I figured I’d start with warrior, since it gives me the opportunity to rant about Neptunal Head.
TP:
Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Walahra Turban/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Dusk Gloves/Rajas Ring/Blood Ring
Amemet Mantle/Swift Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Aurum Sabatons
All in all, this is probably the set I’m happiest with in all my jobs. There’s some room for upgrades that will probably never happen, namely a Toreador Ring instead of a Blood Ring, Cuchulain’s Mantle instead of Amemet, and a Velocious Belt instead of Swift.
+10 Store TP (Rose Strap, Brutal Earring, Rajas Ring) for times I’m subbing Samurai for a six-hit build. For all other not-/SAM builds a Rose Strap turns into a Pole Strap.
I love the Rune Chopper. Having +9%Haste in one slot is pretty god damn amazing… when you have a decent Red Mage. See, that latent effect on The Choppa (and, yes, you have to say it that way), is that for 9% Haste, it costs you 3MP per tic. If you have zero MP, then no haste. A Red Mage’s refresh spell gives 3MP per tic. So, a Red Mage has to refresh you in order to get that latest effect. Not surprisingly, a lot of time asking a Red Mage to refresh a Warrior is like the mountain moving to Mohammed. In those instances I just use the good ol’ Perdu Voulge. Ares Cuirass is awesome and all, but I don’t believe it fully activates the latent with it’s refresh effect.
The only problem with The Choppa is the amazing lack of an MP pool I have on WAR. When I weaponskill, I drop down to 10MP. Even though Refresh keeps my MP pool even, if the RDM is slow on the update, I could believably lose out on some haste for a bit. I have one MP merit to satisfy having an MP pool, but I wouldn’t put much more into it than that. This guy nicely explains why (even if it’s from 2006, jesus fuck this game is old and I’ve been playing it for far too long).
When I do get Refresh to feed to The Choppa, I’m suddenly wearing too much haste. +9 from the Choppa, +5 from Turban, +3 from Dusk, +4 from Swift, +5 from Haidate, and +2 from Sabatons, or 28% haste. Gear haste, that is, haste you’re wearing, caps at somewhere between 25~26%, so the number to hit is generally 26%. So I’m wearing excess haste. I have to lose 2 haste, and the easiest fix there is to replace the Aurum Sabatons. I don’t have anything to replace them with though! I could upgrade Ares Sabatons for +7 Accuracy/+7 Attack I suppose, but that seems like such a marginal upgrade from the other nice bonuses Aurum Sabatons provide, especially considering the cost.
I figure the most ideal situation would be to get a Velocious Belt. Then I could come up with a build of something like Choppa, Turban, V.Belt (+6 instead of +4), Haidate, Sabatons. This comes to 27%ish percent, and while still excessive, I could then possibly upgrade Ares Gauntlets, which have a nice +10 accuracy on them, and ideally could even let me switch out the precious (Adaman Hauberk) for Ares Cuirass. Maybe.
Raging Rush:
Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Aurum Armet/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warwolf Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings
Man, I hate Raging Rush.
I hate Raging Rush because of how utterly, stupidly useful it is. I hate Raging Rush because the weaponskill animation doesn’t even come close to what the weaponskill is named. I hate Raging Rush because I have so much useful gear for it.
Raging Rush is one of those pesky “can critical” weaponskills. The more DEX you have, the higher your chances of critting during it are. DEX also increases your accuracy; for every 3DEX, you get 2 Accuracy.
I fucking hate using the Aurum Armet, but it’s the only headpiece I have. I built my Kupo d’etat hat for RNG and Slugwinder, since that weaponskill is stupidly inaccurate, so I can’t build that for WAR. I don’t even have an askar zuchetto to use. No, I’m stuck with +3STR in this stupid slot for probably a very long time. Ideally, I would use a Hecatomb Cap, but I’m pretty sure I will never see one of those ever.
More on that hat later.
King’s Justice:
Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Aurum Armet/Soil Gorget/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warrior’s Stone/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings
I love King’s Justice. It’s too bad that for it’s utility, I really don’t get much more mileage out of it than I do Raging Rush. The nice thing is that this set is much more accurate than my Raging Rush set is. Soil is +10 accuracy (supposedly), and the Warrior’s Stone has the same amount of STR as a Warwolf Belt(5), but a bonus +7 accuracy on top of it.
King’s Justice can’t crit, so the only role DEX plays here is accuracy. Again, that fucking Aurum Armet rears it’s ugly head. Again, the ideal piece here is a Hecatomb Cap. Actually, for something like King’s Justice, I should just replace the Armet with my even fuglier Optical Hat (+10 accuracy), bust WAR AF2 legs out of storage, and use them (+5STR, +1% Double Attack). The real problem there is that I lose five inventory spaces and have to wear the O.Hat for what amounts to a marginal increase(+2STR). Ideally, I’d be using a pair of Haichryu Haidate for the +10STR, but Sarameya never drops that. Ever.
Steel Cyclone:
Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Genbu’s Kabuto/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Ares Cuirass/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warwolf Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings
You may be noticing that, at this point, a lot of my weaponskill sets look the same. This is very true.
Steel Cyclone is probably my favorite warrior weaponskill. I love the animation, and I love that it’s only one hit. I love that I can stack it with Warrior’s Charge and it’s got +75% STR and VIT (hence the kabuto and the cuirass) modifiers… The only thing that sucks about it is that it requires at least 200TP to be useful. Yeah, the big problem with Steel Cyclone is that unless you’re zerging and/or using Mighty Strikes, chances are you’re not going to be using Steel Cyclone. That’s why this particular set doesn’t have very much accuracy – if you’re zerging, chances are you have accuracy songs on you which will make up for any lost accuracy.
This also nicely illustrates the weakness of Ares Body for WAR. Adaman Hauberk comes with a flat out +15 accuracy, and an additional +10DEX on top of it, making it about +21~22 accuracy, on a single piece, let alone the +15 attack and +10STR. The Cuirass, which has more STR and attack as well as refresh, has zero accuracy on it.
So, that stupid Aurum Armet I use has +3STR, +4 Accuracy, and +4 attack. Most WARs worth their salt use a Hecatomb Cap. Except I don’t have one, because I don’t camp Fafnir and in about the ten Odins and one billion chambers we’ve done in Einherjar, we’ve seen ZERO neptunal head abjurations. Also an E.Body costs something like eleventy billion points and I will have no points anymore from here until the end of time to ever get an N.Head even if one does drop.
So, why do I pine for such a piece of equipment?
That is eleven strength on a head piece. That Adaman Hauberk I use, which is a body piece? Yeah, that only has +10 strength. This in of itself is stupid and excessive and ridiculous. However, here is the second best piece you can get for that slot.
You can get this if you level the first fifteen jobs to 66 and can beat the final limit break quest for each of those fifteen jobs.
I would really like to meet the Square-Enix designers some day, because I’ve never actually seen a man shove his head up his ass before. It must be quite the feat.
