March 2024 Version Update

Actually I thought of 2 valid use cases for Yagyu that aren't Crystal Paradise. Halphas and WAR Fomors

I think the problem isn't that 'Yagyu isnt that good', but that 'NIN isnt that good', really. The amount of potential benefit Yagyu provides given you're already on NIN far surpasses the amount of benefit any of the other weapons give their respective jobs.

When you look at it from the perspective of a top end group, you still aren't going to use NIN because it's not a top tier DPS and you don't care about mitigation. If you look at it from the perspective of one elite player going to help a subpar group, an undergeared player in a subpar group, or as a soloer with trusts.. it's considerably different. The amount of combined damage, hate, and mitigation provided by NIN with yagyu approaches the way a PLD can tank while aoe healing and turns an otherwise uninteresting job into a party changer. Is it worth using over a perfect PLD in any situation like that? Still probably not.

With that said, I think quite a bit of the is coming from people who enjoy(or enjoyed) the NIN job and would love for it to be relevant again. Yagyu nearly accomplishes that on it's own, by changing NIN from a defensive DPS to a DPS-tank with powerful enmity and party mitigation abilities. A small NIN patch in the future that draws normal NIN to parity with other jobs could potentially turn Yagyu NIN into one of the most busted combinations available, and it's hard to completely overlook that when the other options are largely underwhelming.

Of course, I love NIN and I'm no stranger to how dogshit it generally is right now. It's the job I get to play the least in groups out of any in my wardrobes. I feel like im actively griefing the team when I bring it to Sortie. That said it's impossible for me to have any hope for them ever 'correcting it when their stunting of the job has been so deliberate. Katana as a weapon has been ***on since Abyssea and when you compare things like Ruthless Stroke and Zesho Meppo it becomes apparent that they're doing it on purpose as a way to "balance" it out, whether that balance is justified or not. Even in its comfort zone, hybrid magical damage, it plays second fiddle to other jobs. Hurrdurr NEgling: yeah that's great in content without WS walls, but then you're competing with 3 other *** who also want to use Savage Blade.

Great Katana is literally just Katana except better in every single way. Maybe that's their litmus for how they balance it but no matter what their thought process is, typically the stuff they give NIN is kind of half baked. Don't get me wrong, there's tons of cool little things that they've given. Yain, Gekka, Kakka, Myoshu, and Yurin are cool spells, Daken was a nice addition to combat TP per hit loss from Dual Wield, being able to draw hate pop Utsusemi and Issekigan to reduce dmg taken for a bit can be clutch; they just are not as impactful as a BLU casting Nat Med Mighty Guard and Tenebral Crush, a DNC popping up 23% DEF down and doing 300k dmg in 2 WS on practically any target without even needing to smack the mob with its daggers, even a BST applying infallible 33% DEF ATK down and a free 10% of the.mob's HP bar chunked (among other esoteric things like Counter tanking, fat self attack bonus, mdef down conals, TP denial...) etc etc.

Point is, even among other second class 1hander citizens, NIN has always been intentionally worse unless it is allowed to tank. Problem is, SE shifted focus to almost forcing you to use PLD or RUN on things that you want to use a tank for. Low man lower level content that would benefit from a NIN could also benefit from a PUP, or a BLU, a DNC, a WAR, a DRK with 9999HP and Dread Spikes/Origin spam... the niche that I think they balanced NIN around simply doesn't exist, which plays into your point, I just don't think or have any faith that SE will ever reverse course and change that.

It sits in my garage like one of Jay Leno's "never drive" cars and that's just the reality. Would it being better make Yagyu better by proxy? Well sure of course, but you could say that about a lot of things on a lot of jobs. If they made Chain Affinity and Burst Affinity worth using for their intended purpose the SU5 weapon for BLU could become a thing, but here we are. That said, ultimately, I still struggle to think of more than a couple of places where Yagyu would be very good even if they buff NIN to the moon. If they make it a third main tank then yeah, sure, it'd be unbeatable if only for the Enmity generation. But if they just boost NIN's damage output it'd only make the case for Yagyu worse because I'd want to lose my tp bonus/statstick even less.

I don't really disagree with most of what you posted, but I had to reply to this in particular. If you were to win a bonanza R1, it's probably going to be your only shot at any of these weapons. It's not like Zomorrodnegar, where you can farm gil again and buy something else.

