Oa2-4 Or Almace

This is for outside abyssea as I don't care about PLD inside abyssea. Not that it isn't good with almace/ochain, but I would like to shift my attention toward outside.

How effective will Sanguine blade spam with oa2-4 be against CDC spam with Almace? I know against weak mobs, CDC has a much higher ceiling, but against some of the voidwatch NMs, will Sanguine blade be competitive (stacking huge amount of INT)? With oa2-4, the rate of WS will be higher, so the per WS damage doesn't have to be even. Also, with enlight, I don't think oa2-4 loses too much on the tp phase.

Thoughts?

Almace

Just to add, I don't think getting oa2-4 is any easier than getting almace. So it is not about trying to avoid doing the harder thing, it is not. I have seen CDC outside abyssea and I wasn't impressed at all. And this is with a very good blu using it.

OA2-4 has shitty proc rate, shitty damage, shitty delay.

I think one big edge on Almace is the delay allows it for easier time to keep hate. With enmity capped, whoever does the last action usually gets hate, so Almace has a big edge on that. Other than that, I really don't see Almace being that great against harder mobs.

What is the split on the single hit, DA, TA, and QA?

Shitty DPS is not really a problem if you spam an elemental WS that has nothing to do with the base damage. The same goes to enlight damage, which adds a great deal to weapons that hit more.

ok almace for 2 reasons
1) stronger damage per hit in TP and WS phases also you cna still use Sanguine blade if the target happens to be weak to darkness or you need that added HP
2) OA2-4 will feed to many TP to the target for the damage your dealing and in the long run you will loose more HP from the amount of TP moves you will have spam on you
OA2-4 times is at best an off hand weapon and when you talking PLD its 100% fail cause that would mean you dont get a shield!!!!
well unless SE released a new race w/ 3 arms and even then and ochain almace and aegus would still be better for a PLD.

Good point on the TP feed.

On your first point, I think the idea is to spam 10 ws that does 700 each vs 7 ws that does 1000 each. So if Almace wants to use Sanguine blade, it would be missing the point since in that situation, oa2-4 will still be able to spam more of the same ws for the same damage.

Using sanguine blade is for damage purpose, not really about draining HP, although it is a nice bonus.

Knowing how sanguine blade works, it can be very potent with the right setup. dINTx2 is am extremely powerful modifier that other elemental WSs don't have.

I never use my 2-3 (one trial from 2-4) apart from amber lights sanguine spam (if I'm going to AoE farm Pld/Dnc) but I could see it being useful on some older content (but are you really bringing a pld to older content?) One situation I think would be useful to have it is on Cerberus type mobs where 1500 atonements are no problem.

But as stated above, Almace's lower delay will always be best when people are hate capping, which is pretty much always now (though I haven't delved too much into voidwatch yet).

Almace. There's not a whole load of INT options for PLD outside of Abyssea, vs the amount of attack/acc/DEX you can use to beef up CDC. CDC will likely remain more consistent, it also has a higher base D which is important for one handed jobs.

You're also neglecting the aftermath. I've seen CDC perform quite well outside Abyssea, a lot more consistent than SB.

I am a huge fan of OAT. I have OAT for scythe, GS, and polearm. I also have Caladbolg but I think the OAT weapons are extremely powerful.

I think for polearm, scythe, and GS, there is a balance between giving up too much in base damage on WS and WS frequency. And OAT seems to bring the best balance for the above 3 weapons. The main thing against oa2-4 for those 3 weapons is that it sacrifices too much on the per WS damage for the more frequent WS usage, which at some point due to WS saturation and tp overflowing becomes counter productive.

However, with Sanguine blade, base damage has nothing to do with the damage, so it is just about how fast you can spam it. I think the idea is good, and it takes advantage of what I think is an exploit. But the delay and TP feed issue are both legit and troublesome. Tho from the pure damage standpoint, I don't doubt it brings comparable output vs Almace against difficult mobs.

With the gear set that I just made last night. I was able to stack INT to the 130-135 range. It wasn't too bad I think. Not to mention alot of the INT gears also have MND on it, which is a 50% modifier itself. I think outside, with the proper build, it can get up to 500-1000 damage. While CDC can easily do that much against weaker mobs where your dDex is capped for critical, I am not sure you can effectively cap dDex against voidwatch NMs. Not to mention you are dealing with a multihit WS where accuracy matters. I will have to see more number about CDC.

The ODD is great, but with the TP gain rate of PLD, you won't be under AM full time I believe. And without critical hit, ODD won't be adding a whole lot with the low cratio pld have during tp phase.

I think you guys bring good points. I will have to crank out some math before making my final decision.

I'd help you with numbers, but I probably won't be venturing into voidwatch for a few more weeks here. Maybe once we finish up our bard's colorless souls. Just got Almace last night so itching to try it out.

