Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

Looks like everyone is going Scythe. I ended up picking mine up yesterday instead of the bow, but my group wants to keep doing mage setup, so not sure when I get to test/play with it. We have the horn already as well, so it's gonna be nice to pair it with that. Most of our group are picking Shield/Staves though, I think, so they are in no hurry to switch anymore.

I was contemplating getting another stage 3 at the end of the month because it's so much faster/cheaper and having both the Scythe/Gsword sounds amazing, nut that means Stage 4 is even farther away... Think I will just wait the 2 months so I can use the Scythe outside of Sortie and actually have fun with it.

The light sc is probably the most surprising. It opens up some nice options for DRK. Previously you needed different sets for with and without Schere because you just won't have any MP with Gsword, which you needed for light. Now you can just use Foe the entire time and do Darkness as well with the many other dark-based Scythe WS, too.

The Gsword does the same (opposite), doesn't it? If it opens up Darkness options, that's nice, and even nicer for Warrior. While they had Darkness options with some Gaxe WS with stuff like Steel Cyclone, they were always weak WS, afaik. Now if they take Gsword, they will have options for amazing darkness dmg with Fibbledibble and then the decent light options with Ground/Reso etc.

It looks like they actually put thought into their weapons with both job selections and SC properties for once. At least for those 2.

I like your thoughts on this... SE tried to make Consume Mana work with Drepanum but it was too awkward. You couldn't just pop the ability and then get the 50% skillchain bonus on the WS. You had to get one hit in between to drain your mp out first... Terrible.

Now if you pop Consume Mana and prime WS you will add 100 base dmg and lose zero mp! It sorta becomes a DRK's version of Sneak/Trick Attack. You're not one of these DRKs that just full times Schere now and never uses their mp lol? Just kidding, I like your comment here too, now Schere becomes the best earring for DRK because its CONSTANTLY being recharged. I do wish souleater got a boost, it feels like it's trapped in the 75 era for stats.

I'm still going to wait to decide until I see the Scythe damage outside of sortie. I don't trust SE.

It's not even final fantasy to me. It's Apoc madness and always was
=)Apoc 2.0 I can't wait. I'm burning through everything to start my journey.

You guys are a little too over hyped with that consume mana :P Weapon itself has up to 400 damage. Its probably 60% STR 60% INT mods, so at least another 400 from that. Consume mana will be like 12% boost at best. It won't be even worth using and eat 1sec ja delay for such a boost. Its only really good to use between fights if you have TP ready to open with WS. Its Nothing like sneak attack. Sneak Attack forces 100% hit rate and crit, which by itself is at least 25% bonus to damage even at pdif cap with some PDL. Then you have crit attack bonus that even without gearing is 22% base on THF, so the total bonus is at least 50%.

Like I said earlier in this thread, why make anything but scythe if you are going on a 6-10 month grind.

People actually wanting a scythe makes me happy, lol. Praying it's a good weapon in the end.

My numbers are putting it in the high teens % depending on buffs but even lets say it's 15% more damage every 60 seconds the timer is up. So maybe every 4th or 5th weapon skill if you're holding to 2k TP since they seem to scale so much with TP? I think that's worth a 1 second wait. Obviously it's not as strong as SA or TA but it's more interesting than button mashing and now there is zero penalty for using it.

Consume Mana in this situation would remind me a little of Warrior's/Assassin's Charge, only that it may be worth using and doesn't require merits that should be used for better things.

It is more interesting than button mashing for sure, but it's a DPS loss. At least at capped haste. Its better DPS to be 1sec into another round and another WS, than to use it. It can be DPS gain in some rare situation, like for example if you are at 3000tp and are waiting for someone to open SC for you, but that's assuming you are uncapped attack, because otherwise Origin at 3000 will do 99k anyway.

I agree, it is more so if you have the time to pop it anyway because you're having to wait, then why not? Or if you're sat waiting for a pull and have TP stored, you might as well pop it so you can open with a boosted WS. But if it's being used mid-TP phase, it's probably a loss unless the boost is very noticeable.

I'm struggling to see how one average melee attack round is greater than ~12-18% more WSD especially if your doing 60/70/80k dmg like the video shows. If your hitting cap, yeah sure your argument stands but you're not going to 3k TP every time. If it's like most WS, 2k to 3k becomes diminishing returns and 2k is probably going to be the sweet spot when the fTP and mods are figured out with certainty.

More likely than not, it's a dps gain but no ones forcing you to use it if it's not worth your time.

Say it takes 5 seconds to WS, from the animation, the auto-attacks to get TP, and the button press. Let's also say your average WS is 75k (your numbers above). This means you're doing 15k damage (excluding white hits for simplicity) a second

Add an extra second on to your WS and make it 6 seconds, you're losing 15k damage (1/5 of your next WS) to gain 12% damage (9,000) on your WS.

This is how you can lose damage overall by taking a second to use a JA before you WS. Feel free to fill in the numbers of your choice to get to your reality, but it's very much definitely a thing.

