Duality

[Kaze3434]

Really? Everything I've read says it doesn't double the damage because combo bonuses only apply once. Say, you use Duality for Aeolian Edge from behind during a combo you get one attack at 320 potency, the Duality attack will only hit for 100 potency (no combo bonus). Or is the tooltip just poorly worded?

no, you get two hits at 320.

[Kaze3434]

The issue of Ninja's button bloat on controller can be mitigated a bit with without resorting to macroing oGCDs. My current method:

snip
tl;dr: get creative, it's not that bad

i have done pretty much the same, except i moved shade shift and venoms to the third cross bar. the number of times you will change venoms is so small, they dont justify taking up space used by other things. shade shift i have there because of similar reasons. the times you are going to get hit by something physical give you more then enough time to switch and use it in-between globals.

[Dzian]

Really? Everything I've read says it doesn't double the damage because combo bonuses only apply once. Say, you use Duality for Aeolian Edge from behind during a combo you get one attack at 320 potency, the Duality attack will only hit for 100 potency (no combo bonus). Or is the tooltip just poorly worded?

on occassion I tend to duality armor crush. small potency loss but sometimes better fits where it comes off cool down in regards to my rotation. I would rather duality armour crush than have it waiting 15+ seconds till ive reapplied manipulate dancing edge and shadow fang and come round to the third hit of an a.edge combo. especially in fights where there are frequent dps interruptions such as jumping bosses and the like.

if you use armor crush as an example. duality will give you the full potency of the attack twice. but will only proc the additonal huton buff once.

The issue of Ninja's button bloat on controller can be mitigated a bit with without resorting to macroing oGCDs.

Regarding Ninja Hotbar bloat I actually don't find it that bad and only real macros I use are shukuchi and shadewalker.

Click to enlarge.

My r2 is much the same on set 1 and set 2 all I done is put duality and dream within a dream where mug and jugulate are so just tap r1 to switch . the strip up the left I don't use it's soley there as a visual indicator on timers. laid it out like this to minimise trigger swaps and stuff. all combos easily accessible r2 square triangle then either hit circle or expand the bar and hit circle or x. only ever let go of r2 for ninjutsu or to spam aoe damage. basically

[Ilan]

I play controller. I don't think I have the luxury of keybinds. Besides in my experience the 3 Ogcd's are all abysmally weak even when they do Crit. Probably because Ninja is more a support DPS mainly through Trick Attack and I guess Dancing Edge. Enmity Control is cool I guess. Unfortunately I lack the finger reflexes to pop the buffs in sync with all the attacks so I'll never be a top level Ninja nor do I aspire to be one. I do commend those who can pull it off though.

A ninja is not only a supporter, a ninja can deal a extreme high amount of dps if played properly. I can't say anything about controller handling but i think Phireblast did it already.

Yes these 2 Skills don't deal the highest amount of dps in the ninjas arsenal, but they are still dps sources and like i said, macros aren't working properly pretty often and you are still slower with them. But i guess if you aren't playing with an opener and a certain rotation, it doesn't really matter if you are slow or if 1 skill doesn't even go off.

[Ryaz]

no, you get two hits at 320.

Ok, that makes it much better then. I thought it only added a non-profit 100-150 potency (depending in the attack). I assume the whole "applies combo bonus only once" means it doesn't double the extra potency, but both attacks get the effect once. The tooltip is definitely poorly worded. :P

[Rongway]

(no combo bonus)

Example:

Dancing Edge
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Gust Slash
Combo Potency: 260 <=== active on Duality
Combo Bonus: Decreases target's slashing resistance by 10% and HP recovery via healing magic by 20% <=== not active on Duality

[Ryaz]

Example:

Dancing Edge
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Gust Slash
Combo Potency: 260 <=== active on Duality
Combo Bonus: Decreases target's slashing resistance by 10% and HP recovery via healing magic by 20% <=== not active on Duality

Gotcha. I was thinking the extra damage was the combo bonus and the rest were just additional effects.

[Malicewolf]

L2+R2:

Now this is why I said can only be mitigated "a bit". Taking in my "reminder hotbar" method, I still don't have space to put Wasp venom(although I'm considering dropping Shade Shift...) but things are still very manageable.

To the complaint about fitting in the poison stances, just macro both to 1 button. Each time you click it, it will switch the stance. Save's space and there is pretty much no reason to swap these twice in a row (in which case, yes, it would take longer... but you really shouldn't need to do it that quickly in succession of each other).

/micon “Kiss of the Viper”
/ac “Kiss of the Viper”
/ac “Kiss of the Wasp”

[FunkyBunch]

To the complaint about fitting in the poison stances, just macro both to 1 button. Each time you click it, it will switch the stance. Save's space and there is pretty much no reason to swap these twice in a row (in which case, yes, it would take longer... but you really shouldn't need to do it that quickly in succession of each other).

/micon “Kiss of the Viper”
/ac “Kiss of the Viper”
/ac “Kiss of the Wasp”

If you use the extended hotbar, is that even necessary?
I have all my skills+cross class on my normal+extended hotbar, including the reminder icons on my main hotbar. (EG-Mudras are on my L2->R2 hotbar, with a Jin icon on my main hotbar and poisons and shunkuchi/goad are on my R2->L2 hotbar) and I still have spots left over. Granted I still have 2 more skills to learn, but I have four spots left.

[Malicewolf]

If you use the extended hotbar, is that even necessary?
I have all my skills+cross class on my normal+extended hotbar, including the reminder icons on my main hotbar. (EG-Mudras are on my L2->R2 hotbar, with a Jin icon on my main hotbar and poisons and shunkuchi/goad are on my R2->L2 hotbar) and I still have spots left over. Granted I still have 2 more skills to learn, but I have four spots left.

All dependent on a person's set up. I just use hotbar 1 and 2 and everything works fine for me. And in this case, the person specifically said he ran out of room for kiss of the wasp, so I'm just giving the simple solution to put them into 1 button instead via macro as it's not something that needs to be clicked often for the most part.

And honestly, I don't even use the extended hotbar and I'm still able to get everything I need ^^; to me its faster ^^ but to each their own!