Mercy Stroke

Looking for some ideal SA/TA sets for this (including augmented gear, etc.)

Hecatomb pieces can all be augmented and HQ'd. Hecatomb Subligar is a viable leg piece instead of Teutates on a mob with higher defense.

Trick Attack depends a lot on mob. Most of the good AGI overlaps with DEX and not with STR. Part of the value of Mercy is the ability to keep up on hard mobs with other jobs because you get to stack on STR the same way every other WS works so you don't get a poor fSTR penalty. For harder mobs I'd try to keep switching limited to pieces where total AGI beats STR or there is a significant additional stat gained. So I usually swap Ambusher's Hose, Crudelis Belt, Loki's Kaftan, Raider's Poulaines +2, and Rogue Armlets +1 but use Hecatomb Cap, Cerberus Mantle, Ire Torque +1, and STR rings/earrings. Maat's Cap here is nice if you have it. For easier mobs you can switch in more of your AGI gear.

I think rouge armlets +1 are the best for TA still, not 100% sure.

The increases damage is a 1.15x applied to your agility. Given that you should be swapping at least +40 Agi and you should have around ~80 base Agi, there would need to be a hands piece with upwards of 18 AGI to beat the AF1+1.

That's extremely high even with 99 cap. Very few pieces will go beyond 15~ in a stat.

Loki's Kaftan should beat Heca body by a decent ammount for SA/TA Mercy Stroke.

Why swap agi if str boosts the damage more? 1 str = 1.5~ base damage, 1 agi = 1 base damage. Both to the main hit. Str is even more favored by accounting extra hits.

Crit damage +5%.

I'm not talking about loki. I'm talking about the whole concept of stacking agi for TAMercy.

Stacking AGI for TA Mercy Stroke is very situational and almost never worth it. I personally only use AGI gear when it also has STR on it like Crudelis Belt. The only situation where stacking AGI instead of STR would be better that I can think of currently is in abyssea, with cruor buffs, while using GH atma. At that point I do believe AF+1 hands/AF3+2 feet will ever so slightley beat out Heafoc Mitts/Clout Boots. IMO that's not worth making a seperate macro for, but to each his own.

What is situational is the use of the af+1 then (stituational because emp hands pwns so much). Agi is always a bad choice for most of our ws. Among the WS we actually use, mandalic stab, due its low dex mod, is actually the only one where stacking agi is worthwhile on TAWS.

Well first of all we're talking about Mercy Stroke here. And if we're talking about AGI it's cuz we're talking about TA. So the AF3 hands are a basic 8STR / 16attk. The DEX isn't a Mercy mod and it doesn't crit without stacking. We can quibble about the acc benefits to double and triple swings, but that's all gravy.

It's about comparing the benefits of AGI vs. STR+ATTK. I'm *inclined* to agree that the best option there would be Heafoc. Maybe there's a situation where the 16 attack would trump 5 STR, but it doesn't come to mind right away.

I probably shouldn't have used my full TA set as the basis for estimating the AF1+1 hands because others are right that you shouldn't be doing a total switch. It should probably be limited to Crudelis Belt, Loki's Kaftan, Raider's Poulaines +2 (and even this I'm not 100 on), and Rogue Armlets +1.

Given that, it's going to come down to having GH on or not. If you have that extra AGI I'm pretty sure that AF1+1 should pull ahead in an ideal set. Without GH, you're just not going to get the total net return to be worth it. That's situational to be sure, but it's pretty significant. I RR/GH/AoA is still one of the most used combos.

I agree with these swaps. Well, not on af3 feet. Augmented heca feet is better than af3 now.

On hands, unless we are closing the attack cap, 16 attack from AF3 will be better than 5 str from heafoc (with either SA or TA). The same situation applies to AF+1. If attack is necessary, the TA damage boost will fall short to 8 str and 16 attack. If attack is not an issue, the choice between either heafoc or AF+1 for TAMercy will depend on our total agi.

My comment on mandalic stab was due it being the single high level/useful WS where stacking agi is the best way to go for TAWS. We should literally use the TA set on the WS.

