Entropy Question.Follow

5/5 only sh*ts on Guillotine with two conditions:

1. You're close enough to capped attack and accuracy to WS in a good INT set.

2. You throw Gorget and Belt on it.

What it comes down to is roughly a 54 base damage difference from WSC with all the best INT gear one should muster.

130 damage 'average' scythe. 192 base for Guillotine, 246 Entropy:

Guillotine:
1678 damage

Entropy without belt/gorget:
1623 damage

In short: Entropy was a complete and total sidegrade in the best situation until it was found that Belt/Gorget fTP bonus works on all hits.

Entropy with belt and gorget:
2054 damage

But guess what? Same deal with Resolution, so now even non-Torcleaver Great Swords sh*t all over scythe! Buy a Gram for a cool million gil and you can sh*t all over Apocalypse if raw damage is your only goal. 126 damage Gram, 308 base damage with 190 STR, with Belt and Gorget:

3218 damage Resolution with AH sword (still 2.8k if you wanna call out the attack penalty) vs Apoc's 2248 Entropy and having to carry a second WS set.

So no, we don't really whine about Entropy not being better than Guillotine now. It's because Resolution sh*ts all over everything, sometimes Torcleaver included, and Entropy is still less than 25% better than Guillotine and locks down two slots of your WS set just to do that.

So Entropy is still relatively sh*tty, and shouldn't even be particularly considered if you have any GS option at all (Gram, WSDmg magian, WoE GS, and even Caladbolg between ODD refreshes).

Edited, Dec 23rd 2011 9:32pm by Raelix

This is news to me. Got some linkage? I had a slight suspicion, but this only helps Resolution even more.



A full and practical INT set still only comes out to about +51 to +58 depending on what rings you might need for a desired TP return. Twilight/Twilight, Abyss +2 hands, Jet Seraweels, Bale feet, and maybe certain earrings for 2-3 more each if you can beat the BLMs to them (there are +4s, but they don't appear to be truly available)


Damned sure it does, so if you're stuck with a scythe you could definitely use it between AM refreshes. Being able to casually top off your own HP and MP definitely makes Apoc appealing, but the old question about Entropy still stands: What in the unholy f*ck would a DRK cast to need 200 MP back at once... ever?


528 delay, 4 hits: 2112 total delay.
480 delay, 5 hits: 2400 total delay.

Practically 100 WS by the Scythe to 88 WS by the GS, but using AH or 'average' weapons you have 205.4k WS damage by the Scythe versus 283.2k by the GS, and still ~250k if you care about the attack penalty at all.

Entropy is less lackluster than it initially seemed, but Resolution is so staggeringly powerful in comparison that Entropy comes full circle back to being sh*t again.

Damn, I was going with the FFXI AH reports of Blade: Shun giving capped acc and the assumption that it applied to all the merit WSes where Gorgets worked across the board on hits.

That said, the sample size was pretty small, and the hits of the WS showed better ACC than melee swings (though he never stated if he was using gorget/belt).

Needs more testing for sure however as the test would certainly lean towards there not being an essentially auto-capped ACC bonus like others.

This is weird though because I could swear someone parsed capped WS acc on Kaggen with Resolution.


I guess I can do a more thorough test sometime this week since I got Resolution 5/5, it'll give me a reason to finish making Caladbolg I guess.

Not everyone on AH is a complete retard. Just most of them, same as =10 and all of the official forums.

On a side note, is a 2-4 GS with 5hit a decent Resolution build?

Edited, Dec 26th 2011 11:27pm by Return1

2-4 Weapons love these new WS because all the real damage comes from WSC. At 160 STR:

2-4 GS: ~205 base (Don't know its DMG actually)
Cala (90): 277 base

25% less WS damage, but WSing well more than twice as fast.

Hell even 150 INT Entropy:
2-4 Sc: 203 base
Apoc (95): 306 base

33% less, but definitely WSing twice as fast or better because of 1-round chance.

You'd stomp any vanilla weapon except maybe OAT, and both are without considering overage being about 4-7% more WS damage rather often.


Don't forget there's +2 INT on Abyssal Earring (Replace bale for sure if you have it, but WotG earring is probably still better), and Jet Seraweels when Accuracy isn't a problem.

Edited, Dec 30th 2011 4:09am by Raelix

STR GS is garbage, mainly because of the delay.

OAT is your best bet. 2-4 is underwelming with a 2.02 swing average.
WSdamage would be a good quick magian as well.

As for Entropy Im very happy with it as an Apoc user. The MP in handy for low manning. (Dynamis XP for +2a is my current project) And its good for VW zergs.

SE > 300tp Cata > entropy spam

Here is an interesting discussion, I am too lazy to get down to the detail and debunk it, but apparently OAT polearm is only slightly better than the STR polearm:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/18671-Thank-you-for-Stardiver%21/page3

Page 3 post #22. If you don't know the background, OAT polearm is pretty much acknowledged as by far the best polearm behind mythics, so something random like STR polearm could be this close is a pretty shocking thing IMO.

This is coming from math guru Motenten so I was actually surprised. I am not saying OAT GS vs STR GS is the same way, but it is an interesting read and I of course have my doubt still.

