Nin/ Rdm or Blm

[Raineer]

For colbiri all it takes is a couple casts as /anything. Cast on a spider (or whatever) and then cast on the bird. If the MDB is significant it will fail, since it's not a "maybe-resist" sort of thing, it's a solid % down effect.

As for Kuftal crabs, they are resistant to Paralyze as any RDM5X will tell you, and that may explain why ice was resisting as well.

I still don't see it working "as well" at 75, due to the fact other DD's are so, sooo much stronger. There's a reason it works so well in 50-early 60's. Once you get to 60 and pickup the extra MAB /BLM can offer (and you need that boost, to ramp up damage), then you lose a bit of FC and it's a tradeoff. Possibly with the haste gear available towards 75 this can improve, but you're still going up against a mountain of damage from everyone else.

[Krye]

My typical party (this is with good LS-mates, mind you) I would do roughly 40-45% dmg per mob quite easily.

Is this number exaggerated? If that's accurate, I'll play DD instead of tank on nin for the appropriate levels.

[Raineer]

No it wasn't, typical cast would be ~125 per ninjitsu (this was a looong time ago, not 100% sure on the precise amount). You'd always get 2 rounds of the wheel in per mob, sometimes partly through 3 if there wasn't a skillchain. I did have HQ staves too.

That's 1200-1400 per mob, at a minimum (remember, the mob will always half-resist one element.) I'm sure you can find a site with the HP figures for mobs, but I remember in the REALLY noob days of killing robber crabs with Freeze SC's that a 1000-1200 freeze burst would do the remaining 30-40% to the crab.

Trust me though, with those numbers you *will* be tanking, it's just nice you get to DD at the same time.

[Osede]

when i'm PLing my nin from 40 to 75. I'm just spamming ninjutsu ni with subbed rdm from 40-50. however at 50, i found sub war with berserk do same amount of damage lol... but it might due to how the skill calculate at lvl 50 and the mobs i'm fighting at. But at that time i'm also didn't own any staves yet so I can't continue to spamming ninjutsu with less resist at that point

while my friend who set pt with my rng did try it for once during we lvling in kuftal. It did work great, but it just quite annoying that had to do equip swap for every 2 secs >.>

[Raineer]

Are you geared for it though? Like...INT in every slot that doesn't hold MAB, moldavite, INT food, etc? 50 sounds *really* low... Also without staves you will see many more resists, and obviously miss the 10-15% boost from them. Still just staves don't make up that difference.

[evilpaul]

I used it a few levels while taking NIN to 75 (post-ToAU). An unresisted Ni-wheel does about the same damage as Freeze, but resisted a lot on if you were overhunting even with HQ staves. I tried it once in the 40s and again at 51 as I have HQ staves from BLM, and wanted to put them to use. Try again at 53-54, and you'll be getting the whole wheel off mostly unresisted. Also, the crab bubble veil or whatever is magic damage -50%, so you'll need to have someone Dispel that or you won't do any decent damage.

The only thing I've done with /RDM at 75 was holding Feeler Antlion until it popped out Alastor on a Rostrum Pumps run. Haste+Refresh+March+Ballad let's you spam Dispel/Blind pretty much constantly. I couldn't say I had much use for Ni/San spells there. I only have Hyoton: San unlocked and that's pretty much just for use on Puks at Mamool Ja staging point when they blind me. And in retrospect, I wouldn't bother with it as it gets resisted 3/4 times.

I think it could be useful at the Limbus bosses, maybe. But with BLM leveled and mostly done with gear/meriting I don't get to go to those as NIN.

I'd also like to try it with Fin Sushi, which will let you still hit things with Katanas when you aren't casting or during timer cooldowns.

[Sesshoumaru]

My typical party (this is with good LS-mates, mind you) I would do roughly 40-45% dmg per mob quite easily.

Is this number exaggerated? If that's accurate, I'll play DD instead of tank on nin for the appropriate levels.

