THF Gear Advice

Rancor/Atheling probably wins, and I think if you wanted to play around with the offhand Twash 99 wins if you're crazy enough to have both daggers.

I don't get these statements. Unless you're able to instantaneously zero out a mob's HP after it's proc'd, DPS matters in Dyna, and small boosts add up!

Pugi is nice just because it's usually more DPS, not because attack doesn't matter. Add more attack (or acid bolts) onto Pugi and it's pretty hawt.

So more dmg = good? But seriously, my point was triple attack outweighs the attack of Thokcha in dyna was all.

Sorry, I'm sure you knew what you were saying but those kinds of statements are easily misinterpreted by folks with less understanding.

My fault for not explaining. It looks like Pugi does win for Dyna DC.

I can't get Raider's Armlets +2 to beat Nomkahpa unless their DEX contributes to dDEX sweetspot or Acc is uncapped. I can't get Nefarious Collar+Rancorous Mantle to beat Rancor Collar+Atheling Mantle in any meaningful way, so I'll take the Atheling combo for the DA and more WS/dancing/SA/TA freedom. Your 4/5 Thaumas set doesn't even refer to the dDEX it relies upon, which needs to be precisely calibrated to the user's race and target's AGI or else it's a damage loss compared to other options.

I find dDEX sets to be more trouble than they're worth, at least as a Hume who uses THF mostly in fodder events. It took me 8 hours of parsing just to figure out what to wear to an event I had done 150 of the last 200 days, and the speadsheet results are hardly impressive because of all you give up to get that 10%~ crit rate. Maybe I'm just not encountering the scenarios where they shine. More likely, giving up all that WS rate (3TA+TA DMG feet, 3DA hands, and 3TA head sacrificed for a Hume's 151 DEX set) isn't such a great way to get a little more Crit rate. I'd rethink dDEX if i had about 10 more base DEX to work with, but as it is, it's just a headache for marginal gain to me.

In an effort to do more than dish criticism out, this is my standard TP set.

Me and a friend do dyna togeter on DC mobs each with a dual box. I bring THF and SCH and he brings BLU and BRD.

Since we have enspell, haste, double march, adloquium up full time, I am not sure whether to equip raider's boomerang or shoot acid bolts or suppa or ghillie. I try to keep dia 2 on the mobs as well, but probably not every one.

What do you guys think I should equip for ranged slot and ears for a high buff situation like that?

Bolded bit is not correct. Both sets use AF3+2 head and you re-gain the DA3 on Thaumas Nails, so it's more like TA3/TA damage vs 10% crit and 14 attack.

And I really don't understand what this hassle is you speak of regarding dDEX sets. Would you wear a low-acc set to a fight requiring high-acc? Would you use low-attack WS sets in fights where your attack is crap?

Even for Hume THF on Dyna DC with capped attack (RCB, Acid, 2+ box steps-- a situation that does not fully take advantage of Thaumas' added attack), the 4/5 Thaumas set is 303.1 DPS and your Af3+2/Nomkahpa set is 298.3. Switching to Pugi has tilted the balance towards Thaumas. They are only .6% different if you use Fire Thokcha, but 1.6% different with Pugi.

Go ahead and tell me how you'd get from 138 DEX with Rajas+4/5 Thaumas to 150+ without Oce. Head (+1). Point taken about the Thaumas Nails' DA cancelling out Nomkahpa Mittens' DA, I'll keep that in mind.

Your rhetorical questions are not pertinent to the discussion of dDEX versus DA/TA; gearing for Acc when necessary and Attack when prudent are in a different category than whether or not to pursue dDEX or extra swings as a means of augmenting your performance. Acc, and to a lesser extent, Attack, are primary concerns. Gear decisions concerning those stats will take precedence over your proclivity towards dDEX or DA/TA in the slots you have some wiggle room in.

I am not particularly interested in troubleshooting what we can get the speadsheet to spit out, but I've got the extra swing set at 346.9, dDEX at 345.3 with Pugi. 324.8 extra swings, 319.9 dDEX with Fire Thokcha. That's straight up Exen spam. Increase the WS average to 3400 to account for the stacked WSs, and I get 383.6 extra swings, 375.6 dDEX with Fire Thokcha, and 407.4 extra swings, 405.5 dDEX with Pugi.

dDEX may be worthwhile for a Mithran who can still rock the AF3+2 head, but other races can't. Especially not Elvaan. A dDEX offhand may make it work... upgraded Twashtar or Coruscanti are the only decent DPS ones though.

