You are not your... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday, this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. Today's column is a history lesson in FFXI gearing, the Walahra Turban helped to start the time of the cheap haste builds and fundamental changed melee builds forever after.
Ahh, old reliable. The Walahra Turban was the most exciting find the day of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan release. It helped to ring in for all an era that had already begun with certain jobs, the era of the haste build. Once introduced it was possible for pretty much all jobs to have access to a decent haste build from one source or another.
The Stats: In appearance the Walahra Turban was nothing more than a plain looking dark gray/black turban with a white feather, modeled after the Nashira Turban from Limbus. The stats were quite remarkable for the time and are still quite good for some jobs and builds today. The HP and MP bonuses made it viable for both melee and mage classes and the +5% Haste is still the most you can get in the head slot, thought you can build a +5% Haste head piece from the final reward from A Moogle Kupo d’Etat.
The quality of the Walahra Turban is largely dependent on how many other Haste buffs you are getting and your other stats. In high accuracy, high Haste situations, the Walahra Turban is still more effective than almost any other head piece available. As those conditions decrease other items like the Askar Zuchetto come into play with there increase in STR and DEX. Now of course there will be people on both sides that demand that one is better than the other and say you are stupid for picking one over the other, but in like so many places in FFXI it’s just not that cut and dry. The Ace’s Helm is considered to be more effective than the Walahra Turban in almost any circumstance because of the added stats on it.
If we have learned anything from FFXI it is that people that scream and yell about gear are almost always exaggerating to make people believe that their gear selection is the only possible gear selection, and that they are almost never correct. The corollary to that and probably the only iron law of FFXI is that “shit is situational”, a meme created from the Blue Gartr forums that pretty much describes any gear choice in the game. What you can know that is the Walahra turban does you good for a whole lot of jobs and you should have one when you get to 75 because almost every job can get use out of it at some time or another.
The Get: This one is definitely more interesting than most gear quests in the game. And if it wasn’t for .dat mining it might have been a lot longer before people actually found out how to get one. There is an NPC in Al Zhabi that you can give Imperial Bronze Pieces to that will use the funds to increase the defenses of Al Zhabi against Beastmen attacks. If you give 1000 of the Imperial Bronze Pieces to Gajaad he will give you a turban all for your own and before that for every 100 coins you give him he will give you an additional Walahra Water which is a decent little bonus.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
You Are Not Your Walahra Turban.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
You Are Not Your Selene' Bow.
You are not your... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday, this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. A day late, but not short of anything, this week we bring you a bow made from the souls of cute, innocent bunnies. Hey, you requested it! Not me!
This weeks "You Are Not Your..." comes by request from Leybot, the Selene's Bow.
The Stats: The Selene's Bow on it's face looks decent, but nothing that exceptional, but seems to be quite a trend for this column. 
The design is a plain wooden looking bow with the same design as an Eurytos' Bow but with slightly lower base stats and none of the extra Ranged Attack. The base damage is slightly higher than the E Bow, but it must be said that the extra STR on the E Bow pretty much makes up for that because not only does it add a little more Ranged Attack, but it also is half of a fSTR point for ranged, which means it is half way to the next increase in weapon damage because of STR. The Selene's Bow does fall behind quite a bit with it's higher delay though. The most interesting thing about the Selene's Bow though is the comment of "Ranged Accuracy and Ranged Attack varies with the phases of the moon" on the weapon.
Normally this just isn't a good stat, but in the case of the Selene's Bow SE made an exception. 
So as you can see, depending on the moon phase you can actually get pretty close to the E bows normal stats, but in the wrong moon phase you aren't going to get much beside the additional Accuracy, which is nice for making sure that Sidewinder always lands but not for your damage. The difference in damage was rather famously noted in the following graph: 
The most interesting thing about the Selene's Bow though is that because of it's higher delay it is much easier to get a 5-hit build for it. The debate for a 5-hit build in XP and HNM situations is too much for this column and should be saved for another day.
