Straight Tanking Kirin on NIN

[Despain]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and would just like to know if its possible. Simply what I want to know is if its possible, what gear would I use. I was thinking the ideal would be DRK for the hate that it generates. Also realize that Stonega is going to be a problem, and NIN doesn't really get that much access to a ton of Magic Damage%-.

Any NINs out there ever tried this? Or is it just simply impossible?

[chapstick]

Its possible, and NIN gets access to plenty of -magic% gear, not to mention the stonega damage will be spread between all the people beating on it. I've only seen it done back when /BRD worked, but i think /drk could still do the job.

[BerenTebogo]

If you're melee burning it in gear enough to not get owned by face to face heat breath spam then you're probably not going to be holding hate well.

Conversely if you're not melee burning it I don't see why you'd want to straight tank it. 1-2 unresisted breath in a row and you'll be down, that shit hurts if you're eye to eye.

[chapstick]

I remember straignt tanking it through a melee burn as RDM/NIN, just spam curing myself with occasional bind or sleep or something. He mostly uses great sandstorm and the other move just like it, but I'm pretty sure breath never did more than 500, which is pretty manageable considering it's also a very long tp move.

[Weeks]

Yeah, I've straight tanked it in a non-TP burn fight. Quite simply, it isn't worth it. You will die, and it doesn't speed the fight up that much. Instead, just get good at kiting him NIN/DRK and you'll speed the fights up a ton.

[Judai]

Kirin is pretty fucking easy to t2t. I would reccomend 3 tanks though because he can pretty much one shot ppl. NIN/DRK works fine and as long as you don't stand in his face breath isn't so bad.

We did this in an old LS and owned him pretty fast, kind of like a mini-zerg.

[orinthia]

Depending on your people present you can do both kiting and standing still tanking. Start the fight off as standing still, having sams and thfs ta+ws on you and such. When it summons a minigod start kiting while an outside pt claims and cfh the thing and let the main alli's melees help beat it down. Once thingie is dead then stop and straight tank again.

You can have pretty random results doing this. I've been in straight tanked kirin fights where my cotank and I never KO'd and hate was mostly stable on us. Other times you can just get blasted and die repeatedly. I'd have at least 1500hp so that you can take about two whirlwinds worth of dmg, maybe a little more for bit more safety (most non-taru pld/nins seem to get this much pretty easily, nin/drks need just a little more from gear). I still haven't invested much into -magic dmg or +mdb and can manage this mostly from shell5. Plds and rdms can at least cure themselves a bit (templar mace and hospitaler earring are handy for plds) and you certainly get a good return on mp with ethereal earring here. About the highest whirlwind dmg you should take is ~700 counting shell5. Breath usually doesn't reach that high. With a decent investment in +mbd and -mdmg% you should never take that much dmg though, which is a lot more crucial to non-cure tanks.

If you get caught without shadows by a deadly hold it seems to have that lovely ability to sometimes hit you for a little over your max hp... no matter how much max hp you have (fucking 2200dmg hold when I had 2100max hp, or 1600dmg hold when I had max of 1500... never fails). When you get a good rhythm with your cotank or your sams/thfs/etc are smart about shifting hate physical spam shouldn't get you though and you'll probably have an earth staff if not pld.

Do your best. Not every shell is melee heavy at times and certainly a sc+mb through a couple tanks, regardless of their job, will work and make it faster then 100% kite but add a little more risk. Even with 50% kiting it's a little faster with those moments of standing still and letting the few melees tp/sc/etc.

[RKenshin]

It's really pretty easy to straight tank.

Back in the old days when night ended I often found it easier to just straight tank rather than kite (other tanks started to do this as well). Only real thing you need is fast recasts, -magic damage gear, and a good amount of elemental resistance for wind and earth. If I remember correctly I could sit there with about -50% magic damage, and combined with march/carol and barspells I'd have over 100+ wind/earth resistance and near capped recasts (pretty easy to resist the whirlwind/sandstorm). You want to stay in this magic defense gear just about 100% of the time, except when shadows are down.

