Daggers - TrialsFollow

Just kind of curious since I haven't been able to even log in yet. Anyone know what dagger trials they added? Did they build on the current trials? What existing daggers did they add if any? Any armor trials yet?

Interesting, the low damage OA 2-3 times might actually be more attractive than the high damage OAT one depending on proc rate.

Should be D 33/Del 211

Para has no additional delay, but its base delay IS 211 not 190 while base damage is 20+13 for 33, not 30. I was REALLY hoping it was though, that would have really sealed the deal on that one.

If i had to venture a guess (for non-relic/mythic owners) Im going to put my money on Twash/Paraz for my combo of choice with the new dakinis as a good alternative. (at least i HOPE its Paraz. I have put to much into a half done athame to have it be #2 damnit! :P)

Also side note:
Its probably entirely in my head (stupid eyeballing) but after i heard some jobs have reported an upgrade of existing traits that wasnt mentioned in the updates (AutoregenII on whm etc) theres speculation of other old traits getting upgrades like maybe atk/eva/acc etc. I went partyin on thf today (77 yay!) and i "felt" like i was Tripling a lot. This is probably just placebo HOPING we got an upgrade to triple attack trait, but Kparse is borked after update so nothing besides hopeful eyes watching TP returns and spike damage on WS. I dont trust my eyes, but i would LOVE to see a hidden little ninja gem in this update. More triple attaack would make my friggin day.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2010 2:53am by Banalaty

Fortunately, the Deadgye Test (-fStr, Ceremonial Knife, Hpemde) can be administered as we level and we can definitely test for possible T.A. upgrades ^.^

Some cool things coming.

Has anyone done any testing on Critical Attack Bonus yet?

Looks like I will be upgrading my Dakinis to a fire Kila and a Thunder Kila, I may or may not do a second thunder Kila, I haven't decided yet. I will probably also start on a OA2-3 Athame and a Twashtar(horrible,horrible looks, might have to start .dat swapping).

The only problem sham is that the base damage of that dagger sucks. Compared to a fully upgraded Kila (STR or DEX), it loses due to the DOT and WS damage increases from both. The STR one will have 2-3 base damage higher plus on average +~0.053 to cRatio, and the dex one will have +2-3 base damage as well, with 6% higher hit rate. Not to mention Twashtar has a straight 5 base damage on it.

So this thread is more about Trials. There's the Kila vs Twashtar thread.
I just want to talk about which weapon combinations are currently the best and how close or far they are from one another. But I don't want to make a new thread.

I've been working on a new way (mathematical model) of comparing weapon combinations or DPS in general for thief. However, after many hours of brainstorming, researching new stuff, and calculating, I found that I cannot use what I came up with to produce any answers; it just doesn't work. It's just a step in the direction of maybe producing a better model. A better model than what? Than this,

Golden-Standard of Basic Dmg Comparisons

DPS = [(Melee Dmg->100TP)+WS-DMG] / (Time->100TP + jaPause)

This equation is actually pretty crude when applied to thief. For most other jobs, it works just fine. But when SA/TA come into play, especially when you start introducing other weaponskills into the mix like mercy stroke, it becomes much more complicated. And This formula I feel is too crude to really give us truly accurate comparisons. I'd love something better, but as far as I know there isn't really anything.

Settings used here were a level 80Mithra Thf/Nin with 5Str merits. Buffs being Marinara Pizza+1, Minuet4, Victory March, and haste spell. A TP set and an SA+WS set were chosen according to the "best gear-set list" brainstorming thread. I arbitrarily chose to use a colibri+1 as the enemy, with an arbitrary chosen 350def, 69vit, 69agi, at level 88.

I calculated tp/round, tp/sec, ws dmg, etc, etc. But it's just not shown here. For "ja pause", I used what we learned from the Dnc testing thread some months back.

What I got was,

Mandau/Twashtar
[1098.3+1376.5] / (20.833.. + 3) =
103.84dps
Mandau/Parazonium
(961.6 + 1364.7) / (19.417 + 3) =
103.77dps

I really don't think I did the math wrong. But of course I don't swear by this model anymore. As you can see Twashtar and Parazonium are roughly equal Mandau offhands by this model. Yet Parazonium only has 2 more base dmg and +1 more max fStr than the previous Athame, and we'd pretty much concluded that it was above S.Kukri, but inferior to Blau.

