Ninja DPS!

[Arkenne]

Venoms at low level are actually different, tho.

Kiss of the Wasp original effect was of a 5% power increase only
Whilst Kiss of the Viper was of 10% power increase.

There is however a Trait for both of them that boosts them up to a 20% increase and adds Stun effect or Life Vamp effect to Jugulate and Mug respectively. For Kiss of the Wasp, this happens at lvl 36, and for Viper at 40.

This would mean that from lvl 6 to 29 you should use Kiss of the Wasp.
From 30 to 35 Kiss of the Viper.
From 36 to 39 Kiss of the Wasp
And from 40 and on whatever you preffer, but I would recommend defaulting to Viper on groups, since stun tends to be on the way.

[Alistaire]

Please ignore all of Malice's advice re: venoms. Please do not waste time switching venoms in fights, ever.

Outside of end-game you can be in whichever one you want, since you can just face-roll the keyboard and win anyway.

What Malice said, and also the fact you're wrong, as in the example I gave, and also A3S as another example. Even there there's plenty of time before adds pop to switch to wasp and lol @ thinking it's "wasted time" in any situation. If switching stances in the few cases where you should makes you lose time as NIN, it may not be the job for you.

[DarkerOrange]

but in A3S you can just sit in Wasp for the whole fight. You don't need to change.

[Darkstride]

What Malice said, and also the fact you're wrong, as in the example I gave, and also A3S as another example. Even there theres plenty of time before adds pop to switch to wasp and lol @ thinking it's "wasted time" in any situation. If switching stances in the few cases where you should makes you lose time as NIN, it may not be the job for you.

I don't think anyone is arguing that there aren't situations where you may want to make sure you have a particular venom applied for its effect. However, the argument is more that there is no reason to stance dance throughout combat. For most content, if you need stuns, you can simply stay in Wasp and otherwise it makes little difference which venom is applied. The healing provided by Mug is so minimal that if it is consistently saving your life, then there are greater issues to look at. Once you have the last trait, the damage bonus is identical on either so there's really no need to incorporate swaps into your rotation. If they added damage to their respective ability it would be a different story, but they don't. You really only need one or the other in any given situation. Sure you CAN stance dance without any loss if you choose to, there's just no real need for it.

[Malicewolf]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there aren't situations where you may want to make sure you have a particular venom applied for its effect. However, the argument is more that there is no reason to stance dance throughout combat. For most content, if you need stuns, you can simply stay in Wasp and otherwise it makes little difference which venom is applied. The healing provided by Mug is so minimal that if it is consistently saving your life, then there are greater issues to look at. Once you have the last trait, the damage bonus is identical on either so there's really no need to incorporate swaps into your rotation. If they added damage to their respective ability it would be a different story, but they don't. You really only need one or the other in any given situation. Sure you CAN stance dance without any loss if you choose to, there's just no real need for it.

I fully agree with this. I never ever stated you HAVE to stance dance (which is where the argument originated from another thread). But it's truly not that hard to do so. I do find it quite amusing though that so many "I want to maximize my class" players are saying "don't bother maximizing that small heal" but will just as quickly say "You'll get 100 more dmg on that enemy by doing this!". Truly not ragging on anyone specific. But i always find the comparison amusing. Players will jump immediately to defend the smallest increase in DPS, but when it comes to mitigation or healing, maximizing means nothing to them. My original statement was to maximize, you can stance dance. My exact quote that everyone has been jumping on for reference

Try to make sure you take advantage of all your perks! Many don't. Use wasp when your jugulate is available (unless you WANT to silence). Use viper when mug is available. By no means is the hp back from mug going to be life saving, but it's still helpful.

I notice most NIN's don't stance dance much, but you can if you truly want to maximize. Otherwise, just stay in one or the other based on need/preference.

[Xenon_S]

snip

ok, here is my argument

The healing from mug is s negligible to the point that switching venoms for it is an unnecessary action, rather than maximising potential.

Normally my mug does 1600-1700 damage, which equates to 800 hp heal, i have a total of 16.5k hp.

