To: Mr Akihiko Matsui

[scaevola]

Ninja starts getting Ni nukes and debuffs around Lv41; Do your job right and there won't be any of this manual-skillup corner-standing.

No. I actually leveled NIN to the mid-50s in 2005 and exercised due diligence in keeping Ninjutsu capped. Until you actually get those Ni nukes, NIN lacks a reasonable way to skill up ninjutsu; Ichi nukes do insignificant damage and have a long cast time, so it's impossible to do reasonable damage (and thus tank) with them. Even if you could, you still don't even get THOSE until 15, at which point you're horribly behind skill already. You can only get skillups off unresisted spells, meaning you have to devote solo time to getting Ninjutsu close to cap before you can start landing the unresisted spells on ITs you'll need to keep it up while leveling.

There was, simply put, no way to level ninjutsu in an XP party without devoting possibly tens of hours to the extremely expensive and unrewarding process of leveling it specifically. It is perhaps not unreasonable to expect a NIN to make an effort to leveling ninjutsu but at no point could that have ever happened without substantial extracurricular effort, 6-man parties or no.

If you wanted to make the case for old school partying, ninjutsu skill is basically the worst possible evidence you could have used.