Seawolf and Sea Robber CudgelsFollow

I got both of these while going for my Ebisu rod. I don't use either.

Technically, the +acc one is good to use for harder targets, but I just never liked the delay on these weapons. Perdu Wand ftw

For the same Delay one can simply use two Brass Jadagnas (or Brises-os if anyone actually makes the bloody things).

But yes, Perdu Wand is pretty darn awesome if you're that way inclined. If I had WHM levelled I sure as hell would be.



Next on my to-do list: gatecrash the COR forums and drink all their rum

The club with the highest base dd is most preferable for main-hand, thus Brise-Os (+1) rules.

Nowadays, the pirate cudgels suck hard in that departement. But they have killer mods for when you need them, especially the ACC+15 can be very nice against anything that really matters.

Also, at least for me it was quite fun to camp the cudgels. If you are into WHMmelee like i was years ago when whm was my first love, it gives a great sense of accomplishment to finally dual-wield both of them.


Having said that, rule No1 for any serious whm who wants to melee:

Get a Perdu wand as fast as possible!

Nothing, NOTHING compares to its dps.

I thought Full Swing generally blew unless it was 300 TP? In which case, you're not ever "spamming" that. >_>

In my experience, at 100, Retribution is always better for damage. Course, I don't usually get to use that because I always gravitate toward Spirit Taker instead.

Hammer type clubs tend to be Delay 340.

On the subject of actually obtaining them, I spent roughly 130 hours 1/9 on Silverhook. But I guess those kind of drop stories are faily common in this game. :P
Getting him to spawn was my main problem, the only trick I used to use was

"The reference to the text box coming up over the black screen refers to when you zone. For pirate attacks the box will appear while the screen is still black and then the inside of the ship will appear. If pirates are not going to attack the inside of the ship appears, then the text box."
src which is very helpful for staying on the same half of a route if you want a specific club.

Martial wand gives the best mystic boons but the overall dot isn't as good as other clubs. It IS very easy to obtain and cheap to boot. Main hand martial wand and offhand perdu is really nice for mp recovery.

I use morgenstern+perdu ; ; crit hit +10% on hexa strike! (w/ merits)

But I'm no melee and I don't know if there are better things than what I use. I just have fun :D

Perdu Wand is still unmatched for mainhanding when not /NIN (Not counting relic).

Mostly because Auspice's Enlight really benefits from a low-delay Club. Which only enhances Perdu's amazing DPS. The attack/Accuracy bonus are also a huge help when not /NIN.

Solo is serious melee, though! :-D

Oh, BTW, something for people who do melee at all to keep in mind: unless you're wasting accuracy by using a Virtuoso Belt, use it instead of a Swift Belt. (Okay, I'll make one other exception: if you're getting March, the Swift Belt will pull ahead at lower accuracy.) 4% Haste is rarely worth losing 9 accuracy and 9 attack over. :-D

While gear haste caps out at 25%, much of the haste gear doesn't actually total to exactly that.

Perfect example. The classic MNK gear set-up of 25% Haste, actually only gave 24% Haste. Walmart (5%), Black Belt (12%), Fumas (3%), and Kitty pants (5%) while on paper equal 25% haste, didn't actually give 25%.

So adding Swift at 22% haste may get more gain that your calcs showed.

For what it's worth, "x%" on gear = x*10/1024 in reality.

The haste cap for gear is at 256/1024 (which is 25% - but it takes 26% worth of gear to get your 25%), like Kirschy says.

Attack+9... well, it depends on your food, obviously (and, for that matter, the acc+9 may end up being +10 or even, rarely, +11 if you're using accuracy food), but that should be about a 2.8% (+/- 0.2) boost in attack, and so roughly 1.2x that (or about 3.3~3.4%) more damage. (This varies depending on the defense of what you're fighting. Higher-defense mobs will give more benefit from the attack than lower-defense mobs will.)

Obviously, this is assuming you're not fighting stuff under ~160 defense (where you cap out cRatio)!