And I don't think people are really debating Twashtar being possibly worse than Blau. So if these numbers are correct and Parazonium came out equal as a Mandau offhand...
Of course, this is just for Mandau.


In my personal opinion, I think the tp gain of parazonium is understated. Meaning I think it should be better than shown here. Yet in my new model that I used, where I assumed 75% engage time and 25% wait time in between battles, the twashtar combo actually came ahead by 3%. I don't think this is because twashtar was just plain better, I think it's just cuz the model failed.

If anyone wants, I can post the many other lines of calculations in wordpad that supplement what you see up there. Or post the other model I was talking about. I'm gonna work on looking at some other combinations, but I don't think I'll write anything without Mandau in it.

I have seen you say this before Noodles, and I have seen people espouse it in my LS, but I am just not sure I buy into it. Has testing and or math actually proved this? As a thief, I am generally at about 1.000 cRatio even after I eat food on anything that matters, lower on NMs and such, so sacrificing 9% haste for 21% increased damage doesn't seem like it is that cut and dried. Granted, if I am in a pt with a bunch of wars/drks/drgs, sure, 2x haste makes sense, but I would think that you could show that it would be worth it in a pt of one handers like mnks and nins.

If someone wanted to do math, I would assume that a good thief would start from a base of about 15% Haste from gear, Haste spell and 1 March already from brd.

Take a 350 def mob with Dia2, for around 310 Def, 7 levels higher than you - a reasonable example of a possible Lv80 exp mob. Your Attack with pizza should be about 400. The increase to cRatio, as you say, is about 21% (20.9 in this example).

21% Haste (Turban, Raparee, Dusk Gloves, Bravos, Swift, Homam leges - taken streight from your Profile) with 1 March (11%) and Spell (15%). Add 9% Haste from Advancing: 20.5% Increase.

Minuet 4 marginally beats Advancing March for you, a thief, by 0.4%.
It's highly unlikely your party is full of Dual Wielders.

So let's look at a 2Hander, who you are probably in a party of (Probably 2 of them in a 3DD party).
They will have closer to 450 Attack, Maybe 19% Haste (Turban, swift, haiadate, dusk, dusk/usu) or 18% (turban, homam x3, swift). The 9% Haste from march will be a boost of 25%or 24% against Minuet's 17.8 for a 450Att 2H.

Thats at least a 6% increase from using March1 over Minuet4 for your 2H party members.

Even if you have (for some reason) 3 DWers and 1 2H job, it's more beneficial for the overall killspeed for them to have March1 than for you three to have Min4, assuming you're all doing equal damage (which in it's self is unlikely as 2H jobs if played with the same skill and gear, have a strong advantage over a DWer and are likely doing the most damage anyway).


If you have a Corsair, then Min4 is only going to give a boost closer to 15.6%., significantly less than March1.
If you don't have a Cor, but have a Dnc, even with unmerited Haste Samba, March1 will give 23.1% boost, again, a decent amount more than Min4. If it's merited 10% samba, you're looking at 26.5%, about 5.5% stronger than Min4.


Minuet4 is only better than March1 if you:
Have a party with no 2H DDs.
Have no Cor.
Have no Dnc.

If you have at least one 2H DD, or you have a cor, or you have a dnc, then March1 will beat Min4.

And that, meldi, is why march1 is better. The better your party setup, the weaker Min4 becomes. If you have a weaker pt setup (read: only 1 brd), then Min4 will either be marginally better for you, or equal March1 (depending on your gear, again, the better your gear, the stronger March1 becomes). However, even if it's better for you, asking for it to increase your damage by at the MOST 0.5% is selfish if you're decreasing the damage output of any 2H DD you have by as much as 5%.

March/Min is bad. March/March is better in almost all situations. The only time it isn't is when you have only one bard, no dnc or cor, you're all eating pizza/sushi (if you eat meat, and I know for a fact you like your YCBs, minuet is again weakened) and your DDs are only DW/H2H jobs (Bst, Pup, Mnk, Nin, Thf, Pld. Not Dnc, if you have a Dnc, March is again better) THEN Min/March will win.

