Scythe....Vs....Great Sword...

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Scythe....Vs....Great Sword...
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 Titan.Buddah
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By Titan.Buddah 2009-11-27 02:40:27
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So I recently started leveling dark and I know this has been an on going thing for a while now, Because of friends I have that are Darks, But i'm just wondering once I start gearing towards end game I know its all situational blah blah blah but for Merit/HNM what am I looking to be using as far as weapons? Just looking for some input towards drk because I'm a career SAM, And Just want to try something new so any tips would be great.
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 Fenrir.Wynnia
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By Fenrir.Wynnia 2009-11-27 03:20:53
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My Drk is only 37, but I say you use what the situation calls for.
 Titan.Buddah
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By Titan.Buddah 2009-11-27 03:22:02
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Yeah I already knew that "Situation" was going to be one of the most common answers. I just wanted to get some input on people who are career darks
 Siren.Enternius
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By Siren.Enternius 2009-11-27 03:24:27
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Unfortunately, Scythe is better for pretty much everything. Shame, Spinning Slash is such an excellent WS.
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 Titan.Buddah
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By Titan.Buddah 2009-11-27 03:27:33
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See thats what I heared from many Relic Drks that scythe is always better, but I heared that GS Ws's are more useful?
 Ragnarok.Albender
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By Ragnarok.Albender 2009-11-27 03:32:25
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Hi, I have been playing DRK since 2006 and it is the only job I have at 75. So listen to me LOL!

It all comes to personal taste. I am a Great Sword DRK and I can assure you I don't envy Scythe DRK's in terms of DMG.

Indeed Scythe is A+ and Great Sword isn't BUT people telling you differences in between them are huge do lie.

I say you use the one that you simply like the most.
In my case, Great Sword but heh! you may like that Guillotine better.

I take the opportunity to strongly complain on No Great Sword @ Nyzul.

:-)
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By Sylph.Oxbloodravenxo 2009-11-27 03:40:54
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I'm drk 75 as well, i agree with Albender.

Whatever you prefer most, Greatsword has consistent numbers, scythe ranges.
Scythe can range from doing worse then great sword to doing a hell of alot more.

If you like the chance of doing high numbers go for scythe, if you like the consistent 1k spinning slashes, go for great sword.

Personally i find myself using Spinning slash>Guillotine>Insurgency.
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 Asura.Malekith
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By Asura.Malekith 2009-11-27 03:58:04
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To chime in... flexibility is always a good thing... having both skilled up, good weapons for either play style and having WSNM/ Nyzul quests makes you a better dark in the long run. Don't pigeon hole yourself as one type of dark over the other...
 Titan.Buddah
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By Titan.Buddah 2009-11-27 04:01:38
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Well that was great to hear yeah I got both capped to my war atleast~ so just been trying to get some tips on it =) and that was very helpful just glad to hear im not going to get shunned by the drk world for using one of the other
 Sylph.Hitetsu
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By Sylph.Hitetsu 2009-11-27 04:04:11
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I hear Great Axe is also pretty awesome at lower levels with Sturmwind. Don't take my word on it though >.> I haven't even unlocked the job.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 04:06:14
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Go 300% SA Spiral hell!!!

Also I like the mods better for Insurgency. I mean flame rings for example give str which mods both that and guillotine but give int which mods insurgency and gives -mnd which mods guillotine...

As far as Spinning Slash goes it is really only good because of the to Cratio. I mean single hit ws with only 2.5 tp mod and only 30% stat mods... kinda weak. But the boost to Cratio makes it better on higher lvl mobs and worse on mods closer to your lvl. On anything like say 6 lvls higher that could mean you effectively have .3 more to your attack/def ratio which if your hovering at 1 is basically like a 30% boost in attack. However when you have significantly more attack then the mobs def or lvls are closer it will do less and less
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 Titan.Buddah
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By Titan.Buddah 2009-11-27 04:26:46
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Yeah, Right now i'm using great axe to level up with since SW is doing so much consistent dmg =)
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 Ramuh.Sagittario
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By Ramuh.Sagittario 2009-11-27 04:30:11
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High def mobs ~> GS
Anything else ~> Scythe

People will say the difference is negligable, but scythe does have the higher rating so therefore will always trump great sword. Gear accordingly and you will be fine with either, but in my opinion go with scythe, as you can produce some scary numbers if you know what you're doing.
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 Kujata.Argettio
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By Kujata.Argettio 2009-11-27 04:57:51
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First off you can say they are the same in any way.

