Offhand for almace

[Tashan]

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.

You don't understand what is meant by Damage vs TP Fed.

The idea is not whether you're feeding TP to a monster or not, but how much damage you're doing whilst feeding a certain amount of TP.

When you hit an enemy with a OA Khanda you're feeding your enemy 9.9 TP per hit, whilst with a STR Shamshir it's 9.2. As a rough number lets say the OA does 50 damage per hit, and the Shamshir does 100 damage per hit. By the time you've fed your opponent 90TP, you'll have done 500 damage with the OA and 1000 with the Shamshir. Regardless of whether you're hitting your opponent faster you're still doing less damage.

That is what is meant about TP Feed vs Damage.

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You've still not stated your parameters for me to do any parsing.

[Demonofhunger]

You don't understand what is meant by Damage vs TP Fed.

The idea is not whether you're feeding TP to a monster or not, but how much damage you're doing whilst feeding a certain amount of TP.

When you hit an enemy with a OA Khanda you're feeding your enemy 9.9 TP per hit, whilst with a STR Shamshir it's 9.2. As a rough number lets say the OA does 50 damage per hit, and the Shamshir does 100 damage per hit. By the time you've fed your opponent 90TP, you'll have done 500 damage with the OA and 1000 with the Shamshir. Regardless of whether you're hitting your opponent faster you're still doing less damage.

That is what is meant about TP Feed vs Damage.

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You've still not stated your parameters for me to do any parsing.

I understand what TP feed vs. damage means, but I don't see it as a useful idea for BLUs.

I mean, if the mob you are fighting has dangerous TP moves and you are concerned about them doing those moves, then letting a BLU melee on that mob is a bad tactic regardless of the swords he is using. You don't do it.

If those TP moves are manageable, then it doesn't matter how much TP you feed the mob. Sword away as much as you want and spam multi-hit spells.

In the middle situation where you want to keep TP moves to a minimum but can afford some TP feeding, the BLU uses magic spells or single-hit physical spells and doesn't melee at all.

TP feed vs. damage is a useful concept for WARs and other dedicated meleeing guys, but not for BLUs because any meleeing at all is going to be the worse TP feed vs. damage option for our job compared to our other options.

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As for a parse, the parameters would be 99+ mobs outside of Abyssea. I'd be interested to see if more frequent ODD and CdC use compensate for the loss of melee hit damage from using an OA2-4.

Any other parameters you need?