Can anyone explain the benefits of using a Rune Chopper?

[arshesney]

I believe someone did a test on sanction refresh, and noted that since sanction refresh is less than 1 MP per tick (the time between each tick is longer than the rate RC drops your MP), therefore you will only receive the 9% haste half the time.

Not quite, Sanction refresh is always 1/tic (up to a % of your total MP, based on Besieged level).
Game seems to check for upkeep costs before any refresh/regen effect.
Let's assume you start with 1 MP: latent kicks in and it drains the mp.
Next tic you have 0 MP, latent does not activate, so no MP drain, Sanction refresh kicks in and you have 1 MP.
Rinse and repeat.

With Sanction and RDM's refresh you might be able to get the haste full time, otherwise only 1/2 the time as stated.

[Sanjiyan]

Depending on MP pool (as in if a WAR has a good amount of it) the downtime in between battles allows MP to collect up, meaning that the WAR will have the first part of the next fight with the latent fully active. So by that alone it can be said that the latent will be active more than 50% of the time.

With sanction refresh and ares cuirass (which everyone seems to have these days) that's 2 MP/tick or only 1 MP/tick drain. With a MP pool of around 50 (2 MP merits + turban) it'll give out full latent for 2:30, and MP will recover during downtime in 1:15. The bigger the MP pool the better rune chopper works, and being able to ask for that refresh every so often and not have most of it go to waste after maxing out the MP pool is good too.

[Nameless]

Actually, after rethink it, with standard gears, you should be able to get 19% haste as warrior, 22% if you have speed and dusk +1. Therefore, half the time, you will be at 25%, the other half you will be either 19% or 22% with only sanction refresh. So the average haste you benefit from the GA is either 3% or 1.5% depending on your gears. 3% will probably bring the gate between perdu and RC much closer while making it useless for very well geared wars without rdm refresh. However, for the less fortunate wars, you will be getting 6% haste full time if there is a rdm refreshing you. Making it an extremely powerful weapon.

Also allowing you to use askar helm instead of turban in this case without losing any haste.

[Sanjiyan]

My WAR has 19% haste (turban + haidate + dusk hands/feet + swift) but I think for rounding sake, should aim for 26% haste to really max out gear haste. That means I'm 7% short. Once I get askar hands/head to replace turban and dusk, I'll be exactly 9% short, allowing the chopper to have max benefit. I consider myself decently geared for WAR.

Yeah, true HQ WARs will see less benefit.

[Valyana]

Well, let's see...I have 19% Haste on WAR in what I think is a pretty common build: Turban, NQ Dusk, Swift, Haidate. Adding 9% from Rune Chopper would put me 3% over the cap. So for me a Rune build would involve swapping Dusk Gloves for something else, say Adaman Mufflers. This works out to 6 haste and 4 acc vs. 8 damage and 5 att (assuming both latents on all the time)

19->25 haste: 8% with no magic haste, 10% with Haste, 12% with Haste/VMarch, 15% with Haste/Marches
4 acc: 2.22% at 90% base acc

88->96 dmg: 9.01%
5 attack: about 1.25%

The two setups are about even with no magic or JA haste, but Chopper pulls ahead if I have any magic or JA haste.

[Starr]

There's not much more I can add but Rune Chopper with Refresh beats Perdu in most situations, the ability to lose Haste in slots and put in more Accuracy being one of the big advantages. Perdu with Dusk Gloves+1, Unicorn Feet+1 etc would obviously be better on merit/easier mobs.

[friedfunk]

A fully supported Rune Chopper with max haste is a truly destructive build on a budget. Taking a look at the extreme haste builds:

---------------

Rune Chopper build:

Rune Chopper, W. Turban, Haidate, Dusk hands and feet: 24% gear haste

Haste, Marchx2, Haste Belt (10%): capped magic Haste 43.75%

Hasso: 10%

Total haste for RC = 77.75%

Perdu Voulge build:

Perdu, W. Turban, Haidate, Dusk hands and feet: 15% gear haste

Haste, Marchx2, Haste Belt (10%): capped magic Haste 43.75%

Hasso: 10%

Total haste for Perdu = 68.75%

----------------

Number of Attacks over 30 seconds (1800 delay):

RC: 504*.2225= 113 delay, 1800/113 = 15.9 attack rounds in 30 seconds

Perdu: 504*.3125 = 158 delay, 1800/158 = 11.4 attack rounds in 30 seconds

----------------

So Rune Chopper is almost a 40% improvement in sheer number of attacks in an absolute max haste build using Haste Belts, without any 2-hours involved. Somebody above had estimated the damage increase of Perdu under latent to be about 11%, even being generous and saying 15% RC still has a huge DoT gain. The thing about Perdu is you have to WS at 100%, if you don't you lose the latent bonus.

I end up making my own Haste belts, costs me about 6k for 20 charges in total lasts an hour which isn't too bad.

[Nameless]

One thing about haste belt is that it prevents you from swaping out belt during ws. Other than that, it is one hell of a belt if you can find a way to get gear haste else where, which in this case, you can with RC.

[ringthree]

To be fair it is hard to find people above PSC to help with assaults if you don't have a static due to people above psc almost always having a static.
The ISP can be explained away if the person has gotten thier job almost done or done with meriting and/or does ISNM alot.
48kIS means i screwed myself out of 18 ISNM uncapped this morning and with a 1/5ish drop rate on khroma ore alone that means that this morning when I decided to spend my IS for the hell of it I may lost a fairly high chance at 1~1.4mil with my current server price.

Yes, you are basically correct, if you do not try to get something, you won't get it.