I'm not even talking out of my ***. I'm using a damage spreadsheet.

I haven't gotten a good augment on my Hecatomb feet :(

Hecatomb +1 hands with 4% crit vs. AF3+2 hands on TA? I'm inclined to learn towards 4% crit over the attack.

looking over some daggers to offhand w/ mandau. thinking the oneiros is best bet outside of emp? anyone know how that compares to triplus or str kila?

Oneiros is the best off-hand only if you are spamming Evis. And only inside abyssea. Most things fall short to Fire Kila when outside. I imagine if you are spammy on MS FKila might pull ahead inside abyssea too. But the aftermath also helps boosting the benefit from Oneiros, so i'm not so sure.

I havent done to much analysis personally ever since we found out TP bonus dagger works in off-hand, so i use that almost exclusively as a Twash thf. But mercy obviously doesnt have a useful TP mod.

I wouldnt write off oneiros so fast. Time and time again, the 150 delay daggers get underrated because the raw speed for TP gain is glossed over, and the subtle boosts of enhancing DPS more than expected because it shifts the weight of your DOT towards the slower dagger are missed because we often check daggers individually instead of as a set. Your DoT is adjusted more heavily towards the slower of your 2 daggers instead off oneiros. The opposite is true of slower daggers like kila's 201 delay. If that 'slower' dagger is a Mandau or Twash, then that skews all your damage more towards your mainhand's exceptional DPS and additional effects (ODD procs, triple damage procs etc).

I havent explicitly looked at offhands since oneiros came out, but rapidus came out strong (i looked at twash/XXX combos) vs the slower kilas. My gut says oneiros would hold up similarly with the rather impressive crit damage boost even with 2 less damage as a Man/twash offhand.

I've been using kinematics' damage spreadsheet a lot Bana. Much easier to draw conclusions with all the different scenarios. Over there, oneiros only did well with evis spam inside abyssea. A shame because i'm a low delay fan as well.

Instead of making a whole new thread thought I'd ask what are the best Atmas for Mercy Strokes for most situations (raw damage, tanking etc.).

I generally find that the crit boost from SS works a lot better than STR Atmas, so I'd say RR/SS/AoA probably your best bet in general. Not to mention that even if STR Atma helped WS more, they do very little for you in flat DPS comparative to SS (or even GH or AO before the patch)

noticed you guys dont use eponas or atheling. rajas/cerb+1 are better?

yes

I will admit I haven't personally math'd it out, but my general presumption on relic WS is to stat stack due to the high FTP and WSC.

Relic WS do not have an FTP bonus.

Edit:

Meant Cratio bonus, either way they don't recieve a attack boost similar to YGK, going all out in the main Stat of the WS isnt necessarily the smartest thing to do when the WS itself isnt pre buffed.

That's not what I meant, I meant that it's a 3.0x modifier which is relatively high.

Some math I have been working on for Mercy Stroke.

STR vs DEX/AGI for sneak or trick ws. Disregarding the added benefits of attack from STR, critical attack bonus and also any occurrence of double/triple attacks.

For 100STR:
(100STR * 0.6) * 0.85 = 51 (WSC)
100STR / 4 = 25 (fSTR)
Total: 76

76 * 4.0 = 304 (fTP assuming dualwielding)

So to match 100STR you would need approximately 300DEX/AGI so roughly a 1:3 ratio. Attack and double/triple attacks skew things even more heavily in favor of STR for stacked ws. Please correct me if any of the above math is incorrect XD

STR also adds to base damage for STR modded weapon skills. STR is multiplied 3times for the first hit and once for the offhand hit for Mercy Stroke. Dex/Agi are only counted once and are not multiplied by the fTP bonus in a stacked ws.

well, you didn't place a fstr cap (13), and didn't use mandau's base damage as well. You can't really compare stacking dex vs str like that. Your conclusion (100 str = 300 dex) is certainly wrong then. Also, although dex is only accounted once, it's accounted where it matters more (the crit).

The best way to compare dex and str is to unlazy it out. Even using a pdif or cratio value to account the crit power. Oh, and crit attack bonus too. Very important.

OMG that subligar has a use?