What's Better?

[drwaffles]

It doesn't. Especially if you have Triple Attack merited.

Pretty sure it has nothing to do with the Triple Attack.

[Despain]

Homam body beats Enkidu body <_<

This. Enkidu's is nice, but I wouldn't use it over Homam.

[Braeden]

Just hit 75 last night so forgive my ignorance. I can usually figure these things out for myself with any job but the lack of options gearwise with ranger leaves me stumped with certain slots. I know what the optimal gear is, just looking for alternatives til I get there. My main question is head piece for ws. Basic question is: 

AF1head vs nq/hq wyvern helm (or if there's a better alternative)

Here's my setups if it helps. Input on anything else is appreciated.

TP
Weapon: Vulcan's staff/Axe grip
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Rat Collar
Ears: Vision Earring/Drone Earring (Genin if /nin)
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Crimson Finger Gauntlets (working on s kotes)
Rings: Rajas/Behemoth +1
Back: Amemet +1
Waist: Buccaneer's Belt
Legs: Scout's Braccae
Feet: War Boots (+1s never on AH and glacier drops nothing but bst)

WS
Weapon: Vulcan's Staff/Axe Grip
Head: Hunter's Beret
Neck: Rat Collar (working on ws gorget)
Earrings: Drone Earring/Vision Earring (Genin if /nin)
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Crimson Finger Gauntlets (again working on s kotes)
Ring: Rajas/Behemoth +1
Back: Amemet +1
Legs: Scouts Braccae (tryin for p. Seraweels and eventually skadi)
Waist: Buccaneer's Belt
Feet: War Boots (+1 never on AH and working on Hachiyru)

mainly For merit pts. I do Odin and JoL but can make the adjustments as needed.

[Shinryuu]

I don't see any Snapshot or anything closely resembling a 6-hit /WAR (/NIN) setup, let alone a /SAM 5-hit. Of course, you just hit 75, so it's perfectly fine still, this is your priority. I think /WAR needs like 16 Store TP for a 6-hit? Can anyone confirm? Try to get a Mekki and Enkidu subligar, and w/ Rajas and Brutal that's enough. Then you should focus on a Mirke w/ RACC+Snapshot and the SCNM w/ RACC and Snapshot. Other upgrades are Hope Torque and the things you've already mentioned.

Edit: did some quick calculations, apparently you need 13 store TP w/ Vali's/90 delay arrow and /WAR, so you can use a better earring.

[Villian]

13 stp for 490/90 delay and 10stp for 540/192 and 540/90 iirc. Always nice to have a bit more stp than that if possible so you can ws in different gears/CP arrow.

Edit: whoops, late post.

[Thunder]

Here's my setups if it helps. Input on anything else is appreciated.

What weapon do you use? Obow? Ebow? Sbow? Hellfire?

Shoot for one of these. Namely Obow.

Hellfire +1:         Selene's Bow:        Obow:
5-hit: Store TP+17   6-hit: Store TP+10   6-hit: Store TP+10
                     5-hit: Store TP+32   5-hit: Store TP+32
EBow:
6-hit: Store TP+13
5-hit: Store TP+36

[Braeden]

I don't see any Snapshot or anything closely resembling a 6-hit /WAR (/NIN) setup, let alone a /SAM 5-hit. Of course, you just hit 75, so it's perfectly fine still, this is your priority. I think /WAR needs like 16 Store TP for a 6-hit? Can anyone confirm? Try to get a Mekki and Enkidu subligar, and w/ Rajas and Brutal that's enough. Then you should focus on a Mirke w/ RACC+Snapshot and the SCNM w/ RACC and Snapshot. Other upgrades are Hope Torque and the things you've already mentioned.

Edit: did some quick calculations, apparently you need 13 store TP w/ Vali's/90 delay arrow and /WAR, so you can use a better earring.

Ok so, snapshot/stp build for tp. I use obow/sbow so shouldn't be a problem. I'll just have to finally finish acp which I've been putting off.

Any improvement on head piece I could make for tp/ws? Gonna be a bit till I can get af +1 as well as the SCNM headpiece. Been using ohat for tp but I'm pretty sure I can get away without it and WSing in af hat just feels wrong. I went BLM with AMK hat but I'm thinking of switching if I can't find a decent alternative.

[Dooom]

Homam body beats Enkidu body <_<

5 acc over 10 atk and 5 str? I'd like to see some maths on this one, because it goes against what I've seen elsewhere, and we're getting a few people going "nuh uh!".

[Despain]

5 acc over 10 atk and 5 str? I'd like to see some maths on this one, because it goes against what I've seen elsewhere, and we're getting a few people going "nuh uh!".

