Top 5 RMEAs To Rank 15 And Why

Even then, for fully melee strat Dyna D, Death Penalty still help with statues. For fully melee strat Omen, Death Penalty still help with unbursted 15,000 magic damage. For fully melee strat geas fete, Leaden will still deal very decent damage.

For mage strategy using ice or water, Leaden will deal amazing damage while continuing distortion into darkness. For other SC Augment QD V will help you deal 60% more fire shot damage (and +90 macc with R15) when you add 10% to the next fire vi.

R15 Chango on the other hand, wont help you much when you are fire bombing Vinipata or Zerde.

COR may not use DP 99% of the time like SAM may use Masa, but thats simply because COR can be part of more strategies.

it doesn't, actually

quick draw counts towards the magic objective. DP helps you land that much easier.

I don't know about hitting 15k without a GEO.

It's possible with rolls/star sibyl. Ninja can even do it with Malevolence x2, Futae, and good MAB with zero buffs. Pretty sure with all the gear (Wizard's Roll) COR gets, it's possible. Just use the proper element.

Given that I was one of the people that told you that NIN could, I'm aware of its ability.

COR is a different story.

(you didn't tell me about NIN but okay (I use donar gun, first to use that with nin mab set)) Here

(you weren't the first)

When you solo, your buffs are pretty limited anyway. Also he assumed you was talking about max buffs, because you was talking about max TP sets with SAM rolls. How exactly you are getting SAM rolls on DNC solo? AFAIK Qultada doesn't use that roll.

If you solo you cant really use meva songs or strong bar spells, so MEVA gear is essential for many fights. Lets take some real example, like Gin. You want to solo Gin on DNC. Darkness SC do nothing, you need MEVA gear to avoid damage and debuffs from his AoE, you have not enough accuracy to use Cento offhand and you are using Fan Dance. Terpsi is clearly much better for this than Twashtar, both in terms of damage and safety.

Other example of relevant solo would be probably some Normal or Difficult ambuscade in some months. You will most likely use Fan Dance too, have no SAM roll again and will probably need to use hybrid set, unless you want to SP zerg it.

Basically for any harder solo that requires emergency healing, Fan Dance, TP in hybrid etc. you will find Terpsi being superior. Now you need to ask yourself "what type of DNC player I am". If you play mainly in groups and have lots of buffs, then Twashtar is clearly a priority. When you use other DD jobs for group playing and you made DNC only to solo stuff, then Terpsi might be a better choice.

Not to derail here, you seem to think that we don't support MEVA sets for some odd reason even though the premise at start was about turtle mode vs tp mode in the thread comments. But I digress.

It seems throughout the thread many ideas got mixed up, and now its much more clear to me personally..

In Group Setup:
As a group, we aim to have high MEVA through rolls, bubbles and songs and on few fights we resort to MEVA sets.

To some, they don't have the luxury of having extra defensive buffs, and there; its fair to call on using MEVA set 99% of the time when ***hits the fan. But that shouldn't be the only option for all groups on all servers Simon... Yes buffs get dispelled, and switching to MEVA sets while rebuffing should be the norm.

In Solo Setup:

In solo situations, you would want to focus more on MEVA and Terpsichore will defnitly pull ahead of Twashtar simply because of its added utility and AM3 shifting the loss of Multi-Hits in your Hybrid set and resulting in a much better outcomes for the fight.

Is Terpsichore worth the price tag for R15? probably for a hardcore Dancer, but I doubt you're going to solo 90% of the time to justify it for everyone..

Maybe its false assumption, but from many posts here I VERY rarely see something like "oh this piece of gear is great because it has high meva" unless its a RUN discussion. Even on PLD thread someone recently mentioned full volte armor being great to avoid many shitty debuff and many people were like "Oh thats super interesting!" while I was like "but damn, that what obvious since I saw the gear added in patch". Also whenever I see discussion of avoiding Mijin damage from NINs (wave 1 and 2) in Dynamis, I see only people talking about to use MDT sets, while MEVA set is by FAR superior for this. MDT set will reduce damage from 4000 to 2000. MEVA set will reduce damage way below 1000 or even way below 500. Same for stuff like Omen bosses or even midbosses. Interference hitting for 1500 damage, because you lost shell and whm is busy? Everyone will tell you to use MDT set and you will still eat tons of damage. MEVA gear drops Interference damage to like 200. When I was in my previous linkshell when there was many experienced and new/returning players, we were having 1-2 DDs on midbosses or bosses, because more would cause wipes. People being constantly cursed, slept and eatting tons of damage. You couldnt afford to use meva songs, because BRDs were regular brds with 3 songs and needed to use melee buffs for avg geared melee to be able to be relevant in dealing damage. None mentioned meva gear then, which would be an easy solution for all dd jobs excluding WAR and DRK, because Volte is not easy to get.

