Guillotine Vs. Insurgency

This is probably a silly question, but I always see people posting about guillotine in here, and never mention insurgency. So I'm just curious as to the reasoning behind this. I've been quite pleased with the damage from insurgency so far, but I also don't do anything endgame really, nor do I have good gear.

Like I said, probably a silly question :)

As far as I know, Insurgency is basically just Guillotine+1, with even more added damage from better stat mods.

I guess the reason people are asking about Guillotine gear is because it's the people that newly hit LV60 and aren't impressed by their damage, so they opt to look for better gear.

If you WS at 100 tp, Insurgency has a lower ftp mod as well as lower stat mods, with the same number of hits as Guillotine. At 200 TP, it's still lower, and at 300 it pulls ahead. There is some debate over it having some hidden property that occasionally raises damage, though there have been no controlled tests and in my opinion it's just an attempt to make a not-so-great WS look better because people put effort into getting it.

If you have 250+ TP because of amnesia or some other odd circumstance or medding before a fight, use insurgency. If you're spamming WS, use guillotine.

I haven't been able to get Insurgency to put out consistant numbers. Over all it puts out lower damage on 100%tp than Guillotine but has a tendency to spike higher than guillotine, but that is very few and far between.

Overall I stick with Guillotine unless I'm trying to SC with somone.

Insurgency is moded by STR 20% and (INT)20% 100tp= .5 200 tp= .75 and 300 tp=1.0 so its better if you have more str and int gear or if your a taru or if you have tp stored

Guillotine is STR 25% and MND 25% and 100-300tp = .85 so this is better if your elvaan or just have more MND+ gear than INT.

But DRKS get more INT+gear than MND+ but i should add that both ws are heavily moded by att. anyways i hope this helps.

<EDIT> Insurgency can also create light? or dark sc. so its very useful when you have someone to sc with.

Dont see any good ws gear with INT on it, MND it is.

Another question that just popped into my head (thanks for the responses btw).

Now I haven't really tested this, but from what it seems via my general use, insurgency seems to have higher accuracy. Is there any merit to this, or am I just having a case of good luck?

Guillotine > Insurgency unless you are opening/closing Light (or for some reason decided to store 300TP and not use Spiral hell).

Lower modifiers (20% instead of 25%)
Lower fTP values (0.5 instead of 0.85 @100 TP)

All mean it is a worse WS.

Flame rings and naturally high INT will not change this fact (unless you have a stupid amount of INT). This is coming from a mithra with INT merits.

It is the DRKs equivalant of Tachi: Rana (useful for SCing, but not as strong as your other WS). Except SAM can self skill chain easily and regularly, we can't.

I haven't seen any testing to support this. But I doubt any one has done any testing.

Well I did some digging, and found a few old screenshots. I don't know if this is still a viable theory but it seems logical.

First WS, 1121
Second WS, 1622
Third WS, 1804

What I'm thinking, is that if you take that base damage, then add any drained HP to it, it will give you a high spike.

For instance, in the above situation, first WS was 1121 damage. Then he cast Drain and Drain II for 187 and 326 HP, respectively. That's a total of 513 HP drained. Added to the original 1121 damage, that's a total of 1634, or only 12 off of what the second WS's damage was.

Likewise, taking that same 1634, then adding the two Dread Spikes procs (88 and 104) from after that, that's a combined 192, add that to 1634 and that's 1826, 22 off of what his third WS was. The slight variations compared to the added Drain+WS numbers could be down to just Attack variables.

It's a far-fetched idea, but it's possible Drain gives a boost in damage if you WS within one minute of the initial drain cast.



Now, after saying all that, I've not touched my DRK in three years, nor do I have any DRK friends, so I have no firsthand experience with the WS at all, so I could be waaaaaay off.

That's an interesting find. I'll have to play around with that tonight and see if I notice anything. I'd like to think that climbing nyzul was worth my while >.>

Oh i'd love to test that, but since I don't often do nyzul I don't have it unlocked... Q.Q If what your saying is true, the my playstyle would work really well with insurgency.

(Playstyle to be read as Ride the Drain Timer)

I'm thinking the reason it hasn't really been tested is because as far as I know, DRKs don't spam Drain on Greater Colibri, and don't carry any actual Magic-based gear for maximizing Drain potential for endgame stuff.