I agree, although on HNMs I try to get as much accuracy for THF as I can get. Although, I don't have either of these body pieces QQ so I can't really say much :/

[Shinryuu]

2.5% hitrate is both TP damage and WS frequency. 1% TA is the same, except it also adds WS damage. The 5 STR, 10 attack are only for the THF's TPing part of total damage, which in general is not high.

[Thorny]

Homam is better, why do people still listen to pchan and mdk exactly?

[Despain]

Which is true considering THF is basically all spike damage.

[pchan]

Homam is better, why do people still listen to pchan and mdk exactly?

Rapparee harness is +10% increase in dot and ws frequency with capped haste gear, haste spell and double march, how to you beat that ? Not to mention pizza .. in before double minuet.

[Nightfyre]

Rapparee harness is +10% increase in dot and ws frequency with capped haste gear, haste spell and double march, how to you beat that ? Not to mention pizza .. in before double minuet.

Homam wins at and below 90% hitrate (82.5% without Homam) with otherwise capped gear haste, don't always have haste and double march, etc etc

[Thorny]

Rapparee harness is +10% increase in dot and ws frequency with capped haste gear, haste spell and double march, how to you beat that ? Not to mention pizza .. in before double minuet.

We're talking about compared to Enkidu's in uncapped accuracy situations. Did you even read the last page? Obviously with top buffs, rapparee wins.

[Raen Ryong]

The 5 STR, 10 attack are only for the THF's TPing part of total damage, which in general is not high.

Depends on the mob you're facing. On anything squishy (einherjar/merit and below), THF TP damage is a good 60-70% of the overall damage. On endgame targets I'll agree with this though.

5str = 1.25 fstr, over a 33d mainhand with 0 fSTR is 1.25/33 = 3.79% DoT only on average (this will be less on speedburn targets and possibly more on harder targets)
12.5 attack on a 400~ attack base is greater than 12.5/400 = 3.13% DoT only; how much greater depends on level difference.

2.5acc on a 90 accuracy base is 2.5/90 = 2.78% DoT/WS frequency
If we convert all TA to DA, THF has 25% before Homam and 27% after, so 2/125 = 1.6% DoT/WS frequency (this is not entirely accurate but works decently as an approximation).

Speedburn targets, DoT only figures above get hit by a ~0.6x multiplier, so

STR => 2.27% damage
Attack => 1.89% damage
Total: 4.2% damage

Homam: 4.4% damage

So on speedburn mobs, Homam wins narrowly. On anything high tier, Homam wins considerably (due to a different tp/ws ratio). Enkidu Harness is useful if you cap accuracy with it exactly but otherwise, is generally worse than Homam Corazza/Rapparee Harness.

[Nishida]

SAM75 BLU75 RDM73(getting it to 75 within a day or 2) NIN59

Currently own:
Bushinomimi
Brutal Earring
Loquacious Earring

NIN59 is up in the air on a completion date..I may just focus on merits for a while before finishing this.

I'm wondering..for Apoc Nigh..which earring would be best for me?

Hollow: Awesome for BLU
Magnetic: RDM, and to a lesser extent BLU
Ethereal: BLU, and eventually NIN

Right now I'm thinking Magnetic is a sexy earring for RDM, but Hollow is really nice for BLU since I don't have a Suppa. Ethereal is a decent earring, but excels nicely with NIN/DRK. Not sure what to do here. =X

[Isiolia]

Magnetic is nice, but not -that- nice. Since it was put in, there have been a number of other MP or HP/MP earrings put in that really, you're not looking at a huge gain over a 50k AH piece.
Conserve MP is a very small boost, and again, since it was put in you can get it on a lot more stuff. Spell interrupt isn't really noticeable all by itself either.

IMO, I would remove that from your consideration (and I had one for years).

Personally, I traded in for an Ethereal after leveling PLD, but Hollow is a nice piece as well. Still a tossup between those IMO, though I'd say Ethereal is more "special" due to the damage to MP.

[FailureMidgard]

Add hollow to really good for nin (since you don't have Suppa) and Sam Pole.
Also, I personally don't think Ethereal is even worth equipping for nin/drk...your "idle" time on nin/drk is essentially nonexistant, and you're losing enmity for potential MP gain that is mostly unnecessary. Refresh + Ballad + using nin tools still should keep your MP high enough in general.

[pchan]

Homam wins at and below 90% hitrate (82.5% without Homam) with otherwise capped gear haste, don't always have haste and double march, etc etc

In which case you have to eat sushi ... 82.5% is crap; trade a torreador for raja, cuchulain's for cerberus+1 and eat crab sushi, you'll do a lot more damage even if you don't use double march. Meat THF doesn't exist.