Confused on how to determine which weapon is better

[lufia22]

So I'm only level 13 right now, really only leveling MNK as a sub for a sub, but I figured I may as well keep this in memory for later. I'm not real sure how to determine what weapon is better...some have more ATK, some have more DMG, some have more ACC, some have lower delay. I know H2H damage and DPS is calculated a little differently, but I'm not sure how to compare weapons to know which is better.

For example, right now I have Tropical Punches, which have 0 delay, 10 ACC, but only 1 DMG. Would I be better getting a weapon with 4 DMG but lower ACC and higher delay? Any sort of general guide or anything to go by, like DMG > ACC > Delay?

[Malacite]

Re: Confused on how to determine which weapon is better

Since you're only doing MNK to 37, focus on DMG. Low delay H2H only matter when you have all your martial arts traits by 75 and even then Vishnu's Cesti (the best 0 delay H2H) is over rated.


If you can, get the Republic Knuckles. They'll last you clear to at least 30, where you can go for Claws +1 IIRC (or if you have any high level friends to help you, camp the Boreas Cesti)

[Armando]

Re: Confused on how to determine which weapon is better

Low delay H2H only matter when you have all your martial arts traits by 75 and even then Vishnu's Cesti (the best 0 delay H2H) is over rated.

No, this isn't always the case, and Delay is most certainly NOT negligible until the higher levels of Martial Arts.

Quite frankly the only real way is to pick the best weapon is to calculate the DPSs yourself. I HIGHLY recommend you use Microsoft Excel for this, as you can set it up to automatically calculate the DPSs and you'd only have to plug in the DMGs and Delays of the weapons.

The formula for DPS is:
DPS = DMG/(Delay in seconds)
Where Delay in Secs = Delay / 60
So DPS = DMG/(Delay/60) = DMG * 60 / Delay

This is true for any weapon. The only problem is, with H2H, your weapons aren't standalone; they basically add to your barehanded DMG and Delay. And your barehanded DMG and Delay varies as you level, because the DMG is based off of your H2H Skill and the Delay is based on the level of your Martial Arts trait.

Your barehanded DMG is 3 + floor(H2H Skill * 0.11) where floor( ) means to drop all the decimals of whatever you get (e.g. floor(14.999999) = 14). You can use this site to find your H2H skill without having to log on to the game. At level 13, your H2H skill caps at 42, so your barehanded DMG would be 3 + floor(42 * 0.11) = 3 + floor(4.62) = 7. So with a H2H weapon equipped, your DMG is 7 + the weapon's DMG.

As for barehanded Delay, with Martial Arts 1 your Delay for both hands is 400. If you have a weapon with +60 Delay, then your total Delay for both hands would be 460. However, that's 460 for both hands. To calculate DPS, divide the total Delay by 2 since that would give you the Delay for 1 hand. For example, in this case you'd use 230 Delay in the DPS calculations.

Let's do an entire example. If you wanted to calculate your DPS using Republic Knuckles (+4 DMG, +96 Delay):
DMG = 7 + 4 = 11
Delay = (400 + 96)/2 = 248
DPS = 11 * 60 / 248 = 2.66

And there you go. The higher weapon's DPS, the better. Naturally, that's a very tedious process - like I said, ideally you'd want to make an Excel spreadsheet with a column for the weapon's DMG, another for the weapon's Delay, and have it calculate the DPSs based on that. Something that looks like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v203/Doval/Excel.jpg

Then you simply have to go to ffxiah.com and do a power search for H2H weapons within a level range (like this), and put those DMGs and Delays into the Excel spread sheet.

I've uploaded the Excel Spreadsheet I used as an example in that screenshot earlier. You can find it here: [ame="http://files.filefront.com/H2H+DPS+Tablexls/;13576367;/fileinfo.html"]H2H_DPS_Table.xls Download File on FileFront[/ame] . Plug in your H2H skill and barehanded Delay in the respective boxes (it calculates the barehanded DMG on its own), and plug in the weapon +DMGs and +Delays.

In general the weapons have relatively negligible amounts of +stats so you usually just go with the higher DPS one unless the DPSs are practically tied. The main exception is Tropical Punches. If you really want to know, every 2 points of Accuracy increases your chance to hit by 1%, so you could account for it by increasing the DPS of the weapon by that much %. For example, Tropical Punches would have a DPS of 2.4 at your level, and the 10 Acc increases your chance to hit by 5%, so you multiply the DPS by 1.05.

[lufia22]

Re: Confused on how to determine which weapon is better

EDIT: Woops, missed part of your post.

Thanks for the info...will need to get Excel.

[Armando]

Re: Confused on how to determine which weapon is better

If you mean the actual Excel program, you could get OpenOffice. It's free, very similar to Microsoft Office and will open/save to Office's file types.