WAR builds

[IxX3xil3d0n3XxI]

My WAR just hit 54 today, i cant wait to hit 55 later tonight for Rampage.

Looking onward i see 3 different types of builds for WAR. I see Haste build, ATK build, and ACC build. atk would use sushi, and acc, meat. Seems intresting.

I was wondering what type of gear would be needed for each type and each types effectiveness as well as what you perfer.

The only haste piece i have is the 75 turban, being as haste gear is rather expensive, i do have amnents+1, chiv chain, potent belt, 2 woodmans, ohat, 2 flame rings. and i plan in buying a Maneater and Woodvilles axes when i get closer to the lvl.

Also for earring selection, i have 2 mermans, a assualt earring, and a minuet. I may also buy a fowling, i dont really know which is the best choice for a WAR. Any prefrence?

based of the gear i have, would ACC > macro STR+ ATK be the best one?

Thank you ^^

[IxX3xil3d0n3XxI]

Re: WAR builds

please dont all reply at once now lol

I did some research and i think i im going with ACC gear(with att and str) + meat. I see that setup being good on HNM's since you need ACC for those.

still replies would be helpful

[Jei]

Re: WAR builds

From what I heard, ACC/Attack for TP and STR for WS is what people do at 75. Pre merit, just WS in your ACC/attack gear too. Rampage being a multi hit WS, landing all the hits in EXP mobs pre merit is not that easy without ACC gears.

ACC gears where you can, add attacks where there's no ACC to add. And eat meat @@)b

[tdh]

Re: WAR builds

Y'know, I could have swore I responded to this already. Well, here goes again.

Post Lv.55 and Pre Lv.66 you're going to be Rampaging everything that moves. It's a five hitter with chances to Crit each one. You'll want all the Acc you can get to make sure all hits land to do the most damage. Get Acc and Atk equipment and eat Sushi. Follow Jei's suggestion of Acc in as many slots as you can, and then Atk in all the others. I would only alter one item in that thinking. I'd go with Swordbelt +1 over the Life Belt in most occasions. You have Aggressor and Sushi, and that Atk+12 would be real nice.

Pre Lv.55 you're using Raging Axe and Spinning Axe. I wouldn't be so worried about landing both hits for Raging Axe so I macro'd in STR for that, and the same for Spinning Axe which I'm pretty sure is a 1 hitter.

Post Lv.66 and pre-TP Burners, Mistral Axe is a 1 hitter too. So you could macro in STR, and I will probably do the same thing. Anything to push the number of Mistral.

Once you're in TP Burns, depending on how good your Acc I'd say go with some good Atk food, and let your gear and Aggressor handle all your Acc problems. The Atk and STR from the food, peppered in with the STR from your gear should get the job done. The other option is to build a STR build and with Acc peppered in and eat Sushi. WAR friend of mine uses Flame Rings, Hauberk, Chiv. Chain, Warwolf Belt, Assault & Fowling Earrings instead of Life Belt, Sniper's/Woodsman, or other Acc items. That's STR+23 right there before food, and there are other STR options to add to that build.

I guess the best suggestion is to test it out. Borrow gear from friends and then go buy them yourself if you decide to go that route. For me I will most likely just go Acc until TP Burns, and then add in some more STR and Atk since we're hitting T and low VT mobs.

Just my 2 gil. ^^

[AgentBrownEye]

Re: WAR builds

as a lvl 75 war, i have some insight into this subject. currently i have a str+ bulid, and i eat sushi. if i'm not mistaken i have roughly +28 str w/o sushi. however, i'm lookin into puttin togther a acc/haste setup for tp gain and using my str+ gear + Ohat for ws. i persobally haven't played with swordbelt +1, so i can't judge on that. the reason i'm considering going with a acc/haste build for tp gain is i wanna switch back to meats for the att+ % it offers. but this all will wait till i have the funds ^^

[Tokitoki]

Re: WAR builds

All WARs are going to tell you to either farm up some cash or get materials from your HNM shell to get/make Haste gear.

Ideally, you'll have Walahra Turban, dusk hands, unicorn/dusk feet, haidate, swift/speed belt, and you'll want a suppanomimi if you havent done Divine Might yet. The other slots would be acc for the most part (snipers, hauberk of some kind, earrings slot can be attack or Brutal depending), and throwing in attack in the other slots (Amemet+1, neck depending).

Neck slot is really a great slot if you have the time to spare. You can get a Soil Gorget to help with Rampage accuracy, Chiv Chain for STR, Acc, and Store TP, or Temperance torque for +axe skill. If using Ridill you can throw in a Fortitude torque for the extra sword skill.

If you have neither the time nor money for this, the optimal setup would be an Acc setup with Attk put in the waist (swordbelt +1), back, hands, etc. There is a point when you cna have too much acc, especially with merits, so you do not need to put acc in every single slot you can. Things such as Ohat and Hauberk will let you use other alternatives such as swordbelt, WAR AFII hands, or Spike Fng./Tarasque Mitts.

