Cloudsplitter

Anyone that has access to this weapon skill can tell you that it is very weak. Its hard for me to believe that this Ws was intended to be this underwhelming. Its not very befitting of an empyrean weapon. I think there may be something wrong with it.

It may be a calculating error, but you have to also remember one thing. Just because it's a WS off of a new endgame weapon, doesn't elate automaticaly to high damage.

its just my opinion and concern. I just think the reward is worth the effort(unlike with ALL the other empyrean weapons) and there could be something wrong with it.

Cloudsplitter is a magic WS and you're wondering why it sucks?

hellfire doesn't suck

most likely due to not exploiting the mods on it. I used to think Cataclysm was kinda meh until an LS mate turned me onto the affinity bonus it gets from my Pluto's staff. It seemed to get a little punch too from Neptune, but not as much. I started tweaking it out a little and before I knew it my BLM was landing almost 2k each on mandies in our cleave run.

STR/MND mods kinda stinks for WAR/BST. While the STR is a no brainer--if your MND is underpowered it could be holding it back a bit. IDK if it would get any help from a moldy earring, but could be worth a try too I guess (if you have one).

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Originally Posted by RAIST

STR/MND mods kinda stinks for WAR/BST. While the STR is a no brainer--if your MND is underpowered it could be holding it back a bit. IDK if it would get any help from a moldy earring, but could be worth a try too I guess (if you have one).

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1 MAB = +1% damage on magic WS.

STR and MND are equal on cloudsplitter because it's a magic WS. It's unaffected by physical damage calculations.

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Originally Posted by Areola

hellfire doesn't suck

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Wildfire also has a 5.5 damage multiplier, you can use a Vulcan's Staff with it and COR can use Wizard's Roll and sub BLM for a whole lot of Magic Attack Bonus.

Trueflights the same way, most of the time I can only do decent numbers with it on a mob if its weak to magic or resistant to physical damage and its even more compouned that its only modifier is AGI.

What sort of numbers are you putting up exactly, and against what target/zone?

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Originally Posted by Zaknafein

What sort of numbers are you putting up exactly, and against what target/zone?

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i was testing it out on the tabar beaks out in sauromugue champaign. The highest ws i could get was 1100 at 300% tp
Str at 79 +43(122) Mnd at 68 +42(110) Mab at 11% moldy and hecate's earring. at 100% TP cloudsplitter was averaging 750where primal red averaged 850 Chr at 81 +15(96) same Mab. i did both ws on the same mob so I'd know there was no lv difference tping on other mobs in the area. i don't know how to do exact extensive testing. so i'm probably doing it wrong by most peoples standards. If anyone else can test it correctly please let me know what I'm doing wrong and let me know your results

reminds me...I gotta get back to making my @#$@#$ sea gorgets one of these days....

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Originally Posted by Swords

Trueflights the same way, most of the time I can only do decent numbers with it on a mob if its weak to magic or resistant to physical damage and its even more compouned that its only modifier is AGI.

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It's also affected by INT Magic Attack Bonus and Light Affinity.

Almost all of the Epic Wildfire numbers i see are using Epic Atmas to enhance it. Atma of the Lion(? I think thats Fire:Major), etc. Ultimate, etc. Which produces great numbers. However I dunno if it hurts their DPS as much as it would hurt a BSTs or WARs, cause of the relatively small damage from their TP phase and large in WS phase.

If you geared your Atmas towards pure MAB, You'd likely get higher numbers, But your TP-Phase would suffer greatly, Which is the flaw with magical weaponskills (In Abyssea anyway, Not outside as there is no Atma outside). Cloudsplitter is basically "Primal Rend +1".

If you ever get a Farsha, Inside Abyssea you're likely better off knowing the WS damage is going to be crap, and gearing toward your normal DD ways (RR/VV/GH/Apoc/Etc), and using Cloudsplitter to activate Aftermath, and continue using Rampage.

Though, I'm wiling to humor the Idea it might be a glitch, But something tells me its not :(

Clouds aren't very hard.


MYSTERY. SOLVED.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

reminds me...I gotta get back to making my @#$@#$ sea gorgets one of these days....

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In the context of what we are discussing here, Sea Gorgets are a poor gear choice.

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Atma of the Lion(? I think thats Fire:Major)

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Lion is lightning, Smoldering sky is fire.

