When To Use Ninjitsu and When Not To Use It

[Novaura]

Since getting my Ninja maxed out to Level 50 and noticing other Ninjas in dungeons doing Ninjitsu, there has been the use of one Ninjitsu in particular and it is never used correctly or effectively.

The Ninjitsu in question is Doton which is used to create a circle that causes the Heavy status affliction on any enemy within the circle. However, I have noticed a lot of negative consistency with it. When I try to use it, the tank pulls the enemies out of the circle, rendering the Ninjitsu useless. And when I see other Ninjas using it, they use it against bosses, thinking that bosses are susceptible to Heavy. But having also played as a White Mage and the Stone ability also causes Heavy, I know for a fact that the bosses are not affected by it.

So tanks, let us use our Ninjitsu effectively and my fellow Ninjas, use your Ninjitsu correctly please. We are trying to help each other after all.

[Zephyranthes]

Doton for 3 or more enemies that will be able to survive the entire dot duration. That's basically it for the dps part.

As for the heavy portion, I don't think any boss fights (excluding final coil since I haven't done it yet) needs it.

[Sol_Aureus]

Doton for 3 or more enemies that will be able to survive the entire dot duration. That's basically it for the dps part.

As for the heavy portion, I don't think any boss fights (excluding final coil since I haven't done it yet) needs it.

This is correct. Doton is so situationally useful that I'm surprised I see it so often. It's a 24 second DoT at 30 Potency, so if literally every tic of the DoT hits it's 240 potency total. If stuff dies before Doton's timer reaches 6 seconds, you're better off using Katon for AoE (missing 2 DoT tics on Doton puts it down to 180 potency, which is equal to Katon's potency.) And on Single Target, Raiton is still king at 360 potency, so there's never really a reason to use Doton on single targets. The only time I could ever think that it would be useful in current content would be Twintania if she's being tanked on top of where the Dreadknights spawn so that the Heavy effect slows them down a bit initially, and even then that's pretty situational. Arguably Raiton is still more beneficial to push her out of the phase faster.

Doton has it's place, but it's against 3+ targets of survivable adds where tanks know not to pull mobs out of the AoE...most of the time I just end up using Katon and not worrying about it. Faster ninjutsu timer anyway because it's 2 Mudras instead of 3.

[Keisatsu]

From what I understand (Both from seeing other Ninja's and myself) Doton at odd times (During boss fights) tend to be because of a mistake in Mudra combination

Whether this be due to mis-timing, lag, or other, will usually result in Doton being placed down, an example would be activating Huton via: Jin - Chi - Ten.
Start with Jin like usual, and then go through lag, or some other form of timing where Chi is not registered and I instead get Ten, which would give me the Katon icon, now realizing what I've done, I've effectively missed Huton and can either do Katon, Bunny, or Doton, so I'll move on to Doton and just place it down instead of wasting the Ninjutsu.

Just posting my experiences as to why Doton is placed randomly at times, yes you may call me a baddie or whatever for this. :C

[Kaze3434]

This is correct. Doton is so situationally useful that I'm surprised I see it so often. It's a 24 second DoT at 30 Potency, so if literally every tic of the DoT hits it's 240 potency total. If stuff dies before Doton's timer reaches 6 seconds, you're better off using Katon for AoE (missing 2 DoT tics on Doton puts it down to 180 potency, which is equal to Katon's potency.) And on Single Target, Raiton is still king at 360 potency, so there's never really a reason to use Doton on single targets. .

one reason people seem to use doton so much is because they dont know how dots work in this game. most think that they work every second.

[Wobi]

Honestly unless there are a lot of adds to burn down I've rarely used it, and in fights like T5 or ST the mobs are moving around far too much for Doton to be an effective use of your cooldown. I tend to stick with attack speed boost from Huton and the awesomeness that is Suiton so I can pull a nice trick attack on the boss so everyone gets to be a bit more effective for 10 seconds while we are trying to push to another phase or just take it down. Now when the Trick Attack cooldown is in effect I will stick to Raiton (boss/bigger HP targets) or Katon (for mob packs) as long as the attack speed boost is still up. I'm interested into seeing how far the nerf goes, as as the 100% crit from Kassatu (sp?) I've seen Raiton go anywhere from 1200-2000+ (echo).

Doton looks pretty sweet but in most fights another ninjutsu would make better use of your time.

[Kanemano]

Frontlines on the flag.

/thread

[Evangela]

I just don't understand why macros aren't working so well with these Ninjutsu combos.

[Destinova]

I just don't understand why macros aren't working so well with these Ninjutsu combos.

Macros round up. So you can not use /wait .5 and if casting a 3 mudra ninjitsu your adding time that you could be using for a gcd skill.

[Jynx]

Even when manually inputing Ninjustu I tend to get a pretty wild variaty of reaction times to my key presses, something it's instant other times I feel it's very slugish. It's made me goof up more than one cast and wind up casting a bunny or something else than what I was aiming for.