Hand-to-Hand

Overview

The melee weapons of choice for Monk and Puppetmaster, Hand-to-Hand emphasizes pure melee damage potential. Although its attack and accuracy are calculated like those of one-handed weapons, Hand-to-Hand damage and delay are calculated in a way unlike any other weapon class, one-handed or two-handed:

The damage of a hand-to-hand weapon is added to a character's natural hand-to-hand damage. A character's natural hand-to-hand damage is calculated simply by multiplying his/her Hand-to-Hand skill by 0.11 and then adding 3. When calculating the Weapon Rank, however, the number used as the Weapon Base Damage is the number displayed on the weapon plus 3, with no contribution from H2H skill.

This means that H2H damage is capped slightly lower than other weapons with equivalent damage rating. For example, Destroyers weapon rating with capped H2H skill is 53, but its damage cap is equivalent to another weapon (such as Sword) with a weapon rating of 50 (since its Weapon Rank is computed using 18+3=21 instead of 53).

Note that this can be a problem when using current damage calculators for FFXI, since they assume Weapon Rank uses the same number as weapon rating or equivalent Weapon Base Damage, and would therefore give slightly inaccurate values. To fix this problem with H2H weapons and other weapons which have different weapon ranks than predicted by their weapon rating (Maneater, Blau Dolch, et al.), a damage calculator would have to ask for both the weapon rating and Weapon Rank separately, instead of trying to calculate one from the other.

A Hand-to-Hand weapon's delay works in the same way as its damage. A character's natural hand-to-hand delay is set at 480, and can be reduced with a Monk's or Puppetmaster's Martial Arts. The multiple Martial Arts traits that a Monk has allow its natural delay to go as low as 300. The delay you see on a hand-to-hand weapon is the amount of delay it is adding to your natural delay.

NOTE: If a character does not have natural Hand-to-Hand skill (or a subjob with the skill) or is equipping a shield, attacks will only swing with one fist instead of two, regardless of any Hand-to-Hand skill merits present, but the delay will still be the same length as if it had two. e.g. A RDM/WHM with a H2H weapon only swings with one fist, but a RDM/WAR or RDM/MNK will swing with two. The only job trait that affects this skill is Martial Arts.