Keeping skilled up

[DakAttack]

I am interested in going War/Thf for obvious reasons. My Warrior is 42, Ninja 30, and Thief 21 so I'm going to have to do some leveling on thief before I begin. I started out at 30 after War/Mnk as War/Nin, and at 42 I'm started to get a little tired of it. I can deal damage real well, nobody can keep hate off of me. I use Sniper Rings that my Dragoon uses, so acc isn't a problem at all.

What I'm wondering is if I can keep both two-handed axes as well as normal axes skill up as War/Thf. It isn't easy trying to keep two weapons skilled up, but would parties mind me switching out GA for an axe and shield or something every once in a while?

I probably already know the answer, but I'm open to other suggestions. ^^

[Rico]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Some parties don't mind, other would. An example once I got 55 I become the offical Rampage whore and they wouldn't want no other Weapon Skill besides that. Once I got my Warrior to 60, people started asking me for Raging Rush at times besides Rampage. My Great Axe was behind from the lvl 55-60 Range so I had to skill it up again. Subbing Thief never interested me once I got to 60, I'd be scared to do SA Rampage I think I'd die from the amount of hate I get, but with NIN sub I still do very good damage and If I do get hate I can dodge about 5 attacks from a mob and by that time the Tank should be able to get the hate back. So basically I wouldn't use Thief before level 60. Just my opinion.

[Omni]

Re: Keeping skilled up

imo, i dont think a party would mind if the 2 conditions are met.
1) your skill lvl isnt so behind where it affects your acc/dmg. 5-6 skill lvls behind seems OK.
2) you switching weapons will accomdate the renkei you are participating in. or atleast, have anohter renkei that works well too.

as for as subbing /thf, i personally feel its not 'worth' it till after you get steelcyclone. just amount of dmg you can do with fuidama+steelcyclone makes up for the loss of utility at that point. but thats just my opinion ^^

theres nothing wrong with being a rampage whore. ive partied with warriors that make rangers sweat on tp gain AND ws dmg. (this was prepatch also). a warrior pal of mine, with some exceptional gear of course, haub+1, snipers, anemit+1, bloodsword and sole sushi would do consistent 700-900 dmg rampages.

[kuu]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Only statics and very lenient people would let you.

You are only fooling yourself if you think it won't effect xp flow.

They gain TPs differently, and make different skillchains, and must be played differently.

And even worse if you're using axe and shield without nin sub. At least war/nin's can get away with a gaxe sometimes by being a trick partner.


If you're there to open light with mistral, you can't do it with a gaxe.
Same with darkness, which is not as used much, due to the problem with having a good darkness opener...not to mention fullbreak is pretty crappy.

[Gaignum]

Re: Keeping skilled up

you dont have to have a nin sub to be a sata buddy, im monk, and i do it all the time, people need to get off this nin everything mentality...
nin sub aint gonna pull crap offa a tank if crap hits the fan unless you got decent size rampage you can throw out.

honestly, in most cases, on the swapping, i generally dont care, and most others wont either, but on the other hand, not a whole lot of wars will do that on my server, its usually one or the other. a good bit of them do that in skillup pts anymore...

in pt setups from 55 and beyond, axe for the most part is going to be your friend for WS compatibility.

as soon as you get mistral, a lot of pts will be looks for light SCs over distortion in my experiences, so consider that.

at 71 with great axe, you can end darkness skillchains with a vengeance via steel cyclone.

oh btw, if your looking for a good darkness opener, look for a mnk, im sure asuran fists will more than accomodate you kuu. asuran + steel cyclone = dead mob.

[kuu]

Re: Keeping skilled up

you dont have to have a nin sub to be a sata buddy, im monk, and i do it all the time, people need to get off this nin everything mentality...
nin sub aint gonna pull crap offa a tank if crap hits the fan unless you got decent size rampage you can throw out.

honestly, in most cases, on the swapping, i generally dont care, and most others wont either, but on the other hand, not a whole lot of wars will do that on my server, its usually one or the other. a good bit of them do that in skillup pts anymore...

in pt setups from 55 and beyond, axe for the most part is going to be your friend for WS compatibility.

as soon as you get mistral, a lot of pts will be looks for light SCs over distortion in my experiences, so consider that.

at 71 with great axe, you can end darkness skillchains with a vengeance via steel cyclone.

oh btw, if your looking for a good darkness opener, look for a mnk, im sure asuran fists will more than accomodate you kuu. asuran + steel cyclone = dead mob.

War/thf aren't SATA buddys, they SATA on a SATA buddy.

And any a mnk that can asuran for good damage, would be almost doubling your TP with a slow gaxe.

