The Ninja Superthread

[Arkenne]

Please understand that by no means NIN is a WAR's pet.
WARs are our buddies.
We can give them our burst aggro so they can focus on DPS and keep the Storm's Eye going for us so we can DPS more.
It is a mutual deal.

They DPS more as a MT or OT, and we DPS more as a result. And thats good.

Also, please keep in mind that DRG's rotation is very squared and restricted.
What happens if you bring 2 DRGs? The Piercing debuff will be up a 100% of the time, right? But will DRG 1 stop excecuting the debuff because DRG 2 already applied it? Nope, because after the debuff weaponskill comes a DoT finisher which they don't want to drop at an individual level. And even less now with their 4th-BotD-extender weaponskill after Chaos Trust.

If DRG 1 placed the piercing debuff and DRG 2 opted to not use his piercing debuff, DRG 2's DPS will drop in a boss fight. DRGs do not take full adventage of the Piercing debuff duration.

Now, in the case of MNK, Dragon Kick is more flexible, it allows more Bootshines for 1 of the 2 MNKs.
This effectively improves the MNK 1's DPS if MNK 2 keeps DK going. But MNKs can only have this luxury if there happens to be another MNK around... and that will not happen often outside situations like Hunts, or 24-man raids. One very rare case.

In the NINs case, what happens if you bring 2 NINs? The weakest one can keep DE going, and the strongest doesn't need to bother with it. On top of both NIN's DPS going up in a 10% because of the Slashing debuff, NIN 2's DPS will go up by 180 potency per minute by totally suppressing the need of using DE, replacing it by AE. NIN also doesn't need to have another NIN for this scenario to happen, WARs CAN help them with this, and since WAR is a Tank it can naturally happen with more frequency than the MNK scenario. Almost guaranteed that in Hunts or 24-man raids there will be another NIN or WAR keeping this debuff going also.

NIN can take adventage of the full duration of the Slashing debuff.

Also DE doesn't only favor WARs, but PLD and DRK are also favored by it. It just so happens that there is a better synergy with WAR out of the 3 Tanks.

Something I like about the NIN's rotation is that its broken in pieces which you can place however you prefer.
MU > SF > DE > AE is one. But it can also go
MU > DE > SF > AE (my favorite)
DE > SF > MU > AE (to support your party's DPS asap)
AE > DE > SF > MU (almost the absolute worst)
SF > DE > AE (for trash)
and one hell of an adaptability extending on a great deal of situations.

At least, unlike MNK and DRG, the NIN doesn't have useless GCDs: Feint, Haymaker. Or nearly useless ones: One-Ilm Punch.
NIN can make full use of their entire toolkit in almost every battle (Yep, even Sneak Attack and Hide have their uses). And AC does have its place in it.