hey guys,

I'm currently lvling NIN on a 2nd character, need some advice as to what the best gear and food is at what lvls. Right now since i'm still in the dunes and there isn't much +eva gear to get at, have been focusing on +AGI, however, I don't really notice too much of a difference in getting whiffed on even with squid sushi where my AGI = +16 to base stat. I was told by someone awhile ago that for every +2 to a base stat = +1 to the corresponding combat stat skill and every +5 combat stat = +1 combat stat skill. So the proposed formula is:

+2 AGI = +1 Evasion skill
+5 Evasion = +1 Evasion skill
+1 Evasion Skill = +1 Evasion skill

*also a general "rule of thumb" is that if your combat skill is capped that any additional skill lvls will stack on top of the cap.

Now the problem is that, not much of this has been proven, I've tested it with STR and how that related to ATK and the forumla works in that sense (except that +ATK gear will give you the + combat stat w/o any conversion) I guess the best thing would be to go solo tough mobs and see how many times i get whiffed on using jack o lanterns vs. squid sushi.

The other thing is hate, I'm playing as a mithra and have a real hard time keeping hate against DD (mostly blms and rngs) of course this is the dunes we're talking about and DD are prone to go buckwild w/o a care in teh world as to whether they pull hate off the tank or not, but i'm considering possibly investing in either +DEX, +STR, or +ATK as opposed to AGI being that mithras have hi base AGI as is, in an attempt to do more damage and pull more hate.

Other stats I've heard are improtant to a NIN is +haste, -spell int rate, and HP. Though I've been told at endgame is more when +HP , +DEF, and +VIT come into play over +AGI, and +Evasion, which makes sense because there's no way a god will sit there and wiff on you while you wait to get more shadows up, so you have to have enough +VIT, +HP, and +DEF to survive a "spike".

Haste seems like it would be pretty sweet, however most of the +haste gear takes the place of other sweet pieces of gear. Leaping boots / Fuma Khayan. Survival Belt / Speed Belt. Also, I've heard that the +8% you get from combining these 2 items is barely even noticable to the point where they're worth the price tag they come with.

I've been trying to focus mainly on Agi and Evasion, and but I still get busted up a lot and have my problems with hate, just wondering what some of the mroe seasoned NINs have to say about gear and food and what stats to boost, things you maybe would've done differently when you were a newb NIN. any and all info provided is a major help.

Thanks

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i don't understand why ninja's focus on the agi trait, agi doesnt help you get more hate.

imo i would go with attack and enmity stuff for earrings and rings and waist and use evasion in the main body parts, also you need acc to hit to get hate...but im not a ninja just sharing my opinion if i was. (this is if your tanking)

??

I appreciate your feedback tho, I do have a bunch of +dex and +atk gear from lvling war, those may help me hold hate... Just not sure if going full DD setup is worth the the -agi/evasion

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personally i think that agi is a lot more important before 37 and ni. when you only have 6 shadows of ichi (3 from instial pre batle cast) 3 from recast and then you hope and pray your timer comes up soon the agi does help a lot.

However, once you have ni you have so many more shadows and i have swapped out my agi rings for sniper's ring and a mermaids ring. i have o kote's for +20 attack and use the best katana's i can buy for the level.

My food of choice right now is dorado suish.

Dorado Sushi 12 30m 　Dex 5 　acc 15% 　 racc 15% 　 　Resist Sleep
Enmity+3

This food helps me a lot more then jack's but it only last 30 minutes.

I"m a 46 nin right now.

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75brd 75nin
bastok rank 10
cop completed zm 15

i was thinking once i got 37 (Ni,Ichi) i would start focusing on DD STR+ and DEX+ cause w/haste you can pretty much have either spell up @ time to cast again or that dumb? (20nin)

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I beat FF. Maats Cap is over rated.




BLMAF2:3/5
RDMAF2:2/5
BSTAF2:5/5(lies!hi2ublacksage)

so now you're all saying that it's really all about atk and dex? why doesn't that seem right to me lol

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The thing about haste gear Jim is it works 2 fold. Not only does it speed up how fast your attacks are, but there is usually a noticable effect on recast timers.

Personally, I went with atk gear so far, with the exception of earrings. Considering up to 37 you will more than likely want a voke buddy no matter how good your evasion is.

