Lehko Vs. Cornelia Vs. Ephramad

This is a debate I keep seeing repeated, so I figured why not dedicate a thread to it?

I'll admit that I’ve been a Lehko user for a long time. I never really put much thought into changing it until this week when I started reading other players’ opinions.

From my personal perspective, I’m starting to feel like I’m not getting as much from Lehko anymore. I play DRK, RUN, DNC, COR, RDM, THF, and BST, so Cornelia might help me more overall.

Ephramad for DRK and DNC in high buff situations is also very tempting though. Those are my main damage jobs at the moment. I am lacking augments on Nyame, but am actively working on that with my group every week.

Of course, I know I could just pick one, test it out, and swap later if I don’t like it. At the same time, I’d rather pick one, adjust my sets around it, and not have to revisit the decision again for a long time.

From what I’ve gathered from reading other posts:

Lehko

Best if you are supremely geared and hitting 99999s almost all the time. It may also be better for players who don’t often join party setups with top tier buffs and debuffs.



Cornelia

Benefits most jobs in most situations due to the WS damage, but it still depends on the job. Magic WS on COR, for example, benefit a lot from this.

There’s also less to think about with Cornelia. Might be more appealing if you are lacking augmented Nyame.



Ephramad

Clearly excels when attack is capped, but the key is actually knowing when that is happening. The top players using this will usually have a very good understanding of their buffs and will maintain separate sets for attack capped and uncapped situations.

A lot of players aren’t willing to go that far. It may be stronger, but knowing exactly when to use it can turn some people off.

I also read something earlier about MNK, WAR, and BLU benefiting because they lack PDL options from other sources, but I can’t remember where I saw that.



In the end, I don’t think this should be about ganging up on people for choosing one over the others. The amount of debate around them tells me SE probably succeeded in making all three viable, which is a good thing. Having options is great.

I think you hit the highlights and this post serves as a reference for players trying to decide between them. I'm not so sure about "players struggling with accuracy" though, since several prominent rings have as much or more accuracy than lehkos.

IMO cornelia appeals to jobs with less native attack like BRD, COR, NIN, SAM, RDM, etc. Since they have a harder time hitting the attack cap, especially when loaded up with PDL (SV Aria).

It also has a more broad appeal because it's useful on nearly every ws for nearly every job, whereas the uses of lehko and ephramad are more situational.

When ephramad shines, it really shines though. It has many complementary stats that are notably missing from cornelia.

Really it ultimately comes down to your job selection, buff situation, WS and weapon choices, and play style. Which is why there will never be a consensus. If you primarily play solo, doing content like escha NMs, sinister reign, Omen, and vagary, your answer will be different to someone who 6bots or always plays with a party full of full power buffs in endgame content.

I chose Lehko's before and I'll choose it again, because I'm a *** for crit.

I know crit builds aren't achieving anything particularly noteworthy, and at best you're pushing 20% of your overall DPS through white damage in the best crit builds with an Empy like Ukon or Twash, but gd is it fun and satisfying.

I felt like I had plenty of options for hitting capped damage in certain content, so getting a ring that let me put together builds for fun was more enticing for me personally. I'm sure the +4 STP over Chirich +1 isn't changing anyone's x-hit, but not having to worry about hitting haste cap in pretty much any gear configuration was a nice bonus too.


Violently agree.

I've always saw Cornelia's as a fantastic stopgap (for a long time) before tranfering to Ephramad's. Corn is for players who aren't exactly new but are getting into the thick of it before they get upgraded Ody gear. Also a popular choice for COR, a job with a low barrier to entry.

IMO it is job dependent.

All 1h jobs would benefit the most from ephramad, when discussing physical and hybrid WS.

On the 2h jobs, most of them would benefit the most from ephramad, with a couple exceptions.

Sam - already has good PDL options in JSE, but lacks native attack bonuses or JAs that boost attack.

Rng (ranged onry) - already has tons of PDL and a very high attack cap on ranged attacks. Routinely uses elemental WS which don't benefit from PDL. Also hardly anyone plays rng.

Drg gets bonuses from its wyvern, idk how attack starved it is with prime polearm, if at all. War and drk have tons of attack.

It also depends what you want to gear for. Sheol C? Pdl. Most/all older content? Pdl. New and newer content, sortie, v25? Debatable, leaning pdl job dependent.

Lehko's is just.. a convenience ring for when you don't want to spend money on chirich +1 I guess. Crit rate is just for looks, so you're spending a TVR reward on storetp. Very meh considering the alternatives.

