
Originally Posted by
Demonofhunger
I don't mean to be impolite, but that seems to be a circular bit of theory.
If you care about TP feed for any reason, then you shouldn't be meleeing at all (or should be using a sub with Subtle Blow if you can afford some TP feed and you want to minimize it).
If you don't care about TP feed, then any actual total damage lost by offhanding an OA2-4 comes from slightly slower melee strikes that do a slightly smaller amount of total damage. (Only a quarter of DA and TA on melee strikes is wasted because DA and TA still work fine on WS, so the actual amounts of lost damage from melee strikes is very small.)
In exchange, you get a huge amount of OA2, OA3, and OA4 on that weapon and a huge amount of TP and the ability to WS substantially more often (and it leads to the further question of whether a TP gearset might be more favorable overall).
The only relevant question is whether the small amount of melee strikes damage lost by using an OA2-4 in the offhand is offset by the extra damage from WSs and ODD from an Almace. Any other theoretical discussions are a distraction at best and misleading at worst.
I mean, saying that you get more hits/round than a MNK/WAR says nothing about Total Damage Over Time, and at the end of the day the total amount of damage is the only important number. An Almace sword makes this an interesting question because Chant Du Cygne can often do good to decent damage on NMs that we can only slightly damage with a normal melee strike or BLU spell, so maxxing out uses of CdC also maxxes out Total Damage.
I think the thing I find most fascinating about this argument is that people are making snap decisions after looking at just a few stats divorced from all the other considerations that go into increasing total damage, including other directly relevant stats.