Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

And yet, if we weren't min/maxing then they wouldn't die in one hit. 50% of this game is crafting gearsets, 40% is buffing.

That isn't what minmaxing means. Minmaxing would be putting steps and ***on everything. Wearing nyame gear and hitting a savage blade macro to 2shot a sheol trash mob isn't minmaxing.

Between Staff, g.axe, and this most jobs have defense down, if they don't have something niche to their job like a WS, pets, or ammo. The exceptions are COR and DNC.

Sure there is resists, but 5/5 Empy+3 fixes a lot of that, obviously not everything.

I know its nitpicking at this stage, but for any physical boss fight, run could just rayke flabra > Armor Break. Fairly certain this allows armor break to easily land on arebati, for example. Cant remember if effects still apply when hitting 0, but a sneaky tactics roll in lobby before arebati v25 would allow for some 9 mins of def down.

Actually it would be super relevant to discuss. Killing trash mob 100-200 times with 1WS instead of 2WSs is way more important than killing boss with 100WSs instead of 120WSs (unless you dealing with boss, that have some countdown to wipe move and you are on the edge)

That might work in oddy but not to the point where you'll be at attack cap on V25 oddy nms. Sortie could see it working better but there, if you're running a melee strat, typically you're not going to have a run tanking.

Back on topic, prime weapons are capable of of hitting att cap without pdl builds in the majority of situations if not all, at 3k tp. Full wsd seems to be provide the most consistent results. I would forgo any pdl gear other then a jse earring or neck swap, maybe sroda ring unless you are at R10 or below on nyame and have nothong better then pdl gear. If your in an attack capped situation, you will be hitting 99999 anyway or, atleast that has been my experience with the polearm. Cant really go up from that. Pdl may play a bigger roll in non two handed weapons but I have no experience with them.

For sure not 9min.
3xflabra lowers the resist rank by 3 levels and I'm pretty sure Arebati resist rank against wind is lower than 25%, so you would still have guaranteed 50% resist even with Rayke, so 4.5min and that's assuming resist rank is not 5% (very likely) and then Rayke only puts you at 20% with 2.141 multiplier to meva, so it's very possible you are not even guaranteed to land it at all, unless you have enough macc or land some meva debuffs (SV Threnody being probably the most important one).

The trash that you can't kill in 1 have more than 100,000hp or get stat bled into obscurity by a geo to begin with. So no, it still doesn't matter. It's also ignoring the fact that a mob that takes 7 seconds to kill not requiring 25 seconds worth of debuffs falls into the "common sense or Darwin award" category.

That said I return to my original statement, no reason not to include box step when talking about ratio modifying support on things where it makes sense. Even just a level 1 box step is worth mentioning, almost twice as strong as light shot for only 100tp. It's important for people to understand these things when thinking about primes especially since what is arguably the strongest of all of them revolves around giving the party a much more urgent need for more attack buffs/defense debuffs even without considering any specialized gearswaps.

Well if you are hitting 99k with 3k TP, your next goal is to hit 99k below 3k TP. You would ideally have 2 different WS sets for different TP thresholds in that case. That being said, I agree with you that in most or all cases for DRG, potential PDL should really only comes from accessories. I have Ephramad ring which I would also use (but I choose it mainly for BLU and I'm not sure if I would choose it for DRG also), but I definitely wouldn't go for any main armor swaps, especially with aria.

From 2h jobs, probably only WAR and SAM has lower PDL in accessory and could use Empy+3 swaps. Especially WAR with no PDL in neck and earring, because it also comes with TP bonus. Even TP bonus +100 is very strong for both Prime WSs. In worst case scenario of going from 2900 to 3000TP, it's at least 3-4% damage increase, which is a lot in consideration for one armor slot. Overall STR+VIT is also higher on Empy even against R30 Nyame.

SAM is also in good position here, because Empy+3 feet has significantly more STR and DEX than Nyame.

DRK has way too much PDL already, but without Aria, Empy head might be still good to swap in, because it has 16 more STR and 3more INT and +38 Scythe skill too (and for Fimbulvetr it has 9 more VIT too).

Overall I wouldn't consider any Sakpata/Gleti's/Mpaca PDL swaps for Prime WSs. Only Empy +3 and mostly for scenarios without Aria (beside WAR, which I would use pretty much all the time).

For 1h weapons

RDM doesn't really have PDL swaps for armor.
MNK and PUP idc
THF idk, maybe. Probably not. If Ruthless has some good WSC, than sure, because of giant boost to DEX over Nyame, but with 20-25%DEX WSC it's pretty meh.
BST is already packed with PDL on neck and earring, but if you play with Slug and take advantage of Corrosive Ooze, then I guess it can still be good.
NIN also has PDL on neck and earring and only PDL swap for armor is Mpaca legs (I dont really count Malignance), but it's 11-12% WSD against 8%PDL, so even with enough attack, gain from that swap would be very marginal and I wouldn't recommend it.
BLU has almost no PDL (reason why Ephramad's is such a big deal for it), so Gleti's body could probably provide some gain over even R30 Nyame, but I guess i don't really care about Imperator enough to waste time to calculate it.
DNC very similar to BST. It also has PDL in neck and earring already, but also has potentially for higher def down on target, so it can still be potentially beneficial to swap to Empy+3 legs. Probably not with Aria and Ephramad though.

