Realistic Numbers With Kikoku

So I was losing interest in the game because I was stuck in a rut of never getting to do anything but cor, so I returned to my first love ninja. I followed the guides as best I could. My gear is the same as in the guides except for the wsd rings and some less than perfect augments.

So my question is this, using omen mobs, and no buffs as the base line what kinda numbers should I be seeing with R15 kikoku? If this has already been stated I’m sorry to ask it again I looked around and couldn’t find it.

I jumped on metsu betsu wagon and i was disappointed, i don't have numbers tho.

It might just be cause I am used to Savage blade, and leaden salut numbers but I am being really underwhelmed with all of ninjas ws. An it’s making me sad. Though to be fair I’m usually solo as ninja or shoved into the alt group with no buffs haha

20k metsu seems reasonable, I know I could get 16k np and I was not BiS for metsu. The bigger question is are you willing to spend so much on Kik when aeonic is better and 'free'?

w/ no buffs you should be doing about 10 to 12k on omen trash mobs unless you're talking about bosses?
w/ actual buffs you should like he said easily be at around 26k, occ i see random spikes for 33+ but just MA procs I guess

Seems you are use to the overbuffed ws's, you will dislike nin then, sorry no real way around it. Nin *IS* the worst dps in a group setting considering all jobs BIS, though Chi can be exploited if the party is built around hybrid ws's (good luck haha).

Nin solo is great due to the ability to do both light and dark easy, and dual burst each of them. Thats how you solo on nin (on mobs that take good magic dmg) and get great dps. Nin also is consitent in that you actually dont even neeed 1 trust buff to reliably self sc, and most jobs cant say that. As solo goes nin is super fun.

I understand your frustration in a party, maybe offer to tank? It's not dps but the games full of real dps now anyhow. Maybe that will be a niche you enjoy more?

Can't really tank anything worthwhile when every 'tough' mob spams AoE every other frame and wipes your shadows constantly.

/Casts San, ooh I have 7 shadows, next frame, ok I have zero shadows.

Can't even use our DD 2hr effectively with the spam.

I always felt like main-job NIN should have some sort of resistance to AoE shadow wiping. Example: a trait that makes AoE consume 2 shadows but lets a percent of the damage through based on remaining shadows instead of wiping all of them.

Something like that sounds really powerful. Maybe even OP. Then you take one look at rune fencer.

Yeah thats a reason nin tanking is niche, I mean at least your useful over other jobs occasionally? Otherwise your just soaking up a slott for a real dd sadly. I do not like this at all as I love the nin job, but reality is what it is.

Once SE does a mnk style buff to katana ws's I think we will be fine again, but as it stands there is no real hope to compete, and thats the OP's issue and why he will dislike nin. By seeing him reference lead and savage its obvious he like the bandwagon jobs with flashy ws's, which is 100% okay as its bandwagon because they are fun and simple and most of all effective. Nin is none of that right now, its a very complicated job as far as melee jobs are concerned, and it deals a VERY large amount less than real dd's but requires stupid amount of work to even get most of its gear required to even show up on an alliances parse.

The work to reward ratio on nin so terrible, it's gear is very hard/time restrictive and sadly all of it is required to even really start to see yourself as a potential dps.

What I loved about nin most was that you could easily self MB 60k nin nukes as a solo player, and SE screwed that over. If we want to be realistic nin to have a dps niche right now need to be able to land that on nms consistently..... having another ws spamming dps job doesnt help the game as there are many at this point, but turning nin into a rdm equivalent that doesnt use mp might be the way to go for SE to create something unique and fun that gives some variety to the button smash parses.

Metsu is bestu

jk it's not

My favorite use of Nin tanking is against Kyou. Super niche but I’ve noticed a higher demand in Kyou lately. With blink tanking you don’t have to worry about all his nonsense enfeebling added effects and Malignance gear makes him pretty much non threatening with AoE. Point him at the group and Bravado is dealt with. Add all that to decent DD capacity and it’s a smooth run.

