Great Sword Selection Question

I'm a new drk - just leveled it for Nyzul Isle V2. But I always remember being impressed with the aftermath of the empy GS in abby when I saw a dark that had one, he was swinging for 1k each when it proced. So - (without much research) I started on empy GS for drk. My plan was to use Torcleaver to activate the aftermath, then use resolution while its up.

In Voidwatch today, I got a hoarfrost blade - people said its one of the top 3 GS in the game?? better than eph.

I'm nearly done collecting all items for eph GS (have not turned any in yet). Would you recommend I finish eph GS for the aftermath - or use those items on a different eph such as gun for wildfire, and only use hoarfrost on DRK? Is hoarforst with resolution really better than an eph with aftermath?

I was told hoarfrost was "better" than 85 calad but that 90 calad was better than that. Personally Ive done VW with both and can see a definite increase in numbers spamming resolution with hoarfrost over using the occasional torcleaver to maintain aftermath and resolution between them. I will be doing calad to 90 semi soonish, hopefully its worth the effort.

Make a gun. Caladbolg is trash.

Perhaps it may not concern you, but unlike Hoarfrost/Borealis, Caladbolg GS can be further improved with the lvl 95 and 99 trials.

I would consider Hoarfrost a placeholder at most, and it certainly doens't make it in the top 3 list.

That being said, it all boils down to how far you want to push your DRK and Resolution on DRK. Personally, I am working on a Caladbolg (after finishing my 1 goal relic weapon I don't really feel like putting as much effort into a new one, even though Ragnarok would be a sexy GS)

A lot of emp's at 85, aren't worth doing if you have the ability to obtain either a 99 trial weapon (provided the trial enhances what you need) or some of the newer end game content weapons. They may be better but only marginally in some instances. Don't get me wrong by any means, emp GS is still a great weapon even at 85 but I'd concider going with a 99 trial weapon such as +WS Damage or TP Bonus (there is a long thread on those somewhere here).

If you have the ability to take an emp 90, 95, and 99, I would definitely go with that. 90 on some weapons is questionable vs a 99 trial or other weapons. Hearts aren't too bad to obtain for your GS though with a little help (or a 2 box mule) so 90 probably isn't an issue for you.

If you don't have the ability/gil to go 95+, and/or you play COR a lot, you can give another job a great option for end game while still having a great weapon for DRK. COR makes great use of that gun even at 85 or 90.

Honestly though it's your call. I can't speak too much since I made a Farsha even though I saw all the talk about how much it sucked but I still wanted to make one. At least the GS is a good weapon in the end.

For the same cost as producing a vastly superior Ragnarok.

People generally don't talk about 95+ Caladbolg because you could get a Ragnarok with that gil and it's generally a superior weapon.

Calad90 is a very easy weapon to make though, and would'nt take you much more than a week if you can duo it with nin or war + whm.
But then again, OAT GS would take about the same time to make :p

Edit: Well, ignoring the nm-camping trials*

would 99 rag beat 99 calad?

Yes, and well, with rag99 you automaticly have 40 accuracy more than you'd do with calad99, which would be of huge help on certain VW.

And 14% crit hit rate, 1 more base damage (for all that matters), not having to do Torcleaver every 1.5mins to maintain aftermath, and permanent occ deals 2.5x damage.

Hoarfrost isnt in the top 3 GS but its still good.

Ragnarok > OAT > Caladbolg > Shiney GS from rex > Hoarfrost

OAT and Calad90 are fairly equal in VW where you can utilize am3 I belive, but yeah, that

Would think that Caladbolg and Borealis would be pretty damn close outside of infinite Dusty Wing territory.

Basicly:
Get a Hoarfrost blade as a starter.
Start working on Ragnarok.
If you know Ragnarok will take you a long time to complete, I'd recommend just to make an OAT GS meanwhile, it's a very simple trial which takes a week if you do it at a decent pace, few days if you hardcore it and get lucky with mirrors\riftsands

Riftsand can be found for just 2k a piece now, but Mirrors are still a *** and have gone up since I gathered my 150.

