Unlocked Empyrean WSs - Which will be good?

[Byrthnoth]

See title. This is what I think, but I don't play most of the jobs:

* Victory Smite has approximately the same fTP as Shijin Spiral and loses out on a 40% stat mod/5% attack boost. However, it can crit and stacking STR lines up with attack and fSTR, which doesn't auto-cap for H2H anymore. I bet they end up about equal when using Spharai. Kenkonken should obviously be using Stringing Pummel.

* Rudra's Storm will be good for non-Mandau THFs and Dancers because it is a high-fTP single-hit WS that can be combined with Climactic Flourish or SA/TA. Despite making SA/TA one of the fundamental THF abilities, SE placed all WSs that fully utilize them on RMEs. What derps!

* Chant du Cygne will be the best physical sword WS hands down. Requiescat will still have its place.

* Torcleaver doesn't have much hope against Resolution, except as an SA WS (which people don't do).

* Cloudsplitter still sucks and isn't affected by base weapon damage.

* Ukko's Fury has lower fTP and mod than upheaval, but it can crit. I'm really not sure about this one because of all the stat vomit on recent gear (including a lot of VIT). It might end up that non-Ukon WARs should still be using Upheaval 5/5.

* Quietus will still be inferior to Entropy.

* Camlann's Torment will still be worse than Stardiver, and Drakesbane with Ryunohige will rule them all.

* Blade: Hi has about the same fTP as Blade: Shun, no attack penalty, and can crit. AGI was a less convenient mod before the days of stat vomitus, but now it's probably fine. However, now using gear that enhances crit damage is a big kick in the modifier balls while before it was convenient. I don't think Blade: Hi will exactly save Ninja, but it might be a little better than Blade: Shun.

* Tachi: Fudo will be better than Tachi: Shoha in high buff situations.

* Dagan lets you turn an Icarus Wing into a little MP, but using the wing and engaging to WS as WHM would probably kill your party. I don't see this being useful even for strategic reasons.

* Myrkr will be worth unlocking, because BLMs don't have anything life-essential that they're doing. Now that we're in the days of single-staff nuking, building TP with Occult Acumen is far more viable. Having access to this WS is simply another way to become more MP efficient.

* Jishnu's Radiance will probably be the best bow WS purely for damage. This will help Yoichi compare to Annihilator.

* Unlocking Wildfire will be nice, as it gives any gun RNG or COR a respectable magic WS alternative. I am not sure that it will surpass Last Stand, but it does have the benefit of dramatically reduced Enmity. Comparing it to Coronach in terms of damage, I'm not sure which would win.

[Toth]

Is this still going to happen though? The devs have been rather quiet about it.

[Byrthnoth]

Man, I hope so. I haven't seen it specifically included in the November version update, but every time they talk about upgrading RMEs they also mention unlocking the empyrean WSs.

[Fwahm]

I wouldn't count Torcleaver out just yet. Compare their stats at 100 TP (with ele belt/gorget and TP bonus Moonshade earring):

Resolution: 4.75 ftp (5.25 with Mekira-oto +1 on corresponding day), -15% attack penalty, 100% STR mod
Torcleaver: 5.20 ftp (5.30 with Mekira-oto +1 on corresponding day), 0% attack penalty, 60% VIT mod

Since weapon damage and VIT on armor have increased so much, I wouldn't be surprised if Torcleaver was competitive or even superior in some situations.

Also, Torcleaver > Torcleaver = Light; Resolution can't close a level 3 SC with itself unless you have Scourge. If you're going to be using Senbaak instead of Ragnarok after the update, it would be useful for utility purposes.

[Sechs]

See title. This is what I think, but I don't play most of the jobs:
* Victory Smite has approximately the same fTP as Shijin Spiral and loses out on a 40% stat mod/5% attack boost. However, it can crit and stacking STR lines up with attack and fSTR, which doesn't auto-cap for H2H anymore. I bet they end up about equal when using Spharai. Kenkonken should obviously be using Stringing Pummel.

