Which Weapon Should I Get I'm Too Stupid To Pick!

I like that ML50 now joined superbuffs beeing present in 100% of all possible situations on FFXIAH.

Don't forget any extra dex from race changing too.

None have said that. I have said "even" in that sentence.
Now ML 30 is pretty easy to get for main jobs and that's already like 33-34(?) dex and 30 skill, so easily over 50 accuracy.

The TP bonus offhands really rule when fired as close to 1k as possible, other offhands Flametongue/ice brand/zan can overtake it at 2k and above because the tp bonus offhand reaches max quicker. If you are purposely delaying WS to limit your tp feed it makes sense to use a different offhand.

As mentioned before 30 weaker WS is more damage than 20 stronger, but specifically for a fight like mboze that's also 50% more TP fed. Add on top of that near-fulltime warcry from warrior you really don't need much tp bonus gear. Add in the macc for doing tickles and that is a real life condition where flametongue would be significantly better than thibron.


Now is it worth taking a bonanza for one fight? I dunno, depends if you've cleared it I suppose, but imo there's only V25s, aminon, and master trials in our current endgame and this is one fight that would probably gain significantly from it.

Otherwise if you're just blasting mireu with every buff in the world for 45minutes then only your lockstyle matters.

I did pick Ice Brand and decided to so some physical damage testing with Blue Mage with Tizona using Expiacion. Ice Brand is a clear BiS for nuke on BLU and really satisfied with it but since Expiacion have both 30%STR and 30%INT stat modifier I was curious to see how it could improve. Goal was to compare DPS of Thibron, Zantetsuken and Ice Brand offhand with Expiacion spam at 1000TP and 1750TP.

ML40 BLU/DRG R25. Sylvie, Qultada, Koru, Joachim, Monberaux, Grape Daifuku. Keeping AM3, Occultation, Nat Meditation, Erratic and Tenebral Crush all the time. 10 minutes session with Scoreboard again Locus Bats in KRT. Excluding any accidental WS with Qultada. I repeated some session I felt not on top.

Tizona/Thibron @ 1000TP = 6953DPS
Tizona/Ice Brand @ 1750TP = 5825DPS
Tizona/Ice Brand @ 1000TP = 5791DPS
Tizona/Zantetsuken @ 1750TP = 5631DPS
Tizona/Zantetsuken @ 1000TP = 5543DPS

In the end Ice Brand have a bit more DPS than Zantetsuken and provide better peak damage reaching 83K Expiacion at 1750TP+. Quad attack on Zantetsuken on the other side helping doing more a bit less powerful WS. I was surprised to see such small difference between 1000TP and 1750TP. I did redo some session to make sure and result was consistent. So I have the feeling that Flametongue would close the gap with Thibron but more on Savage Blade than Expiacion. Also those result worth what they worth with the trust buff only.

Problem with icebrand vs sakpata is you give up so much utility. When I'm cleaving anything hard the 10 DT / 5 Phalanx / 15 Vit / 100 HP helps a lot for survival. Then Sakpata sword also has 10 fast cast / 3 refresh which helps cap recast and MP... which weapon is really better for cleaving now?

Do you really think this is "no mistake or coincidence"? The lv72 Martial weapons had TP Bonus, added well before the magian TP Bonus weapons were added, and they didnt work offhand. Its a coding issue in the way augments are handled vs weapon stats.

For cleaving I was already using Bunzi / Maxentius. You can reach proper defence with buff mixed with crown control in Blue Mage AOE Spells. I am however using Sakpata for the initial full evasion sleepga and all Magic Accuracy set. I think you are loosing a lot of attack power if not using offhand like Maxentius or now Ice Brand. +30INT +40MAB (-20MAB) and +248MagicDamage (-217) push damage by some good amount !

Except...you're adding a shitload of auto-attacks for your 20 WS so...it's not like 50% more TP fed.

Let's say it takes you 10 hits to get from WS to 1k TP and 20 hits to get from WS to 2k.

If you do 30 WS at 1k TP that's 300 auto-attacks and 30 WS

If you do 20 WS at 2k TP that's 400 auto-attacks and 20 WS.

If you think that's a 50% reduction in TP fed, I think you need to re-evaluate your position.

"holding your WS" until you reach a higher TP value is actually feeding the mob MORE TP, unless you're standing disengaged, waiting for Tactician's roll or regain to give you TP.

edit: I guess you might be referring to Mboze specifically and not TP denial generally, in which case you're still feeding the TP above but you're feeding it to an add and not the boss...so I guess...technically you could be right about the TP feed

That said...the "you'll be at 2k TP plus Warcry" argument has ALWAYS applied for TP bonus weapons. If, for some reason, you're TP bonus'd to hell, then obviously a TP bonus weapon isn't good anymore.

It wouldn't. it might not look like much, but Thribon is almost 20% ahead in your test and Flametongue would be maybe 7% ahead of Ice brand.

What was your accuracy with Thribon?

With food and excluding Joachim I was 1472/1242 accuracy.

With Tizona/IceBrand accuracy on TP set with food is at 1512/1512. Quite a difference there but it can be fixed with songs.

Bgwiki lists 1269 required accuracy to cap on those bats, so you was potentially missing around 13% hit rate on Thribon.

Depends if you are mostly using entomb where vit is the main mod and helps for recast.

Most likely Joachim was covering that with Madrigal + March when he don't try something funny. Real BRD would fix a lot of the possible irregularities in those results.

Still flametongue look better than previous best offhand. With STR boost and PDL i understand people loving it !

I don't think I've ever posted before (in 17 years lol), but I want to thank you all for the testing and back-and-forth. As someone who has left and come back to FFXI many times over the years, I was excited to see the Mog Bonanza kupons given out. But, like others, I'm completely paralyzed by what to pick. So, thanks again for all the testing and discussion. It really is appreciated!

fair point lol. I fairly recently came back from a 10+year break and didn't even realize the Ikenga's Axe augment was a thing and that definitely lends itself more to the augments being ***... but that's also just weird (but i guess not surprising)

I believe its Augments with TP bonus work in any slot I could be wrong.

Love the spin trying to justify flametongue/ice brand lol.

Cool weps for sure, but I even TP bonus mainhand for arebati v25 clear and it was not a problem (pretty sweet set up on rdm using ullr for ws). In almost every fight you can get away with TP bonus offhand for higher DPS. Wish it wasn't true sometimes as it is kind of boring, but it is the reality.