Still no decent elemental WS for RDM that uses MAB?

[saevel]

Conditionally, I hope Requiescat will out damage CDC. Not under normal conditions, but under the condition that you are fighting something with extreme physical defense.

I agree RDM does fine with Double attack, but Crit is not so easy to come by for consistency, outside of aby. There are only a small handful of items that a RDM can acquire.

CDC could be beaten by a well designed Elemental WS. At least on RDM. BLU and PLD, probably not. They don't have the same access to MAB as RDM.

Maybe you don't understand, Req isn't a magic based WS. It's five +1 (/NIN) hits, 100% MND -20% attack and use's the regular physical WS formula. Mdiff and fINT have no effect on it at all, neither does M.acc or magic damage bonus (staff / atma). It's a physical WS period. It's only redeeming value is that it's damage subtype is unspecified similar to SWI / Atonement instead of slashing like the rest of the physical sword WS or piercing like physical dagger WS. So if the monster had 25% slashing resistance then that would be ignored for Req.

High defense on the other hand would crush Req damage even more then normal. That -20% penalty would become glaringly apparent. At 650 attack you would be WSing as though you had 520 attack. If the monster was the same level as you and had 400 defense you would go from 650/400 = 1.62 ratio to 520/400 = 1.3 ratio or at (1.62/1.3) = 1.246, 24.6% damage hit. If the monster is four levels above you then it becomes (1.62 - 0.2 = 1.42) vs (1.3 - 0.2 = 1.1) for (1.42/1.1 = 1.29) a 29% damage hit. And this isn't even talking the damage bonus that CDC gets with critical hits.

Now lets talk about crits, RDM doesn't have +crit damage but we're no slouch's. 5% crit from merits, 6% from neck piece and +15% from WS @100TP means 26% before dDEX. Wonderful thing about CDC is that since it's 60% DEX WSC you want to pile on DEX which happens to raise both your accuracy and base crit rate. So anywhere from 10~20% at dDEX=(40~50). So now we're talking 36~46% crit rate during a four hit WS (/NIN) that we can turn into a five hit on DA proc. So while we won't be busting out Ukon WAR damage, we won't be hitting for 600 either. The sheer amount of DEX/Acc we get means you'll be eating meat on most things, or pizza at worst.

So yeah, CDC > all right now. Req => DB depending. Req's 6 hit vs DB's 4 hit with WSC being about even between then (100% MND vs 30% STR 50% MND) but Req getting that atrocious attack penalty and db having a slightly higher fTP on first hit.