Ninja or Monk

[GaspardSavoureuxx]

Hey everyone.

I play this game for a while in shadowbringer, and stop for like a year.

I wanna focus on a job to learn and try for the 1st time savage.

I was main heal, i played tank a lot too and ninja.
Ninja was my fav dps and i play it kind of a lot too. Now that i have a new character (little problem on my account), i want to buy a book.

Although, i hesitate between Ninja which i loved before (i don't know now) or Monk (it seems super fun too now).

What's your advice? Do you think ninja still as fun and fast paced like in shadowbringer or will the Monk be more active to play now?

Thanks <3

[Equitable_Remedy]

I personally find NIN to be a lot of fun - I started playing in ShB and still love it.

That being said, MNK performance is much higher if that's what you care about. I also think that the MNK class rework was very well done (though that is a controversial opinion around here) and that the class plays quite well.

I don't think that there's a wrong choice, here! You'll be fine either way, so go with your gut and just switch to the other one if you're not feeling it once you start savage raiding.

Good luck!

[GaspardSavoureuxx]

Thanks for the tip.

I'm gonna look at some video but it both looks good

I know the monk is "better" in term of dps, but i don't care much about that. I just need to play a job that i love

I'm gonna think and try then, the only choice i have

[wereotter]

Ninja and monk are night and day when it comes to complexity.

Monk after it's overhaul is relatively simple. It's not as punishing as it used to be with positional requirements, but you will still have to be aware as every third GCD will require you to hit either a flank or rear. The job, however, is a bit more punishing on death than others since you will lose all your nadi charges when you do die, making getting back into your rotation after death tricky.

Ninja, however, is an incredibly complex job by comparison. There's a lot of things like using a skill to get a proc that you won't use for up to another 20 seconds. Using Bunshin on cooldown but holding Phantom Kamatachi until trick attack, for example. It has a lot more to watch for cooldowns as well.

I was deciding between the two as well for savage, and landed on monk. The more simple playstyle while putting out big damage meant that I could put more of my brain to properly executing fight mechanics instead of playing the job correctly. Monk does have a lot of downtime lull in its rotation, with the only real change up being every 60 seconds during Riddle of Fire, but it is still pretty fast paced having the lowest base GCD.

Ninja mains can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I did get the impression that ninja, also, gets more punished for boss jump phases pushing your whole rotation out of alignment. But that really would depend on if the bosses tend to go untargetable during phases you need to use certain skills.

[Equitable_Remedy]

It's so interesting, because my impression was roughly the opposite.

Once you get the muscle memory for ninjutsu, NIN is quite easy (not at all in a bad way). I had the impression that MNK was the bigger-brain class—MNK has 50 difference openers and 45 subtly difference rotations to optimize various things. NIN has the one opener and the one rotation.

NIN is not really punished at all in savage for bosses going invuln and whatnot. Your rotation is almost completely flexible outside of burst, and for any savage fight, there will be norms about when it makes sense to hold burst until after an invuln window or not (P2S before limit cut, P3S adds, etc.) The one buff you have to maintain on NIN lasts 60 seconds and can be reapplied in 1 GCD after an awkward invuln break.

Maybe I just need to actually try MNK, haha! I basically just play NIN most of the time I'm on.

[GaspardSavoureuxx]

Thanks for your input gentlemen.

I choose monk, i bought a book.

I knew ninja and played it quite much in lvl 80. The monk is totally different (in a good way though).

While you have tons of button to play on the opener for ninja (again, in shadowbringer, didn't test it here), the rotation for 1 min after that is quite dull.

On the monk, the opener is a little bit "easier" if i can say that, but your rotation is different. Instead of the 3 same button you have at least 6 or more.

I like it very much, and i think it could be my main. I'll see when i'll be 90 and full stuff if it'll be boring, but i doubt it.

Thanks all for your input and sharing your feeling about those jobs

[wereotter]

It's so interesting, because my impression was roughly the opposite.

Once you get the muscle memory for ninjutsu, NIN is quite easy (not at all in a bad way). I had the impression that MNK was the bigger-brain class—MNK has 50 difference openers and 45 subtly difference rotations to optimize various things. NIN has the one opener and the one rotation.

NIN is not really punished at all in savage for bosses going invuln and whatnot. Your rotation is almost completely flexible outside of burst, and for any savage fight, there will be norms about when it makes sense to hold burst until after an invuln window or not (P2S before limit cut, P3S adds, etc.) The one buff you have to maintain on NIN lasts 60 seconds and can be reapplied in 1 GCD after an awkward invuln break.

Maybe I just need to actually try MNK, haha! I basically just play NIN most of the time I'm on.

