Mercy Stroke Set

So I'm slowly working towards upgrading my set for stroke atm (pretty lulszy at the moment, but its getting there.) Wondering if the STR dagger would be a good option among other things. Already plan on picking up a Pyrosoul, Vulcan's Pearl and possible oce +1 body. I'd like to get heca cap but probably never will honestly. Any suggestions on what else to upgrade/look into? Disregard ws'ing in epona's cuz I'm too cheap to buy a junk str ring while I save for Pyrosoul :)

A str dagger is certainly valuable. Not very convinced with that backpiece though, what about Rancor mantle?

Hmmm not heard of Rancor mantle before nor can I find any info on it?

I like str dagger outside abyssea. Usually use triplus offhand in abyssea stacked with apoc/rr/gh ofc. You could get str/attack ammo, heca body or koci's if lucky enough to obtain. Heca hands, feet, and legs, with the appropriate augments are good also. Heca head isn't all that hard to get if you see a shout for ks99. Its a common drop. You could also play with soil gorget and belt to see your numbers. Overall your set looks pretty good.

+5% crit rate, +10% damage taken. Drops from casket in Den of Rancor.

I was using soil and shadow belt I believe but personally I've noticed higher output with this setup so far. Unless I've just been impatient and went for all out str and not payed attention to numbers really. Mainly been sticking with rapidus since I'm not quite at haste cap with my TP setup and don't have triplus. Focused on building Mandau the past few months and now working on upgrades for the set/mandau itself.

For one, rancor mantle is an inferior back for mercy as mercy cannot crit naturally, and under SA/TA its 100% crit.

Next, if you use the prosilio route, stick to cerby +1 back and get the hell rid of the brutal - you're at -2% DA with that setup, unless /war you're wasting ur ear1 slot. 2 str+4 ears would be ideal.

Eponas comes out slightly ahead of pyrosoul i believe.

Oce +1 body is a waste imo, toci's will be worth it but im 99% certain that lokis will almost always beat the +1.

Work on whirlwind dirs or athos tights for legs. Also athos tabbard for body.

An oneiros knife offhand i believe comes trumps, drops from arch boss in dyna jeuno.

Hecatomb +1 feet with 4 str and 8 attack augment are ideal, the str alone is easy enough to get at least.

Hecatomb cap +1 or aias bonnet are strong options. With the -DA route, hecatomb augments lose much of they're impact.

If you take the prosilio route, a soil gorget will beat justiciars.

Woosh, I was sure Mercy was crit, my bad.

Something like this looks about ideal for a general sneak attack'd stroke. Obviously for TA you would swap out certain pieces for agi.

Feet with 4str and any attack is ideal.

Leg augments are so-so for stroke, although random pool str would be fantastic.

Head can get +10atk, and if you get 2 or more double attack then swap a vulcan pearl for brutal.

EDIT: To clarify that's unstacked. Though with good gear, exenterator is better. But Mandau will pull ahead at 99 with the 15% extra WS dmg.

Not sure which would be better, Toci's or Athos's Tabard Toci's is better. STR Thokchar is the better offhand unless Twashtar is 95+ but I'll be damned if I'm not going to use it after putting in the time...

Brutal's is still good with the above setup where you're sitting at 12% DA, 13% TA. More DA if you have augmented heca's cap. This obviously changes if using AC. In that case an extra STR ring and earring will work.


Can you explain this, genuinely would like to hear why that's the case.

Not disputing that it's probably not worth using Brutal in a Prosilio set, but I don't get how is -2%? Brutal is 5% and Epona's is 3%, should be a net 3% on that set unless something else has -2A that I don't know.

I derped, ignore anything i said about brutal...although still not worth using unless its actually giving a decent bonus - i.e. if using a heca cap with 2%+ augment.

I'd also like to hear why this is the case

For neck

Thf base attack 417, +16 from merits and lets say 100 base str so +50. 483 before gear.

123 pure attack in my set, and 57 str so 28 more, total of 691 before food. Add in 153 from red curry (152.5, old total was 691.5), for a total of 844.

17 attack would be a 2.02% dmg increase ideally, although this will usually be less.

4 str is 2.4 WSC, so with my set 2 dmg total.

Again assuming a 100 base str and 100 base dex, with mandau 53 base dmg.

str 100+57
dex 100+47

under SA, the dex is +147 dmg, and the str is 94, total dmg of 294. 2 WSC will increase this by 0.68%.

Overall increase in ideal situations is 2.7%. Assuming no food, that would increase to roughly 3%.


Gorget adds a flat 0.1 fTP, with mercy stroke having a fTP of 3.0 across the board, gorget is a flat 3.333% damage increase.

