Non Ultimate Offhands That Beat Air Knife? (Nevermind Im Dumb)

So I'm eyeing Air Knife as an option for my dancer (and thief and bard)

I posted in the general thread, however I thought it might be better to ask directly here.

What are the absolute best offhand options for TPing on a dancer that doesnt have Ultimate weapons to speak of?

I will note I do have an Airy buckler, if that counts for anything, as I assume it's still viable to straight up hit 78.6 haste or whatever as dancer without needing dual wield at all.

IIRC my prior playstyle was dual wielding with fan dance up, and single wielding for saber dance + haste samba, cuz the extra ~7% or whatever attack rate wasnt worth the massive loss in tp/hit

Though I also recall with certain offhands it went back to being worth it again, cuz of their stats and them having way lower base dmg.

Thus, Im looking at Air Knife because it has the ultra low delay of 150, yet also has pretty decent damage, general stats, and the en-effect

But, is that enough or does it still lose to other offhand options? I think Ternion dagger +1 was a solid option for low delay, decent dmg, and it had WS Dmg on it.

Or... Raetic Kris +1? I think was the other major option?

I really don't remember tbh, but Air Knife certainly looks like a strong contender, but I dunno the meta anymore, its been years, so I'm curious if its dead on arrival and other quite easy to get offhand options are just better.

I assume the 10% haste on it has to count for something, in terms of vastly freeing up other gear slots, especially belt?

Ah sorry as Maletaru mentioned in the other thread, I have totally forgotten about the TP Bonus knife. Derp lol.

That prolly makes air knife dead on arrival eh?

cento>gleti>other things at least imo

Bard can't wear Air Knife (THF/DNC only).

I get it being better than Gleti's even at max augments, but it's close. Centovente is better when you can use it, but there are actually a lot of places where you can't use it.

Like where? Maybe some solo or lowman without BRD or maybe some non mastered DNC. DNC has one of the highest accuracy among jobs and can apply -44 evasion if needed.

Unless you meant BRD than yeah, BRD might have problems sometimes because mastered BRD has over 100 accuracy less with Centovente than mastered DNC. You sometimes need to give yourself a pianissimo madrigal on BRD.

Rapidly killing Apex monsters!

We do aminon /drk so no cent for me on brd

so I wouldn't say it's dead on arrival, but it's certainly not a contender you should be worrying about for end game gear. the lack of meaningful stats to help with TP gain puts it in a challenging spot. the weaponskill agl+10% is a nice bonus, but I don't know the math on how that compared to the additional 1k tp . obviously, if you're weapon skilling at 3k tp, then yes, this would clearly beat the tp bonus dagger, but unless you're going for AM, there's little reason to wait for 3k.

it also wouldn't be a main hand option as it's not a dream weapon, so let's look at some of the other off hand options out there

gleti knife- same acc, 15 less agl, +30 atk, -20 evasion(even more than the agl factored in), -14 skill, +15 dex, making the total acc roughly the same, maybe a total difference on -4, -8% haste, which seems substantial, until you consider the fact that neither thief nor dancer struggle to find equipment haste. +5% TA, 5%crit, 10% waltz potency.

crep knife- same stat points as gleti with the addition of 15 chr and also adding 3% of chr to ws, 5% QA, slightly less overall acc as well, another 7 points lower than gleti

those are probably the 2 highest offhand contenders for stats. the TP dagger being a staple when you can assure enough acc.

my conclusion, is that while the air knife looks nice, it lacks attack to boost your weapon skills, and unless you're using a strictly agl based weaponskill, you're not likely to gain the full benefit of the 10% agl mod. the only weaponskill that qualifies is exenterator, and we all know that's just a building weaponskill, not a damage one.

It may not look like it has much to help tp gain unless you know about the magic of 150 delay daggers. Tpgain per delay actually gets much better as you move further below 180 delay and old school thf and dnc loved 150 delay offhands for this reason. Its a solid fun weapon thst i would see using jn several builds but ultimately I would go for more unique bonuses over another dps option if you play other jobs.

it is insanely fast, I fully recognize that, but if you play anything other than just thf and dancer, there are better options. Paired with the fact that people don't generally seek out thieves for their damage capabilities. Dancer would get more out of this than thf, but even then, I feel like most would agree there are better options.

All of this, isn't meant to discourage the person asking the question though. If you have no other options then yeah, pick it up and have a good time. But if you're serous about playing the job and taking it to content, this will likely fall off pretty quickly.

iLevel stat vomit means that the particular stat you get +10% of doesn't matter as much as you might think. If you gear for a STR WS, you have like 400 STR and 300 of the other stats. There is a small difference there, but it isn't like 40 additional base damage makes it good while 30 is useless.

Also, iirc 150 delay daggers used to be good because the minimum base TP/hit you could get was 4, so below a certain delay you could swing faster and just get more TP. They fixed that when they redid the TP to delay curves more than a decade ago, but it exists in the public consciousness.

Edit: eh, still seems to be true just less true than it was: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/File:TPDelay.png

If you want to go fast.

Just make a Jugo+1

THF only sadly.

The triple or quad from gleti / crep should make up for any delay TP gains differences. Also triple / quad add dmg to WS as well.