There's not any other bonanza weapon that redefines a job in the way Yagyu does. It adds an entirely different method of playstyle with very strong gameplay implications, that are currently hampered by the overall state of the job. Is it likely that it'll never become amazing or BIS for an ideal group? Absolutely. But, if you don't choose Darkblade, you can't ever use that playstyle. That's why it's going to stay the most iconic bonanza prize, even if people (maybe rightfully) view it as overvalued.

In theory yes, FBII would be like 10% stronger on avg at 2450 effective TP, but bis Fast Blade II set has higher PDL, while having way less attack in gear, so it's much more demanding of outside attack buffs.
That's just WS damage, but Excalibur can also use much better TP building/utility weapon like Gleti's knife.
Lastly KoR can 3step double Light after Kor > Savage, FBII would only be able to do that 2 step Light with Savage.
Not to mention Aftermath benefits of KoR. Overall Excalibur is muchy better option imo, unless all you want to do on RDM is close Light after some Fragmentation WS/SC and you mostly hold TP to 1750 anyway (but then Prime dagger would be even better for that, unless you specifically want slashing)

In an era where people micromanage and fine-tune their gearswaps based on every situation imaginable to squeeze out every last bit of potential DPS gain, why is something that potentially allows the other DD's to spend more time in their DPS set instead of Hybrid set a useless toy?

opinion discarded

Sure I've already made that point myself a couple of times in this thread, I was just meta commentating on the fact that making a job stronger obviously can make an underperforming(for lack of a better word) weapon stronger. As I said on the last page you can't compare a once in a lifetime weapon to one you can get by playing the game, however the main point stands: yes buffing the job can make the weapon stronger, but it still doesn't necessarily make it incredible and more importantly I have zero faith in SE ever doing it to begin with.

I think I'm just going to agree to disagree on your thoughts on Yagyu as a whole because I genuinely do not think it redefines NIN in any meaningful way outside of being a party trick on a few fights here and there.


Ignoring the fact that nobody has called it useless, as I've said now a few times give me some actual examples of when this would actually happen and I'd happily change my tune. I'd be interested to know which fights would allow your DDs to take off their hybrid sets because they have Utsusemi. So far when asked for examples everyone has either ignored it or backed out. Ironically I've actually given more examples of fights that Yagyu would be great on than anyone else.

Most of dynamis, sortie trash, segments, basically anything with a suboptimal group.

[I know, I know, old content doesn't count and good groups wouldn't bring NIN to sortie or odyssey.]

This is really kind of reminiscent of the late-reisenjima era argument about how subtle blow is worthless and nobody should ever use MNK based on current content, right before the string of content where everyone used SB sets and mewing for 2 years. Albeit, somewhat mitigated by the acknowledgement that we aren't getting much of anything new.

Dynamis I can get behind but eh, I do think Segments and Sortie trash is a bit of a stretch don't you think? I guess theoretically being able to use less defensive gear could help segment groups that struggle to hit 8k+ or whatever so I will admit that it can help, though when we're talking about that kind of group would they be able to capitalize on that? I dunno, seems like kind of a sad excuse to choose a bonanza weapon though I suppose there's merit in the power fantasy of carrying the team with your sharingan. So sure, segments and dynamis.

I think I'm really having a hard time coming up with actual NMs and examples of harder fights where this thing would help a struggling team clear in a meaningful way. I can't think of any bosses (sans Halphas) that uses only physical attacks that can be mitigated by shadows, or where at least most of the dangerous ***can be taken by shadows. Keep in mind that the whole reason this is a problem is because they started designing fights and NMs as counters to Utsusemi to begin with. You already know that back in the day attacks that ignored utsu were largely the exception not the rule.

(Unrelated but I liked subtle blow before it was cool)

You're caught up on being able to completely mitigate fights, but if NIN is recasting utsu after each shadow strip then it's still going to block what's blinkable for everyone in aoe, as well as a considerable amount of plain hits(reducing TP gain). If half the TP are blinkable, that half of the TP will be doing next to nothing. I would imagine the difference in damage and debuffs taken to be very visible on most monsters. That should smooth out quite a few events, whether or not they are changing sets based on whether utsu is up. It also passively accumulates hate on the NIN so random trash mobs aren't running off as much.

That's the thing, I'm using that as the baseline already. Which fights would that actually mean? Rockfins maybe? Some Gabbrath autoattacks? You'd still need to full time hybrid to not got wiped by their magical aoes and spells. You'd cut out an attack or two which might give the healer room to breathe now and then, but at the cost of a slot that could be taken by a better job or better tank, or even an additional support. I'm not even talking about minmax mega groups here (which I'd like to mention, bringing a NIN in an undergeared or underskilled group won't necessarily improve the chances to win if they can't make up for the fact that they could've brought a better job). If we're going with the context of them having buffed NIN and it's the bees knees now, sure I could see it depending on what kind of buff it was.

