Fudo Masamune? Pros/Cons

Okay folks, recently obtained a shiny new su5 from a trade with a LS mate, have recently started working on upgrading my ninja (really miss the old days on nin/drk on tiamat from the 75era.) Trying to understand thoughts behind augment choices and other using this to maximum potential. Anyone care to educate me regarding offhand options as well as situations where this should be used as offhand. Thanks in advance,

Augments don't work in off-hand, keep that in mind.

On Path C it's an excellent weapon for tanking, potentially the best.

On Path A/B it's currently underestimated but personally I think it could be quite an interesting weapon if you can afford to equip a TotM TPbonus+1000 weapon.
The huge accuracy bonus on Fudo Masamune sure helps towards that goal.
In such a setup I wouldn't be overly surprised to see Fudo Masamune perform much better than it's currently given credit for.

It's the best offhand katana. I wouldn't use it mainhand unless you were missing Kikoku, Heishi, Kannagi, or Nagi (probably in that order of priority to obtain, though maybe Kannagi above Heishi).
I would rather have Kannagi over path A. I would rather have Kikoku over path B. I would rather have Nagi over path C.
Even with the emnity of path C, Utsusemi: San with both augment pieces (kyahan and cape) you're getting +70 enmiity to your actions that will incrementally fall off as the fight progresses (and shadows fall off). If you're recasting San, realistically how many shadows do you have up? Is the Enmity effect applied at resolution of the spell so that you get the +70 from San or is it based upon shadows at initial cast of the spell? I would rather the +40 static enmity of Nagi for Yonin stance.

This post has nothing to do with Fudo or Masamune. The ***'s up with the title?

It's a katana the OP is asking about: Fudo Masamune

I honestly can't tell if troll or dumb.

Both

That's interesting, such. You have the 1000 to bonus katana and ever tried off hand? I feel like even with fudo, youd only ever hit like 50% of your swings. If that? It's easy enough to make. I'd like to play with that idea.

As a whole on the entire "offhanding a tpbonus weapon"

They're universally usable/good, there are hundreds of ways to make your acc high enough to make them usable.

The little bit of whitedamage you would lose is more than made up for with that much bonus ws damage. Obviously not for ALL ws/jobs, should be obvious, but has to be said.

People have been saying that this is the best offhand but I've never seen concrete supporting arguments. The bulk of your damage comes from weaponskills, your offhand selection should be based on this. Fudo Masamune only helps your primary by adding more accuracy and attack. I can see these being better in some situations although much of the time I would assume you don't need the accuracy and that the attack (if you're not capped) is going to be marginalized by other options. Kanaria has STP +5, can get TA+3/15 DEX and with good augments can get reasonable amounts of attack on it too if you need it. I see this as the best weapon for NIN in most situations.

I'm geniounly interested to know, would you have a list of worthwile TP+1000 ToM weapons?

I can think of gun, katana...

If you read all the "guides" it's coming up in all of them. The sword the dagger the katana obviously the gun.

That's all of them aside from club/axe. Axe is universally unused, and meleewhm... probably super cool for whm melee since they're already not going to melee on anything that really needs acc.

What they mean is probably that it's the best offhand when you need accuracy?
When you don't, or not so much, a Perf augs Kanaria or a Perf Ochu are probably better.
(Taka for Kannagi MH users I guess?)


Edit:
I seem to recall the Attack x Shadow thing works offhand as well. If you're att uncapped that's a big boost to your dps I suppose.
I'm personally not a fan of those shadow-related bonuses, but at least they're unique and ninja-esque! :D

I don't understand the focus on TP bonus magian weapons except for a few instances. They don't actually increase your maximum potential damage the way everyone implies when they talk about them. They just improve your average TP at time of ws.

Cor (and RNG I guess) are outliers, because the gun allows them to not sacrifice TP speed and still use it.

On a straight melee job though, the amount of extra time to get to 1000 TP and use the TP bonus should be more than balanced out by using a weapon that doesn't require you sacrifice atk buffs for acc buffs to make it work and will get TP faster.

