The Ninja Superthread

[juniglee]

Seems low for your gear, but not terribly much (especially if you're getting a lot of charges in t10). I'd expect maybe 40-50 dps more once you get really comfortable with the fight and are doing everything right. Are you having to do your own Dancing Edge? That sucks a good 10-20 dps away from you. Are you using pots? What opener are you using? Do you keep dpsing the boss during charges (when you're not the one targeting)? Using shukuchi to move between the add pairs?

Thanks for the feedback!

I got just 1 Charge the whole fight. I do use HQ Poison Pots at the end of Phase 2, end of Phase 4, and once more when the cooldown is refreshed again in Phase 5.

I open with Dancing Edge -> Shadow Fang -> Mutilate -> Aeolian Edge in that order. Depending on when my Ninjutsu comes off cooldown, I use Suiton -> TA immediately, followed by B4B + IR + AE combo, and if I have it up, Kassatsu Raiton. I typically never use anything other than Raiton after I use Kassatsu. I try to save Suiton -> TA for until I have both B4B + IR up at least.

I use Raiton during adds phase. I should probably start using Shukuchi during adds phase to get from one end to the other too. We did hit the soft enrage on our clear.

In terms of DPS order, this week's T10 clear my MNK was doing 425, I was doing about 390, BLM was doing about 360, and BRD about 330. MNK is considerably more geared than I am though.

[Best-MNK-NA]

@juniglee: I meant xpots of dex. Those are huuuuge and will increase your dps by around 20 or more. You didn't say if you have a WAR to do Storm's Eye for you or not - if you don't that's, again, 10-20 dps lost.

Your big mistake is saving Suiton-> TA to line up with your buffs. You want TA to have as much uptime as possible. Your ninjutsu rotation should be Huton (prepull) -> Suiton (TA) -> Kassatsu Raiton -> Raiton/shuriken -> Huton -> Suiton (TA) -> Raiton/shuriken

and repeat from there. No matter what buffs are up or aren't up. Those you also want to use on cooldown every single time. That should increase your DPS immensely since you are losing out on a lot of potential time for your buffs if you're saving them to line up with Trick Attack (or vice versa).


Also, you should really insist on getting a good opener off. NIN dps is really tied to your opener going off well or else you'll end up significantly behind in DPS for quite a while before it evens out. I use a pull macro after I precast my Huton that times it perfectly so my ninjutsu comes off cooldown at the right place in my opener for Suiton. Timing it right allows me to get an extra raiton or shuriken off before the next huton which increases dps by a bit and lines up everything else down the road very well (especially since the second trick attack will naturally come up with B4B). I also force my raid to wait for Kassatsu to come back off cooldown before pulling (I'd insist on xpots too but they don't want to wait that long and they're not such a crucial ability). We're working on T13 and we just can't afford a completely substandard pull and hope to clear (think we'll get it this week finally).

I think an opener like the one I use (huton prepull, SE -> B4B+IR -> GS -> xpot -> DE -> suiton -> SE -> ta+kassatsu -> SF -> Raiton -> Mutilate -> mug -> SE -> Jugulate -> GS -> poison pot -> AE is the best, but the one Odo posted a few pages back is really solid too. The important thing is to: Get your buffs and debuffs up asap and then, while they're all stacked with Trick Attack up on the boss, apply your DoTs, do your kassatsu Raiton, and get an Aeolian Edge combo off if you can. I can't overstate how important getting a consistently solid opener is for your DPS.

Also, the numbers for your whole group are very low. MNK especially if s/he's considerably more geared than you - they should be pulling around 100 more dps, potentially. Honestly surprised you cleared with those numbers.

[juniglee]

@juniglee: I meant xpots of dex. Those are huuuuge and will increase your dps by around 20 or more. You didn't say if you have a WAR to do Storm's Eye for you or not - if you don't that's, again, 10-20 dps lost.

Your big mistake is saving Suiton-> TA to line up with your buffs. You want TA to have as much uptime as possible. Your ninjutsu rotation should be Huton (prepull) -> Suiton (TA) -> Kassatsu Raiton -> Raiton/shuriken -> Huton -> Suiton (TA) -> Raiton/shuriken

and repeat from there. No matter what buffs are up or aren't up. Those you also want to use on cooldown every single time. That should increase your DPS immensely since you are losing out on a lot of potential time for your buffs if you're saving them to line up with Trick Attack (or vice versa).


Also, you should really insist on getting a good opener off. NIN dps is really tied to your opener going off well or else you'll end up significantly behind in DPS for quite a while before it evens out. I use a pull macro after I precast my Huton that times it perfectly so my ninjutsu comes off cooldown at the right place in my opener for Suiton. Timing it right allows me to get an extra raiton or shuriken off before the next huton which increases dps by a bit and lines up everything else down the road very well (especially since the second trick attack will naturally come up with B4B). I also force my raid to wait for Kassatsu to come back off cooldown before pulling (I'd insist on xpots too but they don't want to wait that long and they're not such a crucial ability). We're working on T13 and we just can't afford a completely substandard pull and hope to clear (think we'll get it this week finally).

