NINJA - How to maximise my DPS?

[ern815]

Hi there,

I need some advice on NIN. I had ilvl 340 and with melded materias onto all gears but it seems that I was still constantly outperform by other players of lower gear.

I have exactly no idea why so might need some advice from Nin experts to tell me how they maximise their DPS or what's their rotation is like.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[RLofOBFL]

https://www.mooglemedia.com/nin-guide/

[Powercow]

So looking at an alte roite kill from 2 weeks ago (it's the most recent I could find of you)...

1) Mug was used 1 time in an 8 minute fight. Pretty much you wanna use Mug any time it's up and not going to waste a bunch of Ninki.
2) You did Spinning Edge -> Gust Slash 52 times, but aeolian edge, shadow fang, and armor crush had a combined 36 casts. That's 16 times you didn't finish your combo for some reason, almost a third of the time!
3) Armor Crush was used 6 times, and Huton once. Even if you pre-buffed with Huton, you'd have, at most, 70 + 70 + 240 = 380 seconds of Huton active, so for over 23% of the fight Huton wasn't up. That 15% haste is *huge* for Ninjas.
4) Jugulate was only cast 9 times instead of the ~15 it should have been. Just hit that baby on cooldown.
5) Your Ten-Chi-Jin order is kinda wrong. You want to use Jin-Ten-Chi to produce Fuma-Katon-Doton. Yes those are your AoE skills, but their combined potency is higher than T-C-J (your single target ones), assuming the enemy will stand in most of Doton (which they will.)
6) You just seem to not be pushing buttons very fast. For comparison, one of my (imperfect, yes) Alte runs had 358 actions compared to your 253 -- and my fight was shorter. Yeah I used a bunch of utility stuff but even removing those I did 346 -- about 37% more actions. I noticed in particular your on-GCD skills aren't seeing much use, you need to try to be on the boss at all times whenever it's not going to get you killed. The sheer uptime would help drastically.

Mostly it seems to be number 6 -- you don't seem to just be pushing enough buttons. If you are using macros for your on-GCD skills, stop -- macros don't queue up weapon skills or spells, meaning you lose, at the very tiny least, your latency on every GCD you use with a macro. Over the course of a fight, this can result in a huge drop in total skill use.

[Vshunyi]

The most important thing is to press your buttons more. In this o1s run with you and another ninja, the other guy pressed 327 buttons and you did 250. That's a lot of potency lost from all the skills you could have pressed. You need to remember to reapply your Shadow Fang, on that same run it was up for less than half the fight.

Practice your rotation on a striking dummy so much that it pretty much becomes muscle memory. That way you wouldn't have to pause so much during content. Of course, read a guide so you know you're practicing the right thing.

[Eloah]

I don't really Ninja, but I can give you some advice. Avoid STDs, period. Single Targed Dotons, or STDs should be avoided at all cost, hence the abreviation STD. Remember 3 and 4 is the sweet spot. If the enemy count is 4 or more use AoEs, with 3, single target or AoEs will work, since the DPS comes out about even. Also keep in mind Doton has to reach 6 ticks to be a DPS boost over Katon. In shorter fights, Katon is better and in single target fights Raiton is better, since it delivers the full 360 up front and not overtime.

[ern815]

Thanks all for these tips. Surprisingly that you guys managed to dig out information of the fights I had with you guys.

I will press more buttons as it seems to be my weakest point.

[Powercow]

I don't really Ninja, but I can give you some advice. Avoid STDs, period. Single Targed Dotons, or STDs should be avoided at all cost, hence the abreviation STD.

Doton is used in the single target rotation during Ten-Chi-Jin, since:

Fuma-Katon-Doton is (316.8 [240 * 1.1 * 1.2] + 250 + 360) * 2 = 1853.6 effective potency.
Fuma-Raiton-Suiton is (316.8 [240 * 1.1 * 1.2] + 360 + 180) * 2 = 1713.6 effective potency.

This means using the AoE abilities during TCJ will result in your super-powerful moment being about 8% stronger.

Now if the boss misses 2 ticks of Doton, which happens on none of the current endgame bosses (unless you grossly misuse TCJ) then yes, FRS will be better than FKD. And outside of TCJ, Doton shouldn't be used on single target because while it does do the same potency as Raiton, it does also require an extra mudra, which will delay your GCD a fair bit.

So yeah, STDs are good in some cases!

Do note that if you time TCJ to make use of Suiton, then yeah you can do the single target one and get stuff out of it.

[ern815]

I've updated this thread as it seems that I do improve a tiny bit but gotta memorize the moves of my opener...

I got a question, what happens after the opener? Should I just repeat the steps all over again?

[ern815]

How do you sustain high dps output during the fight?

[Dezwaan]

The biggest thing is always press more buttons. However outside of your opener your priority should be Armor Crush combo if Huton is less than 30s, Shadow Fang combo when Shadow Fang is 1-4 seconds, then just Aeolian Edge. You should be pressing your oGCDs whenever they are up. This should mean that Kassatsu and Dream within a dream always fall within trick.

However as the first thing stated... press buttons as fast as possible. Don't stop attacking/leave the boss. Melee uptime and attacking as frequently/often as possible leads to the highest DPS over optimizing your rotation.