Hows NIN these days?

Hi all,

Returning player here looking to play a good self sustaining melee job and was looking at NIN. I started a SAM and it feels good but I do like ninja classes in most games and was wondering about this class since I would have to start from scratch as a Rogue:(

Thanks in advance

Its pretty fun. Lowest personal dps of the melee because you still bring TA raid buff. Highest CPM class so its pretty fast paced and quite possibly the most technical class of them all. If you like being raid support and lots of moving parts with fast pace, its probably for you.

yeah Ninja is pretty great
when i started out it was one of the only classes i really enjoyed leveling

I may give it a try...I do like the hand gestures etc. How s the mobility on this job? Thanks all for the replies.

It has a passive movement speed increase and 2 charges of a targeted teleport. Movement is pretty strong.

It's in fact in a pretty bad spot right now, for raiding progression and even for speedkilling. Ninja's personal DPS has suffered quite a blow and even with Trick Attack factored in, it's still 500 to 1000 behind on DPS in comparison to other melees and casters. (Not all, but the bulk of them).
People that say that Ninja is fine have no idea what they are talking about and you shouldn't listen to them. Trick Attack may indeed be a valuable tool, it's only as valuable as you and your party perform. Meaning it's a mediocre buff at best in average parties, which means most parties. To demonstrate this. There are high end groups that get a max value of 1.5k DPS out of Trick Attack at the moment, even with a party like that, other melee of an equal skill level will still beat Ninja overall with rDPS. Now, put Ninja into a mediocre static, where Trick Attack loses a lot of value and you're looking at 800-1k value, you will be even further behind. The Ninja community, that knows what's going on, are anticipating buffs in 2 weeks.

Is it fun to play? Yes. It keeps you busy and you're able to stay very mobile with nearly all of your attacks. It has a nice mix of melee and magic. It's a well-designed job, the only drawback is if you have high ping it will have a massive effect on whether or not you can effectively use Mudra (and Ninjutsu).

However, in Shadowbringers it took a personal damage hit that Trick Attack doesn't entirely compensate for. Hopefully this will be balanced in a future patch, but right now it definitely feels weaker than it was before, especially for all of the work you have to put into maximizing damage in NIN's rotation.

If you're playing solo, I wouldn't let it deter you. I played through the entire Shadowbringers storyline as NIN to 80 and had no problem. If you're interested in endgame raiding, there's still time for them to balance it and get our damage correct, especially since you are starting from scratch and have to level anyway.

I enjoy the class, but if it's really as mediocre as people say it is I'm feeling like it might be better to just switch to something easier like MCH until it's resolved.

It's a really unique class with a lot of cool qualities.

• Passive run speed upgrade
• Mug steals extra items from enemies if used right (rarely procs though)
• Reduced fall damage
• Fast attack speed and lots of skills to use between normal rotation skills (buttons ahoy)
• Cool flippy jump, complete with anime ninja run

Unfortunately at the moment of this post, in my opinion it is not worth playing. Because ninja has trick attack it is currently being treated as a raid utility job, and in order to keep it from being too overpowered in group content they've significantly slashed its personal dps. Meaning even though you press a lot of buttons, you don't do a lot of damage. This can make running 4 man dungeons and MSQ content feel extremely sluggish, grueling, and be kinda discouraging. I would highly recommend getting back into ffxiv with another job. BUT, if you really want to play ninja, go nuts, as long as you're still having fun.

I don't know how viable it is, I still think it's pretty fun to play.

But I did the first dungeon with it and the Trust; enemies seemed pretty big on the HP. I did it again with DRG and SAM and no, NIN's damage does seem a lot lower than the others.

Ugh...this is disheartening but I hope they do buff the class. I may just hold off for a bit and see if they get a buff. Thanks everybody for the input.

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Originally Posted by Clutch9000

Ugh...this is disheartening but I hope they do buff the class. I may just hold off for a bit and see if they get a buff. Thanks everybody for the input.

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Don't worry about it unless you're playing in a high end bleeding edge static pushing server/world first savage clears. Even though NIN is currently behind in total contributions compared to other melee, all classes are currently in a capable position to clear all content. SE has a very good track record for balancing classes such that all classes are viable, but obviously some will be meta. There is very little way to avoid that.

