Su5/Divergence Weapons - B Path Subtle Blow II

Interested in some math from the math pros...

People frequently talk about B path Su5 weapons as the ultimate low TP feed options, and neglect to consider a really important factor: they also have Follow-up Attack+50% on the same weapon, which means a whole lot of additional TP-generating hits. I think that a large part of why the B path weapons got SBII+25 is solely down to NEEDING that extra SB to mitigate the otherwise excessive TP feed from all those extra attacks (similar thought process to why they gave BST Tandem Blow trait when the master and pet are both attacking the same mob).

Capped SB+75 is great and all, and generates the lowest possible TP per hit. But who cares about that if you get "lucky" with 5 straight FUA procs and feed a dangerous mob enough TP to use some party wiping move before the next Mewing Lullaby or TP Drainkiss goes off?

Like, if I can build a SB+65 or SB+70 set on the same job without a ton of multiattack, isn't that preferable to a SB+75 set with Su5 and all of those extra FUAs? Especially considering that you may be able to use a stronger non-Su5 weapon, so the mob also dies faster (i.e., the less time it's alive, the less chance of a mistake leading to a nasty TP move).

So, I'd like to understand how it really breaks down for total TP feed over time. Does that data exist somewhere that I'm not aware, or can someone skilled with the numbers provide some insight?

This idea gets bounced around a lot but I think the basic premise is flawed. Take, for example, a THF using Twashtar MH vs Gandring B MH. if you're WSING at, say, 1250 TP. That will take the same number of hits on the mob to get to. Let's call it 9 times your daggers hit the enemy to get 1250 TP.

The difference is that the Gandring THF's 9 hits had SB2, and the Twashtar THF didn't.

You could argue that the final round could proc OAT and give one extra hit, but counting all the hits leading up to that is a poor representation of how the TP phase works.

Another interesting POV could be: Twashtar does more WSD, so Gandring needs to WS at 1750 instead of 1250, in which case sure...but that's not what people usually put forth.

You're also forgetting SB on the WS set, which the Su5 weapon will always have but typical WS sets do not. Or not as much of it.

Idk if the augment affects both hands or only main, but a job like THF hits about 4 times per round on average, no? If it affects both hands then bumping hits/round up to like 4.2 while halving the TP fed would still be a significant reduction in TP feed

People have stated that the STP on path A works for both hands and even ranged attacks, so if that's the case, the subtle blow should also work for both hands and shooting as well.

We were clearly intended to nuke in Path B weapons against Aminon with monk's roll to fit in enough nukes between each TP move to stagger him even at low hp (this was a hypothesis I wanted to try and even augmented the various mage weapons, but stopped playing due to a new job).

It's a well established fact that su5 weapons' augments are only active in the mainhand, at least accrd. to the wiki. That would be very significant if not true..

Mainhand and ranged attacks, afaik.

I've asked this before in random questions thread. The main hand "activates" the augments but apparently people have stated that the STP bonus applies to all attacks. So which one is true?

Are you telling me that the main hand swings have 25 STP bonus but the offhand swings don't? I've never heard that trait not apply to offhand swings. The double damage/FUA obviously doesn't work there, but nobody has indicated the STP or Subtle Blow is not included in the offhand swing. Even the wiki doesn't say that.

I mean that should be a simple test. Swing twice with no additional STP (Main and offhand swing) using path A Weapon. Check your TP. Replace Path A Weapon with anything with similar delay, equip 25 STP elsewhere. Swing twice. If the bonus isn't applying to your offhand swings, you should easily be able to see the difference in TP gain.

I would imagine offhand works the same as ranged attacks, don't know for sure.

Been tested a few times that some augments on the su5s, OAT and double dmg, are main hand only but some, eg store tp, work on non-main hand also.

Su5 on storetp path is BiS for Cor ranged attacks for example. That path is the double dmg path, which only works on mainhand - no off hand no ranged.

Even the subtle blow path worm in the main hand could be tested if it the trait applies in the offhand using ballista.

Swing twice vs someone using third eye (without seigan) or one shadow so only the offhand hit lands. Change main hand to anything else and repeat. The TP given to the target should be different if the subtle blow is working in the offhand.

I'd do both of these tests myself if I had the appropriate weapons.

This is exactly what I mean when I say information is available but not on the wiki. "Main hand" activates the augments to work, but which augments "apply" to secondary attacks? Those details are unclear and nobody seems to really know

If gleti knife gives SB II to MH and STP path gives tp to OH, I see no reason to believe SB II from MH wouldn't apply to OH. Are there any SB II, or in fact SB I items, that don't apply to all your actions? SB works on spells, for Altana's sake. There's no way they made it apply only to the MH hits.

But also: even if it only applies to the MH, it still reduces your TP feed by the logic I provided above. I also like the point about SB in WS sets, which is often overlooked.