That is why you rarely see asuran -> cyclone, because it's a lot better to INSTEAD mistral/decimation -> SATA DK(and light to boot for your weapons/bones) which is so much better TP wize to set up.

Unless you got a war that refuses to take hate, most wars post 65 will always sub /nin in xp pts.

On HNMLS though cyclone is useful.

[LadyPeorth]

Re: Keeping skilled up

If you go /NIN, expect to use axes.
If you go /THF, expect to use G.Axes.

/THF with a single axe and a shield is just sad.

Most of the time though...people will want you to Spampage

[Gaignum]

Re: Keeping skilled up

"War/thf aren't SATA buddys, they SATA on a SATA buddy."

did i ever say they were? no.....

[Lmnop]

Re: Keeping skilled up

what the hell? this isn't allakhazham. People, it's been talked the crap out of. I thought we'd all come to the conclusion that war/thf will always outdo war/nin pre-50. Impaction, you're right to go war/thf. Good boy. A great party is with sam and a nin. This way the sam has to use crappy hobaku for opening Fragmentation for you, but then whenever the nin has tp, he gets to close disto. or if you have a pld, he can just solo his enpi and later, jinpu. you can also get a war/nin willing to tank to do smash axe for you, but this option limits the next topic I'll be covering. Also, I believe nin gets a WS that opens fragmentation too but a lot of them don't seem to like it. Also, if you have a nin tank, you can get a dark knight instead of samurai to open frag with Shadow of Death or whatever. This is nice because see part 2

part 2)
Get a strike shield or whatever and a good axe for skilling axe. When you switch to axe in parties to keep it capped, you switch to disto SC. You've been playing for a while, you know what I'm gonna say. Blade: Rin or Chi to SA Avalanche Axe. Hard to say who wins in WSs between /nin and /thf as far as one-handed axes are concerned, but in my experience, I'd put my weight on /thf. At any rate, you'll still close better distos than a drk/war's slice. Oh yes, of course Enpi will open it too, note that I must sadly exclude Dragoons as though -yes, they can open distortion just fine, they lack a Frag opener to capitalize on your Great Axe time. The idea is to build a party capable of facilitating both SCs. Of course, if you end up with a pld + dragoon party, you can always just do SA Iron Crapfest for good distortion and then switch out to avalanche.

/thf with one handed axe isn't sad. it's 5% less swinging of axes, but identical tp gain. The difference is like 23 swings a fight instead of 22. /nin definately has its benefits, and great axe definately will outdo the single axe, but the axe/shield combo •should• give you about the same combat prowess as a drk/war that never casts spells. That for a half hour for every 3 hours isn't bad when you're kicking entirely too much ass with SA Sturm the rest of the time.

[Armando]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Thank you, Lmnop. About time I saw a smart post regarding one-handed axes.

One-handed axe isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I don't see how they get TP differently if Counter won't come into play since weapons are supposed to get TP at near-equal rates. You CAN do good damage without dual weild and shields DO have their benefits too. SA basically cancels out DW's advantage of getting an extra hit in your WS and the fact that you can SA for a guaranteed critical evens out that extra hit you get every X swings (haven't bothered to do the math but it's at best every 10 swings) from the Dual Weild haste. And SA Avalanche Axe is pretty good since it's a one-hitter. SA Raging Axe isn't too shabby either. I'm not going to touch the subject of skillchains but you can close Distortion and Fusion with Avalanche and Raging Axe respectively. Haven't gotten high enough for level 3 skillchains. I'm not trying to like convert all WARs into the Axe/Shield combo but it's effective and can be done.

As for swapping, other people pretty much summed it up. If it won't interfere with the damage (both DoT-wise and skillchainwise) people won't mind too much. As for skill points...keep in mind that up until 60+ you get 3 skill levels every job level, and every 1 skill point is .9 Attack and Accuracy, so if you're, say, 6 below the cap it's more or less like you have the attack and accuracy of someone 2 levels lower. You can use that as your guide. If you're like 20 below cap you'll probably have to skill-up first.

Sorry if I missed something but I'm at school so I kinda skimmed over the posts. Good luck and have fun kicking ass ^^

[Clibaut]

Re: Keeping skilled up

I'm a 56WAR/28MNK I really like the combo. I think its fun and challenging.

[Lmnop]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Wow, nice to see Armando around again. Just one quick correction: after level 50, it's 5 skill per level for A rank weapons, not 3.