You're the one that said ~10% crit so I used your number there. I've never implied to not use AF3+2 head, to be clear, which explains our disconnect re: 10%.

And regarding the rhetoric topic, I never once set out to build a "dDEX set." The process went in the reverse:
- Find set with the highest DPS for me
- Understand why this set is the highest DPS (which happened to be dDEX).

I see this process as entirely equivalent to gearing with proper accuracy and proper attack because in both pursuits you're fundamentally just gearing for whatever produces the highest DPS. I don't view one as having "priority" over another-- they all have their respective boosts to DPS and one should simply choose which ever produces the best result. There shouldn't be any attachment to one type of stat vs any other. And proper acc/att gearing is no less tedious either, as they also require parsing and general mulling over data to find optimal values (kudos lots of hardworking folks at BG mathybits for most of this).

Our differences with the spreadsheet are frustrating, though. I feel like most of these threads should be pointless since we have the great resources that Motenten has provided, but the fact that you and I and others always seem to get slightly different results speaks to the complexity of using it properly (a reason that I think discourages a lot of new users). I will say that something is clearly amiss between us though, since you're Exent spam DPS is so much higher than mine and I will upload it somewhere for you if you would like to have a look.

My intent was mainly to provide evidence to the contrary of recent generalizations that didn't hold true, to the best of my knowledge about my own situation.

As for my Exen spam DPS, I traded Acids for a 2nd box's Dia, TP and Exen set are online.

For anyone who is curious, it turns out the disconnect Stani and I had was because I forgot to update DC mob AGI in my latest spreadsheet download. Conclusions for non-Khepri optimal sets goes something like this:

These sets all assume attack is capped, which approximately requires any three of these things:
- A food like RCB or Hydra Kofte
- At least one Box Step
- Dia II from a mule
- Acid Bolts

Dyna DC, Mithra (336.6 Exent-spam DPS):


Dyna DC, Hume (335.9 Exent-spam DPS):


Dyna DC, Hume without Nomkahpa (333.7 Exent-spam DPS):

Brego Gloves instead is 332.5 for reference. Also, swapping to Nefarious/Rancorous in this set picks up .1 DPS but that's too small to be meaningful.

Bah, I forgot to update the mob stats after that discussion. Updated all spreadsheets to use 98 agi instead of 90. Also changed vit to 95, as that seems to better match what I've parsed (though being conservative on the number), and there's probably not too large of a difference between vit and agi.

one of these things are not like the others~

I've had a couple questions/suggestions.

*Active display of key melee stats. Under each set, in the extra rows, I put a display of cRatio, dDEX, fSTR, swings per round, critical hit rate, raw hit rate, WSC, and rounds per WS. Speeds up the process of 'hypothetical' calculations not having to flip from the set you're altering to the sheet that the desired stat is listed on.

*What are over-TP rnds?

*Thanks for the help killing time while people gather for events!

Thanks for noticing this, I was about to post in your thread!

If you're poking around with it, please also add Nemetona Cap to the default THF gear. Resin pointed out that it's actually quite close to AF3+2 head and maybe even sometimes better depending on mob precise mob VIT.

It's the approximate number of rounds after you reach 100% before you actually WS. ie, trying to simulate a little bit of human error. There was a post about it over in the Mathy Bits describing the reasoning more but apparently .5 is a pretty good estimate.

Nemetona should already be in the thf list.

On the stats on the gear page: While I'd like to, there's also the annoying problem of nowhere to fit the data nicely (space is already cramped on that page). I may just trail it down at the bottom; will see.

With the new spreadsheet (Nemetona included) I'm now seeing Nemetona outdo Raider's Bonnet +2 for Dyna DC just substituting it in for the set Suji determined to be best (hume Dyna DC). So much extra gear for so many minor increases...sigh. And I also see Nemetona being better in the Mithra set.

Maybe I'm missing something, and if I am, I apologize in advance. But if we happen to get attack capped on Dynamis DC's how would {item]Nemetona Cap{/item] pull ahead over raider's bonnet +2?

fSTR caps lower on dagger than any other weapon, I read. Or is it still too high to hit the cap on even for dynamis DC's? I'd assume all the attack we're getting from the STR/Attack on the cap is moot since we're already shooting for attack cap w/ the Empyrean +2 head.

