[Guide] The Antichode and You (Spear)
Posted: 26 May 2015, 08:06It's been a while since I've tried spear, and by a while, I mean something like 7 months. During that time period, this weapon experienced a major buff that allowed for a bump in its viability, and hence, needs to be reassessed. Because of that, I made an alt and used it to carry a bit of Edo, albeit with low budget magatama. Naturally, any criticism / complaints / suggestions / whatever are welcome, but you're probably wrong.
Note: Before we start, keep in mind that the guide itself is not really that in depth. However, my knowledge of spear is not limited to what is written down here, so, if the information you want isn't here, feel free to ask any questions and I will respond accordingly whenever I see them.
[Overview, Weaknesses and Strengths]
As of right now, spear is just about average; it's not too strong, but it's also not too weak. At lower levels, it's a weapon that basically doesn't need any ougi. However, at higher levels, it feels pretty ougi dependent now. Compared to other weapons, the number of high level spear users seems awfully low. And as a result, lower leveled players are even less inclined to play spear. But even if these higher leveled players were less rare, they still wouldn't be a good measure of exactly how strong spear can become. Why, you ask? Well, that's because they're not doing it right. Many players fall into the noob trap offered by spear, and never realize its true potential.
So what's good about spear? Well, first of all, unlike other weapons, it doesn't eat through your wallet to play; you can easily get up to the latest content without so much as touching an ougi card ever. Frankly, that's amazing; very few other weapons can do the same thing. However, at higher levels, they become very ougi dependant.
Most spear skills consist of a wide or long AOE that deals a decent amount of damage over some time period. As a result, most of these skills have relatively low single target damage, and most of them are able to fully damage upwards of five monsters, allowing spear to easily shred the majority of the early game. However, these AOE's tend to fall off in damage later in the game, which causes many problems for spear players.
One issue that spears tend to experience is a lack of chakra.. if they get noobtrapped. Unlike other weapons, spear should avoid using a chiami magatama at all costs in order to maximize their damage. Finally, spear has major durability issues, and very few good skills. More on these will be explained below.
[Skills]
In this section, every skill will be ranked S - F, and some other details will be provided. Analysis may be included if I feel that the skill is worth it. Note that multi-click skills tend to have better scaling, but this does not imply that they do better overall damage.
Charge Spike
Rank: C
Mediocre Damage
Collapsing Blade
Rank: F
Not useable because of durability nerfs on EN, + spear already has stupidly high durability consumption, so using this will only bring up even more issues.
Devastation Slash
Rank: C
Okay for finishing off something you missed a kill on, decently fast, but channel time is too long for its damage output, even at an extremely high amount of slice.
Double Edged Cut
Rank: A+
Not as good as other double edgeds, but + the bonus from cross, and you got one hell of a hard hitter.
Ice Blossom
Rank: B
Not as good as it used to be because the damage falls off really hard in Edo.
Lunge Step
Rank: B
Low damage, but you can get close to mobs pretty quickly using this.
Poison Fang
Rank: B
Good for killing goldaruma at lower levels, when you don't have a poison cloud weapon yet
Revolving Blast
Rank: S
While it has a long channel time, higher ranks have incredible amounts of damage, as each explosion applies the full skill force of the skill. This is spear's second highest damage skill.
Rolling Thunder
Rank: C
While it actually scales very well, its not usable unless you use Chiami or you're killing melee mobs/things easy to predict...It gets countered really hard by ranged mobs.
Shadowed Strike
Rank: D
Slow and weak
Stonespire Barrier
Rank: B
Not that bad, forms a decent combination with WDS.
Thunder Crack
Rank: D
If this only went up to rank 6, it'd be a C...but the second hit just...
Water Dragon Spear
Rank: B
High damage... even higher durability consumption. While its good to use at lower levels and the like, dungeons such as Pipe 3, which require you to output quite a bit of single target damage, causes this skill to fall off. It simply eats way too much durability for what it does.
Wind Thrust
Rank: E
If only you didn't have to sit there the whole time... or it did damage
Way of the Spear
Rank: A
You'll need this for some builds.
Intimidate
Rank: D
It increases the enemy attack speed, which is kind of annoying even if it does slow their movement speed. On the bright side, it does 1 damage, even though it doesn't show any numbers.
Taunt
Rank: F
Does this even work? Seems like it fails more often than not.
Spirit Blast
Rank: SS
Since it was buffed, this became your best friend. It's already-high damage was increased by another 30% or so. It's the skill you'll be using 90% of the time. Note that to use this to its full potential, you need to hit the sweet spot. What that means is, you hit with both the slash as well as 3 of the pillars. Normally, this involves using the slash part of the attack to move the enemies into the 3 pillars hit. Even if this is not employed, it still does decent damage.
