Holy crap I'm back again.Follow

Good buddy from the game decided to go back to FFXI, so I decided to join him. I'm back, again! Just did LB and got myself to 91, grinded out 221 plantoid kills with mercy stroke to get past that trial (onto 300 birds woo!) and I'm looking at 11 merits from that fun time. Started looking at all the merit changes and see that you can now get +12 in an attribute, which is very sexy. My question is: How easy is it for us to cap fSTR? As a mandau thf, str is always good and everything, but I know that daggers have the lowest fSTR cap and with all the gear that is out there, is it likely/possible? And would that be for WS only, as I imagine? Probably going to go STR/DEX for my stats, just wanted to confirm so I don't waste STR somewhere, whether it be on the merits or stacking STR too much on my ws set.

If you plan to focus on melee jobs merit both strength and dexterity to level 12. The only other stat people tend to merit is intelligence for mages, and mage only will usually add mind (although healing magic skill is more powerful than mind since the update, and a few have merited charisma if they favor bard as well). But since SES has no mage jobs the choice is simple. STR and DEX. Even if your fSTR is capped your attack almost never is, and 12 str gives you 6 more attack. Since you're using Mandau that's even more reason to go for the str because of mercy's secondary mod. I merited 12 str and dex and never looked back. Sh*t's situational, and I guarantee you won't be capping str on higher tier voidwatch mobs or even some of the more defensive mobs in neo salvage and meeble burrows. Unless you plan to play mage seriously 12 STR and 12 dex is the way to go.

Twashtar and Mandau are almost carbon copy damage dealers, they just focus their strength in different areas. Mercy stroke at 100% is stronger than Rudra's at 100% (mercy stroke gets a 25% damage boost when Mandau hits lvl 95), however 300% TP Rudra's is easily stronger than mercy. Rudra's aftermath is also stronger than Mandau's and level 3 rudra's aftermath blows mandau away, however without aftermath Mandau is stronger because the occasionally deals triple damage effect has been increased to 13%. Mandau essentially gives a permanent level Rudra's 1 aftermath effect as a result. Level 99 mercy is a 40% boost in damage, but that's going to require 5 umbral marrows which aren't exactly easy to come by. All in all they balance out to extremely similar potential. I prefer Twashtar because it comes in handy solo farming nms. Opening up a NM fight by coupling sneak attack and bully with a 300% TP Rudra's and the ensuing aftermath really brings home the bread when you're fighting nms, and voidwatch has a habit of dropping dusty wings to keep the effect going. But mandau's extra attack and latent triple effect bonus beats out twashtar any time I can't maintain a consistent aftermath effect, so it counterbalances when I'm forced to use exenterator.

Your second question is easy. Exenterator is a very strong weaponskill, and is better than evisceration outside abyssea (exception being voidwatch when you have champions drink up..... crit rate and all). We have no x-bow options past 75, so you're stuck using ziska's for last stand. last stand only has utility in a ranger's hand as a result. Our bolt and x-bow options are far too weak to make last stand spamming worthwhile.

Edited, Jan 1st 2013 7:05pm by Melphina

You can only merit 3 WS's? Really? How sad. Granted I'm looking at potential jobs being: THF, PLD, DNC, BLU, DRG. So daggers, swords and polearm. And I can easily drop the DRG entirely, almost anything a DRG can do my PLD, well-suited, can likely pull off too. So I could get dagger, sword and marksmanship ws's.

So some more questions:

1) I see there is a belt similar to the sea gorgets. I have only the soil gorget at the moment. Should I work on getting one of these belts? Which ones work for Mercy Stroke/Evisceration/Exenterator?

2) Any idea how much help I need to kill the Dynamis-bcd NM to update my Mandau? Same question for Animated Dagger.

3) I know my gear isn't up to par just yet, but I FEEL like I'm so far behind others. Is this a job issue? Gear issue? Or do I just need to start parsing to see there isn't much difference?

4) I don't have a big LS to carry me through much other than abyssea stuff. What are some things of equal difficulty to Abyssea that can give me gear options? I have 4 +1 AF3 and 1 +2 AF3, triplus offhand, twilight belt, atheling, keen ring lol, rajas and still using love torque/brutal earring/suppanomimi.