Edit: for tocis vs athos, tocis will give 12 WSC from the dex and 7.2 from str, 19 WSC total.

athos gives a flat 15, so 4 dmg difference, and 5% critical damage increase.

again using my set, 4 dmg is a 1.36% damage increase, and the attack will be a 1.18% increase, total of 2.54% in ideal conditions.

critical attack bonus IV is 14%, adding in the 10% from oneiros making 24%.

a 5% boost to crit dmg under SA then becomes a 3.8% total damage increase, making athos overall 1.26% better than toci's for SA stroke - significantly more for TA stroke.

You couldn't pay me to use Oneiros. The loss in off-hand DPS during the TP phase would be disgusting. It's easily comparable to a Thief's Knife in DMG disparity.

From the gearset I posted, it's about a 7% loss in overall DPS. I see where you're coming from though Seiri as it does make for some nice WS numbers. However the overall loss isn't worth it.

My sets are mostly focused at VW atm, or other high level content where the dmg spread is horrendously skewed towards WS. In this case, the added dps from another dagger - any other dagger - doesn't come close to oneiros.

Outside of VW a str/atk kila, twashtar or something such would outweigh oneiros for overall DPS.

Outside VW i can see that being completely true nat, but as my other post said, with say an average of 40 save tp and usually 3/tick regain from coercion, added in with the abysmally low dmg from regular swings, compared to 3~4k WSs, mob dependant, the dps loss will be much lower, and the overall gain to WSs outweighs it substantially.

I went the, "Screw DA" route all together because THFs have this thing called Triple Attack and Assassin's charge.

With the 11% proc rate and whatever your timer for Assassin's charge is, DA gear will do absolutely nothing at least 11% of the time.

So for instance, in the ear slot, it's a choice between 5% DA that does nothing (at least) 1 in 9 WSs, or +4str that does do something 100% of the time. I went with the +4str earring, which gives me about the same average but guarantees me a higher maximum.

Also, I'm lucky enough not to have my augmented Heca Cap+1 go to complete waste because
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/Jayjs20/71437c8c.png

So yeah, just my $.02

Yeh, trip attack was the only reason I would condone a -da route also, although I simply assumed this was common knowledge.

Rajas > pyrosoul on sneak attack, and ele gorget > just. torque for that set for any stack.


On that note...I'm not sure how vig. +1 compares to cerby +1 backs....gimme 5 to math that out ha.

Edit: Gratz on the cap, very nice.

Well it's basically 1str/5dex vs 15atk.

Don't need to plug it into some calculator to see that one will win if you need the attack, and the other will win if you don't need the atk. I'm just a fan of +stats since you can get +atk from so many other sources, not to mention things like dia/angon/etc.

And I'm already switched back to the sea gorget. It's just an old picture. Also using Athos legs now.

Well not even then.

The attack loss is 1.78%.

The overall WSC gain - assuming the 1 point of str bumps you up - is 1.90%, meaning vig will win in any situation.

If the str doesn't bump you then the gain is 1.47%, and I would just go with cerby +1 for a 'general set' as anything that you don't need the attack on is chaff and gonna die before you even care a jot about 2%.

I use Motenten's spreadsheet to figure out what gear sets work best. Lately I've just been using Bukhis as the target w/o any cruor buffs or atmas to simulate a higher level mob with beefed up stats. Does anyone have stats I can plug in for a new mob that would be similar to what we see in VW?

Maybe use dragua, should be closer.

Then also half your dmg from tp swings as save tp/regain will effectively half the swings needed to hit 100% (or sometimes more than half.

how about Vajra offhand? BG states that it increases SA/TA dmg by 25%

Has it been found if it works offhand?

If so then, yes it would be the ideal VW offhand....

If no, it's a piece of crap for offhand.

Either way: a *** of work for only possible perfection.

A ton of work for minimal upgrades? Sounds like something up my alley, however, though I'm not 100% sure, I don't believe it works offhand.

I know the feeling.

Just...try and find out lol, imagine doing all that bull for it then finding: oh ***, this dagger has...absolutely no usage.

Now that I think about it, Oneiros' usefulness is tied to SA and TA timers, and as you said yourself, the atmacites dramatically increases your WS rate. I would think you would be WSing a lot more w/o SA or TA which would make Oneiros a poor option.

And I'm well aware of triple attack taking priority over double attack, but that doesnt mean you should ignore it completely. But you're right that the difference between a +4 STR earring and brutal's is almost non existent, with the +4 STR earring being more consistent. I'm still not quite sure i understand why the gorget is better, or why the vigilance mantle +1 would be better over atheling or cerb +1.

It's a shame Vajra looks so cool but is just not worth the effort to get.