I've been playing around with a melee fighting ninjitsu char for several months now. I never really spent much time with him and I've been juggling the template around quite a bit, not deciding on what will work best. Part of that may be because I really haven't learned how to work the ninja, so that's why I'm asking for template ideas here.
I know there will be five core skills (current skill cap is only 705):
ninjitsu 120 (currently 96 with equipment)
fencing 120 (currently 81)
tactics 90+ (currently 75)
hiding 100 (currently 100)
stealth 80+ (currently 92)
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After that (other than just how much to devote to tactics and stealth), I keep going back and forth on what is essentially room for two more skills to round it out.
One option is to add healing, whereby I'd add maybe 100 healing and 90 anatomy, taking me to 710 (but with jewels could probably increase tactics above 90). This would give me good self-healing, curing and resurrection capability but seems underpowered against tough monsters (again, maybe it's because I haven't really learned how to "work" a ninja). It also provides no recall capability other than charged runebooks.
Another option would be to instead add 100+ bushido and about 70 chiv. With this I'd have the ability to recall with chivalry and could use CW and EoO to increase damage -- as well as having perfection, confidence for healing and other special moves of Bushido. The downside is that this character is weak in healing -- could heal through confidence, close wounds and pots, and could cure poison only through the chiv spell and pots (though orange petals and eventually resistant up to level 3 poison with unicorn form). However, this is still a fairly weak healing capacity, is dependent on potions (and thus limited to one-handed weapons) and has almost no resurrection capacity. As before, whatever points I have left over could be added to tactics and/or additional bushido.
But these are largely based on my experiences with traditional melee warriors, which a properly used ninja is definitely not. So any other ideas out there from experienced ninjas? This is primarily (though not necessarily exclusively in the future) for a PvM toon.
I know there will be five core skills (current skill cap is only 705):
ninjitsu 120 (currently 96 with equipment)
fencing 120 (currently 81)
tactics 90+ (currently 75)
hiding 100 (currently 100)
stealth 80+ (currently 92)
---
After that (other than just how much to devote to tactics and stealth), I keep going back and forth on what is essentially room for two more skills to round it out.
One option is to add healing, whereby I'd add maybe 100 healing and 90 anatomy, taking me to 710 (but with jewels could probably increase tactics above 90). This would give me good self-healing, curing and resurrection capability but seems underpowered against tough monsters (again, maybe it's because I haven't really learned how to "work" a ninja). It also provides no recall capability other than charged runebooks.
Another option would be to instead add 100+ bushido and about 70 chiv. With this I'd have the ability to recall with chivalry and could use CW and EoO to increase damage -- as well as having perfection, confidence for healing and other special moves of Bushido. The downside is that this character is weak in healing -- could heal through confidence, close wounds and pots, and could cure poison only through the chiv spell and pots (though orange petals and eventually resistant up to level 3 poison with unicorn form). However, this is still a fairly weak healing capacity, is dependent on potions (and thus limited to one-handed weapons) and has almost no resurrection capacity. As before, whatever points I have left over could be added to tactics and/or additional bushido.
But these are largely based on my experiences with traditional melee warriors, which a properly used ninja is definitely not. So any other ideas out there from experienced ninjas? This is primarily (though not necessarily exclusively in the future) for a PvM toon.