I think an opener like the one I use (huton prepull, SE -> B4B+IR -> GS -> xpot -> DE -> suiton -> SE -> ta+kassatsu -> SF -> Raiton -> Mutilate -> mug -> SE -> Jugulate -> GS -> poison pot -> AE is the best, but the one Odo posted a few pages back is really solid too. The important thing is to: Get your buffs and debuffs up asap and then, while they're all stacked with Trick Attack up on the boss, apply your DoTs, do your kassatsu Raiton, and get an Aeolian Edge combo off if you can. I can't overstate how important getting a consistently solid opener is for your DPS.

Also, the numbers for your whole group are very low. MNK especially if s/he's considerably more geared than you - they should be pulling around 100 more dps, potentially. Honestly surprised you cleared with those numbers.

Thanks for the advice. Back to the training room I go - both to work on rotation and opener. And perhaps get some X-Pots of DEX for myself (I can craft them without issue).

Yes, Warrior maintains Storm's Eye like 95% of the time.

[Butcherboy]

At above at the start of the page there are quite a few really good rotations

[Lavieh]

That's absolutely insane... My best bet would be the Warrior was just doing the -slashing% debuffs after he/she generated enough aggro to do so and the NIN was doing nothing but AE spamming and applying DoTs.

I'm pretty sure he didn't AoE at all. Doton isn't going to push you up that high. I also saw this video while it was still on Alex's stream. I have yet to have a clean T10 run but I can get close to Chloro's numbers on T11, in similar if not worse gear (~30 DPS behind). I think a lot of it has to do with his connection/Ping. He can most likely get three-step mudras off with a lot less clipping. Comparing how I open to how he does he doesn't lose as much DPS whenever he refreshes huton as when I do. It is really hard to tell though without actually watching him, I think he has a niconico channel if anyone is subbed to that.

I think it is really good to note that he is BiS for i130 given that he has as much weighted dex as he possible can get.

[Aiurily]

generally you can translate 1s saved gcd time to 1.5 dps or so near bis gear level

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfwucJOTTsA would be an example of unrealistically fast mudras for most na players
http://www.twitch.tv/masakiii/b/611798268 @ 44:30 or 56:05 is where you see his mudra speed for huton. pretty normal speed for that type of instance (pvp/estate are a lot more responsive)

he parsed 618.8dps, 237k dmg in a 383s fight with 130 wep. close to around 21 ninjutsu possible (19 base+4 kassatsu raitons=23, minus two for fuma shurikens in add phase probably)

depending on how heavy you want to be with your mudra gcd clip estimations compared to their speed you can figure out the dps difference i guess. it's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be imo. getting even 5% increase from getting top tier speeds is a big stretch unless you have 200ms+ normally or regularly make cute bunnies

[Lavieh]

Bunnies

I wrote a very long post out but it was deleted on accident because I clicked the back button.
To summarize :

Given he had 1 second on 3 step- mudras and .3 seconds on 2 Step-mudras above a NA player the dps gain for that encounter would have roughly been 10.7 DPS given he would get an additional 6-7 actions.


Also having almost no latency can effect other parts of a fight aswell.

[Aiurily]

you say given but your "givens" have no real measurement to them though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfwucJOTTsA still stands as the fastest speed i've seen, so using that as a base (a 30 fps video)

391 skill speed total (19 belt, 25 gloves, 6 bandana)=2.08gcd. frames to cycle a gcd=63; 1f=0.033s.

first suiton - 26f clipped = 0.858s
second suiton - 23f clipped = 0.759s
first raiton - 11f clipped = 0.363s
second raiton - 10f clipped = 0.33s
first huton - 14f clipped = 0.462s
average for 3 step (fastest) = 0.6105s

for reference, my own speeds @ 391 ss. 30 fps, 63 frames to cycle a gcd=0.033s per frame

my suiton - 33f clipped = 1.089s clipped
my raiton - 17f clipped = 0.561s clipped
my huton - 34f clipped = 1.122s clipped
average for 3 step = 1.105s

difference between my ok speeds and his fastest, jp tier speeds

suiton = 0.330s saved
raiton = 0.231s saved
huton = 0.660s saved
average for 3 step=0.4945s

if we assume 21 ninjutsu where mudra clips happen with an even divide of ninjutsu (7/7/7) that's 8.547s of clipping. taking his numbers (237k dmg @ 383s), if you extend the fight duration by 8.5s but keep the damage the same, his dps drops to 605.3 (13.5 dps less while not accounting for auto hits or dot ticks, so realistically even less of a dps loss number, around or less than 10). the bulk of it really just comes from a faster huton animation cancel really.

then on top of that, cc's speeds aren't as good as this person's speeds either. him doing 30-40+ dps extra isn't majorly from having better speeds or gear lol

[Best-MNK-NA]

I found out today the only other group on my server that's cleared T13 is comboing their LB3 with Trick Attack to do more damage. I've always been under the impression LB damage wasn't affected by anything. Has anyone done actual testing to see if they do combine together?

[Dervy]

I've always been under the same assumption...

Maybe it's because TA is a vulnerability on your opponent and not actually a buff to yourself. But as far as I know, until I've seen actual testing of it, I'm not buying it.