The Ninja Superthread

[Best-MNK-NA]

@juniglee: I meant xpots of dex. Those are huuuuge and will increase your dps by around 20 or more. You didn't say if you have a WAR to do Storm's Eye for you or not - if you don't that's, again, 10-20 dps lost.

Your big mistake is saving Suiton-> TA to line up with your buffs. You want TA to have as much uptime as possible. Your ninjutsu rotation should be Huton (prepull) -> Suiton (TA) -> Kassatsu Raiton -> Raiton/shuriken -> Huton -> Suiton (TA) -> Raiton/shuriken

and repeat from there. No matter what buffs are up or aren't up. Those you also want to use on cooldown every single time. That should increase your DPS immensely since you are losing out on a lot of potential time for your buffs if you're saving them to line up with Trick Attack (or vice versa).


Also, you should really insist on getting a good opener off. NIN dps is really tied to your opener going off well or else you'll end up significantly behind in DPS for quite a while before it evens out. I use a pull macro after I precast my Huton that times it perfectly so my ninjutsu comes off cooldown at the right place in my opener for Suiton. Timing it right allows me to get an extra raiton or shuriken off before the next huton which increases dps by a bit and lines up everything else down the road very well (especially since the second trick attack will naturally come up with B4B). I also force my raid to wait for Kassatsu to come back off cooldown before pulling (I'd insist on xpots too but they don't want to wait that long and they're not such a crucial ability). We're working on T13 and we just can't afford a completely substandard pull and hope to clear (think we'll get it this week finally).

I think an opener like the one I use (huton prepull, SE -> B4B+IR -> GS -> xpot -> DE -> suiton -> SE -> ta+kassatsu -> SF -> Raiton -> Mutilate -> mug -> SE -> Jugulate -> GS -> poison pot -> AE is the best, but the one Odo posted a few pages back is really solid too. The important thing is to: Get your buffs and debuffs up asap and then, while they're all stacked with Trick Attack up on the boss, apply your DoTs, do your kassatsu Raiton, and get an Aeolian Edge combo off if you can. I can't overstate how important getting a consistently solid opener is for your DPS.

Also, the numbers for your whole group are very low. MNK especially if s/he's considerably more geared than you - they should be pulling around 100 more dps, potentially. Honestly surprised you cleared with those numbers.