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

In what scenario? high buffs with marcato Aria?
Avg around 50k with spikes to 99k, assuming spam with Thribon offhand.

I'd be more interested in low buff and solo situations.

What numbers does Tizona do under same circumstances you've posted for comparison?

Shields are all over the place.

I cant do a name search for aspis (it only shows aspis/aspis+1, of which BLU isnt on), but looking at all the https://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&slots[]=2&jobs[]=65536&description=def&level[0]=2#adv usable shields that BLU is on, its all over the place and seem to follow their own rules (ie: Acheron shield???)

However, if you want to look at consistency, aspis, buckler and targe all seem to be the same archtype
https://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&slots[]=2&jobs[]=128&description=def&level[0]=2#adv

And the common jobs used across those type of shields are:
WAR RDM PLD BST SAM
Of course there are exceptions (ie: all the mage only shields), but I'd say about 90% of that shield archetype are usable by those five jobs. Astral Aspis is the exception, not the rule. So its not BLU got screwed, but SAM got screwed out of being on the diamond aspis, and THF has no business being on it.

Not really a buff to RDM either as +15sec to Sabo isn't much and only other time would be when they go /DRK which is pretty much just HM Aminon.

Unless you are like one of the idiot "main RDMs" in one of my linkshells that was suggesting that Diamond Aspis helped them with "MP issues" when they didn't have composure up.

The logic with the shield is that it's usable by every job with native shield skill. THF is one. SAM isn't. Though, yeah, if you're going by what jobs get access to shields, SAM (and DRK) are the stranger ommissions.

BLU almost entirely is just on ones with mage stats, which would mean BLM SCH GEO (and DRK and RUN) should also be on it.

Would rather have seen it be all jobs, but, there is logic there.

I didnt even look at that. So the logic is sound and very clear cut.

it is only if you look at diamond apsis in a vacuum. BLU has no shield skill at all and it's on several shields, not limited to magic ones either. It's also on shields with lots of different elemental resistances while it got left out from the omen shield that would perfectly fit a melee mage like BLU.
On the other hand it's also on genbu and genmei shield which don't have and elemental resistance or magic beneifits at all.

I see the value of this shield primarily in the extended skillchain window and the duration buff just as a bonus, which BLU wouldn't benefit much of at all btw.

If I had jobs with the shield on I'd care much about I'd immediately would try to figure out a skillchain, preferably a infinite one that goes back and forth in tier 1 and that trusts with infinite MP pool like shantoto and matsu can't chain with to see if the barrage of MBs improves solo DDing. Of course you can do the same in party setups.

BLU is primarily a mishmash of size 1 shields, with the exception of acheron which is a size 3, its an oddity if its put on one at all generally, think culminus is the last non-all jobs shield it got put on.

Fast Blade II will never beat avg Black Halo, Savage and Expiacion from corresponding weapons, but all of those has very poor self SCs, so you could do very good damage with FBII > Savage > Light > CDC > Double Light for example. Tizona is hard to beat solo in general, because of MP recovery and how AM3 synergize with Malignance and how good Malignance is for solo.

I think the usefulness of the shield depends on whether the RDM in question mainly does group content or solo. In solo runs (or multi-box), the shield does expand the dimension of our possible strategies a lot.

One significant impact is the possibility of extend the multi-step skillchain beyond 6 steps. To me, it has been extremely satisfying to kill Ghatjot with an 10+ step skillchain (RLB > Seraph > RLB > Seraph infinite loop).

As for Dhartok, having access to Provoke with /war while still being able to reliably multi-step also makes it a lot more manageable for me.

I've also been having fun to use Excalibur to loop between Lv2 skillchains, having the flexibility to decide whether to continue to loop or enter a double light / single darkness finisher.

For group content, I agree that the shield's benefit is less significant. And I also don't understand what "MP issues" according to your LS member are supposed to mean XD

[Edits] Having said that, I do find the extra 15 seconds for Saboteur quite useful at times. For instance, for this month's Ambuscade V1D, it usually takes me one minute to kill the BLM, and the shield give me a whole 15 extra seconds, enough to land a Saboteur-powered paralysis on the MNK XD

By the way if someone knows logical from nextgame give him a heads up that they hand out free bonanza weapons this month. I think he didn't catch it or he probably would have made a video about yagyu darkblade by now?