I don't think it does. :(. Eventually you will resort to TP off-hand because the benefits are noticeable.

I mean, the only two picks that actually do something for which there aren't better options available are Aspis and Darkblade. This is a toy pick; if somebody plays THF or DNC, they'll find ways to use Air Knife as much as they would any other choice for any other job.

I was strictly speaking about airy knife vs gleti / crep. Im a tp bonus advocate. Even at acc floor in offhand. The only time Id think about different offhand would be when literally my main hand is missing a lot.

For context below: I classify "easy" for obtaining stuff to be "easier to make than a relic or aeonic", both in cost and time/effort. Since you can pretty much just buy a relic weapon with gil, and I assume you can still pretty much just pay a group to ride along and get an Aeonic for gil too.

Just to refresh my memory: the popular non DREAM mainhand that you'd use is Tauret, right, in terms of "the best you can get for most use cases, but not DREAM tier in terms of cost/effort"?

And thatd be what you'd wanna consider an offhand to pair with?

Or is Tauret beaten by any other non-DREAM mainhands?

Am I right in understanding usually you'd rock Tauret Mainhand and Cento offhand, and spam Climactic rudras, in clusterfuck "everyone go ham" party scenarios where stuff like SCs arent important? Or just like, spam Evisc over and over 0 braincell mode, something like that?

I last played right when Prime weapons started first coming out at lower tiers.

I don't have any concept of scale of how hard a Mpu Gandring is to build, is there a tier of Mpu Gandring that isnt that hard to get and it becomes the new best "easy" weapon to get?

And in that case, is Mpu + Cento the new meta combo to go after if you want "good but still easy to get"?

None of the primes are easy to get. Most time consuming rema process is primes. Think mythic at 75 cap kind of time consuming.

Easiest to get is bonanza. Literally free even if you're unsubbed.

I used it very briefly on dnc on locus bats 2 nights ago. Damage output was noticeably extreme, ws's 60k+ (twashtar/AK) non-climactic. Climactic hit cap every time. Standard buffs, full 6 living person party like it was 2005. Job points not capped but great gear.

Had I been stricter about 1k tp ws's cento would clearly be better. But it's a boring job points party and I was tired and also watching Shameless. AK worked in that "situation".

On thf as offhand to gandring the evasion is just bananas. Nothing can hit me,

I like my AK.

Even lower tier prime weapons? My question was specifically if theres *any* tier *other than* the final one that starts to become best mainhand weapon for spamming weaponskills (ignoring other DREAM options)

Any usable prime. The minimum usable tier is stage4 which is 3.5m and 15 psyche total or a minimum of three months for psyche even if you get 3.5m muffins in that time.

"Minimum" is doing an awful lot of work in talking about generating 3.5m gallimaufry

That's definitely more work than an aeonic but sounds like

Aight so, after that what's the next best mainhand non DREAM dagger? Tauret?

If there was a ranked list of daggers to chase that'd be dope, I'll scroll through the guide sticky and try and catch up.

Probably Gleti?

Still kind of six-of-one, half-dozen-the-other to talk about Odyssey if you're avoiding DREAM though

As others have mentioned, you will get use out of AK indefinitely because there will always be situations where TP Bonus Magian simply isn't feasible. A big part of why Centovente is so popular for DNC is that crazy high spike damage with Rudra's is what people use DNC in endgame for so nothing else matters to them. The map is not the territory here

Gleti does look pretty promising even at lower ranks.

Surely just getting a piece oddesey gear to R15 or so isn't nearly as much work as a DREAM? I get past that it gets to be exponentially more work.

But I'm seeing testimonials of ppl 3manning the lower rank fights so it can't be that bad right?

Comparatively DREAM weapons are, what, ~120mil or so?

Main thing is I'd rather funnel funds into finishing my already existing DREAM weapons than start a new one, I still have to rank up my epeo to R15 which is a pretty penny.

I already have Tauret tho.

And if I'm spamming evisceration, IIRC cento is *not* my ideal offhand for that.

Would Air knife shine in the situation of evisceration spam with tauret then, or does it still get outclassed by other options even then?

If using Tauret+Evis I would offhand Gleti's

It's more like, getting to the point where you are capable of R15ing Gleti gear, as well as committing to whatever the needs of the other people you're playing with.

I mean, DREAM DDs are a dime a dozen basically everywhere. To not have one on a job you want to bring is dead weight, and this is ignoring that Odyssey is designed to require each player to have multiple jobs. Whether Gleti R15 is better than AK or not, AK is something you can get right now and will still be as good or better down the line.

Air Knife's 10% AGI mod would destroy Gleti's as an offhand before even considering the enspell damage

(leaving aside the question of why you're even using Tauret at all anymore if you have Gleti's and can get Air Knife)

To be clear: I have a DREAM pld and run I can take to odyssey.

My thf/dbc/brd I more use for solo trio boxing content with my alts. I have a full set of malignancy gear for example.

I don't really have a solid third option for going to odyssey atm though ?

I have a mid war with naegling, not amazing but prolly functional as my third job to bring.

All three would be slashing dmg tho.

IIRC one of the piercing T3s absorbs wind dmg which might make air knife actively a bad offhand too wouldn't it D=