Best Sword Combinations Now?

I'm guessing it's more about if you're pdif capped or not. The thing with naegling is the bonus atk% per buff. But of you're capped already then yeah.

Does Naegling effect increase attack when AM3 is up as a positive buff icon?

Obviously not. You can't main hand naegling and get aftermath.

Afterglow effect, maybe.

I prefer Icingdeath and Twinkle as the ultimate sword combo

Ingeloakastimizilian?

I don't want to go back to find my post about it, but Naegling vs Sequence discussion is an old one and Naegling will almost always win for RDM Savage spam in practical scenario, unless you are not capping you accuracy on additional hits.

I thought the effect worked in offhand, just not the bonus damage to savage blade?

all those things are MH only

Anything after Main hand: applies to main hand

What would you pair with Almace mainhand and where would it place in this hierarchy?

I still think that tier list has something that leaves me skeptic, in addition to the absence of Almace (which probably would place high for solo content because of constant Light, but that's clearly not the type of tiering the author was tryin to make)

I can believe that his spreadsheet showed Sequence/Thibron beating Naegling/Thibron.
I think in a real situation though (a long-enough parse, for instance) things would be the other way around and Naegling/Thibron would win over Sequence/Thibron.
Spreadsheet tend to underestimate TPgain and TPoverflow, it's hard to efficiently simulate that.

A Parse (or a Sim) would be more accurate, in that sense.



Back to your question Blind, I think a Colada with Perf/DM augments and lots of DEX probably still is BiS as an Offhand for Almace builds?
Naegling could be a cheap (and inferior, but still valid) alternative if you don't want to bother with the random aspect of augmentation.
Naegling is nice as an all around OH weapon to be fair, gives a lot of other "secondary" stats that won't directly affect your raw DPS in a zerg fight, but will still be precious for pretty much anything else.

Just my two cents :x

Zantetsuken, Naegling and Colada are all good offhand options for Almace. Like Sechs said, I would assume that a Colada with enough dex (it would have to be like +30DEX DM aug if that’s even possible) is the best OH option, however I don’t think a perfect non-DM aug would be enough: +20DMG +15DEX +25ACC/ATT +4DA/+3CRIT/+5STP. Otherwise Zantetsuken is pretty much ideal (str, multihit), and Naegling isn’t too far behind (assuming accuracy isn’t an issue).

In terms of the hierarchy Shozo posted, I’d guess r15 Almace/Zantetsuken would place a bit above Tiz/Almace (~200-300 DPS higher ignoring skill chains) and Almace/Naegling slightly below that: so both second after tiz/thib.

Given that Almace/Zan, Naegling, Colada would perform roughly the same tier as Naegling/Thib, it appears like Almace would be a niche weapon for situations where you want to exploit light skillchain damage. And considering the cost of making one, that time/gil might be better spent in other areas. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Your ignoring AM3 effect on Tiz/Almace for the procs during CDC, those aren't a small increase to damage.

For Almace offhand, you would need a very high augmented DEX / TA Colada or possibly Naegling or Zan. Zan is kinda weird because QA 3 is only ~9 DA worth of MA and STR does very little for CDC, which is what you'd be using with an Almace.

Given the current state of gear/content, I think you aren’t wrong at all in thinking that. That said, Almace can be used by RDM and PLD, so even though it is niche for all three jobs you may still find significant mileage out of it.


You are right that Tiz/Almace is a great combo for cdc spam. However the question was about offhand options for Almace and how they fit into Shozo’s simplistic hierarchy of weapon combo dps.

In this narrow view, spamming CDC using r15 Almace main hand with a reasonable offhand will out-damage r15 Tiz/Almace. This is mainly down to the power of the empy r15 aug and the fact that cdc scales super well with ftp mods and multihit (you can think of the r15 +10% CDC dmg as +0.173 ftp (.183 if using fotia neck instead of jse), applying to each hit). I can go into more detail on why Almace is clearly the (theoretically) better CDC weapon in terms of raw damage, but in actual practice/according to spreadsheets: Almace is the best CDC spam sword.
About your comments on Zantetsuken though, I disagree with the base assumption that ~9 DA on an offhand is insignificant (if naegling had 9 DA it would be by far the best offhand). Second, fSTR is a component of all physical weapon skills (can be thought of as approx. ~20-25% mod) and STR also gives attack which contributes to pdif. So while, sure it would be nice to have DEX instead (Crit chance and dex mod), high base dmg, low delay (lower is better for dual wielding), 15 STR, a bunch of acc/att, and 3 QA is nothing to sneeze at.

edit: I realized my personal spreadsheet gives almost the same numbers as Shozo's and found that he was likely using Expiacion for his Tiz/Almace numbers, which makes sense, but I assumed it was CDC in my earlier post. Therefore amending the list to give a reference point for Almace CDC options (again ignoring SC damage):
I want to point out that spreadsheet results like these are just one reference point and are far from definitive. They are really just automated napkin math.

You make it way too complicated here. 10% to whole WS is 10% to whole WS. It doesn't matter at all if it's WS with replicated fTP or not. If CDC does 30k without 10%WSD from Almace augment, then it will make 33k with Almace augment (ignoring base damage and 20 DEX to make it simple).

