SupremeTentacle wrote:@ Grave
Wand has something to compensate for what you described to be a lack of ability to handle mobs without eating through SP. Seeing as how Lv. 105 magatama are only of the fifth rank, this implies that wands are able to use rank 5 skills, which consume little to no sp for them. These rank five skills should also be sufficiently powerful enough to one shot monsters. For example, a wand could easily have a wand with triple rank 5 fireball. This skill not only has extremely low cooldown, but is also targetted, and does decent single target damage. Wand users are almost able to infinitely cast this spell with only one weapon if they do things correctly. This allows them to easily eat through mobs of a lower density without consuming vast amounts of sp. God sealing circle also decimates mobs of melee-based monsters.
TS's best Ougi is Fuujin's circle dance, which, in combination with several other factors, such as their damage consistency and scaling, puts it a good tier above sword. Do note that TS has access to more wind skills than almost every other weapon, implying that wind builds are extremely viable and efficient. I would say that a wind build is far superior to a lightning build for TS.
Heal is detrimental. I've seen a staff do 400k per tick with Nether Trap (in our server, on the dog boss in oushuu). I think it's quite usable as an offensive weapon, just not optimal because of limited elemental selection and low base damage.
Using three rank 5 moves will cover for single targets, but wands can easily take those out anyway. Adding more damage to that is superfluous in that aspect. And using 3 moves in one wand means you'll have to sacrifice a slot unless you want to switch weapons in accordance to a mob, which can be fatal in panic situations. Using 3 moves back to back will easily take up more SP than a single move. It's more efficient however. The problem with wands is with frost glaive being their largest AoE move, one would need to walk within aggro range to cast it, and there's a gap between the caster and the glaive. That gives the chance for enemies to walk up to you while you enter your animation.It also consumes a massive amount of SP. With Axes, you can chip away at an incoming mob with something like BFB, and double Asura's to clean what's left. Theoretically of course. With wands, one would need to frost glaive into frost glaive to chip away at mobs IF it hits, and then Sealing circle whatever is left. The bad thing is, if it doesn't clean up, it puts enemies right in front of you which is exactly what wands don't want. Fujin circle doesn't have as large of an AoE as frost glaive, so if the enemies are dispersed, it's not the best tool. I agree the crimson ray is quite weak though. The most effective method that I see for wands would be to zombie flick the enemies using bright homing as a machine gun. It sounds ridiculous, but effective in theory.
Twin swords do have access to many wind moves, and fujin circle dance it quite under rated. However, I would think it to be the superior Ougi IF it acted more like Miyamoto's ougi, and went through enemies. Sure fujin is insanely strong, and hits twice per lunge, but it doesn't go through an enemy. This makes it good for single targets, but if the target is a boss monster, the boss monster will hit you by the time you enter your third hit, which will more than probably kill you. Roll canceling would just make the move useless if you can't take advantage of all the hits. This also makes the chiami lose value, as you have less hits to get a crit from vs TB. Also, this move tends to get stuck on dead enemies when their bodies haven't disappeared completely which makes it hard to use, and extremely annoying.
Staffs are too important to every player. I didn't consider their damage, because if they could do damage, odds are they would just be outclassed by wands. Healing isn't very valuable, but the other skills like res, RS, and invig/medi are.
