The Ninja Superthread

[treuhavik]

Well, the theory behind this is that you want to leave the boss with your highest potency attack to soften the blow to your DPS while you're away. For most jobs, including NIN, these are DoTs. Aside from Sneak Attack, which I both doubt you'd be willing to use or have ready, that is Shadow Fang @ 440 potency. If you have time for 3 GCDs before break, SF + Mutilate = 950 potency alone. If you can manage DE or any buffs before those, do-it to-it, but for sudden breaks it'd be Fang > Mutilate.

And this is when you're leaving your main target, as in bosses, to deal with adds/mechanics.

For adds themselves, it's a case-by-case basis. This is where you'd need experience with the particular enemy to know it's life expectancy. From there you can judge whether it would be worth using DoTs (will the mob receive enough tics to counter use of another skill?), but it's almost always worth using your debuff before anything else on whatever it is you're fighting, even most trash mobs.

I'll add some of this to the OP soon.