NIN at 90? Easy or hard?

So, I was wanting to give Ninja a shot; always been a fan of dual-wielding swords/daggers in other video games, and Ninja is the only job in FFXIV that does that, so I'm giving it a shot. However... I've heard that Ninja is apparently one of the harder jobs to play at endgame, and from what I've seen, that's a bit true; it apparently has a fairly complex rotation, and a specific skill (Mug) that needs to be used at a specific time for everyone to benefit from.

That being said, I still really want to give the job a shot. I am not the best at team fights, I'll be the first to admit; I die faster than a fly with a smoking habit, I'm terrible at reading/predicting mechanics, and my ping isn't exactly the best, either, but I'm still going to learn this job to the best of my ability and do what I can to be as good of a player as possible.

So, how is Ninja at 90, for endgame dungeons and such?

Ninja is just the naruto weeb class of the game, just imagine you are a naruto universe ninja, they have like half the skills from the anime included at this point xD

In general ninja is quite busy during its burst window so if you get used to that after a while you should be fine, after that it is pretty relaxed waiting for things to be ready for the next burst window.

Ninjutsu might take some time to get used to but they become muscle memory quickly, I never had a latency issue with them with the exception of a lag spike causing one mudra not to register but it is often quite rare and you see the animation only happened twice instead of 3 times for example so you can at least avoid wasting it completely xd

I find NIN to be one of the easier jobs in the game, especially the easiest melee. I often use it for progging and learning hard fights. You only ever single weave OGCDs and you only have two positionals, one of which you don't use very often. The burst window really isn't that busy because you're still only single weaving OGCDs during it, you're just pressing a variety of different buttons during it.

NIN is a great job to pick up and play. It looks like it has a higher skill floor, and perhaps it does while you're trying to memorize the Mudras, but once you do you find it has a pretty low skill ceiling like every other job in the game right now. Mudras end up being muscle memory after some practice, just like any other button in the game. I often recommend NIN as the "gateway" for new players to learn how to melee DPS in 14 because of how easy it is while also providing stellar numbers.

So no, NIN is not hard at 90 end game. The only two jobs I can say that for personally are SCH and BRD. GNB too if you hate the EW rotation and keep trying to force it into SHB playstyle which is a huge DPS loss. :p

Im going to give a different answer here from Mithron's view. Please be advised that my views pertain to extreme and savage content. Outside those, your performance is less vital and therefore the effect of these points less impacting on your experience.

The hardest part of Nin isnt memorizing and executing the mudras but rather keeping track of all your spinning plates, especially during every 1 min burst window and fight mechanics combined.

If you drift your Trick attack/ mug, you have an issue.
If you lose track of your Huton buff, you have an issue.
If you forget to Suiton in the right timeframe every minute, to prepare for Trick window, you run into problems.
This is all of course on top of tracking and executing your repeating 1 min burst, that is somewhat complex to learn for the first time.

Ninja to me means constantly actively tracking timers and anticipating the next trick window, pooling ninki every minute for it, while splitting my attention also to mechanics.

This is much less the case on Samurai, Reaper or Monk I find.

The second part of the Nin difficulty are the devastating failure states that can occur on input mistakes :

if you double press a mudra, you lose the entire mudra charge for 0 dps, not only wasting the spent GCDs but also the 20 sec cd mudra charge, of which you have two.
On top of that you would also lose one of the following as a domino effect :
A Kassatsu Charge wasted.
A Suiton window missed and therefore burst drifted.
one less Raiju attack because you missed your raiton on the failed mudra.

If you move an inch during ten jin shi, a 120s dmg cd, you lose the entire charge for 0 dps as well.
if you use weapon skills after raiton, you lose the raijin charge entirely.

Ninja is a great class but it certainly punishes the player harder than any other DPS class for making mistakes. Perhaps BLM comes close? Im uncertain.


Once you get the rotation down and if tracking several things at the same time fits your personality, these issues arent as present. I certainly wouldnt call it a beginner class though, its fast, demanding and unforgiving.

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Originally Posted by Quyn

Im going to give a different answer here from Mithron's view. Please be advised that my views pertain to extreme and savage content. Outside those, your performance is less vital and therefore the effect of these points less impacting on your experience.

The hardest part of Nin isnt memorizing and executing the mudras but rather keeping track of all your spinning plates, especially during every 1 min burst window and fight mechanics combined.

