Nekokage

"Buzz Buzz" - Hamlet

I really cannot accredit why I like ninja. Its a demanding job, that requires me to.. count.. um.. well it requires me to pay attention to one thing over and over again, in addition to everything else a tank has to deal with. I mean.. a serious tank will really despiratly do everything possible to grab hate from a mob that is slowly killing a healer or whatever. But its really hard to do when you're counting shadows, anticipating when to recast, and when you can provoke again. Its a complicated job; especially when you consider how little advantage ninja get when it comes to keeping hate. About the only thing we can do is to scrape by on one or two items to hold emnity and cast ninja magic whenever possible.

Well.. after getting Ninja to 40 for the sake of CoP, I returned to it after I obtained enough equipment to be able to do it without being too terribly disadvantaged. But reaching to 60 was a long and very hard road, since for every one good party I would get, I ended up with two or three very bad ones. It's not a that these people were bad, it's just that it is very easy to mess things up for a ninja, mostly due to people not doing their jobs, or at least doing things in an unadvisable way.

I think the most annoying thing of all, that even plauged me as Paladin, are those damage dealers that decide to unload with several job abilities that create emnity and unleash a huge attack before I could even start to build up hate. It is by no means to say that such attacks are not possible; its just that the first few seconds of a battle set the hate pattern of the whole fight. If say a warrior unleash a rampage at the start of the fight, even a paladin will be hard pressed to recover hate, let alone a ninja. The only thing that is a saving grace is the fact that people loose emnity by taking damage and of course loose all hate bying reaching zero hit points.

But its more a point of people doing a basic job. I remember one party that had a summoner and a red mage that both did an amazing job helping me keep hate. A ninja's hate comes from the number of attacks evaded or do zero points damage--and conversly loose hate by taking damage. Therefore, its important to use all shadows to the maxium. This means, slow is a slow death and ruins everything. Haste is a blessing above all, and the many bard songs a double blessing letting all shadows casting almost seamless. But this red mage and summoner pair both kept me hasted, but also the summoner cast stoneskin in order to help me recast without interuption AND keep hate. And they paid attention to when it had to be recast. It was wonderful. And many times when I have a bard in the party, oh heavens, I feel like I can do no wrong.

Well, enter in the offer to be in a static, and I'm in Kitty Shadow heaven. Our static is made up of two ninjas and a white mage, and we meet once per week. Its been great! We can invite a thief who can SATA on anyone available, any one of us can use provoke when required. Of course, so far we have been xp'ing on the pink birds of reflection. This makes hate control very tricky since every spell used will be returned right upon us. I have high hopes that this will be a great time and easy way to get my fourth job to 75.