WHM Weapon Skills

[Dux]

Hi.

Well during my mind bendingly exciting hunt for a Carbunkle Ruby which passed uneventfully for about 20 hours I noticed my WHM actually has weapon skills. I decided to breaks the monotony for a few moments and use them and see what pretty explosions I could make. I was amused.

It got me wondering if the WHM weapon skills are actually worth anything? I am gonna leveling my 2handed Staff to max for my SMN.

Any advice specifically about WHM weapon skills and staff's in particular?

[ZenXIII]

Personally, i use a club as a WHM and those weaponskills are actually rather nice.
I've only gotten to level 72 or so (in club, not character ^^), so i don't have the higher level ones, but, iirc, with club you get hexastrike (multi hits) and a couple of different ones (starlight and moonlight, i think are the names) that replenish MP (one gives you back MP, the other replenishes MP for all near party members).
Basically, i've used them to make farming a lot easier (elementals seem to take a lot of damage from divine) ... and i haven't been disappointed.
However, re: staffs specifically... i honestly don't know, as i've stuck with the club and shield combo.

[Miriamel]

Personally, I switched from staff to club. I wouldn't want to pass up on the 225 WS Hexastrike.

Most of the early club as well as staff abilities aren't that great - although I have developed a liking for Seraph Strike, which does up to 300 damage depending on TP and not enemy strength. I'm only up to the two MP-giving WS's (utter crap), so I'm not exactly sure about high level WS apart from Hexastrike.

Most of the early staff skills are earth elemental based, hence they are not too powerful. You do however get one AoE attack at 70, which is not too shabby. The two WS after are light/dark elemental based, so I'm guessing they do decent damage (haven't personally tried them, though).

[Claritin]

Club vs Staff

For WHM it's really easy to decide...

Club lets you use a shield
Staff is 2-handed.

Since WHM rarely ever melee.... having a shield for defense when things go bad is really nice.

Although I have 91 skill in club and 40 in staff ;-) I just like to tinker... and keep in mind I have a PLD and PLD is just as good with club as with sword.... so on occasion I will switch when soloing etc.

I leveled my Staff for just a little bit for the sake of my BLM and SMN... leveling a weapon skill to 40 is insanely easy when you have a lvl 36 holding the weapon beating down lvl 18 monsters... Your HP regen ability as WHM is almost enough to compensate for the dmg you take... you never need to cast heal.

You can get 2 free staves in Windhurst through questing
1.) Misery staff (effect curse lvl 20 required lvl) - Curse's foiled again quests
2.) Hypno Staff (Effect sleep lvl 30 required lvl) - Reap what you sow and let sleeping dogs lie quests. - requires high enough faction for the 2nd quest that you will also unlock teleport : Mea quest.

You can get a lvl 30 club that has decent dmg output using I think 4k conquest points in Sandoria if you are from that city. Royal Squires Mace.

Have fun with your weapon skills.. just remember to stay focused on healing at all times... and stay back when fighting monsters that silence or use area of effect attacks.... it is not a wise WHM that enters combat against a mob that does area of effect attacks to raise a skill.

[Sugarloaf]

i've seen hexastrike and it is truly amazing but i have used staves since the beginning mainly because i need any extra +mp/+mnd i can get as elvaan ^^ plus i fancy double handed weapons as it is i guess.

[Lyonesse]

Clubs have fairly consistent WS surprisingly.

Shining Strike - Sucks ass

Seraph Strike - Easily one of the best WS before level 41 IMO. Consistent damage and very few mobs are highly resistant to light damage. For WHM, this will be your bread and butter if you ever do melee farming or minor melee in parties.

Brainshaker - Terrible for the most part. This is a decent WS to do Skillchains with but its Stun effect is laughable.

Starlight - Good MP restoring WS. It gets stronger as you go up in Club skill.

Moonlight - The Area Of Effect version of Starlight, the amount replenished grows as you gain skill levels. This is an EXCELLENT WS for XP parties on a PLD as you can restore some of your own MP to generate aggro and restore others around you. It's very helpful in pinch situations. WHMs don't get much use out of it since most don't melee but it is something you should use if you're on a questing party.

Skullbreaker - Not sure about this but I assume it's similar to Brainshaker in damage which makes it kind of sucky.