For colbiri all it takes is a couple casts as /anything. Cast on a spider (or whatever) and then cast on the bird. If the MDB is significant it will fail, since it's not a "maybe-resist" sort of thing, it's a solid % down effect.

As for Kuftal crabs, they are resistant to Paralyze as any RDM5X will tell you, and that may explain why ice was resisting as well.

I still don't see it working "as well" at 75, due to the fact other DD's are so, sooo much stronger. There's a reason it works so well in 50-early 60's. Once you get to 60 and pickup the extra MAB /BLM can offer (and you need that boost, to ramp up damage), then you lose a bit of FC and it's a tradeoff. Possibly with the haste gear available towards 75 this can improve, but you're still going up against a mountain of damage from everyone else.

the 40% damage in a party with well geared DD 50-60, from my testing so far 50-52, is definitely possible.

Its almost conclusive as of right now that most people think nin/mage post 63 is just a bad idea in a normal situation, I'm of this mind until some one post some SS and proves otherwise.

[Sesshoumaru]

Ok gave the Boyhada Tree(sp?) a whirl lvl 52-53 2.5k in.

@52 for about 5k me and the party did bark spiders, setup was pld nin/blm(me) sam(sobo well geared) brd, replaced before we moved camp with a drg, drg(well geared, replaced the brd,) Rdm, was replaced before we moved camp with a cor, and lastly a smn.

So this what the 3 different setups.

Pld, Nin, Sam, Brd, Rdm, Smn.
" " " Drg " " .
" " " " Cor " .

Well let me say this Kuftal crabs, and crabs in general suck, Spiders suck. While these all have their normal drawbacks for a nin/mage your dealing with shell buff spam from crabs and the annoyingly strong slow from spiders. Also both the kuftal crabs( only these for some reason) and the spiders seems to have some amount of innate resistance. However the spiders still had consistently higher numbers then the crabs.

On the spiders my damage ranged from 130-160, unlike the crabs which were just out right high resist to some spells and practically none to others the spiders seems to just resist slightly to all with a large resistance (about half to 3/4) to the earth and lightning spells.

after about a dreary 5k due to the suckyness of spiders and the fact that they link to sound and people tend to lvl their npcs off them as well as bst come to lvl on them around the 60s, making it impossible to get a good pulling rhythm going, we moved camp to the crab/crawler/rabbit/mandy area. mostly because another jackoff leveling their NPC decide that that had to camp the spiders at the first tree entrance, which put a bst lvlin in the right tunnel/ little cave like room, a npc at entrance tunnel and a npc in the left tunnel system leading to the deeper parts of tree.

one trick for spiders, which gets a little annoying, is to step out of their slow range and cast from there, however there are problems with this.
1) you end up having to run in for buffs, which was ok, a little annoying when u get hit with slow while doing it but still ok.
2) if you pull hate the spider might decide to come to you and slow anyways.
3) even using distance pluggin 12 distance isn't always 12 distance as to say some time its off and your closer then you think.

so to recap lvl 51-52 Kuftal crabs and boy tree spiders suck, better to go to QSC for beetles and anticans, just bring echo drops.

@52 robber crab, only killed one, and Mandy (Mourioche (sp?)

crab was like a kuftal crab but didnt resist water and fire as bad, dunno why maybe cus it was just a low one but didn't bother to test any more.

Mandy, these mobs were damn easy to kill and were perfect for nin/mage except for their AOE sleep which wasn't a huge problem unless they got spam happy with it.
Tip: try and time wheel to be able to nuke away the last 25% quickly.

the damage on these was 150-170ish with the usual resist to earth and lightning. once you hit lvl 53 your damage stabilizes even more.

@53 the Boyhada tree (sp?) Mandy (Mourioche(sp?)

mandy ease and fun. pld tank suggested. Also rdm and brd are not needed for these unlike crabs. and no need for a whm either which would be nice for spiders. smn and Cor work excellently for backline against these guys. Smns have time to use lower lvl cures as opposed to whms who can cure bomb. Cors don't need to dispel and get a bonus from smn. another nice thing is that aside from Smns using fenrir's BP and etude from brd, who tend to whine about having to cast etude even when they are /whm and not pulling, Cors offer a usefull buff for nin/mage Corsair's Roll.

