The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

You don't need to buy Kendatsuba Hands +1 unless it's for a meva set, if you're pinching pennies. Adhemar Hands+1 are primarily better, especially if you pick the acc option (the acc difference between the two is minor). Kendatsuba head +1 has a ton of acc that Bonnet+1 doesn't have, and for any high level content, you're likely going to want to meva anyways so they are good for both of those reasons. Generally, I use bonnet+1 for fodder content, because the crit damage+ is very nice when paired with a few kenda pieces, and you get the crit rate set bonus when paired with adhemar hands. I swap between the two periodically, so you will want them both.

IMO, I'd buy the HQ abjuration pieces first, and then over time add the su3 to your arsenal, since they are very useful. For Ninja, they are less pertinent for meva than it is for Monk, due to having some protection through shadows. I personally don't have tekko+1 su3, but you would want both hands and head eventually for Shun, but they are not a requirement by any means.

I more or less agree with Buukki's points, with some additional thoughts.

I tend to default to 5/5 Kendatsuba +1 TP set on anything with significant danger of magical damage. Since Ken+1 head/hands is also not that big of a drop in DPS versus Adhemar +1 head/hands (thanks to all of the acc/crit rate/TA), I'm comfortable with that trade for the added security.

That being said, I'd go for Adhemar +1 head/hands as the priority for a few reasons:

* Perhaps obvious, but if you have sufficient accuracy to not want to swap out Adhemar Bonnet +1 and no big concern about Meva, Adhe+1 head/hands = best DPS. Worth noting that Ken+1 head/hands are no slouch though, lots of Acc/TA/Crit rate is a very nice combo.

* Adhemar is useful for LOTS of jobs. It's still near the top of the pack of TP options for most of the 9 jobs on the set, compared to Ken+1 only being usable by NIN MNK SAM.

* You need two or more HQ abjuration pieces for the set bonus (Crit rate +2% per piece, bonus starting with 2 pieces equipped. Makes HQ Adhemar a bigger step up from NQ than you may be considering.

In case you don't yet have other Kendatsuba+1 pieces, I'd rank the priority as:
1) Body. Best TP piece for most situations on NIN, great Meva. If you play MNK or SAM, equally great for those jobs.

2) Legs. My default TP piece. Samnuha Tights can win in low acc situations, but there's a BIG accuracy gap, so you'll want Ken+1 for serious content. Again, great MNK SAM gear as well.

3) Feet. Yet again, my default TP piece (but Herculean Boots with strong augments are competitive), and also a top notch Shun piece. Good for MNK SAM, yet again.

4) Head. Buukki explained it well, you want the Acc option and it's great for Shun. Great for MNK Acc gear as well, less so for SAM (cuz Flamma+2) unless you need the Meva.

5) Hands. Still good and worth acquiring, just lower priority than the other set pieces. Great Shun and Meva gear, competitive TP piece that may be worth a slight DPS sacrifice from Adhemar+1 depending on your situation.

Note that when prioritizing all of the Su3 and Adhemar stuff, I'd prob slot the Adhemar +1 head/hands combo (and you'd want both since they work well together) pretty high - maybe behind Ken+1 body, but above all of the other Ken+1 pieces.


This isn't wrong, but from a practical standpoint soooo much of the magic damage you'll encounter is AoE stuff that isn't absorbed by shadows. Leaving MNK and NIN in more or less the same situation, where both get some benefit from Meva.

It's far more common that physical attacks are the blinkable ones that I can protect with via Utsusemi - stuff that gets through my shadows is far more likely to be magical. That's why personally, I find Meva to be *the* stat I care about for defensive purposes. That's also why I stuck Meva on the Resin slot of my TP Andartia's mantle (paired with frequently used 5/5 Ken+1 TP set, you can stack enough Meva to be very effective).

Do we have any Mid/High tier gearsets that are up to date?
Wanna make my Mule a nice Ninjar but finding a lot of old info.

First page

Just got Heishi Shorinken reading over the guide trying to make ninja great again...

So ded.

some of you have ever test a iddle full eva Set like some THF do in dyna divergence or you think its a total waste ?

like this set for example
ItemSet 306702

Being naked does make you very light and able to evade. Just...not in XI.

Looked in his profile. I think he meant to post this set.

ItemSet 366702

That's the first time I am noticing all the evasion those pieces have. I largely forgot that stat even existed, might not be a bad set to macro in for Utsusemi: Ichi

Does anyone have this set (or close) and able to checkparam how much Evasion it is?

ammo="Yamarang",
head="Hiza. Somen　+2",
body="Hiza. Haramaki +2",
hands="Hizamaru Kote +2",
legs="Hiza. Hizayoroi +2",
feet="Hiza. Sune-Ate +2",
neck="Ej Necklace",
left_ear="Eabani Earring",
right_ear="Infused Earring",
left_ring="Hizamaru Ring",
right_ring="Vengeful Ring",

no back or waist but the above is 1120 evasion with /checkparam.

I tried building for evasion before. Including Yonin/2x Mijin Path D/Salt Ramen/Kurayami/Blade: kamu i was able to get good evasion vs Apex. The problem was vs a single Apex i was never in danger because of Utsusemi and if you mass pull stuff they just tear through shadows, due to acc floor and they hit real hard. I wasn't impressed but that was just with trusts rather than real supports/group content.

Kenda+1 doesn't have terrible evasion to begin with too.

