Well, I know I am one of the only diehard holdouts performers using skills other than [Severe Rainstorm] and [Gypsy's Kiss], but hopefully with enough information other people can be made interested.
Many porings died to bring us this information.
YOU SHOULD KNOW: This wanderer is a level 141/36, and is using a Metallic Sound / Reverberation build. This is 120 base INT a and 80 base DEX! All gear worn during these tests is MATK related. Whenever a whip is used, Moonlit Serenade is also being cast.
Presenting..... a lot of data.
Thoughts
+12 Rosevine [spell5][spell4]
This used to be the best metallic sound weapon. The average damage of metallic sound is something like 2.2% higher than the next best weapon, the thanatos whip, but only when the thanatos whip isn't optimized for metallic sound (i.e. a card that adds +% damage with magic attacks). This may not be a big deal, and malangdo enchants are expensive for the rosevine, and the thanatos whip is noticibly better at just about everything else.
+12 Thanatos Whip
This appears to be the best whip right now, hands down. Its the best for metallic if you card it for magic damage. Its the best for Reverberation even uncarded, and even better with either a magic+% card or any physical +% card. It has a pretty decent arrow vulcan damage. With a skeleton archer card, the damage with arrow vulcan would almost be the same as my (range-perfected!!!) queen's whip. Archer skel also adds damage to reverberation, so if you want to fight with nothing but reverb and arrow vulcan, this is your weapon, and archer skeleton is your card.
+9 Queen's Whip [double kingbird][expert archer 5][expert archer 5]
Its a typo in the chart. It's actually +9. This used to be Gypsy's best weapon. Its now not all that useful.If you malangdo enchant it (expert archer 5, expert archer 5) and put two cards in it, it will offer the best arrow vulcan damage you're going to see (until we get the Floral Decoration Microphone, which gives Arrow Vulcan damage +200%). I do not really recommend spending the time/money perfecting one of these, the Thanatos whip is almost as good, and can be used for a lot more stuff. The queen's whip lags in last place for amplified metallic damage. It is quite useful for reverberation damage, but all the whips are just as good.
+12 Queen's Leg of Infinity
This was worth testing, since it has high ATK and MATK and performers can equip it. You do not need a whip/instrument to cast either metallic sound or reverberation. However, all the support skills do require one, as does AV, so you're pretty useless with a dagger equipped. What do we get? Worst Reverb damage. Largely due to not having STR on the wanderer. Decent but lagging metallic damage. Given all the drawbacks to not having a whip, this isn't worth considering; rates poorly against thew whips period.
+12 RWC Knife [kingbird][worn with pendant/ring for the +120 ATK/MATK]
Well, if STR was the drawback of the queen's leg, the RWC knife should be better. Well, I wasn't wrong. The atk/matk are better, which results in a better reverb. But we're not using amplifiers, so now metallic sucks. And the downsides of a dagger (no spells without swapping, can't AV). Despite being better than the queen's leg at reverb... it's still inferior to all 3 whips. D'oh. Well, daggers are useless is the moral of this story!
Conclusion
If you haven't considered the Thanatos Whip [1] up to this point, now you should! It's clearly the best whip.
Once we get the Wing Headphone, Reverberation is going to be a fun build! Grab a thana whip, card it, use the hat, and go to town with ~28k or so reverbs that can be spammed at attack speed in magic strings. The wing headphone should make Metallic more fun too, so you can go wild with a Metallic/Reverb wanderer soon.
To the Maestros of the World
The Thanatos Guitar is identical to the whip, and moonlit serenade barely changes the damage, so you should see similar results to what I listed above!
Edited by Jaye, 28 June 2015 - 03:53 PM.