Now using seph ex as example
I as a dps only takes unavoidable raid wide damage.
Phase 1
Tifferet does about 7k, fiendish rage about 7k, green ratzon 7-8k, purple ratzon 10k
Phase 2
Genesis explosions for 2k and 10k
phase 3
life force/spirit splitscreen for 10-12k, blue knockback for 3-4k each (3 hits total), da'at for 5-7k, earthshaker for 8-10k

The point here is for everyone of these attacks, with the exception of earthshaker, are all raid wide damage
Healers have to use AOE heals to top everyone off or the entire raid will die from the next raid wide hit, which comes pretty fast
It is very likely that, every time you use mug, you will either be at full HP or will be healed to full by whatever healers are throwing out in a couple of seconds, meaning the heal from mug is rather pointless

Meanwhile, we have other skills dedicated to mitigation
Say if in seph ex i got clipped by a double ratzon due to poor raid coordination, i will probably be left with 1-2k HP
From experience, one round of AOE heal after ratzon is usually around 4-5k, which brings me up to around 7k HP
Almost immediately, seph will use tiffere which hits for 7k, i may or may not survive that if the healers did not throw me an extra cure, the main tank is still taking damage as we speak
In this situation I will second wind myself and it brings me up to 9k hp, with which i can comfortably survive the next tifferet until healer notices me

To add to that, we also have shadeshift, which can mitigate fiendish rage, earthshaker, and life force(orange splitscreen)
We can also crossclass mantra, useful instances include pre-double tifferet, cochma explosions, and basically anytime in phase 3 when big aoe hits are about to come

Using those skills are maximising with regards to damage mitigation, swapping venom for mug and jugulate mid fight is not.

[Malicewolf]

Snip

The only thing I will say is that this is not only referring to end game content. Yes, in Seph Ex, it's most likely not going to be the difference of a save or not as you usually only enter those things with trusted statics anyways. But there are plenty of instances where healers feel they can let the DPS go to half hp in older Ex content and just DPS with the party. While, in a sense, this is true, they can easily do so, it also leads to mistakes more often. The example of Seph Ex is up there with savage. Everyone has to be on their game in the first place as anyone messing up could easily wipe the party. So yes, in those cases, it's not maximizing much. But I've also been in scenarios where my tank dies and I'm the tank now with my NIN in a dungeon. Sometimes that few hundred is exactly what you need for your healer to get off that next cure. Not saying it's a common thing and it's situational in itself. If you can manage it, it's easy enough. There is no need to do it, but it's there and for me it's a single button to switch between the two stances (i macro'd it so 1 button switches from wasp to viper each click).

If it's pulling too much of your focus, then don't do it. As everyone has mentioned, you can usually just stay in 1 stance and switch during instances where you have to pull and a mechanic is necessary. I do find it interesting though that it is even such a big argument... considering how many things a NIN already has to pay attention to in their rotation and CDs, this shouldn't really even be a blimp on the radar... but to each their own! No one is forcing anyone to swap venoms here. It's an option though. As I said, it ends up being a switch MAYBE once every 90 seconds IF you need to be in wasp for some reason and can't simply stay in venom. Most bosses don't get stunned as many have already stated.

And in your example of Seph Ex, say you do get knocked to just below 1k hp. Healer does AoE heal and you get 4k back. You're at a little under 5k now. You pop second wind and find your hp sitting there around 6.8k. Boy, wouldn't that suck? That extra 800 could of came in handy here. Now, I don't believe there even is any reason to be in wasp stance in that fight, so I'd assume you'd be in viper regardless and probably benefitting from the mug hp anyways. Not saying by any means to save mug. That'd be silly waste of DPS. But if the timing happened to be there, it'd be the difference.

I have not gone into Seph Ex yet however. I should probably go into that sometime soon xD Keep getting distracted doing other things xD

[Xenon_S]

snip

well, the described situation where i might fall under 1k if raid coordination wasnt good, happens before the 90s mark, even if i want that mug heal its not back on CD
and im actually in wasp stance 90% of the time, since the difference is minimal and i like the icon of it better than viper, but thats not really an argument i digress

its not really big of an argument, people are just jumping on the idea of stance dancing on ninja
which at first glance, myself included, consider it to be a really silly idea that serves no purpose.