[-Ant-]

I pretty much have the "perfect" haste build on war and still use rune and substitute haste for attack or something. Then again I don't use Gaxe ever, I'd probably be better off with Perdu.. Rune chopper is pretty badass and shouldn't be ruled out as a great axe to use.

Also I'm pretty sure you get the full haste effect wearing Ares' or Sanction.

[Shineko]

Auto-refresh ticks before the costs on rune weapons, was tested long ago with Rune Axe on BST w/ Gaudy

[Bregor]

Hint: Perdu Voulge isn't the easiest thing to obtain.

Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan
Published by: Square Enix
Developed by: Square Enix
Release Date: April 18, 2006

I don't care how "hard" assaults are, you've had over two years to do them, and finding a RDM willing to Refresh a WAR is much harder.

[Ayr]

Perdu, failing that, Maneater/Juggernaut, or failing that... Woody/Maneater.

Using anything else and you're kidding yourself.

But I can see how Rune Chopper has its uses for certain situations. Do a Kirin or something, pop a Yagudo drink and go to town?

Really the hard thing will be finding a Rdm who'll Refresh you. Easy to do in Colibri camp where a mage can go afk for a few mins and everything's fine, but 'specially when in camps like Mamool Ja Staging Point where they can sometimes have their hands pretty full, it could be a bit hard.

Seriously, Perdu! Its effing easy to rank up Assaults. So many ppl complain, just go to Whitegate every 4 days, shout for 4 clears, ???, profit!. You get like 1 and a half ranks week. Piece of cake.

[Fogo]

I typically use perdu for meripos and normal endgame farming and stuff, but I keep a rune chopper for zergs (yag drinks are cheap). Course it helps to have a base 80 mp from merits too (blm and smn were the first two jobs I leveled). Also with askar instead of walmart turban, and aurum feet, i'm only at 18% haste instead of the typical 19-20 your average war is, so the chopper helps me out a bit more.

I think if i were to optimize my chopper gear i'd get the turban back out, and swap my dusk hands for war hands +1, for exactly 25% haste and a nice 14 extra attack on top of that all. That is, of course, if I actually cared about that little tiny difference.

[Sanjiyan]

Perdu, failing that, Maneater/Juggernaut, or failing that... Woody/Maneater.

Using anything else and you're kidding yourself.

People still play WAR/NIN these days?

As far as I know a good g.axe build, even with /NIN, is equivalent to any axe/axe WAR. G.axe with /SAM and 6-hit build blows that away, and is on par with axe/ridill minimum. I know I haven't touched my axe/axe or axe/joy WAR in ages.

You don't even need Perdu either. Byakko's is pretty good, and then there's always berserkers, gawaines, martial, etc.

And people still use woody? Or even jug? I thought IR pick is almost there with a jug offhand, with the atk bonus and extremely low delay and all, and being several hundred thousand gil cheaper.

[Fogo]

I dunno much about axe/axe anymore, almost never see it, rarely see axe/joy once in a while. war/nin with a GA build is going to outdo both axe/axe and axe/joy.

I'm pretty sure most wars still /nin unless you're in a nice LS pt where you can rely on the other members to pick up their end of the group, as opposed to a typical pickup meripo where more than likely the other DD's are going to be supbar. I'd love to /sam all the time if i could but more often than not I end up an MP sink because i'm tanking the mob all the time and the other guys can't pull it off me, seigan +third eye just doesn't last as long as utsusemi shadows can.

[Sanjiyan]

This is not quite related to the topic anymore, but /SAM works well with colibri since they don't hit as hard as a mamool. Last merit party I had consisted of NIN, g.axe WAR/NIN, WAR/SAM (me), SAM, BRD, and RDM.

Just kept seigan on fulltime, and it works just as good as /NIN, and I noticeably pumped out more WSs due to my 6-hit, and meditate, than WAR/NIN.

I just don't get g.axe WAR/NIN on stuff that utsu and third eye work both equally well. Wouldn't you want to /SAM in those situations for a little more DD benefit from the sub?

[orson]

There's a few people who really don't understand that there's other ways to keep the Rune Chopper active than a Rdm refreshing you. Granted you're correct it's a situational weapon based on what buffs you receive and what gear you have but if you're talking having soul voice marches, haste, hasso, and full haste gear using only 16% byakko's shorts, walmart turban, swift belt, and aurum sabatons Rune Chopper is going to destroy Perdu if it's active. Also you look at the stats you can get instead of wearing HQ dusk and HQ unicorn there's a lot of bonus acc, att, etc.

Regularly to get a full haste build War has to have Walmart Turban, Byakko`s Shorts, Speed Belt, HQ Dusk Gloves, HQ Unicorn Leggings, and Blitz Ring. I think honestly though at around 21-23% haste you`re going to be fairly close in damage to a Rune Chopper build with Perdu but you need those HQ pieces.

The thing is Rune Chopper most likely is not something the average player or group is going to be using. Most of the time in stuff like random merit parties you aren`t likely to get haste, marches, and be able to keep hasso up 100% of the time. This makes a huge difference because you need that bell curve on haste to kick in before you really see Rune Chopper shine.

Like I said before Rune Chopper is an excellent piece of gear for War but it is situational. If you`re smart you`ll come up with the best places and times to use it.

[Starr]

I make bitches refresh me in meripo, if they can't somethings wrong.

[Maaglin]

I make bitches refresh me in meripo, if they can't somethings wrong.

^^ This.

Playing the shit role of RDM in merit parties, I occasionally see a rune chopper WAR and it's really not a problem to throw them a refresh in with the haste cycle. I don't really know why RDM's think this is so fucking hard.