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Part 6 - lol Melee WHM What! - “Disgracing the Haters”

Melee Whitemage! What a concept, ever gotten sick of sitting in the backline just hitting a cure macro? Whitemage was the first job to Solo Avatar Prime fights back in the good ol' Days when things actually mattered.

The previous guide went into the intricacies of Melee and tactics, this is something I feel is better learnt in the field than talked about but lets get some basics out there.

Most times while you melee you want to keep your TP so you don't want to be swapping weapons constantly this means you need to either use a Cure potency club which isn't the best Melee option available or you need to work "melee Cure sets" around not using a club or shield! I'll leave this up for you to gear as it's very much surrounding upon what you melee against as to how in-depth a set you actually need.

First real step is Subjob selection, there are 2 main subjobs in this category, Ninja and Dancer. Each Subjob has it's own unique benefits and do not always work best in every situations so be prepared to change your play style were appropriate.

The best Whinja I ever saw was CerberusCorphish, who unfortunately no longer plays. His preference was Dancer Subjob and I can understand why.

Ninja

Ninja provides Whitemages with the ability to equip 2 Clubs to decimate your opponents, it also comes with -25% Delay (Dual Wield III) and as a further tool, Ninjitsu! while most of the spells affiliated will be useless to a Whitemage, the one we're interested in is Utsusemi: Ichi and Ni, both providing 3 shadows with varying cast and recast timers to boot. Overall a very good Sub Job for Enemies that hit hard but don't strip shadows or spam Silencega etc.

Dancer, a Homage to Lillsette!

Dancer is another Support Job that allows you to use 2 weapons at the same time however it only provides Dual Wield II which is a 15% reduction in attack delay, and where Ninja had Ninjitsu Dancer has... Dance Steps! (Not even joking) Box Step reduces your targets defense by approx 10% and gives you haste Samba (5% JA haste), Drain Samba I and II, TP based Cures and Erases (also removes Para and Blind etc so its an Erase and Lyna type Ability). This is the preferred Sub Job at this time due to taking time to cast Ninjitsu plus Box Step coupled with Dia2 is -20% Defense on your target so in group play this can be rather potent, not to mention help your own DPS as WHM is a bit on light on Attack.


Note: I will be updating and amending this as I go along as I'm still running numbers for WS calculations until the spreadsheet gets updated for GEO and Magical WS's

Low Accuracy	Mid Accuracy	High Accuracy
ItemSet 344944	ItemSet 344945	ItemSet 344946
Chironic with acc/attck/DW, Alaunus's with acc/attk/Haste, Tamaxchi with Occasionnally attack twice augment	Chironic with acc/attck/DW, alaunus's with acc/attk/Haste, if you have good acc augments, you can use tamaxchi instead of Sindri(Fully augmented)	Sindri with full augments, Chironic with acc/attck/DW, alaunus's with acc/attk/Haste

Lets start off with some minor Stats to get started~
Haste

Haste is calculated as Reduction in delay and does not impact on your TP per hit unlike Dual Wield.

• Haste from gear caps at 25%
  

• Haste from Job Abilities caps at 25% Haste.
  

• Haste from Magic Caps at 43.75%

So 25% Gear haste is not a 25% Boost in damage, its a 25% reduction in swings delay, but how does this help? Well +50% Haste is halving your delay which effectively Doubles your attacks per second even though it's only a 50% bonus it acts as a +100% increase! At 75% Haste

Dual Wield, How does this work??

Dual wield although reduces your Delay like Haste does, does not stack with haste and does decrease your TP, however the exact amount this now reduces TP per hit has been changed since the 2014 Updates and an exact equation is still being formulated (or at least I can't find one).

How these work together

Your first have to work out your delay reduction, 1 being with no buffs.

Equation:

The game rounds to 2 DP so 36% delay left on your normal attack which is roughly 3x your normal attack speed. This is attainable with Whinja and a Haste Samba from another member i.e Duoing or a Trust NPC as an example ~

WS Sets

Realmrazer

ItemSet 344947

Chironic with attack, accuracy and Weapon skill Dmg. Alaunus's With MND/Acc&Attk/Wsd.

Hexa Strike

ItemSet 344948

Chironic with attack, accuracy and Weapon skill Dmg. Alaunus's With MND/Acc&Attk/Wsd.

Judgement

ItemSet 344963

Chironic with attack, accuracy and Weapon skill Dmg. Alaunus's With MND/Acc&Attk/Wsd.