I just dont see enough arguments of MEVA being a solution for many things (and it is a solution for many things) while MDT sets being talk a lot and in 95% of examples they are worse (especially when you have Shell V on top of MEVA gear). Also arguably I would rather TP in Turms, Kenda, Volte with melee buffs/bubbles, than TP in max TP set with Carols, Runeist, Vex, Languor. You can switch to and out of MEVA, but you cant change rolls, songs and bubbles that fast, especially when you used JA to enhance them and dont want to lose that effect.

Could hit 15,000 without a GEO


This was with lucky number wizard roll and star sybil

Why won't you have a GEO in melee strat though? should have like 1 GEO in each DD party and probably 1-2 GEOs in tank party?

With Malaise, lucky wizard roll and no star sybil

My equipment aren't BiS either, so Afania will probably have an easier time doing this =o

do shots even count for the magic obj? Though it was only for casted stuff

Going back to topic of this thread..

Assuming we talking about priority in going from rank 0 to rank 15, not from nothing to rank 15, then:

SS tier:
Apocalypse - Beside huge bonus to WS that is the main reason to use this weapon, you also gets nice drain bonus and its very useful to close Darkness with Catastrophe to cap HP, then use drain III
Annihilator - Beside huge bonus to WS, that is the main reason to use this weapon, you also gets 5 sTP
Masamune, Twashtar, Verethragna, Caladbolg - Beside nice bonus to top WSs and base damage, they also have stats increases that boost other WSs and/or dDEX and/or fSTR
Liberator, Tizona - beside both getting big boost to top WSs, they also gets huge base damage increase. Now Tizona gets +30 acc which is VERY useful for using Thibron offhand and 30 macc is very nice too for BLU. 30 macc for Liberator on the other hand is very useful to land those absorbs and 30 acc helps to land very important additional hits on mythic WS.

S tier:
Chango, Trishula, Lionheart, Fomalhaut - Nice bonus to top WSs and base damage.
Death Penalty, Gastra - Big boosts to top WSs and macc, but base dmg bonus is mostly irrelevant.
Spharai - Huge boost to WS, but WS itself is barely competitive with this boost, but big boost to base damage and counter damage.
Terpsihore, Epeolatry, Ryunohige - Big boost to relevant WSs, very big boost to base damage. Even more accuracy on those jobs let you to switch at least food to more offensive one.
Armageddon - Good boost to relevant WS, STR helps with fSTR for Crit build and all physical WSs, Agi helps with most important WSs and makes this weapon even more superior for niche needs of extreme accuracy builds.

So, Kenkonken is the best PUP weapon for everything except for THE TWO MOST RELEVANT ASPECTS OF THE JOB (by an overwhelming margin)?

Kenkonken is a great melee TP weapon, with or without your puppet fighting alongside you. Or even a pet-only weapon, IF (big if) you can reliably get AM3 up. But that's really a tiny fraction of what PUP typically does over the past couple years (and I'm not coming from a place of PUP ignorance - I have Kenkonken and have been a die hard PUP since Aht Urghan, and I use PUP regularly in current high end content).

Tanking? You're better off with Ohrmazd or Midnights.

Pet only? You're better off with Divergence H2H, Ohrmazd, or Ohtas (unless you're riding Mythic AM3).

Nuking? Better off with Divergence or Ohrmazd.

Kenkonken looks badass, it has uses for melee, and it even retains use for niche situations with stuff like swapping it in for lower burden on maneuvers when you don't care about wiping master TP (though it makes no difference whether or not you augment it, and there's a not much worse alternative in Midnights that basically does the same thing). But well over half of the time I'm on PUP, I'm using a weapon other than my Kenkonken.

This quite obviously doesn't compare with something like Death Penalty in terms of making a job considerably stronger for relevant current FFXI content.


Count me as a skeptic about placing Spharai in "S tier" based on counter damage (requiring MNKs to face tank the mob...). YMMV if you run with a group utilizing MNKs in that way, but I think that's pretty niche. Final Heaven is also lame.

Base damage is comparatively more helpful on H2H than other weapon types, I'll give you that. But if that's your main argument, Godhands trumps Spharai. And either one still falls short of the considerably lower DMG on Verethragna (thanks to huge amount of STR, bonus to a strong WS, AM3 white damage, low delay). Hell, doesn't the lower DMG Ambuscade H2H even beat Spharai on a pure DPS perspective, due to better stats (DEX STR acc) and the crit: STP effect? I'm not super up to date on that comparison, but IIRC Karambit is competitive for 2nd place DPS behind Vere. And if we're in the territory of an RMEA being on similar level to an Ambuscade weapon, that's not an RMEA that I'd be advocating as "S tier" for the improvement it brings to the job.