Yeah I'm going to test it in campaign. Not the best test subject, but better than nothing.

Try Crabs throughout bohyada, they range from EP to T.

I think that's a little more stable of a target than campaign. Can be solo'd relatively easily, and worst case bring an NPC.

I'm a bit skeptical there... 1100~ Insurgency on a Lesser Colibri just looks like you've missed a hit or two. Guillotine averages ~1800 on those for me <_<

Subbing what? I don't come anywhere near 1800 on lessers.

edit: 1800 means double attack proc'd on it. I doubt thats an average.

You might be right, my memory might be hazy. Subbing SAM, Hasso+Last Resort etc. I used to go and bully them sometimes if I was close to a merit point.

I'll probably say 1600 or so was closer to the average.

EDIT: "etc" not including Souleater. Important point since we are talking about DRK.

Hmm gotta add that to terms for testing

No Double attack Gear,

Keep track of tp gained upon completion of ws to see how many hits landed.

Keep attack / str, and other mods steady in each ws (Keep hasso up all the time or not at all, don't use LR or stuff that has long timers)

1600 sounds right yes, 1400-1600 even.

Gonna try when maintenance is done, would be interesting if it was "so simple" but it would still make Insurgency a joke on anything higher than a Greater Colibri (and since i have yet to use DRK for anything but HNM/gods/jailers <_<).

I'm 99% sure you will average more than 1100 with even Insurgency though... if I wasn't inactive I'd go out and Insurgency a Lesser and let you know! It just seems awfully low.

It's been awhile since I've done a lesser colibri party on Drk, but I remember hitting 1600 guillotines with SE up, but even then it was rare. This was /war, so I did double attack sometimes. I may have hit 1800 once or twice, but that was it. Of course, my gear isn't great. If you're hitting for 1800 on lesser colibri, I bow you to sir.

Talking at 75 here, since he would've had to be 75 to use Insurgency :p no way did I average 1600 at any point during my levelling career or even now on exp level mobs...

Interesting observations... I'd never test it on DRK too, but I had a few comparisons between Insurgency and Guillotine in Cape Terrian (EP/DC Mobs).

Tests All spamming 100% TP.

Guillotine had better dmg than Insurgency (unless Insurgency Crits/Double att).

Insurgency hits by 1000-1400
Guillotine hits by 1200-1600

All those without Last Resort, just /SAM with Hasso.

My char is Elvaan so... MND helps a bit here on Guillotine.

Its been awhile since I test it so.. gonna gear my DRK today just to test it again and I will let you know here again.

This caught my interest. TESTS PLX D:

I did at lv 66, BRD+COR on Erucas, was crazy <3

I totally forgot to try after maintenance though -_- Gonna try now.

Edit:

Well tried, Drain didnt change anything to Insurgency at all. Drained for an average of 549HP per colibri then using it at 100TP gave me the exact same ***numbers i was getting without the Drain process <_<

Might be a good idea to just look toward adding a shitload of attack, i'll try this an other time i think, forgot heca legs in MH/
You already poped things out of nowhere on Blade Jin last day, are you going to do this on every single WS there is in this game? Misinformation and post count are 2 different things.

I'm so envious :( when levelling DRK I didn't even know what a BRD was, and it was pre-2hander update! I thought it was strong then, can't imagine levelling it now...

I use insurgency, but only because it's prettier than guillotine~

seriously though, guillotine does do better dmg over all. even with the random spikes that people refer to, they don't happen often enough to tip the scales.

You don't need tests,

It is simple enough to work through the WS equation and see that Insurgency is behind Guillotine at every point.

The only time Insurgency can consistently beat guillotine is at 250+ TP. And If you are saving 300TP, it is normally for a mob where Spiral hell beats them both.

The difference isn't massive, and you would need a lot of samples to prove it, but it is there.

Well yes, it was right when they made 2handed update which mean it was the "broken" one, not the current one :p
(._.)

yeah, for all the same reasons people described earlier, guillotine is an overall "better" weaponskill in terms of damage output.

too bad it's got the most awful noise and animation attached to it. I think my ears bleed a little every time I use it, and my eyes literally burn in their sockets watching the animation.