The one time I did get hit it was for a whopping 150ish each and these attack fast and hard, given I was nin/mage and didn't have my eva gear etc on but still mandy just are not nin friendly, especially when they kick attack and counter.

recap bring a pld don't need a whm, rdm, or brd to do well. still need some kind of refresh.

[Raineer]

Pre-60 you'll do alot better as /RDM, there's 0 reason to /BLM (except the extra ~2 int you get).

I'm surprised at the "if you pull hate" thing though...typically I was intentionally the tank, and the parties were like me/dd/dd/dd/brd/mage.

[Sesshoumaru]

You are probably right I will try out rdm on my next run there actually wasn't any particular reason for me subbing blm over rdm then the minor int boost as I'm elvaan and every bit helps, ele seal sleep (which I have not had to use not even once), and icespikes which since I wasn't tank in the pts I was in I didn't use.

Also Pld was there and DDs were slacking. There isn't exactly a plethora of people leveling atm around my range, least on my server. If you noticed in garl I was easily tanking with a war/nin as backup just in case. Besides liek I stated in the post nin is not a viable choice for mandy as they hit hard, fast and can easily wipe all 4 shadows in one round (hth kick counter) might even have double attack but I'm not sure. now if I was nin/war I'd say it wasnt that huge of a deal but it sucks to be mid cast of one of your ninjustsu like doku, the poison, or even one of the ni elemental ninjutsu and get shadows wiped quickly then be in the red c4 u get your shadows back up.

1) no eva gear and while you can swap it in it can get hairy even still.
2)/mage does not take hits well.
3) wheel casting can delay your ability to cast utsu.
4) this is really only when fighting mandy hth kick counter tp moves deadly combo, given mandy will spam lol tp moves but still a way to die.

And while nin/mage can hold hate by damage alone it is not reliable and a mandy on the loose can totally rapeyour healer in 2-3 seconds especially with a paperhp job like smn.

1) Nin/mage will loose hate, especially between wheels even if you time your wheel well to do constant damage with little break between wheel one and two.
2) on resisted spells its easy to lose hate for a moment.
3) the higher you go the more other DD catch up, nin/mage does not scale as well as other DD do. Thus relying on damage for tanking becomes less stable as you progress.


spiders rape nin/mage tanking wise. slow will simply kill you and even with a whm erasing the hell out of you it just isn't nice, also they can go through shadows and one shot you while your in the middle of casting. crabs will be offer even more problems with your tanking even if the rdm is fast with dispell as I have seen a rdm dispell their shell buff for them to put it right back up. I also definiately do not see nin tanking coli at all aside from them constantly stealing your food, which they will prolly do anyways, pecking flurry to the face will be insta death if your mid cast.

Basically on nin/mage your trying to do as much damage as possible and the higher your get the more tanking and damage dealing will conflict. also for shorter fights where people are encouraged not to hold back for the sake of chaining nin/mage drops in tanking viability.

As it is colis are tough for nin/war to keep hate with and if this MDB business is true then nin/mage has no chance tanking and may even fail at DD. so before lvl 52 perhaps it viable depending on what your hunting but I won't vouche for nin/mages tanking post 52 especially when you consider the possible camps for that level, not talking about wotg cus I don't know any wotg camp areas.

[Raineer]

I guess it's a manner of picking targets that work best for you. You'll see a large difference in /BLM and /RDM for keeping shadows up (as well as a delay in recast for the wheel.) If I was fighting mandies who counter alot, I don't think I would engage them. I believe when I did this on beetles in CN I simply didn't engage anyways, sure you can't parry but keep in mind you have the luxury of never having TP. This means you can swap to Auster's Staff when you have shadows and Terra when you don't.