The Get: This is a lot more interesting than most of the items in this column. The Selene's Bow is a rather rare drop from White Coney and Black Coney. These are NM's in Uleguerand Range that are spawned by trading a San d'Orian Carrot to a randomly moving targetable object called "Rabbit Footprint" that only appears during Full and New Moon. During Full Moon trading the Carrot will cause White Coney to appear, and during New Moon Black Coney will appear. White Coney tends to spam the healing move Wild Carrot and Black Coney will spam only damaging TP moves. The Coney's can generally be duoed but the Black Coney can be a bit tough because it can use Whirl Claws which can do decent AoE damage. Just keep spawning them until it finally drops your Selene's Bow.
If you like this series, but are wondering why you never see the items you are looking for, then leave a comments and we might just feature you favorite item next week!
Monday, July 06, 2009
You Are Not Your Perdu Voulge.
You are not your... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday, this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. After a short absence this column returns today and we take a look at a Great Axe that is a great axe.
The Stats: The Perdu Voulge is one of those Latent Effect weapons where you can't be sure of the stats before you test it, but after testing it you see that it is way better than you might have thought. 
This great axe itself is pretty good with a standard great axe delay and pretty high damage even before the latent effect is considered. The latent effect really makes it shine though. The latent effect like all Perdu weapons and other weapons like them are activated by having less than 100TP. What really makes them shine though is the fact that the latent is still active for weapon skills. This is because of the way that the game considers TP use. For a weapon skill you actually use up the TP before the WS goes off, so with a weapon like this the latent effect is added into the WS because the game considers you to have 0 TP at the time.
Now that you know how to activate the latent, lets look at the improved stats on this weapon. The damage is boosted to 96 which is the highest non-relic damage of any great axe, and there is even a hidden addition beyond that. When you are under 100TP or doing a weapon skill, you get an additional 5 Accuracy and 10 Attack. This is incredibly good considering the other great axe options for an end-game WAR. The best thing is that while you will lose the latent bonus for swings above 100TP, you will still get them if you are saving TP for a Steel Cyclone or for some other reason.
The Get: The Perdu Voulge is one of the many Perdu weapons that are available through Imperial Standing after getting the Mercenary Rank of Second Lieutenant. Second Lieutenant is a very high rank and you need 48k in Imperial Standing, so if you are looking to get this great axe for your WAR, you better get working on finishing up those Assaults, which you should have been doing anyway. :) The Perdu Voulge should be your permanent Great Axe unless you have a Relic or Mythic. It should finally replace your Byakko's Axe or Martial Bhuj if you were still using those. Get those ranks and spend the Imperial Standing and this awesome Great Axe will be yours!
If you like this series, but are wondering why you never see the items you are looking for, then leave a comments and we might just feature you favorite item next week!
Monday, June 15, 2009
You are not your fucking Skadi's Cuirie.
You are not your fucking... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday, this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. Today we will take a look at one of the most annoying Salvage pieces to obtain, the Skadi's Cuirie.
The Stats: Salvage provides some of the best gear in the game, and that is very well known. Some of that gear is very good for one job on it's job list, but not some others. Some of it is situational, some of it is WS gear, and some of it covers different roles for different jobs. The http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Skadi%27s_Cuirie is a great example of that. 
Finally, a piece for this column where the stats speak for themselves. This is a RNG and THF piece, obviously, but it is definitely situational depending on what you are using it for. The nice thing though is that there are many situations where it is good which is unlike most "situational" gear. Large portions of DEX, AGI and CHR make this stand out as a THF WS piece first and foremost. It has been suggested that it is the best WS piece in the game for THF, at least for http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Edge, because it has a ton of modifiers (even if no STR) and because of the additional Accuracy on this piece. Yes, not only does it have good WS stats, it also comes with a good portion of Accuracy and even a little Attack on it too. It can even been a really good TP piece depending on what else you have, and what situation you are in. Definitely not as good as Homam Corazza, though pretty close, and Rapparee Harness is only situationally better than Skadi's and those situations (high vs. low accuracy) don't really over lap. 
