I know i have chosen a FF for my major pierce weapon (see my Final flourish or Barbarous thron blade thread) but I want a back up elemental pierce.
I would really love a shock flourish but for now I gotta choose from the both
I am the sort who likes to get up close and dirty and run away!
I may have forgotten but thank you anyways. I prefer DPS over slowing an enemy down but my SF can do that easily. But I'm still thinking.
P.S How do you like the idea of shock flourishes?
I'm not sure the question is clear : the title explicitely say flamberge or rigadoon, which are both piercing, but you say you already are going to take FF and you are talking about an "elemental pierce" which I don't understand what it could be.
What are you really looking for :
- another status piercing sword ?
- a back-up elemental sword for resistant targets ?
- something else ?
P.S. : shock flourish probably wouldn't be used. Status flourish are not used already for a reason.
But wouldn't a Shock Flourish epicly troll in Lockdown?
Well I understand the want for dps, but you have to factor in the most important variable: hits per kill.
Let's say you hit for 250 damage with both Flamberge and Rigadoon, and an enemy has....say 700 hps.
You'll require 3 hits to kill it. One hit, two hit, three hit, dead. Now if you land a fire infliction even on the first hit (which will do between 70~110 damage, depending on what floor you're on) then it'll tick and bring the enemy down to 350 hps; you'll still need to hit it twice more to kill it.
This would mean that the "dps" option didn't actually speed up your kill at all. However, if that enemy landed a hit on you before you killed it, you would take damage, however if you'd used Rigadoon and stunned it, you could have dodged that hit and taken no damage.
Of course I'm using entirely arbitrary numbers here, but just wanting to get across the point that hits per kill is the only important factor when debating between variations of the same weapon.
In fact, in the case of flourishes, even the pure pierce version (the high dps version) would be held to the same principles and, since the damage bonus is fairly low, it would arguably not kill any faster than the status versions.
Since they both land the same (or very similar) hits per kill, I feel that a useful status that can save lives is more important than a status that's there purely to speed up kills, but won't necceesarily speed it up.
Fire adds damage. As everyone already said, if you wanted damage, a plain flourish is better.
At least stun offers a tactical difference.
I'd say Rigadoon (as that's my choice) because unlike Magma, you can't so easily spread the fire across multiple targets or the map; you'll attack something, set it on fire...then kill it.
Whereas the stun could actually help make the kill easier, the fires extra dps ticks won't likely change your hit/kill number. Thsi could be especially true attacking such things as Trojans, or Devils who dodge further attacks, allowing the stun to be productive.
A similar theory applies to LD; fire won't help save your life or make the kill easier, but stun certainly can.