Still a tiny fraction of what a relic costs.

AH swords are decent too. I guess if you want a free sword you can go be mostly ineffective at Ig til you get one, but Hoarfrost Blade is just gram with 10 DEX instead of Refresh+1, so I don't know why it's getting the peen-suck here. etourdissante and the HQ are new and nice because of their delay if you can still 6-hit them (NQ easier than HQ, natch).

Voidwatch is the stupidest place to compare any weapons at all. Regain and Save TP blow hitbuilding out of usefulness, AM3 becomes the norm... just favors crappy and vanilla weapons too much and shuts down most of what OAT has going for it. Rag is at least worth its weight outside of VW too instead of being a stupid vanilla sword with an ineffectual aftermath that barely makes up for using Torcleaver except at 300tp. At least when you ignore Scourge you're only losing 5% crit rate.

Resolution killed Caladbolg, some people just keep jumping on the corpse listening for a breath.

I do still have some fun with my Caladbolg though! :P
But I miss the days where I could spam torcleaver as the strongest, as I think it looks pretty cool :D (slowmotion ground strike with quake animation ftw!)

You are missing the part that he already has hoarfrost blade so spending 1mil+ on refresh+1 is crazy. This is why the topic is about whats better than hoarfrost blade.

I picked up a Gram for 800k and turned it around for 1.2mil a couple months later, which was the last influx of cash to finish buying my OAT bits.

If you can't afford an AH sword in the interim, you wont be able to afford OAT let alone Relic. I did miss that he has Hoarfrost already, but the list of sidegrades is pretty long and pointing out that it's roughly equal to AH swords is necessary.

Its not about not being able to aford a ah gs its about why would you spend gil on an ah gs when you dont need it. All the possible upgrades from hoarfrost are ra/ex or from ToM and OAT doesnt cost much more than gram. You're earlier post was fully based around him not having hoarfrost to start with and that he would be useless on Ig without one off the ah.

http://www.beast40.com/Kparser/watcher/

Check out the watchermnk file, there is a 99 Cala spamming Torcleavor. Much more impressive then one would think when attack is capped.

I finished Oa2x GS recently, it's a great GS. It's definitely not Rag but its still good. Didn't take me long I did have some help so took me about 4 days. The hardest part is the Krabkatoas and collecting the Silver Mirrors.

Well Krabkatoa isn't hard I just started paying people for Blue Abyssite to speed up the trial. Silver Mirrors averaged me 15k each and Riftsands 3k each.

Should I sell Herald Gaiters to complete my last bit for a Ragnarok? It runs for about ~17 mil.

I was all about the "Caladbolg is trash mentality" until I geared up my drk and parsed against my friend ghostknight. I was using borealis while he was using 90 cala and we both use near-optimal equivalent tp/WS sets while fighting Ig-alima. Every parse was basically the same, my total WS damage was higher by about 1-3k, but his total melee damage was double mine (8-9k higher). The lower delay and aftermath on cala just plain destroys anything outside of relic. The only time I could see OAT keeping up is if your tp build does not have a lot of multihit in it and you are not recieving fighter's roll, which has become pretty commonplace on my server.

As for 99 Cala vs 99 Ragnarok. I really don't think the argument is as easy as saying one is better than the other. They each have situations where they will be the optimal weapon.

greatswords in general are sexy. especially with those mithra flips with resolution :3

just make both cala and ragnarok if you're hardcore!

No, if you farm currency/heavy metals/alexandrites you can make 17mil in 1 week of work to finish your ragnarok. Otherwise you will finish your ragnarok sooner and be sad your mages are slow.

This x100

Keep the gators they are harder to get then 17mil

Best farming job I'm guessing is BST? Guess I need to lvl that. Currently the currency in my group is going to someone else. I'm currently participating in order to get looting rights for Umbral Marrows for Apocalypse.

I really don't think you make 17 mil in a week just farming, HMP, alexandrites. There's also a lot of luck played into that.

but you are right, I'll hold on to the gaiters.

Best farming job is BLU if you do it properly, can do BST if you're comatose though.