5) And what do you guys think of THF/RUN as a potential tanking combo for dualboxing?

1) Ugh, 3 belts, really? At least make me need 3 jobs to need 3 different ws belts, I don't understand how people with 99's handle inventory, I have 2 99's and my safe/storage/locker and either my sack or satchel is full at all times >.>

2) So they're all popped NM's like everything else in the game so you need to farm the pops and then fight? I can probably get my LS to help here and do 5 pops at once, nice to know.

3) I feel I'm behind at times because I can do those 3-4k ws's with 5k spikes, but it seems that SAM/NIN/WAR can do that every single WS, and I'm not getting that high unstacked, maybe 2500-3500 evisceration, though I know my ws set is behind.

4) I just got my +2 body last night. My whm dualbox is up to level 95 and I'm doing a lot better getting things done now than when she was in the 80's, and I've gotten two more hp/mp abyssites which certainly help. Epona's nearly requires brewing, doesn't it? Most people don't want to deal with straight up fighting him. And you want to get blue procs for epona's, so I'll need a good bit of help anyway. I do intend on leveling DNC eventually, simply because all our merits completely match up, going to get a Twashtar eventually (LS leader who just returned is doing scythe and waiting on her to get to the doomed toad bit) so the Aluh Jambiya looks solid, gives more oomph in place of many fast attacks, though I do think Triplus works well with the empyrean armor set for THF.

I haven't done much with Voidwatch, a friend made me come along to Ig-alima I think it was in Dunes when I was level 95ish and I hardly did any damage. Is that an atmacite issue? Level/gear issue?

5) I'm not looking at it necessarily from the hate standpoint. I'm looking at it as survival. You get +34 resistance baseline against a single element (of which MANY abyssea NM's are element specific, so you're always on the right one) with two JA's to furthur reduce damage from that element. You get magic defense bonus (and it should be 2-3 traits of it since they get MDB7 or something), a 10% bonus to parrying. The runes also give you an extra 10-12 damage per swing (in abyssea this isn't much but outside of that's a decent improvement) you get flash for your own osh*t situation, you get tactical parry for some more tp, etc. I think it works well to help THF in its main weakness: Targetting a heavy magic damage boss.

1) Then so much for getting help or making an attempt to zombie the soil belt. I'm on missiong 7 in WotG, do I need to progress to do WoE?

2) That is excellent. I really need to finish this dragon trial (290ish to go!) and then just have the two dynamis ones until Umbral Marrow. But just that jump from the 3 trials would be excellent for me.

3) TP gear: Mandau 80, triplus offhand, raider's boomerang, af3+1 helm/hands/feet, af3+2 body/legs, twilight belt, atheling, keen ring lol, rajas/love torque/brutal earring/suppanomimi.

WS gear: Heca cap, soil gorget, kemas, ethereal, heca+1, af3+1, keen/rajas, atheling, warwolf, af3+2, lithe boots. My ws set has ALWAYS been subpar, I've always focused more heavily on TP gear.

Going to work on mandau 85 tomorrow, done some other light farming for my dualbox WHM.

4) Can THF and WHM duo Rani? My LS leader needs an Epona's, DRK body and I need iron plates, maybe I can get LS to do that for a day, but I know they want to brew it for "safety".

5) I intend on using THF/RUN for the Itz-farming I need to do for Twashtar once I get far enough along in that.

So far my upgrades have been: Mandau 90, Af3+2 hands, Prosilio belt. And I'm out of gil, lol. Had a friend craft me heca feet+1, so need that abjuration, need to get my whm dualbox up so I can go farm sky a bit. Need to get back to making money, had so much farming to do for "free" gear I was ignoring it. Now I see just how expensive getting my THF up to snuff is going to be.

For Reive's, think I should go on my THF, or PLD? And with a dualbox WHM, would that change the answer?

Edited, Apr 18th 2013 4:02am by SirEaglestrike

I got my pocket whm SoA last night and just did a Reive and my god is it annoying as THF. My whm got knocked back outside of Reive TWICE incurring a 10min wait because I was attempting to fight a single mob off to the side. PLD seems far better to utilize until I have a group to do it with. I have a lot of Bayld to farm, I want to at least get to the crafting rings asap while LS continues to farm other things like Salvage I/II and such.

