Polearm Decision Woes

Hi, I typed out a huge post about the DA9% lance but then my session timed out and I lost it! Awesome lol.

Basically it boils down to this. With STP+41, Haste +26 and DA 27% when subbed WAR (All gear currently available. I listed this but lost when session timed out) How well will this lance perform?

The STR Lance had shown surprising results and I have the feeling we have also dismissed the DA9% Lance in the same way. I don't know and understand the games formulas well enough to calculate it all out on my own though. Obviously we have a higher base DMG on all hits and what looks to me is a guaranteed DA on all WS's and an approximately 41% DA on Jumps when you swap out some choice STP and Haste pieces for more DA.

Any thoughts?

your talking about 17% DA in gear+10% /war. Is that 17% DA coming from gear and you want to add another 9% from lance, or is 9 of that 17 the lance your talking about? If your stacking 17% before the lance then the build is probably terrible. List the gear your talking about using.

The gear I was theoretically using as ideal is posted below. I made an error adding up the STP and counted Rose Strap twice when I added it up in my original post. The DA9% lance is included in the DA Numbers I used from gear so total out the door DA would be 27 with DA9 Lance, Gear, and /WAR. These numbers do not take into account any other bonus from sub-jobs other than the Warriors natural double attack trait. I will leave that up to the pros if they feel like taking those numbers into consideration. I'm not looking for 100% pin-point answer as most things are situational now. Just a ball park on how the lance will perform.

So many people repeat what they hear as what they know with out looking at other possibilities. It strikes me odd that the trial for this lance requires more work and yet it's worse than the other options. I know people will say "It's SE" and to that I say yes you are probably right haha. But like I said, I just want to make sure we aren't dismissing anything with out taking a good look at it first.

Main - DA9% Lance
Sub - Rose Strap
Ranged - NA
Ammo - Hagneia Stone
Head - Lancer's Mezail +2
Neck - Houyi's Gorget
Ear1 - Brutal Earring
Ear2 - Aesir Ear Pendant
Body - Lancer's Plackart +2
Hands - Brego Gloves
Ring1 - Raja's Ring
Ring2 - Portus Ring
Back - Atheling Mantle
Waist - Goading Belt
Legs - Phorcys Dirs
Feet - Lancer's Schynbalds +2

This set grants the following stats:

STR - 24
DEX - 29
VIT - 25
ATT - 100
ACC -41
Polearm Skill - 12
Store TP - 37
Haste - 26
Double Attack - 17 with an additional 10% off of the War Sub-Job for a total of 27% Double Attack.

I did not take into account with those numbers how STR, DEX and Pole Arm skill feed into ACC and ATT. Those are raw numbers off of the gear.

Thank You for taking a look at my request! ^^

Personally, Mal, I would consider swapping the Rose Strap with a Pole Grip (+2 DA), and the Portus Ring with a Tyrant's Ring (of course if you're doing Campaign, definitely stick with the Rose Strap). You ultimately keep the same amount of Store TP, add a couple points of Double Attack, and while you lose some Accuracy from not having the +5 Polearm skill, if you're at 99 it should be a negligible loss. The other loss being the -4 AGI from the ring, but you're not a Dragoon to be agile anyway.

Beyond the main gear you are showing there, consider as well macro'd in gear for when you weapon skill. In my case, I have a pair of Calmecac Trousers, some Jingang Greaves, and Lancer's Vambrace's +2 I toss on for Stardiver, adding in an extra +10 DA (that is including the Pole Grip).

So +10 from all those pieces, plus Brutal (+5), plus Atheling (+3), being +18% DA ... tack on the spear for 27% DA (37% in the event of a /WAR sub). This is just my personal opinion, and I don't pretend at all to know much of anything, but a 27% chance of doubling up on any of our multi-hit WS attacks sounds like good, good stuff.

Going with just a TP build gear like you show, you're still sitting at 19% DA if you try the grip/ring swap I mentioned. Obviously that is no 40-50% proc. rate like the OA2 can give you, but from anecdotal evidence with my current rollout with a Nahvalr and 12% DA from gear? I see plenty of DA proccing to keep me happy.

