steel cyclone vs raging rush

[Throgar]

which one deals more damage?
oh and which is the best buyable greataxe?

[hexx]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

Well see, Steel Cyclone is situational at best. Raging Rush (or if you finish Nyzul King's Justice). Steel Cyclone is best used when you are /thf and stack it with SATA (and Warrior's Charge if possible) for some psychotic damage. Of course, you need to have a decent STR/VIT build for it as well. Raging Rush and King's Justice are good meritpo WS but for either one you also need a fair amount of STR (and DEX in the case of RR since it has a crit mod).

[Lmnop]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

STR/Attack(/Acc if you're not /thf). Only put VIT in slots where you don't have one of those 3 available in meaningful quantities. Steel Cyclone at 300% tp (for instance, fighting imps and you're just now un-amnesia'd) else use Raging Rush.

If you have King's Justice, It's probably still not as good as RR. I use KJ a lot (because I like to play with my Seismic Axe and I just have to hope it's true that it ups KJ damage), but I still use Raging Rush when Berserk is down.

If something has high-ish defense (most melee-able endgame NMs), you're probably gonna be happier with Raging Rush.

Assuming you won't be happier with it anyway.

Summary: use Raging Rush.

[Throgar]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

ok, thank you for the infos. ^^

[Malacite]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

Steel Cyclone is primarily used when going WAR/THF at events like sky, and only with 300 TP (200 if using Martial Bhuj) because it's modifers are crap at 100 and 200, but at 300 it becomes beastly.

Typically you'd do Sneak Attack + Trick Attack + Warrior's Charge for a guaranteed critical hit + double attack, all hate-free.


But for pretty much everything else, King's Justice should be your bread & butter WS. There is a massive comparison thread over @ BG, but KJ does tend to win out thanks to it's 50% STR modifier (and it can also make Light)

[Callisto]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

STR/Attack(/Acc if you're not /thf). Only put VIT in slots where you don't have one of those 3 available in meaningful quantities. Steel Cyclone at 300% tp (for instance, fighting imps and you're just now un-amnesia'd) else use Raging Rush.

If you have King's Justice, It's probably still not as good as RR. I use KJ a lot (because I like to play with my Seismic Axe and I just have to hope it's true that it ups KJ damage), but I still use Raging Rush when Berserk is down.

If something has high-ish defense (most melee-able endgame NMs), you're probably gonna be happier with Raging Rush.

Assuming you won't be happier with it anyway.

Summary: use Raging Rush.

This is mostly on, a couple nitpicks:

For Steel Cyclone you do actually want to focus on STR > VIT > Attack. Similar to SAM's Yuki/Gekko/Kasha, Steel Cyclone receives a hidden attack bonus, I don't have the exact number offhand, but it's pretty substantial to the point where you want to be aiming for the highest possible base damage before worrying about attack.

Raging Rush is a critical hit-based WS, meaning that it has low modifiers and the bulk of it's damage will come from getting crits. As such, it's nice for when you have low attack compared to the mob's defense, since critical hits are essentially equivalent to a large attack boost. You'll want to load up on Accuracy and DEX, as the most important thing is landing every hit, while the second is your crit rate, which is decided by your DEX minus your target's AGI. Having 50 more DEX than its AGI is the capping point, for mobs that have a known amount of AGI you can gear specifically towards that cap(for example, Greater Colibri have 67 AGI, at 117 DEX your crit rate will be capped). If the mob has very high or just totally unknown AGI you can go with more Attack than DEX and just hope to get lucky on crits.

King's Justice, on the other hand, operates best at very high levels of attack. If your Attack is at or near capped, it would generally take 2 or 3 hits of RR getting crits in order to match or beat KJ, which there are not favorable odds for. Capping Attack on merit level mobs is certainly doable with buffs, a good Chaos Roll value, Berserk, and a Meat Mithkabob should more or less have you near cap on birds. As lmnop said, usually it's best to use KJ with Berserk up, then RR with it down, assuming you are also getting a 2nd Attack buff such as Chaos or double Minuet. If Berserk is your only attack buff you'll still want to use RR unless you see an opportunity to close Light off of something like Kasha or Insurgency, then it may be favorable to use KJ for slightly less damage than RR would do for the extra skillchain damage.

As far as buyable Great Axes, it depends on the situation and what buffs you can get. If you have a RDM that can keep steady Refresh on you, Rune Chopper will outdo any of the other buyable ones. If not, Martial Bhuj is probably the next best option, then Gawain's Axe/Balestarius, none of the other buyable ones are really that good outside of those. None of them(except active Rune Chopper) really hold a candle to Perdu Voulge/Fortitude Axe, if you can get access to those go for them ASAP.

The short version: Raging Rush, unless on a very high end mob, then 300% Steel Cyclone. If King's Justice is available, that will beat RR at very high levels of attack.