But, normally shadows are easy to keep up. And if you time things right you can throw enmity gear on in between attacks, to avoid taking full damage. When doing this the most dangerous thing is heat breath spam, but even that isn't too dangerous with those buffs. Most of the time I didn't have those kinds of buffs though, but if they're available they're good to have. Even without them though, it's rather manageable.


However we melee burn it, but even so as a melee that usually gets the most buffs (and well, has just about all the best gear/merits) I'm usually straight tanking it for long periods at times. Doing the same as above, it's usually pretty easy. On fluke bad luck where on a rare occasion Astral does massive damage and is preceded by stonega, or any other string of bad luck, and I'm the only one left to tank... Both on WAR and SAM I haven't had trouble just straight tanking for longer periods of time in between recovery. I use the same strat as I outlined above, idling in -magic gear and switching to def if needed.

We did 5 or so runs yesterday, and it was surprisingly easy to tank as SAM/WAR doing the same. Second set of Kirin runs I SAM/WAR'd at with the same results. So yeah, if I'm doing on SAM/WAR I'd imagine any tank job with the right gear/support and skill could manage it. And I've seen all of them do it too, minus RDM/NIN, but certain they'd be fine.

[Thorny]

I'm sort of curious, is each lower whirlwind/sandstorm a resist? The damage varies significantly, and I've never seen anything that I could consider a 1/16 resist. I was under the impression that because of his obscene tp regen it varied strongly with how much tp he had when it was used or was just random. Stoneskin makes it harder to judge, but I've still had it go off twice before breaking stoneskin with no resist gear and the opposite barspell up(I was using a magic dmg-50% setup counting shellra though). That would put the 2 at a combined 700 or less base damage if they weren't back to back resists @_@ RDM survivability is fine, as elvaan without hp merits idling in magic damge- the only time I die before cures go off is if I mistime ichi or ni after stonega and deadly hold goes off, and that's my own fault(though I had a deadly hold go off during astral flow once for same result =|).

[Despain]

Thanks for all the replies guys. I will take this into consideration and give it a go tomorrow :3. Only real problems I see is Sleepga and Stonega, but everything else I should be able to live through.

[Zilong]

Heat breath doesn't kill tank, 500 damage is pretty lulz

Those fucking whirlwind and sandstorm is the real ball buster.

[RKenshin]

I'm sort of curious, is each lower whirlwind/sandstorm a resist? The damage varies significantly, and I've never seen anything that I could consider a 1/16 resist.

I'm not sure actually, the damage is really, really random.

But, using the setup/gear/buffs I mentioned earlier it'd almost always hit for rather low and manageable damage... For about 100-300 most of the time, with occasional 300-500s.

[Despain]

Heat breath doesn't kill tank, 500 damage is pretty lulz

Those fucking whirlwind and sandstorm is the real ball buster.

I was thinking the same. Usually when I kite and its not night time, I just fulltime Suzaku's Sune-Ate, and Heat Breath doesn't really hurt me as much. I haven't really seen it do any jaw dropping numbers, but Great Whirlwind/Sandstorm are really deadly. I was thinking about having two Bards and a WHM in the tanking party, for double march, ballad, and carol, since I'll be subbing DRK.

Also, I was going to try to just kite Kirin until it pops all its mini gods, since this is the first time that I'd be attempting this.

[RKenshin]

Problem with heat breath is just that it's consistent hard damage. It will always do 500 damage before any reductions if you're in front of the mob, and when spammed it can just be a pain... Even when reduced.

IIRC you can spin around him and take a lot less damage from not being in its direct path, if you time it right.

[Suiram]

Heat Breath has a pretty far range but also the longest windup of any of his TP moves. I wonder if standing at max melee range you'd have enough time to run out of range when you see it. Being out of range also stuns him for a while longer than the out of range stuns of his other moves, so if you were able to make out of range you'd also be able to make it back to him without moving him.

This is just speculation by the way, it might be too far to get away from if you don't have a running start.