Right. What confuses people are the words "Main Hand" and what the wiki says about these weapon augments.


Some read this to mean that ALL of the augments ONLY work for your main hand only, and this reasoning is definitely not true since they at least work for Ranged Attacks. Every single time I have asked someone if the STP or Subtle Blow from Path A/B applies to your offhand swings, people either say they don't know, or it's main hand only. It's super unclear to players even who have the weapons.

It's true augments are only active if weapon is worn on main hand. Note worn as opposed to them being active only on main hand.

It's also true that some augments are only activated on the main hand, specifically OAT and double damage bonuses.

Fair points, but I think the assumption that "Augments are active only when the weapon is in your main hand." means they're only active ON the main hand is just misreading the quote. To be clear, I'm not talking about any specific person here or accusing any individual of doing that, I'm just saying if you read the quote Buukki pasted and think the augments only apply TO the mainhand, you're just not reading it right.

There are some times where it does only apply to the MH, like you said Crocea & FUA, but that's because Enspells are ALWAYS calculated on a per-hand basis, and enspell damage on a weapon only applies to that weapon's enspell damage.

All FUA weapons only work for their hand.

I guess this could be better documented. As you say, there is a lot of "you just have to know that" kind of stuff in FFXI, but the wiki is already enough of a maze that I'm not sure where you would put that information or how someone would find it. If you have a suggestion, go for it.

There's just not a list of what does and does not apply to secondary attacks, so players will read the quote, and not be certain of whether it applies to offhand hits (Byrth, Dodik, and Nolano all were unclear at least from their responses). I'm not complaining about the wiki at all, btw. It's just a reading/wording thing, and the fact that SE is just never consistent with anything that sows doubt. Whenever I mention that the STP or Subtle Blow from Dynamis weapons affect offhand hits, I am usually met with someone who says "no its main hand only" because they are reading exactly what the wiki tells them.


I think a note on the full Dynamis-D weapons page that states something like "Store TP and Subtle Blow II augments are universal; they apply to every action, not just attacks performed by the main hand" might be helpful, but I agree it's already a maze of information to dissect, especially on that specific page. It might get lost in there

They're just misreading the wiki.


This says that the augments are only active WHEN THE WEAPON IS IN YOUR MAIN HAND. It says absolutely nothing about which hand the augment applies to, at all.

Again, I'm sure it's possible that the nuance of certain augments that do/don't apply, like Crocea/FUA, could be made more clear on certain pages, but this page and others are extremely clear and any interpretation of "this augment only applies to this hand" is just misreading these words.

Theyre going to be stupid no matter what it says. It can't be fixed.

But it's not about number of hits to WS, I'm talking about the number of seconds to hit the mob enough times to give IT enough TP to use a move. Like, let's suppose you're in a fight where you are relying on a single SMN using Mewing on cooldown, and their BP recast is 21 seconds:

(a) Twashtar hits how many times in that span, and feeds how much TP to the mob, versus
(b) Gandring B hits how many times in that span, and feeds how much TP to the mob. (yes it feeds less per hit, but you need to take that amount x number of hits to know how much TP you've given the mob)

Or are you saying that best practice should be to only get enough TP to do an appropriate WS, then turn and stop feeding all TP until next Mewing? And if that's so... do you really need a B path Su5 and SB+75 to do that? (i.e., why not just do the same thing with a different, stronger weapon - as long as you getting TP doesn't give the mob enough TP to use its BS move that is the reason you're concerned about Subtle Blow in the first place)


How is an extra 5-10 Subtle Blow from a Su5 weapon HALVING the TP fed to a mob? Most jobs you'd think about using a SB build would be able to put together a SB+65 or SB+70 set without needing a Su5 weapon, so the comparison is that set versus a SB+75 set using Su5.

Should be testable in ballista. Single wield both weapons and hand time how long it takes for each weapon to grant the other person 3000 tp. Just throw barrier/wilt bubbles up and have a Max defense rune or paladin take all the hits. You'd be able to clearly tell which one's giving the target more TP over time

That's true, but are you prepared to take this all the way to the logical conclusion? Removing all forms of MA because they give too much TP? In theory you should use nothing but STP (because it feeds no extra TP to the mob) and have as-close-to-0 multi-attack as possible. Having delay reduction is increasing TP feed, are we going to use gear with +slow on it to reduce TP feed?

IDK, maybe sometimes you want to avoid hitting the enemy too much, but I think in most cases you're talking about the amount of TP you feed a mob for each N damage you did to it.

I mean, yeah, there's SOME consideration of removing MA for that very reason. When I'm doing a SB fight on MNK, where possible I usually do opt for like, Malignance over Mpaca or Kendatsuba that have TA. Or using Bhikku body that doesn't have multi. Same for THF, I'd tend to opt for gear with stats like STP or Crit rate/dmg (Malignance, Gleti, etc.) over gear with a bunch of Triple Attack.

