User:Gregedor/GuideUtsu

Hasso, Seigan, Utsu Oh My!
How do you wrangle this three headed monster? With a lot of macros and a fair amount of pain I would say... This section I'll explain a bit about what overwrites what and how I usually deal with the three competing abilities: Hasso, Seigan, Utsusemi.

Overwriting & Recasts

Well to kick it off... Hasso overwrites Seigan and Seigan overwrites Hasso. Duh. When you swap back and forth Third Eye is not lost, but how it behaves will change. So you can be in Seigan for a while with Third Eye up and anticipate 2, 3, 4 hits or more and as soon as you go to Hasso the very next hit will remove the Third Eye effect. Now what cannot happen, is the recast timer cannot be changed. If you were in Hasso when you hit Third Eye, switching to Seigan will not cause the recast time to shorten by 30 seconds. Also, duh, but it's important to know that the recast is based upon what was active at the time.

Third Eye will not overwrite Utsusemi. You will use the Job Ability but to no effect and activate the recast timer. Utsusemi will overwrite Third Eye however. You also know from your Ninja skills that Utsusemi: Ni will overwrite Utsusemi: Ichi, but not the other way around. These will both be effected equally by Hasso and Seigan: you will have a longer cast and recast time. The longer recast may not bother you depending upon what you are doing, but the longer cast times certainly can make it hard to get shadows up.

For this reason I recommend putting on max haste gear while casting Utsusemi, gear without regard to accuracy/attack/etc. like you normally are concerned. Walahra Turban is a perfectly acceptable piece of gear in this instance. In slots that you cannot gain haste, that's where you look at Spell Interruption Rate or Evasion/Parry/Agility gear. Reducing the extended recast timers due to having Hasso/Seigan active is important. With a decent amount of haste and a friendly buff or two you can get the recast timers back down to the normal recast rate. Again, extremely helpful depending on what you are doing.

Sequencing

Now because Utsusemi can overwrite Third Eye and Ni can overwrite Ichi and Third Eye is this nice instant-cast job ability, you can squence these along for awesome tanking power. You can start with Seigan and Third Eye up and take a hit or two or three. Your next stage is going to be Utsusemi: Ichi though which has a long casting time so you want to not risk it for too long. ~15s of the 30s recast timer is probably long enough, again depends on what you're fighting and how well your Third Eye is functioning. With Third Eye still up, preventing interruption, you can cast Utsusemi: Ichi and overwrite the effect. Now you have a fresh 3 shadows to avoid damage. When you have 1 left or even when the effect falls you can cast Utsusemi: Ni and get a fresh 3. If you still had 1 left it will be overwritten so there's no fumbling around with removing the effect. Then wait for all 3 shadows to fall and you can cast Third Eye since it's an instant-cast job ability and you're back to square one. So to recap:

Third Eye >> Utsusemi: Ichi >> Utsusemi: Ni >> Third Eye