Nice, congrats on the sword. Let me know how it does in general. I think the biggest thing about voidwatch NM is that accuracy is suddenly an issue again, especially against T3-T4. Which makes me worry about any single hand multi hit ws.

I'm a little concerned about that. My accuracy was not so good last time I did the Puk but my gear has improved a fair bit since then. I'll probably have to alter my TP/WS sets to include more accuracy which is disappointing as I finally finished 26% haste for PLD a few weeks ago.

Must have been a rubbish blu, outside abyssea im normally averaging 1.5-2k with some higher spikes dotted in. From reading your posts you pretty much think OAT > Almace so why are you even asking? Every person in this thread has said Almace > OAT and you are countering everything with crappy stuff about OAT, if you arent going to follow the adive just make the OAT sword and be done with this sillyness.

I don't have a bias against Almace. So just because everyone post "Almace" without giving any support, that I should say ok? Do you think I came out with this idea of OA2-4 Sanguine blade? No, it started with someone owning Almace and Ochain using Almace inside abyssea and OA2-4 exclusively outside abyssea.

None of the ppl who replied with Almace gave any solid support to the idea other than a few. And I mostly agree with them on the short coming of OA2-4 in that it feeds tp, and that it recaps hate slower due to higher delay. Most ppl base their number on the 1.5-2k CDC like you have just said. If it does that much outside abyssea against HNM, then yes, it beats the crap out of OA2-4, but the problem is that it does not.

A Wildfire COR friend who was in the party of the Almace blu said that she wasn't impressed by CDC one bit. It only does decent against Dynamis Xacabard mobs when she did critical hit roll. When the roll is down, it does awful damage. Do you seriously think you are going to cap dDex against HNM? and if you are not criticaling your hits, you aren't going to do 1.5-2k sorry to say with the little amount of attack you have.

All I am trying to see is if there is any solid evidence that CDC will do well against mobs that you are actually going to be using pld for. Knowing the game machanic, 1.5-2k is extremely difficult to do unless your critical hit rate is at the 50% range. I don't see it go too much higher than 30% outside abyssea against harder mobs is what I am trying to get at. And I welcome anyone to show me otherwise with a parse or solid math proof.

Like I said, there is absolutely no reason for me to favor OA2-4. If you look at the path, I actually think OA2-4 is harder to do, sadly I don't have blu leveled or else it would be much easier. I just don't want to waste my time doing both, hence the discussion. You don't need to get all offensive about it, and honestly, what crappy stuff about OAT did I say that was not correct?

Honestly you shouldn't worry too much about your damage output (unless you're an excal paladin, in which case my next statement falls in line with increasing your damage). What you need to be concerned with is recapping hate faster than the DDs.

I'll have oa4 finished later tonight if you need testing.

Yes, and that is the biggest reason for the discussion IMO. I think if anything, that reason solely should get me to the Almace side. I was just wondering if there is anything from oa2-4 that outweights that disadvantage.

Please do so. If you can, try to test the proc rate on the 2-4. Do you have a Sanguine blade set?

It's not to say you should ignore damage of course, part of PLDs issue is lack of damage output. Need to balance out recapping hate and putting out as much damage as possible though.

Maybe your BLU was awful, i did xarca as blu/nin (i'd love /rdm but the stuff hits too hard to rely only on occultation and -PDT) with my mule and CDC was averaging what u said, 1.5k+ on melee mobs with way higher numbers on mage mobs.

I use this for CDC:



Set DA trait, auto-refresh, acc bonus and support spells, only 3 DD spells i set are vanity, quad and disseverment.

Can easy 1-shot mobs with with CDC >> spell with chain + efflux, so its all about how u use it i guess.

P.D.: Food was yellow curry bun and abusing Triumphant roar (only use red inside abyssea mostly).

Agreed. I wonder if CDC gives a large critical % bonus similar to the 15-20% on blade hi. If the critical % bonus is large enough at 100%, then the damage should be far more consistent. I think you have a very open opinion on this issue, so please try out CDC against harder mobs and see how it fairs.

Thank you.

Nice, thank you for the info.

Both

Didgist stop pretending you're allowed to play jobs other than warrior.

Almace by far for a few reasons:

1. TP feed vs Damage output.
2. Enlight as an argument point is terrible, ***resists on 90% of the game that you actually would consider bringing a pld to
3. CDC is like predator claws back in the day for real. Don't make an opinion of the ws until you see it spammed 100 times and realize the damage is wacky. One ws will do 2k, the next will do 400 and so on.
4. ODD procs on almace seem alarmingly frequent. I feel I get 2 to 3 more procs per 100% ws than I do with vere on mnk. Even in situations where I know atonement is going to do more than cdc, I'd rather have the aftermath on almace as it's pretty damn proc happy.