Ninja DPS!

[Dubah]

So I have a couple of questions about some things that just make no sense...

I will start with the Venom's, they both have the same effect, only difference one changes the effect of jugulate to a stun, the other i forget what it changes but i think that change was more important.

Anyways, why do people add in the swap venoms at certain points in the rotation? Makes absolutely no sense and may be a waste of time. So hopefully someone can explain this and make it make more sense to me.

Ok, so down to the dirty. I'm only level 36, so I'm not worried about it for myself, but can someone give me a good rotation for a level 60 ninja?

[Xenon_S]

short answer: you dont

long answer: the person who wrote that in another thread is a tank main and is unfortunately not well informed about the intricacies of ninja, while he is trying to help, most of that post is generally wrong information

for nin guides, shasta's and firana's are good if you want to look into it.

[Alistaire]

Generally viper is more beneficial in raids but there's some raids where you need a stun at certain points, so switching mid-fight isn't unheard of, it's just not part of a rotation.

One example is A7/M3 where you need to stun the big add, but staying in wasp after that isn't worthwhile.

[Darkstride]

Yeah the venoms are a missed opportunity with Ninja, in my opinion.

The added damage should have just been rolled into Ninja's base attack power while the venoms just added their special effect. There shouldn't be a need to have a venom active just to have normal damage output (and even then, its on the low end when compared to other melee). If you level sync or change jobs and forget your venom, you take a serious hit to damage output. That's just bad design, in my opinion.

As far as the damage increase is concerned, venoms are identical (once you're sufficently leveled), so there is no reason to change stances unless you specifically need the effect it provides. The "enhanced" trait slots could have been used for something better, or atleast have had more interesting effects. Mug's drain is barely noticeable and there aren't a lot of instances where a Ninja NEEDS to Stun - usually Silence is sufficient. Added traits or even more Kiss abilities could have helped to augment other abilities such as Dream Within a Dream.

Venoms were a good idea with a lot if potential, but I think they were implemented poorly with a very basic, uninteresting function.

[Dubah]

Thanks for the answers lol, i was looking for something that said otherwise and just couldn't find anything... Anyways, I changed classes to machinist last night. The ninja was just too much for me lol, that and i just couldn't grasp the ninjitsu stuff, it's easy yes, but for some reason I've been missing cooldowns on it and all sorts of things, was a fun class, i may try to get back into it later when i can actually focus. But for the most part i was missing simple things and decided that the ninjitsu just added too much on top of the 500 other skills ninja's get. Gonna give machinist a shot now, although not sure how much i will enjoy ranged dps. But we will see, i am hopeful that i will find a dps class that fits my playstyle, if not ill just go back to healing lol.

[Maero]

I always find it better to have the ability to stun since other dps or tanks do not always do so, i do wish changes were made to both poisons though to be of a more beneficial difference other then stun or silence

[Malicewolf]

Wasp = jugulate will stun
Viper = mug will return 50% of dmg as hp

While mug won't give you any substantial hp back, hp is hp. On fights that require stuns to prevent party wide dmg mechanics, you should stay away from using wasp else you may end up giving the enemy a stun resist when a stun is necessary. These are not something that occur all the time, but is extremely frustrating when DPS get tunnel vision for their DPS numbers and don't realize what they've done. Usually because ALL the DPS think "oh what's 1 stun" when there's 4 of them thinking the same thing.

Prior to lvl 40, the two poison's are NOT equal. Wasp does 5% extra dmg, viper does 10%. At 36, wasp does more due to trait at 20% and at 40, they even out as viper gets a trait as well. Both of these do not get their respective additional effect until they hit these traited levels.
So jugulate doesn't stun with wasp until 36 and mug doesn't give 50% dmg worth of hp back until 40.

The vemon's do not effect your cooldowns whatsoever. Clicking it will not cause any resets, so it can be done in less than a second and inbetween your rotation. Once you get used to it, it literally takes no effort whatsoever. When I say stance dance, you switch maybe once every 2 minutes or so. If you have full hp, no point. If you're in a raid and the boss is giving out party wide dmg, there's nothing that's going to hurt about switching to viper if you're on wasp. It'll take less than a second in between a rotation. Jugulate stun won't effect most bosses to begin with though, so you could easily switch to viper at start and stay in it. I prefer to switch in raids though as add's come up often and if they do NOT have a mechanic that needs to be stopped via stun, i can easily stun them for a few seconds.

Most players now-a-days simply burn bosses. This is fine to do, the gear we have now simply makes it possible. But I still prefer to utilize aspects given to me to the fullest. I find it helpful when everyone is so locked onto a boss in a raid that they don't pay attention to all the adds beating in a healer's face. Stun can help give them a small opening. Don't forget, your healers can be interrupted. I've played all 3 classes and as a healer, it's extremely annoying when people simply ignore add's beating in my face and then complain that I'm not upkeeping their health.

[DarkerOrange]

Please ignore all of Malice's advice re: venoms. Please do not waste time switching venoms in fights, ever.

Outside of end-game you can be in whichever one you want, since you can just face-roll the keyboard and win anyway.

[Malicewolf]

Please ignore all of Malice's advice re: venoms. Please do not waste time switching venoms in fights, ever.

Outside of end-game you can be in whichever one you want, since you can just face-roll the keyboard and win anyway.

Wow, being a jerk much? Please tell me how my information was wrong on that one? There is literally NO time wasted. Switching venoms cause ZERO interrupts. I did not say anything was necessary in my statement. It was asked and information was provided. Please show me my wrongs senpai!

[Xenon_S]

Thanks for the answers lol, i was looking for something that said otherwise and just couldn't find anything... Anyways, I changed classes to machinist last night. The ninja was just too much for me lol, that and i just couldn't grasp the ninjitsu stuff, it's easy yes, but for some reason I've been missing cooldowns on it and all sorts of things, was a fun class, i may try to get back into it later when i can actually focus. But for the most part i was missing simple things and decided that the ninjitsu just added too much on top of the 500 other skills ninja's get. Gonna give machinist a shot now, although not sure how much i will enjoy ranged dps. But we will see, i am hopeful that i will find a dps class that fits my playstyle, if not ill just go back to healing lol.

As a NIN main, i find my hands quite full when I try to handle MCH skills. Though I never practiced mch much so there's that. If you want a simple dps class I suggest mnk, it has the least amount of meaningful timers you have to watch and a straight forward rotation, just have to hit positionals and you are golden.


Now malice, while it is correct that switching venom does not interrupt anything, there is also no reason to switch venom mid fight, hence it is one unnecessary action not worth spending atp on.
While orange's attitude may be unwarranted, there are various inaccuracies and misinformation back in your original threads, which I have taken the time to counter.

As for ninja's stun, it lasts 2 seconds. It serves as an interrupt as opposed to tanks' 5 second stuns that are crowd controls. A3S comes into mind, I stun to interrupt mucilage cast of add phase, tanks stun the liquid limb to stop it from dragging the healer to doom on last phase. Ninja's stun will not, most of the time, stop a trash mob for a meaningful amount of time before it mauls at the healer.

I play all 3 roles too. As a healer if I have an add on me, I will jump into cleric stance while moving towards the tank so I can kill it while hopefully the tank does something about it.
And as a healer, you don't need to top the team off all the time. As long as they have enough hp to survive the next unavoidable damage, they are fine. I personally won't heal ppl not dodging AoEs properly in dungeons (if they tried but still got hit it's a different story)