Now replicated fTP means a lot for MA proc. MA proc means much more on WS with replicated fTP (assuming it replicates fTP higher than 1.0), so Tizona AM3 is actually much more valuable on CDC.

I wrote big wall of text, but I decided to just delete it and sum it up in very short info.

Almace/Zan would win with Tizona/Almace for CDC, but it's very close. Almace would have ~6.8% stronger CDCs, but Tizona would have ~8.3 to 8.8% (depends if SAM roll is on or not) more TP per round. What would make Almace win is Melee damage, because of AM3. It wouldnt be much tho, because melee damage is not a big part of BLU DPS.

Now the far more important part imo. Max TP set (3/5 Adhemar, Samnuha, 6%TA Herc Feet) has only ~2.3 to ~7.7% more TP per round advantage (again depends if SAM roll is on or not) over 5/5 Malignance, when using Tizona/Almace. Now for Almace/Zan Max TP set has ~11 to ~16% more TP gain over 5/5 Malignance.

That means switching to -30%DT and stupid amount of MEVA (all that debuffs slowing your DPS can gtfo!) is just a small loss when using Tizona MH, while it's a huge loss when using Almace MH (even bigger when you count in that Almace take more advantage from crit rate/damage from Adhemar, because of relying slightly more on Melee damage). So I wouldn't even think about it 1 sec and would go Tizona MH 24/7.

I agree with you completely, though if you are trying to respond to my posts: I think you may have not read the context. Blind asked "What would you pair with Almace mainhand and where would it place in this hierarchy?"

The question was never whether Tizona is a better REMA for BLU than Almace; anyone that has both will use Tizona over Almace MH if not simply so they never have to worry about having mp. Though I do appreciate the analysis regarding the new lilith armor.

I want to make sure I understand something correctly. When comparing Almace/Zan to Tizona/Almace for CDC spam you say I take this to mean that Tizona/Almace gains TP faster than Almace/Zan.


Later when comparing those sword combos and how much they lose in TP gain when using 5/5 Malignance you say I take this to mean that Almace/Zan gains TP faster than Tizona/Almace, otherwise it wouldn't have lost 16-18% more TP per round than Tizona/Almace in this situation.

I don't think you would assert that Tizona/Almace TPs faster and then a few sentences later assert that the opposite was the case, so the misunderstanding must be on my part. Where is my mistake?

Yes. Tizona AM3 provides a massive amount of multihit, allowing Tiz/Almace to gain TP faster than Almace/Zan if all other gear is equal.



No. He's comparing each weapon set against itself if you replaced the common max TP set in current use with 5/5 Malignance armor. Both sets of weapons gain TP more slowly with 5/5 Malignance, but the effect is less noticeable with Tiz/Almace thanks to its redonkulous AM3.

Both weapon setups are assuming AM3, right? Mythic AM3 provides a lot of multiattack, which may get somewhat marginalized if stacked on stop of a TP set that already has a good amount of it. It's still better, but you're not seeing the full benefit.

TP'ing in 5/5 Malignance, however, means dropping a lot of that multiattack (accessories only at that point). The Tizona setup shifts to leaning on previously-wasted AM3 multiattack, where the Almace just doesn't have anything to offset it and sees a greater decline in TP gain.

Tizs AM3 also increases CDC damage noticeably, something spreadsheets don't account for usually. Tiz to 3K expacion the CDC spam with lighs every other WS. Expacion is actually kinda weak at 1K like Savage is. At 2K it becomes a monster, which is why all the Thibron craze. CDC is the exact opposite, strong at 1K with very low damage growth from TP. Almace is really a better offhand then main.

Like Meeble said, but I made huge mistake there (it edited now).

I forgot about 3% QA when calculating Malignance set for Almace/Zan, so it's Max TP set has 11~16% more TP per round over 5/5 Malignance, not 16-24%. I'm sorry about that.


I included that. For CDC, Almace/Zan has 10% augment, 20 DEX and 15 STR advantage, while Tizona/Almace with AM3 has on avg 6.8% more fTP . Overall Almace/Zan will have ~6.7% stronger CDC (I calculated it using current optimal set).

Thanks for clearing that up everyone; sorry for my misunderstanding.

Is this assuming uncapped delay reduction for the 5/5 Malignance, or did you compensate for the missing 6 Dual Wield with traits and accessories?

It assumes Reiki + Eabani. Max TP set assumes Suppa and Adhemar body and Windbuffet belt+1.

Just want to point out that I find Almace/Zant to be the best sword combo for soloing Lilith on E. Short enough fight that getting 3ktp for AM3 isn't worth it (and she can use a tp move to limit max tp to 1k), and 3-4 CDCs is all you need to kill her.

Either /RUN 2xLux to deal with dread spikes from Dark Thorn or be a god and turn around and geist wall (first form is more resistant to blank gaze).

I was looking through the posts and might have missed the answer so im just gonna ask again. When talking about tiz/thib being the best combo is that assuming r15 tiz?

R0 Tizona/Thibron would probably also marginally win with other options, but R15 bonus is really good. Both for Expiacion damage and for less accuracy problems on Thibron from that +30 accuracy.

Thank you for the clarification