Paladin Weaponry!

With the most recent update, we now have several high base damage weapons at our disposal that largely outclass the R/E/M swords for general straight DPSing.

Clearly, the new best sword seems to be the Buramenk'ah, but before that we may have some interesting options.

There seems to be a high damage version of every weapon class that drop from the Delve field NMs (and are buyable with plasm), and our immediate upgrade seems to be the halachuinic sword. The only problem I'm seeing is that Requiescat seems to be a not-so-stellar weapon skill; this is where my question lies.

We also have access to a new club! The mondaha cudgel! The main reason I mention this is due to PLD having access to a fairly powerful club weapon skill-- Realmrazer. Paladin has A- club skill, meaning theres only a (7?) skill difference between that and sword, and the weapon can be further augmented for accuracy. Does the ability to use Realmrazer over Requiescat make this a viable weapon to use (where we can't make use of Req's special properties), or am I overestimating the power of Realmrazer?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

On that note, I'm curious to see how the crafted club compares to the Naakual sword.

Sharur(+1) + Realmrazer gogogo.

The club is pretty monstrous, wouldn't be surprised at all if it beats the Naakual sword. Any base damage advantage that Requiescat has is made up entirely by the huge lead in base damage that the club has (and then some) while eliminating the attack penalty issue that Requiescat harbors, and PLD's club skill is very close to its sword skill making it a minor loss in attack/accuracy from that. Only major advantage that the sword has is in its delay (which is actually fairly major), and to a much lesser extent the fact that Requiescat has more utility attached.

It definitely seems that they've attempted to create weapon tiers with this update.

1) New Naakual + Crafted
2) Delve plasma weapons

At the top tier, the club seems to have a better chance at outdoing the sword with a generally better stat comparison: 45 base damage advantage and a smaller delay disadvantage of +94. Moving towards the second tier, the stat differences make the comparison a bit more difficult for me to speculate with a smaller 26 base damage advantage and an even larger delay difference. This difference in scaling can be seen in the listed DPS sections on wiki for the weapons as well: Bura/Sharur 32.5 vs 31.44 and Hala/Mond 27.37 vs 22.94.

I'm nearing the point where I'll be purchasing my first plasma weapon, and I'd be interested to see how those two (Halachuinic vs Mondaha) compare.

With Hala vs Mondaha, I have sword winning 205 to 191. With Bura vs Sharur, it's 245 to 228 (232 with the +1). Average damage per round favors club (approx: 400 to 350), but with the delay difference, melee DPS ends up being in favor of sword (approx: 140 to 110). That, plus the slower TP gain of the club due to its delay, is enough to outweigh the better weaponskill damage club gets (club is several hundred points above sword). Note: this includes Enlight, and assumes weapon+Ochain (or other non-stat shield) as /war, not dual-wielding. Also done with Berserk up, in case you're comparing with the DW numbers below.

Dual-wielding, they're much closer together, but sword is still slightly ahead; Hala beats Mondaha 181 to 175. All I changed for gear was the DA set earrings to Brutal+Suppa, and had them both offhand a str Shikargar.

Given that they're not -too- far apart, would suggest checking your own numbers as well, rather than considering the above to be definitive.