note here that evading the mob is not the ONLY factor in getting Utsusemi: Ichi up again. Your ninjitsu skill also plays a factor, since the higher the skill you have in it, the better the chance you can complete the spell even if you get hit. By the time level 25ish rolls around, I'm confident that I have enough evasion, ninjitsu, and parry skill to be the one and only tank in the PT. Parry is nice when it's at higher levels - getting it to skill up is another story ; ;

Food: At first I listed eating the Bowl of Navarin as my regular food item during blink tanking. Since then I have decided against it for a couple of reasons. 1) On my server (Fairy), there doesn't seem to be a huge market for that food item. If you can buy it from an NPC, that information I am not aware of. 2) They don't stack which I hate. 3) I rather eat mithkabobs because of aggro control. Please look at the Keeping Aggro section for more information.

Oh, and on Fairy, there has never been a Mithril +1 Earring sold in the AH of any city... so trying to obtain one was impossible for me >.<

[Narru]

Buddy Voker:
--------------------

First of all, NIN + PLD = GOD (only at lower levels before you can solo tank of course ^_^ ) Before you reach the level 25 mark, most likely you'll have to group with a buddy voker. Heck my LFG search comment specifically says: "Utsusemi OK - Will be main tank but will need a buddy voker ..." Do yourself a favor and get a PLD to help you out. I find that because a) they needed to get a char to level 30 to unlock PLD, thus are more experienced usually, b) they are already in the mindset of tanking so don't mind getting hit and will have the gear for it, c) have the other pld abilities that can save ya in a crunch ( Invincible > Ninja 2h ). Was in a PT in Qufim killing Pugil at level 22 (yes you heard me, 22 - took on giants as well ^^). Chaining to #3, 200+ exp after Chain #1 usually. PLD had to leave, so we got a DRK to replace. I figure more damage output would be better since I was tanking 90% of the fight anyway. For some reason or another, we couldn't pass the #1 chain. No one could figure out why. It was that dramatic a change.

Secondly, NIN + NIN = SUPER GOD. It's a joke at times. If played correctly, there's absolutely no downtime, you can chain up to #5 (depending on how crowded the area is), and everyone loves you. Ideal PT for me at these levels, I would have to say Nin/War, Nin/War, Blm/Whm, Blm/Whm, DD, DD. Where DD can be either Blm or Rng. Note that for all my opinions, I'm assuming the people you're PTing with are somewhat skilled and not poor. Let's face it, a poorly skilled or poorly equipped character won't have as stellar a performance.



Keeping Aggro:
----------------------

Ok, this will be the meaty part of this whole summary, as I have a couple rants I can go on. I apologize now if I tangent too much, but I have a lot to say

We as Nin blink tanks play a what I would call "querky" role as aggroers. There's absoluetely no black/white division in anything really when it comes to aggro - it's all a grey area. Unlike a paladin where it's a lot simpler - pld should always keep hate, no matter what, at all times. Lemme give a quick example before I continue: We start fight, I provoke immediately, blink miss blink blink, refresh Utsusemi, miss miss blink blink blink... at this point my blinks are all gone, provoke timer is ready again, but I need another 5 seconds before I can recast Utsusemi. What should I do? Should buddy voker provoke and allow him to get hit once or twice while I refresh Utsusemi and then provoke, or should I provoke right away and rely on my evasion to allow me to recast blink? Sometimes, especially if you've just evaded/parried the last 6 consecutive hits or so, it's a hard decision. If you keep aggro to yourself, you risk the chance of failing to recycle Utsusemi and causing excess downtime to your whm. But if it does work out, the rewards are great - no damage is taken, blink is back up, you can kill more. It is because of this I say that at level 25 you "might" want to solo tank. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on how much you want to gamble in order to achieve greatness

At the later levels, you'll find it harder and harder to keep aggro against the super heavy damage dealers - blms and rngs. This is where I'll try to provide a workaround for it: the dual provokers. This concept is a little hard to understand, so I'll try to explain a lot:

At any and all times, I like to keep the backup voker ready with a provoke just in case I run into a extremely bad string of evades (especially if we're trying to take on things we shouldn't be at our levels - talking about the IT+++'s ) It allows the buddy voker to take it off me while I refresh Utsusemi obviously. Now, how can that be accomplished if I DON'T get into a bad string of evades until later into the fight? If I provoke every 30 seconds and never take a hit until maybe my 3rd provoke, that buddy voker won't be able to get it off of me cause I have much more hate than he does. What do I do? Simple. Just have your buddy voker provoke 30 seconds after you provoke - ALWAYS. So what will happen is that you will make the decision at this point (after he provokes) what to do next. If the evades are going well and you can take more hits, you should provoke immediately to take it off of him. If you're blinks are all gone, take the time to refresh it and then provoke. In either case, you and your buddy voker should be a lot higher on the hate list, thus allowing your damage dealers to go all out more.

Here's another tactic I use (especially before level 25 when you absolutely need a buddy voker). Utsusemi refresh cast time is 45 seconds. 3 blinks = 3 rounds of combat. Let's say 3 rounds of combat take 15 seconds to execute. Meaning you need to last around 4-6 rounds of combat of misses before you can refresh Utsusemi again. My rule of thumb is - the first 6 attacks are free - NO MATTER WHAT. You have 3 images, after the second one is gone I start to refresh Utsusemi so that the mob eats one while I recast blink, giving me another 3 - thus 6 hits free at the start of every fight. At that point your buddy voker should have voked it off of you. Once you refresh Utsusemi, you have basically 45 seconds before you can recast it. Now you have one of two options - 1) provoke now, let it eat 3 images, and have buddy voker voke again - 2) let buddy voker take a couple hits while you wait til the refresh timer on casting Utsusemi gets to around 15 seconds, then provoke and do the 6 blink tactic. The choice is yours. Sorry if that was confusing to anyone.

Now to include in the human factors. Let's face it, if you're going to be PTing for 5 hours straight, you can't expect everything to work like clockwork at all times. Other members of your PT get lazy, you get lazy, provoke isn't done exactly at the 30th second, someone's talking on the phone or is distracted. In other words, shit happens. It's ok to take a couple hits sometimes, it's ok to let your buddy voker take a couple extra hits (especially if the whm is bored outta his mind and you want to give him something to do ^^), it's ok to sit and watch the giant run after the tarutaru mage and smack him around a bit just for kicks. Lol. The main thing to remember is no one is perfect - you can't expect the buddy voker to always voke when you want him to, you can't expect the blm's to try to throw a wrench in it just for fun and nuke all out in the beginning of a fight sometimes. Just remember, a) it's a game, and b) just make sure you stay alive - lol.

[Narru]

Other Members in your PT:
---------------------------------------

To be added later when I have more time.


Paralyze, Slow, Blind:
--------------------------------

To be added later when I have more time.

[Narru]

Ego Inflating:
-------------------

To be added later when I have more time.