Spreadsheet shows Vsmite coming slightly ahead even of 5/5 Shijin Spiral.
I guess it would lose if SE were to release more mobs with "reduced critical hits taken" like in Legion.
Vsmite also benefits way much from Impetus (3/5 minutes, decent uptime) compared to Shijin Spiral (and this is probably why, in spite of pretty similar WS damage, the overall DPS damage with a Vsmite set is noticeably higher)
I did a lot of tests in several different environments and in the end my opinion is that Vsmite, even without the Aftermath, is slightly better than Shijin Spiral, but overall they're pretty close.
If anything Vsmite will be a nice alternative if people need WS points for different WSs.

* Rudra's Storm will be good for non-Mandau THFs and Dancers because it is a high-fTP single-hit WS that can be combined with Climactic Flourish or SA/TA. Despite making SA/TA one of the fundamental THF abilities, SE placed all WSs that fully utilize them on RMEs. What derps!

I see it nice with SA for THF and maybe for Flourish on Dancer, it's also really nice for SC properties. I think Mordant Rhime > Eviscerarion = Darkness > Rudra = L3 Darkness?
Aside from these specific situations as far as I could test it doesn't hold up against other WS available to dagger users, even Mordant Rime for DDbrd provides more damage.

* Blade: Hi has about the same fTP as Blade: Shun, no attack penalty, and can crit. AGI was a less convenient mod before the days of stat vomitus, but now it's probably fine. However, now using gear that enhances crit damage is a big kick in the modifier balls while before it was convenient. I don't think Blade: Hi will exactly save Ninja, but it might be a little better than Blade: Shun.

Damage wise I got really random and different results on Hi vs 5/5 Shun for Ninja, according to the variables (targets, gear, buffs etc).
Sometimes it would win, most of the times it came slightly behind 5/5 Shun.
As I said above, it's still gonna be a pretty nice WS option for who can't afford to spend points on Shun.

* Tachi: Fudo will be better than Tachi: Shoha in high buff situations.

Being that the damage is concentrated in a single hit, it should also benefit more from gear that affects WS damage, altough I think the only one of such gear that's currently still used is Phorcys Body? (affects only the first hit). On the other hand Shoha benefits twice as much from multiple attack stats, compared to Fudo.
I'm not sure in Fudo always winning even in high buff situations (didn't test it tho) but it sure is an excellent option and opens up several new possibilities for SC properties on SAM.

I seem to remember back in the day they were pretty close to each other with Fudo slightly ahead in highly buffed situation, but that was when you took into account the overall DPS bonus provided by Fudo's aftermath.
Without an aftermath I'm not really sure it will be situationally better than Shoha, or not that often at least, but it should still be another... option?

[Sechs]

Man, I hope so. I haven't seen it specifically included in the November version update, but every time they talk about upgrading RMEs they also mention unlocking the empyrean WSs.

A few weeks ago they specifically mentioned in one of the last sentences of their "november update patch". But I agree it was a pretty generic sentence so... who knows.

Some time ago, before that, they also mentioned they wanted to address methods to complete the WoE weapons (they were't talking about the WoE pouches), wonder what they meant with that.
Less trials? Less NM kills required for each trial? I wouldn't be surprised if in the end they decided to do nothing, but I remember them mentioning wanting to do "something" to make the process more linear in light of the new direction the game has taken.
Also wonder if the new jobs will be able to use these new WSs once they have been unlocked. I'm mainly thinking about RUN and Torcleaver.

Once we are able to unlock Empy WS only Relic WSs will remain exclusive. Isn't this a bit strange in such a new scenario? Not that I'd want any relic WSs for my jobs, and majority of them suck anyway, but in a world where you can also unlock Empy and not just Mythic, it will feel a bit strange for Relic ones to remain exclusively linked to their weapons, even because these days Relics are possibly the easiest weapons to complete of the 3. Yes, I'm going that far, imho they're easier than Empys.

[Alistrianna]

In a high buff situation against a tough target (Tojil) I got Victory Smite at almost 6,912 dmg vs Shijin Spiral's 5,768. Once you drop Impetus they become somewhat even (Smite drops to 5,609) where Spiral stays the same.

