Continued Prime Weapon NA Review

Incursion was the worst ever but sortie shot past it easily. Nothing comes close. Unless you want to count monstrosity and pankration, but they give nothing of value.

It's in the updated dats.

Full list:

Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Detonation, Compression, Distortion. Helheim: Aftermath effect various with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Trasnfixion, Scission, Gravitation. Laphria: Aftermath effet varies with TP.
Absorbs HP and MP. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Induration, Reverberation, Fusion. Foenaria: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Delivers a twofold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Transfixion, Scission, Gravitation. Gae Buide: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Delivers a fourfold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Induration, Reverberation, Fusion. Dokoku: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Detonation, Compression, Distortion. Kusanagi: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Converts damage dealt to own MP. Damage varies with TP. Yagrush: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Transfixion, Scission, Gravitation. Pinaka: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Induration, Reverberation, Fusion. Earp: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Delivers a twofold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Detonation, Compression, Distortion. Varga Purnikawa: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Delivers a fourfold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Dissolution, Impaction, Fragmentation. Mpu Gandring: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: impaction, Compression, Distortion. Caliburnus: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Delivers a twofold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Transfixion, Scission, Gravitation. Lorg Mor: Aftermath effect varies with TP.
Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Induration, Reverberation, Fusion. Opashoro: Aftermath effect varies with TP.

Thank you!

You guys whine about every event that needs to be grinded at the moment of writing. I bet if Prime would require to spam voiwtach again, you would come here whine Voidwatch is the worst event in game.

It's missing axe Spalirisos/Blitz

Something else too, and the one is yagrush, but lorg mor is there. Couple things are off.

That's not the issue. Problem is Sortie requires full 1 hour and attentive 1 hour, not casual, unless you want less than optimized points, then what's the point of even running it. It's repetitive vs something to compare it with like Odyssey segments, which again is half the time and need less attention to detail.

Segments are also more progressing vs galli, you can farm bosses with little as 12500 segments and can progress your gear faster, vs you take x # of runs to hit that 1m galli for ONE weapon, 1 hour grind a day.

It's clear cut difference. Even if you add gil to sortie it still sucks because it's 1 hour, we're all in our 30's 40's maybe even 50's+, we don't have time like when we were 18-25 to play this game hours on end, especially a daily grind for 1 hour.

Axe doesn't have the name in the description for whatever reason.

Delivers a fivefold attack. Damage varies with TP. Skillchain attributes: Liquefaction, Impaction, Fragmentation. Aftermath effect varies with TP.

You can check these yourself, it's POLUtils > String Tables > English > Ability Names, Ability Descriptions

Just have to line up the names Index with the Descriptions Index

So stage 4 is usable everywhere and basically finished and stage 5 is going to be afterglow levels of sadness like normal.


But in the meantime, I'm much happier with the revised WS properties of the Prime Weapons. SE level of troll is back to it's usual.


If I'm reading this right it gave most jobs the level 2 SC property they lacked in level 1 properties and then gave them a level 2 to go with it to make the lvl 3 they normally can't outside of maybe Aeonics.

Fusion
------

• Scythe - do you even Light on Scythe Bro?

• Katana - Hopefully it's better than Aeonic

• Gun - Frag on COR to go with all the Fusion

• Staff - Cool flex mages

Frag
------

• Dagger - DNC makes their own Fusion, rejoice!

• Axe

Grav
------

• G.Axe

• Polearm - Makes Distortion like Sonic Thrust but without aggro-ing all the mobs I'm trying to CP on.

• Bow - Yeah anything decent on Dark would be an improvement

• Club - Melee GEOs with that sweet 4 step double dark

Dist
------

• G.Sword - What? NOT A 5TH FRAGMENTATION WS FOR RUN?

• G.Katana - I heard you guys love RANA for opening dark...

• H2H

• Sword - Requiescat is trash and CDC is mediocre as distortion so I'm very happy at the prospects of having strong Dark on my main jobs

Sky: Farm lottery spawn NMs and fight for claim on timed-spawn NMs. Most of this event is either farming trash praying to RNG, or standing around waiting for something to spawn.

Sea: See above.

Limbus: Walk around a zone killing trash. There are chests with rewards in them.

Salvage: insane RNG, ridiculous hidden mechanics required to get your gear. Event is based around not having any spells, abilities, or gear. If this event came out today people would absolutely ***themselves with complaints

HNM: Stand around for several hours trying to claim a single NM. It has no mechanics except "stand here, tank it, make a SC and MB it"

Einherjar: Shitloads of trash mobs which do nothing. Bosses with TP moves.