There's obviously some balance here. Maybe you need to use one of those Kendatsuba pieces with TA to get the needed Subtle Blow, so OK consider that in your analysis. But consistency of how fast you feed the mob TP is better in a TP denial strat than the unpredictability of having a lot of MA gear.


No, I'm literally only talking about TP fed, completely independent of TP/damage dealt ratio. Only concerned about "how quickly am I making the big scary mob use its TP moves".

Situations where avoiding TP moves at all cost is the priority. Slower steadier damage is fine (provided it's enough damage to kill in tim). If I just cared about a balance of damage to TP feed, I'm probably not in a situation where I'm worried about stuff like SB+75, Su5 weapons etc - that's the more typical scenario, but we're talking stuff like, idk, Mboze. Things like SAM SB+70 set with Masamune versus SAM SB+75 set with Su5, or DRK SB+65 set with Calad versus SB+75 with Father Time B.

You just have to say "It's situational" and decide for yourself.

You want fastest and unsafe.
Less fast but safe but waste 100m.
Or Safeish but winnable.

You get maximum SB, in tp and ws, or you sacrifice damage for maintaining SB. that's the primary difference with these weapons, SB stays high in ws gear, with less dps sacrifice. It's really a wash.

Extra hits negate the SB. More ws damage negates the white damage loss. They really end up the same. just that masa sam in 70 SB is free (you already have masa) or 75 SB sam you throw away 100m on an item you use twice and store for life. The difference in actual output is null. SU5 is less dps, a waste of gil, and is no safer really. Same with the drk. or war. Or drg. Or any DD.

(maybe cor and ranger, if you want to shoot with capped SB, for... reasons)

SB has increasing marginal returns. Going from 65 to 75 SB is reducing TP feed by 28.6%. Going from 70 to 75 SB is reducing TP feed by 16.7%.

If you get an extra attack on 50% of rounds and your average round is 3.5 hits, you're gaining an extra 14.2% attacks over time. Single wielders with 70 SBII are probably not feeding less TP over time with Su5-B. Everyone else is. Jobs with only 65 SBII or less and dual wield jobs are feeding considerably less.

However, I think there is something else to be added to the conversation. If you consider attacking more often a negative that washes out the benefits, you kind of have to ask yourself why you're wearing DA or TA gear instead of a solely STP build. The real goal is to do the most damage possible while never feeding enough TP to trigger a WS. Those extra hits are still damage and TP with no extra TP fed relative to a different weapon.

In most cases, absent the gil cost, I would prefer the SU5. I can understand why you would pass on the SU5 when factoring in gil cost and frequency of use.

The thing that may or may not blow someones mind

The weapons are made to gain extra hits, the SB only exists to balance out the tp given from those extra hits. They don't exist AS subtle blow weapons.

I don't think it matters why SE made them; you'd be the first person to say they don't understand their own game.

If you take a job like DNC or THF with only 5 SBII, the augment is increasing the number of hits until mob gets TP by 80%. For COR, with no SBII, it's a straight 100%. The extra attacks aren't providing anywhere near that much additional TP feed, so they still work as subtle blow weapons.

The thing is we don't use those jobs as/in subtle blow/tp denial strats anyway.

It's mnk and sam, drk and war in the case of mboze. dnc got the special treatment for aminon, where the SB is minimal.

You're never going to see someone worrying the thf is feeding too much TP, cause this isn't 2006. (cor/rng being able to shoot in capped SB I mentioned already, as that's a unique case)

SAM DRK and WAR all rely on omen body to get respectable SBII without a weapon, though. Obviously you can buy it from trove, but there is some difficulty finding something like that exactly when you want it. It's also costly.

You can grab a Su4/Su5 weapon, buy heroisms, and be capped in 5 minutes with no luck or hassle.

I don't think everyone needs these weapons (honestly, most people don't need most of the gear they pursue), but they have a place. That place probably isn't for folks who already have masamune and dagon.

Unless you're prioritizing AM3 or DS/TS white damage, your normal ranged shots won't suffer much from using subtle blow in certain spots. Making a 50 SB set is not really that difficult and is unlikely to result in a major dps loss, and at least a good portion of modern gear has higher amounts of Subtle Blow. If your objective is to trigger less TP moves over time, adding Subtle Blow is a very mild way of helping out your tank or healer. You could put a few pieces on for a boss like Arebati, which would make life a little easier for the RUN and not impact kill speed much. Just nobody ever does.

Thing is, RNG and COR can both use Subtle Blow II pieces with R30 Ikenga's Hat (5), Gleti's Knife (10), and Sherida Earring (RNG only, 5). RNG would hardly make an xbow for SBII so that's irrelevant, but a lot of minmax CORs have one anyways for the OAT, so it's just a bonus. I suppose you could shoot in it over STP+25 to make life a little easier for the tank, again, just nobody ever does.