[Byrthnoth]

Tachi: Fudo is 3.75 fTP, 60% STR. With the fTP Moonshade earring and Gorget/Belt and 20% DA, it's 4.4 fTP.
Tachi: Shoha is 2.375 fTP, 100% STR, +3/8 attack. With the fTP Moonshade earring and Gorget/Belt and 20% DA, it's 3.17 fTP.

Modifiers are devalued due to the huge base damage boost on weapons lately. Check it out:
* Assuming 200 STR in each WS set and uncapped fSTR against a 120 VIT target gives us +122 base damage for Fudo and +190 base damage for Shoha from STR.
* Tsurumaru has a base damage of 243, while level 99 Kogarasumaru has a base damage of 128.
* Pre-Adoulin (with Koga), Shoha's extra 40% mod was a 27.2% base damage boost on WS. In Adoulin (with Tsuru), Shoha's extra 40% mod is only an extra 18.6% base damage boost on WS.
** There are adjustments that you can make for Fudo (because it's one-hit and benefits from WS damage gear) that you shouldn't make for Shoha. This means that a pure STR estimation like the above is going to favor Shoha.

- Fudo has 39% more fTP than Shoha under pretty reasonable conditions.
- Fudo has 16% less base damage than Shoha (1/1.186)
- 1.39*1.84 = 1.17, so Fudo is still 17% ahead

In situations where Shoha's 37.5% attack boost doesn't increase its damage by 17%, Fudo will do better damage even without aftermath. It's probably not going to be a mindblowing difference most of the time, but it will be there and it will approach 20% in some situations.

[Kyte]

* Chant du Cygne will be the best physical sword WS hands down. Requiescat will still have its place.

That's not exactly true. CDC will only be best when ratio is not easily capped, while fighting something weak to slashing, or while fighting somewhere that resists "attributeless" damage (Umbrils, etc).

I was about to say something about Cloudsplitter at least being one of the few elemental WSs that Warrior gets on a decent weapon class, but then I looked it up and saw it doesn't even have a dSTAT. What. the. fuck. I guess they'll just have to use Requiescat or maybe Sanguine if they have some strong need to not deal physical.

[Darkmagi]

Most awesome thing about fudo will be self SCs with koga!

[Meian]

I really want to believe that you don't have to get 99 on the regular or the 99 WoE version (I know it was mentioned long ago in a dev post you would, maybe they'll change their minds) and long as you had unlocked it in a lower level version you still get it @_@

I miss Zorroing mobs :\

[fantasticdan]

Didn't they say it would require 90+ emp or 99 WoE?

[Meian]

Didn't they say it would require 90+ emp or 99 WoE?

They did say something of that nature, which was what I said in the parenthesis and hoped they changed their minds to let the lower levels that unlocked it be able to use it as well

[Darkmagi]

Never saw 90+ emp mentioned, source?

[Fwahm]

SE originally mentioned 99 Empyrean only, but when players expressed their discontent with that, they quickly added WoE 99 to the things that would unlock it. There was no mention of lowering the level that Empyreans would unlock it at.

[Meian]

Never saw 90+ emp mentioned, source?

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/37...me-weapons-yet Near the bottom basically

SE originally mentioned 99 Empyrean only, but when players expressed their discontent with that, they quickly added WoE 99 to the things that would unlock it. There was no mention of lowering the level that Empyreans would unlock it at.

Correct, though hoping they change their minds

[Hoshiku]

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/37...me-weapons-yet Near the bottom basically

Admittedly I'm bad at reading but the only thing I saw on that page about a 90 weapon was that someone posted a screenshot of tossing one. Does it really say in there somewhere that they're considering letting us unlock ws from lv. 90 emps?

[Dew]

In conclusion…
Apologies that this post is so long, but based on all of the above we would love to hear your feedback on the revamps to level 99 RME weapons and unlocking weapon skills with Walk of Echoes weapons.

Only says Walk of echoes weapons for ws unlocks. Doesn't mention anywhere they will be unlocked from any level of emp.

[Meian]

Sorry I was not referring to 90 emps

[Alistrianna]

I remember someone mentioning that the 90+ empyrean part was mentioned at the secret vanafest thing that happened a few months ago in Japan.