Vanya vs. Darklight vs. AF2?

[Sheth]

TLDR, SCH go CRIT, WHM go Spell speed.

[Arale]

So reading this thread reaffirms my conclusion that spell-speed is pretty garbage.

[Raminax]

Hardly. Just because you can't get halved casting times at the beginning of a game's lifecycle doesn't make spell speed useless. I mean, what are people expecting? Cure 1 restoring full health once you get your relic weapon, too?

Either way, I personally find crit awful for my playstyle. I love precasting, I love keeping people topped off, so I begin casting Cures as soon as the target has lost ~800 health. Crits in this case are useless, only generate extra enmity (which is actually important on some encounters such as Titan Hard) and you can't rely on them anyway, because gear is too bad currently to get your crit numbers to respectable percentages. 'course, because I love precasting too, I don't like spell speed very much either. So Determination is what I'd prefer currently.

[Evangela]

why do you want to waste your money on Vanya set? lolwat

[Sebyos]

DL gets you passed turn 4 no problem so you don't need Vanya. After that, the general consensus seems to be that you need quite a bit of 90 gear for Turn 5 so forget Vanya there too.

[Shiji]

I would like to retract what I said earlier in this thread regarding Crit vs Spell Speed. My conclusion is it does not matter. Just as Sebyos said you can get to Turn 5 solely with DL. Turn 5 expects you to have ilvl 90 gear. It doesn't matter what you wear so long as it's ilvl 90 power. If you can get ilvl90 gear you're going to wear it regardless unless you are completely decked out. As it turns out however if you get lucky with drops you will most likely be wearing mostly crit as all the allagan body pieces are crit(except boots) while the AF2 jewellery is Crit.

In the case of the thread with Vanya vs AF2 some people swear that Vanya is on par with AF2 fully penta melded. Until we get some solid data on all of these aspects dealing with crit and spell speed it's just speculation and theory crafting. I have found that I now prefer Determination when I can get it.

[Rainsford]

*snip*

Well that's the point, right? Players in full i90 will always have more base stat due to caps. Duh.

But here's what it comes down to for me. Comparing someone in full Rose Gold to someone in full AF2, the person in AF2 will have 20 more MND (4 per piece) and 20 more crit (and up to 48 more Piety if you don't Materia any and can't find a Bard for some ungodly reason), but the person in Rose Gold will have 60 more Det, 60 more Spell Speed and some Vit if they want, along with having sets that will work with BLM/SMN/WHM/SCH interchangeably.

Now, is that MND really that much more important? Will the 60 Det that Rose Gold can potentially give cancel it out? Who knows.

While, from a 100% min-max perspective, no one really knows exactly what wins (aside from the eventual i90 crafted gear, ofc), the crafted gear is most certainly on par with AF2/Allagan at the very least. And the best part? You can farm up a set of Rose Gold in a week if you wanted to. A full set of AF2 will take 5 weeks at the absolute minimum.

[Shiji]

Well that's the point, right? Players in full i90 will always have more base stat due to caps. Duh.

Er, Yes that is the point of ilvl 90 gear but not the point I was making. The point I was trying to make was that the debate between DL vs Vanya vs AF2 doesn't matter. You can get all the way to turn 5 with DL going beyond that is just trying to min/max to the point of inane. If you are screwing up on Turn 4 it isn't because your gear isn't up to par and I think most people have come to the conclusion that Turn 5 is near impossible without full ilvl 90. What I was refering to in my post was that the whole crit vs spell speed thing won't matter because those stats don't hold more value than Mind. So every upgrade you get you will take no matter if it's crit or spell speed. This talk of what to pick spell speed or crit won't matter for weeks or until you get BOTH allagan and AF2, which could take months. Yeah full AF2 in 5 weeks? What? Maybe on a legacy server or there is an exploit I don't know about.

Comparing someone in full Rose Gold to someone in full AF2, the person in AF2 will have 20 more MND (4 per piece) and 20 more crit (and up to 48 more Piety if you don't Materia any and can't find a Bard for some ungodly reason), but the person in Rose Gold will have 60 more Det, 60 more Spell Speed and some Vit if they want, along with having sets that will work with BLM/SMN/WHM/SCH interchangeably

Yeah it won't cancel it out lol. 20 Mind is BIG amount of mind. Plus skipping out on all of that Piety??? Are you serious? I know we have tons of bards now but, we really shouldn't be designating one bard for full time mage ballad simply because the WHM(or Scholar) decided to "opt-out" of taking 48 Piety. Also something you seem to be missing out on is that the AF2 and Allagan have more Defense and Vitality which help out quite a bit.

Fact of the matter is that if Vanya was the key to beating Turn 5 it would have been beaten already. Seeing as the legacy servers have been at it for weeks now I think its more of an 80/90 ilvl gear requirement.

[Rainsford]

*snip*

Well min-max is the reason we are even posting here, right?

And my point is that, with crafted gear, crit v spell speed isn't even an issue. You can have both! But we know how the stats work. 12 points of crit = 1% crit rate, and 10 spell speed = .01 off your GCD.

As far as the full sets go, I was referring to full AF2 accessories. Takes exactly 6.3 weeks to get them all starting from scratch, and maybe a hair quicker if you count the Allagan accessories. I'm just referring to the crafted items though since I am most familiar with them.

48 Piety is 300 MP. You can cap spell speed/crit/det on Accessories with a slot or two left over, so you can put Vit OR Piety on them if you really care that much about it. Also, conveniently, Darklight pants have exactly 20 Mind. Cast Physick 5 times and averaged 836. Took them off, cast 5 times, and averaged 814. Obviously the range on heal numbers is pretty large, but that's not too dramatic a drop. The extra crit on full AF2 accessories comes out to about 1.7% or so.

On the other hand, 60 Spell Speed drops your GCD by .06 and I quite honestly have no idea what type of effect 60 Det has, and it's hard to really tell what's best without knowing. My point, of course, is that while i90 max stats are definitely higher, they aren't high enough to blatantly overpower the benefit of all those extra stats.

As far as Turn 5 goes, I honestly think it's overtuned and unbeatable at the moment, so that's sort of a moot topic.

[Shiji]

snipd

Ah, yes had no idea you were refering to AF2 jewellery. As far as 60 Determination goes, people are saying that 6-7 Det is equal to 1 Mind so around 8-10Mind maybe. I guess what It boils down to for me and other people is "Do I really want to spend all that time/money/materia attempting to make the best Vanya/Rose/Crafted Gear?" After you get DL it's so ugh.

I also couldn't agree more on your Turn 5 statement lol.