Ninja/????

Have lots of experience w/a Thugs/Poison and really like it a lot. I'd like to try Ninja as a primary. Any advice on what secondary pairs well with it? Time Manipulation looks interesting and I have seen a few builds lately on the forum.

How does Ninja/TM work... pretty good?

What other secondaries should I consider. I do lots of soloing.

Nin/traps is really really good, but I team on that character often. Anything really would work solo. My recommendation would be in this order: traps, dark, then time. If you wanted to solo EBs/AVs then traps and dark are really nice.

You have to remember that melee pets like Ninja's are inherently weaker because they get a chance to take all damage types, Melee, AOE and Ranged. What this means is unless you have some way of mitigating that damage or incoming attacks they will die much more then ranged attack type pets like Robots.

As was already mentioned depending on what you want to do, you need to pick you secondary carefully. I can tell you players like Redlynne who are big Ninja TA players out of concept will quickly tell you its not awesomesauce if your looking to do Robot Traps type of things like fighting AVs solo.

Traps as was mentioned is always great regardless of Archtype as it affords you the ability to defense cap yourself. With masterminds you can pick up provoke and try to get some attention to yourself letting your pets gets some extra hits in. Mind you Provoke alone will NOT gain a bosses ( AV, EB, GM ) attention for long without some other personal attacks that will cause them damage to build up that aggro. Provoke just adds to your aggro list.

Dark is good as well, it gives you some pools with resistance and defense. The only issue is many of the defense abilities are based on -To Hit Debuffs. To Hit Debuffs can be resisted by big bosses like AVs. Which can mean instant death for all your pets at times.

Time is nice since it has many assorted AOE powers and debuffs. So basically team teleporting and dropping all these debuffs on a group can be fun.

Storm can be fun and wild but without a doubt limited on teams. Hurricane one of your best powers for debuffs can be pretty much hated on teams and can get you kicked or threatened. I can tell you without a doubt on Incarnate missions before even joining a team I have been questions or instructed on how I needed to use Hurricane. As annoying it can be, I do get the fear that some other storm player instilled in this player now that he or she should be asking me if I am a Hurricane nut. I have played on teams where some players never knew you could turn hurricane off.

Personally I am thinking Time with Oppressive Gloom with Team Teleport might be a good way to go. Oppressive Gloom is just the icing on the cake. What does not get debuffed, frozen in time, Slowed has a chance of being stunned by Oppressive Gloom. I think its total lock down.

With nin/TM, the ninjas are naked if you miss that buff or if they die and you resummon. It could be another 90s until the next buff, but they can also run away and still be buffed (if they run into another mob they're dead anyways).

Force Fields with Mace Mastery for Powerboost. Your crazy Ninjas will be invincible.

Oh and don't make a Ninja/TA. You will delete him later.

The only way Ninja/TA would work is if you have a tanking Tanker/Brute who can grab aggro for you.

/TA excels in debuffs and keeping distance between you and the foes, but wait, Ninjas run in! They run in without any decent defense/resistance and they will melt faster than you clicking Aid Other.

This of course doesn't really apply to soloing. I think if you only solo x1, any secondary would work.

If you play Ninjas long enough, you'll realize that they draw a lot of aggro to themselves. Ninjas' AI on their own is to "spread out". Looking at caltrops and crane kick, those two work the best if the ninjas choose their own targets and spread out (which will also lead you to a lot of team-wipes because Ninjas run so fast and they chase runners!).

I have a long list of things that can make Ninja, Merc and Necro much better. I am waiting for another new MM set and I will hit A. Hawks about it. :P

NInja/Dark is the best pair for ninjas. /DM have plenty of support to keep ninjas alive. This is possible because it have two source of AoE heal(Dark Servant) to complety heal any dmg they receive.Also it mitigate the incoming dmg by -recgh,Ton of -tohit,Slow,and fear.

Ninja/Dark is very simple to play, just use tarpatch,Fearsome Stare and HT and the whole mob will be disable to attack. Then you send all ninjas into attacking and you will be done. /Dm is the most versatil of all the secondary and I recomende for anyone new to Ninjas/.

I personally hate the dark heal's radius, ninjas are rarely all gathered within *wait* when did the heal radius become 20? I swear it was annoyingly small a few years back.

Ninja/Storm is surprisingly good, as long as you're comfortable with Hurricane. I have one in the Wednesday night MM Madness group in another thread in this forum. Genin and Oni have about 7% Defense, while Joinin have 14%. Add about 5.5% for well slotted Steamy Mist. Hurricane can be enhanced to about 34% ToHit debuff. That's effectively soft-capped Defense, plus you have a heal for the lucky hits. We ran Sister Psyche at +1/x8 last night with 7 MMs, and I generally rounded up 3 spawns worth of Freaks with Hurricane and then we let the pets go to town. Yes it was chaotic, but mobs died fast.

I'm running Ninja/Therm...the fire shields seem to toughen them up some. throw in some of the Pet Uniques and they should be gold. Well... that's the plan anyway. Looks good on paper.

7% Defense (ninja) + 5% Defense (Proc IO) + 4% Defense (Maneuvers) = 16% Defense (total)

That's not even enough Defense to wipe your nose with when talking about Genin that are -2 to YOU before squaring off against Foes that will be anywhere from +0 to +4 to YOU. Defense is one of those protection schemes that fares *very badly* when outlevelled by your opposition.

There's a reason why I say that Ninjas have all of the survival characteristics of pre-creased origami rice paper on a humid day ... unless supported by your Secondary in a *serious* way.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...