The Anima grind is not the problem.

[Alahra]

I wasted my zeta for a piece of gear that is worse than the standard esoteric weapon stat-wise?

It's actually not. It is very slightly better due to how poor Skill Speed is for NIN, at least going by Dervy's last updated stat weights. Since Kannagi has Determination as the "high" stat and Skill Speed as the "low" one, whereas Yukimitsu has Crit Rate low and Skill Speed high, it very slightly edges it out in Effective DEX.

Kannagi is not, however, better than the Thordan EX daggers despite the higher item level.

[SkyzTheLimit]

It's actually not. It is very slightly better due to how poor Skill Speed is for NIN, at least going by Dervy's last updated stat weights. Since Kannagi has Determination as the "high" stat and Skill Speed as the "low" one, whereas Yukimitsu has Crit Rate low and Skill Speed high, it very slightly edges it out in Effective DEX.

Kannagi is not, however, better than the Thordan EX daggers despite the higher item level.

I see your point with Yukimitsu, and you basically summed up my frustration in the last sentence. Thordan EX is better than Kannagi, so why waste my time grinding for it? I may not raid, but i could handle Thordan EX, the only reason I held off was BECAUSE of the animas.