Thrakon Breastplate > AJ?

Thrakeon will pull ahead slightly due to 50% STR mod as opposed to 20% DEX mod on Penta. Critrate also improves but that's highly variable depending on gear and target mob. However, I daresay if you're WSing in Thrakeon it's probable that you would not be in the high range of the dDEX function even on Greater Colibri so it would be a very small improvement.

Are you talking about penta AND drakesbane? or just penta? cause I don't see drakesbane, but penta sure as hell can't crit. (w/o mighty strikes/sneak attack)

>.>; who cares about aj... get hecatomb and you'll be fine...

Nice necro, blasphemer.

love some necro... wut?

Well it's nice to see people at least give informative and intellectual criticism on certain pieces of gear over another instead of just doing the cliche: "You suck cause you wear xxx gear!"

I am so not looking forward to re-learning the mechanics of gear builds for various jobs ~_~

From what I can tell when it comes to melee DD the objective is to hit accuracy cap then followed by haste for frequency of attacks then additional damage via atk/str if possible. Amirite?

Pretty much.

Although you also have to consider 'xhit builds', where x = the number of hits to reach 100TP, this is achieved by wearing the correct amount of Store TP in gear.

For 2handed DD:

SAM with GKT should always have a 6hit build
SAM with Polearm should always have a 5hit build
Non-SAM subbing SAM should always have a 6hit build
Non-SAM subbing non-SAM should always have a 7hit build

The exact amount of sTP need varies depending on the weapon delay.

Ah yes, I figured this would mainly apply when samurai is involved as main or sub and especially for 2 hander weapon users. Thank you for the insight, although I think for my return to Vana'diel I wanna try out a mage of some sort. Never delved much into magic so learning something new should be fun.

To add to Argettio's advice, Haste is generally considered a higher priority than Accuracy cap. Though both are obviously essential, you would not want to use an Optical hat over Walahra Turban, no matter what your job. And Accuracy is actually far less useful on gear now than it was in the past. If you're not doing Greater Colibri, you should be using Marinara Pizza (+1) which gives both a large boost to both accuracy and Attack. It's really great food, and easy to cap Accuracy with it, without going full-on Accuracy gear.

What that means is items like Ace's Helm have almost fully lost their usefulness for anything other than very-high HNMs or Greater Colibri merit parties.

Really? I have a hard time believing this. I mean it seems like the ultimate piece with very little compromise. Unless there's a ton of new ***out I'm not aware of.

Eh anyways, I'm not here to have a heated debate of what piece is right and which is wrong when parsed over a very long period of time against "x" mob or whatever. I'm mainly coming back to have fun with the job classes and do the missions and meet up with old friends.

Store TP is certainly a larger concern for SAM than most other 2 handed jobs (mainly because SAM needs more sTP) but it is something every DD should be aware off.

Even dual welds need to consider sTP at times (NIN, BLU and THF both can gain a lot from the correct use of sTP).

But sTP doesn't normally become a concern until the later levels (60-70+).

And as Enternius said, unless you accuracy is really bad then pizza + full haste is the best way to go.

Mages haven't changed much over the last few years, gear has got a little better and our understanding of the mechanics has improved, but nothing as fundamentally job altering as pizza has happened to mages

Don't get me wrong, it can still be used in any situation if you so choose. But if your Accuracy is already capped (Should be on a two-handed job using Pizza anyway), then all Ace's Helm gives is STR+4 and Haste+4%. If that was actually useful, people would use Askar Helm more often which gives STR+4, DEX+4, and Haste+4%. No one really cares about STR on TP gear.

Yeah, I loved pizza when I merited prior to quitting back in September. It was the perfect compromise between meat and sushi. Either hitting and WSing for much less damage but nearly guaranteed hit rate or a coin toss for extremely awesome damage haha.


True, intentionally throwing vital stats like haste and accuracy for increasing dps oh so slightly through additions of STR & Atk is pretty foolish, however unless you have the luxury of double march and flawless pulling I don't see 1% making a make-or-break condition.

Due to how haste is calculated, more haste is nearly always better than less haste, no matter what other stats change.

Which means Turban (5%) is better (95% of the time) than anything with less haste (Aces, Askar, Denali and usukane head)

When you really need accuracy then Aces can beat Turban, but that should only happen on high end mobs unless your other gear sucks.

Perhaps the mini-haste with the major +acc pieces such as Aces/Usukane were made for meat lovers. The dps range even while TPing would soar (esp for monks i'd imagine) but indeed, haste works wonders when accumulated and stacked heavy.