It's not the mudras, and I say that as someone who always bounced back and forth between the two jobs. Those are pretty easy to learn, especially if you learn them naturally as you level. It's more things like how many other cooldowns you have to watch, and if you do it wrong, then you've messed up for the next two minutes. Things like watching the rolling timer on trick attack and ninjutsu to make sure you don't use the suiton too soon. You want to use it well before trick attack comes off cooldown so that you have two uses of raiton during trick attack, but not so soon as to lose the suiton buff before you can trick attack. Also there's the ninnki gauge and bunshin to make sure you hold onto the ninki if bunshin is coming off cooldown soon instead of burning it as soon as it's available on bhavacakra. As well as just how much you have to attempt to cram into the trick attack window, which for me was just a chaotic mess.

Monk, on the other hand, just has you hold onto perfect balance to use when you have riddle of fire up. It doesn't have any OCGD damage moves other than forbidden chakra, which you always use as soon as it's available. And you do the same with your damage buffs. So you end up with far fewer parts of your rotation to babysit. The only part to really learn and watch is what combination of moves you want to use in perfect balance to get the right nadi, which if you've played ninja will be really easy, and getting used to the idea that you're in formless fist once you execute a blitz, so you don't have to just pick up your rotation where you left off.

[Equitable_Remedy]

It's not the mudras, and I say that as someone who always bounced back and forth between the two jobs. Those are pretty easy to learn, especially if you learn them naturally as you level. It's more things like how many other cooldowns you have to watch, and if you do it wrong, then you've messed up for the next two minutes. Things like watching the rolling timer on trick attack and ninjutsu to make sure you don't use the suiton too soon. You want to use it well before trick attack comes off cooldown so that you have two uses of raiton during trick attack, but not so soon as to lose the suiton buff before you can trick attack. Also there's the ninnki gauge and bunshin to make sure you hold onto the ninki if bunshin is coming off cooldown soon instead of burning it as soon as it's available on bhavacakra. As well as just how much you have to attempt to cram into the trick attack window, which for me was just a chaotic mess.

Monk, on the other hand, just has you hold onto perfect balance to use when you have riddle of fire up. It doesn't have any OCGD damage moves other than forbidden chakra, which you always use as soon as it's available. And you do the same with your damage buffs. So you end up with far fewer parts of your rotation to babysit. The only part to really learn and watch is what combination of moves you want to use in perfect balance to get the right nadi, which if you've played ninja will be really easy, and getting used to the idea that you're in formless fist once you execute a blitz, so you don't have to just pick up your rotation where you left off.

This is very interesting perspective - it really makes me want to try MNK. The points you raise about NIN are interesting - I've mostly treated those things as relatively minimal CD management. Of course, it's hard to know if it's just a matter of being used to it and no longer spending much brain power tracking those CDs. One of the virtues of NIN (though many on the forum seem to disagree) is that it's relatively chill outside of burst windows, so you can devote more attention to setting up burst windows with Suiton, etc.

[Grimoire-M]

This is very interesting perspective - it really makes me want to try MNK. The points you raise about NIN are interesting - I've mostly treated those things as relatively minimal CD management. Of course, it's hard to know if it's just a matter of being used to it and no longer spending much brain power tracking those CDs. One of the virtues of NIN (though many on the forum seem to disagree) is that it's relatively chill outside of burst windows, so you can devote more attention to setting up burst windows with Suiton, etc.

No this is mostly my feeling too. The biggest hurdle is often just figuring out how to TCJ safely during a high movement phase and adjusting around that. P4SP1 in particular gets me a lot, but that’s because of Pinax.


Oftentimes the problem is death recovery and drift. You’ll encounter problems on phases that should be absolutely clean like FoF on P3S for a mistake made much much earlier that happened to be close or during a TA window. That said, I can’t imagine it would be any better on Monk.

[wereotter]

No this is mostly my feeling too. The biggest hurdle is often just figuring out how to TCJ safely during a high movement phase and adjusting around that. P4SP1 in particular gets me a lot, but that’s because of Pinax.


Oftentimes the problem is death recovery and drift. You’ll encounter problems on phases that should be absolutely clean like FoF on P3S for a mistake made much much earlier that happened to be close or during a TA window. That said, I can’t imagine it would be any better on Monk.

P3S has a problem near the end where riddle of fire comes up while the boss is untargetable before doing the dive dash across the arena. It's so near the end of the fight that it's not a HUGE deal, but if you don't just burn it up and waste a blitz, then you won't have it up when brotherhood comes up again right before enrage.

That said, if you're not getting to enrage on the fight, then this is even less of an issue.