Nin are better tanks now?

[Mojo]

It's fallacious to say that Razed Ruins is uniquely responsible for high katana damage. Weapon skills aside, it affects all melee weapons mostly equally. No weapon type is going to benefit from it moreso than any other in terms of sheer melee swings. In regards to weapon skills, it does help katana because Blade: Jin and Blade: Hi can crit, but crit weapon skills are not unique to katana.

Ascetic's Fury
Victory Smite
Evisceration
Vorpal Blade
Chant du Cygne
Rampage
Raging Rush
Ukko's Fury
Drakesbane
Blade: Jin
Blade: Hi
Hexa Strike
Jishnu's Radiance

All of those weapon skills and the weapon types that have access to them are thus enhanced by Razed Ruins in an almost equal way. The only exception to this is when the weapon skills can benefit from the 50 DEX through an increased WSC. Blade: Jin & Evisceration have a 30% DEX modifier while Jishnu's Radiance & Chant du Cygne have 60% DEX modifiers. Thus those weapon skills will receive either +12~13 or +25~26 to their WD from that 50 DEX. While nice, it's hardly exceptional, especially when contrasted to what other weapon skills may receive from cruor buffs. Blade: Jin vs Ascetic's Fury, for example.

Weaponskill	STR	VIT	DEX
Ascetic's Fury	50%	50%	0
Blade: Jin	30%	0	30%

Assuming you're using Razed Ruins/Gnarled Horn/Apocalypse, then you're going to net +90/120 DEX, +40/70 STR & +40/70 VIT in various Abyssea zones. For Blade: Jin, this equates to WD +32~34 in Visions/Scars zones, WD +47-49 in Heroes zones. For Ascetic's Fury, it's WD +34 in Visions/Scars zones, WD +58-60 in Heroes zones.

I did leave a few things out. Classes that have critical attack bonus traits or gear will experience lower marginal gains from the +30% critical attack bonus on Razed Ruins. Ninja gets Kamome & Qirmiz Tathlum (also Loki's on Blade: Hi) for +15-20%, Monk has Impetus, which I'm not sure how to quantify, but I remember someone saying that it will average less than 15% and that's only while Impetus is up. Classes that experience enhanced critical hit rate through gear or abilities (Ninja with Innin, Monk with Impetus) will experience a lower marginal gain from the +30% critical hit rate on Razed Ruins.

Either way, saying that katana benefits Razed Ruins more than weapon class with a crit based weapon skill just isn't true. Hand-to-hand, for the most part, rides Abyssea buffs even moreso than katana.

Also, in regards to Berserk. Every weapon class benefits from this virtually equally unless you don't need it to cap your cRatio. Capped cRatio doesn't occur often without Berserk anyways. So, for the overwhelming majority of situations, Berserk is going to affect all weapon classes equally. The exception to this is when the weaponskill you're using doesn't use pDIF. There are a few of them, such as Wildfire, that behave this way, but those are niche cases. So implying that Berserk is somehow less considerable because of Razed Ruins or katanas or whatever is also fallacious.

[Juxtaposition]

I should note that all of my arguments are under the assumption of an ideal party setup; that is, a (reasonable) tank, a (reasonable) healer, and a utility (WAR for red, BLM for grellow, etc.) If you are soloing or duoing with two melees, for instance, I do not consider that to be ideal, and thus /DNC or MNK/NIN becomes viable. When I call /DNC a gimp subjob, it is in the context of an ideal party setup. Sorry for the confusion. That said I have a few more things to touch on.

How many of those 4x was a BRD spell?

Those four times were with Threnody, sorry I was unclear. The point I was making was that just because it so happened to occur once doesn't mean that it is the norm.

I am on no specific side as I know that NIN and MNK are both great tanks. I don't believe one is "better" at tanking then the other because that depends on player skill, gear and atma of course. So I will be honest - don't really have an argument there. From your original post I had that "MNK's pwn" impression - In which I stand corrected. Yes MNK's suck at red, and ninjas have a lot more options in that department.

NIN and MNK are both great tanks, I agree. THF and DNC are also passable tanks. PLDs are bad tanks. Conceptually, MNKs are superior tanks to NIN, player skill, gear and atmas have no consideration when discussing a class theoretically because the classes should be assumed to be played at their best.

