Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better!: RDM Guide

Thank you for the information!

I'm mulling over the three swords as we speak. All three look really fun regardless.

- Fire seems like it could be good, and I've heard it might be onpar with Thibron offhand for physical WS.

- Ice looks to nudge out Ammupari shield when you're able DW for int/macc spells. The appeal for me looks at how it'll interact with magical WSs.

- Onion Sword I've heard is really really nice for a fusion bridge..

It's all going to come down to personal choice with this. It really depends on the other jobs you play as well. There are a ton of great choices but you can only choose one...

For Me:

Firebrand: While probably BIS in certain situations. R25-30 Gleti, Crep, and Ternion Daggers are all decent choices too. I think other options will hold their own. I really wanted to pair this one with my Mandau/Excal but I don't think it was worth picking it over other options.

Ice Brand: I kinda just stick with Daybreak for my magical weapon skills. It's still great for Sanguine Blade/Red Lotus Blade, but turns Seraph Blade into something wonderful. For Sanguine Blades there is always a ranked up Bunzi Rod. It is better than the options I mentioned but again, it wasn't worth it to me.

Onion Sword: I don't play DNC much, and I just R15ed my Excal. So that kind of made the decision for me. It's an awesome fusion based weaponskill that basically gives the user a DEX based weaponskill similar to Decimation (With the Ambu Weapon), cherry on top is that damage varies with TP.

Red Mage can really exploit this Weaponskill with Temper II/Dual Wield. There will be damage spikes on occasion where Fast Blade caps out at 8 hits due to Dual Wield and Multi Attack.

Again though I have more than enough weapons already. Your alternatives for Fusion are: KOTR and Empyreal Arrow (Archery on RDM is fun and hits pretty hard honestly., I will never stop meme-ing!)

The Shield was a pretty safe bet personally. It will extend Saboteur by 15 seconds. You can't really get that from any other piece of gear at the moment.

It is also loaded with Magic Evasion and other beneficial stats. Which you will probably want if you are actually meleeing in a Shield (Odyssey)

The extended skill chain mechanic is also pretty neat. But isn't really that important.

Keep in mind we have NEO Limbus around the corner. How many times have you coveted a piece of gear/weapon only for it to become outdated?

I figured the Shield was a safe bet. It didn't feel like a side grade to me. While all the other choices had alternatives or options that were really close.

I really had to choose utility. I feel like I have enough "hammers" in the tool box already personally.

If I won the Bonanza, Since the shield is out of the way, I would probably pick up the Fire Brand.

Which is exactly why someone who is very undecided, should rather wait the release of that before deciding on what to get from their Kupon.

I mean... not like the kupon is gonna expire and you have to decide beefore next week.

Haven't played since 2023, any up to date gear guides for RDM? is this one still relevant? talking about HQ/endgame sets, I stopped playing just when Empy+2 reforge came out, was up to date before that.

if the last thing you saw was Empy+2, the only real changes since then have been Empy+3, the Null pieces (which are ok for RDM, but not game-breaking), and Prime Weapons. Really hasn't been anything truly "new" since then. In regards to gearsets that are more modern than that- most changes you'd see would be just swapping any existing Empy+2 in a set to the +3 version, possibly Null Mask for idle sets and Null Loop(neck) maybe for "max-macc" sets versus potency in enfeebling moments where stuff just don't land.

Made Onion Sword III and it's been very strong, though I'm having to build a new gear set for it from my CDC set. So far I've been able to get an average of +2 MA procs per WS, but it's super random. 3 Hits for no MA procs, 7 for double TA's. 40% chance to have TA, 23.4% to have DA, 36.6% chance to have nothing, and you get two rolls per WS. 13.3% of time you get a WS with no MA procs, 16% with two TA procs, the other 70,7% is a mix of procs. Half the procs on are with the Thibron hand which is underpowered, so not as powerful as main hand.

I'm actually thinking of using a different offhand like Gleti but then waiting longer? Not sure if that's the best or not.