I was going to post my thoughts on this in the context of a recent event, Sortie, as an example of what I mean and decided not to. But I'm vetoing my own decision.

I've gone NIN to Sortie, maybe you've subbed NIN and have seen it too, but none of those NMs are weakened by Shadows.

Dhartok: Has one physical autoattack that can be absorbed by shadows, everything else is magic.

Gartell: has no parryable/evadable attacks, shadows don't work either

Triboulex: It's magic all the way down Jim, and nothing protects from its towers besides meva

Aita: woops all magic, and the dangerous part on him is the fetters, and as a subcategory of that the dangerouser part is the debuff from fetters

Aminon: I mean sure he has some physical attacks but that being said you're not using that kind of setup on Aminon as we currently understand it

Yes, I acknowledge that you may be able to mitigate some attacks on some few NMs and it might make a difference (primarily for the healer), but is it job changing? If the best example we have is making fighting trash mobs easier, how impactful is that really? What is it achieving that another job who doesn't rely on winning the actual lottery can't do?

I am not playing down on Yagyu to play down on it. I genuinely want a reason to be excited for the prospect of eventually potentially winning one besides playing around with weird builds and seeing what I can get away with for memes. But my brain just isn't going there.

You're listing off only Sortie bosses and Odyssey NMs again, when I've already acknowledged it's not that great for those. If you want to be reductionist like that, why even include Odyssey? Anyone who's kept up already has everything R30, and even if you only have your V25 wins it's not like you need an optimized setup to cheese RP. All you need is your 9/9 boss setup and (maybe) your segment farm, so ~9 jobs and the other 13 don't matter any more.

I consider it impactful because it provides a (relatively cheap) source of damage mitigation for the entire party and the ability to acquire [potentially very large amounts of] aoe hate without giving up your subjob. It has mechanics that give it large impact on most situations you throw it into, even if that doesn't currently make NIN the optimal job for those situations.

There are probably some new strategies that could be executed with it for existing content, but good luck finding them when only a half dozen people have it and none of them are in top end groups.

Ones that take it serious at all because it's easy to do?


Guides are suggestions

Genuinely, what else actually matters? Since I'm the reductionist I'll try to figure out more events where having AoE Shadows could help a slow team clear content.

You've made it clear that a group of presumably new or just very bad players can make use of it in Segments, I'll agree here.

A slow or new group can use it it in Dynamis especially if their healers are slow or new. Yes, sure. I don't think it'll help much on Wave3 boss or most of the Wave2 bosses though.

How about Omen? It helps a little on Caturae and trash, but it doesn't mitigate any of the things that would make midboss or Caturae difficult to a struggling group.

Escha. Can be good here for some things. I don't think Utsusemi can stop some of the more devastating HELM ***like Vermillion Wind, Feral Beak (maybe this one), Banneret Charge, AoE charms, it won't help on WoC to prevent his rats from Jihading your alliance into a crater or benedictioning himself to full but it could help survive Medusa Javelin. It'd be OP for Kouryu since just about everything that makes him dangerous can be eaten by shadows and I already use a strat where I tank his dragon form from behind w/ Yagesumi and Scherzo and eat his *** like grass. Vinipata will still ***out Mama's Judgment without a good stunner but it blocks his autoattacks and maybe a couple of his stance abilities. Zerde doesn't benefit much if at all. Some of the easier NMs like the Wrathhare benefit, Pixies not so much, any of the whales still *** you with Spikes but you can avoid some of their attacks (not the instant death one tho), the monkeys are somewhat neutered by utsusemi too. The mimic in reisenjima still sucks, Yakshi still sucks, maybe some benefit on dragon and peiste (less so on that). From Dubh still eats *** if he feels like it. Mimic still sucks. Doesn't help for the cactuar. Helps for most of the ark angels besides I guess Taru. Helps for most of the sky gods but not a whole lot. I'm probably forgetting something.

HTBFs? I guess it helps with Odin for some of his attacks, does nothing for Alexander, Cait Sith, practically nothing for Lilith. Might help for avatars if you can't proc off their enspell but how many groups, particularly groups fielding a NIN who knows how to use and owns a Yagyu Darkblade, are partying up for Avatars?

Does little to nothing for Vagary for the same reasons as Sortie but sure I guess it's premium real estate for helping clear trash. Not sure what they're gonna do on the NMs though.

