Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

So like, 5/5 dark seal is overrated. All you're getting from the extra 4 merits is -40% dark magic casting time... which you can easily get rid of in exchange for a nearly fulltimable -40 enmity that doesn't respect the -enmity cap.


edit: nvm im forgetting about relic head


I'd still argue that that -enmity could situationally clear the extra dark magic duration though, especially on short fights like sortie bosses

It's the hat that makes DS so good, if not for that then yeah the other t2's would be more desireable.. well, maybe not diabolic eye due to how low the acc boost is now but its something

Sorry, I didn't mean to make it look like that's the real rank. That was just my personal opinion. The dagger is amazing and has four jobs on it. Good for ML, good for sortie, good for V25s. I feel like GK is great, but limited to SAM and SAM already share slots with other powerful slash-based DDs.

I love WAR (my fav job) but I also play PLD, RUN, DRK... That's why I'd place Helheim higher. But that's very limited to a personal opinion.

honestly you'd only have to dump 1 merit in dark seal to make muted soul almost match schere earring anyway. 2 merits and they're equal. Guess you can weigh the benefits and costs of having an HP based schere earring on you at all times vs 10-20% dark magic duration

DNC being able to nuke with both dark and light SCs is going a little underrated/understated above in the mpu discussion. Multistep/SC damage is DNC bread and butter and having a strong light option was missing from its kit.

might be the guys I am playing with but GS seemed to loose some of the raw power compared to other options GA/GK/Polearm/Scythe. I assumed it got watered down a bit to make the dedicated weapons better and GS to be good overall option since 4 jobs on it half being tanks.

I'd argue you're overrating it. There's very few times where a Climactic Rudra SC isn't already sufficient, and in places like Sortie you aren't making Light skillchains with Ruthless. If we want to use skillchain properties as our litmus though, SAM's best way of making Darkness before used some combination of extremely underpowered weaponskills, Mumei fills the hole and allows many times stronger Darkness SCs. Not apples to apples since SAM can make Darkness without Kusanagi, but the power difference is massive.

Let's not even begin to talk about what Diarmuid does for DRG for both damage and skillchain properties...

I can agree with Helheim being a notch above GKT/Dagger/Gaxe/Polearm, maybe. Its closest rival is Caladbolg which only DRK (and PLD lol but really?) can use and doesn't share the same SC properties. That said, Polearm makes a fitting case to be on the "same level" as it transforms an otherwise dogshit weapon type into a powerhouse and gives DRG the means to make potent Darkness skillchains when necessary, its only downside being it's on a job that people don't understand and see as a meme and can't be used by anything else. Dagger is totally not above the others though. Its power level is similar and sometimes even worse than Twashtar with its main and sometimes only benefit being skillchain properties, unlike with the 2 handers whose weaponskills got put into the stratosphere because of course they did.

I haven't seen Gaxe in action but I could easily see it slaughtering Chango since gaxe weaponskills are by and large dogshit compared to other 2h weapons. Not speaking on it though since I have no frame of reference. Maybe I'll make it next.




Also, as a stage 4 katana owner, I 100% agree that it is probably the worst Prime. I'd even put the club above it because at least the club gives you most of a Raetic Rod with its aftermath. All Dokoku does is make me sad. Can achieve a majority of what it gives you with a Kikoku.

Drg definitely wasn't hurting for a strong darkness sc, SD>SONIC>SD>SD(aeonic pending) makes double darkness and before primes stardiver was on of its best ws and trish was/is a strong weapon for drk.

Strong relative to its available WS, sure... but Stardiver is a pretty garbage weaponskill when compared to almost anything else and even Shining One's Impulse Drives clear it. Diarmiud is on an entirely different level.

stardriver from my understanding was drgs best ws when you can sc or spam, you can get out more stardivers for dmg in a same time frame than impulse drive. the main difference being when you want to 1 shot something from a high hp value, thats where impulse shows it value imo on drg

I was simply stating a fact that Mpu fills a hole in DNC's kit (Light based SCs which, for things like sortie, do matter). I also have a much easier time hitting 99k with Ruthless than I do with Rudra. The difference isn't huge and this is mostly anecdotal, but I see a lot more ~88-90k Climactic Rudras and pretty consistent 99k Climactic Ruthless. (I am strictly talking about sortie basement bosses here, by the way. I only use Rudra on B/F, and D/H if the element dictates it.)

Also, I wasn't downplaying polearm or gkt or any other prime whatsoever :) I may even make polearm next.

What I'm saying is, Stardiver in itself is a weak weaponskill especially when you compare it to other weapons. Great Axe falls in a similar weird "not very strong but when used with Radiance/Umbra does good" spot; they require skillchains to do as much damage as Scythe/Gsword/Gkt/Savage. Diarmiud not only rectifies this issue but it maintains stellar skillchain performance. The comparison to Impulse was simply to show how weak Stardiver is per weaponskill, without including SC dmg.


Not downplaying your experience but just injecting my own (and a bit of math): Twashtar Rudra is much easier to hit 99k on @1-1.5k TP, Ruthless is easier closer to 2.5-3k. With Aria this matters since you can often WS at lower TP values with it. Stage 3 or 4 gandring is also never going to match Twash, you practically need stage 5 for that.

StarDiver was great before the ridiculous amounts of WSD we get. Once WSD got handed out like candy, one hit WS's shot to the top.

