red ninja needs buffs, badly.

[Andylynn]

after 3 nasty bird parties, i've come to the conclusion, low to mid level ninja sucks. we suck it up til 37, wasting cash on shihei, only to fall behind in comparison in damage dealing. whoever thought ninja was supposed to be a designated tank at low levels was not very bright.

-tried spamming debuffs/wheel. got way too expensive, didn't do too much to keep aggro.
-tried tanking with yonin, i couldnt hit for crap
-tried a combo of the two + evasion gear, i still got hit way too much!

why must lower level gear subtract one for the other, when i want to try and actually evade a damn monster, when i hit it does hardly anything. and when i try vice versa, it ends up eating shadows. this game needs to make up its mind, either give us better tanking equipment, or give us skills to relegate us to roles other than peoples moneyslaving tanks.

if i am to remain a low level tank, i would appreciate better gear, and more job abilities made for retaining emnity, because burning this much shihei just to be a near useless partymate is obnoxious. i dont want to have to wait til 75+ or soloing EPs in order to evade deftly. nor do i want to wait til then to do decent damage either.

[Malamasala]

if i am to remain a low level tank

That is the wonderful part of FFXI. You won't remain low level for long.

[wish12oz]

I didn't have any problems holding hate or not dieing when I leveled ninja in 2004/2005. You have much more to work with now, it should be easy. I blame player error, if you spent less time pretending to be awesome and having relics/mythics, and learned how to play the game, I bet you could do it too.

[Andylynn]

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines.] there are plenty out there that i've discussed with and agree, low level ninja is an awful tank, they fail hard at trying to keep aggro, especially in places where the DDs have a weapon type advantage.

[Karbuncle]

I didn't have any problems holding hate or not dieing when I leveled ninja in 2004/2005. You have much more to work with now, it should be easy. I blame player error, if you spent less time pretending to be awesome and having relics/mythics, and learned how to play the game, I bet you could do it too.

DD's also have much more to work with as well though. This is in terms of holding hate, DDs from 2011 are slightly smarter than in 2005 and have access to more gear options (I think such as Swift Belt/Headlong? Were either of those around in 2005... its been too long). So do NIN but its a different ballpark with the 2-handed Update (which i think was later than 2005?), NIN falls behind with a lot of 2handed DD.

Outside of that, I dunno :X I leveled my NIN about the same time as you 2005~ and It wasn't horrible, But its been too long to accurately remember.

[Alkalinehoe]

I would do NINx2 tank for low levels (36 and under), works pretty well. WAR/NIN x2 also works too. Heck, I've tanked as SAM/WAR in Yhoator without much troubles.

[Andylynn]

DD's also have much more to work with as well though. This is in terms of holding hate, DDs from 2011 are slightly smarter than in 2005 and have access to more gear options (I think such as Swift Belt/Headlong? Were either of those around in 2005... its been too long). So do NIN but its a different ballpark with the 2-handed Update (which i think was later than 2005?), NIN falls behind with a lot of 2handed DD.

Outside of that, I dunno :X I leveled my NIN about the same time as you 2005~ and It wasn't horrible, But its been too long to accurately remember.

indeed e___e. when you've got sidewinders flying for 1200+, and pentas for 600+, its kind of hard for a nin to do anything about that :x.

[Vold]

The art of ninja tanking is a lost art. But fear not. I'm here to help. I'm here to take the pain away. I will now reveal to you an ancient gobbie secret that we ninjas "learned" i.e. threaten the life of this one Goblin if he didn't tell us the secrets to ninja tanking. What we learned was this: Thief.

You have to consider that the player base turned ninja into a tank. The only way we were able to achieve this goal was to use the power of THF for SA TA hate control. No ninja has ever held hate without it until Abyssea came around. There was some merit to be found with /drk but it didn't change the fact that ninja and thief are two peas in a pod. They relied on each other to get exp. Where there was a ninja, there was always a thief.

You need a thief. You need a first provoke. You need SATA. You need a group to work together to make it work. That's how ninja tanking works and always will. All that was thrown right out the window with ToAU and beyond because players got lazy and tired of working for their progress. It was like, yeah whatever, whoever can have hate, stuff dies so fast we'll just cure bomb them. What can you do, really. But until that point, if you ever see it by skipping Abyssea, you're going to want a THF at low levels for tanking on ninja. You will never be able to hold hate in a typical PT and anyone who claims otherwise is very forgetful or a straight up lying troll out to stir drama. Ninja tanking was very very stressful for me(but rewarding) because I did it right, and I required the help of SA TA to keep hate on me at all times. You can go the co tank route. You can live with hate bouncing here and there. But if you want hate on you at all times, deploy your ninja abilities to their max potential and have a THF for SATA. And it doesn't hurt to static with a THF you can count on. I did.

Now, for your case, and I'm going to assume by birds and low level you mean colibri in ER [s]. If by chance you mean 55+ in ToAU areas, you might as well suck it up, take the invite to "tank" for at least some of the time to mitigate damage, gear up with what DD gear you can for at least when hate isn't on you specifically(I still went the eva route until hate was off me) and go to work the best you can until it's over with. Same holds true for low levels if there is no THF to be found. But at 55+ people are going to want you to do one thing: Kill as fast as possible.

The need for ninja tanking has died down considerably through the years as our gear improved, players became veterans, and the age of power leveling reared it's ugly face. Back when you could attain 6k per hour as the standard with a ninja tank, it was thriving. But those days are long gone and you must get through ninja experience by any means available to you. If that means feeling useless to a PT, so be it.

[Hoshi]

NIN hold hate by spamming ninjitsu. If you don't like the expense don't play the job. You're not going to be able to hold hate off of rng and drgs on birds if they go all out and I think you shouldn't worry so much about trying. Focus on learning the job and skilling up your ninjitsu and let the ranger learn why they need to understand enmity better.

[Corwin]

Quote removed by Moderator.

At least you're honest about it.