Dual Wield Weapon set at 75Follow

You won't be getting 80% acc. I barely hit 80% without sacrificing a sh*t load of haste gear, at which point defeats the purpose of using the joyeuse. And your math only holds true if the mob stays alive long enough, which in the vast majority of cases, it does not. In merit parties, and the majority of end game scenarios, the fight is going to end before the joy toy pulls ahead with that math, in which case the numbers have to start over again at the beginning of the next fight.

My simple question evidently got skipped over. NO biggy. But really, why use a Cobra Unit Knife? Is it for the low delay on off-hand?

I answered it. I said I used CUK in calcs because others suggested it. I wouldn't personally use one. Despite the low delay, it does not have the DPS other low delay weapons other classes use. Perdu Blade for NIN has 10.10. Blau Dolch has 11.12. Sirocco Kukri has 10.4. In contrast, CUK has 8.77 DPS. In my eyes it's another heart snatcher: It has something on it that gives the appearance that it's good, but it's still pretty much crap :P

It is slightly better than HS, in the sense that it causes more tp gain and DNC isn't only focused on damage. However, I'd still go with other daggers.

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Now to address the ATK comment... by rdmdontdie
First, you came up to the right number for fSTR, but your calc seems off. Max fSTR for both weapons will be 11, while the fSTR gained is 3. You applied 3, so it's fine.
We no longer know for sure if the pDIF works in the same way as listed on the wiki, but even if it does, some of your calcs seem a bit off. For instance, I'm not sure how you go 1.5 as the max. The max is going to be ~1.0 for dagger and min will be ~.2. We usually just use the cRatio, with the ATK you stated, vs level 82 greater colibri with dia II it would be .839
Math:
327*.10= 32, 327-32= 295 Def.
351/295= 1.189 - .35= .839.
Joy:
298/295= 1.010 - .35= .660

Lets do Bk+1/BK+1 since I think it's smarter. The new Cratio is .873 vs .660. Going to use the gear I had in the mad/march scenario, so delay would be 139(with haste, haste samba, and march, 57% haste). 5.1 tp a hit.

In 1 hour, there will be 1553 rounds, with 3097 landed hits @95% acc and 5% DA.
fSTR is 3, so the average damage over time should be about:
35 * 3097 *.873 = 94,628 damage.

For the Joy in that situation, we'll use 47.75% DA to add in the brutal. Delay should be 147. 1469 rounds, 1469 swings at 95% acc and 5% da, so 1464 swings landed with dagger. Damage:
35 * 1464 * .839 = 42,990.

Now the Joy part, you mentioned Closed Position. this is 15 extra acc IF you can keep the monster facing you always. I know that's impossible, unless you get a very cooperative group that all clump up on one side of the enemy. That's also nearly impossible. Especially if other members have similar style merits, like THF and ambush needing to be behind, SAM needing front, etc. Most people circle the enemy. I'll leave it out for now, because if I do include it, then I'd want to leave out mad(which is already helping joy more than dagger).

Joy has 1469 rounds @ 47.75% DA and 83.5% acc(not going to use hollow like you because brutal will be around the same, and help more on WS, plus helps main more). 1811 hits from Joy landed.
38 * 1811 * .660 = 45,419

Total damage for BK+1/Joy = 88,409

This is a difference in melee damage of 7%.

Hmm, what's left is to calculate WS, but I'd need some insight on what kind of WS gear a DNC would use, and their stats at the time. I'll just state what is necessary for BK+1/Joy to catch up: 1200 tp between the two setups mean around 13 ws more for BK+Joy in a perfect world(it's 13 not 12 because the total amount of tp, 16702.5 vs 15485). However, this is nearly impossible since you can't always WS at 100 tp, and with joy you have a high chance of going over 100 due to DA. Worst case would be something similar to having 96.9 or so tp, then procing DA on either offhand only or on all hands, wasting 10.2 to 15.3 tp, and will probably happen often with a 45% DA weapon. See this thread for an example.

So, while still giving Bk+1/Joy the huge benefit of the doubt, we'll lower it to 11 more WS, probably more likely to 10 WS or less. At 11 WS, you ws average needs to be 747 to catch up, at 10 it needs to be 822. This is also assuming the WS for all the other times you went before the joy pulled ahead, which it will not be. The BK+1/Bk+1 setup will have higher damage WS(due to 10 extra atk) so the gap will be even further.