The chance of you getting in a PT with only pld/bst/pup/mnk/nin/thf as the other DDs, and having a bard at all (read: them not disbanding for being with such a lol job selection), is rare.

Edited, Jun 30th 2010 7:57pm by Noodles

DRK gets more Attack Bonus also.

Edited, Jul 1st 2010 6:57pm by Lobivopis

The million dollar question will be: Will those additional stats on Twashtar work in your off-hand? Or will SE nerf it just like they did for relic and mythic off-hand.

I am wondering if the dagger just before Twashtar is worth using as off-hand? It is a Kartika with +6 base dmg. So: DMG: 39 Delay: 201. Just to compare Perseus's Harpe is DMG: 37 Delay: 210.

I am asking since nobody is getting 50 Glavoid Shells anytime soon.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2010 1:21am by Breaze

Add auric dagger to the list of alternatives there, when we figure out where it comes from

dmg 39 delay 201 subtle blow +10 "enhances dual wield"

Also, what are the thoughts on fully upgraded athame? (either the oat2-3 or oat path) See very little discussion on them.

Looking at how close the Mandau combo numbers are so far, I don't this wouldn't be the first time that dagger combinations came out to be so close. It happens in gear comparisons all the time.

Regarding gear comparisons.. often we say like, "when acc is around 80% or below, use X; If not, use Y"
Just as well you might be able to judge what dagger combo to use based on circumstances, since there are several good ones. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Nyzul Isle -> /Parazonium2-3x ; Medium-pace Meripo /Parazonium1-2x ; Einherjar Boss -> /Twashtar."
Doubt it's just limited to mandau combinations.

Speaking of this, has anyone discovered the method to obtain this yet? The version update was so massive I anticipate it will take a long time before everything is chronicled on the wiki. I haven't heard of the means to get the auric dagger yet so I'm curious to know if anyone else has.

Also I wanted to comment on this



I haven't tried to do any large scale math comparisons for a while because I've come to the realization that it's too easy to overlook factors and make mistakes. It was Deadgye who first told me that you can't accurately compare two dagger setups "in full" and you should stick to individual portions which can be done. A piece of gear versus B piece of gear, or calculating tp per hit is easy, but in practice you're combining everything. TP gain (with many sub factors), sa/ta solo and stacked weaponskills (and timers), gear, food, weaponskill frequency, melee criticals, buffs/debuffs, average pDIF (and as shamaya said it overlooks things such as actual engage time versus downtime plus other possible mistakes).

I will continue to do math for things which can easily be mathed (smaller scale comparisons) but S-E has issued A LOT of gear now with so many stats it's impossible for me to say "this is better than that" anymore. I will always advocate intelligent play by using the knowledge we have of mechanics and I've been trying to get back to the basics a little bit.

--Don't sit on job timers for too long (especially sa/ta)
--Get your accuracy close to or at the cap by whatever means needed then look for other stats
--Haste returns exponential gains
--Some daggers and equipment are obviously weak whereas others are obviously stronger
--Weaponskilling twice at closer to 100% tp will be more effective than weaponskilling once at over 200% tp

etc etc etc. These are the tried and true universal constants which we know we can rely on. This knowledge of what is effective when playing the job is what I use when I'm playing anymore. I don't trust large scale maths to be fully accurate because there is too much that can be added to the equations to throw it off.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2010 10:20am by Melphina

Mandau is still rare/ex so you can only have one at a time no matter which level weapon you're using. The different dats merely correspond to the different sets of stats from the magian's trials upgrade process.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2010 12:20pm by Melphina

Hi, it's been a while Chanchan. Good to see you around.

I'd have to agree, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you could have both...

...the real question is...who in their right mind would take the risk of doing another relic weapon with the possibility of it not working?

Mandau is less work? That is an interesting way to put it.

I don't consider 5000 killshots on EP monsters less work. And I did not even mention the first trail since that one is too weak. Also you will be doing even more of those next update. Think 2000 + 2500 monsters.