For RNG, it's utility is not as universal, but it is still a very good piece. First of all for Barrage, where Ranged Accuracy is critical, it is the best. But it is also a very nice Sidewinder/Slug Shot piece for higher evasion mobs, basically anything higher than XP mobs. Finally, it has -10 Evasion, and I don't know why, and the stats on it are so good it doesn't matter.
The Get: Ok, this is the hard part. This is probably one of the most difficult items to get from Salvage, and that is not necessarily because of drop rate. First of all you need the three items from Salvage. The 15 is the Njord's Jerkin from Jakko, which if you are doing Zhayolm Remnants you are going to get inevitably. The Freyr's Jerkin is the 25 piece which drops from Long-Armed Chariot, not the most difficult but one of the more annoying Salvage bosses, and also time consuming which is a problem if other people in your group need the Usukane 35 body because that route in Silver Sea Remnants. Finally, the Freya's Jerkin drops from the Peryton in Bhaflau Remnants which has a chance to drop the 35 if they even appear, and that is all after you kill the previous 10 Archaic Gear in less than a minute without having them disappear because of random weather effects, or aggro, or linking, etc. And then after you get all of the items, you get the glory of collecting 12 Imperial Wootz Ingots which are horribly expensive. Toss in 10 Imperial Gold Coins, and the Skadi's Cuirie is finally yours.
If you like this series, but are wondering why you never see the items you are looking for, then leave a comments and we might just feature you favorite item next week!
Monday, June 08, 2009
You are not your fucking Marinara Pizza.
You are not your fucking... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday, this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. And somedays we won't even talk about equipment, like today when we focus on food, Marinara Pizza.
The Stats: Yes, Marinara Pizza. Sure, there is a lot of equipment to cover in the game, but that doesn't mean that food isn't as important or even more so than your equipment. 
Marinara Pizza is a relatively recent introduction to FFXI, coming in the last couple of updates, but it is something rather unique when it comes to food for melee. Most melee, especially two-handers, are moving closer and closer to the accuracy cap as their gear improves but they are not quite hitting it. It is even better for dual-wielders like NIN and MNK who are usually doing decently for accuracy but definitely need more accuracy, but would really be improved with more attack too. I know that some people say they are, but Colibri don't count, and you shouldn't gear yourself to easy accuracy situations, but for the hard accuracy situations, or better yet have multiple gear sets for different accuracy situations. Before Marinara Pizza you had to choose between accuracy in the form of Sushi or attack in the form ofMeat. The problem is that Sushi was usually way more accuracy than you needed, but Meat would leave you with too much of an accuracy gap. This is really important because, depending on your buffs, accuracy is one of the most effective ways to increase your melee damage.
* HP +20The really nice thing is that the increase in attack is actually pretty good, while the accuracy is usually more than you are going to need on most mobs up until the biggest of the HNMs. Marinara Pizza lasts for three hours, which means it is not stackable, which means you should toss 5 or 6 of them in your Mog Satchel but they are definitely worth the space.
* Attack +20% (Cap: 50 @ 250 Base Attack)
* Accuracy +10% (Cap: 40+)
* Undead Killer
The Get: Head on over to the AH and pick it up. Better yet get the HQ version because it isn't really that much more and it gives you +1% for both Attack and Accuracy (Cap: 55 and 44+, respectively). If you have cooking at 40, you can even make them yourself! Either way, go out and get it, your parser will love you for it.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
You are not your fucking Yigit Crackows.
You are not your fucking... is a series of articles dedicated to profiling a variety of equipment. Brought to you every Monday (hopefully), this series will discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path, but it will always be useful in some way or another. Today we will focus on the Yigit Crackows.
The Stats: The feet slot is something pretty difficult for BLM to deal with in general, and the Yigit Crackows are a great solution until you get the top-most gear available. 
The Yigit Crackows had a pretty unique model when first introduced, based loosely on the Sha'ir and Nashira designs, but with it's own unique skin. Though I believe this design might have been recycled or at least only slightly tweaked for other pieces, they still stand out pretty well.