Final breakdown: BK+1/BK+1 will have 7% increase to your melee side, which, based on your 70/30 breakdown is a 4.9% increase to total DoT. Furthermore, it gives a 4% increase to it's WS side, while BK+1/Joy will produce ~7-7.5% more WS, resulting in a ~3.5% increase from BK+1/Joy in WS damage total. This is all giving Joy favorable conditions. Break those numbers down into the 70/30 split and we get a 1.05% increase to total damage.

The difference between the two is 3.85% in favor of BK+1/Bk+1 over Bk+1/Joy, even favoring Joy by using acc songs instead of dual haste or atk/haste, and other calc increases favoring joy mentioned above.

The ATK isn't negligible like you stated, nor is joy that big of a winner. Now as you stated, it does net more tp allowing more moves to be done. However, this is only accomplished by crippling the party requiring Madrigal, or by using extremely expensive sushi, and only works on colibri. Granted, having different gear for different camps is to be expected of DDs, my THF and DRG have complete different sets when needing to switch from haste to atk to Acc, and my NIN and THF has other varied sets or simply just slots. I use different food per camp as well.

That said however, Colibri is one of the locations I personally believe madrigal no longer has a place. With cheap sushi being available, any DD class should be able to maintain respectable acc independently, even without a large amount of acc gear. This allows for more powerful songs Minuet and March to be used instead, increasing the overall potential. When I party with people who can't keep up because they need madrigal, I'm upset. I spent the time an effort to increase myself enough to help the party without detriment, and then others who are lazier or refuse to change from a weaker setup that requires it force me to take a song that doesn't help me in the slightest(like on my DRG, before I started haste build).

/rant off.

Edited, Jan 29th 2009 4:27pm by Souji

Eh, when it comes to how Dnc is played, if the party already has a dedicated healer (like most merit parties), I will focus on damage. No point in having 2 healers, yet having a pseudo DD who can change to healing if need be is nice. That's the only reason I try so hard to be a better melee DD.

And I wasn't able to find a party today ;_;. I'll try tomorrow.

I should thank you souji, I crunched the numbers on BK+1, and found out that the difference in delay is like 1/6th of a second lol. However, the damage is way different, so now I'm convinced I should invest in a BK+1, for the time being at least.

I have a slightly different version of the "which weapons to dual wield" question... What would be the ideal set-up to use when Azoth is not an option?

I've had 75 DNC since last spring, but I've only had a handful of opportunities to play it since dinging 75. That being said, I want it to be decently geared when I do get to play it. (Because maybe if I do well at playing it, more chances to play it in meripo will open up!) My LS doesn't fight Ixion, and I'm not spending 1.3M on a job I currently rarely play. Ermine's Tail is an option in the near future as I actively do MMM. I just got my Koggelmander, so I'm changing my rune set-up to farm for Ermine's.

Other pertinent info on my set-up. I'm 8/8 dagger and 8/8 sword. The only DNC specific merit I have is 1 upgrade in Haste Samba. (Meriting DNC is low priority, but I could at least unlock Sabre Dance if that would give me a big bang for my buck.) I own a Suppa, a Joytoy, and 23% in haste gear. In my grand total of 1 meripo I have played in, I used BK+1/Joy and crab sushi on Colibri and was disappointed. I was going to try dual daggers whenever the next meripo chance arises.

It's also different from WARs because they trade off not just the acc/atk from lower skill, but also lower weapon damage from not using an axe. D35 Joy vs a D31-34 dagger is pretty close there, but D35 Joy vs a D46-50 axe is a much bigger difference in base damage alone.

Personally, as a WAR raised on Shield Break, I'm convinced that if you're not lowing enemy evasion, ure not doin it rite. Especially on some of the higher evasion merit mobs like colibri and Mamool, where the differences in missing an entire hit or hitting only slightly harder are much more noticeable in the time it takes for something to die. Even in earlier levels where I was dual wielding daggers with dagger merits, I still focused on Quickstep and (before Reverse Flourish) Desperate Flourish as a means of improving overall party DPS and killspeed.

Anyway, on the note of Joyeuse attack, I was fairly convinced we gave up on DNC DoT and the only reason we used it was to benefit our TP gain for either waltzes or WSs. We're a melee class with a B+ rank in our highest weapon skill, which happens to be the lowest damage weapon in the game. Since when did DoT become something we were convinced mattered to us? I mean, I'll give you that other jobs can make a similar setup work better by having higher attack and fSTR checks, but I was under the impression that it really didn't matter for DNC because it wasn't a straight DD class, but a multi-talented hybrid class with more than one use for its abundance of TP. Isn't that why we have a split in the community about whether building for Store TP or Haste is better, given that they'll both improve TP gain but one also improves DoT, yet we still can't reach a decision?