If you drift your Trick attack/ mug, you have an issue.
If you lose track of your Huton buff, you have an issue.
If you forget to Suiton in the right timeframe every minute, to prepare for Trick window, you run into problems.
This is all of course on top of tracking and executing your repeating 1 min burst, that is somewhat complex to learn for the first time.

Ninja to me means constantly actively tracking timers and anticipating the next trick window, pooling ninki every minute for it, while splitting my attention also to mechanics.

This is much less the case on Samurai, Reaper or Monk I find.

The second part of the Nin difficulty are the devastating failure states that can occur on input mistakes :

if you double press a mudra, you lose the entire mudra charge for 0 dps, not only wasting the spent GCDs but also the 20 sec cd mudra charge, of which you have two.
On top of that you would also lose one of the following as a domino effect :
A Kassatsu Charge wasted.
A Suiton window missed and therefore burst drifted.
one less Raiju attack because you missed your raiton on the failed mudra.

If you move an inch during ten jin shi, a 120s dmg cd, you lose the entire charge for 0 dps as well.
if you use weapon skills after raiton, you lose the raijin charge entirely.

Ninja is a great class but it certainly punishes the player harder than any other DPS class for making mistakes. Perhaps BLM comes close? Im uncertain.


Once you get the rotation down and if tracking several things at the same time fits your personality, these issues arent as present. I certainly wouldnt call it a beginner class though, its fast, demanding and unforgiving.

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I have a question, why did you take anything Mithron said with any seriousness to warrant anything but derision? Their posts show that they are t-cupping hard as it is

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Originally Posted by Travel

However... I've heard that Ninja is apparently one of the harder jobs to play at endgame, and from what I've seen, that's a bit true

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This just came up in another thread, so I'm going to quote my response from there:

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

As I NIN main, my impression is that NIN is one of the easiest melee jobs. It doesn't have a bunch of short term buffs to manage nor does it have any particular long-term complications in its rotation. Further, outside of burst, NIN is chill is pretty chill, which is great for doing mechanics, etc.

Perhaps NIN looks harder on paper than it is in practice - that was certainly my experience. When I started playing during ShB, I nearly didn't play NIN because it came across as quite complicated. Once I actually played it, I found that it wasn't particularly complicated at all (but felt very good to play).

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Join us :cool:

Depends what you find hard. It's fairly easy for me once you learn it and practice it.

It's opener and burst phase are daunting but once you have that down it is among the (if not the) most straightforward melee

Ninja also has the unique ability to time suiton/use a raiton outside of burst to maintain GCD uptime at no/a very small loss

NIN is probably one of the most complicated melee to learn for a newcomer, but among the easiest to play optimally.

Ninja has a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and they don't naturally flow into each other as there will be times you have to hold onto certain resources because a skill is nearing coming off cooldown or you set up other buffs, such as the suiton buff, for when you need to do a trick attack 20 seconds later.

Once you get the flow of it all, it can be a very fun job, but it does take a lot of practice to get to learn how to play.

Also don't listen to the comment above me. I explain it in another thread, but they are wrong about using raiton to disengage and maintain the GCD rolling. It's never done at no loss to total damage.

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Originally Posted by Quyn

The hardest part of Nin isnt memorizing and executing the mudras but rather keeping track of all your spinning plates, especially during every 1 min burst window and fight mechanics combined.

If you drift your Trick attack/ mug, you have an issue.
If you lose track of your Huton buff, you have an issue.
If you forget to Suiton in the right timeframe every minute, to prepare for Trick window, you run into problems.
This is all of course on top of tracking and executing your repeating 1 min burst, that is somewhat complex to learn for the first time.

Ninja to me means constantly actively tracking timers and anticipating the next trick window, pooling ninki every minute for it, while splitting my attention also to mechanics.

This is much less the case on Samurai, Reaper or Monk I find.

The second part of the Nin difficulty are the devastating failure states that can occur on input mistakes :

if you double press a mudra, you lose the entire mudra charge for 0 dps, not only wasting the spent GCDs but also the 20 sec cd mudra charge, of which you have two.
On top of that you would also lose one of the following as a domino effect :
A Kassatsu Charge wasted.
A Suiton window missed and therefore burst drifted.
one less Raiju attack because you missed your raiton on the failed mudra.