Back on topic, it does kind of suck that the Axe WS is so poor. People are right though, it can be boosted substantially with Atmas, Meds and /Rdm (why do people use and talk about /blm when /rdm gets the same MAB boost by the way?). Realistically, there are probably situations where Cloudsplitter is the right choice, depending on what you're fighting. We're just not in a position to regularly boost up our MAB to take full advantage of it like COR for example.

Also, for the sake of it. Here's a pretty complete build for CloudSplitter:
Ugly Pendant
Twilight Mail
Twilight Helm
Flame Sachet
Suzaku's Sune-ate
Fortis Mantle
Aqua Ring
Aqua Ring
Novio Earring
Hecate's Earring
Heafoc Mitts
Teutates subligar

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

Though, I'm wiling to humor the Idea it might be a glitch, But something tells me its not :(

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I'd be lying if i said that it isn't wishful thinking. But finding out i wasted all that time on a ws that's worthless without a brew kinds hurts my FFXI pride. Even though its most likely not a glitch i would happily welcome any adjustments that would make this ws useful. At this point i wish i would have made the bow, or even the culb <_<.

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I'd be lying if i said that it isn't wishful thinking. But finding out i wasted all that time on a ws that's worthless without a brew kinds hurts my FFXI pride.

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I was well aware that it wasn't going to be the greatest WS before I started making the Empy. I'm surprised other people haven't done this kind of research. Waste of time though? What is this game if not a massive waste of time? The thing is, it's still one of the best DD axes in the game at the moment and BST has an exceptional WS for Abyssea already in Rampage.

Having said all that, it would be nice if the fTP on Cloudsplitter could be boosted at least:D

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Originally Posted by blowfin

(why do people use and talk about /blm when /rdm gets the same MAB boost by the way?)

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Because Wizard's Roll gets a bonus from BLM or /BLM being in your party.

IF there where any forums or sits that said anything about Cloudsplitter being < or = primal rend i would have made the bow and then got a charmers merlin. or maybe i didn't look in the right place for that info. Inside or outside of abyssea cloud will never compare to rampage.

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Originally Posted by Areola

IF there where any forums or sits that said anything about Cloudsplitter being < or = primal rend i would have made the bow and then got a charmers merlin. or maybe i didn't look in the right place for that info. Inside or outside of abyssea cloud will never compare to rampage.

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Yeah I hear ya there wasn't much info on it. I'm currently making farsha. While it not having huge #'s is sorta crappy I am still gonna finish it. Considering it's the best option for my Bst. Not interested in putting the time/effort and huge amount of gil into a mythic.

Out of curiosity do you have the corresponding lightning gorget/belt? Also what are you using as your off hand weapon? I'm doing the empy, and occ attk 2-4 axe. Spose worst case scenario I can use cloudsplitter to have aftermath active then spam rampage/primal rend till aftermath needs to be reapplied.

A LS mate did his Farsha and was very upset that he wasn't breaking out huge numbers after seeing other 1 hand empyreans doing 4-5k consistantly, and as for wildfire a rng mate in ls did it and set up mab gear and atma and was doing 4k while a cor in ls was doing 7-8k+ no brews used.

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Originally Posted by Zaknafein

Out of curiosity do you have the corresponding lightning gorget/belt? Also what are you using as your off hand weapon? I'm doing the empy, and occ attk 2-4 axe. Spose worst case scenario I can use cloudsplitter to have aftermath active then spam rampage/primal rend till aftermath needs to be reapplied.

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I normally offhand the occ att 2-4 axe but sometimes i use the TP bonus axe. I'd use a ugly pendant for a neck piece and i haven't tried a lightning belt. when you have 100%-199% TP you get lv 1 aftermath and lv 1 only last for about 30 seconds. Unless your getting haste and or march the aftermath will wear off before your next WS. Also TP bonus doesn't affect the aftermath lv, at least not form my axe haven't tried any atmas yet.

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Originally Posted by Areola

I normally offhand the occ att 2-4 axe but sometimes i use the TP bonus axe. I'd use a ugly pendant for a neck piece and i haven't tried a lightning belt. when you have 100%-199% TP you get lv 1 aftermath and lv 1 only last for about 30 seconds. Unless your getting haste and or march the aftermath will wear off before your next WS. Also TP bonus doesn't affect the aftermath lv, at least not form my axe haven't tried any atmas yet.