Edited, Jul 3rd 2010 2:08am by Breaze

Obtaining a relic and upgrading it through the Magian quests while extremely time consuming is painful and time consuming but for me personally it will be easier. In fact, I started "really" working on my Mandau and my OAT Athame at around the same time, halfway through completing my dynamis dagger currently, and I'm 2/10 on Verthandi Eyes. On average it takes me 19 hours of farming to obtain a Verthandi pop and I've yet to get a group consistently to handle the fight, there's no interest for those I know and I could be mistaken but the close friends I have who would help for 0 incentive are BLM/THF/BLU, WHM/MNK, WHM, and SAM/COR, which last I checked, could not 4 man verthandi. Sure if you can consistently get a group to kill the NMs it's simple and probably takes nowhere near the time upgrading the relic trials do.

However, that isn't the case for me, sadly. :\

The Empyrean Weapons seem more out of reach than Verthandi as well, given they require more people, more items and a similar drop rate. The saving grace being of course they are not as hard to obtain pops for. Of course, in the future they will be more low man friendly as well. That being said, there's a fair chance even greater trials will be added to those which make me uneasy on focusing on that over Mandau as well.

tl;dr Yeah, for me Mandau would take less time/frustration and I do hope Empyrean Weapons are more feasible in the future.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention, @Shamaya; believe me I have tried purchasing some of the items required, however on Shiva, VNM shells are sparse and I can't seem to find a single one that actually kills Verthandi ever, really. The drops from the T3 VNms aren't exactly ah, equally desirable.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2010 10:53pm by ElvaanTHF

Fusetto/X's, with the new crit dmg+ body and back. Stack a dex, pop a feint.
http://robonosto.blogspot.com/2010/07/magian-weapons-mutli-attack-rate.html
^--This blog is really good. Looks like I was wrong about the 2-3x parazonium. Instead of it being almost 2 hits on average per round, it looks like it's about 1.7 instead.

My friend have completed the OA2-3 axe and he did some tests on it. I don't know how big was the sample size or any other detail, but he told me that he always hover around 1,6 attacks per round on every test with attack distribution roughly 55:30:15.

Edited, Jul 5th 2010 5:21am by Ozma

I'm going to assume a used KSNM99 orb has a different .DAT than an unused one given there has to be some trigger to not allowing a repop, yet you still can not hold a used and unused KSNM99 orb. That, however, could be erroneous on my part, but it would be a "safe" assumption, no?

Edited, Jul 5th 2010 7:56pm by ElvaanTHF

I would love it if anyone knows of a situation where 2 different r/ex items with the same name can be held at once. Not that I know anyone who's actually tried upgrading a 1-2x and 2-3x weapon at once (has anyone?), but assuming you can't hold both at the same time when they have the same name, it's so lame.

This already happened (and continues to happen) any time you have more than one non-Rare item. The game is no more confused if I tried to macro in "Mandau" while having a LV75 and LV80 Mandau in my inventory than it is when I try to macro in "Ruby Earring" while having two Ruby Earrings in my inventory, even (and especially) if I have two different Ruby Earrings. This has always been an issue with augmented items from Tenshodo Coffer BCs.

The OAT and OA2-3T weapons are the same weapon with different augments. And thus the same dat with different augments. That's where the two mandaus differ they are two different items with different base stats (befor augments) and thus theoretically could be DWed.

The fact that they existed at the same time is proof it's possible to have two different Rare items with the same name, strengthening lobi and my's points.

That's a valid point and probably the easiest way to settle the discussion. The three different Parazonium's are all tagged as rare but augmented differently. If it is possible to dual wield two of them then dual wielding 2 Mandau's should also be possible. I actually want to be proven wrong on this and if that ends up being the case I'll eat my words. I'd LOVE to be able to dual wield Mandau's (even if I probably wouldn't ever see two myself) as that would be really really hot.



I believe you're right. Your arguments have been stronger than mine have. I will concede my stance on the matter for now and wait to see if anything develops from this. I believe I may have been wrong. Man, if you really can dual wield two Mandau's that would be just... wow. Enough to make a person /drool.

Edited, Jul 6th 2010 11:13pm by Melphina