Thank you for Stardiver!

[Ophannus]

This would seem to indicate the str polearm is a pretty clear winner over OAT, by about 4%. If you think these results don't reflect reality, please review the spreadsheet and tell me where it is flawed and what could be done better.

How is STR polearm beating OAT with a 5 hit? OAT with 5hit lets you WS almost 40-60% more often than a STR polearm.

[Motenten]

How is STR polearm beating OAT with a 5 hit? OAT with 5hit lets you WS almost 40-60% more often than a STR polearm.

(comparing outside Abyssea)

Tweaked for OAT: Switched from Bullwhip to Goading (did same for str polearm for parity), switch from Pole Grip to Rose, for general 5-hit build, just to be sure (it boosted the OAT build slightly).

Excluding the 0.5 over-TP rounds:

OAT nominal average rounds to 100 TP: 3.01
OAT average rounds to 100 TP with 32% Conserve TP: 2.98

Str nominal average rounds to 100 TP: 4.54
Str average rounds to 100 TP with 32% Conserve TP: 4.34

32% Conserve TP is from trait + elemental belt.

As you can see, Conserve TP has almost no effect on the OAT build (since you'd need a full 20 TP proc to reduce the hits any), but a fairly noticeable one on the Str polearm build. Str polearm is a 6-hit, but on the high end of the range (17-18 TP per hit), so many of the CTP procs drop it to a 5-hit build.

Without accounting for Conserve TP, the Str polearm drops a couple points of DPS.

OAT has a higher delay, which somewhat offsets it's lower rounds per weaponskill. Overall weaponskill cycle time is 1095 delay for OAT, compared to 1400 for str polearm. So OAT weaponskills 28% more often than Str polearm.

Average weaponskill damage for OAT is 1202; for Str polearm it's 1436. So Str polearm weaponskill damage is 20% higher than OAT.

Jump damage is mildly in favor of OAT, being about 2.5% ahead of str polearm.

Melee (white) damage per cycle is nearly identical on a per-round basis (Str polearm 1% ahead), however Str polearm has 46% more melee rounds per weaponskill cycle, and overall 47% more melee damage per weaponskill cycle.


Overall net effect is 2268 dmg per 1095 delay for OAT (124 DPS) vs 2841 dmg per 1400 delay for Str polearm (122 DPS). The gear tweak above (Goading+Rose for proper 5-hit on OAT, loss of 2% haste for Str) gave a slight edge to OAT this time around. Putting the Bullwhip back on the Str polearm build puts them back at nearly identical to each other.

Note that if you can reduce the average number of over-TP rounds, it favors the OAT build more than the Str build, and the OAT starts to pull slightly ahead. With 0 wasted TP rounds, OAT is at 132 to Str polearm's 130. However the converse is also true: the more over-TP rounds you average, the more the OAT falls behind the Str polearm.

[Ophannus]

Putting the Bullwhip back on the Str polearm build puts them back at nearly identical to each other.

That's silly because I have 26% haste and a 5hit on my OAT build.

[Ophannus]

So basically I should throw out my Corsesca and disregard by 5hit build and start getting Flame Geodes? ;_;

[Motenten]

That's silly because I have 26% haste and a 5hit on my OAT build.

If you use Zelus Tiara instead of Lancer +2 head in conjunction with Goading Belt, that's another slight improvement for the OAT build. Doing the same thing for str polearm makes it worse, though.

And no, you don't have to throw out the Corsesca and start on the str polearm, which should be obvious if you were paying attention. The assertion I'm making is that their damage potentials are very nearly identical, rather than the false claim that the OAT was far superior to the str and store tp weapons.

[Ophannus]

Go go extra elemental breaths from increased ws rate?

[Ophannus]

Meh, the WS is still kinda meh on VWNMs. Was doing 300-1300 Drakesbanes and 300-1200 Stardivers on Akvan last night with Red Curry, WAR was easily doing 2-5k Ukko's Furies, Blade Hi was doing 1200-2400, VS was doing 2200-3500, Shoha was doing 700-2k. Could have also been that I didn't have Stalwarts(Never got the KI for that Pariapht) but I was using Red Curry Bun with Augmented Angon with +2 hands.

[Transmit]

I have no clue how you're hitting that low with Stardiver. Granted I've not done Akvan yet, but on both Pil and Kaggen my WS's were never lower than 700~ and usually averaging 1400-1600~ I dont recall Akvan having anymore defense than the other two Jeuno boss's. Though I do abuse Stalwarts, and 5 minutes of quite a serious attack buff is noticable.

[Meldity]

I'm more irritated by the fact war/sam's can also use it. In fact today I was actually a little enraged in a pick up group for VW when a warrior said he was going to use stardiver for me and said I should drakesbane. Little did he know drakesbane isn't even worth it anymore with its stupid 20% attack penalty. I know we get to TP way more than war's but it still pisses me off since we don't even get a WS unique to our job that's worth using.

Protip: it's impossible to have a better drakesbane unless you have razed ruins atma. if stardiver doesn't do more damage chances are you're doing it totally wrong.

[Transmit]

Just did a few Pil's, heres the parse of my Stardivers from the first fight.

771: 1
778: 1
790: 1
890: 1
982: 1
1010: 1
1026: 1
1028: 1
1035: 1
1065: 1
^ 1080: 1
1121: 1
1154: 1
1173: 1
1185: 1
1238: 1
+ 1268: 2
1326: 1
1355: 1
1394: 1
1468: 1
1494: 1
1495: 1
1585: 1
1751: 1
1780: 1
2054: 1

Same gear used as the page before. Stalwarts + Yellow curry buns. Also Im still using Vougiers, so it's far from the best set up. Stalwarts is +20% attack for 5 minutes (went from 740ish to 922 attack with it up)

Out of 4 fights -

- Stardiver 66052 0 66052 93.85 % 57/0 100.00 % 0/2192 1158.81

57 Stardivers. 1158 average, a few of them without buffs / thrown directly into his shield (see 0 low...), and a high of 2192.

For comparison the only other noteworthy DD in my party was a SAM who switched between Fudo and Shoha...

- Tachi: Shoha 32661 0 32661 100.00 % 27/1 96.43 % 361/2610 1209.67

1209 average, low of 361, high of 2610.