If you move an inch during ten jin shi, a 120s dmg cd, you lose the entire charge for 0 dps as well.
if you use weapon skills after raiton, you lose the raijin charge entirely.

Ninja is a great class but it certainly punishes the player harder than any other DPS class for making mistakes. Perhaps BLM comes close? Im uncertain.


Once you get the rotation down and if tracking several things at the same time fits your personality, these issues arent as present. I certainly wouldnt call it a beginner class though, its fast, demanding and unforgiving.

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This is why difficulty is subjective: I don't find any of these things "difficult" whatsoever, and instead I find timing my Blood for Bloods and not drifting my jumps + animation lock on DRG much harder, or optimizing my opener with fight knowledge and gauge spam on SAM, or just not making mistakes or clipping on MNK. I can't speak much on RPR because I didn't find the job very enjoyable even after I got it to 90, so NIN has always been my "comfy" pick in extreme/savage. NIN was the second job I learned when I started this game back in HW, and I really enjoyed doing Alex savage back then as it. The straightforward nature of NIN's set up and execute is why I love it and find it much easier and beginner friendly. Your points are valid when learning, but I don't find the difficulty cap of learning those to be nearly as difficult as the difficulty cap of learning the other melee.

Ironically BLM is my other favorite DPS to play lol

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Ninja has a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and they don't naturally flow into each other as there will be times you have to hold onto certain resources because a skill is nearing coming off cooldown or you set up other buffs, such as the suiton buff, for when you need to do a trick attack 20 seconds later.

Once you get the flow of it all, it can be a very fun job, but it does take a lot of practice to get to learn how to play.

Also don't listen to the comment above me. I explain it in another thread, but they are wrong about using raiton to disengage and maintain the GCD rolling. It's never done at no loss to total damage.

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Quote from the Balance:

"As one of the most flexible melee in terms of disconnecting from the boss, Ninja has a wide array of options to pick from to keep their GCD rolling. Below is a simple priority list to follow to handle your disconnect:


1) If Trick is to be off cooldown in 20s, use Suiton to disengage.
2) If the disengage is within 45s after using Bunshin, save Phantom Kamaitachi to keep your GCD rolling.
3) Use Raiton, even if that means x1 Raiton less in Trick.
4) Throwing Dagger"

Option 1 is literally a 0 dps loss (save for the potential auto attack lost in any sort of disengage)

After playing SAM during 6.0 and 6.1 then swapping to NIN at the very start of this tier I can say that while NIN is very punishing when it comes to mistakes, those go away quickly as soon as you begin to get comfortable. The main thing about NIN is that your 2 min burst window requires alot of effort due to the high APM, the ease you can drift CDs or over cap on gauge, and how much stuff you need to fit within your Trick Attack windows. Conversely things are pretty low stakes in between burst windows. Even your 1 minute windows are by comparison more chill than your 2 min windows. You don't have much to heavily keep track of stuff outside of just using Suiton before over capping mudras which lines up well with Trick coming off CD or make sure you don't Bhava (Single Target Gauge Spender) when there's like 10 seconds left on Bunshin's CD. You also have some flexibility with your positionals and playing around with TN stacks.

You know, with the amount of threads you make, you could have already leveled every job to 90 by now

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

You know, with the amount of threads you make, you could have already leveled every job to 90 by now

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Is asking questions somehow a bad thing now?

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Originally Posted by Aurora428

Quote from the Balance:

"As one of the most flexible melee in terms of disconnecting from the boss, Ninja has a wide array of options to pick from to keep their GCD rolling. Below is a simple priority list to follow to handle your disconnect:


1) If Trick is to be off cooldown in 20s, use Suiton to disengage.
2) If the disengage is within 45s after using Bunshin, save Phantom Kamaitachi to keep your GCD rolling.
3) Use Raiton, even if that means x1 Raiton less in Trick.
4) Throwing Dagger"

Option 1 is literally a 0 dps loss (save for the potential auto attack lost in any sort of disengage)

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You led with option 3 as the correct answer to disengaging. Suiton I would agree with if it's at the correct time to set up the trick attack, but I wouldn't advise someone to start with a raiton. Also I'm not sure with their assessment, but feel free to enlighten me here if my math is wrong.