Ok question, anyone know of a decent DEX body with some form of multi-attack and possibly atk? I was looking around and wow pickings are slim. Two choices I have on hand are these

Malignance tabard
STR +19
DEX +49
Acc +50
PDL +6 (Stp +11)

Nyame mail
STR +45
DEX +24
Acc +40
Atk +65
DA +7 (WSD +13)

Nyame has 25 less DEX (ouch) but had a ton more atk and DA is useful, WSD helps a little bit on that first hit. Malignance has good DEX, some PDL, but no attack and nothing else.

Ayanmo has 48 dex and 7 DA
Carmine D has 28 dex, 4da, and 20 atk
Augmented Agony has 45 Dex and 60 atk

I just noticed that going through armor with 40+ DEX. I might start out with this one and see where it goes from there.

I would think the agony would beat the ayanmo in a 1 to 1 swap if you're not already attack capped, but it'll be interesting to see what it looks like stacked up against nyame. Can you post your fb2 set so far?

Bunzi R30 has 30dex 8%pdl and 70att.

Yeah I'm trying to balance a few different stats, DEX for the 80% conversion to base damage, Multi-Attack to proc extra hits because this WS kinda relies on those, and +Attack / PDL to hit higher pDiff multipliers. This really needs the python simulator to figure out because of all the different conflicting parameters.

overcapped att:

main="Onion Sword III",
sub="Thibron",
ranged=Empty,
ammo="Crepuscular Pebble",
head="Malignance Chapeau",
body="Malignance Tabard",
hands="Malignance Gloves",
legs="Zoar Subligar +1",
feet="Leth. Houseaux +3",
neck="Fotia Gorget",
waist="Sailfi Belt +1",
ear1="Moonshade Earring",
ear2="Sherida Earring",
ring1="Ilabrat Ring",
ring2="Ephramad's ring",
back="Sucellos's Cape",





uncapped attack:

main="Onion Sword III",
sub="Thibron",
ranged=Empty,
ammo="Coiste Bodhar",
head="Nyame Helm",
body="Agony Jerkin +1",
hands="Nyame Gauntlets",
legs="Nyame Flanchard",
feet="Leth. Houseaux +3",
neck="Fotia Gorget",
waist="Sailfi Belt +1",
ear1="Moonshade Earring",
ear2="Sherida Earring",
ring1="Ilabrat Ring",
ring2="Ephramad's ring",
back="Sucellos's Cape",



Good +2 earring beats Sherida.

This isn't directly a criticism of you specifically, but I've seen people posting screenshots and stuff lately of sets instead of using AH's item set tools and it makes me sad, because I have to guess what the gear is. Obviously I'm veteran enough that I can tell that that first set is using the Stinky Subligar, but newbies likely aren't. :P

I edited it with a list of items. I don't have time to create ah sets atm.

Reforged relic +3 pants have 22 dex, and 60 atk. Wayyyyyyy better than zoar subligar +1

More attack, for an attack capped set, sounds valuable

They also don't have DA+5 TA+3

Is DEX/DA/Att the focus of FBII?

From what I've gleaned from testers is fishing for multihits goes a long way.


...

On another note, if you aren't trying to fire them ASAP, an Almace offhand sounds promising and worth trying

The TP offhand meta feels sadge : [.

In terms of REMA, I think I might do Excal first for fun. But empty am3 is fun :)

The way I see atk capped sets, and the way you do may be different. I also test all my sets. When it comes to atk capped sets I don't assume rdm is going to stay capped at all times when I make gear changes, so when I look at my sets I keep this in mind. I's nice to assume atk capped but you have to be realistic about that actually occurring when sacrificing that much atk, and make sure you are in fact still atk capped. You aren't using naegling so that's a large amount of atk bonus lost, the chance your atk is still capped is much lower compounded with the lack of attack on the subligar and onion sword has 0 native atk. Then adding pdl into the equation just makes that even harder to remain atk capped. While I did forget about the multiattack on subligar, I suggested atk on pants for an atk cap set, to make sure your atk is in fact capped. As from numerious testing of different sets loosing even 50 atk in gear on rdm can make you fall under atk cap, so starting 40 atk behind from just the sword can be problematic.