I fell for this myth back when R15 was a "decent" relic. I was gonna make one anyways, but I noticed even with a R7 Heishi at the time, R15 Kikoku was till behind it slightly. I thought maybe with low buffs (sitting in tank party) it would be different, but I tried both weapons in dynamis wave 2 and basically Shun was always better than Metsu with Fudo offhand. Was pretty annoyed at that, and at some point SE is going to have to re-do all relic WS. They are just pathetic.

Told yall to not listen to Lunatone

That's right, get a Nagi instead.

I first started on mnk, then moved to nin, and yeah I will admit I have jumped on some bandwagons. I keep getting caught in the use X job I don't care for to get gear for X job I do care for over and over. I made kikoku a long time ago and was really hoping it was awesome and I was just missing something. I am only 4 NMs away from aeonic which I have already seen is gonna be better. I just hate the idea that metsu and kikoku are sub par. But I understand nin is a sub par DD comparably, and I'm not gonna fight it when I know im wrong. I am accepting y'all are probably right, so I wont kill myself trying to make metsu bestu (haha) and just enjoy it till aeonic. Thanks for the insight guys.

Its not bad to jump on a bandwagon job, never feel bad about that. This is an unbalanced game and sometimes when your on run #1000 doing same old BS content you want it done faster so you can afk in town in 1% drop gear or stuff that costs absurd amounts. However when you try to play to 'enjoy' ffxi just realize that others will not enjoy you making it harder on them, since they are generally on jobs they also hate so that content can be done faster and easier. Its a real vicious circle.....

The real key is to play ballista so you always can do the job you want in the way you want haha.

One day Ninja will rise from the ashes...

Ninjas need a big boost in mag acc, then our enfeebles might stick, we have quite a few unique ones now, that would be a start. Ninja needs an auto RR after mijin, minor, but helpful.

Migawari needs overhauled to be useful, less recast longer duration, make it actually do something.

Damage wise, a small bump would be nice, but ninja was never built to be top of the parse. It's not a glass cannon, it's supposed to provide consistent and safe slower damage.

And the ni/San wheel needs work. Something. Also remove positioning on yonin and innin.

Combine all of that, maybe we get somewhere.

Spreading the gospel of Metsu over here

metsu sure looks cool and is super consitent, thats a neat thing, plus sc properties etc.

Nin will one day get an update like mnk did, hopefully in less time span though...

Nin can main tank most, if not all omen bosses.

Every DD can “tank” omen bosses now... need a new bar.

The bar was "anything worthwhile"

Most DDs cant tank omen bosses without near BiS gear. Nin can. Not to mention any strat where you want to rely heavily on subtle blow nin is the best option for a tank.

So basically never. Look believe it or not i’d like for NIN to find it’s place. That place is not currently tanking no matter how niche a situation you want to create. Even in a subtle blow low man case you could argue MNK would be a better choice not to mention you are having to TRY and create a NEED for a NIN tank. That in and of itself is kind of bad design (not by you just as a principle).

If the one role we can semi agree on as a player base that NIN fills it’s in a very low man minimal support as light DD sort of tank. That’s fine but what we all know it needs is something to offer when it is in a normal group or alliance setting. The best and easiest way for this to happen is to let it get better at one of its aspects be it nuking or melee DD or enfeebling. But what I don’t think it will be again is a decent tank without lots of changes to either current and future Mob mechanics or ninja/shadow mechanics. And trying to pretend like it’s doing any real tanking currently does not help the cause.

While i agree nin needs some QoL love... the problem is similar to mnk before mnk buffs. The problem wasnt mnk, the problem was the community. Nin is a valuable and useful tank with numerous tools of mitigation, as well as a DD with similar tools. The community doesnt want to value this, doesnt mean it doesnt exist.

Nin is still your best tank for things you do not want using TP moves, or things that have near 1shots in a lowman setup, such as Odin HTBF.