The potency gain from using Raiton and Raiju in a trick attack window is, at least, 121 potency, 65 potency gained from Raiton and 56 gained from Raijin (more if used in the 2-minute window with mug and other raid buffs) The potency of Throwing Dagger is 120. So the amount you lose from doing the raiton outside of the buff window is comparable or greater to throwing dagger, meaning you'd be better just keeping your GCD rolling with the dagger (or Suiton/Phantom Kamatachi if they're available) than losing that much in your burst. Which would say to me, you're better off still using the dagger over using Raiton when disengaging.

Using throwing dagger completely removes a melee combo attack from your timeline, Raiton just swaps one in for the Raiton in Trick.

Your melee combo attacks average out to around 320 potency per hit (+ 5 additional Ninki from your finisher), so you're losing over 200 potency.

Also keep in mind that you can't fit a third Raiju into Trick during 120s bursts, so you're only gaining the 5% from Mug + any other 20s buffs.

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Originally Posted by AlgernonBlackwood

Using throwing dagger completely removes a melee combo attack from your timeline, Raiton just swaps one in for the Raiton in Trick.

Your melee combo attacks average out to around 320 potency per hit (+ 5 additional Ninki from your finisher), so you're losing over 200 potency.

Also keep in mind that you can't fit a third Raiju into Trick during 120s bursts, so you're only gaining the 5% from Mug + any other 20s buffs.

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We're talking about when you're disengaged, though, where you can't use your melee moves. Obviously you shouldn't dagger toss if you're in range to use your regular combo. Additionally it's worth noting that dagger toss does give you the same ninki as you'd get from using your 1 and 2 combo moves in the melee without interrupting your ability to continue your melee combo once you're in range.

I'm looking at the potency lost due to not having the raiton in buff windows. Aeolian edge still has a lower potency than both raiton and raiju, so if you're swapping that in, you're still losing potency in the buff window over using a different ranged skill and holding your ninjutsu for the buff window. So I'm not seeing how your point makes things higher... Not saying you're wrong, just again, not seeing how this maths out.

I'm saying that you need to look at the entire timeline of a fight. If you use a Raiton, you'll still be casting the same total number of melee combo weaponskills and Raitons over the course of the fight, but if you use dagger, you'll be casting one fewer melee combo weaponskill in exchange for one dagger throw.

320 potency (average potency of your melee combo weaponskills) + 35 potency (The 15 bonus ninki you get completing a melee combo, which works out to an extra 5 ninki, or 1/10 of a Bhavacakra per melee weaponskill) = 355 average potency per combo weaponskill vs. 120 potency on daggerthrow. I'm ignoring the 5 ninki you get from all weaponskills, since it's irrelevant.

The 121 potency gain during Trick that you mentioned doesn't make up for the 235 potency you lose by swapping when out a melee weaponskill for a dagger throw over the course of an entire fight. Even if you ignore the bonus ninki (since you'll likely end the fight with unused ninki and may be forced to overcap at some point, you can't reliably translate such small amounts into potency), it's still a loss.

If you knew for certain that this would only cost you a Spinning Edge, I think it would be worth it, but at that level of optimization you probably have better ways to deal with downtime.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Is asking questions somehow a bad thing now?

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It may or it may not be, I don't care, I just find it amusing to look at the post history, I've never seen someone so undecided

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

It may or it may not be, I don't care, I just find it amusing to look at the post history, I've never seen someone so undecided

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Probably can beat that, in every single mmo I have played, I have never managed to stick to one dps class for more than 1.5 months, it truly is suffering

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

It may or it may not be, I don't care, I just find it amusing to look at the post history, I've never seen someone so undecided

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Don't exactly have much time to play the game anymore; I just want to know how the different jobs perform before I dedicate what little time I have to playing one. Already found a Tank (Warrior), Ranged DPS (Machinist), Magic DPS (Summoner), and Healer (Scholar) to main, just trying to figure out which Melee (currently split between Ninja, Monk, and Samurai) to main.

Sorry for asking questions.

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

Probably can beat that, in every single mmo I have played, I have never managed to stick to one dps class for more than 1.5 months, it truly is suffering

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It's funny; this is the only MMO I've played that I've really had trouble getting a class figured out. Every other MMO I can figure out what I want within a day at most, but FFXIV? Been nearly a year, and I'm still looking for a melee job.

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Originally Posted by Travel

Already found a Tank (Warrior), Ranged DPS (Machinist), Magic DPS (Summoner), and Healer (Scholar) to main, just trying to figure out which Melee (currently split between Ninja, Monk, and Samurai) to main.

