Player’s Handbook

FFXI: Brave Grip

Recently, a new BCNM was discovered that is linked to campaign and nation control of certain areas. In order to access these BCNM’s, your nation must have control of every area surrounding it. That is, San d’Oria must have control of La Vaule, Vunkerl Inlet, The Eldieme Necropolis, Junger Forest, and Batallia Downs. The same is with the other nations, just with the respective areas. Once these areas are under the control of one nation, a new BCNM appears in the Campaign OPs menu. The BCNM is fairly easy, and I won’t get into that due to that fact.

Anyways, as I said, new items have emerged from said BCNM. Including the sought after Brave Grip. Every melee including myself basically couldn’t wait to get our hands on this Grip when it was discovered. So, Titan eventually was able to access the San d’Orian BCNM, and several Grips appeared on the AH. I quickly bought one for myself and immediately started testing.

Here are my results. Although there is a relatively small sample size, I felt it was easy enough to determine the % increase of Brave Grip.

These numbers are with me using WS at 300% TP, no DA gear, Hasso, and the normal hits are me swinging with my WS gear on:

Now here are my numbers with Brave Grip on. Everything is under the exact conditions as the previous WS’s/Crits:

It’s pretty obvious there’s an increase in damage, but lets determine the exact amount. I took the MAX damage of WS and Crits from each sample, and found out the difference. Between the Crits, the difference was 10 points of DMG. This equates to about a 3.2% increase in damage. Next, I found the difference for the WS DMG. The difference here was 43 points of DMG. That factored to about a 2.9% increase in DMG. Taking these two values, it can be determind that Brave Grip increases your Crit DMG by approximately 3%.

After that’s all said and done, you still have the decision to make. Brave Grip, Pole Strap, Axe Grip, which is the best to use? It’s not exactly that cut and dry, especially for Samurai, but let’s take a look at what possible numbers we can get.

Say your average Gekko on Tiamat is 1,200DMG. Also, you get in 2 WS per landing. Normal Tiamats take 30-60 minutes, so lets use 60 minutes as our time. Every 4 minutes, you get 2 WS in. That is, you get 2 WS when on ground (2minutes), and have to wait for it to land again when in flight (2minutes). So over the course of the fight, you will get around 15 WS’s in. With Brave Grip, your Gekkos will do 1236 DMG in theory. Over 15 WS’s, that’s an additional 540 DMG.

Now lets compare this to using Pole Strap. The average Samurai has Brutal Earring, Askar Korazin, and Pole Strap in WS for a total of 9% DA in WS. Over 15 WS’s, you should get at least one DA. Usually, DA’s don’t increase your DMG dramatically, it’s about a 200~ DMG increase. If this holds true, on paper Brave Grip will outparse Pole Strap.

So really, it depends on your playstyle and how long you fight a mob. Over time, Brave Grip DMG will add up. However, if you’re lucky… you can get many DA’s during a fight (unlike me). It’s a tough choice for Samurai, but both Pole Strap and Brave Grip are top notch pieces of gear for SA WS. As for other Jobs and WS’s, Brave Grip might be the best choice for WS’s like Raging Rush, Skewer and Drakesbane. That is something I am hoping to find out by our resident Warriors and Dragoons.

FFXI: 5/6-hit sets and you (Ranger)

One day I was looking at Skadi’s Chausses and thought, “Man these really suck…except for Thf, but Thf sucks”. However, after researching further into STP (Store TP) for Rng, I actually found a use for Skadi’s Chausses on Rng. I own a Yoichinoyumi, so at first I looked into +STP amounts needed to increase my TP gain enough to take one shot off from getting 100TP. I was actually quite surprised at what I found. I only needed +11 total STP to get a 6-Hit (and in turn, a 5-hit shot after you use WS) build.

This could be done easily by subbing /Sam and using no STP gear, but I wanted to try and keep /War and get the 6-hit build. So, I found out all I need to do is TP and WS in Skadi’s Chausses (+7) and Rajas Ring (+5) for a total of +12 STP. I haven’t been able to include a parse or show any tests as I don’t have Skadi’s Chausses yet. However I do have Enkidu Legs (+5) and could use those in addition with Brutal Earring (+1) to get a glimpse of what is to come.

The only reason I’m only semi-considering to fulltime this set up while /War is because I only lose 13~ Rng.Acc while in TP, and 4 STR while in WS. I’m almost sure one less shot to get 100% TP will easily out do the 4 STR I lose in WS, and the loss in Rng.Acc really isn’t that big of a deal either.

Now for those of you who don’t own a Relic, getting a 5/6-hit build is still relatively easy. First I will start off with normal Bow user weapons, then normal Gun user weapons.

The usual Bow Rng will use either Vali’s/Eurytos’ Bow or Selene’s Bow.

For Vali’s/Eurytos’ Bow, you will have a total delay of 580 (490+90). This puts you at 14.8 TP/Hit. In order to bring you up to a 6-Hit build, you need +13 STP. This can be done easily by using the following gear:

For Selene’s Bow, you only need +10 STP. If you have Skadi’s Chassuses I suggest you use those combined with Rajas Ring. If not, you can use this with Rajas Ring:

Now for Hellfire/Hellfire +1 users, you need a lot more STP to put you at a 5-hit set up. A NQ Hellfire will have 900 Delay (660+240), meaning you need +17 STP to get a 5-hit set up (you will need +17 also for Hellfire +1). You can get a 5-hit set up using STP gear for Hellfire, but you will end up having to lose some important gear. Skadi’s Chausses and Rajas ring would be your main portion of STP, but after that you would have to TP and WS in a combination of Brutal Earring, Chivalrous chain, or Cobra gear. Here’s what I think would be “optimal” if you did try and get a 5-Hit set up with Hellfire using /War:

With this set up, you only lose up to 9 STR or 10 Rng.Att and 6 STR. It’s not that much of a loss, but it would be up to you if you think it’s worth it. If you don’t want to use that much STP gear, it would be easy to get a 5-hit set up with /Sam. Subbing Sam gives +15 STP, so you would only need +2 STP. The easiest and best solution for that is to fulltime Rajas Ring while /Sam.

Now for Annihilator users, it’s basically the same deal. You would actually need +21 STP in gear to get a 5-hit set up with /War. I honestly don’t think it would be worth it at all if you try to get a 5-hit set up with /War, as you lose a lot more STR, Rng.Att, and Rng.Acc when doing so. However, it is still easy to get a 5-hit set up with /Sam. All you would need is +6 STP, meaning either Skadi’s Chausses or Rajas Ring + Brutal Earring for your most optimal combinations.

That’s all I have for now in regards to STP and 5/6-hit builds for Rng. Once I get my hands on Skadi’s Chausses I will try to do some tests to see if it’s worth losing the (small amount of) STR, Rng.Att and Rng.Acc when using STP gear. Also as a sidenote, I only mentioned the most optimal gear for Bow/Gun STP sets. Cobra gear has a lot of STP, and might be easier to obtain for others. However, that gear will lower your total STR/Rng.Acc/Rng.Att much more than what I suggested.