I wouldn't think you "need" /BLM just because you're elvaan. From your posts it sounds like you are hitting for plenty of damage as-is. Don't forget that /RDM also allows for Regen and Cures. If you lose hate, then cure people and you'll have hate back. I typically would use like a Regen and Cure2 once per battle, ballad will take care of that easy, even once every couple fights. Like I said, pre-60 the choice is /RDM, you're gimping yourself otherwise due to the loss of FC it's Haste effect. I think you'll see a big difference in the crucial "on the pull" moments, which is certainly the hardest part of NIN/mage. The party has to know you can't voke and needs to wait like ~5 seconds for you to get 3 casts out. After that, hate shouldn't leave you. As a tip I tried to pull if I could, and I pulled with Jubaku to get it out of the way. Keep in mind we've verified in the enmity thread the puller gets a hate bonus. Use it if you need it.

Just keep in mind that all your hate comes from casting, in-between wheels you can cast debuffs too. As stated you can cast "Blind" magic as well for more hate. Even if you lose hate for a tick at the beginning, it really shouldn't take long to get it back. Once you get to 56, AF head helps a bunch. Ninjutsu Earring makes a difference as well. Ninjutsu/Moldy is the combination you want.

[Sesshoumaru]

lol I'm not going to make this a /blm vs /rdm discussion and I never said that /rdm was inferior to /blm just that I decided to test out blm first. Nor have I said elvaan needed blm either all I said was I was using it because I was elvaan and the minor boost might help, again I have not disgarded /rdm I just have not got around to using it. However since your such an avid proponent of /rdm I'll make sure to test it out in my next session. Also it was more then the int that had me choosing /blm as the first sub to test.

You are probably right I will try out rdm on my next run there actually wasn't any particular reason for me subbing blm over rdm then the minor int boost as I'm elvaan and every bit helps, ele seal sleep (which I have not had to use not even once), and icespikes which since I wasn't tank in the pts I was in I didn't use.

Let me correct the last staement a little, the first part as Nin/mage I was actually main tank but I ended up not using icespike because at any given point I could just yo yo the mob between me and the rest of the pt and get shadows back up. That I'd have to say is the strong point of Nin/mage the fact that they can control hate and back off if need be but still be able to return hate onto themselves.

I guess it's a manner of picking targets that work best for you. You'll see a large difference in /BLM and /RDM for keeping shadows up (as well as a delay in recast for the wheel.) If I was fighting mandies who counter alot, I don't think I would engage them. I believe when I did this on beetles in CN I simply didn't engage anyways, sure you can't parry but keep in mind you have the luxury of never having TP. This means you can swap to Auster's Staff when you have shadows and Terra when you don't.

I wouldn't think you "need" /BLM just because you're elvaan. From your posts it sounds like you are hitting for plenty of damage as-is. Don't forget that /RDM also allows for Regen and Cures. If you lose hate, then cure people and you'll have hate back. I typically would use like a Regen and Cure2 once per battle, ballad will take care of that easy, even once every couple fights. Like I said, pre-60 the choice is /RDM, you're gimping yourself otherwise due to the loss of FC it's Haste effect. I think you'll see a big difference in the crucial "on the pull" moments, which is certainly the hardest part of NIN/mage. The party has to know you can't voke and needs to wait like ~5 seconds for you to get 3 casts out. After that, hate shouldn't leave you. As a tip I tried to pull if I could, and I pulled with Jubaku to get it out of the way. Keep in mind we've verified in the enmity thread the puller gets a hate bonus. Use it if you need it.

Just keep in mind that all your hate comes from casting, in-between wheels you can cast debuffs too. As stated you can cast "Blind" magic as well for more hate. Even if you lose hate for a tick at the beginning, it really shouldn't take long to get it back. Once you get to 56, AF head helps a bunch. Ninjutsu Earring makes a difference as well. Ninjutsu/Moldy is the combination you want.

I do pull and I do use ninjutsu earring, However The idea of swapping in terra's for utsu did slip by so ty for that. I actually pull with hojo which is similar to a brd pulling with elegy and it places terra's on me as I also use staves in my debuff macros. Another reason I use hojo to pull is that many of the mobs I was fightign are strong to earth, or weak to ice, except stupid kuftal crabs.