They need to add evasion skill+269 to certain jobs' (ninja thief dancer monk puppetmaster rune) REMAs. Make evasion useful again.

Given the acc floor I'm not sure that would make any difference when you have multiple targets hitting you.
For single targets it could probably make a difference but then again for such targets NIN is already in a fantastic situation even without any specific Eva builds, thanks to the 3 tiers of Utsusemi.

Sooo... I'm not sure it would change anything, for NIN I mean. For other jobs maybe, I dunno.


I've always been disregarding Eva builds so far, but after reading some of Ladyofhonor's posts concerning his THF I sorta changed my mind, slightly.
You kinda need a very specific setup to exploit it though, with specific buffs. It doesn't really work that well if you're just solo with trusts.
So if someone wants to build an Eva set for his job to use when solo it might be good to be aware of this, before getting disappointed by the results.

Add a ninja Roll rostram XI, you gonna have 50+15+40, so 105 eva and if you add 2 song (max) so 136 + 91.


So 1120 + back full eva so 45.
I think we should see how much AGI we have, but we should reach 1497, maybe more with AGI bonus from cape.

I don't have any idea if 1500 eva is a nice result, no idea how much THF full trump+1 Su5 can reach without buff.

1500 will get you at max eva for all of Omen (except MAYBE some bosses, haven't fully tested evasion vs them), and all of wave 1 dyna. Wave 2 you should still be evading some but don't think you'll be capped on everything.

I tank the wave 2 windy boss with one SV mambo and an evasion gearset (but NOT my max evasion set, my cape's resin augment is parrying, I use AF+3 legs, Ashera Harness, and Moonlight rings). I start with evasion weapons (Gandring is +100, Nibiru knife +49) but once Blind II lands I swap to DD weapons and evade perfectly fine. If I had to guess I'm in the 1650-1700s range while tanking it.

To note, the Zitah weapon can be augmented to have a total of +54 evasion for NIN. You can also /RUN, my preferred sub on THF anyway, and Swordplay builds to +60 evasion.

From the looks of things NIN will need more buffs to reach evasion there, but with the safety of Migiwari and Utsusemi, can likely pull off a lot more in regards to evasion tanking particular bosses. NIN will also keep hate better since it has some actual +enmity in it. It's certainly something I think a serious ninja should look into. Not sure when I'll get back to NIN to give it a try.

I've been curious about this for a while, so I went out to do a quick test. Nothing very thorough, just a basic sanity check to see if there's any obvious gap between the two.

I used the same gear set for both, though I don't have a Heishi yet, so I used R0 Kikoku/TP Bonus vs. Kaja Sword/TP Bonus. Fighting Apex Jagil with Dia 3, Chaos/Sam, Fury/Frailty & MinuetV. Did all WS at ≥ 1750 TP (so effective 3000) to remove variance from TP overflow. I really just wanted to know what the difference was in max damage.


Tbh, I didn't think the gap would be that big. I solo a lot, so I still prefer Katana for the skillchains, but Sword is definitely looking like a real option in some situations.

Already been saying that since page 144, SB on NIN rocks.

Jeez even without the ambuscade sword 15% those savages would've been better lol.

That's quite depressing, if you ask me :(

Something is wrong with those numbers, Ten and SB are much closer then that with Ten actually having a higher fTP on it's first hit. Check gearsets as I think Ten isn't equipping the WSD it should.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Savage_Blade
4.0 10.25 13.75
50% STR / MND

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Blade:_Ten
4.5 11.5 15.5
30% STR / DEX

At 2K+ Ten should be in the ~40K range, I know because that's what I was doing on even higher level Apex mobs when I was CPing NIN to 2100 and using Ten.

Kaja/Naegling SB is stronger on all hits at every TP range.

This is the statement I would expect from someone who only has DRG mastered.

On a serious note. From my testing Naegling does 100% beat Ten for sure. I have a pretty skewed set towards Ten and I was still doing about 12k more dmg per WS using Savage Blade @3k TP using R15 Kikoku. However, the one thing I do want to test that I can't atm since I don't have the TP bonus Katana is Metsu spam vs Savage Blade spam DPS wise. The big difference there is that Metsu spam will net you SC dmg + a ton more white dmg which is why it's typically beaten Ten spammers with Heishi in my experience.

First Hit
1000: 4.0*1.15= 4.6 > 4.5
2000: 10.25*1.15= 11.7875 > 11.5
3000: 13.75*1.15= 15.8125 > 15.5

Additional Hits
1.0*1.15= 1.15 > 1.0


Might want to spend less time grinding CP and more time learning math, buddy.

Naegling also has a native attack bonus, which NIN, and most other jobs that can use it, need if they're not being super buffed.

Another aspect is that Kaja/Naegling multi attacks are all performed by it, instead of Hitaki (70% lower base damage than Heishi) taking half of them.

They are not all performed by the main hand

The damage discrepancy between them should be small and practically non-existent if the Aeonic Katana is being used. Again Ten actually has high TP growth while SB has an extra base hit, both get a free hit from off hand. The WSC difference between them is interesting because while SB has a higher STR mod Ten's extra DEX mod should be much better then MND considering the gear NIN gets. The result should be both doing very similar damage with Naegling (not Kaja) doing more due to it's 15% flat bonus.

The test above was kikoku/Hitachi. Savage blade might still win with naegling/Hitachi, but ten r15heishi/Hitachi will be much closer than the above screen shot shows. Not really showing a fair comparison with TP bonus if one set doesn't even have the ideal weapon for the build.