Yeah first thing I thought when I saw this giveaway was "Some Ninja YTber gonna ***his pants"

It's unfortunately just WAR footage but found a video of fast blade II with trust buffs on locus bats:


Numbers don't look bad at all, don't know how it translates to BLU though.
With WS + SC damage it would have to pull ahead of tizona quite a bit to be worthwhile since droping it foces you to sacrifice BLU points for battery charge or magic hammer.

I expected like a 10 part series by now honestly

WS numbers on WAR will be much higher, because you sub Ikenga, which has much higher damage than Onion itself. BLU would sub Thribon, so offhand hits are weak. WAR also has much higher multi attack.

isn't there some potentially abusable synergy between diamond aspis and maxentius?
After the 10th chain you should hit magic burst cap of 40% from maxentius alone which should open slots for focusing on other stats, be it matt, int, occult accumen or what ever.

Shield or Katana for me. But I'm waiting to cash in at Moogle after new Limbus arrives.

I got all the jobs under shield at lowest M44. So could get good use there. But if new Limbus proves to be a NIN playground then I may opt for that. My NIN is a bit of a solo toy but I'd love to explore that more.

I’m assuming you mean having one other character (could be an alt) equip Maxentius to MB after the 10th step, while the shield character keeps the SC going? I think that could work.

Generally speaking, Diamond Aspis works quite well with MB strategies. In my current usual setup, a GEO alt uses Wizard Rod to MB while my RDM delivers successive SCs with the shield. They synergize very well, and by analogy a similar strategy using Maxentius should be feasible.

One possible issue, though, is how many enemies will allow us to exploit this strategy to its fullest extent. From my experiences so far, in the fights where MB works, most boss enemies fall into two categories: they either melt like butter and die around the 10th or 11th steps, or they have certain TP moves that force the SC to interrupt, in which case I only do 3-5 steps. In both cases, the Maxentius strategy seems to only have a somewhat limited application.

This is exactly what I wanted to see with Onion on WAR, but my 692 day streak of learning Japanese on Duolingo isn't enough to translate. Looks pretty nasty though, even with just trust buffs. Can't tell if he's box stepped it down to get those kind of numbers.

looks like this is with warcry up.

Valid strategy, I'm just worried they'll release it in chunks instead of at once so you'll probably only start figuring what's optimal for new limbus 1-2 years down the line :(

If it's just braindead farming mobs it's going to be BRD COR WHM WAR WAR WAR spamming savage blade or BRD COR SCH SAM SAM SAM spamming jinpu or NIN NIN NIN spamming Chi Blade

Maybe there'll be MB camps like there are gears for ML

Maybe there'll be some piercing weak camps for THF DNC DRG WAR and SAM using Polearms

I hope they all hit like a truck so everyone has to use NINs and MNKs with high HP, or evasion tanked on THF DNC with mambos, but it is going to be more of the same trash.

The idea that there will be a meta shift for trash killing is some peak lolliery

A year from now when they drop U&O, then maybe. Thats indeed a long wait. (and even then, at best it will be desire for a 2boxed ninja to put shadows on a pld)

...unless you want them to make them immune to slashing damage and hope to use flame tongues enspell as the only source of damage...

Crocea with enfire from Ifrit and some gear would hit for like 1300-1500 fire damage.

I honestly hope certain segments of Limbus require Rangers and Shooty CORs.

I mean it's possibly a given due to double light or dark weather.

It wouldn't affect your choice of exeter or artemis bow though

I guess if they make a limbus-points stackable bullet that destroys rema bullets, you would think for a half a second about exeter before saying you still don't want it.

I was just saying in general.

I seriously hope nobody picked those garbage ranged weapons. They did RNG dirty

Using ranged dd means adding a tank and thus -1 dd though.

In before "hidden effect, occasionally do 5x damage".

Really kinda depends on what your doing, like pretty much everything else in FFXI. FBII unlocks some really crazy SC's that will produce big numbers, it's a very large step up from spamming Expacian. Something simple like Expacian -> Fast Blade (Fusion) -> Savage (light) -> CDC (double light). The fusion will have have a 0.6 multiplier, the first like will be 1.5 multiplier and the second at 1.75, these are multiplicative with SCB which BLU should have at least 16% but Nyame gives a ton so likely over 30%. Basically the fusion should be mid to high five digits on top of both lights being 80 to 99K. That easily eclipses doing upper five digit Expacian's.

The only "weak' WS in that order is the final CDC and it's still respectable damage, we're just doing it for the big double light that its going to produce. If something doesn't live that long then just use the three step Expacian -> FBII -> Savage, all three of those scale strongly with Thibron.