Relic/Emp Daggers, not worth the effort? Follow

Ppl usually ask about a "easy" way. And easy way they get as reply. Of course, if you have resources both mandau and twash are worthwhile to get. In the past it was common to say that mandau changed thf completely. That is still true, and it also aplies to Twash, as both weapons have that same job changing tools (high dps and a strong ws). On twash's case, it's not even much of an effort (as you can see from so many ppl walking around with the weapon today).

Edited, Sep 21st 2011 10:56am by Laphine

Thanks for clearing that up fellas.

Wanted to shoot for Twash but it seems a bit unrealistic to achieve due to my limited playtime.

Wouldn't want the tiny bit of playtime I have to revolve around grinding trials for the weapon.

^ this 100%.

Its not impossible to do with limited time/resources, just takes longer. If you want it REALLY bad, then it can still be worth it.

Its a pretty simply equation: Desire vs Resources. If you have a lot of desire, but few resources, it can still work. Alternatively, if you dont want it 'that' much, but have TONS of resources (ie: it would be 'easy' for you) then it can also be worth it.

Is your desire for the item greater than the time and effort you personally would have to expend to get it?

Basically, all comes right back to the question in the OP. Is it worth it? Depends entirely on you :P We cant really answer it for you, but we can tell you how much effort it really is (those that have done it or are working on empys at least) and tell you how powerful the item is. Then you decide how much you want that power and how feasible it is for you to complete it and weigh it yourself.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2011 11:14am by Banalaty

I better get on my VW. My new job has screwed up my playtime, but boosted ODD ftw. SO guess I know what i will be doing with all my free time for a bit.

Didn't want to make a thread, but what's the general balance of power Mandau vs. Twashtar? Just curious.

On paper they are really very, very close. Similar DPS (Man has 1 more damage, same delay). Rudra=3.0 ftp, 60% dex. Mercy=3.0ftp, 60% str. Aftermath comparable to mandau normal proc. Mercy has 25% bonus damage, rudra has higher potential to start with.

Rudra has more potential epeen damage because stacking with SATA overlaps more dex gear than str so gear is more cohesive than stacking str/dex making gear more efficient. Also FTP rises with TP over 100 unlike mercy. +15 dex on SA etc.

At this point in the game, they perform similarly, they 'play' similarly (because the WS are so similar) and one can now legitimately argue they take similar resources to aquire (1500 metal plates bumps up twash to relic level effort on top of everything else).

Twash has higher spike damage, but a little more finicky with the need to keep aftermath up while mandau is a little more flexible because of the weak aftermath, but lower WS damage so you are freed up to use evis more often when its better.

I wouldnt loose any sleep worrying about 'picking' the wrong one and regretting it. They both are so similar its not worth worrying about.

Just a small fix, but rudra has 3.25 ftp at 100.

And another edge we could give RS is its ftp growth too~

However Mandau is hands down better if you can't SATA and have to use Dancing Edge or Eviceration. Also, assuming Coruscanti turns out to be awesome you'll have to give up TP bonus offhand on Twastar to use it which puts Rudra's behind Mercy Stroke at 100% TP in that scenario. Dual wielded MS on 90/95 Mandau is fTP 5.0 vs 4.25 at 100% TP for dual wielded Rudra's (the 25% damage multiplier affects the offhand hit and any multi hit procs in the WS)

I have a feeling that Mandau is going to get another boost at 99 while Twastar is going to just be more DEX and DMG. SE hinted on the official forum that they will be adding something new (as opposed to buffing existing properties) to relics and mythics at level 99.

Of course I also have a feeling that they're going to ask for another 10k currency at 99, or if not that then something equally difficult.



Edited, Oct 13th 2011 7:46pm by Lobivopis

Yeah, Twash is heavily dependant on aftermath, although with TP dagger, it stands up just fine to evis/DE without stacking. There are still other little things like TP bonus WOTG earring that can be used to beef it up to ~4.5 DW at 100TP+overflow TP we all get, but it still is 'generally' going to come down to the ability to use all of Twashes potential which depends on situation and human error as you described.

Basically, if you have the option to spam EFFECTIVE rudras and keep aftermath up without gimping yourself, Twash should be gravy. If you can never use Rudra/Mercy then Mandau wins hands down. Somewhere in the middle (where real people actually play :P) they should be the realistic performance. This could swing either way.

Honestly, unless SE makes some rather drastic change to either relic or empy weapons at 99, im comfortable enough saying its to close to realistically call so long as both are used intelligently to focus on their strengths and minimize weaknesses. The specific situation and person behind it will determine which would get the edge. We could do some elaborate modeling to factor in everything and come up with a winner, but i cant imagine it would be by enough to care and it impacts so few people i cant be bothered. Hell, it may be as simple as "Elvs go mandau for str, mithra go twash for dex" and leave it at that :P

No it has "occasionally deals severe damage" in addition to "Critical hit rate +5%" The typo was that they left out the critical hit rate in the NA/EU client.

