Oa2-4 Or Almace

I havent faught VW stuff yet, and I'm not a PLD, but..
I assume the last thing you wanna do with new strong enemies is feed it tons of tp, so we basicly have a winner allready just from that.

I did both... The OA2-4x is my offhand on BLU when don't have to use staves or the Isador for spell spamming.

TBH if you are really just wanting to compare SB vs. CDC outside of Abyssea... CDC wins, it just does more damage.

Now whether you want to devote yourself to the Almace or maybe make a Baudelaire +2 that's up to you. As for using the OA2-4x sword to spam SB it's great vs. EP and DC mobs and if that's all you'll ever be fighting outside Abyssea go for it! If you're really wanting to throw down large numbers with SB then you'd be better served making the INT/MAB sword.

Just remember your WS DMG is only as good as the mods you're able to stack when you use it and for PLD there is more good CDC gear available than there is for SB.

Notes: TBH = to be honest | SB = Sanguine Blade | CDC = Chant du Cygne

Not bias, ok. I tried Joytoy Sanguine blade spam and it sucked compared to CDC damage.


Are you on my server? are you in the same LS as me? do you PT with me? if any of those are answered with a no then the above quote is full of crap. You are basing CDC damage off some fail blu that doesnt know what they are doing. My blu has dex+83 and somwehere around str+40-50 that gives me 160 dex in total that set also has a decent amount of attack. On my pld atm i have str+40 and dex+61 and a lot more attack than my blu which does effect CDCs damage a lot.


I highly doubt my crit rate is capped but its certainly 1.5-2k on must stuff out of abyssea. Sky gods minimum i got was a 1.2k highest was 1.8k and didnt really test it that much up there. Dynamis Xarcabard though i always go pld i do get the odd 900 CDC most are 1.3k or higher and ive had up to 2k quite often. Little amount of attack? Twilight Helm = +25, light gorget adds damage, Cent earring = +10, Atheling = +20, Cuch belt = +10, Tumber = +18 and my augmented Heca adds att+2 then theres str91+40 worth of attack and sword merits. If thats not enough then theres Yellow curry buns or Marinara Pizza +1. Its very easy to get 100% tp in 30 secs even out of abyssea so yeah you pretty much can keep AM up full time.

You said you arent bothered about shitty DPS, i can probably see you hitting for 0 on some NMs with that sword and more hits doesnt mean you are going to get TP faster if you miss, the few times i did the PUK Voidwatch NM i had a decent hit rate to say how high its eva is. Saying Sblade damage will be as much as or higher than CDC is idiotic if something is that hard that CDC is doing low damage that mob is probably going resist Sblade or its going to do low damage . You really havent seen any decently geared people doing CDC. Speaking of the blu if they should be useing food or Trimuphant roar damage better with both.

Also, why does that not count for Almace aswell? >_>
Almace got a better WS, with a way better aftermath, which in effect increases your hate.
The add effect on excal does _not_ give any hate(sadly), like all other add effects >_<

The added effect on excal greatly increases the rate of the fight on any mob that'd you want a paladin on. You don't need damage to cap hate on paladin. The point is to make the fight go faster. You'd see Paladins doing 33% of the damage on Faf/Nidd back in the day with it.

I have got to agree Excals add effect doesnt give hate but it does do a lot of damage, the Excal pld in my old dyna ls was doing 400+ damage when it proc. Excali also gets the ws damage +25% with the 90 version which does make excali and almace tied for damage id say.

Yes, it does indeed add alot of dmg, but so does the aftermath on Almace in the long run!
So both excal and almace PLDs should basicly use the same playstyle, with relying on dmg to keep hate.

ODD only procs on one hand for MNK, that's why it seems so low. All have the same proc rate. 30%/40%/50% depending on amount of tp(100/200/300)

I can't think of too many NMs where Sanguine Blade wouldn't be outright resisted, which puts it at a major disadvantage outside of the already rather large damage disadvantage that it has next to CDC.