There's one situation I can think of where potentially W&A charge are both dps gain and even then its probably a potential dps loss if you're not fast enough; pop the charge before fight and ws without being engaged using that third pt windower addon/plugin (forgot the name. the one that lets you ws without being engaged) and then engage during the ws animation. Maybe the other situation is when the mob is about to die and you squeeze in the last ws with W/A charge and its enough to drop it, and pushes out the other person who was just about to ws?
Always hated these two JA's.
Anyways sorry for diverting from the topic. outtie again before someone blasts me for not contributing to the specific topic.

edit: One fix I always thought that could fix these two JA's was for them to apply only to WS's. Otherwise just pop them before you engage in full Stp gear for a guaranteed triple attack/quad attack which, in full stp, should result in an earlier ws?

picked it up last night, just don't expect any clean testing for a while. I was pretty far ahead of about half of my static in muffin totals (a few still focusing on gear for the first week or so after the cap changes), and steady runs with good returns mean a lot more to me than ideal testing at this point.

Will be talking with others better versed in methodology regarding quality testing when that time comes.

Congrats. I gotta say I'm liking the look of that purple bow.
Don't worry about the controlled testing environment in the short term. No one else seems to be ready with their's. But some general eyeball-esque screenshots of some dmg with or without buffs would be nice. All these fellas will whine about needing proper controlled tests but really they all also want to see some random dmg =)

Pinaka... pinaka...want to taste my purple pinaka..Pinacolada pinaka, soi el capitain pinaka loca

Because that attack round brings you to another 60/70/80k damage WS, which you will do faster (on top of the white damage from that attack round).

end of the day Consume Mana is just a poorly designed JA that I believe only exists to give all those greatsword DRKs something to do with their MP while they pretend to be WARs.

What you should be excited and hyped about is that Origin (same as Catastrophe) helps lower the risk of using Scarlet Delirium in optimal way and that's probably the most powerful DPS ability in the game if used optimally.

I understand it's a thing and I don't want to derail this into another scythe conversation but all I'll say is...

If it's the same or less dps then it's not worth using, if its more it is. I really don't care except I'm excited to have a possible opportunity to do something different if it pans out that way again when all the unknown variables are finally identified.

It's still premature to say one way or the other imo. I'm probably being too optimistic. Though I still think in irl it's going to be favorable versus the fantasy spreadsheet scenarios on who's hill people love to die on.

If it's not, I'll just continue to ignore it's existance as I've been since it was released.

That needs to be calculated (with real numbers when the scythe is out of sortie and the mods/fTP are finalized).

It's not liberator or SU5 path B with multi-attack and it's not empy white dmg. It's a slow *** scythe especially when you are waiting for LR recast timers.

You might be right but this is all speculation atm.


You really gonna start sitting in Ratri waiting for Origin to save you? That's playing with fire.....

One of the biggest benefits of these Primes is their extremely easy 3 steps. You just pop it before the 3rd WS and gain WS damage and SC damage making it worth the JA delay.

I also wouldn't call it a slow *** Scythe you can make very nice 4/5 hit sets. I never feel slow using Apoc and this has some additional TA.

Apoc's aftermath is giving you JA haste during LR's down time... That makes it faster than the prime and Redemption has a lower delay. It's slow, for a scythe.

I mean...Redemption does technically have a lower delay...by 11...but I don't think that's anywhere near significant.

With 78.75% delay reduction (Hasso up, no LR):
513 delay becomes 109
502 delay becomes 107

With 80% delay reduction (LR up):
513 becomes 103
502 delay becomes 100

I mean, it's technically faster...but I think this is a completely imperceptible difference.

Also, if you have capped magic and equipment haste and you have Hasso up, the Apoc AM gives you 1.25% delay reduction, so I wouldn't call it a massive improvement on your delay.

Agreed, and these properties can be a significant choice if you are planning on using your prime stage 3 to ease the grind to stage 4 - i'm struggling with the idea of a 3 step darkness prime when darkness is a lot less useful than light in sortie. Between gun (enmity info pending) and scythe myself right now.. Would like to see some bow and polearm info.

Because you don't play drk, presumably.

I really don't understand why people are still subbing /SAM with Master Levels... I won't. Imo /DRG is too good with WSD II boost which applies too multi-hits, also the jump abilities are better TP gain than Meditate if you properly gear them and I can reset my hate. And I despise the way Hasso *** with my cast/recast timers. Not trying to be "controversial" but I don't sub /SAM regardless of people's opinion on it. So I guess that wouldn't help me...

Back on topic:

At this point, is it safe to assume the stats on the weapons are the modifiers for the weaponskills? Has that been confirmed at least?

Example: Origin is STR and INT?

Nothing was confirmed. None did a specific test, beside visible damage down on Terminus with Agi down.
Its really safe to assume stats on weapons are modifiers though. They aren't that stupid. Question is just the % imo. I will do the test when I get mine, but I'm 51% dagger 49% scythe now.

Ratri is terrible for Scarlet. Its based on HP% of max HP you lose not HP amount and Ratri has like 400-450HP on each piece.

But the Damage Taken+ means you take considerably more damage than normal, which means you lose more HP%. The main issue is timing it so you get hit by a big move and not a regular melee attack. If it's not timed properly then I can see how Ratri isn't helping as much as some may believe.