Back after a long time

I've not really played since shortly after Aht Urgan released, but I'm back now for awhile, and I'm finding that a ton has changed. So far, I spent awhile getting WAR to 49 and then leveling DNC to 49 as well (since I've always enjoyed soloing). I hit 76 on NIN today (after a boneheaded moment when I got the necessary XP but had forgotten about new limit breaks).

What do NINs do these days? I've done a little reading and the impression I've gotten is that they aren't the tanks they once were and that they are more like secondary DDs now (though this started in ToAU, I guess). What role do they play in Abyssea (which I've yet to do because I need a bigger linkshell first)?

And hey, if you've got any tips for the journey to 99, I'm all ears. So far, I've just been soloing pages and pulling what seems like decent XP, but my metric for decent is several years old now.

Nin/dnc can solo pretty much anything from abyssea and earlier. Get yourself a lolnnagi, it's realy easy and will up your power a lot. As for 99, they gimped the last fight hard, so it's no problem to go on nin anymore. XP? Abyssea. Good XP these days is in the 10s of thousands an hour. Keep an eye out for Aby La Thine worm shouts, they're simple. Just remember that in abyssea the kill speed doesn't matter. You just have to make sure to only kill that one mob. If you kill anything else, you'll lose your chain.

During EXP, they do very little special, generally just deal damage, and depending on their setup they're not even bad at it. The interesting parts start at endgame, where NIN has mixed placement. Some events, especially everything inside Abyssea, it will be very useful, due to its solo/lowman survivability and ability to cover most red weakness staggers (which you'll need to get key items and Atma off NMs). Outside of Abyssea it's still popular for other lowman efforts, generally used on older content.

However, on new content it's not too popular. In Voidwatch it's often only used for NIN specific weakness staggering, although you occasionally get to hold adds and some other utility features. For other events it's generally not desirable, such as for Nyzul Isle Uncharted, Legion or new Einherjar, or anything that relies on dealing as much damage as possible. That is because it's generally easier to try to avoid damage altogether, than rely on a NIN holding hate, because hate is unmanageable these days. Also, most damaging moves a mob does go through shadows or wipe them all on one hit, so NIN does not have the advantage anymore in that area like it used to in the past.

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Originally Posted by Tsukino_Kaji

Nin/dnc can solo pretty much anything from abyssea and earlier. Get yourself a lolnnagi, it's realy easy and will up your power a lot. As for 99, they gimped the last fight hard, so it's no problem to go on nin anymore. XP? Abyssea. Good XP these days is in the 10s of thousands an hour. Keep an eye out for Aby La Thine worm shouts, they're simple. Just remember that in abyssea the kill speed doesn't matter. You just have to make sure to only kill that one mob. If you kill anything else, you'll lose your chain.

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Just nitpicking a bit, but good exp is in the hundreds of thousands a hour, not tens :p.

Kill speed is important though, up to a certain point, that point being when you kill as fast as things repop. This point is at around 340k/h on latheine worms, in my own experience, but actually a bit hard to reach, at least if half the alliance is made up of leechers, :(.

Okay, cool. I started my Magian Trials last night for the katana, so I'm working on that a bit. Should I be a certain level after 75 to start doing Abyssea, or is that high enough to get started? I see that the worms in La Theine are level 89, so my guess is that I won't want to be doing those right away, but I'm also not completely up to speed on this stuff yet, so I could be wrong.

I've had 99 everthing forever, so I don't realy remember and I was telling him that kill speed is not a factor in chains anymore. If you can get a doll pt in altep, that's the best XP, but they don't realy exist anymore. At least on siren.

You kind of have to start such parties yourself nowadays. It's just much more rare for an alliance to stay alive indefinitely, so when new people feel like EXPing and there is no party already going or no shouts, people just go do something else instead. If you start a party and give it some time, you'll be able to pick up all those people who "feel like getting some exp but CBA organizing it". Once you have around 12 people, that's enough to get started, and just gradually fill up the last 6 slots as people randomly pop up for exp.

Additionally, if you're the alliance leader, you can be whatever job and level you want to, and might not even need to open chests. Considering how many party leaders I see who just don't give a shit about keeping the alliance healthy and efficient (which eventually leads to shit exp, which again leads to people leaving and the alliance dying), I'd say you justify being useless battle-wise by actively keeping the alliance full and efficient.

And ok, yeah. You're right in that. Sorry for misunderstanding.

In the long run, you should be able to obtain a pt on nin. People tend to assume that nin can handle things and forget about lvls. When you get into a pt, don't forget to never stop attacking things so you look like you're doing something. Most people wont catch on and a lot of people don't care. Appearances are important. lol

He speaks the truth. If you look busy, people will leave you alone.