Shield at -15% MDT II surpasses everything that paladin has lol i dont understand why ppl say its a bad and -25% is amazing with mev
Shield at 1 mill Galla beats every Rema for Paladin so far

Laphria was my first stage 4 and I can attest it performs a lot better than chango for weaponskill spam. I've been using a white damage heavy build similar to what you would do with Ukon and it's pretty effective. I've posted my sets in the warrior thread a couple times. I wouldn't say it slaughters chango though, but it's definitely better.



Mpu Gandring is basically light affinity Twashtar. I've run the math and played with the stage 4 and everything I've seen numbers wise lines up with my expectations. The cutoff where Mpu gandring's ruthless stroke overtakes twashtar's rudra's storm is around the 2500-2800 mark. Anything above that range favores MPU ruthless, and anything below it favors twashtar rudra's. The lower agi/dex secondary stat mods on ruthless relative to rudra's higher dex mod offset its superior TP scaling so its potential is only a smidgen higher. At 3000 TP MPU's ruthless is about 5% stronger than twashtar's rudra's is, which counts for something, but it's not game breaking.

Keep in mind this comes with the caveat that dancer and thief both have so much accuracy they just offhand centovente even in the hardest content, so base weaponskill tp with moonshade is always going to be 2250 or beyond. In practice the two daggers perform on pretty equal parity. But..


This is the most important thing that's been said in the discussion, especially if you're taking dancer to sortie. You want to use Mpu gandring on AECG bosses to make fusion and light, while you want twashtar's darkness for B and F bosses. And if your bard is using either twashtar or mpu having the ability to use the alternative means you aren't weaponskill walling them and yourself on aminon. The versatility of having both Twashtar AND Mpu Gandring and being able to swap between the two as the situation calls is the real bread and butter here. Every dancer main should strive to get both. One is never enough anymore!

Did you forget aegis is a thing?

Yeah I rate it as necessary if you like playing DNC. TA, extra CHR, and 4 jobs doesn't hurt either.


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Diarmuid being the only multi-hit 2h prime WS and WS damage boost native should be all you have to say about Polearm, but people want to say lolDRG so whatever. Accepting new information is hard, we get it.

Arent gs/gaxe 2 hitters?

EDIT: guess they arent, coulda swore they were

Real dancers use Hydrascale bags...

Let’s be honest here. None of the extra hits on the prime wesponskills really matter. The only hit you care about with any of these weaponskills is the first. If the first hit is doing 60 or 70k and the extra hits add 2 or 3k each how important are they really? They would need the tp bonus to transfer to every hit to be relevant, and at that point they’d be beyond broken. Sure they add a small amount of extra damage, but it’s so fractional it’s not affecting much.

Prime dagger is a game changer in Sortie and Sortie is life, so its worth having at least a stage 3 in your group.

Our core group swapped to SAM and DNC as DDs and everything became faster and easier.

What jobs did they swap from? When we do melee strat, it's usually with a DRK and a WAR. We have access to SAM and DNC as well though, and I'll be making S3 dagger here in the next couple of weeks.

Even for just 8-NM run, DNC does add a lot of utility. Like, I don't have to worry about /DNC steps, trivializes Haunt (Chocobo Jig), Violent Flourish, things like that. It all kinda adds up.

Also forgot about how nice it is to have Haste Samba if you're single-wielding a one-handed weapon.

We were on WAR and SAM or WAR and DRK. Rest were the typical COR BRD RDM WHM (we aren’t on aminon yet). We switched as soon as I got stage 3 dagger. As others have stated it’s nice having lvl 10 box step up pretty much immediately which upped everyone’s damage, jig for haunt, Grand Pas and Yaeg make F really smooth and easy, and DNC’s burst overall just makes bosses go faster. Emergency waltzes saved a fight or two as well.

God why can't I upvote this more than once. Why can't BRDs FLY? And wtf happened to GEO?


You mean like if your wyvern gave you 10% extra to all ws hits, ws bonus gave you another +21% to all hits, and you get 20%atk/20%def/15DA/job haste without cooldowns so long as your chicken dinner is still flapping?

Not to mention you get tp so fast breaking 2k per ws is child's play? Yea, that second hit isn't as good as the first but it's more
then 2-3k. If I hit a ws under 75 k, it was against a v20 or higher gaol NM or, I'm way underbuffed.

Would recommend you guys do aminon if you have the jobs. Aminon feels much easier than H-F on melee hardmode. If every time you have an aminon KI you go and kill him and two other basement bosses, thats already 50k, a +1 case and a chance at meso.

If you haven't attempted it yet I think you will surprised at how easy he is.

I have a decent dnc just lacks a prime, would aminon still be doable?

Might be slower, but I don't know how it wouldn't be possible. I'd recommend making stage 3 at least. It might take you guys something like 20 mins to kill it until you get the hang of it. But his reward is so much higher than anything else in sortie that it makes sense to attempt him asap.

Aminon is super weak to the common strat. If you follow the step-by-step of aminon cookbook he literally just sits there until he dies. My stonekin, for example, wears off on cooldown and I am not doing anything creative... just using a meva set.

I have 300k to go on my current stage 3>4 and the plan was to do the dagger next. might pitch this to my group though. is there a big difference between easy and hard?