I'm sort of rambling, so I'll cut myself off here.

You're right about tyrants ring. That's where my missing 4 STP was hiding! I forgot about it the second time I added it up. As far as the grips I don't know what would be more important. Getting to 40 STP or having 2% more DA. Since I really don't know how to calculate this stuff I could already have more STP than needed idk lol ^^

Little bits to note:

Switching from /sam to /war, Str polearm seems to gain a fair bit more than the OAT. As /sam, OAT is the weapon to beat, but as /war, str polearm is on par or slightly ahead of OAT (and both weapons improve relative to /sam).

Caveat: This is just with what gear I have in place; I'm not doing a full gear comparison here.

Aside: Fixed the default delay for Jump/High Jump; they were still at 90/180 seconds in my spreadsheet.

I don't have the base damage on the DA polearm; none of the wikis are up to date, and FFXIAH doesn't list augments. Using 125 as a guess.

Switching from str to DA polearm increases average hits per round from 1.245 to 1.327, given 22% DA vs 31% DA, plus 2% TA and 2% QA. That's a 6.59% increase in hits per round, which should translate to about the same amount in overall damage (all else being equal). It ends up being more than that due to effects of gear changes in weaponskills and jumps. Overall gain of a Chauve-Souris going from 0% DA to 9% DA is an 8.5% increase in overall DPS.

However a Nahalvr has a higher base damage (?), and much lower delay.

Overall combination of effects puts the str Nahalvr at 2.3% ahead of the DA lance if all gear is the same. The OAT lance is 1.7% ahead of the DA lance.

Certainly tweaking can be done, and I might be wrong in my guess about the DA lance's base damage (if it was 128, it would tie with the OAT). However the initial view indicates that it's not the best option; if you're capping attack (which may be possible as /war in Voidwatch) it will beat the str polearm, but still fall behind the OAT.

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Originally Posted by Malphius

You're right about tyrants ring. That's where my missing 4 STP was hiding! I forgot about it the second time I added it up. As far as the grips I don't know what would be more important. Getting to 40 STP or having 2% more DA. Since I really don't know how to calculate this stuff I could already have more STP than needed idk lol ^^

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Don't quote me on this, as like I said I'm not as in the know as many others around here seem to be, but I am under the impression that if you're aiming for a 5-hit build, you need at least 34 Store TP. So with that in mind, if your roll-out already has +36, you're ahead of the curve when it comes to what you need on your polearm.

That's mainly why I would take the Pole Grip over the Rose Strap. You're already at capped physical haste, your STP is enough for a 5-hit, that means you have some leeway. May as well toss on some DA and hope for some added attacks/bonus damage during WSes and Jumps.

Edit: A more knowledgable friend beat me over the head with her mathematics book. You actually need 45 STP for a 5-hitter with the DA/OA2 weapons. My mistake! :( A 6-hit, however, is entirely doable (low to mid 20s required depending on delay). Of course this is all under the assumption you're starting at exactly 0% TP.

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Originally Posted by Motenten

Certainly tweaking can be done, and I might be wrong in my guess about the DA lance's base damage (if it was 128, it would tie with the OAT). However the initial view indicates that it's not the best option; if you're capping attack (which may be possible as /war in Voidwatch) it will beat the str polearm, but still fall behind the OAT.

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In that case, it's worth pointing out that the DA+9 Chauve-Souris indeed has a higher base DMG than that. It's 132 DMG, comparable to the Nahvalr's base DMG, but minus the STR/Attack boosts.

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In that case, it's worth pointing out that the DA+9 Chauve-Souris indeed has a higher base DMG than that. It's 132 DMG, comparable to the Nahvalr's base DMG, but minus the STR/Attack boosts.

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Ok, that changes things around a bit.

Vs a mob with high level correction, but not capped attack, str lance will win; as attack gets capped, DA lance wins.
Vs a mob with low or no level correction, DA lance tends to win regardless.
DA looks like it always wins vs OAT (OAT gets ~15% more attacks, but DA has ~18% higher damage per hit).