[Version2.32]

Re: WAR builds

pre-merit parties do the following: for tp gain ATTACK/ACCURACY + Sole Sushi, for weaponskill macro: macro in every STR equip u have but be aware that you should leave some ACC slots too for rampage in order for all the 5 hits land succesfully.
good luck!

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: WAR builds

I have a "balanced" gear setup that gives me +25 accuracy, and I typically eat Sole Sushi. Would I need to swap in some additional +acc gear when Aggressor is down?

Also, I don't have a parser, so I'm not sure if I'm hitting that 85% to 90% accuracy stage. During battle, there's too much going on for me to simply count all the hits and misses. Anyone have an easier way to gauge hit rate during battles?

[Hankthetank]

Re: WAR builds

At 55 gear priority for TP should be Acc > Atk > Str for WS it should be Acc > Str > Atk
Acc is as always of paramount importance, especially at 55 when you first get rampage.

Regarding different endgame builds form my personal experience:

Haste Builds

As far as haste gear, I wouldn’t concern yourself with it until you reach 75 and begin meriting. Prior to 72+ there are really not enough haste pieces available to make a haste build worthwhile.

As a general rule, haste builds are ineffective with less than 10% haste. Your Wally hat is 5% but that will still leave you short 5%. Unless you can get your hands on some more haste pieces, I would advise against using the turban as you only haste piece. (I Do recommend macroing the turban into you Utsu Macros, every little bit helps)

That being said nothing is written in stone and even with 10% there are situations where a non haste build might be more effective. For example when I had only 10% haste and no haste from a mage on high VT/IT mobs, I would opt for a an all out Atk/Acc build as it would perform better.

It should also be noted that in order to make a haste build one must sacrifice something. That something is often ACC or Atk pieces.

Eg. Wally hat replaces 10Acc of the O-hat or 7 Atk of the Valk Mask
Dusk Gloves replace 12 Atk of the T. Mitts +1/ AFv2 Hands or the 7 acc of Adaman Hands.
Byakko Shorts replace the 14 Atk of Dusk Trousers or Atk and Str of Barone.
Dusk feet/Uni boots replace the Atk and Acc of Adaman or Amir feet.
Swift Belt replaces the 12 Atk of a Sword Belt+1 or the 10 Acc of a life belt.

This is another reason why Haste builds are most effective at 75 once you have some merits under your belt. Meriting your weapons can help with the Acc/Atk you lose by swapping out Acc pieces for haste pieces. Even at 75 none but the rarest of players, can do successfully pull off a full haste build without sacrificing something. I have yet to meet a player with 15%+ in haste gear that could eat meat and still parse in the 90%+ Acc range on anything above T mobs. For the majority of the player base using haste build will make you heavily reliant on Sushi. As such Gear should be build accordingly and any non-haste slots should have a priority for +atk when TPing and +STR when WSing.

Advantages of Haste Build:
1. Until you reach the haste cap, haste gets exponentially better the more you add. This is the only stat to behave in this manner. Until Cap haste has no diminishing returns quite the opposite it gets exponentially better.
2. Multi hit weapons benefit greatly from haste since the more chances they have to swing the more chances they have to proc a multi hit.
3. Haste effects recast timers as well, allowing you to more easily tank with lowered Utsu timers. Even if not using a haste build I would still carry any haste gear you have and macro it all into your Utsu timers.
4. Properly built and merited a haste build is the most devastating DD setup for anything other than HNMs.
5. Perma Hundred Fists is cool.

Disadvantages of Haste Build:
1. It’s expensive and /or requires some hard to obtain Rare/Ex haste gear.
2. While it can be the best DD setup, for many people the increased performance is not worth the cost in time and gil to acquire the proper gear.
3. Needs a ton of tweaking to optimalize, without tweaking you will find cheaper builds that can outperform you at a significantly lower cost.
4. +1 Items become more important since you need to squeeze maximum performance out of minimal slots. Items PCC, Snipers+1, etc all become required items if you intend to eat meat, further adding to the cost of this build.
5. No real visible changes. Your hit for hit averages won’t go up, if anything they will drop. WS damage will stay the same or decrease slightly. No real wow e-peen numbers, need a parser to accurately see how well this build performs.

Meat builds
Eating meat is often the most highly desired non-haste setup. You basic goal is to have enough acc in gear to allow you hit a 85%+ hit rate while eating meat dishes to significantly improve your Atk rating.

This requires a significant amount of Acc for an endgame Warrior. You will need 40-60 Acc in gear (depending on camp/target mobs/bard/no bard/etc.) in order to eat meat and maintain an 85% hit rate. Acc is of paramount importance in this setup, load up on as much Acc as possible and allow your food to boost up your Atk. You cannot get as much atk from gear as you can from food like Red curry, so if you can maintain a high hit rate your performance is boosted significantly over a sushi eater. Macro in as much STR as you can for WS, but you have to be wary of swapping out to much Acc especially when using multihit WSs like Rampage.