That accuracy claim feels like a big stretch to me. These certainly aren't bad weapons to upgrade, but do you really think 30 acc on weapon is gonna regularly be the make or break amount determining whether you can drop acc food (probably acc +100 from NQ sublime sushi)? DNC and DRG have a lot of accuracy anyway, meaning that in situations where you might cap without acc food, there's a significant likelihood you're doing so even without that 30acc augment on weapon.

Epeo is an even stranger call. There's a good chance that if you're using Epeo for the safety it brings, you probably still want to use defensive food regardless and just slip into more offensive gear when safety allows (e.g., Battuta up). I guess there are situations where the acc could be relevant to RUN offense, but those are niche.


This I'm down with. AGI+70 in particular is fantastic, helping Racc, ranged crit rate, and all marksmanship WS. And people seriously sleep on the amount of white damage you do with AM3 on a ranged weapon, we're talking about damage equivalent to a modest WS on half of your crit procs.

Also very underrated for enmity control purposes: people love to praise Annihilator for that (and rightly so), but Armageddon can rely on extremely low-enmity Wildfire when applicable. And specific to RNG (sorry COR), Armageddon also helps Trueflight quite a bit (inherently lower enmity as a magical WS) and even pump up the effectiveness of Decoy Shot to plant more hate on a tank with stronger AM3 TP shots/crits.

The best Racc/white damage/Wildfire weapon, coupled with being basically the second best option for every other ranged WS, AND the second best enmity control ranged weapon, AND you can use it on two jobs... Not a bad call with all that wrapped up in one gun, especially if you aren't interested in specializing and making multiple RMEAs for RNG COR.

Just as far as Spharai/Karambit, Spharai is better. it would be a different story if asuran fists was good. (the difference is pretty small, but having free counter+ is lovely........ when it's useful) and one more piece (emp+3) with WSD should make Final Heaven the best WS (situationally, at 1k, without footwork, without impetus) It might be now, I don't know if the sheet has proper final heaven +%, it's still using 95% hit rate, so probably not.

They're still clearly below vere and godhands

It was more about how much Spharai gains from R0 to R15, not as good is Spharai R15 compared to other H2H. Final Haven with R15 Spharai becomes competitive with other options at 1000TP, so using it for AM and/or as skillchain linker is no longer a damage sacrifice. Spharai gains same 24 damage as Godhands, but has less damage at R0, so that 24 damage is more % increase. Counter damage is normally nothing superior, but if you have Spharai and use it for situations where its advantages works best, then that counter damage is very nice bonus from R15. All that imo justify putting augment for Spharai in S tier, doesnt mean Spharai itself would be in S tier REMA.

Fair enough, thanks for the insight. So still... I get putting Verethragna up there in RMEA rankings (for people who can get over it being for MNK...) I could even understand Godhands, since it's a nice improvement to DMG for a good weapon, and that matters on H2H and the Aeonic TP Bonus remains useful.

Spharai lag behind both of those top 2 for DPS (and are close to the Ambuscade weapon). So I really can't see suggesting Spharai among the top RMEA to augment, when it's at best a 3rd place DPS weapon for a somewhat non-meta DPS job. Unless you're seriously making use of that counter enhancement - and while that use case might justify it for a particular player, I have difficulty accepting it as a suggestion for an overall RMEA recommendation.

EDIT:
I get that it's a solid improvement to DMG versus R0. But hell, you could also say that about other RMEA that are still not going to be competitive options (Sup, Nagi. I see you over there, Amano.) And the topic and OP were pretty clear to me:

That doesn't say "which RMEA gain the most from going R0 to R15". If R15 augments take a weapon that wasn't very competitive at R0 and make it competitive (Kikoku is one example that has a case here), that warrants inclusion. If an RMEA was already a monster at R0 and continues to be so at R15 (say, Masa), that deserves to be there. If an RMEA lagged behind relevant alternatives at R0 and still lags behind at R15 despite some improvement... not really what the original question asked? At least, that's how I was interpreting things.

That's the problem with open ended "tier lists" like this. And why my first page answer is the best answer.

To many ways to define the list.

If we were to just let you /endthread with a single post how are we supposed to waste all our time shitposting and arguing with each other?

Not sure why you are getting impression that Spharai is so far behind other options in MNK arsenal.

You can check in my post here that R15 Spharai is only significantly behind Verethragna and only during Impetus up and Veret with AM3. Godhands is better than Spharai with Impetus down, but only by 7%. Now those numbers dont include counter damage at all, so if you have hate on MNK, R15 Spharai would probably catch up to R15 Godhands easily. Those numbers also dont include self SC options. For MNK solo DD with Impetus down, Spharai spamming Final Heaven for self light would beat everything else, including Veret spaming Vsmite. Since MNK this days is mostly used for doing damage without feeding much TP, you will more than often be only DD and will tank too, so both counter and self SC will apply.