Just putting the question out there so I can understand the logic behind it. To help me make better gear choices in the future.

I agree with your argument, but I'm too dumb to know if the spreadsheet accounts for capped attack or not so I can not give you a definitive answer. But I don't remember walking around with 740 attack on my thf very often.

First: fStr caps lowest on H2H weapons, usually, since that's based on the +D on the weapon, not the total base damage. But yes, other than that daggers have the lowest cap.

An explanation of how the damage difference comes into play:


From the hume set, looking only at the melee side:

Only one piece of AF3+2, so removing it won't impact set bonus.
Accuracy is well past capped, so the acc from either piece won't matter.
So the difference is: 13 str + 7 att vs 3% TA.


Hits per round:
3.3552 with Raider+2
3.2551 with Nemetona
3.075% increase from the 3% TA of Raider's+2. (ie: roughly half of the raw value of 3% TA is lost)

cRatio:
1.8384 with Raider+2
1.8774 with Nemetona
2.12% increase in cRatio from Nemetona's attack (7 + 13/2)

Base damage:
60/44 with Raider+2 (7 fStr)
63/47 with Nemetona (10 fStr)
5.00%/6.82% increase from Nemetona

Damage per round (including +TA damage):
368.003 with Raider+2
384.568 with Nemetona
4.5% increase with Nemetona


Changing def down so that attack is capped without Nemetona --

Damage per round (including +TA damage):
397.167 with Raider+2
407.254 with Nemetona
2.5% increase with Nemetona


Aside: If you change offhand to Str Thokcha (keeping capped attack), the difference is further reduced due to slightly reduced value of str (fStr is higher to start with), and slightly increased value of TA (hits per rounds is lower to start with).

Damage per round (including +TA damage):
434.949 with Raider+2
442.004 with Nemetona
1.6% increase with Nemetona



For all cases with the Pugiunculus, rounds per weaponskill (Exenterator):
6.66 with Raider+2
6.83 with Nemetona

Assuming that weaponskill damage is identical for both sets (ie: we're not changing weaponskill gear), and using Haste, but not Samba or Marches, and (for the sake of comparison at this stage) assuming that melee damage per round is identical, that's approximately a 2.25% reduction in overall DPS. As haste increases, the loss in DPS is lowered.

For the case where attack is capped, this causes us to end up with near-identical final DPS values for the two headpieces. When attack is not capped, it yields about a 1.5% increase in damage switching to Nemetona.

For a D 55 Weapon Rank 6 Mandau99, fSTR will cap at roughly 147 STR against 95 VIT Dyna DC's; most prescribed TP sets fall 20+ short of that value. As for why Nemetoma can beat out AF3+2 head, the impact of its 3 TA is watered down by other DA/TA already present, whereas fSTR contributes to base damage, which high levels of other melee stats will compliment rather than diminish.

/echo;

Oh, I remembered another suggestion! For Mandau's OD3, I use ODD=((1/Melee.F11)*0.26). Melee.F11 being mainhand swings per round, 0.26 the conversion rate of Mandau's hidden OD3 proc rate and potency into ODD. The result (I believe) is the Mandau's hidden OD3 is converted into ODD, and weighted so that it is as if only the first swing may proc.

Not to backseat spreadsheet design, but perhaps a "Relic Hidden OD3" 0/1 option on the setup page, if 1, use the output of that formula in the ODD line, if 0, user defined. Or user defined hidden effect proc rate and potency, which are then incorporated into the aforementioned one hidden ODX per round formula. Or detect relics in the equipment sets, and act accordingly. Totally up to you, just my thoughts so far!

Thanks again for the work!

So did that ever get replied to in the actual DPS Spreadsheets topic on BG or added in anyway to the sheets? I recently got my Mandau and I would like to make sure my calculations are actually correct on everything. Also he way you handled it is that set up for the 95+ version of the Mandau?

New daggers from the 2013-03-27 update. Figrued is list em'

tzustes knife


tzustes knife +1


macoquetza


leisilonu


oxidant baselard


nitric baselard


coalition dirk

would a tzustes / Aluh Jambiya combo work well?

basically as good as you can do with strictly AH daggers, but STR Thokcha still beats both in either hand with the sets I've plugging into mot's THF2 sheet

Putting TP gain aside, the point of haste is to bring down your delay. There's no point using high delay weapons just because they have haste. It's the same as using low delay weapons and lowering the gear haste cap to 21%.