---

Anyway, to get back to why I said 4% haste isn't worth giving up both the accuracy and attack, we'll take the worst case (from Virtuoso's standpoint) of two pieces of HQ Blessed:

Haste: +6.25% for Swift
Attack: -3.375% for Swift

which leaves (note: for nitpickers out there, you don't just add/subtract on these, you add the amounts to 1 and then multiply) about 2.66% for the accuracy to cover. For you to get that little out of accuracy requires you to be sitting at a 92.5% hit rate with Swift - or a 91% hit rate with no belt at all. (You might actually be better off if you've somehow managed to produce an augmented belt with just Att+/STR+. It's late and I don't want to bother running the numbers for that. :-D)

So: get a Virtuoso Belt, folks, please. (Or find a BRD to duo with rather than soloing.)

Also note: if Haste II becomes a reality (probable) and it's 20% or 25%, don't toss out your Swift Belt.

So you're just doing +9/320 or so (attack) for the ~2.8% and the 1.2x is part of the pDIF/cRatio math?
--> Wiki has an awful lot of verification tags (at time of writing)!

See, this's the part that fascinates me, can you show a bit more of the "why/how" behind that?

WHM has low attack, which should make +ATT more appealing/helpful than if you had, say, 650att. But that doesn't stop the blind advice-giving machine from spitting out "PCC>Torque ALWAYS" and "Sushi>Pizza ALWAYS" and so on.

I still want a clearer idea of how close the following are:
55att vs. 16acc (pizza/sushi)
7att vs. 3acc (torque/pcc)
6att vs. 2acc (cape aug)

...because if I understand your math right, 55att could be a ~13% increase in damage, where you need ~60% hitrate or lower with pizza, in order for the sushi to win!
(or, having something like 68% and below with sushi)

Similarly, torque could give a 2% increase, such that you need ~75% hit rate (or lower) for PCC to win. Bellicose could give ~1.7% requiring ~58% hitrate (or lower) for aug to win.

Is this for real?


___________
EDIT: always with the typos/colors^^

Edited, Mar 15th 2010 9:53am by RyaWHM

Yeah, these are roughly correct. Keep in mind that, assuming you're not fighting mobs that are T or above (and therefore level correction doesn't come into play), your attack cap is just a flat "twice the mob's defense". (Also keep in mind that I slightly oversimplified the calculations earlier. There's a downward adjustment to your average pDIF that actually plays a pretty large role in situations where you're not likely to be capping cRatio.)

Most mobs (crabs are the main exception) are going to have defense roughly equivalent to a skill at B+ rank, plus half their vitality - for EM mobs at 75, this works out to be about 286 defense (give or take about 5 points).

The basic formula to keep in mind for rough numbers:

((Attack / mob's Defense) * 1.2 - 0.4) * Hit Rate * (1024 / (1024 - 10 * Haste percentage))

The first portion covers pDIF (minus the annoying 0~5% random boost, but including the average bottom-end subtraction), while the second and third portions should be obvious. The ratio of any two results gives relative performance. (This obviously doesn't cover "which weapon should I use" situations, which adds in a whole other factor.)

So, the obvious question: how much attack beats one point of accuracy? Well, let's run through examples:

(For the purposes of this, I'll go with what my build will be once I finish going after melee gear - Perdu/Viking Shield, Kusha's/Lava's Rings, Merman's Earrings, Virtuoso Belt, main-five NQ Blessed + Goliard + Turban, Bellicose Mantle - but without club merits on the grounds that you may have already used your allotment of weapon merits. This works out to Attack 345, Accuracy 307.)

* Attack +55 vs. accuracy +16:
Requirements: mob defense 200+, mob evasion 306+
Attack +55 gives anywhere from a 19% boost in damage (at mob defense of 200) on up to nearly 38% (sky gods). For mobs at EM, you're looking at probably closer to a 22% boost in damage.
Meanwhile, accuracy +16 will match this as long as you're sitting at 36.4% accuracy or lower.
Winner: Pizza.

