Ultimate Dragon Ninja Build Advice

[Nuppeppo El]

Here is what I have seen/am thinking of doing to my current Dragon Ninja. I'd love for peoples thoughts and feedback on it.

Dragon Ninja Build

General Stats

Body 65
Heart 100
Stamina 32
Strength 33
Skill 200
Dex 100
Magic 30
Spirit 36

Spirits

Main: Kato
Secondary: Bat/mouse good for damage boosters

Clan - Kuroda

Equipment

Elixir
Weakness Talisman
Sloth Talisman
Catwalking Scroll

Kekkai Talisman
Earthfolding Talisman
Carnage Talisman
Extraction Talisman

Suppa Scroll
Leeching Talisman
Tiger Running Scroll
Quick Change Scroll

Shuriken
Spirit Stone
Medusa Powder
Paralytic Groundfire

Awakening (Mystic Art) - Onmyo
Enlightenment (Mystic Art) - Ninjutsu

Weapons

Dragon Sword

Attack (zero ki enemy)
Familiarity damage bonus A+
Final blow damage
*Skill change (iai quickdraw)
Change to attack (heart)

Hayabusa Style Kusarigama

Close combat damage
Pierce guard (close combat)
Familarity damage bonus
Close combat attack (enemy scortched)
Change to attack (skill)
Weaken melee weapons

Cannon

Amrita earned
Hand cannon speed up
Equipment drop rate
Agility damage bonus
Fire damage
Grace of Amaterasu

Armor

Head - Hayabusa Shinobi: Hachigane

Attack
Elemental damage reduction (guarding)
Bonus for absorbing amrita increased attack
Amrita earned
*Increase defense (enemy out of ki)

Samurai General's Armour (M): Do

Damage reduction (status ailment suffered)
*Life
Elemental damage reduction (guarding)
Received damage from attack
Received elemental attack damage
Grace of Amaterasu

Arms - Hayabusa Shinobi: Kote

Increased attack and defense (Kato)
Elemental damage reduction
Attack
Close combat attack increase attack & defense (Kato)
*Status ailments relieved (something goes in here)

Legs - Hayabusa Shinobi: Hakama

Attack
*Lower enemy defense (scorching)
Running speed
Amrita earned
Bonus for status ailment

Feet - Hayabusa Shinobi: Suneate

Running speed
Attack
Tenacity (recurrent damage)
Bonus after purification
*Increase attack (critical)


Accessories

Magatama

Yokai close combat damage
Life
Durability of living weapons
Amrita earned from people
Amrita earned (using living weapon)
+ One extra effect (e.g. water damage)

Yasakani Magatama

Yokai close combat damage
Life
Living weapon attack enhanced
Amrita earned from Yokai
Change to defense (spirit)
extended elemental effect
Set bonus requirements down


I will of course need abyssal defilement and reforging at the blacksmith somewhere along the line.

Therefore what I'd like to know is:

Should I blow all my gold on changing the effects on my low level armor and then defile the full set in the abyss to bring the levels up to 300 (+40) or higher.

Or

Should I farm for higher levels of my armor on Way of The Nioh before putting on the effects and also doing some defilement in the abyss?

If anyone has an OP Dragon Ninja I'd appreciate your help.

[Deostades]

That's a fun looking build!

Your Accessories are going to be next to impossible to get exactly what you want. This is a theme for the rest of the list as well, but be willing to compromise. A Yasakani with Yokai CCD and Extended Elemental Effect will already be lucky to get; might be good to stick with it until you get a better one. "Good enough until I get better" is a good motto for Nioh!

Star attributes are extremely difficult to get reliably. They cannot be reforged/tempered, and even when Forging your gear they're quite uncommon. That said, getting Iai damage boost on your sword should be alright, as long as you have the smithing text.

Relying on random drop is a pain, but the "perfect" gear often does require it to some extent.

For example, I run Last Great General set for my armor. I had no Star stats at all on it until last night, when I got a leg-armor with "Increase Speed (Finished Using LW)". Seems small, but that extra burst to get away from the middle of melee while I wait for my LW guage to reset is extremely nice.

Up until then, I was plenty happy with the effects I had already plugged in.

As far as the defiling question... you'll want to do that as well. I think across all my runs I've got a full set of random-dropped Ethereal Dragon Ninja gear, but it wasn't all at once, and spread across many many levels.

Make sure you're confident in the floors you're running when you defile - die twice and get kicked out of the abyss, and your defiled gear is gone. Just like that.

Yeah. Happens to all of us at least once - and usually just the once, because the game has taught us to act more intelligently.

All said, I wouldn't count on trying for the "Make the perfect loadout, and then steamroll the Abyss". You can do that, but... well, it just isn't as much fun.

I've manage to get at least two people on here to give Spears, my favorite weapon, a second look as they're descending the floors, and I'm giving Axe another go for the same reason. It's fun, and a lot of the enjoyment comes from seeing what works and what doesn't.

[Zamus]

Do not bother with grace of amaterasu or a medium chest piece, you are mostly in light armor with hardly any way to reduce damage, you are going to die and the minimal DR from medium armor or 500HP won't help at all, get izanagi instead and put rejuvenation talismans to trigger the damage buff.

You are carrying paralisys items, just use hino enma kabutto for the insane damage boost., also why heart CTA on the katana when it's only at 100, get skill instead.

Attack/Defense properties on gloves are garbage, especially the kato one, it's not even a 1% damage increase, you are missing firearms damage reduction on the helmet, chests and another 2 slots.

[puzzlefox]

With a build like that, I'd play up the paralysis dmg bonus. The bat lady helm gives something ridiculous like +40-60% bonus dmg to paralyzed enemies and accessories with +20-24% dmg to paralyzed enemies are pretty common. This is how builds can get to a million 1-shot dmg. Since you're packing paralysis items and are going full bore glass cannon, I don't see why you wouldn't have those bonuses.

And like Deo said, star stat bonuses are very hard to come by, especially if you don't have the smithing texts. Only one of my armor pieces have one (reduced defense enemy scorched, which works well since I use sakuyahime).

The only thing about dragon Ninja that I don't like is it leaves practically no room for mixing set bonuses since it's a 7 piece set that has a full set bonus that's not worth foregoing. You will be able to do a 4 PC bonus along with it, that will have to be a grace set. Ameratsu would be the only relatively useful one, but sakuyahime would give you more dmg if you want to mess around with staying scorched which will be tricky with a crit build since you can't get scorched without taking damage

[DooG Is Eternal]

Depends on what is your playstyle, dragon ninja can be played in a few ways.

1) going for strong poke for all opening, flowing shadow or iai

2) paralyze iai one shot

3 LW kusa strong attack spam.

honestly tho i have no idea why the guy who made the min max build video used amaterasu which is pretty redundant to be honest after trying it, since most players likes to spec like a glass cannon, extra 500hp wont help at all.

Inazagi was more useful for 1/2

sakuyahime was more useful for 3