Oh, and Salodin, you're right. I misread. Apparently, 11:30 AM was still too early for me to be posting.

Even if you don't think they're that evasive, you have to admit that colibri are on the high end of the merit mob evasion scale. The bulk of merit mobs aren't as evasive as they are. Admittedly, that does partially stem from an unwillingness of a lot of jobs to use more effective accuracy foods due to having them eaten frequently mid-fight, but that's a function of the mob and it should factor into a party's ability to deal with them regularly. Even if you're popping cheap crab sushi, it can still get eaten mid-fight, potentially leaving you shorter on accuracy than some of your other party members until you can get some back up (which can be difficult between damage mitigation attempts, especially in TP burns where Pecking Flurry can ruin your day).

As for support jobs dealing extra damage, that's what Joyeuse is for. If you're finding yourself storing up more TP than you're using on Sambas, Steps, and Waltzes, then start spending the extra on DEs. Just because you're giving up DoT for TP gain doesn't mean you have to give up on damage entirely. It's probably personal preference on my part, but I've always felt that gearing for TP gain (Joyeuse, Accuracy, Store TP) benefited both the party and me as an individual better than gearing for DoT/DPS (offhand dagger, STR, Attack) because I'd rather be building excess TP with lower DoT than having improved DoT but risk coming up short on TP when I or the party needed it. The loss of DoT could always be poured back into mobs via extra DEs if I had enough to spare, so I never felt like I was giving up that much. You know, it's probably my OCD speaking, anyway. I like to be more focused on what COULD happen than what IS happening, leaning toward stocking up on TP more than contributing a bit of extra damage over a fight.

The more I think about it, the trickier the problem becomes and the more I want to say "It's just a matter of preference." The fact of the matter is that this isn't a dilemma that any other melee job has to deal with. They have one use and one use only for their TP. (Well, BLU has a sort of secondary use with Chain Affinity, but in the end, it's still just a way to increase damage over the course of a party.) I think it boils down to how you want to play: Do you want to play as a DNC, building TP for your JAs and using the spare for damage, or do you want to play as a melee, focusing on DoT and letting the TP come to you at a standard rate? I guess neither side is going to concede to the other on this one. There's a legitimate, logical use for Joyeuse within the proper setting, and there's no shame in wanting to push offhand accuracy and DoT. This will probably be the discussion for our job that'll never die over the course of several years. Every job has one XD

OK! I just got out of a merit party on Colibri, and tried a few different things. First off, I'd just like to say that while my point of view on the subject is obvious, I'm still trying hard to be as unbiased as possible and give as fair a result to any and all tests I do on the matter.

That being said, I did 2 melee setups. Neither included Joyeuse, since I forgot it in MH. The knifes I were using was Jambiya/BK+1. The first SS is with my in my "Haste/Accuracy" TP build. This includes:

Head: Walahra Turban
Ammo: Tiphia Sting
Body: Pahluwan Khthingymajig
Neck: Chiv Chain
Ear1/2: Suppanomimi/Minuet Earring
Hands: Cobra glove thingy
Ring1/2: Woodsman/Woodsman
Back: Amemet Mantle
Waist: Swift Belt
Legs: Enkidu Subligar
Feet: Dancer's toe shoes

My acc was utterly HORRIBLE for the first 15min of the party. I was parsing 76% during that portion. Why? Because I had the bright idea of eatting a meat mithkabob, trying to increase damage. Wrong idea salo. First 5min I was at 70% acc using my full haste build (see below). I said oh crap, then switched to Haste/Accuracy. 10min pass after restarting the parser and I'm only at 76%, I say @#%^ing A, so I take hate to lose my food (which was a 5min ordeal cause I couldn't hit often enough to WS at the right time to pull hate), then switch to crab sushi. Here are the results with Crab Sushi + Haste/Accuracy build:

First run

During the first part of this test, I parsed at 92.5%, using crab sushi + Haste/Accuracy build + dual daggers. The bard in the party was using double haste, which worked out in my favor so that I could better show how acc is on these mobs through application, rather then math on a forum lol.