It's so fun I love it .... but as I'm reading all these complaints most people are over valuing Bunshin and trying squeezing everything into TA which is making it harder for themselves and over complicating their rotations . There is an easier setup which aligns all of our cooldowns and takes better advantage of TA with a big ol burst phase without having to micro manage Ninki , i just hope more people figure it out sooner then later . Don't get discouraged though it's really a fun and engaging job and will definitely stay as my main .

So Ninja is fun, but how does it flow? It had a certain flow in HW that it didn't quite have in SB, how is it in ShB now though?

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Originally Posted by Taranok

So Ninja is fun, but how does it flow? It had a certain flow in HW that it didn't quite have in SB, how is it in ShB now though?

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Worse. Everything clips now. Everything has tighter windows.

NIN is a mess atm.

NIN is very fun to play.
A very active and always on the roll job.
When you aren't raining thunders down on your enemy you are planning for the next one already, and its not even 20 seconds before the next oGCD rains on them.
Always a gain-vs-loss mentality going around, aligning everything as it pleases you and feel gives out the best outcome.

Clipping is their life, but SF is their beat. So long you can put 3 AE combos inbetween SFs without dropping it for longer than 1 second you are fine imo.


The only bad thing is that, despite being a very busy job which feels amazing to pull off. Because it has TA, its actual personal contribution currently is questionable.

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Originally Posted by Ilyn

It's so fun I love it .... but as I'm reading all these complaints most people are over valuing Bunshin and trying squeezing everything into TA which is making it harder for themselves and over complicating their rotations . There is an easier setup which aligns all of our cooldowns and takes better advantage of TA with a big ol burst phase without having to micro manage Ninki , i just hope more people figure it out sooner then later.

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You seriously gonna drop this and then just walk away without telling people your awesome new setup?

The route your taking makes already dismal dps numbers trash can worthy... the reason it’s like that is because someone did the math over and over to find the maximum best a ninja can do. Unfortunately drifting from that at all puts you lower than dancer. It’s kit is designed by top tier player/s, so recommending you hope more people “get it” is just recommending a bad way to optimize ninja play. It’s a VERY strict rotation, it’s leagues above in difficulty than all other jobs, ping reliant, and “drifting” your abilities at all for personal satisfaction of simplifying is just plain bad play. You need to be thinking 3 minutes ahead while playing ninja and use Meisui more than in your opener to get the appropriate amount of bhava usage. ALL that just to at the very best add 1.6% dps to your fellow team members...in a lot of cases less than that with drifting, pugs, etc.

If you're asking , take it as you will but I'm not claiming to be master authority about lol it's just what I do .With that said. First things first, bunshin is 15 secs and TA is 10 seconds so your just wasting damage and time trying to preset suiton/meisue and align bunshin to trick attack which can't fully take advantage in a TA window , basically to get the most of bunshin is just to get the equivalent of 2 AE combos and 1 SF combo which equates to .... 15 seconds . Second thing to keep in mind, for the time it takes to do a AE combo with Dwad/ass you'll get the more damage potency in less time with just TCJ alone since it's x2.5 potency now . With that said pretty much the best use of TA for me is to just use Kass/HR x2 and TCJ back to back using the charge actions to string into the next cast while using TCJ suiton to Meisui out . So I go Huton > Hide > Mug > SE > true north or consumable > SF > Suiton > TA > Kass/HR > Kass/HR > TCJ > meisei > SE > Bunshin > GS > Dwad > AE > Ass and so on . Doing so prevents any issues with trying to line up your regular mudra timer with your charged jitsus for the next minute and a half . example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjH_J08Uvxg (I get alittle sloppy at the end but don't mind that lol )

Also by stringing both kassa charges gives you window of opportunity to position yourself for Tcj in case you know a boss plops a big Aoe over you to screw you while TA is up . When you do TCJ > TA to bunshin you have to stand still then move to do a positional and now your fully restricted to melee range hense putting yourself into multiple error scenarios . I've pretty much condensed it all to a 600 > 600 > 700 > 1000 potency ranged burst TA window with quicker dps start up and better time sync . All together is 3225 potency + 10% = 3547.5 for stringing three moves together . I took alot of things into consideration as I tend to try and see the forest beyond the trees but that's just me . As with all 80 abilities that I've experienced , they're additions that adds to a rotation and aren't the central theme of it .