Gonna quote myself here, and ask a kinda offtopic question, as that kinda reminded me:
Which is better outside? Excal or Almace?
I've seen KOTR do rather decent dmg vs weaker mobs at level 75 (meritparties), but I allways had filters on otherwise.
How well does it do vs harder nms? Specially now with the ws dmg bonus on the 90 sword.
(Not saying you have to use KOTR if you have excal, just two different questions:P)

Now afk for a few, bbl!

Excal would win out on any mobs where melee aren't critting constantly for 200+. If we're talking abyssea (but we're not) Almace will beat Excal likely.

Excal probably wins vs high level NMs outside Abyssea if Atonement is doing full damage. Tough call otherwise. My main issue with Excal vs Almace is that Excal's add effect is hateless, so Almace is probably better for keeping hate in the long run.

A lot wrong here :/

I'm sorry draylo I didn't make the DA sword like you did. Hell I made my choice to do the OAT2-4x before people parsed out what was better for dmg. So far as making it now, not interested I got better uses for my time...

So far as what I use for spell spamming... I'm talking about Charged Whisker burns when I have to use a Jupiters. As for anything else I might cast, Isador in my offhand is sufficient so I don't get what you're getting at.... a lot wrong where?

The sword, str shamshir isn't hard or long to do at all. The little bit with explaining the "TBH, SB" CDC" was just funny because who doesn't know those terms already, at least TBH lol.

I guess if you weren't recapping hate with the damage from hitting with Excal that would be an issue, but you should be. I'm not sure how much CDC does on VW mobs or if Atonement gets resisted(it probably does) but Vorpal does only a little under CDC outside abyssea (read a couple hundred max on average) so I would think you could use that if your CDCs are really that good, but if they are then you probably aren't hitting low enough that Excal's DoT destroys Almace.

Edit: I also don't know what KotR does damage-wise.

You may think it excessive but I guarantee there'll be one person out there who's greatful for the acronym key.

As for shamshir... I'll get right on that AFTER I finish doing some WoE empy's and the Ukon I'm slowly grinding shells for... Shamsir is such a low priority for me in the grand scheme of things atm given my playtime and what I end up playing when I am online which lately happens to be a lot of MNK, NIN, and BLM.

I don't see how having 3 OAT weapons counts as having bias. You don't agree that OAT polearm is insanely broken and fall short only to mythics polearm? So what's wrong with wanting to get the best, isn't it what this whole discussion is about?


I am not on your server, not in the same LS as you, and I don't PT with you. So since I don't do all of that, I can't see it with my own two eyes or parse it myself. Therefore, it is reasonable for me to be skeptical. You can't have it both way. I am not the type of person who will put a disbelief on everything, but I do know the game mechanic very well, and when your stated numbers don't agree with my math, I will raise a question. If 160 dex in total caps dDex on T3-T4 VWNM, then yes, I believe you can do 1.5-2k. But if it is even 5 dex short of it, you are looking to lose 3% critical hit rate minimal.


1.2-1.8k on sky gods aren't anything to write home about. If 1500 average is your average on sky god, then good luck getting 1k on some of the new stuff outside abyssea.

And if we are talking about attack on a PLD ws set, I would like to tell you that I play drk and build my Torcleaver set almost exclusively on stacking attack. And I can tell you unless you are at 1100-1200 attack, you are no where near the cap ratio. So I don't know how you think all your gears stacking up with food will get you remotely close to even 700. If you think that is high attack, then hey, let it be. But IMO it is low compare to how much you will need to cap it. And we are not even talking about WS accuracy after the first hit.


