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so i was looking into the magian ga's while i try to find something to switch out my byakkos for. atm my choices are byakkos or fortitude axe. i got 5ranks until i can get perdue voulge until then was thinking of trying to get bonesplitter or luchitaine(not as likely unless my abyssite changes to purple faster).

basicly looking for sugestions and or dmg break downs or ga i might have over looked that are = or better than byakkos with minimal outside help needed.

From my personal experience I would say Perdu/Bonesplitter and Fortitude are all a bit better then Byakko's. Many people dismiss Fortitude Axe, but when I play aggressively and watch my TP like a hawk, it usually matches my Perdu.

I have also heard of people swearing up and down that Rune Chopper even with 1/3 refresh from sanction is on par with perdu but I haven't done any tests in exp with it. Anyone here have data on that?

Like was mentioned you could try for a good augment on Erlking Gaxe but odds are by the time you get one, you could have finished questing the 101 DMG Bonesplitter.

If I were you I use Fortitude Axe provided you have stones readily available, while doing magian paths or ranking up.

Rune chopper is only better when you're at very high amounts of haste: spell, double marches, hasso.

It's also better than perdu for people with less haste gear. Swapping down from 19~21% haste to rune chopper with 25% haste is significantly less of an improvement than being below 15% haste. If you don't have byakko's haidate or swift belt, etc you will see a full increase with that 9% haste, whereas other people need to swap out some of their gear to fully benefit.

Remember that rune chopper is really only 8 base damage behind perdu and frees up multiple slots, like swapping turban to askar for 1 fstr, swift to warwolf for 1.25 fstr, etc so you can get some more accuracy or attack and reduce it to 5~6 damage difference. Even still, I wouldn't use rune chopper over perdu/bonesplitter without a consistent source of haste.

fixed

The majority act like tossing refresh AND haste onto one person is akin to asking to bang their dead grandmas.

In my many years of playing, in a year far far away, I had found that this was the best attitude to have when it came to any type of exp party you could join. Parties just always ran smoother when everyone was paying more attention to what they were actually doing than trying to look at the various numbers that Windower so conveniently provided and multitasking. Don't get me wrong, there isn't anything wrong with trying to get that less than a percent of a percent higher parse rating, as at least you're making an effort at bettering yourself, but don't let it obsess you to the point where you're missing out on what's going on. I've partied with people so focused on the parse info that they'd take a few moments to engage the next mob, and I always found that funny. They're trying to parse higher, and ended up losing whatever they gained just because their focus was elsewhere.

Also, a lot of times its just fun to play by the seat of your pants. I'd rather just go with the flow of the party and react at my own pace than to go into panic because I didn't activate Bergressor right as the timer finished its count down.

For what its worth, the USO is a pretty cool place, and eh doesn't afraid of anything.

In the situation where your RDM has the MP to refresh you, chances are they aren't doing enough elsewhere.

Composure refresh is 40 MP for 450 MP, or 600 added MP per 10 minute convert cycle (sounds like a lot, right?). Note that within that time you would be hasting 3 DDs 3.33 times each, which would be 120*3.33 for 400 MP. Toss in 4 refresh to the non-pulling support for another 160 MP. That is basically the entire MP a RDM gained from their refresh just giving other people refresh and haste. Then you try to include Dia II and curing people and your often casting solidly until convert is up, that 160 MP for relatively minimal gain for a single player doesn't really matter much. For situations where you don't have a corsair you really have no hope for refreshing a warrior.

While rune chopper definitely holds some of the best potential, but remember a good war is only getting 3-6% haste from rune chopper with at least a 5% base damage penalty in doing so. It's not like a magic 9% more haste with zero sacrifice. The difference is more than negated by not being able to full time hasso, or not having Dia 2 on every mob (factoring everyone else's damage), etc etc. Many changes with a rune chopper can leave you in the red in comparison to a standard party.

And then if you have a curebot you shouldn't even have a rdm in the party so your point is invalid since dnc was proven to be superior.

I wouldn't use it on any sky god or sea jailer, but I could just be underestimating it's 64 base damage versus a stronger-than-VT mob.

How much attack do you typically roll in? Solid brd/cor buffs could make it much more feasible, putting you in a semi-permanent zerg state...though against anything you have more than a single party for I would be very hesitant to use fort.

My last byakko I used Fortitude Axe. Higher leveled enemies doesn't make it less powerful. That said byakko my ws average was around 450-500 as WAR/SAM. This is with 0 buffs save haste from an outside WHM(Yes it was a pretty gimp alliance), I don't have figures on fort axe with good support, if someone has more extensive testing then the 2 parser logs I have, feel free to contribute.

My equally equipped WAR friend averaged about 200-300 more damage per ws, but I did over 2 times as many WS's him, or any other DD. People always scoff at Fortitude Axe, but actually get out there, run some parsers, and play aggressively(ws right at 100 TP), and you'll see it is a top notch GAX.

