Off hand katanasFollow

I believe it's near unanimous that in that situation, the Kamome is the best offhand katana, due to the +10% critical hit damage (since Blade Hi is a critical hit WS, that's a significant boost to its damage), the accuracy and attack, as well as having a decently low delay

Several offhand katanas are good, situationally of course:

Kamome: Best offhand damage in Abyssea, competitive outside due to low delay.

AGI Sekka+3: For when evasion matters; good DPS and a boost to :Hi as well.

STR Sekka+3: Best offhand damage outside Abyssea.

Ban: Competitive offhand damage if Enfire damage doesn't get resisted to sh*t.

DA+10 Enchu: Competitive offhand damage in and out of Abyssea.

OA2~4 Enchu: Complete sh*t, don't be tempted/fooled.

Hochomasamune: It depends why you think you need the Fast Cast; if it's to keep shadows up, you'll likely be better served by an AGI Sekka+3... really there's only 3 situations I can think of where its useful:

-Mob has Regain (meaning you can't control when it uses TP), TP moves wipe or consume multiple shadows, and you absolutely must avoid taking melee hits.
-Reducing recast on elemental Ninjutsu; probably better off with INT Sekka+3s... but totally acceptable to use this in those rare situations instead of doing all that work for something rarely used.
-Reducing Migawari recast; best use of this by far. 25% (gear) + 15% (spell) Haste with Loquacious gives me a 1:17 recast on Migawari, while offhanding Hochomasamune drops it to 1:08, which is pretty huge. Add in some augmented Suzaku Sune-Ate and other assorted Fast Cast gear and you can drop that to 1min or less. This is what justifies keeping it in Mog Sack for me.

Agreed.

I'll throw one other useful offhand out there purely for solo - Oynos Knife. Gives magical haste +15% for 3min once it procs. You can remove it after getting haste to proc and haste will remain (obviously losing any TP you had when you switch weapon off or back on once haste wears, so if you're gonna switch, use your TP to WS or /DNC JA first to reduce the wasted TP). It's not that bad when you're meleeing with it either, fairly strong DMG/delay as daggers go (DMG:40/Dly:186). But that 39 skill difference between Katana and Dagger does mean something.

Of course you'd want to use a better offhand katana any time you have magic haste from another source, but it's a REALLY nice toy for solo work.


Edited, Oct 25th 2011 9:37pm by Anza

In Abyssea, I offhand Kamome. Outside Abyssea, I use Oirandori.

Ignore that post. Just did some research, and found out that offhand weapons were nerfed.

That's not a nerf, that's always been the case.

Indeed Vlorsutes is correct. All of my posts that had anything to do with using relic or empy for offhand for the effect are examples of once every blue moon where I don't know what I'm talking about in the case of ffxi. OAT katana for outside abyssea and the kamome inside abyssea for offhand are my weapons of choice. Obviously Kannagi for mainhand. Though I wonder if anyone out there has tested which is better for offhand damage wise. OAT katana or STR katana?(For outside abyssea only ofcourse). The OAT does look cooler as a plus, for all you TMNT fans out there beisdes myself, I'd think you would agree.