To all NIN/WAR:

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Gryff
If you go all out evasion you do much less damage making it harder to maintain agro on you, one of the reasons ninja exp seems quicker is not just reduced downtime, ninja will do at least double paladins damage.

So how do you do your job if you have to have max evasion equipped every time it does AOE? Sure, you may be able to dodge more, but since you won't have enough hate for it to care about you, will that even matter?

Or is everyone in the party supposed to drop their damage output to the floor at all times?

Let me know when you have nin at 60 or higher and can comment on the job. ( or rdm whm smn past 60 so you can tell the difference ).

I love this part. I need to have NIN past 60 to comment... oh wait, you don't either, but you DO have SMN and WHM past 60, so of course, that is the other standard. Naturally.

FYI, I pull in 95% of my parties (as a RNG and THF) and therefore get to keep quite a close eye on mana conservation and efficiency (since that controls whether or not I pull).

[Navia]

This change affects alot of others besides ninja mains.

Ninja sub for a ranger main just buys you the ability to hold another hawker knife now if your utsusemi drops so easily, unless you are going to cast it pre skillchain. I should check if the rng/war are making fun of the rng/nin's yet ;x


Everyone and their mother subs ninja for HNM/god fights, this is partially to blame. I believe S-E has had their hand forced in the matter because it affects the type of challenging fights they can design when everyone 74+ fighting HNM can absorb 7 melee/single spell target type hits taking no damage subbing ninja with such frequency.

Ninja still need a throw weaponskill, the ninja job still suffers like SMN do by being too defined by their sub. My only guess is that there is more ninjitsu to fall back on in the expansion (san elementals could do some nice burst damage) or more latent subjob type gear,weapons/ammo to make main jobs other than rng/xxx accurate high damage ranged attackers if you spend the gil.
If there arenew toys for the ninja to play with then this is good, otherwise subbing rng just makes us look like 'rng lite' without the pot leaf hat, stuck with a HQ level 42 gun and level 22 bullets
vying for the 'damage dealer' spot in a pt that will have a huge mountain of prejudice to fight against if you aren't living in a perfect static-pt world -_-
Good thing i never sold all that +ranged acc crap I bought when I messed around as /rng awhile back I guess

I don't really care anymore what sub is considered 'the cookie cutter and not gimp' as long as its not some nin/thf nonsense - even a nin/war without tools is better than that :p

[Gryff]

Originally posted by Spider-Dan
So how do you do your job if you have to have max evasion equipped every time it does AOE? Sure, you may be able to dodge more, but since you won't have enough hate for it to care about you, will that even matter?

Or is everyone in the party supposed to drop their damage output to the floor at all times?


I love this part. I need to have NIN past 60 to comment... oh wait, you don't either, but you DO have SMN and WHM past 60, so of course, that is the other standard. Naturally.

FYI, I pull in 95% of my parties (as a RNG and THF) and therefore get to keep quite a close eye on mana conservation and efficiency (since that controls whether or not I pull).

1. you can swap out to evasion and spam ninjutsu to keep hate.
2. no
3. you need experience as a ninja to a reasonable level or experience as a healer, just watching mp isnt enough to understand both jobs, partying with a ninja does not give you any idea of the different styles a nin can play and how it effects hate.

my RL friends play pld, brd and blm, the pld and brd are 75 so yes, I have experienced both and can tell you what they are like at 75 ( we lan and play each others jobs ).
4. oh great you pull, want a cookie?



I'm not saying nin will be able to do the job the same , but any competant person will still be able to tank as ninja.

[Manatra]

I'm honestly under the impression that only things such as Orc Battledance, Serket Earth Breaker, Weapon AoE attacks will wipe out all shadows. Since they only wipe one shadow at the moment.

As for things like bubble shower, crawler poison attack etc etc, those I don't believe will affect NIN tanking since it just goes through it anyway. Doesn't seem to be related to Ninjitsu at all.

[Alontier]

You only have to think about what Utsusemi really is to realize that this "nerf" was incoming.

Utsusemi → Creates a Shadow Image that lures the enemy to hit it insted of you.
Will disappear when the image is hit by ANY kind of attack making the enemy realize if was a fake.

AoE → Area Effect, eg. hits everything within the area. (ALL the shadow images)

I feel it's a bit too soon to speculate how this will affect the gameplay as this most likely
aren't all the changes/implementations that will come with the next expansion.
But as some has said before.
It will probably be a bit more involving when tanking,
but any capable player should still be able to play the tank Ninja.
(you'll notice faster if you have a half-assed Ninja)
One can only hope that Ninjas will get a new role in parties.

[CarbonFibre]

S-E always said they aren't into the NIN tank thing, so I suppose this is just one step torwards them making it much harder to pull off.