Saying the community is to blame for why a job isn't doing hot makes no sense tbh. Monk was bad because SE didn't know what to do with it. It had no real WS worth a damn and would just suffer from having no useful JA or real damage. Before monk got it fix months ago the job was is a spot nin is now. What a monk could do a DRK WAR SAM DRG could do much easier and put out twice the damage. That isnt a community thing it was a game thing. People keep saying the community is what makes jobs bad but that simply isn't true otherwise SE would've just left job as it was a year or so ago. I'm with mala if you have to find a niche matter for a job to be good then it has a problem. Personally SE should just buff its DD and call it a day. Almost every high end mob in game has some kinda shadow wipe AOE or is a caster type. NIN has the same problem its always had with tanking now its just worse. During 75 cap it was notice and SE pretty much ignored it. If you wanna say subtle blow fights then i'd rather take a monk. Both are gonna take the same damage you don't need to be a best in slot DD to tank like nin can on omen bosses. All jobs pretty much have the same DT set so that changes nothing. Mnk will put out way more damage speeding up a fight than nin can just simple. Wish this wasn't the case but it is anything a nin can tank run or hell pld can tank better.

War/drk/insertDDhere cannot do what a monk can, and never could. No DD has the subtle blow monk does, nor the HP monk does. SE superbuffed MNK beyond what is reasonable, but that doesnt matter because its a PvE game. Monk still has its major benefits, but also competes with the upsides of other jobs competitively.

The problem is almost entirely the community. It values big numbers over actual utility.

DRK says hi.

That would be Monk. Capped SB, Highest HP, Highest Meva, AM3 Empyrean, Penance Chi Blast, and a Truck worth of damage in Impetus. NIN wish it could mitigate TP moves like Monk. Sorry, I love NIN but the only thing it shines on as a tank is when your opponent uses single target moves that can be negated with shadows. So AAGK for instance (you wont take a single point of damage vs an enemy like him). Any monster that can wipe your shadows or deal damage through them, you could just bring a Monk for superior damage and higher survival. NIN would be useful for things where Migawari can eat severe moves (AMAN Trove Mimic, Odin HTBF as mentioned), but since they have other TP moves that can go through your shadows, its a moot point. NIN is in a bad spot because SE is keeping it at the midway point between a nuker, debuffer, DD, and weak tank, instead of just committing to one or two roles.

SE is way too enamored with Ninjutsu as a whole, which makes it pretty annoying as well. I would be okay with the ninjutsu side of Ninja if it wasn't generally a complete waste of time to cast. If they doubled the potency strength of Elemental Ninjutsu, and raised the cap/value on stuff like Yurin, Yain, Kakka, Myoshi, Gekka, and Jubaku, would be interesting. I swear Futae could be so much more useful if it stacked with every ninjutsu spell and was a 1:00 re-use timer. As it stands, the only useful niche with NIN right now is if you give it Malaise + Frailty and have it spam Blade: Chi.

Maybe if you bad other jobs can't do what monk can. Monk has subtle blow thats it over the other jobs. My drk is get same hp if not more than a monk with a SC and drain 3. Just like monk can get hp up DRK can also. They didn't buff it beyond reasonable at all. The job is switching between two weapons based on a JA no other DD that I know of is doing that. The community values results and making things work right so they dont just fail all day. You saying the community is the reason SE added AOE to every mob in game or making shadows what it is dumb tbh. Community didn't make nin damage what it is SE did that. Community didn't make RUN what it is SE did. SE doesn't know and hasn't known what it wants NIN to do since rdm/nin became as thing hell even before that tbh. You saying the community values big numbers over utility is right and wrong. People value the big damage but also know what utility is useful and useless. If I wanted something that was gonna be an mp sponge and do loser damage making a fight longer and more dangerous i'd take a nin. If I want a job that's gonna be an MP sponge and do great damage ill take a monk or insert DD here. Also people are trying to make nin better alot of people have tried for years so don't try to down play what the community has been doing for NIN people want it to be great at things like tanking or DD but SE has it being pulled from all sides from tanking to nuking to melee. SE need to focus on one thing and just stick with it.