WAR Joyeuse Help

[Trythison]

Didn't find this with Search, so here goes. Veteran to the game but semi-new to WAR. Just got a Joyeuse today and was wondering what I should do with my merits to take best advantage of it. A little background, I don't have a Supp or Fort.Torque to enhance skill, so keep that in consideration. I currently have....

8 Axe / 0 Sword 5 Double Attack / 0 Zerk / 0 Aggressor

..... and I'm thinking it should look more like.....

4 Axe / 8 Sword 0 Double Attack / 5 Zerk / 5 Aggressor

...... no?

Or would 4 skill in Sword be enough to land hits with the joy on most hnm? Any input would be helpful.

PS don't say "Get a Ridill" :wink:

[Delekii]

Im not a war either, but Im pretty sure people dont gear toward using Sword on HNM unless they have a Ridill - Joy isnt that great apart from meriting.

[LinktheDeme]

its good for temperance! go go piercing damage on a slashing weapon!

edit: to make it more clear joyeouse does piercing dmg *HINT* This means its good for exping in most areas in toau because most mobs are flying which are weak to piercing *HINT* though i highly doubt it would outdamage ridil in any case

[Bagel]

Since you already have 8 axe merits, I'd go with double axes over Joy, especially if you have money to burn and can go Man/Jug.

[Kaylia]

Or would 4 skill in Sword be enough to land hits with the joy on most hnm? Any input would be helpful.

A fully merited ridill is barely better than axe/axe on most HNM. With that in mind, I'm certain joyeuse is going to be inferior to your current setup if you compare it with ridill, even with 8merit/suppa. Without suppa, 8 merits, and pimped gear (e.body, haidate..etc), stick with axe/axe

In xp, it's slightly different since most mob you fight nowaday are weak to piercing, but I seriously doubt it worth the trouble to change your setup for it. Even if it might be better against puk/collibri, your dmg and acc are going to take a huge drop against bugard/mamool/wyvern, and losing chain on those because you couldnt hit isn't better than gaining a few points on parser.

I haven't parsed axe/joyeuse war recently, so I might be wrong, but axe/axe imo is still the way to go, unless you have multiple job that could use sword merit (pld, rdm, blu, war). In that case, go with sword merit and use your joyeuse.


For now, I would just do axe/axe with 4/3/3 merit in DA/zerk/agg. It's probably the best setup you can have for both xp and Hnm. It will give constant and constant result everywhere.

[Zilong]

Outta curiosity, is there any noticeable difference between Man/Jug and Wood/Man?

A friend of mine has been thinking of getting a Jug, and I wouldn't mind passing him some sort of info before the big purchase since he doesn't frequent these forum.

[Karinastar]

Axe/Joy when setup properly is usually better for meriting than Axe/Axe, and Axe/Axe when setup properly is usually better for HNM. Your mileage may vary of course and it depends very heavily on your merits and other gear.

Your 2nd setup would get you the best performance with Axe/Joy, and it would have the side benefit of having your merits be ready for a Ridill should you come across one.

As far as using Joyeuse on HNM, it's kind of meh. It can be decent, but unless you have minuets you're going to be seeing a few 0s on some NMs which will hurt your TP gain and overall damage output. Even with 4 axe/8 sword unless you're getting good BRD support I'd do Axe/Axe for HNM fights.

Obviously you're not going to be outparsing Ridills with a offhand Joyeuse (aside from the gimpy Ridill WARs you see running about on occasion), but it's still a fun weapon to use and barring access to a Ridill it can make for a nice offhand weapon.

As for Wood/Man VS Man/Jugg... the latter is probably the most solid non-Ridill setup you can get for HNMing. In exp, the 2 combos are going to parse very very close to each other, with Man/Jugg pulling ahead by a bit if sushi is used.

[Tiernin]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword
if you get a ridill switch them

[Lordwafik]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword
if you get a ridill switch them

He has 8 axe merits, he can't put 4 in sword.

[Matricide]

huh?

[Alastaire]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword
if you get a ridill switch them

He has 8 axe merits, he can't put 4 in sword.

Combat Skills category allows for 12 upgrades, so wha? >.>

[Khamsin]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword
if you get a ridill switch them

He has 8 axe merits, he can't put 4 in sword.

You can go as high as 8 in any weapon category, 12 total. So 8 and 4, 6 and 6, however you want to do it.

In this case, 8 in axe, 4 in sword makes the most sense until he gets a ridill.

[bebeci]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword

8 in axe, since it's in your mainhand and for WS.

[Jeryhn]

keep your axe merits and put 4 in sword
if you get a ridill switch them

He has 8 axe merits, he can't put 4 in sword.

Yeah he can.

[draxyl]

Unless for some god awful reason you have 4 merits in evasion and want to keep those around for war...

[SassiAsura]

No self respecting war would do that!

[Palin]

I'm at 6 Axe/6 Sword, 5/5 Zerk/Agg, and I use both. I've found in merits, with 2 BRDS Axe/Joy is a bit better than Axe/Axe, but w/ only one they're either even or Axe/Axe parsers higher, depending on the camp. On HNMs, Axe/Axe is vastly superior, Joyeuse is a terrible HNM weapon.

I'd stay with what you have, the damage increase from a full Axe/Joy setup is barely above Axe/Axe, and only with the right support. Its not worth the effort.

[Septimus]

Since you have 8 Axe already, you probably should stick with 4 sword and change it later if you get a Ridill.

I do Maneater/Joyeuse on pretty much everything and my damage does not suffer, but I built for specifically for Axe/Sword use. (I already had 6 sword merits when I dinged 70 and first equipped Joyeuse.) On our last Dynamis Lord I think the parse was Alleya (BB MNK), Xavier (E. Body + Ridill), Sonomaa (Ridill), then me. Our last Kirin I won the parse 2 our of 4 runs (against a BB MNK), and was second on the other two.

You may not be able to beat a Ridill WAR with Joyeuse, but you can come very close.

[Trythison]

I have e.body and haidate. But general consensus, which is what I assumed from the beginning really, is to keep 8 in axe until I get a Ridill. Woody's still in my safe so I'll keep it handy. The DMG on joy suggested to me that it wasn't going to be great at HNM anyway (save things weak to piercing) so I sorta assumed this was the case.

Thanks for the help and I'll see what's what. :wink:

[Karinastar]

Joyeuse only has 5 less base damage than Ridill... problem is sometimes that 5 base dmg is what's going to make the difference between a 0 and hitting for damage on some HNM if you don't have proper support.

Personally, if I have BRD support I'll use Man/Joy on just about anything, it works fine. If I don't have a BRD I keep a 2nd axe handy. However like Septimus my merits and gear are set up specifically to make that setup work. And on things like melee Kirin, etc the faster TP gain from Joyeuse can help out your total output quite a bit.

The biggest problem you see with offhand Joyeuse users that adds to the conception that it's inferior to Axe/Axe is the fact that they don't build for it properly. It doesn't take nearly as much to get a Joyeuse as it does to get a Ridill, so the average Joyeuse user will likely have access to lesser gear and often times they don't have their merits set up right, etc. What you're doing sounds like a fairly good idea though, you can put 4 in sword and always switch them around should you ever come across Ridill. Stick to Axe/Axe for HNM with that merit setup though.