I would say, that at R15, Spharai is easily 2nd most useful H2H for MNK. Just behind Veret, which is in SS tier in my summary.

That's the whole thing, if I'm going to use MNK it's going to be because I want the things Spharai have to offer. Of which vere/glanz/godhands have none.

If I want damage, not taking MNK at all.

So does that make Spharai the best MNK weapon? No, but yes. Definitely yes. But also no.

Does that defeat the whole purpose of trying to quantify a hierarchy? Yarp.

It's too much of a loaded question. Turns into another "it depends" debate like everything else. Spharai + Verethragna both have their place for Monk, and they really shouldn't be compared to each other directly, but rather, to the role you're using each weapon for. You don't compare Caladbolg to Apoc when it comes to survival since that's a no brainer where Apoc shines. Have to keep the weapons in relative perspective (everyone only sees damage output).

I kind of like that the augments on Relic were job specific vs the other weapon types, which were basically dps increases. Had they went the Su5 route and gave all weapons variable choices (a damage+, tping, and unique path), it would have been a more interesting discussion.

Got me there.

Why are you even making comparisons based on dismissing the best JA MNK has, which you can keep up for 3 of every 5 min? (or even more with COR resets, revitalizers, etc.) Impetus and the 95%->99% h2h acc change is the big reason MNK became a lot less LOL this year... so I can't understand why it's relevant to cherry pick more favorable comparisons for Spharai based on Impetus down. You'd never really see that situation in real play with a competent player using their useful JAs.

1) Spharai is somewhat worse during the minority of the the time when you can't use Impetus.
2) Spharai is a lot worse during the majority of the time when you CAN use Impetus.
-----
QED, when you combine those for the overall picture... Spharai wins somehow? I don't see it, sorry.

Again, I'm not saying you can't find a use for Spharai if you're regularly employing strats with MNK face tanking the mob and using those counters. If so, and you know what you're doing, great - upgrade those bad boys, you do you. However, I would consider that quite a bit of an "alternative" approach to how most people play FFXI, and something more suited for MNK forum discussion than the general purpose topic that most people here seem to be understanding this to be.


There's no reason you can't use a real tank with low TP feed DDs, even on stuff where you're extremely worried about reducing mob TP (tank can always turn if needed, a tank in turtle gear tends to have terrible acc anyway, etc.). But yeah, I guess there are limited situations where it's workable to just let the MNK eat everything.


I do think it's great that any discussion will eventually end up as a MNK cluster**** if you just wait long enough.

SSS tier: any FFXI discussion involving MNK
Trash: everything else

Looking for fone to come Chi Blasting through the wall like the Kool Aid man any moment now.

I dont see removing SAM roll change my point. If anything SAM roll benefits terp more than other weapons since it devalues white dmg on twash and stp on aeneas.

checking spreadsheet without sam roll rq.
Terp taming: 2.80 round ws
Twash taming: 2.94 round ws
Aeneas taming: 2.75 round ws

Lol, aeneas TP faster than AM3 terp without SAM roll. Twash isnt far behind too.

Personally, I solo with 5 trusts from time to time using a tauret and I have no issue connecting 3 or 4 steps at least 80% of time. So the argument of "need terps TP speed solo" doesnt make much sense to me. Theres no way Im sacrificing the SC dmg from rudra for mythic AM3. Especially when math shows that twash and aeneas are both stronger weapons without sam roll.


if you want to pick that one NM thats just not ideal for SC as counter argument then sure? Pretty sure on most of the mob SC is still relevant.


I mostly use cor in serious group content and dnc solo at least 70% of time. And I still utilize SCs. In fact I use tauret which is an evis weapon and I still setup SCs. Theres just no way that Id give up SC dmg on a job that has the highest SC bonus in game. If I just want to spam the same WS over and over without ever SCing cor blu war drk are much better job than that.

If you want to argue that fulltime meva set has value then go ahead. Im not arguing against it. That wasnt my point. My point has always been about the importance of SC dmg in solo DD play, and SC dmg favors rudra. Also aeneas twash has 0 issue getting TP fast enough to connect WSs. So far nobody has prove that the point above is false.

As hard as I go for PUP 24/7, 365...it is situational like DP and cannot compare to DP. There's some arguments even I won't bother making.

How on earth you manage to get into conclusion that I assume situation where you cant use Impetus as main scenario to compare monk weapons? >.>

From start Verethragna, which is the only weapon that significantly beats every other monk weapon during Impetus, was in SS rank in my first comment and in my last comment I said Spharai is 2nd (second, not first) most useful h2h for MNK.