This last patch has a major boon to the DD output of thf (1-h DDs in general) in that we can now cap attack at the same cRatio of 2-h DDs. THF still operates at a disadvantage though, because we have no native attack boosts for the job. Because we do have DW3 natively though, we can go thf/war for great results. I don't think we will ever be able to match the damage output of a really decked out DD, but since SE is working on fixing enmity, maybe we can go back to being a respectable niche job and our slightly lower DD output will be wanted along with it.

That being said, as far as maximizing your output in the damage category is concerned. You really do need to focus on a lot of gear. We already went over improvements for your Mercy Stroke set. Your TP set definitely needs some focus as well. There are pretty much 3 stages to upgrading THF tp sets right now.

Stage 1: Abyssea
Vlor went over this a little, but the very least to get your thf respectable is all located right in abyssea. You are looking at a 25% haste set, with some multi atk thrown in. Goals for this stage are.....

Range: Raider's Boomerang, Why: 3% DW, very easy to get
Head: Raider's Bonnet +2, Why: 6% Haste 3% TA
Neck: Rancor Collar, Why: 5% crit hit rate, Twilight Torque, Why: 15% damage reduction swing when you don't want extra damage from RC
Body: Raider's Vest +2, Why: 5% Haste
Hands: Raider's Armlets +2, Why: stats
Ring: Epona's, Why: 3% DA 3% TA
Back: Atheling Mantle, Why: 20 atk, 3% DA
Waist: Twilight Belt, Why: 7% haste, 2% DA
Legs: Raider's Culottes +2, Why: 5% Haste
Feet: Raider's Poulaines +2, Why: Not for TP, but +1 TH. there are a lot of options here, I used Homam Gambieras

Why this set, well, 4/5 AF3 +2 gives you ~8% triple TA damage, capped haste with twilight belt and either hands or feet. Lots of DA/TA. Easy to get

Stage 2: NNI (Kind of mostly optional, but gives a lot of great Exenterator gear too).
Pieces to get to upgrade TP.
Body: Thaumas Coat, Why: Um.... are you blind??!! 12 acc, 4% haste, 3% DA/TA/QA all on one piece... sick!
Hands: Thaumuas Gloves, Why: Not absolutely necessary, can go for last haste slot
Legs: Thaumas Kecks, Why: 6% haste, 9 str/agi, 14 acc/atk
Feet: Thaumas Nails, Why: No haste, but good atk, great SA and TA piece about even with AF3+2 hands/Homam feet to swap Thaumas Hands/Feet.

This is where I am at right now. I TP in 4/5 Thaumas + Raider's Bonnet +2 and Twilight belt for 26% haste. I double attack a lot. Much stronger than Stage 1.

Stage 3: Salvage (can skip stage 2 if you have access to this, Except thaumas body probably)
Head: Skadi Visor +1, Why: 7% haste, 4 stp, 10 atk, 13 DEX/AGI. Awesome piece
Body: Skadi Cuirie +1, Why: 7% DW, acc, atk, DEX, AGI. Great piece, opens up options for TP gain
Hands: Skadi Bazubands +1, Why: 4% haste, str, atk
Waist: Patentia Sash, Why: 5% DW, stp, atk
Legs: Skadi Chausses +1, Why: 6% haste (hidden), stp, acc, atk
Feet: Sigyn's Jambeaux, Why: 4% haste

This stage is the awesome stage. There is so much haste available, that your consideration becomes where can I drop haste to add DW. The nice thing about our dual wield options is that all of our DW reductions have stp on them to counteract the TP penalty. (Skadi doesn't actually, but the other gear does.

If stage 2 isn't an option, you should aim for
Skadi +1 Head/Body/Hands/Legs + Sigyn Feet. Swap Twilight Belt out for Patentia Sash. This takes you down to only 21% haste, but you gain 12% DW for it. This set comes with significant stp as well, ~5.4 tp per hit, vs. 4.8 on stage 2

If you have access to stage 2 gear, the absolute best we can get at the moment is
Thaumas Coat + Skadi +1 Head/Hands/Legs + Sigyn Feet + Patentia Sash. 25% Haste, 5% DW (8% with raider's Boomerang), lots of stp