UNMs? Could be helpful on some. Might be able to cheese the Fafhogg for example by forcing Spike Flail and ignoring his *** terror and dispel. I don't remember if he actually works that way or not though. Does nothing for Tumult Curator or most any of the other HNMs. Aspid I guess? The Slime for Gelatinous Ring?

Delve? Skirmish? Peculiar foes? I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Wouldn't mean a lot for Delve as we've already touched on Naakuals. Skirmish often doesn't have the group grouped up... or have a group at all. But I guess for Rakaxnar where you're just going around killing NMs, sure. Peculiar foes... sure.

Sinister Reign? Some of those guys like Morimar and August would benefit. Does the tiger's terror go through shadows? Idk. Arciela, the dumbass plant, Saj'akka, Ingrid, Teodor... not so much.

I suppose for grinding Apex and Locus it would help if you don't bring a healer or a support experienced with healing, so can put that on the board.

Missing anything? If we want to scale this up to a more capable group then we're back into entry level Odyssey and Sortie and start from the beginning. I know it keeps being said that "there's probably more new strategies that can be made but uh no one cares" but like, is it that no one cares or is it that figuring out a scenario where this thing actually does something is too difficult to even think about?

All that content is butter easy

Guess nins good for dicking around

And we circle back in to why I don't think it's as impressive as ppl believe. without a doubt it's a fun toy and that can be enough reason to pick it for sure. It's not changing your life though.

Nin is super fun but is the red-headed stepchild of FFXI

I felt mechanics were created just to *** nin over.

Mechanics were created to fuel Yaegasumi and SAM, the chosen child of FFXI.

I mean TBF, if they didn't make mobs wipe shadows constantly, NIN shadows would be insanely strong (see: everything pre-Adoulin). Shadows were already busted as hell when the limit was 3 per cast (from subjob), now imagine that but with 7 shadows per cast and basically no recast times.

Screw Diamond, Miracle Cheer, Onion Sword, and Yagyu. RR5 is the best.

edit: people make the same argument about BLM, SMN, and so many other things. "SE hates my jobs because they put in the MB wall, the BP wall, etc." but these changes were added because of game-breaking strategies that trivialized content. Maybe they were a bit heavy-handed but I think coming up with a light-handed solution is more difficult than people think (which is why I always challenge people to come up with one, and I've not seen a lot of satisfying answers).

Big true. Truest true that has ever been trued.

Anyway isn't it sad that there's nothing to actually talk about in the update thread regarding the update

If you go this route, then imo Kupo set is way better. Can use rod on all jobs and whatever target, not just self cast on WHM and SMN. Then you also get x2 timer on food and cool crafting shield, that I think can potentially push some HQ tiers on subcrafts(?)

Possibly, but you still come up weakened (lower HP and MP pool, could blood aggro, etc.) and you have to wait 30 seconds (while wearing a bad weapon) to use it after coming up weakened.

Crafting shield is EXTREMELY niche because there are some things you can reach a new tier on, but then you can't use escutcheon enchantment so I think there is near-zero useful scenarios for this.

Wait you get ALL THREE kupo pieces?

4, and yes.

That's pretty sick especially for mules. I have no intention of ever making them escutcheons

I agree. That is what you said.


And it would be really cool if that happened and NIN with Yagyu came into vogue, but currently it is not jesus.


That is also my feelings, and with no particular reason for it other than we made SAM a DPS and NIN a tank. If they want to revert Sange or better yet add another JA(not merit) that expends shadows for throwing barrage AND apply it to your party's shadows as well, then Yagyu is Jesus and I will repent my wicked ways.

The problem is it's just not economically viable even with it. Say for example Yetshila...You can hit T1 with it which you normally can't do with escutcheon...except now you will still make 10+ NQ Yetshila, wasting TONS of ingredients, before you HQ a single one. Meaning you will lose gil on that recipe compared to the AH price, which is set by people using the escutcheon. So...sure you have a better chance than you did before, but you'll still be losing gil trying to craft them.

I'll be honest I wouldn't be using it to try to make gil. I'd just be using it to try to get an hq tier on food that I'd be using myself or something

Double duration food is just generally pretty kino especially since it seems it stacks with other double duration buffs

Free jobless Mijin is kind of cool too but eh

Sure, that's fair. Most foods don't have a subcraft so I guess it comes down to "are there foods which are 1 skill away from another tier?" and more importantly: "Are those foods you're interested in eating?"

Can take a look at the recipe list, I doubt you'll find much though, I've looked through a few crafts in the past and it's pretty scant.