Eternal Thunder
Rank: B
Its fast, but it does like no damage compared to spirit blast. Even with 40 lightning, spirit blast's main hit alone still does more damage than it. However, this quickness does come in handy from time to time. You can still use this spell to clear if you're able to one hit kill with it, just keep in mind that its far inferior in terms of boss damage, assuming that you have significant amounts of slice element.
Tidal Wave
Rank: D
Its usable at lower levels, but later on, its damage just comes out too slowly. It doesn't even do that much in the first place, so that just makes it worse.
Earth Upending Spear
Rank: C
Good damage, but it also eats way too much durability.
Purple Lightning Rain
Rank: D
Crappy damage and high durability consumption.
[Damage Maximization]
Too lazy to explain things here. If you want more details, make a post asking for an explanation, or use the Onigiri Multiplier Calculator to find out exactly what has the most DPS. Otherwise, just trust me on this. Title should be Katou Kiyomasa, unless you want to use Uesugi Kenshin for the spirit blast build, which also does work. Note that you should take into account that losing more than 15% of your attack stat will result in a damage loss of more than 15%, which is what the Uesugi kenshin title provides you under the assumption that you have 0 element. As you gain more element, Katou kiyomasa gradually becomes more efficient.
Tl;dr, geared people should take Katou Kiyomasa.
WDS Build
2x lit with confining terror
1x Gemini with fated contractor
1x Gemini with fated contractor + unblinking eye
Go for crit on everything, sf is nice on the terrors
Fateds can be swapped out for water heavenly shield, in which case you should swap out unblinking eye for confining terror. For this build. Water element technically provides you with the most damage, and, since water dragon spear does not scale off of slice, there's not much of a reason to go for fated contractor besides a slight bit more critical.
Eternal Thunder Fated Build
Just don't. This is a noobtrap. I don't care how much free lightning you get, or what people tell you, building for this skill specifically via the use of fated contractor is absolute trash, and you should never do it. Ever.
Well, at least not this patch. This might change in the future because of how tanky some bosses are to specific elements. That doesn't mean you should avoid using eternal thunder altogether; the skill itself has its own uses. However, you should never be building for it.
Spirit Blast Build
1x Lit with unblinking eye
3x Leo with Fated contractor
Go for crit force
Go for crit/slice on the fateds
Optional: replace a few fateds with heavenly shield for holy element. Make sure to optimize your damage via the calculator, by varying crit rate.
So why is this build the strongest? First of all, it does the most flat damage. Spirit blast got a massive buff recently, which made it so powerful that dragon spears became able to one hit kill Musha archers in pipe 3 with the right magatama. It's simply ridiculous. This build works by abusing the insane base damage provided by spirit blast, and amping it up even further.
Since spirit blast scales 50/50 off slice and holy, the player is able to benefit from the slice element on fated contractor to an overly large extent.
Note that this build is mainly focused around doing damage to bosses. You will still be using eternal thunder to clear through the dungeon assuming that you're able to one hit kill things with it. Tougher monsters that you may have trouble killing in one hit, such as archers, can be handled with a spirit blast.
True Lightning Build (Eternal Rolling Thunder)
If you're a real man you'll use rolling thunder without chiami. ;D
Lit + 3 Leo
All Heavenly shield, double lightning.
If using Omen Cross, you can forgo some heavenly shield for fated, for crit rate.
I know you're looking at me like I'm acting silly right now, but this is honestly more viable than you would expect. For ougi, you would be using eternal thunder. Since you have 250 element, you would be hitting 2.45x damage with eternal thunder, which is much more than how much your critical hits would be doing without any element. This acutally gives eternal thunder enough power to be somewhat viable.
Furthermore, this gives you the ability to use another skill... Rolling thunder. Rolling thunder may seem like an inferior skill at first - because it is. However, this skill actually scales very, very well with skill level. Furthermore, it's 100% lightning. In fact, its one of the only skills in the game besides wand skills that are 100% of an element besides slice, pierce and impact. This means that it will do 350% damage when you max it.
Spirit blast, on the other hand, can only do 1.75x damage when you are at max element. Even though it has insane base damage, it ends up falling off when you are built to this extent.
Note that this is still not exactly good DPS, however, you can use it on a boss such as Hyakume. Even if eternal thunder does do more damage than it overtime, the advantage to using rolling thunder is that you have a higher chance to proc the paralysis. Furthermore, you also do not use nearly as much sp. It's sheer number of attacks also makes it so you can cycle 2 of these infinitely assuming you have enough cooldown. In the long run, without any support, you will outlast any other spell in terms of damage per second.
While it sounds like a joke, when a player reaches their maximum potential, both of these skills become much more viable than they really deserve to be. Note that without at least 200 lightning, rolling thunder is not useful.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO USE ROLLING THUNDER ON RANGED MONSTERS. IT IS ONLY MEANT FOR BOSSES THAT ARE EASY TO PREDICT AND MONSTERS THAT WILL ALWAYS ATTEMPT TO HIT YOU WITH MELEE ATTACKS.