Side note: What about trading off the rest of the accuracy for attack, say, with Yellow Curry Buns (which, I'll admit it, I love)?

* Attack +14 vs. accuracy +30:
Well, at first glance, this seems grossly stacked in favor of the pizza. However: EM mobs aren't that evasive. They'll have evasion roughly comparable to their defense, in fact - which means that you're sitting at about an 85% hit rate before your food, and your pizza is wasting 10 accuracy.
Still, that's a heck of a hill for the attack to climb - 11.7% more damage just from the accuracy you are getting to take advantage of. The difference here is between 400 attack and 414 - on mobs of about 286 defense, this only works out to about a 4.6% boost in damage. You're still about 7% behind, and unfortunately STR+5 isn't going to cover that.
Winner: Still pizza, but not quite as big of a winner as it is over sushi. (Mostly due to mob choice.)

I'll cover the other two later, because I'm tired and I need to get some other stuff done before I go to bed. :-)

My DoT does come from my normal melee swings (note: not parsed, since I'm stuck on PS2 until my tax refund makes its way into my bank account by way of, apparently, polyester electrons from the 1970s EDIT: okay, maybe they're a little fresher than the 1970s, federal refund due in about 4 weeks supposedly).

I've been doing a fair number of Cape Teriggan pages, so I'll go with raptors (crabs are lousy for doing estimates on):

Average swing: 55?
Hit rate: I'm going to guess it's capped, but I'd really need to have it parsed to confirm it.
Average Hexa: ~95/hit -> predicted average: 540
Hits per WS: 11

So, per single-WS round, I'm putting out about 1150 damage - slightly over half of it from regular melee. Given the option between 6% more WSes, or hitting 6% harder, which one works out better for my kill speed? (Rhetorical question, though the difference between the two is only about another 4 damage in favor of hitting harder on normal hits.)

It's never a blanket "Haste and accuracy only; attack only matters if the other two are equal on two different builds". Not even if you're using a Kraken Club and main-handing Mjollnir (also, if you are, I hate you and want to steal your account and gear :-D). If you're relying solely on hitting for non-zero to build TP and are ending up with 90% of your damage from WSes, you are not living up to your potential.

Edited, Mar 16th 2010 5:37pm by MDenham

My ratio varies a lot, especially by whether or not I'm full hasting/curing while DD. Here are a few examples I have stats from (with links to full data):

----

Event (link to data): Melee:WS Ratio (type of alliance slot)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Kirin Burns (5x): 1:2.968 (full DD)

Dynamis-Bastok: 1:1.939 (full DD)

Dynamis-Sandy: 1:1.337 (hybrid; full haste/cure duty + melee)

Einherjar T3: 1:1.062 (hybrid; full haste/cure duty + melee)

Dynamis-Bubu: 1:1.017 (hybrid; full haste/cure duty + melee)
(Bubu was recent; unposted at time of writing)

*The gear I used for most of this data can be found here; the only change being Gullintani > Mjollnir (used Gullintani for the Sandy/Ein runs listed here). Also, please note: the Ein stats are from a T3, but the images are from various runs.

----

I know my brain would explode if I tried to mathematically account for the damage change from [change in WS frequency], against the [dot increase from +attack]. I can just barely figure out +attack on dot by itself! (...with lots of help from MD, or a similarly smart/helpful person...)

But I'm always open to improvements ... if I can improve my damage output, I wanna know how! And I love helping others with this stuff too. :)
(...to the extent of my mathness, which I admit isn't amazing...)