Its obviously not what I meant.

Trash being lower def can potentially opens up PDL swaps with regular buffs, but it's usually hard to draw the line of how much pdl you can use. C mobs on 3 and 4 floor are probably the easiest to mention from top of my head. They have just enough HP that you can easily be on the edge of killing them with 1WS or leaving with few % HP and minmaxing the perfect set, that will do even slightly better is very relevant for some jobs.

and for Origin wich set should be the best? thx who answer ^^

Should be the same as the Fimb set on the last page. You might get some extra mileage out of DRK+1 (wdmg 3) earring over Thrud with Origin. DRK+2 would be an obvious upgrade if you are a lucky lotto winner.

Pretty much the same you'd use for Torcleaver

This question hurts my soul. There's pages of discussion about different content, jobs, weapons, and buff situations and how the gear you wear when you WS depends on all those factors, and then immediately following that is someone asking for the best WS set.

Nobody wants to put a single second of thought into making their equip sets and just wants someone to make them a guide/gearswap without having to think for a second why any of the gear is there.

yup. if people haven't realized after 42 pages just on this one set of weapons, let alone literal decades of discussion on how XI works to reference (yes, they're all still out there somewhere)....people just want an answer and then move on.

This Game is not like other ones you're playing if you think that's how XI works. Because if you're not ok with enjoying a fun gear discussion after receiving "It Depends" as the most accurate answer to declarative questions asked, all you're gonna experience here is a lot of frustration.

People still answer them though, so it will keep being asked.

Not sure why y'all acting all high and mighty.

ffxiah players create spreadsheets and simulations and meta gaming (that's not good enough no rema!) since forever and now someone asks about a ws set because this is the place to ask that question and suddenly all butthurt?

Please...

I'd have to disagree partially with the sentiment that people just want a generic answer and for someone to make them guides so they don't have to think. That also means I do partially agree as well.

The amount of relevant gear in this game is staggering. Without relevant goals, you can waste a ton of effort and get burned out. Most people ask for a goal set so they can compare it to what they think it should look like and then go, "WTF is that piece??? I would never have thought to put that there." It's easy to go down gear rabbit holes if you're curious and lots of them don't actually lead anywhere useful or relevant to what you were looking for.

I started building a subtle blow/counter for my PLD for defensive purposes and after I applied it to DRK and WAR, the thinking eventually got over to RUN. It ended as a conditional set that activates with auspice that has 11 QA, 8 TA, 51 store tp, that caps subtle blow and has 10 subtle blow II that I use with Helheim. It started as a more defensive/conservative set for one tank and ended up as my preferred offensive set for a different one.

When it's the same gear question for the 20th time, when there's already been answers, when there's tools/resources available to come to a conclusion, I don't think its unfair to get a little annoyed when its asked again. It'd be different if they put their own set up and asked for improvements/changes, instead of just "best set pls, thx"

Also personal experience is people asking the above dont care to actually know why any of the stuff is "best" and just buy whatever is listed, but that's just me.

I mean...I'm not sure this is the place to ask that question...though the conversation has (as usual) veered off from the original intent.

I think I would just like to see better quality questions in general, not just referring to this guy.

"I have a multi-attack WS set that I use for XYZ WS and a WSD WS set that I use for ABC WS, here they are, which would you recommend I use for Origin? I think it should be the latter, because of whatever reason"

"I have multiple levels of PDL, including XYZ pieces when I need some PDL, and ABC pieces when I really want to go hard on PDL. For Origin, would you swap these in for Sortie basement trash?"

As opposed to:

"I've done absolutely no research, including reading this thread I'm posting in or any of the DRK threads, could someone post a WS set for me that I can use for all content, regardless of context?"

I don't mind if people ask questions and I love that people answer them, but...maybe put ANY AMOUNT of thought into your question and do even a modicum of your own research/building your own thoughts?

100% feel the same

they typically aren't questions. Someone who understands the formula that is easily found on several sites behind a weapon skill can open discussion and ask questions about gear choices, ideal TP for use, and the like. Someone who has done zero outside-game research into finding their own answers can't ask a question, because they don't know what they're asking about. They want an answer without knowing what they're asking. And that's what drives so many batshit.

Perhaps all that multitude of gear starts to simplify itself when one takes an hour on bgwiki or the like to look up the weapon skills they are curious about, typical accuracy thresholds needed for specific content, and buff array options/mixing of different buffs for different content. Of course questions will then arise, but the person can properly ask good questions that give them knowledge in general that can be used for future questions- not a one-off "plug this in" answer like so many seem to think is possible in this game.