Scythe are high damage, high delay, with multi hit WS.
GS are low damage, low delay, single hit WS.

Its like comparing a GKT to a GA...

Single hit WS are best suited to (like GKT) piling on massive amounts of STR, where as multihits are a balancing act of STR, ACC and ATT.

So you could argue that GS WS are easier to gear for. Because of the math (which I can't be assed to go into in length) a GS at a merit camp will alway have a worse average than a scythe (assuming roughly eqaual gear). Scythes excel when you have a decent hit rate and your attack vs mob def is high.

Now move to Tiamat, Kirin etc and the rolls are likely to be reversed as you will struggle to land 3+ hits of guillotine consitantly, so your average with a scythe will drop. Whereas the GS will be still hitting more consitantly (due to probabiltity) and therefore hit better WS average overal. You could start using Spiral hell with your scythe, but that isn't as good as the top GS WS.

The biggest deal breaker for a GS is the delay. It is impossible to make a 6 hit build with most GS in the game (naglering being the main exception), and moving from a 7 hit to a 6 hit build is a 16.7% increase in WS frequency (which means you WS more often with a high delay 6 hit than a low delay 7 hit).

So scythes will WS more often that a GS, unless you use 'sub par' items in the neck, grip, ear slots to make a GS 6 hit.

So IMO for leveling, meriting, low end EG (limbus, dynamis, nyzul) you will be far better off with a scythe.
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 Ifrit.Hitoseijuro
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By Ifrit.Hitoseijuro 2009-11-27 05:09:17
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Scythe is always better until you're up against higher lv mob like HNM-wise with high def, and no buffs, this is where GS shines over scythe. Due to the mods on SS and 95% acc following it, you can load up on it with str/att and push your damage higher than with scythe which due not having an att bonus with it, wouldnt push much damage. As soon as you start getting buffs in that scenerio, scythe starts pulling ahead though.

Hard stuff + buffs = scythe
Hard stuff + no buffs = GS
Weaker stuff(exp)= scythe

Basically, the worse off you are the better GS will be for you, the better off you are, the better scythe will be for you.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 05:50:49
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Really the whole multi hit accuracy argument is lame. If your have trouble hitting 3 hits on a hit attack on a ws chances are you are flat out missing a decent amount of 1 hit ws completely. In the long run bar SA/TA acc will affect dmg of single hit ws as much as multihit. The difference is single hit is all or nothing so you wont see an increase/decrease in dmg while multihit you will.
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 Fairy.Vegetto
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By Fairy.Vegetto 2009-11-27 05:53:42
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"Really the whole multi hit accuracy argument is lame. If your have trouble hitting 3 hits on a hit attack on a ws chances are you are flat out missing a decent amount of 1 hit ws completely."

The first hit of ANY ws gets a huge acc bonus, which is why for example you can go w/ 0 accin a Gekko build and hit the 95% acc cap on just about anything, provided you're not flashed or it doesn't have some weird evasion buff up.

That being said, if you're having troubling landing 3 hits on a 3hit ws, you should still be fine on a 1hit ws.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 05:59:38
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Really I see sams miss Ws all the time. Yes even meritted ones wearing some acc gear. For that matter where does it say anywhere that your first hit gets a huge acc bonus!?! I miss the first hit of DE when not TAing/SAing often enough for it to be a significant.

I call it a placebo. You won't really notice a 90% hit rate on single hit cause you still hit most of your ws. But on even 3 hit your chance to hit all goes from 85.7% to 72.9% which is way easier to notice then going from hitting 95% to 90% of the time.