The maximum WS damage possible by using something like Kanaria offhand or Fudo Masamune is higher than if you use a TP bonus weapon. WSD/TA/Crit Damage on a Kanaria will give higher maximum potential. 1 extra TP round, should make up at least 1/2 of the TP bonus from the magian weapon. Which you should be able to do and still get higher WS frequency than the magian option.

With San that's, what, 105+ to Attack assuming you can maintain shadows as you're not the tank. That plus the most Accuracy (outside of say Shigi) means you can use other pieces. I would've rather had a Fudo Masamune for my offhand for VD Ambuscade this month then having to pack in some extra accuracy in other slots. If I had a group that let me go NIN for Dynamis D wave 3 farming I would rather have a Fudo Masamune for my offhand so I can get other stats else where. People tunnel vision so hard. Are you really attack capped in Dynamis D wave 3? Were you attack capped for Ambuscade VD? Seems like physical damage limit helps encourage the use of more attack as the OP was asking about /DRK applications (presumably for the additional tier of physical damage limit).

In an age of WS spam meta, TP BONUS+1000 is HUGE*. Heishi/TP bonus gives you the potential of 2750 blade tens at 1k TP. White damage is so undervalued by today's community, the damage you lose from a few missed swings/rounds is made up in the meta spam


*If you can make the accuracy work

For tanking, Fudo C's enmity is obviously quite nice. However, probably more important is that it's paired with a significant ninjutsu recast reduction for faster Utsu and Migawari recast. Can't be stressed enough how much easier comfortably going San-San makes tanking, and the extra seconds often means the difference of another mob attack round shaved off before your San timer is ready again. Let's be real, if you're tanking on NIN, having shadows ready to recast is the biggest concern (and if you're spamming Utsu with Yonin up, you really shouldn't have a big issue generating enmity with EITHER of Nagi or mainhand Fudo C).

Regarding Utsu recast, I've been swapping between sometimes offhanding (a) a Shuhansadamune for the combo of Enmity+/Counter/PDT/FC, or (b) when recast is crucial I'll just use a Shigi offhand - despite the Enm-10, the extremely low Utsu recast tends to end up being more valuable when tanking (and you can still make up for the enmity loss per action by the more frequent Utsu casting ability). I might even be convincing myself to default to the Shigi for tanking offhand.

As for offense, IDK what to tell people if they can't see the potential value in an offhand weapon with 269 skill, Acc/Racc+50 (Racc is very underrated, allowing you to keep Daken and melee accuracy very close, not accounting for Madrigals), and Atk+ up to 105. Good DMG to boot. For the atk+, it's easy enough to maintain shadows on a ton of stuff when not tanking, and even when you do lose shadows to AoE you're going to get a large chunk of that attack at most times unless you're fighting something that absolutely spams AoE attacks (say, Divergence wave 3 fetters).

No, it's not always best. When you're capped accuracy/attack with a different offhand, a Kanaria/Ochu can certainly win. But if you're uncapped acc, racc, or atk (assuming you can keep some reasonable amount of shadows), it's a beast of an offhand. A Ninja who wants to have best offhand for any situation would have both.


Agreed on A, Fudo A is basically just a mini-Kannagi.

For B, I could see the potential use for a Subtle Blow +75 NIN build for low TP feed purposes, but man... that's so niche as to be pretty hard to justify the cost. Maybe if you REALLY love super lowman stuff or play with a lot of NIN MNK DD groups?

For C, IDK bout Nagi over it - mainly for the recast reasons I noted above. As for enmity, that's a good question as to whether the enmity applies 7 shadows worth (+70 on EVERY :San cast) or the active shadows pre-cast. I should go test that... If it's applying the full amount of shadows being casted to a Yonin-enhanced Utsusemi, it's obvious that Fudo crushes Nagi for tanking (would only be worse for stuff like auto-attack enmity or JAs like a Provoke, when shadows drop to 3 or less - but the far more valuable enmity activity is Utsu casting anyway)

Even if you are getting only the enmity from shadows pre-Utsu cast, you'll often be recasting with some shadows up (I like to spam a lot of San, and recast when I'm at 3 or less shadows) so you get SOME significant chunk of enmity, plus the recast reduction. I haven't really found it to be a big issue to keep hate when using Ustu with my now lv17 Fudo C, so I'd prob tend toward keeping it over the lower offense and no recast reduction of a Nagi... if I had my Nagi done (maybe this month!).