Hitting for 0 will likely be rare occasion as the majority of it is caused by attack value. Lower D value + fstr will be slightly more prone to hit for 0, but we are talking about a very small %. And from what I understand, SB doesn't really get resisted. If anything, it is similar to how most mobs now a day resist atonement, making it 375 instead of 750. But I will have to play with that to get a better idea, which is kinda what I am trying to do with this thread. I am interested to see how well Sanguine blade does against HNM. In theory and mathamatically, its effectiveness shouldn't decrease too much against HNM as oppose to CDC. Its D value for WS is a fixed 91 or 92 (it is your lvl + 1 or 2 I forgot), so it is based on lvl, and add in dINT x 2 and WSC, then the whole thing x 2.75 ftp.

But anyway, I am not trying to sound rude or anything, I think if anything, you started that. I am open for opinion and good support. As of right now, I can tell you that I am leaning toward Almace. But I am mostly interested to see how both WSs fair against the new HNMs. I never say that SB will do as well as CDC in a per WS base, it is close to impossible mathamatically. But if it can fall within 3/4 of it against new HNMs, then there is an argument to be make (I have 750 SB vs 1000 CDC in my mind). I love pld very much and honestly is trying to see which is better. I know Almace is the sexy and easy pick, but I just want more proof.

lolno. On my BLU which gets somewhat better gear options for Sanguine Blade, I can tell you for a fact that it blows on most NMs.

Is it a constant 50% resist like atonement, or is it a random 50%, 75%, etc etc resist?

In my experience it's a constant resist in most cases, but I've had it resist like any other normal magic attack would. Most often when I'm trying for amber light in abyssea. :<

I see :(

I can tell that i also have DRK leveled and its a lot easier to cap attack on drk than it is pld. You seem to be missing the one massive fact that PLD isnt a DD and DRK is. Hell DRK even has 3min last resort attack boost and endark and the attack gears i mentioned are pretty much the best you can get for PLD. Along with most things stuff can look good on paper but when actually done its not that great as well as stuff that shouldnt work does. Atonement does a lot less than 350 damage when resisted ive had capped hate and done ~160 damage.

Edit: One fight i remember trying SB spam on Briareus with atma of the cosmos, baying moon and atma of the kirin..... it did low 200s every time.

I didn't mean to compare drk and pld, but I said in my original statement that with pld's low attack value, you are going to have to rely on critical hit rate, and when your dDex isn't capping you, you are looking at a low critical hit rate, and thus the low damage. I didn't say your gear for pld could have been better, I was merely stating the fact that despite all the attack gears you can put on pld, you are no where near decent with your cratio.

But yes, if Sanguine blade gets resisted often enough to be unusable against HNM, then Almace is easily the best option. I will be spamming some sanguine blade soon to verify that.

You see, this is why we have discussions like this.

Yeah I have a SB set, i'll run the tests outside of Abyss. I'm not expecting anything amazing from the sword, just decided to finish it and farm cruor at the same time. Was going to use it for a dual wield Almace setup although i'm thinking the Double Attack path might be better.


I know, I know ._.

Aren't we discussing PLD outside abyssea, mostly Voidwatch? Everything in abyssea takes half damage or less from Atonement as far as NMs go. Briareus takes less magic damage also if I'm not mistaken.

Well we most definitely shouldn't be discussing PLD inside abyssea, that's for sure.

It has uses, but not in any situation near one we're discussing.

i said this meny times to people in my LS, crit hit WSs will pwn in abyssea but as soon as you do stuff outside abyssea then crit hit WSs have the bigest draw backs, which is no atma/cruor buffs.

my Caladbolg PLD/SAM (2.5k-3k) and Masamune SAM (3k-4k)is way more consistant and higher average than my Kannagi NIN (300-3k) outside of abyssea.

and my blade hi set is geared to more crit hit+ and crit DMG+ with having the ballance of attack str and agi at the same time where i use the exact same gear set for my Caladbolg PLD and my masamune SAM.

just need to finish pugil and tammuz to 85 my almace to have alook at that out os abyssea

Not arguing that this will out-do CDC in any way, but what do you think of:



Shamshir is Mab sword.

Edit: Oops, I was thinking PLD for gear but I guess I was thinking BLU when I put in two swords