Dynamis (OG): Pull trash mobs, try not to link statues. Sleepga and hit them with WS. Make a path to kill the TE statues I guess that could be counted as strategy?

Geas Fete: Stand in one place, popping NMs and killing them. Most have absolutely no mechanics to worry about at all

Sinister Reign: RNG-fest. Stand in one place and kill NMs that spawn.

Incursion: Shitloads of trash mobs, a few NMs with basically no mechanics, incredibly repetitive

Unity: Stand in one place, pop NM and kill it over and over again. Very few have any mechanics worth noting. Heavy RNG, boring and repetitive

Abyssea: I personally enjoy this content and think it's reasonably engaging, but most people absolutely hated it. It probably caused the largest exodus of players in the game's history.

I could go on and on. People saying Sortie is the worst event 5ever are ignoring most of the game's history.

I dunno homie, seems like you might've never liked the game at all.

I've enjoyed playing all these events because it's about the people, the gear, and the grind. I don't mind the fact that most of the content in the game is ***-tier boring stand around fests. I just think it's hilarious that Sortie is somehow the worst content SE has ever produced when...it's not even remotely close.

Inb4 "but it's 2023!"

So with this new info into Prime WS, every weapon has 3 step SC to make the SC they couldnt before.
Great axe Disaster<Disaster = Distortion < Disaster = Darkness
and it goes on
grt swd/grt kat/swd all darkness
Kat/scythe/staff/Dagger all light
Thanks SimonSes for pointing this out

Abyssea caused a huge amount of controversy when it was announced, but a large part of that was due to the level cap increases. Most of the exodus was around that, if I remember correctly. [And possibly around power-leveling]

Abyssea was objectively good content, even if it took a while for people to come around to it.

Sortie just... isn't.

People hated Abyssea because their Adaman Hauberk they spent 3 hours a day camping for (afk for 29 minutes every 30 minutes) was no longer good. The game offered upgrades instead of sidegrades for the first time in 7 years and people were mad.

It changes everything really. At least for me. I wasn't interested in many of those weapons because they were overlapping great choices like Twashtar, but holy ***now it's interesting.

So many amazing options. I'm super excited about dagger. Even more excited about scythe, tho too bad scythe is not Liquefaction/Impaction/Fragmentation, but oh well, can't have everything I guess.

Funny fact (if I haven't overlooked something). Only RNG with prime bow can make double light on top of light from 3xPrime WS, without switching weapons (DRK could by switching to gsword). Every other job lacks pure light or darkness WS to do it.

Bow is on 2 step Dist > Grav for dark unless you're talking about Prime WS > Apex > Empyreal/JR > JR or Prime WS x2 > Empyreal/JR > Apex > JR.

They kept their lvl 3s on opposite sides of the aisle. So only GEO gets that sweet 4 step.

This is a solid improvement over the information I had a couple days ago.

Yeah brainfart with that bow.

So I guess only GEO can do it and DRK by swapping to Great Sword.

Hmm, not every weapon. Quoting the polearm WS info:
That'd be a 3 step darkness, no?

Polearm already had a 3 step darkness, or 4 step umbra with Trishula.

Stardiver>Sonic>Stardiver>Darkness. Then Stardiver again with Trish for umbra.

On the other hand, while DRG can also multistep light already... the WS for it are godawful. Assuming the WS is any good, a strong light SC option would have been a lot more appealing.

Are they terrible? I don't DRG much, mostly just EP with it but the WS seem...fine? Stardiver -> Camlann's -> Drakesbane -> Camlann's. They all do pretty decent damage, it's not like you're using Leg Sweep or Double Thrust or anything.

Well well well...
I wouldn't call sortie completely casual maybe, but I wouldn't call it extremely pro either. There's a lot of shades of grey in here.
Sure if you wanna do 8 bosses run regularly then you need a pretty good and reliable set of fixed players who are somewhat pretty good at what they do.

But I've led multiple runs with plenty of people being completely PUGged and managed to get ~43k Galli pretty regularly in what I'd call a manageable and almost relaxed environment with a generous amount of space for possible errors by these players.

If you consider ~40k good enough, then I'd dare to say the event is not particularly demanding.
Of course if you expect to get >65k every run it's a different story... But even that is nowhere as hardcore as stuff like V25 T3/T4 Odyssey, if you ask me.

I guess that's going to depend on your criteria for "decent" there. But my experiences using Camlann's to multi step things like Leviathan HTMB, or Kei have left me deeply unimpressed with the dmg and wishing for a better light closer. Kei was a horrible slog on DRG.