[Kiyosuki]

^They never said they didn't like it in that famitsu interview, they just said it was unexpected, but they liked it. A part of me wishes Famitsu never ran that bloody article..

Anyways, this is at the bottom of those announcements..

Many other updates are in the final stages of testing. Further details will be announced along with the introduction of the Chains of Promathiha version update. A preliminary version update is scheduled to take place in the beginning of September, before the release of the Chains of Promathia content.

Copy and pasted from the main page itself.

Guys don't you think your jumping to conclusions a little too quickly? Considering the real updates, as in the real meat of whats to come hasn't even been announced yet.These are just a small taste of whats to come, with CoP SE has stated that they assure many big additions to the gameplay. I wish I knew what they had up they're sleeve for Ninja's, and other jobs now.

21 days now..

[711rocks]

i really hope this doesn't kill ninja mine isn't a high level at all, its just a subjob for my thf however im having a ton of fun (this is in valkurm too XD) despite the cost. im thinking of getting thf to only 50 (for THII, and to get astrals) to pay for the cost of being an insane nin/war (The godly ones who spend 100k+ per 20,000 xp)

[_11of8]

The loss of all of the shadows due to an area attack is a big hit to Ninja. I have one at lvl 49, and I know the difficulty it presents, especially when you try dodging a monster that has double attack. We still take damage from the area of attacks, so it's not like they are totally inneffective against us. I can only hope we won't take damage from AE if we loose our shadows.

Stun only works so well as the attentive DRK or BLM and the length of the time it takes for the AE to go off. Compare Goblin bombs to Antican Sandstorms and you'll see what I mean.

I would feel a lot more comfortable about this if they complete the Ninjitsu line of spells. Having that third Utsetsumi will allowing ninjas to still blink tank and people who sub ninja wouldn't get the benefit, . We'll see how it goes.

[strikerr]

hmmmm I've been to about 4 FFXI forums now, and you know what I don't see any of the NINs posting any worries about this "nerf" all I see is PLDs and RNGs bitching ( or is it cheering ) about it, mainly because they don't like having NIN tanks in the first place.

In order to play with a NIN tank it is expected that the party have some skill as players and know when / how to do things. For instance, RNGs shouldn't barrage at the beginning of a battle ( and i have often seen this ) blms shouldn't chain cast, and drks shouldn't go berserk + last resort + soul eater + ws in the beginning of the battle. With any 1 of these examples even a PLD spam casting cure III would have trouble holding regaining hate.

Now ninja keep hate by 4 ways
1.) Evading attacks by either not getting hit or using a shadow ( The more attacks missed the more the mob gets pissed. )
2.) Using its debuffs ( which mind you are just as strong if not stronger then the rdm debuffs ) adding to either not being able to hit or slowing the hit ratio.
3.) Using their elemental spells and doing the elemental circle. doing good damage multiple times within a very short time.
4.) Provoking every 30 seconds ( oh wait this is the same as PLD atleast the ones that aren't so damn lazy that they forget to )

PLD keep hate by 2 ways
1.) Curing either themselves or a pt member ( higher the cure the more the hate)
2.) Provoking every 30 seconds


Now about the friggin topic of the thread, we have no idea how this is going to effect blink tanking untill the updates are intiated, and also keep in mind that you are now getting the same nerf because the whm will have to cure you every time that the mob uses a AoE attack too, and you will be loosing the +11 or 12 ranged acc that you would have from the duel hawker's knives, so that you can get more def from the war sub. Now stop worring about how other ppl ( who care about doing a good job ) will do their jobs and worry more about your own.

[Kiyosuki]

Another way to keep hate is one I'm just shocked not more people think of...

Politely ask the Rdm, or whatever debuffer in your group, to not use Paralyze, Slow, Blind, or Poison unless absolutely necessary.

Part of the hate thats gained from these bebuff's is if the effect is actually *from* the Ninja. If a Rdm slaps on Slow before the Ninja can put on Hojo, that ninja's only going to achieve half of the hate that it can possibly get from that one spell, and over time the hate you could acumulate from the effect too..is lost because the Rdm did it, not you.

Its not enough that you just do it, the effect has to correspond to you as well. It really does help, I can't understand why more people don't think about that. I'm sure the Rdm won't mind..unless he's just a prick.

Anything other than Bli, Slo, Para, Poi is ok. Stun, Dispel and the like, but those four spells can be one of the Ninja's most powerful hate keeping tools if they're even allowed to put the effect on. If the debuff doesn't take effect, and its just needed that badly then maybe the Rdm can do it, but its usually no problem.

Remember...half your hate is the actual effect of the enfeeble. Otherwise, its like chucking one of those nifty poison powder filled eggs at the enemy...using just the eggshell without the powder.