The best thing about Fort. Axe imo is that its extra hit stacks with DA, and it's proc rate is 55% for just a double(non sea weapons that OAT are just 45% and don't stack). I get triple attacks very frequently, and that really ups your DoT, and TP gain.

Also, straight up if you're attempting to prove a weapon's worth discount your parse values by at least 20% because the standard player you're parsing against isn't playing that aggressive because they don't have anything to prove. Anyone who is parsing often cares at least twice as much about their damage output so they use specific gear swaps (this dude needs 420 acc so I use this build, that dude needs 410 acc so I will use this build, etc etc).

Was your friend immediately WSing at 100 TP or was he waiting slightly? He might not have waited full attack rounds, but he could have added the WS delay to his next attack round for a slight difference that would then be compounded each time he did it. Were either of you eating food? Did either of you use a specific gear set for Byakko's level of evasion?

It's just an unfortunate situation that unless you have two people equally invested in the parse you likely will get skewed results from the general player's sluggishness. Now if you can guarantee both people are as apathetic/aggressive then you can actually see how they compare. Typically trying to outdo friends/LS-mates for top damage helps keep it relatively accurate, but even then there is plenty of room for variation given such short sample sizes.

Parses prove you care more and give you an estimate for how one gear/food/play/buff style compares to another, but unless you're feverishly controlling for all the player controlled factors you get skewed results. I often out parse DDs in XP parties only because I can multitask better than them (because none of us are solely paying attention to past birds since they can be zombie-afk'd for 20k/hr easy :D), so I WS sooner, use buffs once they come up, etc...but none of those parses really prove anything more than I paid more attention.

Either way if you had an alliance using an OAT isn't that big of a deal, though you really should kick some DDs for support and make sky significantly easier.

Your original post listed no other information just that you had slightly weaker weaponskills (WSC make up a large portion of the total base damage anyways) and that you WS'd over twice as frequently.

The fact that you were WS'ing more than twice as frequent points to other issues with your friend (or you). If you have a weapon with ~50% more proc rate, at most you should be doing roughly 1.5 as many WS, not twice as many.

For six hits
Perdu/byakko's axe require on average slightly less than four attack rounds to WS given 10% DA + brutal + merits + pole.
Fortitude would require on average slightly less than 3, though a much higher frequency you would overshoot TP by 1-2 attacks.

On average you shouldn't be expecting more than a 25-50% increase in WS frequency, definitely not more than double (especially when you discount for overshooting TP).

So this leads me to three possibilities:
Your friend isn't geared/merited exactly like you (maybe lacking GA/DA merits or Rajas/6-hit, acc could explain this)
Your friend didn't have haste spell (only buff you said you had)
Your friend wasn't playing as competitively as possible
Your sample size was too small to get a genuine reading (you just lucked out more than he did for OAT procs)
Your parser wasn't accurately recording (sometimes too many sources confuses/clogs it, though often gets all your dmg)

Or,

You're lying/exaggerating/misremembering or whatever

In no credible situation where all values save for weapon/ammo are the same would there be that significant of a difference in WS frequency. Your results don't make mathematical sense so unless you can somehow explain why you're doing a third more weaponskills than you should, your example doesn't negate the fact that you could likely deal as much damage as you did with rune chopper or perdu or bonesplitter and feed the mob less TP.

Then go parse it yourself. I'm not going to bother picking apart my alliance for you and going and asking my friend exact details on how often he was paralyzed, when he was using zerk/aggressor, cause you think I'm being dodgy. I just don't care.

Everytime I use my Fortitude Axe, it parses very well, and when we switch roles, he parses very well against me and my perdu build. I was just giving my personal experience for the OP, because he asked about fort vs gods. Expecially since he doesn't even HAVE perdu. You want to try and tell me all our parses are skewed up, well...I just don't give a damn.

If the OP sees you insisting on trying to prove I really didn't outparse him, and that Fortitude axe should never be used on Byakko fine, let the OP keep using his Byakko's Axe, since because my parse might be slighted by a few%, the weapon is obviously worthless.

Edit:
Actually Fortitude axe like all sea weapons have a 55% DA rate, and that additional hit stacks with DA, so even on paper you would have more then 50% more WS's. On paper I still wouldn't have "twice as many" like I ended up with, but him being paralyzed for even a minute or two would easily give me that advantage. You can keep insisting that because of micro small discretion like that, that the entire parse is flawed, but every parser log in the game has those.

Either way, once again, I don't care, let the OP do what he wants. He already has my input.


Edited, Jun 2nd 2010 3:09pm by Reynark

Would the 102 dmg Bonesplitter outbeat Perdu in most scenarios? Or any good magian trials opened up? Wiki hasn't been updated fully :(

I'll agree with that, I just got my 102 Damage Bonesplitter yesterday! Now to somehow coerce a LS to help me get 50 Glaviod Shells,,,,