But a regualr pull would go like this:

Hojo pull, if no resist great, > At camp either jubaku or hojo if its up, probably wont be yet, > enter into wheel one> use either jubaku or hojo while the mob is debuffed to that element> Finish wheel one > cast doku if time cast kurayami > start wheel two> mob is usually dead, if not reapply hojo juba etc during wheel two if you see mob with a lot of hp for some reason as your going through the wheel. However if the mob has a small amount of hp doku if wheel isnt ready to start then just start wheel 3.

I will try /rdm out next time I promise and see how things go.

[Seditedi]

I don't see why you wouldn't use /RDM at any level.
MAB I vs MAB II isn't a huge difference and you probably only lose 2-3 points of INT tops.
Fast Cast II will help more than MAB II in the long run and you'll definitely have a more versatile sub that provides Magic Defense Bonus as well.

[Raineer]

I didn't mean to come of as a "strong proponent" to anything, I just don't want you to have bad experiences with the setup. If you're going to toss as much gil at this as it takes, might as well play it perfect The reason why I advocate Jubaku on the pull is due to casting speed. Those first few seconds of the pull you neeeeed as much hate as possible, as I'm sure you are well aware, so all Ni spells are key. I'm 99% sure you get the hate for Jubaku whether it resists or not. Needless to say, you're still a NIN tank so Hojo would certainly be my very next spell cast.

As for Seditedi's post, I can agree with that as well. Keeping /RDM for the cures is also really a good idea.

[Sesshoumaru]

from speculation nin/mage might fall flat on its face once it hits colis so who knows perhaps it will be viable for irukas but again I really doubt this being a long haul sort of thing. Probably will hit 60 and peter out if even that, DD especially 2 handers have come a long ways since the hay day of nin/mage.

Edit: logged on and switched to /rdm... its a 1 int difference at this level lol. with fuma swift and /rdm my recast for utsu: ni and ichi is 38 and 26. I'm goign to try and throw a pt together and test /rdm out tonight.

[Seditedi]

It's 4 less MAB with MAB I compared to MAB II. Definitely worth your while to use /RDM as you're not really losing that much damage from 4 MAB.

[Sesshoumaru]

@53-54 6k on 53 4k on 54

Camp was in wajouam woodlands (sp?) and we hunted colis.

party was 53-54 setup was like this nin/war nin/rdm blux2 war brd. Odd pt setup but it worked and was the only jobs available.

well the MDB thing about colis is true they out wright resisted every nuke I did. damage was terrible it was between 10-90. Now I thought maybe it was just me being really low compared to the coli but that wasn't it. the other Dd in the party blew right past me in damage even the nin/war.

Once I leveled to 54 I thought maybe once I cap my ninjutsu thign would get better...
Well they didn't my highest nuke of the night was an amazing 93.

So is nin/mage DOA when it comes to colis? I'd have to say yes, unless the rest of your DD in the party are gimped your just going to feel foolish wasting money when the other DDs are blowing past you, one sturmwind from the war was making up about 30% of my damage a fight and his regualr swings and crits just made me cringe at the thought of my damage.

Btw a ty goes out to my pt for putting up with the low numbers.

[Raineer]

That sucks :/ There wasn't ToAU when I levelled NIN/mage so I have no point of reference. I used that setup all the way to Cape Terrigan before I just pretty much got bored of it and wanted to swing katanas again.

[Sesshoumaru]

yeah well it was fun while it lasted but when a nin/war out parses a DD on colis with no food and no tp you just can't say that is a viable DD lol. I guess you can say colis are the flip side of crabs and conquest mobs, weak to melee strong to magic. However I still think a party of 5nin/rdm with a smn will be able to do some serious ninjutsu burn in conquest areas smn can use fenrir stat buff and pull/ hold mobs with carby or something while the nins rape everything, or maybe a cor for exp roll and azure roll ( the magic accuracy one). Out of all the burn type parties it wouldn't probably be the only one that would benefit from having a brd lol.