T-Staff vs SoS/A-Club

[joppykid]

I know there is stuff someone on google with this info or even somewhere on these forums but I was looking for some fresh responses on this.

I am a 53 Monk right now and have SoS/A Club. I love the dps they do, I used 2hb all the way up to 50 but I am glad I switched.
Which is better though? T-Staff or the 1hb combo? I haven't had the opportunity yet to try a t-staff yet so I have nothing to compare it to.
I have heard that both are the best so I was just curious what others thought? Is it worth switching from the 1hb to 2hb? or vice versa? Eventually, yeah it'd be great to have both for when mobs have dmg shield up but I don't have that kind of cash.

Thanks

[ownrage]

also wanted to know people's thoughts on RFS vs Tstaff vs A-Club/SoS

[Bruman]

A guildie had an RFS, and I tried it out over my AC/SoS. I did not think it parsed well. Tstaff procs are great dps.

Another guildie with a tstaff typically out-parses most fights, especially once you consider how parsing doesn't record other procs properly.

I don't have any logs to show, this is just from watching it and averaging things out over various raids. There's a couple of things to be wary of when parsing though.

1. You only get proc damage from YOUR weapon. This is to due to when other people proc, you see a message about it, but no damage numbers. When your weapon procs, it will tell you how much damage it did. This is the same way spell damage works, so noone ever knows what damage the other casters are doing, unless they're parsing too.

2. DPS is VERY inconsistent. If fights lasted longer, that would help, but generally they're over very fast. Rankings and dps-per-person fluctuates between fights wildly. The only way to get a good idea is to average over a night's raid, but even that has issues because...

3. Stats fluctuate. For it to be a good comparison, everyone needs to have the same DPS-related buffs - haste, str, and dex (for proc-rate). Even then, gear between everyone is different.

4. People come and go. This is EQ. AFKs are common. Sometimes the parser will get tripped up on when a fight started, which will destroy DPS. Looking between monks, we often are out pulling (and then the parse really reads bad on our dps, because it starts the fight with the throwing weapon, including the non-dps time to run it to camp). Monks getting aggro have to FD it off. You get the idea.

5. Even then, things aren't consistent here. Short fights especially skew numbers. If you're using a 2hb, a few misses will tank your dps. So 1hb will look better. DPS seems to be especially more-so all over the map here than it was on live.

The only real way to get a good feel for what weapon is better is to have access to them all yourself, find a consistent place to kill a mob by yourself, then do several fights with each weapon in a controlled environment.

And even THEN, you still have issues of how dps changes with haste. With very fast weapons (monk epic, for example) and haste items and spells, you reach the minimum delay of 9 easily. At that point, weapons with higher delay can reach better ratios with haste.

But wait! Now throw in damage bonus calculations! The faster the weapon, the more damage bonuses you get. So it's more than just the ratio too. There's probably some point where a certain amount of haste will flop which items are better.

For best results, get a shaman (and maybe an enchie) to find some dark blues, give you raid buffs, then kill 5-10 mobs with each weapon and average it out. I don't know if anyone's tried that, or they're just posting parses saying "Well, over the night, I did better with my tstaff than so-and-so with their RFS", not taking into account the fifty billion other things that screw with parses that I went into way too much detail about.

What do I recommend? Get what you can afford, and don't sweat it too much. Most shit will be dying so damn fast that it won't matter. And with all the other variables that come into play, you wouldn't notice it on a fight-per-fight basis anyways. General recommend upgrade path is JM/KD -> AC/SoS -> TStaff.

[joppykid]

Great Stuff, Thanks for your input!

[eqravenprince]

Got this parse from another thread, unfortunately, it doesn't show AC/SoS combo.

Level 20 (damage per min, fairly accurate)

Jade Mace/Knuckle Dusters - 473
Peacebringer - 606
Imbued Fighters Staff - 618
Tranquil Staff - 680
Runed Fighters Staff (Post Nerf) - 638

Level 50

Jade Mace/Knuckle Dusters - 1038
Peacebringer - 1063
Imbued Fighters Staff - 1019
Tranquil Staff - 1156
Runed Fighters Staff (Post Nerf) - 1092

[Bruman]

Yeah, those numbers would be better with how much haste the person had, as well as no haste versus with haste. Then we need dex/str numbers too. Dex especially, as it'll push TStaff past all those others. Also, need to know what kind of mobs they were going against, how long the fights lasted, were they solo or in a group, etc etc etc. It's hard to draw anything but the vaguest idea from that info.

What's particularly noticeable here is how close TStaff is versus PB. Seeing as how those two weapons are nearly the same dmg/dly (29/30 vs 28/30), but the TStaff has a 100pt DD proc, you can tell it's not a super high-quality parse. In most fights, the TStaff will proc at least a couple of times with reasonable dex, which should put it noticeably higher than the PB, but here, it's not. So either the fights were very short, or the parser wasn't the person playing the monk.

[Treats]

Those numbers are all from an old program in the Velious era named Copeland's Weapon Analyzer. There are different calculation options you can set. It is not an actual parse.

Monk
Level 20/50
100 Strength
Flowing Black Silk Sash
Proc % for 1hers : 3%
Proc % for 2hers : 5%
Resist % : 50% (Wouldnt be applicable for T Staff)
Hit % : 60%

Damage Curve

Min: 45%
Magic : 45%
Max : 10%

Adamantite Club/SoS Combo @ Level 50 - 1100

Some things to note:

Proc damage will not increase your dps that much. Even if you have 255 dex that still only equates to two procs per minute. With a Tranquil Staff thats 240 dmg = 4 DPS increase.

There isn't really a minimum delay here anymore. Haste will give you the same increase in DPS no matter what the delay, kind of hard to explain.

[Yanomamo]

Wouldn't a better idea be to duel a cleric and let them heal themselves? And possibly have others heal from outside the duel (can this be done?)