Drakesbane has atk issues, and suffers massively if you use anything but Ryu.If you're still capping atk after the penalty, and using Ryu, then it is good damage.

loldrg

This is just my opinion and sorry in advance for the rant, but I don't think either of those reasons are why most people hated Abyssea. It may be the reason many people quote, but it wasn't the actual reason behind the downfall of the game's community which was at the crux of the game's decline.

Abyssea destroyed the status quo of the game, which was content that required more people than benefitted from it. Meaning if you needed say 6 people to do something, chances are only 2 or 3 could actually get anything out of it, and usually no more than half of those players got what they were after.

Sounds dreadful at first, until you realize that this forced social networking, forced community, and forced selfish players out of the game. This was the single driving factor behind FFXI having such an amazing, kind, and helpful community compared to other MMOs. In order to progress in the game, you needed other players to selflessly help you, which meant you needed to selflessly help them in order to build a network of helpful players to do stuff with. Abusive players simply couldn't progress, no one would take time out of their day to help them.

Abyssea changed the paradigm. It was full of soloable content or stuff that needed at most 2 or 3 players to do, and gave more than enough rewards that each person can benefit from it. Voidwatch came shortly after, with individual rewards meaning if I want to help someone get a drop, all I can do is help them kill it (which costs me voidstones) and if the drop goes to me instead of them, oh well, it can go on the garbage heap. Which has been an increasing trend ever since then. These days the structure of the game actively discourages helping other players in most content, and seems designed to encourage you to only help yourself.

Abyssea killed the community in this game, and killed linkshells. Who needs linkshells when it makes more sense to shout for a few people who need the same thing you do, and go get it? It was the beginning of FFXI as a self-centered game and not a community-centered game.

Everything added since then, with only a small few exceptions like Omen, has been the same.

My problem with prime weapons and their approach to daily-required content in general is if you do the content less frequently, or less optimally, you're wasting your time entirely.

Let's imagine for a minute you're not getting 50-60k avg a run (Fairly reasonable for less organized or skilled groups). Let's imagine you're also not willing to run 7x a week.

A 6-month grind turns into 1-2 years very quickly. Never mind the amount of extension wanting to upgrade a bunch of empyrean gear adds.

Weird choice for a game on its death knell, or maybe it's a calculated choice because of that. Seems like they're allergic to subs either way.

Yeah and coming off CT with Defense Ignore to Attack Penalty is fairly whiplash for trying to get consistent numbers. CT does better because of all the PDL and WSD trait DRG got, but I'd agree that Dark was already their stronger WS.

On the plus side, damage varies with TP for a job with 4 Jumps, Conserve TP, WSD trait, less than amazing PDL options but still Wyvern Buffs to help use it does make the AM, WS, and Weapon in general pretty attractive to me. I am only a recent DRG so my perspective is grain of salt at best.

Let's not pretend here, that was always "selfish" behavior, it was just controlled by made-up aspects like "linkshell points" and whatever other garbage EGLS of the time made up. It's the reason why drama threads existed on BG and the other forums. It's why linskhell leaders siphoned ***suddenly once they got everything they wanted from a group of suckers after offering them a fragment of what they gained.

People were always fueled by the motivation to get things done for themselves, but the very scarce nature of the items compounded with the participation needed gave way to people being more cooperative.

Help now, benefit later. That type of thing.

Let me be clear, though - I don't disagree that the community aspect is what I enjoyed about the game -- it's still the only reason I play to begin with. I just enjoy doing things w/ folks, and working towards a goal together (Sortie notwithstanding, I've been doing it most days a couple times a day and it's just burnout).

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying DRG is in a bad place or anything. I just think that this new WS would have been a better addition as a light SC WS.

Thinking about it, this is especially true considering that DRG can't extend Darkness into Double darkness without Trishula. Whereas a light SC could be doubled up by Camlann's. And even if Camlann's doesn't wow, me, I do still think it's better to be able to hit that double light than to not.

So yeah. I think DRG itself is fine. But the Prime polearm doesn't seem worthwhile to me so far. Pending more details on the WS, of course. And I think they could have given DRG more by making it a light SC option.

Totally going off on a tangent here, but Leg Sweep is a phenomenal utility WS with a very long Stun effect. You don't use it for damage, but it can really lock down dangerous mobs (as long as they aren't lighning/earth based), especially if you're sacrificing some of your own DPS for the other DDs to kill something while you keep it stunned. Not even very hard to go back to back Leg Sweep > jump for TP > Leg Sweep again when stun wears.

This entire thread is the most pointless exercise imaginable.