Weaponskills That Need Most Refinement

[ManaKing]

You have to realize that if all WS are useable or rather should need to be used, then people have to carry around the gear for all their WSs. Some of us just don't have that kind of space.

I agree that there should be WS diversity, half the reason for that has been outdated. WSs aren't important for their SC properties as a primary thought, only as a secondary consideration for more damage potential for SSC.

There are realistically 8 or 9 different kinds of WSs categories:

• Physical Damage
• Magical Damage
• Critical Damage
• Ignores Defense
• AoE
• Additional affect WSs
• Stun
• Drain WSs
• Restore WSs

1. Physical Damage is the most basic. You hit the mob X amounts of times. The type of damage depends on what weapon yo are using. They can be ok, like Fast Blade, or they can be great, like Resolution. It just depends on the numbers. You can get additional attacks, but no crits. You can miss one or all hits of physical WSs.
   
2. Magic Damage is a single hit of magical damage. The type is determined by the WS. Usually INT vs mobINT affects their ratio, but not always. You can't get additional attacks, nor crits (magical or otherwise) but they are affected by MAB. You can't miss Magical WSs, but you can have them resisted to the point that they do no damage.
   
3. Critcal WSs are just like Physical WSs except that they can crit. Numbers are all that matters to determine if they are good or bad which is why plenty of weapons have multiple Crit WSs.
   
4. Ignores Defense is a kind of Physical Damage WS that ignores defense. The amount increases with the amount of TP used in the WS. They are 1 hit. Generally unused, even the Empyrean ones, because reducing defense isn't as practical as increasing Attack.
   
5. AOEs can be any kind of other WS type, but it affects an predetermined area that is intrinsic to the WS. While some AoEs share Ranges and Areas, there are many different kinds with different applications.
   
6. Additional Affect WSs generally do damage and do another affect as well. They can either do the affect as part of the WS by default or they can modify the additional affect by TP level. Either way, they still follow the guidelines of Physical Damage if they are Physical, magical if they are magical, etc. Sniper Shit lowers Int and TP can crit, so it is still a crit based WS, but it also does an additional affect. Shockwave is an AoE that sleeps targets. Additional Affects are just add ons. They can be good or bad, but generally they aren't useful because they don't do more than just doing better damage would do.
   
7. Stun WSs are a type of Additional Affect but they stun. They are always 1 hits and generally do bad damage to compensate for their utility. They were all phased out when Stunning with BLM and then later DNC became the norm. I.E. no one really wants them back because they would rather do damage with their TP. This would basically be the first example why we don't want every WS relevant. It is unpleasant to have to WS for stunning since it takes time to accumulate the TP for them and then you have to sit on them and wait to react to the mob. It was fun to stun gobbie bombs in Valkurm, but I don't want to go back to that.
   
8. Drain WSs are similar to Additional Affects, but they differ in 1 aspect. They lack WS properties. Sanguine Blade doesn't have WS properties Catastrophe does. That's about the only real difference between them, other than one is magical damage and one is physical damage.
   
9. Restore WSs are like Drain WS in that they don't have WS properties, but they don't do any damage to the mob because they aren't targeting the mob. Instead it targets the player.

There are only a couple of WSs that don't fall into those categories. Most of them are swords. Spirits Within, Atonement, Requescat, and Wildfire are about the only WSs that don't act like normal WSs.

At the end of the day, they can create new WSs types, but more than likely, they will just adjust what they already have. STR based WSs are always going to be good since you are double dipping. DEX based WSs that crit make sense, but just about any other stat is just for aesthetics and will be inferior to those two for damage output. Unless your job has an over abundance of something like MND on RDM or WHM for Requiescat or Realmraiser, those WSs are generally just not good, because that was how the game was programmed and when the WSs were designed, they didn't compensate.

When they change either level adjustment or defense or both, they will change how some of these work. Ignores defense might become good. WSs with heavy attack or damage boosts will probably still be good. Everything else may become subjective.

Will CT as a VIT based WS that Ignores Defense be worth killing Chloris among other things? Probably not. Quietus might be ok though. It is more of an issue of DRG vs DRK and STR vs VIT WSs.