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TP Bonus Axe doesn't work in Offhand does it?

Or is it different from all the other trial weapons and Martial Weapons :X?

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Because Wizard's Roll gets a bonus from BLM or /BLM being in your party.

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Really? I have 90 COR and have never heard of sub jobs working for the job specific bonuses. Nor does wiki mention anything about this.

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IF there where any forums or sits that said anything about Cloudsplitter being < or = primal rend i would have made the bow and then got a charmers merlin. or maybe i didn't look in the right place for that info. Inside or outside of abyssea cloud will never compare to rampage.

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BG forums are a very good source of information whenever updates and new content get released. I'd suggest you lurk there a bit. Also, you could have posted a question on forums (either Zam or BG or FFXIAH) and i'm sure you would have got the same answer you're realizing now. Also, depending on when you started the Axe, chances are information for the WS might have been on wiki. Side by side the crit. based WS of the bow obviously has way more potential than the magic WS of the Axe. Before we even think about fTP multipliers and how Cloudsplitter starts with a lower value than Primal Rend.

I guess that's where i messed up i didn't go to BG. Whenever i found something on Zam or FFXIAH all i got where war's saying "IT SUCKS MAKE A UKON" or bst saying its primal rend +1(leading me to believe it would be better that primal rend) nothing about the damage or lack there of. I also new that the bow has a much more powerful ws but i spend the majority of time on my bst when i'm not with my ls so i chose the axe.

Gotcha, it's still a fantastic axe and an achievement to be proud of. At the very worst you've probably decked out a bunch of people in +2 feet ^^

Also, with the aftermath it looks like it's clearly better than Primal Rend. Even one proc on Aftermath is enough to make it a better option by the looks of it.

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Because Wizard's Roll gets a bonus from ... /BLM being in your party.

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This has been tested and proven to be false. Subbing BLM is just plain silly if you have the option of /RDM available.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...with-subjob-!?

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Originally Posted by Wheels

A LS mate did his Farsha and was very upset that he wasn't breaking out huge numbers after seeing other 1 hand empyreans doing 4-5k consistantly, and as for wildfire a rng mate in ls did it and set up mab gear and atma and was doing 4k while a cor in ls was doing 7-8k+ no brews used.

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What atmas was the RNG using vs the COR?

Cor gets a 10-20% damage boost from there af3 feet if they use fireshot then wildfire

Cloudsplitter is a lightening elemental attack WS. Its pretty good for an ele WS, don't know why people are expecting it to compare to other crit hit WS. The reason your seeing all these crazy wildfire numbers is that the COR's are stacking it with +Fire / MAB atma's while your using RR / Apoc types. You want to do crazy damage on cloud splitter your going to need,

Atma of the Lion
Thunder Damage +40%
Triple Attack +10%
Physical Damage Taken -10%

Atma of the Blinding Horn
Thunder Damage +30%
Magic Damage Taken -10%
Conserve MP: Minor (useless on the jobs involved)

Atma of the Ultimate
Magic Attack Bonus +50
Magic Accuracy +50
MP -25% (useless on the jobs involved)

As for the stat to use more testing needs to be done on how this WS's fINT works. INT isn't always used for fINT, Wildfire use's AGI (P_AGI - E_INT) instead, along with a few other WS's. This could use STR or MND for fINT along with being one of the WSC's. MAB is also something to look at, pack it on whenever possible but please remember that 1 MAB does NOT equal 1% extra damage, this is a myth. The amount of additional damage is based on how much MAB you already have.

You have 24 MAB (from /RDM or /BLM) and you put on the 5% earring.
1.29/1.24 = 1.0403, or +4% damage not 5.

If your already at 74 (from atma + MAB II) then its,
1.79/1.74 = 1.0287 or +2.87% additional damage.

And while brewing you should be dealing retarded damage, technically thunder has more +DMG then fire. Fire can get +60 from two atma's, thunder gets +70 and the accuracy to go with it. Only their +2 feet and tendency to sub RDM lets them deal that kind of damage. As a WAR (or BST) your also dealing melee damage, so while your ZOMFG numbers may be less your still crushing them in total damage.