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You seem to like the easiest jobs in the game (though I think WHM is much easier than SCH, at low levels SCH seems easier because Embrace actually heals a ton proportionally), so while NIN is easier to optimize (IMO) than the other melee, SAM on a base level is easier than NIN. So play SAM as your melee.

I also think DNC is easier than MCH as well personally, but again that's just my subjective opinion.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

You seem to like the easiest jobs in the game (though I think WHM is much easier than SCH, at low levels SCH seems easier because Embrace actually heals a ton proportionally), so while NIN is easier to optimize (IMO) than the other melee, SAM on a base level is easier than NIN. So play SAM as your melee.

I also think DNC is easier than MCH as well personally, but again that's just my subjective opinion.

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Well... it's not so much as I like the easiest ones, as it is me having to compensate for latency on my end. I live smack in the middle of nowhere, and it results in a lot of lag - and button failure - on my end. Hence, less button-intense jobs are kinda what I'm forced to play, on higher-level content such as raids, at least.

Which sucks, because I would like to main Gunbreaker and Bard for high-end content.

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Originally Posted by Travel

Well... it's not so much as I like the easiest ones, as it is me having to compensate for latency on my end. I live smack in the middle of nowhere, and it results in a lot of lag - and button failure - on my end.

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Then MCH and NIN are the two absolute worst jobs in the game to play for your ping issues, avoid both of them as much as you can. SAM and DNC are much better for high ping and button failure.

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Originally Posted by Travel

Don't exactly have much time to play the game anymore; I just want to know how the different jobs perform before I dedicate what little time I have to playing one. Already found a Tank (Warrior), Ranged DPS (Machinist), Magic DPS (Summoner), and Healer (Scholar) to main, just trying to figure out which Melee (currently split between Ninja, Monk, and Samurai) to main.

Sorry for asking questions.



It's funny; this is the only MMO I've played that I've really had trouble getting a class figured out. Every other MMO I can figure out what I want within a day at most, but FFXIV? Been nearly a year, and I'm still looking for a melee job.

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Was not trying to be rude, honestly just get any single job to max lvl and play with people and max spells turned on, looking at how other jobs in your parties play and look helps a ton when deciding what to main.
Plus the more stuff you level the better at you get at it, sooner of later even if you play very little you will suddenly get everything maxed.
I ended up hating my first max leveled job but it made it easy to get my eyes on other jobs I had not even contemplated playing just by looking at the job being played by other people in end-game content, if I didn't do that I would have been in undecided limbo with no end in sight.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Was not trying to be rude, honestly just get any single job to max lvl and play with people and max spells turned on, looking at how other jobs in your parties play and look helps a ton when deciding what to main.
Plus the more stuff you level the better at you get at it, sooner of later even if you play very little you will suddenly get everything maxed.
I ended up hating my first max leveled job but it made it easy to get my eyes on other jobs I had not even contemplated playing just by looking at the job being played by other people in end-game content, if I didn't do that I would have been in undecided limbo with no end in sight.

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To be fair, leveling DPs is a massive pain in the ass in FFXIV. Not everyone can grind Bozja hours upon hours.

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Originally Posted by Quyn

To be fair, leveling DPs is a massive pain in the ass in FFXIV. Not everyone can grind Bozja hours upon hours.

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Just doing Daily Roulettes every day while farming level relevant FATEs in queue is more than good enough to reach max level on every job in a reasonable time, especially for super casuals.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Then MCH and NIN are the two absolute worst jobs in the game to play for your ping issues, avoid both of them as much as you can. SAM and DNC are much better for high ping and button failure.

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I'll give Dancer a shot, then! I admit, I never really gave the job a shot before; I'll try it out when I can!

I think NIN at lvl90 after they fixed Raiju it's okay, I still hope that Weaponskills do not eat up Raiju Stacks in the future and Hyosho Ranryu should be unlocked with lvl50 (and give it a buff on lvl76) but aside that it's okay

I imagine it can be pretty hard to initially pick up until you have the muscle memory for mudras. As someone that's played the job since Stormblood imo the only hard part about the job is during the 2 minute window in the event that a lot of mechanics are happening just due to TCJ occasionally falling at an awkward point in a fight. (it's not really an issue I've seen pop up in savage/ultimate, but for sure happens in EX trials) But overall the job is pretty simple.