DNC got a ton of violent flourish toys this update. Do we know if "Violent Flourish" Accuracy +37 on Horos Casaque is a unique multiplier or just magic acc with a different name? If it's only macc then Mummu should beat it.
Mummu head is also kinda nice since we can easily reach 50% waltz potency without using the head slot.
We don't know what Horos Casaque (and before it, Etoile Casaque) are doing to Violent Flourish. Anecdotal evidence has always favored a MAcc boost, but we don't know if it's 1:1 or what. I'd guess it's at least equal to 37 MAcc, so Mummu +1 (40 MAcc, 40 Acc) might be better than it but I'll probably keep using Horos +1 to save inventory space. Also, though I just talked it up, I have actually found few uses for violent flourish lately. I'll probably just store the entire Mummu set until Violent Flourish is worth sacrificing 4-5 inventory for.
Even with the body I'd still use the -2 recast MKE hat on pretty much everything. So my set would look something like:
Ammo: new feather (5%)
Head: MKE hat (-2 recast)
rear: roundel (+5%)
Body: 119 AF+3 (+19%), Received +8%
Hands: 11% potency augmented Herc hands (hopefully with CHR)
Ring: Carb+1 or Asklepian if you are waltzing yourself
Legs: Desultors or CHR
Feet: 119 AF+3 (14%)
This set overcaps you to 54%. If a good CHR earring or ammo came out you could drop Roundel or the feather for it (-1% potency for CHR). If you don't need the recast, you could swap out MKE hat for the Mummu bonnet +1 for another Received +8%.
If the body stacks with the MKE hat, it means that Curing Waltz III is down to a 6 second recast. Not very relevant to current endgame, but still interesting.
Is there a point where the AF legs become useful because of the SC bonus? I haven't really thought about how to work those in, but I'm curious. My Samnuha Tights augs are lousy, my Herc augs are reasonable for PK. I guess maybe I'm just more curious about what SE expects us to do with the legs.
It's probably safe to assume they will boost that number on the Empy hands when they get to those upgrades, too. Is there some tradeoff point where stacking SC bonus outweighs stat losses in other categories?
There is a trade-off point but I guess the summary is just that these pieces are really hard to use well. SC Bonus +16 is +13% skillchain damage. Skillchain damage is a product of some combination of multipliers and the closing Weapon Skill damage.
WS+SC damage = WS Damage + (WS Damage)*(SC multipliers) = WS Damage*(1+SC Multipliers)
So you increase your WS+SC damage by 6.5% if you increase WS damage by 6.5%. How much you increase it by if you mess with the SC Multipliers term depends on how large the SC multipliers term is (including resists/bonuses). It could be as much as 4, which means a further 13% increase would increase SC+WS damage by 10%. Even without resisting, it could be as low as 0.6 (single-step L1 skillchain), in which case you're looking at a 5% increase in WS+SC damage from SCB+16. Of course, if you fail to skillchain or your skillchain is badly resisted then there's always a chance you could be looking at a ~0% increase in WS+SC damage from SCB+16. That's really the problematic case. For me, I probably won't be bothering with these pants (over Samnuha or Lustratio +1) unless they end up being augmented with 30 DEX or 10% WSD something.
Also, SC bonus caps at 50. We have 31% in trait and these are 16%, so they put us at 47% without using the hands.