Guillotine Vs. Insurgency

Yes, I've always found Insurgency to be.. Odd. I've reached Mathematically impossible numbers with Insurgency. But also 80% of it's numbers are only 2/3 of Guillotine. I thought at first it might have a hidden "Damage Taken" modification or something. But I decided looking for Jimmy Hoffa was more likely to reach fruition. But I am fairly certain that something other than the standard damage formula is working with this weapon skill. If it could be Isolated...

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but you shouldn't be getting ~33% difference in damage on average. averaged out, there should only be a ~15% difference in favor of guillotine (that's going to average at 130~190 damage in most merit level cases).

as for theories, I haven't tested them extensively, but I have played with them and found nearly all of the more outlandish ones to be false (taking/dealing physical/magical damage at a few different levels, WSing multiple times on the same enemy using only insur. and using different combos of WSs, using SE before hand and turning it off or letting it wear before WSing, ect.). the only one I've found to be the lest bit possible are that it's pDif max may exceed the norm, but it's almost impossible to test without knowing the current pDif caps to use as a standard for testing.

I wish I knew too. My Average Guillotine is 1300, average Insurgency is 900. I haven't really messed with it in a while though. I don't think I've ever seen a 1,000+ Insurgency without a double attack or insane attack bonuses/souleater. Maybe because lolelvnosmart. Not counting the insane ones.

Really? I've always loved the Guillotine animation and sound effects. It's just pure brutality! It's like saying "I'm a Dark Knight, and I'm going to tear you apart"!

EDIT: Average Guillo of 1300? <_< What kind of WS gear/buffs do you have?

Perdu/Pole/---/Bomblet
Heca/Gorget/Assault/Brutal
Ebody/Chaos+1/Triumph/Rajas
Forager's/Warwolf/Black/Chaos+1

gives me ~1075 or so on birdies/most einherjar mobs with BRD/COR, would have to be obscene gear to get 1300+ average on anything worthwhile.

[note the above is my full offensive WS gear, I have loads of sets of course]

DRK! ^0^

:( I swear Last Resort makes you miss hits.

Colibri's is the Norm. Ein mobs I get about what you are pushin.

Edit, because I can't even understand what I wrote.

Vendetta, Pole Grip, Bomb Core (Don't laugh ; ;)
HCT Cap, Justice Torque, Supremacy/Brutal Earring
AdaBurk, HCTMittens+1 Flame/Rajas Ring
Amemet +1, Warwolf, HCTSubligar, HCTLeggings+1

Assessed with 2x Minuet, I should have said that, but hell, I figured that was "Standard" now...

I'm sure I'll get lots of Lolz for the neck, "OMG USE GORGET" but honestly, if you knew my story with Justice Torque, you'd (And everyone) Would forgive that indolence.

The big difference I see is the Weapon. I'm not sure it actually matters, but Since I Rarely merit now, I went with vendetta because it seems to produce better numbers on "Unconventional" Prey, mostly High Level NMS. But the Perdu holds great significance in my armory, I don't use it now, because it's on a mannequin, but I would never throw it away. I'd toss the Assassin's Armlets I can't equip before I'd toss the Perdu Sickle.

Double march is the standard songs, unless you are lucky and have 2 bards.

And how is Vendetta better for high level stuff when it has less ACC and ATT than perdu?

If I knew, I would say. Honestly, I don't know why it does, but it does.

Conventional wisdom would say something like fSTR value, but I doubt 1 matters that much. Accuracy is Worthless or Amazing, depending on your personal situation. Sushi up with full merits and equips I have, sticks acc at 95% on pretty much everything reasonable to melee (IE, Fafnir is not reasonable to Melee, so I don't test on him, But Sky Gods are Reasonable to Melee) The defense rating of high level mobs is so HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, the attack on Perdu isn't going to do much.

The Big reason though, On NM's and stuff, It's not always in your best interest to WS at 100% TP every time. If you're tanking for example, you can wind up killing yourself because of stupid weapon animation or activation lag. So often, I have to melee well above 100% Tp for sake of not dying. Again, I focus on flexibility than a need to produce the biggest numbas ever. Part of that mindset is to take lower DPS in order to prove less of a burden on a healer, or in some rare cases, not kill the entire party. Byakko is still incredibly dangerous with no tanks you know.

And it's not like I'm one of those "OMG PERDU SUX CUZ I DUN GOT IT" I've had that thing since before it was "Good".

One bonus about Vendetta though, I often (used to) Tank Byakko on DRK, and you have no idea how awesome it is when that intimidate kicks in while casting ichi.

Stop gimping yourself, get a PDT and MDT set capped.

Takes more slots ya but allows you to be a real DD, not a semi afk one.

I was doing campaign last night and simultaneously doing some small tests. Like I said earlier, campaign isn't the best test place, but I need merit points/ allied notes, so sue me :P Also I didn't really write down any numbers... so take this with a grain of salt, I'm just saying my general notices.

I did notice that last resort did help out insurgency far more than guillotine. I tested out the drain theory, and it didn't seem to do anything to insurgency. I did notice however, that insurgency seems to have those random spikes people keep talking about. And again, my accuracy seemed better with insurgency. I had many more full 4 hit ws's using insurgency than with guillotine. Of course, without any real testing, this is just myth, but yeah.

Someone should just spam insurgency with no gear switching, no draining, no last resort, etc. and see how often the spike occurs. Maybe it's like the Tredecim scythe. Maybe every 13th crits or something?

But like I said, I don't have any real numbers to back this up, and it was done in campaign, but it's just what I noticed :)

And here I was figuring Minuet/March was standard, Don't think I have ever done the other 2 before, unless 2 bard party.

