NIN: Huton spam vs Skill Speed

[Jim_Berry]

I see many NINs spam Huton for obvious reasons. For those who spam it, what is your reasoning for NOT going for Skill Speed gear? I'm just curious.

[Ricdeau]

Skill Speed only lowers GCD, but Huton increases attack rate across the board so your GCDs are shorter and auto attack frequency is increased. You should always strive to keep Huton up as much as possible.

[Dervy]

Skill Speed only lowers GCD, but Huton increases attack rate across the board so your GCDs are shorter and auto attack frequency is increased. You should always strive to keep Huton up as much as possible.

Adding onto this, the rotation of the Ninja seems as if it was based around Huton, or high intensity Skillspeed levels. If you try the typical Nin Rotation of DE-SF-MU-AE (Then muggle MU when it's falling off), with and without Huton, you'll see that without Huton, the rotation breaks down a lot. You'll end up either clipping or missing your DoTs by a tick, as well as having potency decreases clipping DE as you're trying to keep it on 100% up time.

Another thing is this, If you just build yourself around SkillSpeed, those are item stats you could of invested into Determination. Skillspeed doesn't affect the damage, cast-rate or cooldown of Ration*, where as Determination will. So investing in Determination will benefit both Mudras and Physical Damage.

[Tex_Mex]

Skill Speed has 3 major problems:

1) It has slightly lower stat weight than crit to begin with, making crit preferred
2) Skill Speed stat weight drops even further if players are dealing with lag. The mudra lag issue causes Skill Speed's stat weight to drop even further.
3) Higher levels of Skill Speed cause diminishing returns due to TP running out faster.

Here are the stat weights:
Ninja
WD: 9.132
DEX: 1.000
DET: 0.325
CRT: 0.226
SS: 0.215

DISCLOSURE
The Skillspeed for Ninja was calculated without any latency issues. It's evident that Mudra's, coupled with Latency, delays your GDC by a fair amount. With a good connection, your Mudra's will delay your GDC by 0.5s every 20s or so.
If this applies to you, then the appropriate Skillspeed weight for Ninja is:
SS: 0.201
If you're being delayed by 1 second, it'll be approximately:
SS: 0.19

Note: This information was provided by Dervy and can be found in its original location here: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...eight_updates/

[Callinon]

Just to point out too that anyone spamming Huton is either in a very strange fight or is doing something very wrong.

Under ideal conditions your ninjutsu should rotate between: Huton -> Suiton (TA) -> Raiton -> Repeat. While this isn't always totally possible or changes for various fight-dependent reasons, just doing Huton every 20 seconds is basically always wrong.

[Jim_Berry]

*SNIP*

I won't lie; I hardly use Huton. I've been paired with a NIN with Sasuke Zeta, and a combination of Dreadwyrm and Augmented Ironworks. I'm using Shiva Katanas, some Aug Ironworks, no Dreadwyrm, but I'm usually higher on the Hate List than he, even with his Huton spam.

I seem to play NIN better than my BRD, and had no complaints about my damage out, which is another factor in me dropping BRD. I'm still in the process of being 100% confident with NIN (healers need not worry about me as I dodge well), so I'm gathering info.

I would see NINs using Doton on a boss while I'm spamming Raiton (I think it's Raiton, the Thunder). It would make me think I should be using Doton as well. I usually keep Blood for Blood and Internal Release active, but I will admit that if Kassatsu (if I spelled it right) and Blood for Blood are close to being ready (by a second or two), I'll hold them until both are up. At this point, I'd probably do Suiton > Blood for Blood > Trick Attack > Kassatsu > Raiton. Again, I see other vet NINs do different and I need to see what I need to switch up.

[Ricdeau]

You will definitely see more damage by ensuring you keep Huton up. Obviously you don't just use it whenever, but you want to keep that buff active. Having increased attack frequency is going to increase your damage across the board by using more GCDs and having more auto attacks. Others can guide you on whether or not you want to seek anymore Skill Speed, but increased attack speed from a buff is invaluable since it also effects auto attacks which nothing else currently increases.

[Dyne_Fellpool]

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think you're using the word "spam" correctly, OP.

[Ricdeau]

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think you're using the word "spam" correctly, OP.

At least lets hope he's not really seeing people spam Huton and basically only Huton. As Callinon pointed out if that's happening then those ninjas are doing it very wrong.

[Bushido_Brown]

With how the secondary stats are allocated on the current gear, too much skill speed will sacrifice a lot of crit and det, which will always be more important. Having between 375-425 SS is plenty with Huton up. Some mention wanting a lot of skillspeed to get an extra hit in while other buffs are up, but that extra hit evens out with simply hitting harder with better crit and det, and your TP pool will last longer.