My main is on cornelia because of sam and rng. Other alts are mostly 1h and they're on ephramad.

Cors are all on ephramad despite it doing nothing for leaden salute. It is just that strong for savage blade.

Lehko's is a fantastic choice for Shining One users, and any other crit WS.

I personally rocked the cornelia's ring for a good while but recently swapped to Ephramad specifically because i tend to be doing group content with high buff levels. Drg with Prime is not attack starved at all imo.

obv pick cornelia so you have something to remember her by in these months we are apart

Great sum-up.
Quoting this part because I think you should probably delete it?
It does very little for accuracy, there's plenty of better options and even among the ones you listed, Ephramad is way better if accuracy is what you need.

Furthermore I would add another note on Lehko.
A minor part of Lehko was the 10% haste, allowing certain jobs to sport specific combinations of gear which wouldn't bring you to 25% haste.
I feel this secondary part of Lehko is less relevant these days because Alabaster Earring exists.
It didn't cancel it, but it did diminish the strength of this specificc stat on Lehko, imho.

The choice is all job and content specific and only you know what your situations are, but knowing that there is no winner across every situation is important.

That said I think cornelia's is always a safe choice where lehko and ephramad are a little more nuanced.


I also think people overestimate the amount of time they are over attack cap or they only play with SV+bolster. I also play mostly sam and have pocket aria and even noticed a few surprising situations where an extra attack song is actually better than aria.

The correct answer is Fickblix's Ring because I just know they're doing to fix SMN again soon

Just change your ring when your situation changes, It's not like you just randomly end up in statics you have the opportunity to change rings for free weekly.

There's no reason to criticize others for choosing a ring that makes sense for their current situation.

Which is crazy to me, it's such a strong job.

Not a lot of content where you can make use of hover shot stacks since a lot of stuff is just zerged / cheesed.

If you're just looking to Savage blade spam, there are other jobs that can do it and add more for the party like Warcry from WAR or Angon from DRG.

I can auto-pilot and be optimal in my TP gain so long as im facing the mob and in range, or i can mash a button with generally good timing for the same but worse effect than the person just hitting engage once and being in range, also my best dmg is in certain positions that can easily move around and that's a hit too. And now i gotta do a dance to build stacks that doesnt carry over to the next mob

Jobs nice and all but i completely understand people not wanting to mess with it over any other basic melee DD

In the meta 1 dd party;

It's because ranger only offers savage blade.

If you just want to mash savage blade you do it as cor or brd. They do the mashy but also the singy or the rolly.

Your only deeps who is also the tank you don't really want to be ranger. Optimally, anyway. You use rng when you're doing 2 dd no tank in party, alliance content. Dienamis for example.

I don't want to derail this into a RNG thread, and all points taken and mostly agree with, but these are some pretty reductionist takes on what RNG offers.

Hover Shot is a pain in the ***, though really has no bearing on TF, Flaming Arrow, or Savage blade builds, but point taken.

Pretty sure RNG is required for at least 2 of the T3 Ody NMs, and IIRC, was instrumental in the latest MT clears, the absolute hardest content in the game. I get it takes more work to gear and more brain power than spamming your jinpu/fudo macro, but every job has its issues.

I probably like the job more than the average player, so I'll admit I have some bias, but reducing it to a savage blade job simply because it's the best at it is kind of narrow-minded imo.

Still choosing Lehko's because Arma AM3 goes brrrr.

Unless you mean the damage is already so high on those it doesnt matter, true shot doesnt apply to ranged magic WS though so can atleast ignore positioning a bit with those(through hot/flaming still benefit on the phys side iirc?)

Updated this to take out the accuracy line. Also happy to see some good points being shared here.

I'm still on the fence about which one to pick. Will decide after I get time to run some calculations to see just how much Ephramad is needed compared to Cornelia with the gear I have and the buffs I get versus what I usually fight.

Yeah, this. Anywhere those 3 weaponskills are worth using (you're doing 5 9's or close to it), there's no real tangible benefit to HS stacks.

The most relevant place in endgame content HS matters is probably Arebati and Xevioso (I have no experience in the new MTs so no comment), and you're not using any of those WSs there anyway.

Edit: Early in the Sortie days, I brought RNG while we were figuring out strats and comps, and those bosses (at the time), lasted long enough Hover Shot was worthwhile, and Shadowbind came in clutch if tank got bodied and we needed time to get them up and rebuffed. It's definitely not useless, but I think you get the most out of it with Empy/Prime AM and Camouflage up while you just drop big *** RAs and WS spam would rip hate.