@Mylliana

Second March vs Minuet

@Dameshi

You eyeballed you damage against mobs that have Defence Up moves (that they can spam due to the amount of TP they get fed), and you are trying to draw conclusions? Sorry, but that isn't going to hold any weight.

Accuracy should be capped on any of the normal mob in campaign (I cap hit rate with my RDM). So any differences in hit rate will be purely luck based (which comes back to the problem with eyeballing and small sample sizes).

Argettio is such a rawr cat

@Argettio

Agreed on all accounts. I'll do real tests someday ;)

I never thought this thread would raise such a debate :O

:-)

I believe you can turn off weapon skill animations, but I think gullotine just owns them all.... for this reason.... A lot of people seem to think they can own a Dark (people I who havent played Drk in my belief) in PvP, and I love to do PvP with a group of xbox live friends I mic-chat with....so they really do know the additional effect that comes with Gullotine (by finding out the hard way)...

but for real (since no one really PvP's but me)
There is good WS gear for all of our weapons skills, just not all as equal to eachother, and may require some serious effort to aquire, but I'm sure you'll find a nice Spec build for which ever you choose that will carry a nice average dmg output...but even with that you'll get still get that moment where you see a nice chunk of life on a mob that you think oh a nice buff and WS and next mob in this chain... you fire the macro to read

TuTone looks like a jack *** because he just did 400 points of dmg... you know where you expand your log just to make sure you buffed

double march with either double minuet or chaos roll should be standard for merit pts...

but, I'm not sure why your dmg is slightly lower than mine, rae, I use to average ~1160 guillotines and ~1040 insurgencies with a similar build. was usually pushing over 730 attack ('was' because I've recently dropped scythe build+merits for GS build+merits) with double mins and closer, if not over, 800 with chaos.

Chaos Roll onry is why. Never Minuets!

I'd think you'd average guillo. a little higher with chaos, I've spiked up to ~1380 w/o double attack on birds, but it's rare (takes all 4 hits landing nearly max). for the most part your pDif should be about capped on birds (a bit under for other mobs) with your build, eating atk food (could be the cause of a lower average if not, lol).

guillotine
perdu/pole/x/fire bomblet
chaos+1/gorget/brutal/hollow
haub. or heca./chaos+1/ulth/rajas
forager's or chuchu/potent/black or askar/chaos+1 or piss(I won't touch these for tp, too ugly...)

insurgency
perdu/pole/x/fire
chaos+1/justice(no gorget yet)/brutal/hollow
haub. or heca./chaos+1/ruby/rajas
forager's or chuchu/potent/black or askar/heca. or piss

would swap around gear to hit acc cap then slap on whatever would give the biggest boost (atk for low atk buffs, str for high). but, I've since swapped to GS to better accomodate my ls's party styles and gear more so towards high def enemies since I have the ability to use other jobs for weaker ***. 6-hit naglering is prety sweet and I've been able to use meat if not pizza for enemies like gods. I just wisah I could get it to average in the higher pDif range 'cause 4/5 times it will either be minimum or below half (have gotten it to spike up to 700 on genbu at 102% on occasion, lol).

Bump! Needs moar testing

Yeah, sorry I haven't gotten around to running test yet :(

Is that with SE? I find thats where SE really shines, in on harder mobs, as SE will help you get over their high defense. I hit genbu for over 900 with guillo, but he quickly disposed of me with a hit/tpmove/hit combo all at once(,_, ) (/drg ftl).

I average around 1200 on birds, but it could be higher if kill shots didnt lower my average.

I thought I'd share some frustration with Insurgency!
while doing some Nyzul Isle, we had a lovely undead floor. I popped a last resort and BAM Insurgency, barely over 100% TP for 2020 DMG. I waz liek.. wut? THEN! same floor and SAME ROOM different undead doggie..! I did another Insurgency for lulz, and it did a little over 2200... without last resort?! lol

and then of course the next few Insurgency were suck ***.

Insurgency's hidden effect modthing: WTF
az n sumtimes it do gud dmg 4 no reason, most times it don't!(j/k, don't eat me!) and HAHA sorry I'm no help :3

that's no buffs other than yellow curry buns, hito, it is pretty rare though (I did mention this is using spinning slash, yeah? lol).

as for destinn, poidh plz. that sounds like an unlikely number because you'd still need every hit landing for pDif max on top of landing a 6-hit insurgency (without souleater), unless you're up against some mob that takes extra physical/slashing dmg, but I don't remember any being in there. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it is highly unlikely (talking once every blue moon while dancing in the devil's palm with a naked super model and super star humping your legs after winning super lotto with a $0.9 billion pot, and smoking a blunt rolled with two $1000 bills) with what we know about the current damage formula.

Undead dogs are weak to slashing!

I second the motion.

lol, now that you mention it, yeah, I notice misses more with LR up too, but that might just be 'cause I'm attacking at capped delay XD

no pics sorry :\ me post wasn't meant to be bragging of the number! My DRK isn't exactly uber lolbut there you go!

also note how low lv mobs are in Nyzul Isle lol
the DMG ##s on those 2 were a little shocking for me, seeing how my DRK is gimp, but that floor was hella weak period. you know the floors that it seems the mob's HP, DEF, etc are like.. cut in half?! it was one of those, except only my 2 insurgency did 2k DMG :3 ( sure, the WAR that was with us did a hax Steel Cyclone, but that's normal for him anyway, DOESN'T COUNT! D:< )

yeah, I took into account all damage factors, but I didn't even remember there being hounds in nyzul (could much more easily reach those kinds of numbers on them), nice on pointing that out, lol.