Ninja Guide

With that being said, let’s get started. The first niche optimization is probably the easiest one to implement, and if you are doing the opener from up above, you already are doing one instance of it. This is the optimization of when it is better to do another GCD in Trick Attack instead of a second Raiton. The way this works is that you have to have the GCD be under the effect of Bunshin, gain a Bhavacakra inside the trick that would otherwise have been outside of Trick Attack, and it can’t be a Spinning Edge. Raiton is 800 potency, and the Bunshin on top of the Bhavacakra is 500 potency. To get above the Raiton’s 800 potency, we need to do a GCD that is originally at least 300 potency, which means it is only Gust Slash, Aeolian Edge, and Armor Crush that fits this condition. Once again, this only affects the very last GCD of Trick, and you have to only be able to put the Bhavacakra inside Trick Attack because of this.

A second niche optimization is single target Doton. Yes, this is a thing, but it is very hard to do correctly. Doing this incorrectly just once in a fight is a guaranteed potency loss of at least 120. And it only ever truly gains you a max of like 90 potency if done correctly. To fulfill the condition for this optimization, the boss has to be able to stay in the Doton the entire duration, and you cannot lose a single GCD to the extra time used to cast Doton. This is due to the fact that when SE made ground abilities like Sacred Soil and Passage of Arms instantly tick so you got the protection instantly instead of relying on server ticks, this change was applied to all ground AOEs, including the damaging ones, which gives Doton 900 potency instead of the expected 800 from looking at the potency numbers. So Doton is technically 100 potency more than Raiton, but it also takes an extra mudra to execute, so you lose about .5 seconds on your GCD if not more with ping. For this to be a gain, you have to know when a fight’s phase will end, down to the exact timing of your GCD, and this needs to be consistent. Assuming these conditions are met, you then move one of your Raitons from Trick, and turn it into a Doton before Trick. The reason for this is that Doton does not snapshot enemy debuffs, so using it during Trick is a loss compared to using it before Trick and allowing the ticks to be going throughout the entire time trick is up. So you would essentially want to Suiton then trick Doton when you get the next mudra charge, then do trick normally but switch what was previously a Raiton with a GCD instead.

Another niche optimization is using {!Shadow Fang} outside of Trick Attack. Because Shadow Fang has a duration of 30 seconds, there are often cases where a boss either dies early or becomes untargetable for part of this duration. This would in turn make it lose a lot of potency depending on the situation. In a case like this, you will want to move Shadow Fang either forward in your opener to out of Trick, or to after Trick depending on the situation. Gaining one tick is enough to outweigh what Trick Attack does for its potency. It’s a relatively simple optimization but it happens rare enough nowadays that it’s rarely used.

As a final niche optimization, we have holding cooldowns that end up losing a usage. This is probably the rarest possible optimization, and is the weirdest one for most people since it goes against one of the fundamental principles to optimization: getting the most uses out of an ability as possible. The only times where this can really be worth it is if a boss has a phase where they take heavily increased damage, or a fight that has adds that need to die ASAP. The most common ability this is done with is Kassatsu. So, let’s see an example: