Guilotine WS Equip Help

Starting to look at some equips for my WS macros, was hopeing for some insight. - Currently 75drk, scyth capped, but i havnt started any end game events yet

I'm not DRK but knowing it's a multi-hit WS, ACC plays a massive part as I'm sure you know.

Looking at the mod I would say use STR as the primary one as that in turn increases ATK and DMG overall. So I'd say concentrate on ACC, STR and ATK in places where the is a major boost of this and not in any of the others.

Again I'm not DRK and not sure on all the equip available to you, but I think it's right.

The first step is identifying your target and if guillotine is going to be the right choice. Honestly, you wouldn't use guillotine on something like Fafnir without significant bard or corsair enhancement. It's just not possible through equipment (though souleater can circumvent that a little) to push through a decent number on something with that much of a level correction.

Now, this is just my opinion of how the hierarchy goes for what to look for. And some qualifying footnotes to follow.

1Accuracy
2Attack
3Strength
4Dexterity
5Mind

That's the scale of importance, but it's not that clear cut. For example, once you hit the accuracy cap, any accuracy afterwards is a waste. Also, there's some gray area with certain equipment combos. Do you use a High attack and Accuracy hand piece (Ares' Gauntlets) or a High Strength and Dexterity Hand piece (Hecatomb Mittens). The best thing I can say, is experiment with all sorts of things as money and luck allows. I can provide you with MY guillotine setup as a jump point for research though. It's a formidable set, unlike most DRK, I have binged a little on Dexterity, and found that the critical chance (any Multi hit weapon skill can critical after the first strike) is worth the loss of a little strength or attack. I'll provide alternatives for things that might be too unreasonable. I've been playing Dragon Age lately so I ain't up to speed on all the new options for equipment after that last patch. I'm sure someone with a little more insight will come.

Vendetta ::: Perdu Sickle or Milliones' sickle.
Pole Grip
Hecatomb Cap
Adaman Hauberk ::: Haubergeon,Hauberk or HQ
HCT Mittens+1 ::: Ares' Gauntlets, or AF+1 Gauntlets.
Hecatomb Subligar ::: Black Cuisses, New Equipment.
HCT Leggings +1
Justice Torque ::: Snow Gorget (I can't differentiate between the two.)
Warwolf Belt**(Augmented with +2MND)::: Cuchulaine's or that New belt.
Amemet Mantle+1 ::: Cerberus Mantle,Forager's Cape.
Raja's Ring
Flame Ring ::: Ulutham's Ring. Millis ring for Set.
Supremacy Earring ::: Assault Earring, Hollow Earring.
Brutal Earring
Bomb Core ::: Fire Bomblet (Too unreasonable price still)

That's just my set, there are better options for sure, but overall that's a functional set. I'm not particularly interested in changing the hundredth's place of decimals in my DPS, so if that's the kind of detail you're looking for, perhaps you should ask someone else.

Just some extra notes. The Perdu Sickle is best if you are maxing out Attack and accuracy, the Sickle has a lower fSTR cap than Vendetta or Millis. In my experience, the Perdu caps around 1250 on Guillotine without crits or double attacks, Vedetta and other fSTR10 (or 11, I forget) Scythes can hit 1500 or higher without a double attack or critical (Bards and Corsair willing).

No. Weaponskills cannot critical unless it says in the description, or used under effect of Mighty Strikes, Sneak Attack or Trick Attack (60+ THF).

The difference is about 30~35 damage at max D/fSTR :p

Focus on ACC. You need like +60 accuracy with 8\8 Scythe merits to cap accuracy vs Greater Colibri without eating accuracy-food.
ACC -> ATK\STR

Well, I post observations, Not copypasta BG forums.

But one thing I will attest to is Multi Hit weapon skills can critical after the first hit. The subsequent hits are treated differently than the weapon skill itself. Critical weapon Skills are treated differently as well. If you would take the time to try it yourself, instead of relying on others for all your info, you'd see.

Again I point out that I say AFTER the first hit. The first strike will never critical unless it is a forced critical or a critical weapon skill.

I've been using Guillotine and other multihits for about 3 years and have never noticed a single damage spike I could not explain while maintaining that critical hits are not possible after the first.

Double Attacks offer the only "anomalous" damage spike, the rest follows a predictable range given by ~3.875Pdif(D + fSTR + WSC) [for 4 hits].

EDIT: Death Scythe +1 has a 2.4%~ deficit in DoT to Perdu by virtue of delay alone, before you consider the accuracy/attack part. The D difference is not very significant and even less so on weaponskill.

I lol'd. At you, not with you.

They don't crit, really. A well-designed test will easily demonstrate this.

Your well designed tests are failures then. Hate to break it to you. ^^


No no no, really though. I could be wrong, I'm not going to get into a lolforum fight over lolweaponskills. I just really do hope you are making you claims off something other than "WELL BGFORUMS SAYS IT, IT GOTTA BE TRUES THX"

If I got paid to research this kind of stuff, or could put it on a job application that "I researched the Critical chance of the Weapon Skill Guillotine" I would actually care to delve into the work it takes to really ascertain what's better.

All I know is When I started messing with critical possibility builds, I noticed a significant, consistent WS average. Damage spikes of 300+ increase or more with no Double attack or buff explanation. Smells like critical territory for me. And perhaps I was too hasty to declare such but it's not like I'm suggesting "Build for crits onry kthx" I assume this person asking about stuff wants to eventually get laid or eat, or something that doesn't involve pouring over a thousand pages of epeens flopping around. So I speak simple.

You're the one making contrary statements to what is common knowledge, so you have to provide the evidence. Eyeballing is not useful. Also why would so many people using so many critical-less multihits all of this time not notice this?

Also, how do you make the deduction that only the first hit cannot critical hypothetically? How are you discerning between them?

There's lots of weaponskills that can crit.
Guillotine CANNOT crit.
Insurgency give random spike dmg nobody can explain.(if i didnt miss anything?)

This, especially the second part. Burden of proof is on you, not me. I'm doing my fair share of mechanics investigations of my own will, but I've no interest in re-proving common knowledge just for you. Sorry.

The first hit is simple to test. /THF on a LVL0 mob. And a few hours. The first hit of Guillotine (And apparently every other Multi Hit weaponskill, but I've obviously not tested them all) is treated differently than the next. I don't have access to the equations for them, or the patience to really explain it anyway. But with a LVL0 mob (IE Huge Hornet) all monster variables are accounted for. Unfortunately they don't last beyond the first hit, so testing ANY multi hit weaponskill is incredibly difficult.

As for why people don't notice, I cannot say. I can speculate that because of Expectation, and people like yourself, they just write it off, unwilling to question it, or more likely, refuse put forth the effort to research it. It's been ingrained by (possible) misinformation that it's not possible, so nobody looks for it.

And you're absolutely right, eyeballing is no way to get true and precise results. But honestly, I can't see why anyone would really take the time to investigate down to the .0001 of a virtual attack. Maybe some people get throbbingly painful erections from mathematics, maybe some people need to compensate for "Something else" and do so in a virtual world, I don't know. I deal on the "Every man's" macro level.

This = Positive Result
This = Negative Result

If they're not looking for that kind of broad strokes, than I don't come highly recommended.

I understand where you're coming from. Burden of Proof and all. Again, if this actually mattered, I'd take the time to do it, but it doesn't. The only reason why I am still posting, is to remove any notation of possible hostility and, since I genuinely want to help the OP, to inform him that I AM NOT dealing on the micro calculation level. I mention the "Crit" thing primarily because I noticed such a positive and consistent boost, and he may or may not see similar results. Perhaps there's something else at work, perhaps not. But I mentioned it and "Possibly" mislabeled it, but I have no doubt as to my observation itself. It is kind of hard to not Notice a 300+ Damage bonus with standard 4Hit TP return every few weapon skills. With or Without double attack gear.

I was testing you with my questions above and you answered correctly and you don't seem unintelligent, so I'm just puzzled where this extra damage comes from. This is probably a very stupid question, but you are keeping buffs constant between things aren't you? Attack boost from Last Resort etc would explain that nicely, but again I doubt you would miss that.

The only thing I can think of is adding DEX to critical is also increasing your accuracy, so the added consistency could simply be landing more hits? You do seem to know about TP return though, so again that couldn't have missed you either.

Do you have evidence of these? I'm not calling you a liar or anything, it would just be interesting to see. If not, whether or not you are correct it is best to work under the assumption that these weaponskills cannot crit, and therefore DEX is only important for amplifying accuracy and is a very minor stat.

it's bad practice trying to attach assumptions to advice, it leads to making the uninformed you give advice to feel stupid when someone proves them wrong and all they have to go on is, "well so-and-so told me so." some of your advice was decent, but you should have left it at that instead of adding your observations as fact.

getting back to the topic:

even knowing that the current model shows the first hit of all WSs gain an inherent acc boost, you still want to push for capping acc on all hits since you're looking at somewhere around 270 damage per hit after outside buffs.

after your accuracy's been taken care of you want to build upon a mix of atk and str. you'll want to take a good look at what's available to you first. generally, after you've capped acc you won't have very many open slots left for str/atk gear. obviously the best options would be anything that contain both, but since that isn't always the case if you can't get 5 or more str, go for atk (unless it's 5 str v. more than 15 atk, which isn't normal and will probably never happen).

figuring this out may seem like a lot but it's only the beginning, if you want to go the extra mile you'll want multiple setups different levels of mob's eva. for less evasive you can drop some acc in favor of places you can get the greatest atk/str boost, for more evasive you'd need more acc gear in your set, if you can't get any more you're better off taking out the GS and using sushi (this normally won't happen with more end-game gear, but it can when you're starting out, GS also pushes ahead on more defensive mobs when you aren't getting any outside atk boosts; minuet/chaos roll).

edited in; the difference in damage you're seeing comes from pDif variation, the damage is more or less randomly generated within max/min values. on higher dmg weapons this varriation can be very large and you'll almost never see completely maxed (or min) values on all hits, but it does happen from time to time.