----

Anyway, closer to the original topic:

Is there an easy way to account for the attack, like multiplying by your DOT%, as long as we know the ratio?
(such as multiplying by 0.5 if you're 1:1)

________

Edited, Mar 16th 2010 11:19pm by RyaWHM

These numbers look closer to what I'm used to seeing. My point was not that WHM melee swings do no damage, but that you'll improve your DOT vastly more by focusing on improving stats that help your TP gain. Of course attack still helps, but it should be nothing more than a tie breaker that is considered after you have capped acc & haste, because acc & haste not only improve your melee damage (by hitting more often) but also TP gain rate. Attack does the former but not the latter. It's possible for an attack boost to outweigh an accuracy boost, but it has to be a drastic difference to the extent that WHM doesn't even really have any conflicts of this sort except with food. None of our other slots grant enough attack that it's worth TPing in attack gear over other acc/haste gear that's available. Not even Virtuoso, although if someone did a parse I would be curious to see the numbers. I'd be seriously shocked if they had 80%+ accuracy and Virtuoso was even remotely close. I would think all jobs would've learned this well by now, given the fact that it's 2010.

[sm]Edited, Mar 18th 2010 9:19am by Pergatory

level correction in Dynamis-Bastok? :/

post seems to be running away..
my 2 cents, i camped silverhook for almost 1 year straight. probably had 25 claims.( was solo ) 10 deaths, 1/15 on club. very very very painful to camp, as i have camped for 17 hrs, only to not see pirates even pop, let alone the nm. if you are serious whm/nin i would recommend the club.

Or Wheeling Thrust or Steel Cyclone or Howling Fist or Mandalic Stab or Spinning Slash.

Or Viper Bite, but that's only for low levels.



Edited, Mar 20th 2010 4:39pm by bsphil

Not quite as true as you'd think, thanks to the delay reduction of DW.

Let's take Perdu/Brass Jadagna +1 (only because, at least on Alexander, Brise-os +1 is a lie).

Perdu solo: DMG 39/delay 216 -> raw DPS: 10.83
Perdu/BJ+1: DMG 39+46/delay (0.8 * 216+334) -> raw DPS: 5.32+6.27 = 11.59

(Never mind that offhanding the Brass Jadagna is putting it wrong way around as far as WS damage; I'm listing them in an order that makes the lines more aesthetically pleasing to me, not MH/OH order.)

Right now we're looking at being just barely above 7% ahead on TPing. (WSes will be up by a different amount, which for the time being I'll leave out. Contact a customer service representative to obtain this information.) So, theoretically, we could take a weapon with a 7% lower raw DPS figure than a Brass Jadagna +1, pair it with Perdu, and we'd be looking at the same damage output, right?

Well, not quite. Since we don't have a weapon right at that figure, we'll take two that bracket it decently - the NQ Brass Jadagna, and a Purgatory Mace. (More likely than not, the Purgatory Mace actually lands slightly above the figure in question - 7.72 - because of its STR+3, so pay more attention to its results.)

Perdu/BJ: DMG 39+45/delay (0.8 * 216+340) -> raw DPS: 5.26+6.07 = 11.33
Perdu/Purgatory: DMG 39+41/delay (0.8 * 216+324) -> raw DPS: 5.42+5.69 = 11.11
Perdu/Purgatory (w/fSTR increase): DMG 40+42/delay (0.8 * 216+324) -> raw DPS: 5.56+5.83 = 11.39

Hey, wait a minute, now! Purgatory Mace is almost as good as an HQ Brass Jadagna (and is, at any rate, better than the NQ)?

No, actually. For certain situations, it's better, but remember we're only talking DoT, not WSes.

So, uh... what weapon would we have to be off-handing to drop our damage output to match a solo Perdu?

This is an ugly question, because we have two variables that we're looking at - delay and DMG - and only one equation, so we get a line where everything above it is better, and everything below it is worse.

The formula we're trying to solve is (x=delay, y=DMG):

39/216 = (39+y)/(0.8*(216+x))

or, multiplying both sides out:

6739.2 + 31.2x = 8424 + 216y

This simplifies to:

y = (13/90)x - 7.8

Weapons that land close to this line are:

Darksteel Maul +1 (DMG: 40; 40.44 on the line at delay 334)
Zonure (exactly on the line at 324, unless you're getting more fSTR from it, which you should be)
Deae Gratia (DMG: 35; 35.53 on the line at delay 300)

Things to keep in mind on this:
- There are no delay-288 clubs above the line. None at all. Don't use them if you're dual-wielding. Ever. (Well, that's not entirely true, because the calculation isn't exactly right for multi-hit weapons. Prudence Rod technically should be above the line if the proc rate is 54% or higher.)
- As with the footnote above about Prudence Rod, a Kraken Club is better than it looks, sort of. You need to average roughly 2.75 hits per swing with it alone. (I'm not entirely sure what the actual average hits-per-swing for a KC is. Someone please enlighten me?)
- Wand-speed weapons are very nice paired with a Perdu. A Lyft Ferule, for example, is well above the line; for that matter, the next three weapons down on the DPS list at that delay, roughly (Antares, Kerykeion, and Seveneyes) are above the line, and even without being in an Assault, an Imperial Wand lands just barely below it.
- Continuing out to the far end of what we've got available, a TM Wand +2, we find that it's actually depressingly far below the line (17, while the line is at 20.656 at 197 delay) - but it's a level 52 wand that's meant for casting, not fighting with. So this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
- Mjollnir vs. Lyft Ferule: I know, bizarre comparison to be making. Still, it's actually kind of a surprise: the Lyft Ferule is further above the line. It's a better companion for Perdu than Mjollnir is - but once again, for TP only. (You are looking at reduced WS damage; also, a quick time-to-WS calculation gives us 63.36 seconds with Perdu/Lyft and 62.88 seconds with Mjollnir/Perdu. Since there's not a significant difference in those times, the ~30% lower WS damage does not, generally, get made up for by the ~11% higher damage while TPing. Not even with my 50-60% damage from DoT. You'd need to be doing a spectacularly low 27% or lower of your damage from WSes. If you are, I have two suggestions for you: (1) quit spamming Judgment; (2) get some accuracy gear for Hexa Strike and Black Halo.)

--- end dump ---

I just wanted to comment on this quickly (esp. since I agree):



#1:
It's kinda like kids putting coins in piggy banks, they might do it without fully understanding the importance of saving. I have always done haste/acc, but only because "duh, it's what you do" -- not from fully understanding why ATT isn't as good. That's why I swooped in with my haste/acc calculations ... because it's all I know (._. )

#2:
The other reason this stuff was interesting to me, is because most of the "haste/acc always/obviously" came from "real DD" math. So I thought WHMs, having really really terrible attack levels, might possibly have a teeny tiny slim chance of benefiting (more than regular DD's) from attack. People usually don't do this kinda math for WHM ... ^^;

So, the huge thread detour didn't change my gear choices, but it did give me a better understanding of how to compare attack. So thanks guys! :D

well from the looks of it it's a tier1 goldsmithing synth made from a rare drop from a lv73 NM; I wouldn't expect it to be super cheap xD I just hope there's a respectable repop time or demand for the +water macc evolith farming that would bring more into the market. If it can be etched in the same way that darksteel maul and brass jadagna can though I can see many happy hexastrikes coming from one. xD

Edited, Mar 21st 2010 3:59pm by ZiGG

This! Campaign was one of the first things I tried with Gullintani/Kraken, I even made a brief video for demonstration! Now with Mjollnir, it's even better ... but frankly, Mjollnir means nothing compared to Kraken Club.

Whenever someone mentions wanting Mjollnir, I tell them to save for a KC instead ... it's cheaper (usually) and Perdu is fine ... KC is the more significant performance gain, of the two >:D



Not true according to Studio Gobli (--[japanese]--), and I can attest to the single hit being far less common than 2~5 or so -- I feel cheated when it swings once, and it really stands out ... seems I would notice if it happened 1/8 of the time.

According to those links: 5:15:25:25:15:10:3:2 with an average of 3.82

EDIT: I tried to make a convenient link to google translator results, like I did on wiki, but it exploded all over and made a terrible mess :(

Edited, Mar 22nd 2010 1:23pm by RyaWHM

man one of these days :P Don't think I'll ever manage the yagrush but a kc I might just be able to get one day :P