About the usefulness of Defense Down debuffs I'm surprised more people haven't noticed this issue:
https://twitter.com/long_horned/status/1339104052890673152
Basically, the debuffs are reduced by 50% on enemies such as the UNM Centurio XX-I (Dia II lowers defense by 7% instead of 15%), by 33% on VE Garuda Prime and by 75% on VD.

From my own experience and testing there is a similar nerf in Dynamis-D wave1/2 (but not in wave3 for some reason) and Odyssey Gaol. I tried to stack Bolster Frailty, Dia III, Lv10 Box Step and Armor Break/Corrosive Ooze there on multiple occasions and it gave very disappointing results. For instance, the NM Procne requires about 7500 attack to cap at V15 for a job with barely no PDL available like BRD (which is easily achievable with minuets/chaos/fury) but the difference in damage is very marginal when only the debuffs I mentioned are used.

Sure would be nice if there was some way to see a mobs stats in real time, props to the guy for finding that out

Well, for non-NMs, we can see their defense/evasion by /check...though most of the time the targets we're interested in are NMs so that goes right out the window. They should've just made /check show high/low even for NMs, but FFXI is nothing if not mysterious...

So that Twitter post doesn't correlate to anything else really and there'd need to be actual tests to verify if it applies anywhere else. But due to the reason it appears that way, it isn't likely happening in Odyssey.

The reason those UNMs appear to have "resistance" to DEF down is because of how monsters in pre adoulin zones had to be made. Because those zones used to have level correction penalties, monsters in those zones were created at level 99 in order to avoid them. This meant that the new shiny UNMs had the stats of a lvl99 monster. To compensate for this, they have enormous stat bonuses to elevate them closer to their appropriate content levels.

If you have a monster with a 100% DEF bonus who also has a 50% DEF down applied, you're only reducing the final DEF value by a quarter because the bonus and the debuff are applied at the same step.

Keep in mind this should only apply to things added before they removed level correction in each zone. Newer things like peculiar foes and locus/apex mobs won't show the same results since they aren't gussied up level 99 mobs.

I'm not sure if it'd apply to later HTBF like Shinryu either since I don't remember if they removed Level Correction for the Empyreal Paradox when they added that. The changes to the Flan fight were due to some sort of *** up on their initial tuning of them based on level correction *** as well.

Hmmm. While I've long been aware of the lvl 99 mob with inflated stats thing SE liked to do in old level correction zones, this is the first time I've heard it suggested that those boosted stats were a % based increase, rather than a flat increase to base stats.

Do you have any references for how this was determined to be the case?

This is an interesting idea, I had not thought the boosted stats on these lvl 99 NMs could be a percentage increase. Odyssey NMs are lvl 119/124/134/139 NMs with inflated stats too, maybe Defense Down debuffs are also interacting with their hidden defense % buff thingy. They all have a permanent and undispellable Attack Boost buff making Attack Down impossible to land but it could be just an oversight from the devs since it's still possible to land Defense Down on them.

Another explanation would be, that it is flat increase do def, but def down only applies to the base portion.

I don't have a chronicle of numbers to offer you however if you don't believe it, the Twitter post itself has all the numbers you'd need and you would verify it the same way that the Twitter post there did its tests. We already know the order of operations for buffs and debuffs and regular % based defense buffs on mobs can already easily be observed doing the same thing. This is our control and you can replicate it on something like an Apex Crawler with Box Step, Dia, what have you. That establishes and reinforces what we already know about the interaction of defense buffs and defense debuffs and supports the numbers from the Twitter post.

You can then move on to see on a UNM that can also buff its defense (crabs that can do Scissor Guard for example); it will make this effect even worse in an entirely measurable way when they add the additional defense bonus on top of the permanent one.

If it were a newly observed resistance to defense down, it would have no effect on the relative potency of Defense buffs, but it does. The way it works is functionally identical to a defense buff interacting with a defense debuff and, ergo, the conclusion can be reached that it's a permanent percent based defense bonus interacting with defense debuffs.

I haven't done nor seen nor heard about any testing in Odyssey in particular but, taking Papesse's experience into account, it is entirely possible that those NMs receive similar bonuses to their stats that may even scale based on vengeance level or are just static bonuses if indeed defense buffs feel like they aren't pulling their weight there. Again though that's speculation on my part and I honestly haven't noticed much of a problem with my own eyeballs at this time but I wouldn't at all be surprised if they do have some stat bonuses that work this way. I'd imagine the reason they would've done it here to be different though, instead of trying to uplift low level mobs to a higher, variable level (I.e. 99 to 119, 99 to 121, etc for all the different UNM CLs) they just wanted am easily scalable way to boost these NM's stats that didn't require them to individually tune every NM 25 times. Both would have been done to reduce overall time spent developing the content but for slightly different reasons.