Edited, Oct 14th 2011 8:59pm by Lobivopis

I was looking for a post about mercy vs rudra's and found this one. As i think they are similar and maybe is a question of playstyle pick one or another but i'm still not happy with the answer. Someone mention that Twash get more advantage from equip since is 60% DEX and stack with SA equip getting the max potential of the both SA and WS and Mercy is STR 60% and that hurts if you want use it with SA. However, there is new equip that gives both, STR and DEX like Aias Bonnet and Ocelomeh Harness.

Ok i'll try to make the question w/o mess up all with my poor inglish. Let's imagine I have +50 dex on my SA build (is a ramdon number not start to arguin about if i'm gimp or pimp -_-) ofc if i have to sacrifice 25 dex to add 25 STR for Mercy i'm boosted the WS but gimped the SA and it not happens with Rudra's, but what about if i'm able to keep those 50DEX and add the 25 STR? then will be Mercy better than Rudra's? forget thinks like "if you are albe to keep the aftermatch" just WS or SAWS cause i'll will use it in a lot of different scenarios and I'll never know if i'll be able to keep aftermatch up or not or anything else.

And the million dolar question. What about have both? :P

No matter how many times i check it, body still gives only STR.

Edited, Oct 31st 2011 4:30pm by Vodak

Yes, it does give DEX as an augment, which would class it as new equip, since augmenting sky gear is somewhat "new".

Also, from what I see, 3 DEX is the max, so STR+12 DEX+3 compared to Ocelomeh's STR+11 DEX+11...

FYI its also the best unstacked rudra's body.

Well with lokis 11 dex and agi (agi does still matter for TA/TAWS :P) it is only 2 dex, 13str, 10atk, 3 DA vs 5 crit damage and 11 agi.

(Assuming Fstr isnt capped or its moot)
SA: 2dex=2 damage. 13str=4 damage (once in a blue moon 5). so 2dex damage(benefits from AF3 boost)~6 damage vs 5% crit damage.

In my gear for SA with twash and ~7fstr: (intentionally leaving the 10th place for dex after AF to account for an 'avg' bonus using AF3+2 hands instead of tiered bonus that would only be specific to my dex levels)
Loki:(7fstr)
196 dex*1.2=235.2
(237+Weapon+Fstr)=290.2 base damage for crit.
13% crir boost=327.926

Toci:(11.25 fstr)
198 dex*1.2=237.6
(237+Weapon+Fstr)=296.85 base damage for crit.
8% Crit boost=320.598

Basically the 16-17 atk has to make up ~2.29% damage (which is harder on a crit because of the free Pdif boost than a normal hit). 16-17 atk for me vs hypothetical 450 def mob is +0.037 boost to Pdif. So on a crit, i would need a base Pdif (pre crit) of 0.61 for toci to beat loki on SA. Thats pretty rough.

If my base atk is higer, toci fares worse because that 16-17 atk isnt as big a part of my atk (ie bard buffs etc. Non % based buffs). Or if mob has much higher def then toci's wont raise Pdif as much for the same reason. Its a smaller number drowning in big atk/def numbers making less impact. Of course the opposite is true as well. Less smaller atk and def numbers your working with the more 16-17 will change things.
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Anyway, thats just an example for SA. SA loki still holds up unless your pdif is really abysmal (0.6 is dang bad). SA WS is a little more complex and depends more heavily on what WS you use. Stacked rudras is best case for lokis as nearly the whole thing is crit damage so 5% is an epic bonus. DE on the farthest extreme because it cant crit past teh stacked version at all and str/dex on toci applies 6 times. Evis in the middle. I havent worked those out specifically, and honestly not sure where the toci/loki watershed is.

Also TAWS loki has more weight to consider. 11agi and the crit damage is no slouch on TAWS. I cant imagine, for example, tocis beating loki for TARudra. But TADE it probably would.

Anyway, my 2c. Someone would need to math out or jack the spreadsheet to test all the SA/TAWS combos for toci vs loki. But for SA/TA alone, loki should be sitting pretty. 5% boost on the entire SATA is really, really powerful.

Edited, Nov 29th 2011 11:54am by Banalaty

To respond to the topic at hand I'm gonna say that yes they are more then worth it. If you love playing as THF, DNC or BRD then by all means make the weapons. In my opinion THF would benefit from both relic and empyrean. DNC of course would benefit from empyrean and I haven't done any tests on my BRD with my empyrean yet but when I do I'll post back here on that. I would say if you have the will, time, help and gil make that Mandau. It's extra poison is amazing not to mention it hits like a truck. Rudra's Storm needs a little to make it shine but when done properly it's a good weaponskill as well. Like most things in this game you just have to tweak it a bit to get the most out of it. I've noticed when using Rudra's Storm people on my server bash it because it's not what I like to call a "out of the box" weaponskill(WS).
That meaning you can't just use it any kind of way and hit like 4k damage being lazy and not gear swapping or using sneak/trick attack. Just my two cents.

Hope you like killing Arch Dynamis Lord 500-1000 times because that's what you have to do to upgrade to lvl 99 Mandau.

lvl 99 Mandau has further increased OAT and Mercy stroke dmg +40% lvl 99 emps only get increased DMG and delay. Mandau is now clearly better than Twastar.

Edited, Jan 16th 2012 8:38pm by Lobivopis