Part of the reason for suggesting the pants is also many people don't even look or think about that gear when making gear sets. Aswell with upcoming limbus, they will become even better, but at that point, people will probably be looking at them again.

On ice brand to note, doing resinjami helms with it last night, normally with aria*stage 4* i'm around +-90k avg on savage blades with the various off hands. I used ice brand off hand last night and wsed mostly at 2.2kish tp, a few times times 1800-2100, I hit 99,021-99,999 on every ws on albumin and vinippati(blackhalo), the only 2 I took rdm to. I imagine with flametongue you could go at an even lower tp threshold since it has the pdl, and str. The other thing about this is rdm's club skill is ~60-70 skill lower than sword, so off handing a club might drop your accuracy too much(sortie basement, helms, for instance), or just let u use better food. In sortie we've been having the rdm do the liquification with RLB/Seraph blade, and the sch continuing it. this makes the liquification skillchain do 160k+ dmg on it's own, and allows the sch to use less strats on sc, and more on ebullience and buffing. off handing the ice brand over bunzi/daybreak made for higher ws dmg on rlb than lost on seraph blade, and 0 misses on auto's. The nukes also seemed to heavily benefited from the higher int. Though I didn't pay enough attention to my nuking dmg on bosses to know if this was consistently higher or lower. As far as how the massive int, compares to bunzi when doing this for nukes in that situation, I have not tested that yet. I did do buzni/icebrand over ammurapi though, and the dmg was a good chunk higher so that int definitely plays a factor when it comes to sortie bosses.

It's awful. It really *** is.
There's SO MANY cool offhands that are just *** useless because of *** magian TP bonus offhands.

Please just *** delete them

DEX and Multi-Attack are heavily involved in generating big numbers.

So far this is what I'm working with. I have alts and support available so I'm pretty well buffed, which can change the order of importance.


I'm experimenting with swaping Fotia Gorget for Caro, but not sure as 80% DEX is really important and 2K+ TP starts watering down fotia's 100/1024 increase. I will also try several bodies to see which works the best in the long run. This is by no means a fully optimized set, just a rough first draft.

So with the above
DA 46
TA 40
Hits per MA roll: 2.076, meaning +1.076 average per roll or +2.152 per WS. I'll probably have to play around with DA values to get the one that lands me right above 2.0 and fill the rest of the space with DEX / PDL / attack / something useful.

Yea >.<. I feel, in the case regarding the bonanza weapons, we wouldn’t be comparing everything to Thib performance when it’s just a boring weapon.

Icebrand also has +248 magic damage, which ammurapi doesn't have.

I've been using Kaja Knife OH with my Crocea, don't use thibron much because the acc sucks and I like doing more damage from autos over WS spam, I don't always SB anyway with Crocea.

Any weapon from these bonanza kupon that can work well as OH replacement? I'm seeing quite a lot of talk about it here and good to know blizzard is quite close to THibron but also excels in some cases, and that these work decently as off-hand for MABing.

Take claims about bonanza weapons being better than Thibron with a grain of salt. Every single person saying that also in the same statement says they're holding TP to 2000+ or even 2500+ in some cases. Which of course those will out perform Thibron in those instances.

When I am actually using magical weaponskills. I mainly use a Daybreak.

It's a good middle ground truthfully. But listen there are a ton of different setups that I use based on the situation. Croc+ Tauret is one of them for only sanguine blade/enspell damage.


So the main bonus to Daybreak is the unique "Light Magical Attack" attribute. Seraph/Shining Blade get a nice boost.

Red Lotus/Sanguine still does fairly well. You miss out on melee accuracy compared to other options. It's still far more accurate than a Thib. Also RDM is a pretty accurate job. So like I said, it's a great middle ground.

Daybreak is also still lower delay than Degen +1

The MND+30 is also at least something for Savage Blade. #s are better than expected when ran through the calc.

MDMG is almost entirely irrelevant on magic WS's due to it being added at the end of the base damage calc. You are adding 258 to a much larger number, especially if Crocia is involved.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Weapon_Skill_Damage

It's added after fTP but before the multipliers. It turns into a good chunk. Game breaking? Nah, but a few percent at least.