Rice Ball Sams Any Left?

I solo on mnk mainly. Drg is pretty much a merit job for me. Sometimes if it's something I can't solo on mnk I may go *** w/ it on pup or dnc, but that is rare (but even if I needed drg, I'd just use /blu since I already have it)

I love saber dance + 11 fighters roll. 100% DA go!

So, lets say im on SAM/WAR, and I dont need the +1 STP from Brutal, would I be better off using something else or no because there isnt a earring that will preform better than brutal?

Brutal w/ /war, pole grip is 17% DA

Still a 4.4% increase you're not gonna get that from any other earring (other than wyvern, which should be paired w/ it if you're /drg).

So yea, brutal

Just sayin you'd get less from it than if you had no DA, which would be a 5% increase

Well, I understand that at higher percents you aren't the same values, but I don't quiet grasp why some people make it sound like you should rarely use DA.

Simply put, there's often nothing better to put in the slot.

The two primary sources of DA in gear currently are Brutal Earring and Pole Grip. Pole Grip v Sword Strap v Rose Strap is very situational, but Pole usually wins because either Sword breaks your x-hit/forces bad swaps/sidegrades due to the job in question or Rose is unnecessary for your x-hit. Brutal Earring is much less situational; the DA has to be severely devalued for it to be undesirable. This really only occurs when you get into using non-Jailer multihit weapons. On anything that can hit 3 or more times Brutal is a poor choice of earring, and if you have an acc+4 earring in that slot (Hollow for instance) that earring will be better than Brutal in any uncapped hitrate situation (provided you fully benefit from the accuracy) using a non-Jailer OAT weapon.

EDIT: Why you should rarely use DA? I'm not sure. Things like Ares Flanchard/WAR AF2 legs vs Homam/Byakko's are pretty straightforward, but other than obvious cases like that and the less obvious Aesir vs Forager's (Aesir only wins in high pDIF/capped fSTR situations), I'm not sure why it would be rarely used aside from scarcity.

The very approximate order of things for gaining TP:

Haste > Accuracy > DA
(haste and accuracy can be swapped depending on hit rate and amount of haste you have, but for ‘normal’ situations its that order)

Rice balls not give any haste or accuracy, even worse to get the most out of rice balls you have to give up haste (and sometime accuracy) to get the DA and attack.

As tiger said, if your haste is low enough and your accuracy is good (ie soloing EM or lower or campaign) then rice balls will can beat other foods, but as soon as you need accuracy or getting haste buffs you are better off reverting to ‘normal’ a meat/pizza/sushi build.

Rice balls could potentially be worth it if they add enough gear to reduce the haste loss to a minimum (or add more rice ball gear in non-haste slots). As DA is the only way to increase TP gain once you have haste and accuracy covered (see: Apoc DRK aftermath builds).

As for the usefulness of DA, as Nightfyre said, there aren’t many places where DA goes, but brutal and pole are both the best in their respective slots most of the time.

Askar body and Ares legs is the notable places where you can get DA that people often advice against, but that’s because you are dropping a significant amount of accuracy from a hauby/e.body/n.mail or 3-5% haste from homam/byakko/Barbrose.

And no matter what you think about haste giving constant or increasing returns, 3-5% haste is better than 2% DA.