Also, someone said something somewhere and I had to comment... SA rampage isn't noticeably different from normal rampage. It just guarentees the crit on the first of the 5 hits, which could happen anyway. this vs /nin's extra melee swing and meh... really nothing special. if war/thf with one handed axe 55+, things get hairy but I'm not gonna get into that too much... I guess SA spinning axe is cool, and SA Calamity is awesome @300% tp but how often you gonna get that?
As for war/mnk... I miss war/mnk ;_; unfortunately it's falling into obscurity as I don't even like to do events with it anymore because I'd rather be /thf with flee. Nonetheless, I'll keep my mnk sub capped just in case. Maybe I'll get a chance to use it in the 70s...

[kuu]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Thank you, Lmnop. About time I saw a smart post regarding one-handed axes.

One-handed axe isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I don't see how they get TP differently if Counter won't come into play since weapons are supposed to get TP at near-equal rates. You CAN do good damage without dual weild and shields DO have their benefits too. SA basically cancels out DW's advantage of getting an extra hit in your WS and the fact that you can SA for a guaranteed critical evens out that extra hit you get every X swings (haven't bothered to do the math but it's at best every 10 swings) from the Dual Weild haste. And SA Avalanche Axe is pretty good since it's a one-hitter. SA Raging Axe isn't too shabby either. I'm not going to touch the subject of skillchains but you can close Distortion and Fusion with Avalanche and Raging Axe respectively. Haven't gotten high enough for level 3 skillchains. I'm not trying to like convert all WARs into the Axe/Shield combo but it's effective and can be done.

As for swapping, other people pretty much summed it up. If it won't interfere with the damage (both DoT-wise and skillchainwise) people won't mind too much. As for skill points...keep in mind that up until 60+ you get 3 skill levels every job level, and every 1 skill point is .9 Attack and Accuracy, so if you're, say, 6 below the cap it's more or less like you have the attack and accuracy of someone 2 levels lower. You can use that as your guide. If you're like 20 below cap you'll probably have to skill-up first.

Sorry if I missed something but I'm at school so I kinda skimmed over the posts. Good luck and have fun kicking ass ^^

No... dual-wield axe will out TP of 1 axe or Gaxe under most conditions. This is due to the nature of how TP is given, and also the chances of double attack activating.

There is a TP gain thread around for those that want to look at it.

At lvl 50, nin 25, it's slightly faster swing time.

SC wize, wars makes good fusion enders. Raging axe is a weird SC. it can do anywhere from 57 damage to 350+. If you do do it that way in a PT, it assures you of being able to take hate and not get raped. A War/thf SA sturmwind, they are in for a hurting especial with berserk on.

It's a trade off that one will have to decide.

Once you get to 65, there are too many closers, and not enough good openers that can also act as a trick parther, reason, many War's Gaxe skills lag behind. Like I said above, you full break sucks, and darkness isn't really wanted post 70.

[Lmnop]

Re: Keeping skilled up

you are right on many accounts, but there are a few things missing.

First off, Dual Wield DOES increase your damage, it DOES NOT increase your tp rate. As of 50 war/nin, you will be swinging 10% faster than you would with axe/shield. However, you gain 10% less tp per swing, so you end up getting tp at the same rate. Before 50, 5% is 5% more damage, but tp return is the same. I know that dual axes does slightly more damage than axe/shield at any level, but the tp gain is A OK. And in the context I spoke of above, it's fine to take a small hit to your damage for like a half hour if that. Axe caps fast, especially pre-50.

The other thing is that war/thf can take a hit just fine. Especially before 50. Hell, I tanked most of the time as war/mnk. Getting hit doesn't mean your exp is gonna suck. You're still a warrior. Partying with a war/nin DD 50-55 is outstanding. This way he opens with Smash Axe (always seemed to deal around the same damage as avalanche axe. Thank you offhand swing) for the Fragmentation, and he can provoke after the SC. So now war/nin has a quick spike of hate to stem the tide with his shadows until the tank can get it back. It's kinda a whacky layout since hate goes from tank to war/thf to war/nin and back to tank, but it can work well. I did this on spiders in Boyahda with a nin tank.

Another quick note: even though I hate dual-wielding pre-48/50, I'll cede that it's not too shabby @40. Dual CC axes or CC + AF works really well.
CC + AF: DMG 64 Delay 528 STR & DEX +2, Attack +5
Huge Moth Axe: DMG 59 Delay 504 STR +2
Raifu: DMG 63 Delay 504 Additional Effect Lightning Damage.

End up with slightly higher base damage, slightly lower delay. both have ass WSs. Shield Break all the wall.

[kuu]

Re: Keeping skilled up

Nope, dual wield is faster TP gain, besides the double attack activation.

2 points on this is the animation rate, and the natural delay rate. dual wield works to your advantage on both accounts. Then there is the first hit and last hit increase TP burst.

There is a lot of numbers crunching and stuff, but bascially all weapons, even your fist have a natural delay, which is somewhat bypassed with dual wield.