That is not to say that MNKs are always the superior tank. Indrik is a prime example of a NIN fight; being able to bypass Scintillant Lance as a NIN is huge when it will regularly one shot MNKs is a huge boon. That said, fights where NINs are preferred over MNKs are few and far between, which is why MNK is superior.

And because someone will comment on the PLD can of worms I opened, PLDs are bad tanks because they rely on cooldowns, MP, and do not bring damage. MP I know is not a big issue in abyssea, but it is a limitation nonetheless. Cooldown dependency is a big issue because once you pop your enmity generating abilities, PLDs are a sitting duck for a DD to TP on the mob and steal hate. Their inability to deal damage is worse than you might first expect because once Johnny DD steals hate, PLDs have a hard time reclaiming it, opposed to a MNK or NIN who can easily WS to reclaim hate. Extended fights are even worse due to the enmity cap. The final nail in the coffin is a vast amount of abyssean NMs utilize hate resets. Aside from their cooldowns, PLDs cannot easily reclaim hate with a WS like NINs and MNKs can.

Enough about PLD.

- You're right about the 90% thing, I just mean there are really good chance to proc red in a nin+blm duo (subbing war adds seraph blade and raiden trust to your arsenal, no more no less), and pls explain why you think i shouldn't have an event polearm (which i have since 2005)

/WAR gives access Red Lotus Blade, Seraph Blade, Earth Crusher, Seraph Strike, and Raiden Thrust. That is five more or a 38% proc rate increase. I figured you didn't have the event polearm because you seemed to favor using /DNC which implies that you care/know little about red procs.

- I doubt a mnk/nin can land hojo, since it's a nin48 spell. no need of further explanation about that.

Who cares about Hojo? The only non-elemental ninjutsu is Kurayami.

- mnk+whm guarantees blue procs during 22-7. If you're farming af3+1/+2 item, going mnk+whm simply doesn't work that nicely.

There is no gear that drops from +1 or +2 NMs that is worth giving up grellow procs for. If there is some piece of gear that you simply must have, then save a pop for blunt o'clock.

- /war and /dnc depend on what you are fighting: for example kiting briareus every miute after a tp move hurts your damage more than throwing a violent frlourish. just choose the appropriate sub for the situation (or choose your favourite one).

That is a highly specialized reason for /DNC. My arguments are for general purpose, typical day-to-day Ninja-ing. /DNC for stunning Briareus is a good use for the sub (but then you have to leave abyssea and lose your lights and time, trade-offs!)

Sorry for the punctuation, but i'm not an english native speaker when i see someone writing in italian i usually try to help him/her improve instead of complaining...

For what it is worth, this post was leagues above your previous. For the future, try to consistently use capital letters and punctuation. Grammar and sentence structure is far less important.

[Mojo]

Eh, again, MNK being generally ahead of NIN for tanking is just an assumption.

Job	D Main	D Sub	D Kicks	ν Main	ν Sub	ν Kicks		ν DMG		TP/hit	ν TP	ν WS		WD Main	WD Sub	fTP Main	fTP Sub	WS DMG		ν WS DMG
Monk	93	93	104	0.47732	0.47732	0.068536	95.90926	5.3	5.42283	0.0542283	217	217	2.73809		3.35559	1322.32856	71.70766688
Ninja	70	51	0	0.79415	0.79415	0.000000	96.09215	4.5	7.14735	0.0714735	213	194	4.40059		1.45559	1219.71013	87.17695198

I don't have the energy to come up with a long winded explanation of everything here, but you can probably figure it out by looking at it and thinking for a while (ν means frequency.) It's my Kannagi NIN/WAR vs my Verethragna MNK/WAR in a Heroes zone with Haste only.

Minor things were ignored (such as AF3+2 set bonuses and WS TP), but it does show that NIN & MNK melee DoT are nearly identical. MNK has the upper hand for average WS damage, but NIN has such an advantage in TP gain that it makes up for and overcomes this. So, in the case of disregarding casting times and ability stasis, then NIN is the winner in sheer DoT potential.

