Asking for NIN assistance once more: this time for optimization purposes

[KaivaC]

Hello again.

So I put in some work and after a few non-uploaded runs, I can say that I am able to get around 43-45% on O9S (O10S is a completely different story). I feel like there might be some more room to improve, so I'm asking for some help again in analyzing my logs and seeing where I can get some improvement. I'm here because, truth is, I'm terrified of going to the Balance, hence why I never post in there. If any experience NIN can help me out, that would be appreciated. I'd rather not share my discord publicly, but I can message you and give you my in-game name, and we can go from there.

Thanks in advance.

[Crushnight]

A lot can affect your dps
For o9s i prefer the Blaze 1st rotation over Tsunami 1st rotation due to getting TenChiJin Doton rotation over TenChiJin Suiton rotation during opening burst
During Blaze do you wait for 1s left on debuff timer before going to position and is your position south behind boss or side? south is my preferred as doing AE or SF at that point
Do you sukuchi after umbral smash to get extra hits in?
Do you True North during hard to get rear positionals like Earthquake?
Do you get a lot of party buffs? i tend to get drg tether most of the time but my group likes to roll with whm/sch/pld/war/drg/nin/smn/blm(maybe Brd if he feels like it)
Do you assassinate at every opportunity both orb and boss?
whats your ilv on wep and overall?
Lastly the thing most out your control how lucky are you with crits/direct hits?

i know lotta questions but i can tell you know the basics by having a 45 percentile so i went with the more uptime questions than rotational questions i'm only a 60 percentile nin and i'm looking at other nin PoVs and so forth also just got my 400 wep yesterday so i'm hoping to improve myself more with that

[Tsubaki75]

Like Crush said, it's about making the most out of your toolkit to maintain up-time and damage. I have the flank position for blaze and i can move close enough to pop true north and still hit the boss without clipping anyone in the center.
Also you can move east and west during fiendish orbs and stay within melee range the whole time while avoiding everything.
Using mudras, hellfrog, and even your throwing daggers during the knockdown part of earthquake will help keep up-time as well.

[KaivaC]

My apologies, I just woke up.

For Blaze, I am near position til about 3 seconds because of some issues between my internet and the debuff going off, so I try to play it safe there - it has caused a static member to get hit before, but I was also progging, so I may give take more of a risk next run. My spot is east because we have a usual setup on what side of the boss we are all on for this raid tier. For the umbral smash, yes, I do shukuchi whenever the boss jumps away and during earthquake, I take advantage with both True North and Arm's Length during the initial push.

For buffs, I don't usually get the tether - that goes to one of the ranged/casters unless I'm near the DRG for mechanics. I can time it during O10S, but haven't been able to during O9S. I can probably keep watch for it, but usually, unless it's an AoE party buff, I don't usually get specifically targeted for buffs. I do use Assassinate very often. My overall ilvl at the moment is down to 391, though I was at 393, so I don't really know what I did to drop down two ilvls. The weapon itself is at 390 and overall, I'm rolling with a high crit build.

Stats as of right now are Crit at 2107, Det at 1394, and DH at 1701. I expect that to change once I start getting my 400 gear. Right side is fully 400. Only 400 gear I have on left side right now is my head piece. I haven't tallied up the crit hits, but I usually get a lot of crits during every fight.

No problem with the questions.

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

xivanalysis.com

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

Can just copy paste your logs into there and it'll do a fairly good overview of where you are missing damage. The rest will then just to be cross-referencing that with your developing knowledge of the job from guides and information online, to testing out that optimization you are learning in fights.

And don't neglect mechanics and your teammates altogether, but definitely push your timings and up time in fights to see how and what you can optimize. If you are able to put all that together and have comparable gear, i'd say you'd easily make it into that top 20th percentile.

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

And 100% don't be shy about posting in the balance, the people writing guides and mentoring others in there do it because they enjoy helping people and talking about this game.

[AmeliaVerves]

I don't really know how NIN works, but have you tried to compare one of your logs to a log of a orange parse NIN? This will most likely show if there are any major things they do differently.
(Even tho I might not be the right person to ask, bc I don't know shit about NIN, I might be able to help you using fflogs, so feel free to hit me up on discord.)

Most of the times (and that is kind of a general rule for all classes) when someone wants to improve their gameplay, the go to way is to check the CPM (casts per minute) aka do you click enough buttons? That's very often a 'problem'. People tend to overthink their rotation, next steps, which mechanic will show up next, etc. Check your CPM and compare it to other NINs.


As the only other melee you kinda should be the 1st person to get the dragoon tether. o.o' Since you are the one most likely to stay close enough to even make the tether work. Talk to your dragoon about it and make him macro the tether on you!

[Shamox]

I don't really know how NIN works, but have you tried to compare one of your logs to a log of a orange parse NIN? This will most likely show if there are any major things they do differently.
(Even tho I might not be the right person to ask, bc I don't know shit about NIN, I might be able to help you using fflogs, so feel free to hit me up on discord.)

Don't just assume that the guy is good because he got orange, you should look up to some actual players known for what they are.

Most of the times (and that is kind of a general rule for all classes) when someone wants to improve their gameplay, the go to way is to check the CPM (casts per minute) aka do you click enough buttons? That's very often a 'problem'. People tend to overthink their rotation, next steps, which mechanic will show up next, etc. Check your CPM and compare it to other NINs.

CPM isn't king, uptime is, don't get this wrong.

As the only other melee you kinda should be the 1st person to get the dragoon tether. o.o' Since you are the one most likely to stay close enough to even make the tether work. Talk to your dragoon about it and make him macro the tether on you!

This is not how it works.

[KaivaC]

Yeah, I did try to compare my timeline and casts to others with a similar kill time, and had others helping me, but nobody could really figure out why I was still hitting greys even with my casts being extremely similar, minus the uptime. Come to find out that I had somehow completely omitted Jugular out of my rotation entirely. That took me from 9th percentile to 45th.

I'm not too concerned about getting the tether, as much as I want to see how much further I can take myself. Plus due to positioning and the massive DPS output that the top damage dealer in our group puts our, I think that's why I'm a lower priority for the tether.

I did try out the balance finally and I got some fight specific tips to start incorporating, so I'm gonna give those a shot and see how much better I can get from there.