[Malacite]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

The correct answer for best buyable GAX (in a sense anyway) is Perdu Voulge

I've seen some of the Fey GAX with some nasty mods too though.

[Lmnop]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

Oh fuck. I still haven't done that quest (and I bought the 2nd or 3rd Gax on the server).

Also: thanks Callisto. I'm still a little leery with Steel Cyclone putting on VIT -- especially if you don't know enough about FFXI maths to really want to think about this stuff (my sister would stab me in the eye if I told her Callisto's entire post). Otherwise, what he said about the other WSs is a better description of what I was saying.

If you have the gear to make awesome, reliable king's justices, it's probably time for you to start diving into a lot of damage theory threads.

[Callisto]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

I don't usually pile on VIT just because most slots you get enough STR to make it worth taking that, as that generally does double duty being both the same % modifier as VIT, and adding additional base damage from fSTR(triple duty if you count the slight attack boost, but again that's negligible). For a piece like Genbu's Kabuto though, you're better taking the massive VIT boost than most other options(I think Hecatomb Cap may beat it, would depend on the player's stats without that slot).

King's Justice is really more buffs-dependent than gear-dependent. Like I said you typically only want to use it when you have a very high relative level of attack compared to the mob's defense, which means having Berserk up. The majority of people use Berserk and Aggressor simultaneously, which means you'll have a decent amount of wiggle room in terms of accuracy to allow you to pile STR on, or Attack where you can get very large amounts of it. The majority of your Attack is going to come from Berserk, outside buffs such as Chaos/Minuet, and Food.

Also, you want to always use KJ over RR when Mighty Strikes is up. KJ is essentially RR with higher mods but the inability to naturally crit, when crits are guaranteed you want the higher mods.

[Armando]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

Callisto: Making my life easier since 2006.

[Durahansolo]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

Rune Chopper will outdo any of the other buyable ones

GET TO DA CHOPPA! I like my Rune Chopper when I can get refresh for it, only problems are getting a RDM to do it and wearing a little MP gear since I don't have MP merits yet >_<. Be even cooler if you had a haste setup and if the party would let you get away with /SAM for hasso's extra haste.

[Callisto]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

GET TO DA CHOPPA! I like my Rune Chopper when I can get refresh for it, only problems are getting a RDM to do it and wearing a little MP gear since I don't have MP merits yet >_<. Be even cooler if you had a haste setup and if the party would let you get away with /SAM for hasso's extra haste.

It's also useful for WAR/NIN tanking, capping gear Haste with it makes life a bit easier with Utsu timers. I just have a RDM treat me like a PLD in that situation since they'd be refreshing me anyways if I went that instead. As far as getting maxed out, I've been able to use it in merits fulltiming Hasso/Retaliation with March/March/Haste, it's honestly pretty ridiculous.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

In ToAU area, is a RDM Refresh needed to keep Rune Chopper's latent active, or is the Sanction's auto-refresh good enough?

Is a single Ballad II good enough, or is 3 MP/tick always needed?

* * *
Thread hijack:

As far as getting maxed out, I've been able to use it in merits fulltiming Hasso/Retaliation with March/March/Haste, it's honestly pretty ridiculous.

Speaking of meriting, didn't you promise me some parsed data on damage taken per minute for party without the use of /NIN for DDs?

[Durahansolo]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

In ToAU area, is a RDM Refresh needed to keep Rune Chopper's latent active, or is the Sanction's auto-refresh good enough?

Chopper draws 3MP/Tick and ToAU refresh would provide 1MP so eventually you'd end up draining to 0. Now if somebody had a Ares Body + Sanction Refresh that'd be 2 MP/Tick which would be better but it'd still eventually drain out. I think I recall somebody doing the math somewhere that if you don't get a full refresh you'd end up having like 4.5% haste for 1 hit after each drain or something crazy like that. Its been so long now that I don't even remember where I read it or the exact information.

[Callisto]

Re: steel cyclone vs raging rush

In ToAU area, is a RDM Refresh needed to keep Rune Chopper's latent active, or is the Sanction's auto-refresh good enough?

Is a single Ballad II good enough, or is 3 MP/tick always needed?

3/tick is needed to keep it on fulltime, otherwise you'll only have it active every other tick.

Speaking of meriting, didn't you promise me some parsed data on damage taken per minute for party without the use of /NIN for DDs?

I haven't actually been in a proper merit party in weeks, LS has been kinda dead so no LS parties to speak of and I've been working on DRK when I do have time to flag up

I tried to muscle into LSmate's party of BRD RDM DNC COR DRK WAR as a replacement for the WAR but to no avail, that would have possibly been the best single prospect for getting you defensive parses with me Hasso-hogging.