These comparisons come before pDIF is calculated, meaning that cRatio, critical hit rate and critical damage bonus are not considered. However, the difference in attack between these two jobs is actually quite small and the critical hit rates are going to be identical unless the MNK is under Impetus. NIN can use Innin in many situation though, which will essentially ceiling your critical hit rate at 95% (only on mobs that you can bank tank.) MNK has a base of +30% critical damage bonus (which can be improved during Impetus), NIN has +45% for melee and +50% for WS. Either way, it's difficult to say which job has the advantage in regards to pDIF because there are so many unpredictable variables, but I if I went from my gut feeling I'd say that NIN has the upper hand usually.

This also ignores yet another variable, perhaps the variable, which is Counter. If MNK DoT potential ever exceeds NIN DoT potential (with just Haste spell, that is) then it's because of this. It's difficult to really quantify how much it helps, but consider that most mobs have a delay of 240, or 4 seconds. Being generous and giving MNK a 70% base counter rate (50% Counterstance, 10% Melee Gaiters, 5% merits, 5% Atma of the Gnarled Horn) yields a ν Counter of 0.16625, which essentially adds 15.46125 to ν DMG. This isn't a very reliable value though because it ignores mob double attack/triple attack rates and assumes capped player accuracy (which is common but not certain) and also that your evasion is floored (this almost never occurs.) It's very much subject to change, but it's interesting to note that this 'reference' value, when added together with ν DMG & v WS DMG, is still not enough for MNK sheer DoT to overcome NIN sheer DoT.

Either way, I play MNK & NIN extensively in Abyssea and have both Empyreon weapons. Is this what I observe in terms of sheer DoT, that NIN is greater than MNK? I wouldn't say so mostly because of how cast times affect it (although this has been said already.) I just wanted to show that, if a NIN disregards casting spells and relies on cure bombing much in the same way that MNK does, its sheer DoT potential is equivalent to or often greater than a MNK's. So if that's your criteria for which tank is better (i.e. killing the quickest while being able to survive), then NIN is at least on par, certainly not behind.

[Alderin]

+2 on that post Mojo.

Excellent post.

I know I said I was staying away from this thread but I couldn't resist.

I do agree both MNK and NIN are both great tanks, and also agree that neither outpasses the other in terms of tanking ability. It all comes down to circumstance, party setup, player skill, gear, and atma. Sure, ignoring that and purely looking on a job vs. job perspective - both have potential to be beastly tanks. They just do it in a similar but different way.

I would love to see some parses on simple evasion vs. counter/guarding although I can imagine that would be difficult to test. Because essentially a tank's primary job is to not get killed. Pure DoT is certainly a positive but your post proved that both jobs are very comparable if not ( Even Match ).

Everyone's opinion is their own and I am glad to hear some other people's, however I believe it is difficult to compare the two jobs in a pure tanking ability - especially that of NIN and MNK because as stated, they do things differently in order to achieve a similar goal.

Guarding & Counter & HP vs. Evasion & Shadows.

While guarding and counter may not avoid as many attacks, the tower of HP that comes with MNK evens out this slight disadvantage. While NIN has tools (such as Migawari, that reduces the likelyhood of being 1-shot), shadows that prevent the NIN from getting hit when the evasion check fails, and pure beastly evasion (Of course not comparible to THF, that is why there is Shihei).

Finally, I do believe that NIN has more survivability then MNK in a solo sense, as MNK relies on cure-bombs to stay alive most of the time. I have seen some things that is more ideal for a MNK + WHM duo, however there are also many cases when a NIN + WHM duo is just as good - if not more ideal.

[Alderin]

I should note that all of my arguments are under the assumption of an ideal party setup; that is, a (reasonable) tank, a (reasonable) healer, and a utility (WAR for red, BLM for grellow, etc.) If you are soloing or duoing with two melees, for instance, I do not consider that to be ideal, and thus /DNC or MNK/NIN becomes viable. When I call /DNC a gimp subjob, it is in the context of an ideal party setup. Sorry for the confusion. That said I have a few more things to touch on.

That is a reasonably fair call. I would however use /DNC in some cases that I know you wouldn't - however that is based on opinion. Yes I do agree /WAR is more ideal for most circumstances when in an ideal party setup, against your every-day Abyssea NM.