[RKenshin]

I think the range is too far, usually while kiting if something lands it's that. Worth a shot though.

Worse comes to worse, probably best to just try dodging to the side to avoid taking full damage (since it's a breath attack).

[Thorny]

I was thinking the same. Usually when I kite and its not night time, I just fulltime Suzaku's Sune-Ate, and Heat Breath doesn't really hurt me as much.

The sune-ate don't do anything for it by themselves, you being at an odd angle does. If you're directly in his line of sight it's 500 damage, the farther to the side of the cone you get the less it does. Regardless, any movement speed should let you outrun heat breath relatively easily since it has a long windup and 20' max range on target to go off.

Another thing to think about, a pld friend of mine with assault breastplate and mostly perfect resist gear says that he had a lot of difficulty resisting stonega(with carol and barspell) while sandstorm usually did low damage. Is a mob's magic accuracy consistant across different types of moves? Are there any tests done on this? I'm just curious if it's really worth the gear/inventory space or brd for carol for sandstorm/whirlwind or if nobody really is resisting it and the occasional high one is just 300 tp.

[Furionstormrage]

Its possible, and NIN gets access to plenty of -magic% gear, not to mention the stonega damage will be spread between all the people beating on it. I've only seen it done back when /BRD worked, but i think /drk could still do the job.

Not to derail too badly, but what's "plenty"?

Having just hit NIN75, I've been looking to use my PLD builds (Fire, Earth, Magic Damage) for NIN, replacing as needed, and I can't find more than Merman's Ears, Merman's Rings, Resentment/Lamia+1 back, Resolute Belt, Lamia Kamam+1, everything else I can find is Assault appraisals or just stuffing HP. Am I wrong?
(Not referring to resist builds, looking at a generalized Magic Damage setup)

[chapstick]

Its possible, and NIN gets access to plenty of -magic% gear, not to mention the stonega damage will be spread between all the people beating on it. I've only seen it done back when /BRD worked, but i think /drk could still do the job.

Not to derail too badly, but what's "plenty"?

Having just hit NIN75, I've been looking to use my PLD builds (Fire, Earth, Magic Damage) for NIN, replacing as needed, and I can't find more than Merman's Ears, Merman's Rings, Resentment/Lamia+1 back, Resolute Belt, Lamia Kamam+1, everything else I can find is Assault appraisals or just stuffing HP. Am I wrong?
(Not referring to resist builds, looking at a generalized Magic Damage setup)

By plenty, I meant NIN can wear enough to eat a stonega IV all by themselves and not die. Try out 2x Merman's earrings, 2x Merman's rings, and Resentment cape since it's a conquest area, then ask for Shellra V on top of that. After that, if you want to put MDB you can, but I'd just put HP and earth resist in other slots. You should easily be able to survive stonega IV with that setup.

[Furionstormrage]

Its possible, and NIN gets access to plenty of -magic% gear, not to mention the stonega damage will be spread between all the people beating on it. I've only seen it done back when /BRD worked, but i think /drk could still do the job.

Not to derail too badly, but what's "plenty"?

Having just hit NIN75, I've been looking to use my PLD builds (Fire, Earth, Magic Damage) for NIN, replacing as needed, and I can't find more than Merman's Ears, Merman's Rings, Resentment/Lamia+1 back, Resolute Belt, Lamia Kamam+1, everything else I can find is Assault appraisals or just stuffing HP. Am I wrong?
(Not referring to resist builds, looking at a generalized Magic Damage setup)

By plenty, I meant NIN can wear enough to eat a stonega IV all by themselves and not die. Try out 2x Merman's earrings, 2x Merman's rings, and Resentment cape since it's a conquest area, then ask for Shellra V on top of that. After that, if you want to put MDB you can, but I'd just put HP and earth resist in other slots. You should easily be able to survive stonega IV with that setup.

Thanks for the response. We just zerg Kirin, to save time, but I do have full Earth and Fire Resist, was just curious about general NIN Magic Defense setup, making sure I didn't overlook something obvious. 8)