Mainly haste is pure win for lesser/merit mobs but for big scary stuff I find the accuracy essential as the level difference greatly puts a dent in your typical hit rating. Luckily for us there are a few pieces that make a very agreeable compromise.

Expanding on what Argettio again, 1% Haste is almost never only a 1% increase.

Let's assume you have a BRD and RDM for Haste and double March. You'll almost always have them whether you're doing endgame or just meritting so I think it's fair to assume that much. And let's just assume a basic cheap setup for TP on SAM, with Ace's Helm/Askar as a baseline.

15% Haste spell
11% Victory March
10% Hasso
9% Advancing March
5% Byakko's Haidate
4% Swift Belt
4% Ace's Helm
3% Dusk Gloves
3% Fuma Sune-Ate

This is a combined total of 64% Haste. At 450 delay base (Hagun), that's lowered to 157.5, truncated to 158 delay.

Now let's assume you were using Turban, for a total of 65% Haste. 450 base again, puts you at 153 delay.

It doesn't seem like much but that's almost a 4% increase in attack speed. And will only go up as your gear gets better.

Haste is calculated much more wickedly than I had originally thought. Of course there is gear/magical effect caps of course I'd imagine. Anyways, I still think you'll need the increase in accuracy to narrow the margin of error for high level bosses at the slight compromise of say 1-2% haste.

Actually even I didn't notice this but even if your ACC is uncapped, Turban would still be better at that point in Haste. +4% Attack speed > +3.5% hit rate.

Assuming your accuracy is high enough to justify attacking faster then sure. Although, I know this is going to sound like a silly arguement but has there been the consideration of the whole hitting it faster = feeding it TP? Or is it insignificant when it comes to bosses.

PS: I know birds die in like 3 seconds anyways, but I'm talking about the stuff that is super high lvl and scary >.>

If it actually did matter that you were feeding it TP faster, you wouldn't be meleeing at all in the first place.

Well yeah, but I'm speaking for the bosses you don't have fodder to gain TP off of. I remember diorite farming ages ago and this dumb red mage wanted to show off his kraken club and we got AOE bind and dmg every 0.5 seconds it seemed. Quite annoying. But I don't really see this being an issue when it comes to zerging something to begin with.

Yes, I know what you're saying. But if you mean to say that if all of your DDs gimped their gear in order to feed less TP to mobs, you'd be better off just ditching DDs altogether and going BLMs, SCHs, RDMs, etc. And honestly with 12+ DDs on an HNM all at once, you'll be giving enough combined TP that it will pretty much use it back-to-back anyway.

Enternius

You assumption is slightly flawed when you say 4% > 3.5%.

7 accuracy is 3.5% increase in hit rate as long as you are uncapped.

3.5% increase in hit rate is 3.5-17.5% increase in melee DoT and WS frequency depending on you accuracy before adding the 7.

(17.5% increase only happens when you have floored hit rate [20%]).

'Change in hit rate'/'Hit rate before increase' = 'Percentage increase from adding accuracy'

So for 7 acc to match 4% haste you need ~86% hit rate.

Any lower than 86% and Aces wins.

The turning point moves depending on your haste; more haste moves the turning point down.

Heh so it's just a matter of whether a boss has to be taken down via hit-and-run (manaburn) or zerg (all out melee rush). I'm not quite sure what the strategy is on things these days. Hasn't changed much from the look of it since 2003. Just went from "Throw 18 BLMs at it!" to "Throw 18 DRKs at it!"

Yeah but assuming you can cap on Greater Colibri with pizza, which are inherently evasive for their level, you should still be above roughly 85% or higher on the majority of HNMs. And when Pizza just isn't cutting it, you can always switch to Sushi. Rather take a hit to Attack than lose a bunch of Haste.

I wasn't disagreeing with your conclusion, just correcting your maths.

I wouldn't exactly define 1% haste as "a bunch of haste" and as far as sushi is concerned, the attack from pizza is very different from the attack in gear.

Attack in gear only applies to DoT when you TP in it, where as haste applies to DoT AND WS frequency. Attack from food though, since it's not something that can be equipped during DoT and unequipped for WS, also helps DoT and WS damage, so it's role is much more effective than just attack on gear.

1% Haste, as stated above, is roughly 4% increase in attack speed. Sure it's not the end of the world to be 4% slower but if I wasn't capped through regular TP gear, I'd add ACC in other slots before I took the hit to Haste.