Call me gimp if you like here, or call my WHM rubbish - I do however use /DNC as a sub if I know the mob I will be fighting is going to be a debuff mob - for a simple fact of being able to remove status effects without calling for them. That, and I <3 Violent Flourish.

I do trust my WHM to the end of the earth - when in my regular static. However in my opinion (and I repeat, my opinion), against some NM's, I prefer to choose a sub with more survivability over killing the NM a little faster - Death still happens even to the best of players. Increasing survivability when there is a risk of death in my opinion is always a plus - whether or not the WHM is good. Violent flourish does indeed "save the day" at times. If the WHM is /BLM then that usually isn't an issue, however on the off chance that the WHM is casting a 3-4 second spell in any manner, an NM starts to TP - it is always nice to be able to be on the ball and stun it myself.

Those four times were with Threnody, sorry I was unclear. The point I was making was that just because it so happened to occur once doesn't mean that it is the norm.

Wow, I don't doubt that it happened but that is totally out of the norm - at least from my experience. I will be honest - there has only been one time where we have been through every possible elemental spell (BLM/NIN/BLU) apart from BRD a few times and it hasn't proc'd so we assumed it was a BRD spell. So I am sure it happens, I just personally havn't seen it as often as people state.

I guess there must be a little bit of luck involved there.

NIN and MNK are both great tanks, I agree. THF and DNC are also passable tanks. PLDs are bad tanks. Conceptually, MNKs are superior tanks to NIN, player skill, gear and atmas have no consideration when discussing a class theoretically because the classes should be assumed to be played at their best.

Very true on half of that statement. The ideal tanks in the game re NIN, MNK, THF & DNC. PLD's I will agree are less then ideal when tanking in Abyssea - however I believe PLD is still at a top-teir level outside of Abyssea.

We can disagree with this all day - I believe MNK and NIN both have their advantages and disadvantages in certain circumstances. Neither outpasses the other for absolutely every circumstance. In the end - is gear circumstantial? Yes. Is party setup circumstantial? Yes. The whole game is based on circumstances in which some setups outpass the other - and to compare NIN & MNK in a flat out tanking war, I believe it is impossible to call the winner - due to the aforementioned "circumstance".

That is not to say that MNKs are always the superior tank. Indrik is a prime example of a NIN fight; being able to bypass Scintillant Lance as a NIN is huge when it will regularly one shot MNKs is a huge boon. That said, fights where NINs are preferred over MNKs are few and far between, which is why MNK is superior.

Responded to the last part of your quote without reading this one.

True MNK is not ideal in all circumstances, however I disagree with the point that MNK can "out-tank" most other NM's as NIN can pretty much do the exact same with an ideal party setup. If we go down to the nit and grit of a tank's job and that is to avoid damage / stay alive - while keeping hate off everyone else - I believe both jobs are equal due to what I mentioned in the previous post.

Guard & Counter & HP vs. Evasion & Shadows.

Both are comparable. A NIN can tank as much as a MNK can - they just do the job differently.

And because someone will comment on the PLD can of worms I opened, PLDs are bad tanks because they rely on cooldowns, MP, and do not bring damage. MP I know is not a big issue in abyssea, but it is a limitation nonetheless. Cooldown dependency is a big issue because once you pop your enmity generating abilities, PLDs are a sitting duck for a DD to TP on the mob and steal hate. Their inability to deal damage is worse than you might first expect because once Johnny DD steals hate, PLDs have a hard time reclaiming it, opposed to a MNK or NIN who can easily WS to reclaim hate. Extended fights are even worse due to the enmity cap. The final nail in the coffin is a vast amount of abyssean NMs utilize hate resets. Aside from their cooldowns, PLDs cannot easily reclaim hate with a WS like NINs and MNKs can.

+2. Agreed completely. However I do believe PLD still has their place outside Abyssea as one of the higher tier tanking jobs. (Didn't say highest, just higher).

There are arguments - and a lot of truth behind both of our points. I know this discussion won't come to a close, however I am in a much calmer state due to the absense of trolling I read in your later posts Juxt.