Oh and on the topic of sushi, it's pretty worthless in the dunes. Since its % based you're not getting anywhere near the benefit of something like Rice dumplings or Jacks. Look up the dumplings Jim, they should do what you're looking for atm.

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Karma.

thanks for the help kwechi ^^

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i disagree with str and dex except for on yoru weaponskill. i would load up on acc and food that help with acc. at the dunes the other poster is right suishi is not worth it but at higher levels it is better.

Jacks are cheap bout 4k and they last 3 hours at the dunes i used them.

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75brd 75nin
bastok rank 10
cop completed zm 15

i was just looking at food on somepage.com.. is there anything that gives atk, acc, and eva? Also, what earings and rings would you guys use? dex and atk/-eva?

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+eva/-atk earrings.

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Karma.

at your lvl the agi rings (lvl 14 or so) and silver rings +1 ( - attack + agi)

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75brd 75nin
bastok rank 10
cop completed zm 15

In my opinion, go with as much evasion and accuracy as you can afford.
Regarding your hate problems, don't worry about it too much till you get the Ni tier of elemental spells. Before level 40ish there's usually always a paladin in your group anyway who does the tanking, at least that's how it always went for me in those levels. The Ni elemental spells will help a great deal in keeping hate.
Later on when you're in the 60s you get access to a lot of enmity gear, it works really well, NIN gets a lot cheaper at that point because you won't have to use the elemantal wheel anymore to hold hate.
As for your haste question, you never have to sacrifice other equipment slots for haste: if you can afford haste gear, put the necessary equipment changes in your utsusemi macro, then let them switch back to offense/evasion gear when you're done casting. And yes, +haste doesn't really give a great cut on your recast time unless you really stack up on haste gear (+2% haste = -1 sec off utsusemi timer). You can't really do this effectively till the end-game when you can wear god gear and other high level unaffordable stuff.
Here are foods that I use:
Jack'o Lantern: acc+10 eva+10 chr-10 last 3hr (btw: the myth that -chr has a negative effect on your hate keeping is utter BS, don't let anyone tell you otherwise)
Navarin: Evasion +5 STR+3 ATK+30 last 3hr (Tender Navarin is slightly better but really rare to find)

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macro haste gear into your ni and ichi macro's. really fuma's are the only haste gear i own and at this level still best foot gear imo (haste 3%). When your at the dunes there is no need to even worry about it yet.

oh and i meant silver earings in my other post.

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75brd 75nin
bastok rank 10
cop completed zm 15

cool, yeh, i got silver earings and agi rings, just making sure that was copasetic and that it shouldn't be focusing more on dex and attk. what about headgear?

kingdom's headband: def 7, hp+6, agi+1
bone mask+1: def 8, evasion+1, vs fire-3
erudites headband: def 4, int+1, evasion+3

heh thanks for the advice guys, and sorry for asking a bunch fo stupid questions.

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- Odds are +evasion, like +accuracy, doesnt scale linear. +skill for both weapons and evasion give returns in a more linear way. You cant get a 100% evasion rate - low lvl stuff outside jeuno will still hit you @75 heh.

- Speed belt + Haidate + fuma == rdm haste == 37 second Ni. Can get it down to like 22 seconds too heh. Which is only half of what +haste is good for... Unji + Unsho + Koga Tekko + Haidate + Speed belt + fuma + haste + march x2 Makes double attacks bleed together like kraken club and can get hate back from Hundred Fists heh.

- For most mobs you dont need a voke buddy to bring utsu 1 up at low lvl. You need a RDM or WHM with Slow until you get Hojo heh.


At higher levels pure evasion build for EXP PTs is lame. WAR can blink tank most exp mobs with 0 evasion rate and gimped utsu heh.

Learn to balance your gear with the appropriate haste, attack, str, accuracy, evasion for the type of mob being fought. If you do good damage, and even with +0 enmity, most DD will have trouble pulling aggro off you with their voke (until lv73+ where mobs are VT and douchebag monks with blackbelts and indras get overpowered and make you spend extra money on enmity haha).

As far as sushi or attack food is concerned, use the same rules that apply to all melees for deciding what food to eat.... Madrigal + minuet + attack food is the ideal setup. Blade: Jin does like 600 - 1000 to lv75 exp stuff with good gear and madrigal/minuet/curry.

