Talk:Roro (Original)/@comment-75.47.64.28-20151230200333/@comment-26941260-20151230234103

The correct answer is always defender's sword (...especially for Hannya, too). Short of that, although Rolo is a knight and thus not going to get quite as much out of a naginata as a warrior will, it's still probably your best option.

To explain I'm going to to on a bit of a rant here, but it's fairly relevant:

The thing is, weapon damage is not multiplied; it's added at the end. So, no matter how many buffers you're adding or the 300% damage Hannya can get with her passive ability and skill active, claymore is only adding 180 damage per hit. Sacrificing a huge amount of defense to turn monsterous 3000 damage attacks into 3180 is not exactly impressive.

The damage reduction from weapon defense is also calculated at the end. However, with other damage reduction (passive or active buffs or abilities), it becomes more and more powerful. Essentially its value rises as character defense does, while weapon attack remains static. Unlike crit, defense is arguably as valuable as attack even with 0 bonus on a character (melee, anyways; ranged units and clerics don't generally get nearly as much out of it).

As for the increasing effectiveness, an example using 10 and 50% damage reduction with 18 weapon defense (defender's sword) blocking a 500 damage attack (assuming my math is correct):

10% damage reduction takes it down to 450, then weapon defense knocks 180 off to give 270 which is a 40% further reduction thanks to weapon defense (2.22% per weapon defense point; naginata would get 31%).

50% damage reduction takes 500 down to 250, which is then reduced to 70, again, thanks to weapon defense which is a 72% further reduction (4% per point; naginata would get 56%).

This is significant because Rolo's strength is in his wave attack and defense stacking. The stacking will do nothing for Rolo's weapons attack, but his weapons defense (until the cap at, likely, 50%) is ever boosted by the increasing percentile damage reduction. (Hannya's strength is not defense as much as it is for Rolo, but it's the same thing... Because weapon attack doesn't multiply, weapon defense is still hugely better on her.)

As for Kikuichimonji, it's a crit weapon... Crit is by far the saddest of weapon stats and hard to justify putting on even the most crit focused characters (because the other stats are sacrificed in the process)... A knight with no innate crit bonuses is definitely not ideal for it; you'd want to throw it on a soldier... if anything. It generally takes at least (if I remember correctly) 4 crit points to equal the damage gained from 1 attack point.