Go to lower lvls when you have crap acc in comparison and you'll miss ws just as often as you'll miss normal hits and that is noticable
 Fairy.Vegetto
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By Fairy.Vegetto 2009-11-27 06:04:20
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It's not a placebo. You see sams mis, which all the time because they WS so many times. 95% hitrate is cap, meaning you will miss 5%, which is about 1 in 20. Besides, just check any given parse. Over time, sam should have 95% ws acc on just about anything w/ very few exceptions. I'd assume you're eyeballing, which would be the placebo on your part.

Anyways, there was testing done on this while back on BG. Blind potions were used in this test on lv 60ish crabs in either kuftal or b-tree. W/ consistent blind potions, her melee acc was right at about 50%, ws'ing in the exact same gear, ws acc was over 90%.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 06:07:57
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Not that I really trust most of BG but I might want to actually see that testing. Cause I lvl any job up with lower acc I've definitely had way higher than 50% melle/ranged acc most the time but much lower than 90% wsacc.
 Fairy.Vegetto
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By Fairy.Vegetto 2009-11-27 06:12:56
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Quote:
I had this idea for a test in my head for some time, but I didn't get a chance to do it until today~

I wanted to test low melee accuracy vs WS accuracy.

Setup:
SAM/DRG.
Soboro /w Basic Evasion set. (No DA included.)
Hasso was not used.
Blind Pots were on ~99% of the time.
Only used crabs and each checked High Evasion.
No gear swaps, meditate not used.
Kuftal Tunnel @ Teriggan side.
Used Direct Parse for data.

Melee:
752 Hits
691 Misses
1443 Total Hits
52.11% Melee Accuracy

WS:
117 Hits
5 Misses
122 Total WSs
95.9% WS Accuracy


Things worth taking into account:
Crabs are not all the same level.
I used about ~28 different crabs in my tests.
Blind pots haven't been tested 100%. In the few tests I ran, they showed at LEAST -178 accuracy, probably more. (Wiki has them at -256.)
Blind Pots wore ever 3 min, so a few normal hits got in while blind was down. No WS went off w/o Blind up.


This test didn't turn out how I expected at all. Having 95% WS accuracy and 52% melee accuracy is crazy. I plan to try again /w other 1-hit WS (like Slice, or Tachi: Hoboku.)
http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73144

I won't do nearly large a sample size, but I'll go take a stack of blind pots and recreate this + parse now.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 06:19:15
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There is a chance it isn't all ws ya know. Not like there aren't hidden traits on alot of ws lol.

Maybe I'll do it on thf with lol manstab... well I could do it with sharkbite I guess and go by tp. That might actually be more interesting to see. Which hit hits more the first or 2nd
 Siren.Enternius
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By Siren.Enternius 2009-11-27 06:38:34
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That test is ludicrous. Let's see a SAM with a 50% hit rate on Kirin somehow score 95% (Or even 60+%) WS hit rate, without SA. Then I'll believe it.
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 Kujata.Argettio
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By Kujata.Argettio 2009-11-27 06:58:57
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Ramuh.Dasva said:
Really the whole multi hit accuracy argument is lame. If your have trouble hitting 3 hits on a hit attack on a ws chances are you are flat out missing a decent amount of 1 hit ws completely. In the long run bar SA/TA acc will affect dmg of single hit ws as much as multihit. The difference is single hit is all or nothing so you wont see an increase/decrease in dmg while multihit you will.

Aside from the fact that first hits get the boost in acc.

Multi hit WS damage comes from landing hits. I would estimate that you need 3 or more hits to land with guillotine to consistantly beat ground strike in terms of damage (very rough approximation, but lets run with it).

Now on a target that you are hitting well (lets say 90% hit rate), you will get you will land 3-4 hits 94 % of the time (Binomial maths here if any one really wants to see it).

So on a this hypothetical target where accuracy is close to capped, a scythe will beat a GS 94% of the time.

Now lets move to Kirin or byakko where getting over 50% hit rate is unlikely. Now we only have a 31% chance to land 3-4 hits... but we are landing 50% of our single hit WSs, so as 50>31, we would get a better WS average from using a single hit WS against these evasive mobs.