Note: Before we start, keep in mind that the guide itself is not really that in depth. However, my knowledge of spear is not limited to what is written down here, so, if the information you want isn't here, feel free to ask any questions and I will respond accordingly whenever I see them.
[Overview, Weaknesses and Strengths]
As of right now, spear is just about average; it's not too strong, but it's also not too weak. At lower levels, it's a weapon that basically doesn't need any ougi. However, at higher levels, it feels pretty ougi dependent now. Compared to other weapons, the number of high level spear users seems awfully low. And as a result, lower leveled players are even less inclined to play spear. But even if these higher leveled players were less rare, they still wouldn't be a good measure of exactly how strong spear can become. Why, you ask? Well, that's because they're not doing it right. Many players fall into the noob trap offered by spear, and never realize its true potential.
So what's good about spear? Well, first of all, unlike other weapons, it doesn't eat through your wallet to play; you can easily get up to the latest content without so much as touching an ougi card ever. Frankly, that's amazing; very few other weapons can do the same thing. However, at higher levels, they become very ougi dependant.
Most spear skills consist of a wide or long AOE that deals a decent amount of damage over some time period. As a result, most of these skills have relatively low single target damage, and most of them are able to fully damage upwards of five monsters, allowing spear to easily shred the majority of the early game. However, these AOE's tend to fall off in damage later in the game, which causes many problems for spear players.
One issue that spears tend to experience is a lack of chakra.. if they get noobtrapped. Unlike other weapons, spear should avoid using a chiami magatama at all costs in order to maximize their damage. Finally, spear has major durability issues, and very few good skills. More on these will be explained below.
[Skills]
In this section, every skill will be ranked S - F, and some other details will be provided. Analysis may be included if I feel that the skill is worth it. Note that multi-click skills tend to have better scaling, but this does not imply that they do better overall damage.
Charge Spike
Rank: C
Mediocre Damage
Collapsing Blade
Rank: F
Not useable because of durability nerfs on EN, + spear already has stupidly high durability consumption, so using this will only bring up even more issues.
Devastation Slash
Rank: C
Okay for finishing off something you missed a kill on, decently fast, but channel time is too long for its damage output, even at an extremely high amount of slice.
Double Edged Cut
Rank: A+
Not as good as other double edgeds, but + the bonus from cross, and you got one hell of a hard hitter.
Ice Blossom
Rank: B
Not as good as it used to be because the damage falls off really hard in Edo.
Lunge Step
Rank: B
Low damage, but you can get close to mobs pretty quickly using this.
Poison Fang
Rank: B
Good for killing goldaruma at lower levels, when you don't have a poison cloud weapon yet
Revolving Blast
Rank: S
While it has a long channel time, higher ranks have incredible amounts of damage, as each explosion applies the full skill force of the skill. This is spear's second highest damage skill.
Rolling Thunder
Rank: C
While it actually scales very well, its not usable unless you use Chiami or you're killing melee mobs/things easy to predict...It gets countered really hard by ranged mobs.
Shadowed Strike
Rank: D
Slow and weak
Stonespire Barrier
Rank: B
Not that bad, forms a decent combination with WDS.
Thunder Crack
Rank: D
If this only went up to rank 6, it'd be a C...but the second hit just...
Water Dragon Spear
Rank: B
High damage... even higher durability consumption. While its good to use at lower levels and the like, dungeons such as Pipe 3, which require you to output quite a bit of single target damage, causes this skill to fall off. It simply eats way too much durability for what it does.
Wind Thrust
Rank: E
If only you didn't have to sit there the whole time... or it did damage
Way of the Spear
Rank: A
You'll need this for some builds.
Intimidate
Rank: D
It increases the enemy attack speed, which is kind of annoying even if it does slow their movement speed. On the bright side, it does 1 damage, even though it doesn't show any numbers.
Taunt
Rank: F
Does this even work? Seems like it fails more often than not.
Spirit Blast
Rank: SS
Since it was buffed, this became your best friend. It's already-high damage was increased by another 30% or so. It's the skill you'll be using 90% of the time. Note that to use this to its full potential, you need to hit the sweet spot. What that means is, you hit with both the slash as well as 3 of the pillars. Normally, this involves using the slash part of the attack to move the enemies into the 3 pillars hit. Even if this is not employed, it still does decent damage.
Eternal Thunder
Rank: B
Its fast, but it does like no damage compared to spirit blast. Even with 40 lightning, spirit blast's main hit alone still does more damage than it. However, this quickness does come in handy from time to time. You can still use this spell to clear if you're able to one hit kill with it, just keep in mind that its far inferior in terms of boss damage, assuming that you have significant amounts of slice element.
