Escha NQ Vs Ambuscade

I recently came back to the game after being AFK for some time.

I've been searching some, but I just can't seem to find a good discussion about this.

At the time I can't afford HQ Escha gear, and the Escha NQ gear doesn't seem very satisfying.

Can we get a discussion going on why Escha NQ would be better than Ambuscade gear or vice versa?

I play Dark Knight by the way.

The answer is simple.

Augments.

The Ambuscade gear tends to be very low in haste and that's quite a problem - especially for melee jobs! The Jhakri set is the worst and it has 6% haste versus a proper 26-27% haste TP set - that's a 20% haste deficit! The difference between 60% and 80% delay reduction is huge.

With 60% delay reduction a 240 delay weapon is reduced to 96 delay. With 80% delay reduction that same weapon is reduced to 48. That's exactly twice as fast as with 60% delay, and so you're sacrificing almost exactly half of your TP gain in order to use a Jhakri set - not to mention that you're also sacrificing lots of DoubleAttack and TripleAttack, too!

This is why BLUs who TP in jhakri just can't compete on parses. It's not that they're incompetent in controlling their character - it's just that they've chosen the wrong TP set!

The Usukane set's haste is fine. The skadi set has 16% haste, which ends up doing 33% less swings, assuming 70% total haste, as compared to someone using the same stats but with 80% total haste. It's not as bad as jhakri but it's still pretty bad.

Ambuscade gear doesn't seem to be so absolutely atrocious performance-wise when used as a m.acc piece for enfeebles or using parts of it in your DT gear for new PLDs, but unfortunately it's less forgiving to use it as a melee TP set. Thankfully only the Jhakri set is so low in haste as far as the melee sets are concerned - though the jhakri is more of a hybrid set than a melee set I suppose.

what Drayco said... Escha NQ is really great, gotta do some research about reisenjima gears and augments in case you aren't considering them as Escha NQ yet... addins some crazyness to reisenjima gear... Dark matter augments are REALLY FACKING IMPOSSIVEL TO GAUGE AWESOME. Gotta be rich boy first~

If only there were other types of gear that commonly had a lot of haste, where one could make up the deficit.

Belts, maybe. That sure would be helpful!



Anyway, yeah. Augments are what typically make the best gear the best these days.

What's the difference between using Dark Matter and a stone?
Can it be combined with another stone? or do you just use the single Dark Matter?

Dark Matter allows for different augments to appear and slightly higher cap. For example with dm augs you can get refresh on your body, or quad attack, even treasure hunter. There is no category restrictions on it.

But anyone that tell you to use actual dark matter to augment your gear is telling you to waste all your money. You wait for the campaign where you get 6 free uses a day without actually owning any dark matter.

That campaign certified to me that I will never use an actual Dark Matter to augment. /burngil

I imagine a few pieces of the NQ Argosy set are still decent for Resolution. Emicho gauntlets are a nice Store TP piece.

In a more polite tone and with a more accurate view on the use of said belts...

"There are ways to accomodate the low haste with other haste items such as belts and even Ambuscade capes.

Unfortunately, this very method I am mentioning has numerous faults due to giving up potent misc. traits while doing so - namely StoreTP, DoubleAttack, and TripleAttack in most cases. However, it is nice that they allow newcomers to overcome the haste deficit while using baseline gear."

Or you could just be snobby while refusing to give note to the errors in the alternate option you are pretending as if it is the end-all answer to the legitimate problem that I pointed out...

what exactly is the "NQ Escha" gear? are we talking stuff from Zi'Tah? 119 Abjuration gear? even NQ Abjuration gear can be quite strong, depending on the piece, but as others have said: Reisenjima gear with good augments is generally top tier. Ambuscade gear by and large is nothing more than a starter set that will allow you to participate in lower tier fights. sure, the Skadi/Ares equivalents offer a lot of PDT, but beyond that, they are low Haste, high Accuracy/Attack pieces that stomp over the sparks/Adoulin Peacekeepers gear. many of them are outdone by Alluvion Skirmish items, courtesy of the Augment roulette allowing for things like Fast Cast, specific spell type bonuses, multi-attack or sTP. Ambuscade gear always either completely sacrifices these types of bonuses or has some other downside, generally in addition to the Haste issues.

tl:dr - Ambuscade gear is a stopgap to allow returning players a quick leg up, and should be replaced with Reisenjima gear ASAP. additionally, NQ Abjuration still can be relevant for those not boasting a wallet with 100m gil.

When will this campaign come?

whenever SE feels like running it again. =/

I'm assuming NQ Escha Gear refers to Emicho/Argosy sets, which, in my opinion, are still great for entry level dark knight (argosy is good for resolution, emicho acc path is a nice entry level, particularly hands/body). You can normally form your own shout groups and people will join, everyone is always looking for something to grab if you're buying.

Ambuscade gear, as a whole is generally a bad idea, though, the cape augments from Ambuscade do have haste, and there are dozens of haste belts you could use to supplement the deficit in the meantime while you farm some better gear.

Reisenjima gear (Valorous) should be your primary goal, and eventually, if you care, HQ Argosy for resolution. There are many ways to acquire the gears in question, but I would say that you could just start off with the abjuration sets and work from there.

Also, don't melee in Argosy set, ever. I'd rather you use Ambuscade set over that.

Thank you for the info.

About the Valorous equipment. When I check the augments available on Bg-wiki it seems that the only augments that would be interesting is Double attack and Store TP (the rest are pet stuff).

To me it seems this gear lacks in acc and atk.

Can I get augments like this by using a dark matter?

Accuracy and Attack are standard augments (up to 30 each, I think?) as are things like raw stats, -DT, etc. the Reisenjima augment system is REALLY random, and you can expect to spend a lot of stones to even approach what you want.

Re-read the top section on Reisenjima armor augments. Accuracy and attack can accompany the other stats (up to 40 total with any stone).

Derp.. Thanks :)

I saw someone on Asura with Herculean Vest augmented with "acc+50 TH+1 MAB and MACC~"

Could have been a Dark Matter augment.

It obviously was, but im still pretty sure 50 acc is impossible Oo

It's not on dark matter augments

It's not impossible. Dark Matter Augments completely ignore every rule of the augmenting system, and we don't have a definitive answer on the caps yet. The only thing I have yet to see, so far, is JA enhancing augmented gear (not spells or JT).

For instance, Herculean Legs augmented with Chakra +50, or Valorous Helm augmented with Berserk+10. I highly doubt JAs are subject to augment possibilities, as we would have seen it by now. Best I've seen is something like Gilfinder/TH.

They don't ignore every rule of the augmenting system. Dark matter augments function more or less the same as the stone augments but with different slots, augments, and caps.