I apologise for my previous assumption on your mentality, and can understand where you are coming from on the points you are making. This discussion as evolved from being trolled to something a lot more grown up and reasonable.

[Xikeroth]

Wait til voidwatch, MNK without abyssea = worthless tanks. Then it'll be PLD and NIN game again

[saevel]

I highly disagree about the crud said on PLD's tanking. If your PLD is /WAR and doing the taco / defender / tanking atma think, then yeah he's an idiot and would do just as bad on NIN as on PLD or even MNK. PLD/NIN With the ~exact~ same atma that the MNK or NIN would use, RR / GH / Apoc using a high DMG main hand weapon and either spamming Vorpal blade or CDC if they have an almace. Off hand can be another sword on weaker NM's or a shield on truly dangerous sh!t. They deal more then enough damage to maintain capped hate, flash is just used for initial hate spike and for recasting shadows. Sentinel can be used as either a hate tool (sentinel -> flash -> WS) or as an emergency "stay alive" tool.

You guys are just getting sh1tty PLD's who are still tanking in 2004/2005 era. Its about dealing enough damage to maintain capped hate and surviving all the big nasty moves until all the required !! are proced, then killing it.

[wish12oz]

I highly disagree about the crud said on PLD's tanking. If your PLD is /WAR and doing the taco / defender / tanking atma think, then yeah he's an idiot and would do just as bad on NIN as on PLD or even MNK. PLD/NIN With the ~exact~ same atma that the MNK or NIN would use, RR / GH / Apoc using a high DMG main hand weapon and either spamming Vorpal blade or CDC if they have an almace. Off hand can be another sword on weaker NM's or a shield on truly dangerous sh!t. They deal more then enough damage to maintain capped hate, flash is just used for initial hate spike and for recasting shadows. Sentinel can be used as either a hate tool (sentinel -> flash -> WS) or as an emergency "stay alive" tool.

You guys are just getting sh1tty PLD's who are still tanking in 2004/2005 era. Its about dealing enough damage to maintain capped hate and surviving all the big nasty moves until all the required !! are proced, then killing it.

This statement is true enough, but mnk/thf/nin swing faster and would be the mobs center of attention more often simply because of that. Also, anyone who is a pld and smart enough to know this, would most likely also have other jobs leveled and play them to make things die faster, since pld does much less damage, it's not like any of paladins defensive abilities are required.

[saevel]

since pld does much less damage

This part is complete and utter BS. A taco / defender PLD/WAR using "tanking" atma's will deal crap damage, a PLD/NIN using DD gear and DD atma's will deal amazing damage. Having the letter P L D as your job doesn't suddenly give you damage -50% hidden JT, so stop treating it as such. Swords actually have one of the highest damage to delay ratio's in the game, their fast, they hit hard and have access to a critical hit WS. PLD's just lack any native offensive JT / JA instead being built around defensive JT / JTs. Thankfully /NIN provides a 30% (25+5) DW bonus.

And like I said before abyssea isn't about "maximum damage" while measuring the size of each others pen1ses. Its about procing various !! then killing the monster afterwords. The "tank" just needs to deal enough damage to maintain capped hate, after this no amount of additional damage will enable him to tank better. Heck we're suffering a problem of too much damage as the NM's are dieing before we've had a chance to proc everything we want to proc.

We need to stop this constant stream of "X is the absolute best at Y and therefor is superior to Z" type comparisons / posts. They do absolutely nothing but hurt the community while spreading false information. I've successfully tanked most NM's on BLU/NIN before. Abyssea has greater flexibility then any previous expansion / system. You can have DNC / PUP's and even WHM's "tank" things if you want. There is nothing that a "MNK" tank will enable you to do that you couldn't already do with NIN / PLD / BLU / DNC / THF / WAR / ect. MNK is just the "easiest" as there is literally no skill involved, read a forum and equip the gear / atma they tell you to. Hit the monster and keep counter-stance up as much as possible while occasionally casting shadows. Then go get a beer and make a sandwich.

[Akujima]

Agree with the post above.
Get all these number crunchers outta here.
Bring back the word "Fun" into the game.

You're turning this into some kind of science experiment for crying out loud.