A return! Also a look at new equips: Yorcia Skirmish gear!

Hi eeryone, sorry for not posting any blog entries but I've been away from the game for a while. Some thing have changed, Moghat has went to a sister shell, TribalEtiquette, Tibs quit FFXI, and I took my break.

While I've been away there's been some new content, people do Delve bosses as opposed to plasm farming, there's new zones, a new Skirmish (while with be the topic of this post.) and a new patch is coming with some exciting changes to assault/salvage!

So Since I've came back, I got access to Yorcia to get access to Skirmish, and while I haven't done it yet, I think going over the gear for WHM might be a good idea, even if it's just from a WHM theorycraft perspective.

So we will be looking at the Gendewitha set, which is wore by WHM/RDM/BRD/SCH. the Yorcia Skirmish items are either dropped at the end chest or purchased with Lebondopt Wings and each pieces can also be augmented with Verdigris Stones, that come in NQ, +1 and +2. each having a different rate of giving the different augments.

The augments are seperated into two groups, the first group comes on all of the Yorcia Skirmish armor as a possibility which is -PDT as one of the possible augments for each set. the other group contains augments specific to the set.

for the Gendewitha set, the specific augments can be:

-Cure Spellcasting time, between 1-3% and 3-5 % depending on stone quality
Cure Potency, between 1-5% and 4-8% depending on stone quality

And for BRDs you can get a -Song Spellcating Time or -Song Recast Delay augment.

The Curing augments for WHM are very nice, though specifically the -Cure cast time being the best augment in my opinion since it'd allow you to use the piece as potential fast cast gear specifically for cures. However, don't discount the -PDT augment!

now for the set:

Head:

For head we have the Gendewitha Caubeen, This is a pretty great head-piece even un-augmented just for all the raw stats this thing gives. This does beat +2 Orison Cap for curing for sure, just due to it matching it's potency while offering so much more MND and MP, with some great -Enmity on top of that. Marduk's Tiara +1 from Salvage II does have more potency, but Gendewitha head has more MND, and offers Enmity down in exchange for the +Divine Magic skill, but there are still applications for the Tiara still if you need to Divine skill or the extra point of Potency, but a potency augment on Gendewitha head could make that moot.

This is also potentially AMAZING Idle gear due to the MDB, Magic Evasion and Evasion slapped on it. Especially if you get one of those PDT augments.

It falls short of "FULL TIME THIS!" because for fast-cast this is way more un-exiciting because all it offers is some Haste (maybe RDM or BRD would be more excited for that?) in any case a Marduk's Tiara +1 would be more desirable to combine with more Marduk +1 for Fastcast, or a Nares hat or whatever. That said, being able to be great curing gear and an idle powerhouse makes this piece incredibly strong. If that Haste was Fast Cast or Quicken Cast this piece would probably be too good/broken. I guess if it has a -Cure cast time augment you could FC with it specifically for those.


Body:
The Gendewitha Bliaut is what we're looking at now. This is a piece I feel that's going to cause WHM's like myself a little bit of confusion and puts us in a tough spot. You see, for the longest time the +2 Orison body has been a WHM curing staple, simply for the Afflatus Solace "cureskin" bonus. however Gendewitha body offers a huge load of MND and potency along with slightly more MP in exchange for the +"cureskin" effect and the + healing skill. I donno which will be the real winner here, it's a really hard call, maybe I should contact other WHMs about this. I think RDM might like this quite a lot for curing though.

for Idle though it's potentially amazing! MDB, Magic Evasion, Evasion, VIT, HP, and it's got Refresh. I'm curious how strong it's refresh is. If it's more than 2 MP/tick that is absolutely stunning, as that is more refresh than either Orison body or Marduk +1 body.

Again, nothing really for precast, not even Haste, though again, you could end up with a -cure cast time augment.


Hands:
So, the Gendewitha Gages. Curing-wise, I'm sort of underwhelmed, as before augments it only offers MND, though it does have quite a lot of it. It has more mind than Bokwus Gloves from Delve does pre-augment, but after the +10 augment on the Delve gloves, Bokwus gloves will only have a few MND points less while also offering a whopping 13% potency in addition to some -Enmity. Certainly beats bayld gloves if you get even a halfway passable potency augment, though. the Magic Accuracy is..... interesting, though, may be good for your enfeebles and stuff. I'm betting BRD and RDM are going to be all over these gloves just for the Magic Acc.+

For idle it's still got some of that MDB and magic evasion and stuff lying around on it, which is cool.

but the most notable thing is these have a really nice +7% fast cast! This definitely beats other gloves like Marduk Dastanas +1 or Repartie Gloves  for precast! This could be a great precast piece if you wind up with a -cure cast time augment which I think may be the best application for this piece from a WHM perspective.

Legs:
Oh dear, the Gendewitha Spats.... It's not..... completely terrible for curing? 19 MND doesn't count for nothing, certainly, Could be cool for other raw MND-based stuff? but like with the body, the +2 Orison legs were (and probably still will be.) a strong gold standard in curing gear for a long time for VERY good reason. getting 5 percent of your MP back based on how much you Cure is incredibly powerful, and I don't know about you, but 19 MND is not enough to convince me to give that up. It also has stuff like MAB and -song cast time leading me to believe this piece will just be far stronger for RDM or BRD than WHM.

However it's still a strong Idle piece for any job due to the MDB, evasion, magic evasion etc. These are the reason a WHM will wear these. Which...... brings us to precast.

Orison pants +2 also beat it for fast cast even if you get a -cure cast time augment. because Orison +2 has -HEALING cast time 12%, meaning it works for more than just Cure spells and 12 is quite a bit!

Feet:
Lastly we have the Gendewitha Galoshes. For curing, well it does have more MND than bayld boots. Orvail does have that -Enmity, but you know how many hoots I give, ZERO HOOTS! Why? Three words. "Enhances Cursna Effect". Feet pieces usually are just kinda "whatever" but putting a good utility thing like that on feet and also giving it some more magic evasion?. Sure, I'll wear those most of the time, only situation where i'd not wear them is when I'm switching in fast cast or resting.


There we have it, bit of a weird set, but it's mostly good, even the "worst piece for WHM" is still good for an idle set. I can't wait to start skirmish! I still wanna do other events too, though,, like more Salvage 2 because it was fun. and some of the Marduk pieces are still situationally good. We'll see how it goes.