NIN: Huton spam vs Skill Speed

[Jim_Berry]

I see many NINs spam Huton for obvious reasons. For those who spam it, what is your reasoning for NOT going for Skill Speed gear? I'm just curious.

[Ricdeau]

Skill Speed only lowers GCD, but Huton increases attack rate across the board so your GCDs are shorter and auto attack frequency is increased. You should always strive to keep Huton up as much as possible.

[Tex_Mex]

Skill Speed has 3 major problems:

1) It has slightly lower stat weight than crit to begin with, making crit preferred
2) Skill Speed stat weight drops even further if players are dealing with lag. The mudra lag issue causes Skill Speed's stat weight to drop even further.
3) Higher levels of Skill Speed cause diminishing returns due to TP running out faster.

Here are the stat weights:
Ninja
WD: 9.132
DEX: 1.000
DET: 0.325
CRT: 0.226
SS: 0.215

DISCLOSURE
The Skillspeed for Ninja was calculated without any latency issues. It's evident that Mudra's, coupled with Latency, delays your GDC by a fair amount. With a good connection, your Mudra's will delay your GDC by 0.5s every 20s or so.
If this applies to you, then the appropriate Skillspeed weight for Ninja is:
SS: 0.201
If you're being delayed by 1 second, it'll be approximately:
SS: 0.19

Note: This information was provided by Dervy and can be found in its original location here: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...eight_updates/

[Callinon]

Just to point out too that anyone spamming Huton is either in a very strange fight or is doing something very wrong.

Under ideal conditions your ninjutsu should rotate between: Huton -> Suiton (TA) -> Raiton -> Repeat. While this isn't always totally possible or changes for various fight-dependent reasons, just doing Huton every 20 seconds is basically always wrong.

[Dyne_Fellpool]

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think you're using the word "spam" correctly, OP.

[Ricdeau]

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think you're using the word "spam" correctly, OP.

At least lets hope he's not really seeing people spam Huton and basically only Huton. As Callinon pointed out if that's happening then those ninjas are doing it very wrong.

[Bushido_Brown]

With how the secondary stats are allocated on the current gear, too much skill speed will sacrifice a lot of crit and det, which will always be more important. Having between 375-425 SS is plenty with Huton up. Some mention wanting a lot of skillspeed to get an extra hit in while other buffs are up, but that extra hit evens out with simply hitting harder with better crit and det, and your TP pool will last longer.

[Starrywisdom]

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think you're using the word "spam" correctly, OP.

I'm pretty sure using an ability everytime it's off cooldown without rotating to it's other variants is pretty much the definetion of ability spam. Just in this case the ability is on a long cooldown with 4 other options. So what OP is saying is rather then ROTATE in the correct abilities someonee is just 'spamming' one of them.

[Dyne_Fellpool]

I'm pretty sure using an ability everytime it's off cooldown without rotating to it's other variants is pretty much the definetion of ability spam. Just in this case the ability is on a long cooldown with 4 other options. So what OP is saying is rather then ROTATE in the correct abilities someonee is just 'spamming' one of them.

Oh yeah, if thats what the OP meant then absolutely that is spam. I just didn't think any Ninja anywhere actually does that. If anything, I see Ninjas neglecting to use Huton.

But the OP said "I see many NINs spam Huton for obvious reasons" which, if what you're saying is true, I'd like to know what the obvious reason are lol. That part led me to believe the OP was just talking about making sure the buff is always up, hence my reaction that "that isnt spam" lol.

Anyway, no big deal.

[Dervy]

Skill Speed only lowers GCD, but Huton increases attack rate across the board so your GCDs are shorter and auto attack frequency is increased. You should always strive to keep Huton up as much as possible.

Adding onto this, the rotation of the Ninja seems as if it was based around Huton, or high intensity Skillspeed levels. If you try the typical Nin Rotation of DE-SF-MU-AE (Then muggle MU when it's falling off), with and without Huton, you'll see that without Huton, the rotation breaks down a lot. You'll end up either clipping or missing your DoTs by a tick, as well as having potency decreases clipping DE as you're trying to keep it on 100% up time.

Another thing is this, If you just build yourself around SkillSpeed, those are item stats you could of invested into Determination. Skillspeed doesn't affect the damage, cast-rate or cooldown of Ration*, where as Determination will. So investing in Determination will benefit both Mudras and Physical Damage.