I'll take that as a compliment about asking if I am checking buffs, unfortunately I'm not able to operate DRK on a subconscious level,and am certain that I do not have Last Resort or any damage boost buffs on. the accuracy "May" be helping, I think I get some odd number like 18.4 TP return with Vedetta and +6 StoreTP. Since a Weapon Skill consumes all TP and THEN executes, I don't think the decimal can hide a double attack I'm not noticing.

And I cannot really "Prove" it. The closest thing to proving would be my compatriots testimony and that's no more reliable than anything I've said. And that's also why I ranked DEX low, but still mentioned it. If someone with a little more drive could mess around and prove it, we may see a new Weapon Skill build revelation. It's more likely that it's just an overlooked detail hidden in SE's damage algorithms though.

If you want to look for it, the method I used to isolate off double attack was simply removing everything double attack related (Luckily none of it has any other stat boosts except storeTP+1) and go from there. The procs look like double attacks, but obviously that's not possible without the ability to double attack. By virtue of damage fluctuation, some (if they exist) criticals in a weapon skill may hide behind "Slightly higher than normal" damage numbers. But if more than one fires in a guillotine, You'll see a weapon skill equal to, or beating even a double attack process.

It happened more as DEX went up though. That's what I'm saying. If you'll reread, I've coincided that "Critical" May have been a mislabel. I know well enough that (melee) damage is randomly generated, so I'm saying what made it hit higher, more often in my experience. But that is all what makes melee testing a nightmare, and why there's really no point in debating it. It worked for me, perhaps it will work for him. I'm by no means suggesting he build DEX only, it's just an additional thing to consider.

And correct me if I'm wrong, pDif accounts criticals as it's max, doesn't it?

non-criticals and criticals have their own min/max values and yes they do overlap, the exact multiplier is being investigated at the moment because when the 2-handed update came around the values were changed. personally I can say I've seen max-non-critical hits do more damage than min-critical hits by as much as 20 damage (perdu sickle, mithkabobs, double minuets on colibri), but without having the parse data or screen-shots I can't back this up.

I knowtice you're also using one of the "odd" ZNM weapons. it's been rumored that these weapons' pDif range tends to average closer to max than normal weapons (seemingly surpassing the cap on rare occasions according to rumor), but there's been no conclusive evidence or testing to back this up.

Apparently you guys got a better science to this then I do. After reading your post, it left my saying so it's not my imagination. Recently I switched from pallas to alky braclets to macro in. ( I have other hand pieces target as goals, but until I catch up to what I want), and since I have felt my average damage output on Gullotine has dropped, where I tend to spike alot higher thru the roof. It has gotten to the point where I wont SE unless I absorb-acc sometime before, just so I dont waste it. Is switching back something I should consider?

Also, I'm thankful you folks out there test damages out there, cus just reading these forums make things easier

Stuff with -dex or -acc isn't very nice for multihits. I'd go with chaos+1 or heca personally.

yeah, chaos+1 are usually preferred for guillotine or insurgency, I'd even use nq hecatomb over alkys. as for SE WSs, there's really no need to use abs. - acc for it in most cases, last I heard some research pointed out SE giving an acc bonus of ~25.

I went with Alkys due to the person running our sky events broke off and made her own l.s and no one has stepped up to take over sky, and I am going through the C.O.P grind at the moment(currently at diablos). I am glad to find out that we can critical after the first strike on gullotine.

thanks for the info

Also I was advised when I got my DM earring to go with Abysal/fowling for ears, so I through my assault earring on AH, and it has failed to sale yet....and i feel its a sign to take it down and keep wearing that earring over fowlings, would this help?

Nooooooo, there is no evidence supporting this other than one testimony.

lol, yeah, WSs can't crit unless specified in their description or forced to through the use of JAs. and yes, assault earring is better than fowling about 99% of the time, lol (ppl like to use fowling over assault for the price).

Thank you for saying it, that is exactly what I thought and what I said. Telling me its a piece worn till 70, i actually felt wrong too when I started examing people and thinking damn, everyone does wear fowlings.

Too bad I cant convince you to jump to my server to prove a point lol

I long ago decided that ffxi is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE at calculating damage. The day a last resort+warcry guillotine did Less damage than a no buff guillotine in the same fight, I gave up.

people try to make the argument of the price on an item makes it situational and this is complete BS. I don't have the most expensive or all of the best gear, but I'm not afraid to admit that I'm just being cheap, lol.

there's being cheap and there's being a stubborn jackass, knowing which is which is just as easy as gauging a person's reaction, lol.