When they calculate damage and acc, they probably compare evasion skill vs weapon skill level (like EM vs EM = 50% roll), then add some evasion bonus/acc bonus and finally add some stats modifier (agi vs dex).

None of the curve are linear for sure and it's easy to notice when you get a ton of boost in one stats.



Lol.

Too bad for the healer, but recasting utsu prevent us from doing dmg. I hope they dont mind if we tank on berserk

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Main: War75/Sam63/Blm71/Rng45
Sub: Nin37/Thf37/Whm37/Mnk30
Three nation: Done Zilart: Done CoP: Done

hey dude, thanks for the insightful post, i was hoping you'd see this and lend me some advice. I quoted you on this one part because i found it very interesting.. and something else i was reading up about just before, when you talking about evasion scaling in a non linear way, do you mean that it's based off of like a lvl base? for example, someone who has gear with +20 evasion at lvl 20 would be getting much different results than someone with +20 evasion who's lvl 65? and if this is the case, how the eff does one figure out what will be stuff to wear?

It sounds like as with any job, your best bet is to have a few different setups and make equip change macros or swap pieces of gear in as you need them for the proper setup as to what you're going out to tank/melee for. Which I guess I was expecting lol. just hard to choose and plan accordingly for my next wave of gear

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yeah fucking unicorn jse hp latent shit is making it so i have to bring utsu tools to exp PTs. WHAT THE FUCK

Yeah +20 evasion is more significant at low level, the same way +5 str means alot more when you have 10 base str and the mob has 10 vit or whatever. But im talking more about the difference between evasion returns at 75.

For example at 75 try going to valley of sorrows and fighting the EP stuff there with +0 evasion. The evasion rate will be total ass even with merits into evasion skill etc.

From +0 -> +40 eva you should get more boost to actual evasion rate than going from +40 -> +70.

Late ~> end game, gear is about ability moreso than +5 evasion. Thats why af2 rocks... except warrior.

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Karma.

Haha, i never thought about it that way. I'm gonna get dusk set now and save some tool.
Arrgh...I used to only cry for haste, but whm are gonna get pissed at me for sure if I cry for hp too now.






I played a lot with with WarAF2, and its not as bad as I use to make it sound. Body is pretty good at tanking. It doesnt have the best tanking stats, but not by much, and the +10atk is nice to deal dmg while tanking. It's useful for anything but xp, and HNM tanking (which never happen). The pant and gloves are nice DD gear already, the head is average, but I still equip it to get more parrying skillup when I tank lowbie mob. And for the boot, I use them in xp party pretty often now because I do tank on berserk a lot. AF1 boot are still better for pure DD, but if I can save a lot of damage with AF2, I think it might be better sometime.

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Main: War75/Sam63/Blm71/Rng45
Sub: Nin37/Thf37/Whm37/Mnk30
Three nation: Done Zilart: Done CoP: Done

Actually thats the first time I've seen somoene post how good it is lol. It's the whole warrior as tank thing that throws me off. I mean if it were truely meant to tank, you'd think SE would make war survive a few hits from a god.

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Karma.

nah WAR can tank serious HNM (Cop wyrms included).


A PLD without buffs and defense gear/food gets raped just as badly as war heh. Wouldnt use WAR af2 for HNM stuff though heh.

I tanked on warrior from 1-60 for my static (actually, 1-30 were with pickup but w/e), and we always got more than 5k/xp per hour. I tanked solo/duo/trio after 70 and it worked pretty well with a brd. At 75, most of my pt consisted of many warrior and rng that spam WS and get stuck with the hate till someone else use WS.

I never tried to tank god, and I don't have the right gear to do it atm, but I'm pretty sure war/nin can do it.

Genbu helmet, kirin osote, byako pant (utsu recast, hp and def), haste belt for utsu recast, jelly ring/BQR, unicorn boot (nice def, hp, and haste), AF2 glove for vit and atk.

If you add defense food to that, your vit and def wont be too far from a pld, and you have both utsu you can rely on. You just need a few more thief to SaTa you and you will probably be fine to tank.

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Main: War75/Sam63/Blm71/Rng45
Sub: Nin37/Thf37/Whm37/Mnk30
Three nation: Done Zilart: Done CoP: Done