Plus, of course Nagi has no additional use as a fantastic offhand for many situations. Fudo C does. Makes it a much more viable proposition when you're spending that much money, since you're getting BOTH a top offhand weapon (situationally BiS) and either the #1 or #2 tanking mainhand depending on your perspective.

Aeonic Katana just seems too good to give up for DD.

-Blade Shun is just amazing if underbuffed, or if your target requires a lot of attack.
-When you are highly buffed Blade;Ten does some really solid damage, it really benefits from the TP bonus from Aeonic/Moonshade.
-Under the right conditions the tp bonus works wonderfully with elemental weapon skills such as Blade:Chi/Ei. Fudo Masamune does have magic accuracy/damage going for it though.

It's a real shame the Augments don't work in the offhand.

Nobody here is claiming that Fudo Masamune is a better choice for DPS mainhand than Aeonic.

If your acc can handle the tpbonus weapon it will be your best offhand. Your example doesn’t even make sense, one extra TP round is one extra to round for both combos.

NINs issue with tp bonus OH is really the main hand. TPing
Over 1250 hurts the benefit of Aeonic. Kikoku would be a good bet as a MH (attack, relic procs, possible AM up keep) but it lacks acc.

Fudo Masamune/ TP bonus would solve a lot of the Issues. Probably path B and spam Ten.

I was just saying in regards to Path A/B Augs.

Kinda stuck with Path C on this weapon.

I don't have any Su5 weapons so asking for someone who knows: can you switch paths on a current weapon to another (i.e. you are Path C tanking but want to go Path B for whatever reason)?

No you can't switch paths.

I was actually claiming it could, with TPbonus offhand.

As a matter of fact, it's the case for DNC. With Centovente (TPbonus dagger) offhand, Divergence Dagger is better than Aeneas.
Not BiS, but better than Aeneas. Iir it's second.

Now could this be the case for NIN as well, with Ten spam?
I dunno. Probably not, but then again I wouldn't be completely surprised if that weren't the case, given the situation for DNC.

That's really lame.

Thats my take on it as well. TPbonus is broken with the right mainhand. (See BLU)

I think someone recently theorized Divergence weapon to be pretty cool for RDM as well, with TPbonus sword offhand of course.

For BLU I think it's more a matter of Tizona MH with TPbonus sword OH? Haven't delved much into the BLU situation.


But point of this all is that these weapons make using TPbonus offhand slightly more viable and, at the same time, work really well in conjunction with them.
Aeonics are often wasted because of the "sweet spot" where it's optimal WSing and because of TPoverflow.

So, going back to NIN, I dunno if this combination could be better than Aeonic Katana, but I wouldn't hastedly dismiss Fudo Masamune mh. It has the potential to be slightly better or at least very very close to Aeonic.
(of course only in situations where you can use TPbonus offhand, but it's more viable than most people seem to think, as Eiryl already pointed out)

That's a big assumption for a hybrid tank class. For Ambuscade, unless some buffs fall off I have had 0 less than 100k Blade: Shuns on this month using Kanaria. I don't know if I'm attack capped or not but I would much rather take the 3 TA 5 STP over attack that's not helping me.

Tunnel vision is a quizzical term to use when you're actually the one advocating a single best offhand. You need to keep all options open. For the situations I find my ninja in I don't have much of a use for Fudo Masamune.

At least in the case of blu, this is false. Tp bonus offhand does come out higher in terms of theorical dps and real parses. Several people that I know of have been using them and parsed. It's real strong.

On other job it can be more tricky because of lower acc.

I know some people can't understand the concept of using a lv 99 weapon in ilv 119+++++ era. But that's just how it goes.

Double Madrigal should be the standard buff for any semi high lv pt with Rema brd, imo. Acc songs are far more potent than attack songs. If you can't cap attack, stack attack+ def- from other sources such as debuff ws. There are tons of debuffs gives straight % for def-, by comparsion static attack+ from songs rarely worth the song slot, especially when dd sacrifice 1000 tp bonus or MA/stp(stats that you can't get anywhere else) for it.