General

Fyi in 2 patches when phantoms get the Mille/platter nerf and the tempest buff, the crossbones skill from buccs gives 20% attack for a 4th job skill. It might be worth stealing.

@chocowzzrd:

TL;DR:

Recommended Loadout for phantoms of all funds:

1st Job
Dark sight/Magic Guard/Haste/Iron Body
2nd Job
Rage/Heal/HB/Bless
3rd Job
Cross Surge/Holy Symbol/Arrow Blaster
4th Job
Final Cut [ Raw Damage] / Hurricane|Rapid Fire [In certain Situations you might prefer the higher range over mille, such as during Chaos Von Bon/Pierre]

For Training, Cannon Bazooka is an option over Arrow Blaster if you can 1-2hko with it, otherwise stick to Final Cut.

Reckless hunt is pretty much useless. 40% total damage is additive while final cut is multiplicative. Might as well use platter/holy symbol/bazooka for training.

1st job dark sight, iron body, magic guard
2nd job rage, dark clarity, heal, hyper body
3rd job HS, cross surge, arrow blaster
4th job Final Cut, cannon bazooka (arrow stream for tower of oz)

TL;DR for what skills to steal for new players with minimal funds / 0 link skills / cards / blah
TL;DR for 25% Buff duration (if that makes a difference) / low funding (Fafnir set / 70% Trash Traced Weapon)
TL;DR for 50% Buff duration / low funding (less than 1b)

I would appreciate the TL;DR answers.

Well if you're training cannon bazooka is a much better alternative to mille. With your range you can probably put on hs and use bazooka and still one shot warrior grounds.

Well for bossing yes, but for training it's unnecessary. With reckless I don't have to buff it at all and I can just walk back and forth at wg and kill all the mobs. But with me sitting at 0% buff duration I would just prefer to use reckless, I'm not saying you are wrong, I know that final cut would do more for me but there is down time where I wouldn't have it up. I also have alot more links I have to get to 120 before I even plan on starting a mechanic for buff duration. I will even be putting higher priority on 100% status resist.

Ok let's say for the sake of calculating you have 5000 luk, 300 dex, 500 attack, and 20% total damage.

1.3*(4*5000+300)*500*(1+20%)/100 which is 158,340 range.

Now assuming reckless hunt is 40% total and 40 attack, the new formula is

1.3*(4*5000+300)*540*(1+60%)/100 which gives you 228,009 range.

In this situation, final cut would give you the formula

[1.3*(4*5000+300)*500*(1+20%)/100]*1.6 <- your range will still be 158,340 but your damage output will be the same as if you range was 235,344.

Now assuming you have 0% buff duration, which is quite near impossible seeing how easy 24% buff inner ability and 15% buff mechanic card are, your average dps using final cut will be as if your range was 209,676.

So, at very low range and no buff duration, reckless hunt does out preform final cut. But now lets assume you double the given stats.

1.3*(4*10000+600)*1000*(1+20%)/100 = 633,360 range clean.

1.3*(4*10000+600)*1040*(1+60%)/100 = 878,259 range with reckless hunt.

[1.3*(4*10000+600)*1000*(1+20%)/100]*1.6 = 1,013,376 theoretical range with final cut. (886,704 average range over time)

So as you can see, even with 0% buff duration, final cut gives you more dps than reckless hunt starting around 600k range, and the higher your range the greater the disparity. This formula also does not factor in Cross surge, so I'm about 99% sure final cut will give you more dps. Especially considering if you have 0% buff, getting a mechanic to lv 100 gives you 69 seconds of final cut which makes the average theoretical dps higher.

If you don't have the 50% buff duration like myself then that's when you use reckless

Why do you take reckless hunt? Final cut increases your dps by 1.6x which is way more than 40% total damage could ever do. The only downside to FC is if you don't have 50% buff duration but it's so easy to get that with a mechanic card 15% and 10% from empathy. I can't see a case where taking reckless hunt beats final cut in almost any scenario.