There is a turning point (where this exactly falls depends on a lot of factors, but simply put, if you acc is bad (even ignoring the boost on the first hit) a single hit WS is better than a multi hit.
 Siren.Enternius
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By Siren.Enternius 2009-11-27 07:07:32
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You also have to factor in a lot more than just saying "GS > Scythe because GS WSs are one hit"

For starters, Scythe has roughly 20 more ACC than GS (Will be different if you went full merits into GS instead of scythe but that's far from logical), so the scythe is WSing 10% more often based on ACC alone, not to mention the, what? 15% faster just through Delay/sTP alone?

I know it's an overgeneralization, but that's a +25% increase to the frequency for Scythe WSs as opposed to GS, which, not even counting DoT, would put Scythe WSs ahead.

Add on to that, the fact that 200 TP Spiral Hell with Martial Scythe does more damage than 300 TP Ground Strike with most GS, that's yet another 33% increase because 100 less TP is needed. And then you can just negate the multihit penalty stuff--

Okay, let's just say this. Scythe is better for almost everything.
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 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 07:07:54
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Kujata.Argettio said:
Aside from the fact that first hits get the boost in acc.

Multi hit WS damage comes from landing hits. I would estimate that you need 3 or more hits to land with guillotine to consistantly beak ground strike in terms of damage (very rough approximation, but lets run with it).

Now on a target that you are hitting well (lets say 90% hit rate), you will get you will land 3-4 hits 94 % of the time (Binomial maths here if any one really wants to see it).

So on a this hypothetical target where accuracy is close to capped, a scythe will beat a GS 94% of the time.

Now lets move to Kirin or byakko where getting over 50% hit rate is unlikely. Now we only have a 31% chance to land 3-4 hits... but we are landing 50% of our single hit WSs, so as 50>31, we would get a better WS average from using a single hit WS against these evasive mobs.
50>31. But your only counting how often a guillotine will hit enough hits to beat um Ground strike lol. Those other 50% Groundstrike is dealing 0 dmg. The odds of Guillotine missing all 4 hits on the other hand is like 6%. Which using your 31% means should hit 1-2 hits a good 62% of the time. I would think that 1-2 62%+ 3/4 31% would be as good as all 1 hit 50%.

Unless there really is a acc boost on the first hit a multihit ws will hit just as often as a single hit no matter how you calculate it. The difference is 1 will wiff or hit full and the other will hit some portion of it's dmg.
 Ramuh.Sagittario
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By Ramuh.Sagittario 2009-11-27 07:08:41
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Ramuh.Dasva said:
There is a chance it isn't all ws ya know. Not like there aren't hidden traits on alot of ws lol. Maybe I'll do it on thf with lol manstab... well I could do it with sharkbite I guess and go by tp. That might actually be more interesting to see. Which hit hits more the first or 2nd

NO DAS YOU MUST NOT ARGUE WITH VEG YOU WILL DOOM US TO 500 PAGES OF ASSONYMS.
 Ramuh.Dasva
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2009-11-27 07:10:00
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Ramuh.Sagittario said:
NO DAS YOU MUST NOT ARGUE WITH VEG YOU WILL DOOM US TO 500 PAGES OF ASSONYMS.
What's an assonym? Also didn't you call me Veg the other day?
 Bahamut.Raenryong
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By Bahamut.Raenryong 2009-11-27 07:14:11
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There is most definitely an accuracy boost on the first hit. I used to mess around in dynamis-xarc with greatsword, hovering around 75%? accuracy. My Spinning Slashes were always at 95% over time. Likewise at KS99 Wyrm where my melee accuracy was fairly poor.

I've never seen an extended parse where a high level singlehit WS has failed to attain 95% accuracy over time (Sidewinder not included here!).
 Fairy.Vegetto
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By Fairy.Vegetto 2009-11-27 07:14:30
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So i just burned a stack of blind pots going through 3 diff types of weps and using diff WS'

I used club, gkt, and polearm (only have 2/3 lost the data on club but yea still have the other 2)






As you can see, my ws acc is clearly higher than my melee acc in both cases, thus an acc boost.

In case anyone is interested in the unsaved club data, melee acc was 28-30% and ws acc was 60-62%
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