Advantages of a Meat build:

1. Excellent performance, second only to a blinged out Haste Build.
2. If you plan on meleeing HNMs you will want a high Acc gear setup.
3. Performs equally well with Dual Axes, Multi hit weapons, and Great Axe.
4. Hit for Hit this setup has the most visible damage increase. Both for Regular hits and WSs.
5. Very attractive when I am SCing with someone. In a SC situation it is often better to maximize my hits to 100TP rather than race to 100TP then have to wait and end up with 150-200TP before my partner is ready to SC. (especially, for Maneater users)

Disadvantages of a Meat Build:
1. Meat can often be more expensive and longer duration than Sushi. Eating Red Curry and dying 5 minutes later sucks. Endgame Meat dishes don’t stack.
2. Acc pieces are often expensive. Since you rely completely on Acc from gear, you cannot skimp on any Acc items like a sushi eater could. A sushi eater could TP in Flame rings without noticing a significant difference in his performance, for a meat eater it would be huge. Acc equipment is a must.
3. In order to do this successfully you need a lot of Acc gear. For anything above T/low VT camps you’ll need close to max Acc gear. This makes you inflexible if you find the Acc you have is not enough. You could switch to sushi, but eating sushi while wearing a meat build is far from optimal. You Atk would be low and you Acc would be overkill.
4. This build requires a lot of tweaking to maximize WS performance. Depending on camp location and target mobs, you have to balance how much Acc you can swap out to add Str before your WSs start to suffer.

Sushi Build
In my opinion this is by far the most cost effective build to have, given the extremely low cost of sushi. Basically with a sushi build you are getting the vast majority of your Acc from sushi freeing up the majority of your slots for Atk and Str gear. Try to TP in all the +Atk gear you can and WS with as much +Str gear as you can stack. You will need a bit of Acc but not much allowing you to maximize your STR slots for WSs. 20Acc is usually enough to have a 85%-90% hit rate and can be gotten easily with just a Hauby and life belt or O-hat. O-Hat/Hauby/Swordbelt+1 would be my pick for TPing in.

Advantages of a Sushi Build:
1. Pound for pound you get great performance at a relatively cheap cost.
2. Simple to use. Max Atk for TP and Max STR for WSs. Acc is the most important stat for a war and sushi will pretty much fully address that stat.
3. It is a very versatile build. It’s far easier for a sushi eater to adapt to a higher camp change than a Meat eater to adapt to a new camp. Mainly due to the fact a Meat eater is normally wearing the maximum amount of Acc gear he has, if more is needed there is very little he can do.
4. Very consistent performance, once again requires little tweaking, and will produce solid reproducible numbers just about anywhere.

Disadvantages of a Sushi Build:
1. At the end of the day a sushi build will not be able to out perform a properly build Haste or Meat build.
2. On HNMs if you only have your Acc light sushi build you will have some Acc problems on them.

Ideally you would have all three sets. In order of what set to build first, I would go with a Sushi build first since it offers good performance at a very reasonable cost.

As you look to improve your gear, depending on what haste gear you have available to you I would then go for Haste build or a meat build and both sets will require the same Acc pieces. Byakko shorts are increasingly difficult to obtain on many servers, and they are the foundation of a solid haste build. If I was redoing my build now, without access to Byakko or those new haste shorts form the Black Coffin ISNM, I would probably go right for a meat build.

Hope that wall-o-text helps..

Sincerely,
Hank

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: WAR builds

3. Haste effects recast timers as well, allowing you to more easily tank with lowered Utsu timers. Even if not using a haste build I would still carry any haste gear you have and macro it all into your Utsu timers.

If I understand this correctly, do you mean that the shortened recast timer from haste equipement/spell will remain even if you switch out the gear or lose the spell effect?

I thought the timer would snap back to original duration if you lose the haste effect or change out the haste gear.

[Lmnop]

Re: WAR builds

Negative. You just need the gear to be worn the very moment the spell casting is complete. should also note that in the case of Ichi, you actually have that full 4 seconds to get hasted up. I can start casting Ichi at the same time my WHM friend casts haste on me, and since his spell completes first, I get the full effect of it.

While I don't think you ever need +60 acc for low IT mobs (unless THF type), I like your breakdown, Hank. It's a very nice assessment of how efficient Sushi is, and that it's sort of a stepping stone to getting improved performance, which eventually leads melee to meat (ideally).

I think one prereq of a good meat build is to be able to get enough acc that you never ask a BRD for Madrigal, as it's technically a less efficient song (+15ish acc? vs ~50 attack from highest minuet) and any RNG in your party will hate you if they're getting Madrigal because that's what the melee want.