Nin

[Kabuki]

Do ninjas want earthen ward on them post 70?

[Icemage]

Re: Nin

Taru ninjas probably will, but there's something to be said for killing the monster faster with a BP attack.

Higher HP tanks probably don't need it, but I doubt any of them are going to complain if you use Earthen Ward on them.


Icemage

[Kabuki]

Re: Nin

Thanks ice. I have another question to ask you. How do you keep time of when another Blood Pact can be used? I see people use /wait 32 /echo BP ready and such but they dont work well since if a macro is used during the /wait 32 time, it will cancel. Do you just look at the in-game timer and wait for 30 seconds to pass?

I would also like to add if its better to use Mountain Buster or Spinning Dive too. Thanks.

[Spellbinder]

Re: Nin

This works for me, but may not be for everyone. First of all, you should eventually develop a fairly good sense of timing as you level your summoner, and try to include the time it would take you to cast your Avatar. Summoning them a little early can be good to position yourself or for some instances when you're allowed to simply leave them out to melee. But when your Avatars are out, you're allowed to see the time remaining on your Blood Pact timer with '/recast "Blood Pact"'. It only works when your Avatar is out, so that's why I like to summon them a little early to have better timing.

[kuu]

Re: Nin

Earthern ward on taru nin tanks can be even worse then just low HP, they get hit harder then the stoneskin caon protect sometimes as well. @.@

Earthen ward is ment so that a ninja doing ichi can survive the hit and complete its cast, but if they take a hit that breaks the stoneskin completely, it will still still interrupt very likely.

Though it's convient to use it every so often if nothing much beyond protecting yourself. It saves a whole lot of trouble if you get a spike of hate, you can shrug it off.

[SharMarali]

Re: Nin

I really don't have a method in place to "keep track" of when BP is up. I basically do it by feel. That said, when I was a lower level SMN before I was used to dealing with the BP timer, sometimes I'd pull out buncle in between BPs just to check the timer. He wasn't quite free at the levels I was doing this (around lvl 40ish, maybe a bit lower), but he was significantly cheaper than the other avatars. I only had to do this for 2-3 levels before I got a feel for the timer system and didn't really need to anymore. Of course, since I recently obtained AF2 gloves now I have to learn the timing all over again XD ...But it's cool ^^

Personally I'm rather different from most of the SMNs on this forum and most of the ones I've seen in my PTs when I've leveled other jobs. While I DO deal out a fair amount of damage, I focus a lot more heavily on the support end of the job than a lot of SMNs do. I know a lot of people feel that it's a waste of time and abilities and that it's poor utilization of the SMN job, but I respectfully disagree. I like to do a variety of things to assist the PT, and one of those things is handling buffs and healing. Personally, I try to cast stoneskin on NIN tanks. Depending on how good the NIN tank is at keeping their blinks up, this ranges from every couple of battles to every 10-15 minutes or so. If stoneskin eats a hit while blink is down and the NIN doesn't wind up losing their blink chain and taking 800 points of damage while he tries to recast, so much the better.

[Kabuki]

Re: Nin

I found out Windower has a plugin called Bloodpace. What it does is show the timer until Blood pact is ready on the top right corner in red. It's really helpful.

[SharMarali]

Re: Nin

That's all well and good for those of you who don't play on PS2.. lol

[Omniblast]

Re: Nin

I use this thing here...


Set it for 50 seconds, and cast avatar. It takes just about 10 seconds to cast out avatar. So by then, blood pact is ready and you just gotta hit the button again to re-use the timer. A little extra effort, but atleast it's not using a 3rd party program. (3rd party appliance?)

[Omni]

Re: Nin

Taru ninjas probably will, but there's something to be said for killing the monster faster with a BP attack.

Higher HP tanks probably don't need it, but I doubt any of them are going to complain if you use Earthen Ward on them.


Icemage

personally, i rather have fenrir's acc/eva++ (forgot the name), then if you can, earthern ward. for me, with acc/eva++ i can go full atk build and still evade a whole lot even with -25 evasion.

earthern ward only lasts 1 good hit. after 1 hit youll still have it on but ur next hit is half or 2/3s dmg, which still can interupt your ninjutsu casting.