Tidal Wave
Rank: D
Its usable at lower levels, but later on, its damage just comes out too slowly. It doesn't even do that much in the first place, so that just makes it worse.
Earth Upending Spear
Rank: C
Good damage, but it also eats way too much durability.
Purple Lightning Rain
Rank: D
Crappy damage and high durability consumption.
[Damage Maximization]
Too lazy to explain things here. If you want more details, make a post asking for an explanation, or use the Onigiri Multiplier Calculator to find out exactly what has the most DPS. Otherwise, just trust me on this. Title should be Katou Kiyomasa, unless you want to use Uesugi Kenshin for the spirit blast build, which also does work. Note that you should take into account that losing more than 15% of your attack stat will result in a damage loss of more than 15%, which is what the Uesugi kenshin title provides you under the assumption that you have 0 element. As you gain more element, Katou kiyomasa gradually becomes more efficient.
Tl;dr, geared people should take Katou Kiyomasa.
WDS Build
2x lit with confining terror
1x Gemini with fated contractor
1x Gemini with fated contractor + unblinking eye
Go for crit on everything, sf is nice on the terrors
Fateds can be swapped out for water heavenly shield, in which case you should swap out unblinking eye for confining terror. For this build. Water element technically provides you with the most damage, and, since water dragon spear does not scale off of slice, there's not much of a reason to go for fated contractor besides a slight bit more critical.
Eternal Thunder Fated Build
Just don't. This is a noobtrap. I don't care how much free lightning you get, or what people tell you, building for this skill specifically via the use of fated contractor is absolute trash, and you should never do it. Ever.
Well, at least not this patch. This might change in the future because of how tanky some bosses are to specific elements. That doesn't mean you should avoid using eternal thunder altogether; the skill itself has its own uses. However, you should never be building for it.
Spirit Blast Build
1x Lit with unblinking eye
3x Leo with Fated contractor
Go for crit force
Go for crit/slice on the fateds
Optional: replace a few fateds with heavenly shield for holy element. Make sure to optimize your damage via the calculator, by varying crit rate.
So why is this build the strongest? First of all, it does the most flat damage. Spirit blast got a massive buff recently, which made it so powerful that dragon spears became able to one hit kill Musha archers in pipe 3 with the right magatama. It's simply ridiculous. This build works by abusing the insane base damage provided by spirit blast, and amping it up even further.
Since spirit blast scales 50/50 off slice and holy, the player is able to benefit from the slice element on fated contractor to an overly large extent.
Note that this build is mainly focused around doing damage to bosses. You will still be using eternal thunder to clear through the dungeon assuming that you're able to one hit kill things with it. Tougher monsters that you may have trouble killing in one hit, such as archers, can be handled with a spirit blast.
True Lightning Build (Eternal Rolling Thunder)
If you're a real man you'll use rolling thunder without chiami. ;D
Lit + 3 Leo
All Heavenly shield, double lightning.
If using Omen Cross, you can forgo some heavenly shield for fated, for crit rate.
I know you're looking at me like I'm acting silly right now, but this is honestly more viable than you would expect. For ougi, you would be using eternal thunder. Since you have 250 element, you would be hitting 2.45x damage with eternal thunder, which is much more than how much your critical hits would be doing without any element. This acutally gives eternal thunder enough power to be somewhat viable.
Furthermore, this gives you the ability to use another skill... Rolling thunder. Rolling thunder may seem like an inferior skill at first - because it is. However, this skill actually scales very, very well with skill level. Furthermore, it's 100% lightning. In fact, its one of the only skills in the game besides wand skills that are 100% of an element besides slice, pierce and impact. This means that it will do 350% damage when you max it.
Spirit blast, on the other hand, can only do 1.75x damage when you are at max element. Even though it has insane base damage, it ends up falling off when you are built to this extent.
Note that this is still not exactly good DPS, however, you can use it on a boss such as Hyakume. Even if eternal thunder does do more damage than it overtime, the advantage to using rolling thunder is that you have a higher chance to proc the paralysis. Furthermore, you also do not use nearly as much sp. It's sheer number of attacks also makes it so you can cycle 2 of these infinitely assuming you have enough cooldown. In the long run, without any support, you will outlast any other spell in terms of damage per second.
While it sounds like a joke, when a player reaches their maximum potential, both of these skills become much more viable than they really deserve to be. Note that without at least 200 lightning, rolling thunder is not useful.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO USE ROLLING THUNDER ON RANGED MONSTERS. IT IS ONLY MEANT FOR BOSSES THAT ARE EASY TO PREDICT AND MONSTERS THAT WILL ALWAYS ATTEMPT TO HIT YOU WITH MELEE ATTACKS.