Second part of this. The War and Drg had to leave, so we repped them with a Drg and Sam. Everything stayed the same, except now I went full haste + crab sushi. At times the Brd switched it to atk + haste songs, but never used any acc songs, so none of these results are skewed. My haste setup is this:

Head: Walahra Turban
Ammo: Tiphia Sting
Body: Rapparee harness
Neck: Chiv Chain
Ear1/2: Suppanomimi/Minuet Earring
Hands: Cobra glove thingy
Ring1/2: Woodsman/Woodsman
Back: Amemet Mantle
Waist: Swift Belt
Legs: Enkidu Subligar
Feet: Dancer's toe shoes

Second parse

My acc went down almost exactly 10% with the full haste gear. In hind sight I should have probably kept with haste/accuracy setup, but for the sake of parsing I kept it like this. Nothing else much to say about that parse.

So, in short, with just 3 pieces of haste gear, my acc with crab sushi is at a paltry 82%. I don't recall what was said earlier about acc gear on the off-hand joyeuse build, but if daggers are barely hitting that high with just 13% haste, what the hell will a sword on dnc be hitting? The air more then likely...

Once again, I'll say, if you try to use a joyeuse, you will have to sacrifice so much haste gear to make the acc viable, that it defeats the purpose entirely in the majority of situations. My acc gear isn't the best, but it's far from worse, and having that low of an acc% with only 3 pieces of haste gear equipped, I don't see how any one can choose joyeuse in the vast majority of situations.

EDIT: Ok, I found the post earlier about having 21% haste and using joyeuse with bream sushi +1. With your dex Rdmdontdie (65), any one without any sword merits would have acc ranging from 68.4%-72.9%. With max merits, it's 76.8%-81.3%.

Take away bream sushi+1 (seriously, why are we bream sushi+1?), and the acc WITH 8/8 sword merits ranges from 48.3%-52.8%. Ugh, just...ugh...

Thank you to Aquafis for loading up his FFXI Calculator and doing all that math for me.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2009 4:01pm by Salodin

Edited, Feb 3rd 2009 4:05pm by Salodin

Like I said, he didn't use atk+haste much, so the acc boost from the earring didn't take into effect much. The only time he used the atk song was during 1 Wivre pull, and 3 Mamool pulls. I only listed that fact since it only affected the parse ever so slightly, yet it affects it and I felt it's only fair to tell you as much as I can. I wish I could have stopped the parse during those fights, but with things moving so fast I couldn't.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2009 4:10pm by Salodin

I'm having this conversation on AIM with a friend using an FFXI Calculator, and I pointed that very thing out and he said "Yeah, 10acc does that much to you, with your dex and dagger skill".

Also, to note, one of those mamool was a lurker, and we took a good deal of time to take him out at the end. I remember nothing but miss miss miss miss from everyone, yet it was only 1 mob out of quite a few dozen, so it'd lower my acc slightly, and with the Brd dying while pulling it, we had no way to gain more acc.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2009 4:13pm by Salodin

The second set of dds were definitely better overall. As far as kill rate, it was slightly better on second set, which led to desperation in pulling a Wivre and some mamools. I tried to stick with box step as much as I could, sans the Mamools, especially Lurker.

I got ToD the other week. The next morning i had to work thereby losing the ToD. That evening my friends who told me they would help had endgame sh*t to do thereby making all my efforts useless.

SE needs to make every singe NM (that isn't like 1-2 hour pop) in the game force pop and only control its rarity by the rate at which the pop item drops. There is no way someone employed at a normal job can keep track of the ToD without other people watching it at the other half of the clock.

And before you say do it on the weekend, when do you think those same friends are most busy with endgame AND the room most packed with people...

Edited, Feb 5th 2009 10:17am by RattyBatty

Good advice and I might try it when im ready to solo him (i hate relying on people they just let you down as in my example).

But still just because we can sidestep our way around a bad design, doesn't mean it shouldnt be changed amirite ;)

i think people are just WAAAY over-analyzing this.

If you have a joyeuse, and accuracy is not an issue, then use it. If accuracy is an issue, use dagger. End of story.

I have a joyeuse and am currently lvl 71 with 8/8 sword. I offhand it because I have zero problems with accuracy. I imagine at 75 and Saber Dance I'll offhand a dagger fore merit stuff, but I'll still go /joyeuse for any solo stuff.

I found best combo for me for solo Azoth/Ermine's Tail and for Merit Azoth/Matron's Knife and I may sell the Azoth to fund a Roundel Earring and go Ermine's Tail/Matron's Knife full time. Though that Azoth would be hard for me to part with.