Great Sword vs Dual Wield

I've been trying to get hold of the 119 axes and swords that RUN can equip to make use of the Dual-wield trait when there's a requirement to sub NIN.

Since the update to WS, I just wondered what is the better option for RUN, since obviously sword has the higher skill, but certainly before the update, Axe had the better WS, but since the update I'm not sure anymore, since a lot of WS got a boost.

I'm thinking of going for the sword and axe from the delve 2 NMs, since they can be augmented with dex/acc to make up for axes lower skill, and since that's 12 airlixr +2, I'd like some info on it before I commit, if anyone can help with that?

So tl;dr:

When /NIN, DW or GS? If DW, Axe or Sword? (I'd assume always at least off-hand a sword for better acc).

i never went dual wield on Run so I am talking from my BLU (swords) and WAR (axes) experience

For Raw attack power i would suggest axes, they have some delicious WSs that are very good (Ruinator etc)

For Utility: Swords
Sanguine Blade can deal 3k+ dmg and heal yourself to full HP if accordingly geared (INT and MAB, Run gets some delicious MAB armor), with capped haste you can basicly self heal yourself spamming that WS
Requiescat is ok, but definitly worse then CDC now, but deals non-elemental dmg which can come in handy sometimes
Vorpal Blade could be decent for just raw physical dmg.

Darn good question.. I'm not sure if anyone has retested and updated the wiki pages with the whole revision of weaponskills yet.

Edit: I was recently told parry sould only check and animate off the main weapon, and to much action will ocasionally make the animation break/stop short. After 5 days of aby testing, having retaliation and +multi atk while facing the target (mandies) does ocasionally look like only the off hand is parrying just before a counter or attack round. That cleared up my misunderstanding of parry skill on dual weild. I just wish I knew that 3 years ago while skill ing up everything on war.

From what I'm seeing on the dev notes, most axe weapon skills are str mods. Bora Axe is a Dex only mods so a acc/dex augment on delve should should make it decent. Edit: Just discovered Bora Axe is considered a range atk like Minstral Axe.
Swords are mostly str/mnd mods with elemental (fire) ws being str/int. With Requiesat being all mnd and said to have no properties (not phys or magic) to damage.

If you are going for a sword the two best swords for Runefencer are "Anahera sword" (AAElf) and "Usonmoku". However both are a bit of an investment and Anahera has the +15 mnd that alot of sword ws use as a modifyer along with a +26 atk if sword is the main weapon. For offhand probably "Usonmoku" with dex and/or acc mods with an axe in the main hand. But I've never used axe on Rune and only rarely with swords.

I'd say buy cheap 117 RoE and test it on lower or mid iLev mobs. You can always trade the gear back to that mithra for ~1.5 bayld each laiter so its not a complete 14k spark loss.

Edit: Someone on Lakshmi did a test a couple months ago with Eminent axe (m) and Anahera Saber (o) and got 861 dps with a bunch of buffs. Dual weild Axe/Sword seems functional if geared well. This was before the recent WS and merit adjustment. You may be able to get that number higher.

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Originally Posted by Kote

A lot

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Errrm, thanks, I think!

Thanks for mentioning Onslaught and CDC, which of course, RUN can't even use.

Dual-wielding does NOT increase your chance to parry.

I'm already fully aware of how the mechanics of how the skill + on weapons works.

And the reason for off-handing a sword is 2 part:

A) Why wield a 2nd axe when a sword has lower delay and higher acc?

B) That particular sword can get 15 acc and 12 dex to help increase the acc of the axe.

Other than that I just wanted to point out that yours was the longest post I've ever seen that didn't really offer anything useful at all!

But thanks for trying :)

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Originally Posted by Babekeke

Other than that I just wanted to point out that yours was the longest post I've ever seen that didn't really offer anything useful at all!

But thanks for trying :)

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You're right. I shrunk it down, added dsome things I never new before, simplified the parry myth and found someone did a run/nin with an axe/sword parse. It might be before the WS update but it seems more practicle, if there's a way to know what the dps numbers before the update means.

Hmmm, that DPS figures is interesting, but without knowing what their DPS with the same gear, still /NIN (or /DNC if that's what they used for the test) and using a GS is, it's hard to determine which is better.

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Originally Posted by Kote

simplified the parry myth

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I don't think it's even a myth anymore, that's just not how parry functions at all.

you dont get more chances for parrying because of dual wield. . . thats not how parrying works.

as far as I remember (and please correct me Malithar if I am wrong)

first comes the Evasion check > Parry check > counter check > Guard/Shield block check?

your parrying rate is tied to your parrying skill/gear in parrying and the monster lvl you are fighting

It was always stated that 2-handed weapons had a higher chance to proc... idk if that was just another myth as well, but I skilled mine up using a Treat Staff II on THF in abyssea with a ton of mobs hitting me while I had regen atmas on and /RDM for phalanx.

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Originally Posted by Babekeke

It was always stated that 2-handed weapons had a higher chance to proc... idk if that was just another myth as well, but I skilled mine up using a Treat Staff II on THF in abyssea with a ton of mobs hitting me while I had regen atmas on and /RDM for phalanx.

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that was most likely only because all 2 handers had horrible evasion, hence you saw more parry procs then on more evasiv jobs ^^

Quite possibly, unfortunately we've kinda de-railed this thread lol. I need to do some testing of Ruinator vs Resolution. I've been playing with /SAM a bit recently as I've started trying RUN in salvage and WoE, and it seems so far that /SAM is better than /BLU since you don't really need cocoon on the older content anyway, and being able to self-SC is invaluable.

don't forget the A+ skill factor on parry either. when playing a job with a B or C or lower the parry skill up is super slow, but with rune it was leveling as fast as my GS was. Same reason I leveled Monk, it guards more often than my pup, so faster skill-ups. although rune is actually fairly evasive compared to the other jobs that swing a 6 foot butterknife. Then again, I have a lot of evasion merits too.

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

don't forget the A+ skill factor on parry either. when playing a job with a B or C or lower the parry skill up is super slow, but with rune it was leveling as fast as my GS was. Same reason I leveled Monk, it guards more often than my pup, so faster skill-ups. although rune is actually fairly evasive compared to the other jobs that swing a 6 foot butterknife. Then again, I have a lot of evasion merits too.

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The main reason that it skills faster when you have a higher cap is that your cap on each mob is higher, so the lower your skill, the higher it is from that cap, and the faster/larger your skillups. It hasn't really mattered too much how often you actually parry/evade since they changed the way defensive skillups work about 2 years ago. I skilled mine on THF back when it did matter.

Well, I finally got a hold of the delve axe, and with only 1 merit in Ruinator it seems to be ever so slightly higher damage than rampage. Definately doesn't seem to be anything special though, unfortunately.