I've always been a proponent of Ephramad's Ring. When the rings first hit, people down played it massively, saying that everyone would hardly ever have requisite buffs to trigger the PDL, and so it was a slightly better Regal Ring, and that was unimpressive.

However, a truth about XI is that you're often romping through old content to make ultimate weapons/gain mastery rank/*** *** get money/for the lulz.

You'll hit PDIF cap on old content almost by default, and depending on its age, you might need Trust buffs!

Also, often overlooked fact about PDL, is that it works on Auto Attacks. +10% PDL when you trigger it with buffs/debuffs OR by doing really old stuff = +10% auto attack damage. So if you rework your TP sets to feature Ephramad's Ring, you get more white damage on top of higher WS damage. And PDL currently works across all hits of multi-hit WS, so it's better for those, too.

And this is just talking about the PDL benefit of Ephramad's. It has 10 STR/DEX/AGI on top of +20 of acc/racc/atk/ratk. This makes it the highest accuracy and attack option in the ring slot, something that massively benefits any job willing to melee or shoot. It's a top end ring regardless of your progress in gearing, because of this benefit, too.

The only place Ephramad's doesn't shine is on Magical WS and un-engaged styles of dealing damage(casting Magic). It's the ultimate physical ring.

Meanwhile: Lehko's Ring to me seems like a TP set optimization piece/specialized build piece, mostly aimed at allowing you freedom in adjusting your TP sets such that you can wear almost whatever you want, and still cap haste/hit Store TP value you want/crit as a cherry on top. It has some bearing on some WSes, but it's not something you just throw into almost any WS set and call it a day. In my experience in modern endgame, the gains you'd get out of this ring are meager, super situational, job dependent. It's an enthusiast's ring.

Cornelia's Ring does what it says. It beefs up your weaponskills, regardless of their type. This is fantastic, because it's a big bonus, and you ain't gotta fret about having appropriate buffs. However. it still has drawbacks. It only works on weaponskills, so that is the only builds it will be participating in. This means there are situations, like being Amnesia'd for 30 seconds to a minute, where this ring does absolutely nothing for you. If you get dispelled and suddenly need more accuracy to be able to hit to build TP to WS, this ring does nothing for you. If you're border line even after buffs, and could nudge yourself over the line with +27 accuracy... this ring does nothing for you. And this is before we get into the job dependent stuff. Certain jobs don't care about WSD+% in a lot of their WS sets (mainly MNK, but any multi-hit WS without a frontloaded hit). This ring does a little bit for those, but not as much as other options

Back to Ephramad's... It's the happy medium that excels when you do.

Exactly. And to your point, I took the Weatherspoon ring for nothing more than buffing Trueflight, which again, is a meager gain compared to other options, but damnit I like RNG lol.

I'm pretty sure the August and teodor MT was COR COR COR BRD GEO RUN, but i haven't tried it myself so not totally sure. People are trying RNG for the dragons but haven't won.

Nobody I'm aware of uses RNG for Xevioso, it's only used for Arebati.

Funny enough, the reasons RNG makes little sense for the Xevioso fight are the same reasons listed above. BRD offers songs, COR offers rolls, RD, and WC, DNC offers box step, cures, and haste samba, DRG offers Angon and has much better 1hrs. RNG is a selfish DD even in the best possible scenario.

The only reason it's used in Arebati is because of all the anti-melee stuff he has. RNG's niche is literally just "well, we can't melee it..." and very specific magic damage scenarios which are exceedingly rare.

Last I checked bard and cor don't use kraken club. Paired with a cath palug hammer lockstyle it's the most glorious thing ever! A symphony of meows that never ends. Nyehehehe =^..^=

Thanks for typing out a lot of love I was too lazy to on Eph Vyre,

I would like to add to more of a jack of all trades and one that up and coming COR RNG that are hard up for rings that the AGI on the "big two" Magic WS Trueflight and Leaden is a huge factor and Ephramad isnt even that far behind for damage either on those slots. If you dont have things like dingir, archon, weatherspoon, epam, or regal, it is basically a free option that covers ground for phys capped or uncapped and your primary magic ws options that could let you focus gil/time into other slots too.

The accuracy can also be great for CORs in magic sortie setups that want to plink RAs for TP underbuffed on racc and extend skillchains with Last Stand/Exenterator* in the basement.

You've jogged my memory, I was DNC on that fight lol. I think when we were weak and 2 KI'ing it I might've used RNG.


BRD and COR are in nearly every comp for all content, so I wouldn't consider that a fair comparison, nobody is bringing them for DMG specifically.

The DNC and DRGs are fair points though.