Here is what annoys me about Cloudsplitter.

Most of the weapon skills for Empyrean DD weapons seem to be fairly good. It seems slightly ridiculous that Axe has an elemental weapon skill when Hand-to-Hand, Dagger, Sword, Great Sword, Great Axe, Scythe, Polearm, Katana, Great Katana, and Archery all have have physical weapon skills. I honestly do not understand the logic of giving an elemental weapon skill to BSTs and dual-wielding WARs. At least CORs will have a MAB set for Quick Draw, how many full-time DDs will have a MAB set?

Seriously, I want to know what Square was thinking by making a heavy DD weapon have an elemental weapon skill. And I know better to ever expect an answer.

I did some gorilla style testing on the gneiss leeches in Konschtat-A.

At 100% Tp with out MAB and and only the +40 i get form cruor buffs cloudsplitter does about 700 damage and at 300% it does about 1000 damage. Notice i said "about" and i'm going to say it a lot. I'm rounding UP to make the math easier. ~I'm lazy

So lets say your not normal and save up 300%tp every time you ws if you use ultimate, lion, and blinding horn that's a total of 120% that brings you to about 2200 damage. now lets add a novio +7 hecate's +6 and an ugly pendant +8 for 21 more MAB brings the ws to 2410. Now lets add /blm or /rdm for 24 MAB for 2650 damage. remember these numbers are at 300% TP. 100% TP would be about 1225 damage. based on what saevel said about MAB the damage would be less, but i'm not even going to pretend like i know how to calculate MAB perfectly :P

With this setup you sacrifice all your dd atmas on war and only gain 10% triple attack. The crit rate from using RR or GH alone would trump this in WS and melee damage. For bst you sacrifice dd atmas or pet tanking/dd atmas, if your pet is worthless you might as well be on war.

Basically out of all my QQ ing what I'm getting at is this ws isn't well designed for the jobs its given to as an empyrean WS and i don't see the purpose for its existence(unless war QQ'ed a lot about not having primal rend), and please don't say its great for brewing that's obvious, but I shouldn't have to spend 200K cruor to not regret making this weapon.

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Originally Posted by Areola

i don't see the purpose for its existence(unless war QQ'ed a lot about not having primal rend)

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Unless procing blue, I don't think that most one-handed axe Warriors even acknowledge the existence of weapon skills that don't start with "R" and end with "ampage".

yeah, I would have preferred to have a good strong AoE WS. Magical or physical either way.. .physical probably better...
but it would not have to trump rampage... just hit everything in a little sphere. ^.^

Hasn't BST had enough of crappy magic WS? First they got Primal Rend, then Bora Axe and now Cloudsplitter. All are crap.

FYI bora isnt magical, just crappy, like mistral axe + bind.

Even bora axe hits harder than cloudspiltter QQ

300tp I've done around 3300 odd damage with cloudsplitter (Lion, Blinding horn, Ultimate) lol :/

(100tp 1.2-1.9k)

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Basically out of all my QQ ing what I'm getting at is this ws isn't well designed for the jobs its given to as an empyrean WS and i don't see the purpose for its existence(unless war QQ'ed a lot about not having primal rend), and please don't say its great for brewing that's obvious, but I shouldn't have to spend 200K cruor to not regret making this weapon.

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Completely agree that its out of place for BST and WAR. You can set it to do pretty good ele damage for amber light farming, and its a monster during a brew, but otherwise its only good vs monsters who are physically resistant (eles and slimes). Axe doesn't have any elemental WS's assigned to it (other then Primal Rend), that is the only reason I can think that SE would create this.

I literally had this same discussion with an LS mate after finishing their Farsha last night.

I will say the same thing here that I said to her: Farsha is still the best option for BST, and while your WS damage will never come close to any of the higher tier Empyreans unless you specifically gear for it with Atmas, the Aftermath effect is going to make you come out far better in the long run.

Someone mentioned it on an earlier page - use Cloudsplitter as a means to proc your Aftermath and follow up with Rampage. Best of both worlds. I will agree that it's odd they gave BST another elemental WS rather than a physical one, though.

However, if you're going to be short sighted enough to say it's a bad weapon for the WS alone, I don't know what to say to you. I can understand this argument should you have wasted your time on the WoE version, but the Empyrean by no means is a waste of time.