True Strike - Not sure about this as I don't see many WHMs use it
I'll have it fairly soon on my PLD though

Judgement - Not sure about this either. I'll have it on my PLD as well so I'll come back and tell you how I like it =P.

Hexa Strike - OMG, ownage. A sick WS for WHMs only. It's surprisingly effective for a Mage only WS (and the only multi-hit WS for mages that I can think of at the moment). You won't use it in your XP parties often but it'll be a kick when you do XD.

Black Halo - Haven't seen this personally but it looks quite fun.

[Synbios]

Only Seraph Strike and Judgment can do decent damage until Hexa, Brainshaker is used more like Flat Blade, to stop enemy casting, gobby bombs, etc. The others aren't worth mentioning.

[Issaac]

The only usefullness for starlight i found is while farming, 100TP for 11 mana is just funny but not worth anything. While farming its rather nice, you get back those mana you used for pulling and if you farm one to two hit mobs its not realy worth to use dmg weopan skill.

[Coinspinner]

Starburst does less damage than Rock Crusher. Utterly worthless imo. I'm at 122 staff skill, 106 club, wondering if I should even bother as it seems a BLM cannot ever use any good WS...

[locus]

I've done some tests and Starlight and Moonlight's restoration is based on your weapon skill, so don't diss it so fast.

At weapon skill 230 it heals about 27 mp to everyone in the party for only 100 tp. That isn't trivial. Also - Moonlight does NOT create hate. A paladin using a club for moonlight would just be a very very bad idea unless he was using a Kraken club. Provoke and flash isn't enough to hold hate without a small damage input as well.

Staff I generally use for farm training. Earth Crusher + huge trains + 300 tp = 600+ area attack damage. Spirit taker is quite interesting and Retribution plain looks cool. Plus, you get to use it with the Cure + Elemental staves.

Lyonesse - ask a paladin, black mage or a dark knight - the point of stun is to cancel your opponent's current move, not to incapacitate it. Try doing it the next time a bomb starts doing SelfDestruct.

True Strike = 1x critical hit, damage 192 or so when you get it. Beats Seraph easily at 100% tp.

Judgment = 2 hits, damage about 344, does over 712 damage when dual wielding clubs on pots. (but how often will you do that?)

Black Halo = 2 hits, allows you to do a level 3 renkei with yourself if you subbed Samurai for some reason or use an Icarus wing. (Black Halo >> Hexa Strike for best results)

[Icemage]

Locus is right about Moonlight and Starlight. At 186 Club skill I get 60MP back with a 300% Starlight, or 40MP to entire party with Moonlight.

This doesn't mean they're useful in an XP party(since its very hard to get 100%+ TP vs. IT enemies), but it can be very handy for farming/hunting items since they decrease your downtime. Of course, both skills DO rather suck when you first get them...


Icemage

[Claritin]

Not bad.

300% TP for 60 MP.... yeah I would say that is good for farming ;-)

Still working on my club skill... only at 97 now... soo close to being a better farmer.

I was grouped with an almost all mage party (mostly JPN) the other night when I was on as WHM... and they insisted I melee. also. You know... surpisingly enough with a SAM/WAR, 2 BLM, SMN, WHM, RDM we didn't do half bad.

The trick was Dia 2 and the SMN avatar that gives en-lightning to everyone in PT... and the fact that the monsters we fought didn't do area of effect damage. This was a lvl 36-39 PT in Garliage doing bats and beetles in exp gains up to 4-5 for sometimes as much as 220 xp.... so consider that before you laugh at the party formation... it was WAY more effective than I thought (no tanks were online which was odd as hell) I was originally going to kill 5 or so monsters then explain I needed a different group... but they really did suprise me.

Yes I do realize I could have made more EXP in a standard group... but not that much more and these people needed me....

[Jei]

5 mages aren't bad. one of the best PT I had at 68-70 was like this
Pld
blm blm blm rdm brd

we did 6 chains at level 68... for an ordinary PT at that level, making 4 chains were hard enough already.

[Synbios]

Originally posted by Jei
5 mages aren't bad. one of the best PT I had at 68-70 was like this
Pld
blm blm blm rdm brd

we did 6 chains at level 68... for an ordinary PT at that level, making 4 chains were hard enough already.

That is the best party setup. (With exceptions of BST BST BST BST BST BST)