The BIG assumption being that you're hitting a target that gives you uncapped fSTR and uncapped Attack on both TP and WS phases! This is DRG we're talking about though, so this concept is almost fair.

I would not apply that same thinking to DRK, at least not with Last Resort up or on anything but maybe six mobs in the entire game.

I also believe he blows some assumptions about TP overage, particularly that a hit of overage is lost damage.

RELAX MEGARANT GO!

SpoilerWith a hypothetical weapon and WS and 6-hit and using numbers to give a useful TP:WS ratio that is skewed towards WS output:

100 damage hits, 1000 damage WS.

Clean cycle: 500 TP damage, 1000 WS damage. 1500 damage per cycle.

Overage cycle: 600 TP damage, 1010 WS damage*. 1610 damage per cycle.

*That's a 0.02 fTP per hit bump from 16.7 TP overage with Gorget and Belt on Resolution. Just to show it's not a huge boon to WS damage to go a hit over.

I saw someone use the following method elsewhere a long time ago when the OAT magians were first introduced:

Quote:

It takes five overage occurences to have 'lost' one clean cycle's WS:

1500 * 6 = 9000
1610 * 5 = 8050

I contended that if this only happens 50% of the time, OAT+DA gear for 50% DA rate you get

12*1500 vs 6*1500 + 5*1610
18000 to 17050

So one might think that's a 5.5% loss to overage overall from a 50% DA rate with a 33:66 TP/WS ratio. This is what I thought for a while, except:

You never 'lose' anything that will never change a result!

If you have overage potential from DA on any given cycle your rounds per WS was already closed anyway, so it can't be said that a DA on a last hit is ever costing you something.

The only way those overages happened is a DA on the last hit of the round. This means that the rounds to TP was the same. You hit twice when you still needed to hit at least once anyway.

These last hit DAs can't be construed as lost WS potential!

There's a big flaw to thinking you 'lost' a cycle because of DA overages. Let's say that you had 60 delay (One second).

The clean 9000 damage took 30 seconds. The 8050 damage took 25 seconds. The latter still has five more rounds to make, so really it gets the same number of cycles in.

9000 vs 9550 damage.

Overage from DA does not lose you anything! Those hits are tertiary and are never 'lost potential'. They are pure bonus TP phase damage while also slightly increasing your WS damage. If you have overage from DA your number of rounds to WS was the same, so you got an extra hit in for free.

Stop trying to shoot down OAT weapons with this 'TP overage/overflow' myth. Even when misapplied the 'losses' are minimal, but also functionally nonexistent. This does exist for OA2-4 weapons, but those have vastly more varying round counts anyway.

YES, I REALLY HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO ON NEW YEAR'S EVE!

Edited, Dec 31st 2011 11:27pm by Raelix

Scythes?

Raw damage with proper Belt/Gorget for Entropy:
Apoc = OAT > Redemption (90) = Penitence (99) > 2-4 = Wroth = WS+10% > Twilight > TP Bonus = Other Vanilla Scythes

Apoc and Redemption have to blow their respective WSes to refresh aftermath, and the latter has a bitch of a hitbuild and is generally stuck at lv90, that can swing them either way against what I've put equal to them.

Utility, which is what Scythe is all about now since you should be using a GS for raw damage?
Apoc = 2-4 > OAT > Wroth = Twilight > Everything else.

Apoc is obvious. It's f*cking Apoc.

2-4 is the ultimate Voidwatch proc reading weapon, and still outdamages all but Empys and Shoha SAMs while doing so. Also, /DNC. I may be biased cause I have this one.

OAT is in the same category, but isn't as crazy stupid strong for reading procs or /DNC.

Wroth is the ultimate scythe for Abyssea DRK/MNK RR/GH/RL Counterstance tanking.

Twilight is always handy for sh*t like Melo Melo and apparently even on VW mobs like Kalasutrax.

GS is for Damage, Scythe is for infinite MP.

Torncleaver blows!!!

I had a few drk's in my parties the past few days while on my last two for arcana killer and bird killer. I been using the 2-4x OAT. It is doing 2500-7000 in abby with resolution. And it multi spams it faster than the emp or WoE holders. So am I right in thinking that branch of WS GS Emp/WoE is truely outdated?

I myself do use SA, VV, RL atmas for over 350 STR.

Edited, Jan 17th 2012 11:19am by kimjongil76

Echoes applies to physical weaponskills too? I feel like I'm completely missing something obvious here.

How much better is resolution than quietus?

Would it still be useful to go scythe these days with pentinence +2, use quietus for dmg and than entropy to regain MP? Or is entropy even better than quietus?

The only use for Quietus is 1. Refreshing ODD aftermath on Redemption or 2. Opening Darkness for Entropy.

Resolution > Torcleaver = Entropy > Guillotine = Quietus = Insurgency.

But if you're using Entropy or Resolution, you want to spam them because base weapon damage matters so much less, so things that are Torc/Quietus capable are actually less than optimal, not to mention Torcleaver->Resolution doesn't make Light as one might expect.

90 Redemption is actually a tad overrated in my last post, but 99 Penitence is about where it should be just because of raw base damage. Such tiering is based on edumacated specumalation anyway.

Edited, Jan 25th 2012 10:50pm by Raelix

Ok, enough of this. Stick to the Entropy discussion and leave it at that.