Offhand for almace

[Demonofhunger]

On the contrary, /WAR is the best melee sub that BLU can use in any situation that it would be meleeing aside from solo.

What situation would you use /WAR for?

I do a lot of lowmanning, tanking, and soloing, and in those situations I can't see /WAR being useful since it lacks damage mitigation. Honestly, I can't think of a single situation where /WAR would be the best choice.

Are people making these evaluations based on some theoretical fight where /WAR would be useful to max out melee strikes and the enemy never hits you or uses TP moves? I could see that happening in merit Abyssea parties, but who really cares about maxxing melee there since mobs last a few seconds each? You could increase kill speed better by simply BLU-burning.

It's these kinds of issues that make me really want to see the original calculations. I'm only asking that someone post a link.

[saevel]

What situation would you use /WAR for?

I do a lot of lowmanning, tanking, and soloing, and in those situations I can't see /WAR being useful since it lacks damage mitigation. Honestly, I can't think of a single situation where /WAR would be the best choice.

Are people making these evaluations based on some theoretical fight where /WAR would be useful to max out melee strikes and the enemy never hits you or uses TP moves? I could see that happening in merit Abyssea parties, but who really cares about maxxing melee there since mobs last a few seconds each? You could increase kill speed better by simply BLU-burning.

It's these kinds of issues that make me really want to see the original calculations. I'm only asking that someone post a link.

BLU/WAR is used when you need maximum melee offense. Almace/STR Shamshir with DWIII set and as many JT's as you can fit along with A.Spikes and Q.strike (self SC properties). Use occulation for damage mitigation and ride zerg while spamming CDC as much as possible. It's not a sub for solo / small group scenarios.

[Nightfyre]

What situation would you use /WAR for?

I do a lot of lowmanning, tanking, and soloing, and in those situations I can't see /WAR being useful since it lacks damage mitigation. Honestly, I can't think of a single situation where /WAR would be the best choice.

Given the lack of any useful clarifying information from the OP, the assumption is that damage output is the primary focus and you build accordingly when making comparisons. If you want data for a specific situation, you have to provide specific input.

For your specific case, I can actually construct further arguments against the use of an OA4 weapon given the increase in TP feed and inefficient damage/hit. You have to weigh the TP gain of an OA4 offhand (which is solely useful for increased Sanguine Blade spam, at which point the use of mainhand Almace is called into question... I'm sure you can see where I'm going here) against a defensive option (pdt/eva swords, Genbu's Shield) or even simply killing faster with a superior offhand.

As for /WAR, I use it pretty much any time where damage taken either isn't a concern or can't be sufficiently mitigated by subjob abilities to justify the loss of output. This actually includes a fair amount of Voidwatch NMs, among other content. It's not necessary for the purpose of my comparison though and I did the comparisons both as /NIN and /WAR. Also, even as /NIN you'll find that BLU does in fact have a high base multiattack rate. My melee-focused set has 6% triple attack and 16% DA and is actually missing 3% DA (Portus Collar, though it's not exactly clear-cut vs Rancor). Combined with even our 7% base trait, that's 1.3362 attacks generated per hand per round using Almace/STR. By comparison, an augmented Armadaberk WAR using AF3 neck/earring, Brutal, Atheling, and AF3+2 legs has 31% DA for 1.31 attacks per round. If /WAR with Triple attack set, my hits/round actually exceeds that of a MNK/WAR. I'll grant that the set I'm using on BLU is pretty high-end (I have Toci's Harness and Ocelomeh Headpiece +1), but even replacing Ocelomeh+1/Toci's with Mavi+2/Mavi+2 you exceed 1.25 hits as /NIN with DA set.

I'll do some fresh comparisons for 99 later, holidays etc.