The first thing of note about the Yigit Crackows is the only feet slot equipment for BLM that has both Magic Attack Bonus and raw INT to directly increase magic damage. The Cobra Unit Crackows actually have more Magic Attack Bonus but on most mobs with standard gear the extra INT is going to provide more damage, at least that is what my standardized testing on the Magic Damage Calculator has shown. The in addition to the increased damage from the INT, you will also get some more accuracy for those INT based debuffs too.
The Get: The Yigit Crackows are the 20k Assault Points reward from Lebros Caverns and can be purchased from Famad in the Commissions Agency. They are Rare/Ex so there really isn't an alternative for getting these, and Lebros Caverns doesn't really have a good points run besides Apkallu Breeding which can get to be pretty easy after some practice, but even with all perfect 3 person runs it will still take over 2 weeks to get enough points. Take this into consideration though: Celestria (a player that deserves a ton of respect when it comes to gear choices) once said that if you don't have the Yigit Crackows for your BLM then you may as well just cut your feet off. The best thing about the Yigit Crackows is that even though they are not the absolute best you can get, they are close and they can be used for quite some time as the only thing that can really beat them for damage is a complete Morrigan's Robe set.
Monday, May 18, 2009
You are not your fucking Noble's Tunic.
Not everything is going to be rare or hard to obtain, sometimes even the most mundane items are incredibly critical to playing your job and that is definitely the case of the Noble's Tunic.
The Stats: This is the first item where we can look the bonuses and see how good they on it's face. 
The Noble's Tunic is a key piece of WHM end-game gear. The DEF like almost all Mage gear is pretty much irrelevant, and the MP is actually pretty meager but that is also pretty irrelvent once your WHM can wear this item. The reason this item shines is because of it's additional stats. Even though there are other items with Refresh on them, there are none that have Cure Potency on it. Some people choose not to spend the money on the Noble's Tunic, instead preferring to go with something like a Cleric's Briault, Dalmatica, or even a Marduk's Jubbah. 
The problem with this is that even if you can find the refresh in other places you can't find the Cure Potency, and for some people that is even better than the Refresh. The Cure Potency scales as you use heal for more, making it scale with the higher level of cure that you do. In essence this means that you are actually saving MP over time which probably amounts a different kind of Refresh. There are other ways to increase the strength of your Cures without increased Cure Potency like by increasing MND, but they don't compare to the abilities of a straight increase in Cure Potency percentages. 
Here we can see a baseline Cure strength graph for a WHM without any Cure Potency and here we can see what happens when we add just 20% Cure Potency from a Noble's Tunic and the standard issue Light Staff. 
The difference is pretty huge and it gets stronger for stronger Cures. So, even if other body pieces have Refresh on them that is no reason to pass up a Noble's Tunic as you will be gimping your Cures, and stronger Cures can mean fewer Cures and more MP saved. This is especially true with the introduction of Afflatus Solace and it's additional Stoneskin effect.
The Get: The Auction House of course, and it's a pretty penny too. It's also worth all of those pretty pennies. If you are looking to get one crafted, the main ingredient you are going to need to pick up is that Shining Cloth, which you can buy off the Auction House or get from various high level NM's or KS99's. If you are going to buy the parts and go for the HQ, remember that your Clothcrafting is going to need to be at least 87, but that does mean you should be able to get to Tier 1 on it.
Monday, May 11, 2009
You are not your fucking X's Knife.
In the second installment of my gear review we will be going over the dagger that almost every THF drools all over, even in their dreams, the X's Knife.
The Stats: Looking at this is almost like looking at the Hagun, but the base stats are even a little better in this case. 
The X's Knife is the very simple bone-style knife design, and looks no different in game than a Behemoth or Bone Knife. Again, in following with SE's general laziness when it comes to recycling weapon models this is rather generic, even more so than most other weapons. 
In general, this is a bit higher on delay than most daggers, but it does have a pretty high weapon damage so this is probably going to be a main hand dagger for non-relic users. The damage does put it in the upper echelon of daggers too, but that really isn't the main benefit of this dagger. That is in the simple additional bonus of "Increases critical hit damage". This effect not only works on regular critical hits, but also on forced critical hits like from Sneak Attack and Trick Attack which means that for a THF this bonus will apply to almost every WS they do and to Evisceration also. As you can see, this damage will apply pretty often for just about any THF, and since it can be used so often we should look at what exactly this bonus does.
Now, for a long time this dagger was known about but not really tested, but after the testing the realization about how good and how important this dagger really is started to spread. There is still a bit of speculation on what effect the X's Knife has on critical hits, but the generally accepted idea is that it raises the pDIF (that is basically the damage range of any damage on by a weapon) for critical hits by 0.3. That is a pretty complicated way to say that you are looking at about a 10% increase in damage on critical hits across the board. It is going to be higher for things that are lower level and have less defense and lower for things that are higher level and have more defense, but that is true of anything that effects pDIF. The effect on pDIF can be seen here: 
There are some people that believe that it is a straight 10% increase in critical hit damage, but I kind of doubt this because when it comes to weapon damage SE generally likes to do the changes within the damage formula, unlike magic. This bonus applies to both the main hand and the off hand, so you don't necessarily have to main hand this dagger, but there are very few situations where you would not want to main hand this dagger, especially because you can still use a Blau Dolch in the off-hand and still maintain it's bonuses too, and it is wicked quick which is what you are generally looking for in an off-hand dagger. There are some higher damage non-relic daggers that could justify off-handing the X's Knife but using those would mean giving up the much better Blau Dolch.
The Get: Now, this one isn't that easy to get, and it is Rare/Ex so you can't even try to save up and buy one. The X's Knife only drops from the quest battlefield in Boneyard Gully called Requiem of Sin which requires another Boneyard Gully quest battlefield called Tango with a Tracker, all of which requires you to complete CoP and talk to Despachiaire in Tavnazian Safehold for a key item to start all of the quests. Sadly, it can only be done once a week and it has about a 10% drop rate, so you will be doing this quests for a while. There are a bunch of strategies available, but if you get a couple of friends together and pick a time weekly, you should be able to get this after a while.
Monday, May 04, 2009
You are not your fucking Hagun.
Starting a new Monday morning trend here. I am going to profile a piece of equipment every Monday morning and discuss why it is a good piece of gear, why it fills your needs, why you should get it or any other reason it could be useful. It could be something obvious, or it could be something off the beaten path.
The Stats: So to start off lets go with something completely essential instead of something interesting, the Hagun. 
The Hagun is one of those big-bladed Great Katana's that look more like a gigantic meat cleaver than a Great Katana. The look is good but it is so ubiquitous that is does get a bit tired after a while, especially considering the fact that it is a mostly recycled model (bad SE!). 
The base delay on it is completely unremarkable, because it is the same as just about any other Great Katana except for exceptionally rare versions. This means it has the standard requirements for Store TP to reach a 6-hit build, and that most people with just a little bit of work will be able to put together what they need even if it means a few trade-offs. The damage is actually quite remarkable in that it is so low, at 77. The damage really is a deception thought because it has a quire remarkable extra stat that makes up for the rest. The TP Bonus on this item is what makes it stand out from the crowd. The TP Bonus adds an addition 100 TP to any weapon skill done with the Great Katana. Now there are a bunch of different weapons that have TP Bonus on them and most of them are mediocre to poor because the TP bonus really doesn't do anything compared to other available stats. For Samurai though the TP bonus is huge, for example on Yukikaze, Gekko or Kasha the modifier for damage is increased by 20% at 100TP which for a SAM STR based weapon skill is huge (and just remember, if you are spamming TP always use Gekko, it's stronger, it's been tested). 
In the end this increased TP modifier turned poor and unremarkable stats into the best Great Katana you can get off of the AH and by far. There is nothing short of the super-rare that you can get that even comes close to the damage.
The Get: As I said before you can get this on the AH because it is a pretty old piece of gear, made back when SE thought it was OK to actually use the AH to by and sell end-game gear. Right now though you will pay a pretty penny for one with most servers going for around 3 mil to pick one up. If you don't want to pay to play you can always try to do get it through the ENM Sheep in Antlion's Clothing. Up to two of them can drop but the drop rate isn't that high at about 10%.
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
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