Double Edge L

Increases physical damage dealt while dealing damage to self over time. Stacks increase every 3 seconds, up to a maximum of 16. For each stack, physical damage dealt is increased by 15%, and potency of damage dealt to self increases by 360. Duration: 48s
Double Edge L
Wisdom of the Skirmisher + Bloodbath L + Wisdom of the Guardian
	Instant
	90s
	10
	0y
	0y
PLD, WAR, DRK, GNB, MNK, DRG, RPR, NIN, SAM

When used properly and in co-ordination with your healers, Double Edge L can increase your damage tremendously and when optimised is unrivaled in its potential damage output. When used improperly, it will decrease your damage tremendously because a dead player does no damage.

Basic Usage

Before using Double Edge L you should always check that you have sufficient healing available to keep you alive at higher stacks. If you intend to use it during a BA run, always ask your healers first before equipping it, as without their help you will not be able to make proper use of this action and would be better off taking something else instead.

You should always pair Double Edge L with an appropriate Wisdom for your role: Wisdom of the Martialist for Tanks or Wisdom of the Duelist for Melee DPS.

While it might seem tempting to pair Double Edge L with an action like Bloodbath L for sustainability, you will always do more damage just by having an appropriate wisdom and performing your normal rotation well. The flat damage gain from the Wisdoms should not be overlooked.

The damage taken from Double Edge L is not only the responsibility of the healer to mitigate, the user can contribute a lot in making it safe to use as well. As a Double Edge L user, you should always be using the highest ilvl buff food you can obtain for the maximum vitality bonus, and using Eurekan Potions on cooldown. You should activate your first Eurekan Potion 5 seconds after activating Double Edge L as the healing effect only lasts 40s and the damage taken from the first few stacks is minimal compared to when at the full 16 stacks. Melees can use Bloodbath at 20 seconds left to help out the healers.

The most dangerous time when using Double Edge L is when you are at high stacks and there is incoming damage, e.g from a raidwide AoE. The overlapping damage from a tick and the AoE could kill you outright, and so you should always be paying careful attention to your HP. It's always better to be cautious than risk dying, the damage lost from a death will always outweigh any potential gain. Every Double Edge L user should have a macro on their hotbar to remove the buff, or be ready to click it off manually from their debuff bar. An example macro would be:

English:

/statusoff "Double Edge L"

German:

/statusoff "Logos-Zweischneid"

French:

/statusoff "Évocation Logos: Double tranchant"

Damage Optimisation

As a general rule, you will want to use your hard hitting attacks at high Double Edge stacks. You can use a tincture at 30 seconds left to cover higher Double Edge stacks. Double Edge usage changes from one boss to another:

• Art/Owain: These bosses die rather quickly so you can start your Double Edge at 20 seconds countdown timer
• Raiden: Use it on pull or around 3-5 seconds before the pull, he will cast Ame No Sakahoko at about 45 seconds into the fight and jump to the middle so you want your chain to be ending just as you have to move out for the AoE.
• Absolute Virtue: Use at 15-20 seconds on the pull countdown, this means the later use of it won't have high stacks collide with Turbulent Aether orbs if you get an orb.
• Ozma: Use either at 20-25 seconds on the countdown or on pull. Roughly 25 seconds into the Ozma fight everyone needs to move to the back for the introductory star shape, this means you want to either finish your high stacks and chain burst right before moving to the back or start just before pull so you can hold it till after you are back in melee range in star shape.

Some of the hybrid jobs like Dark Knight, Paladin and Ninja have magical attacks that are built into their toolkit. Since Double Edge only increases physical damage, playstyle of these jobs might change slightly or drastically. Below are some job specific tips on how you can increase your damage output and help out your healers with job specific mitigation tools.

Job Specific Tips

Warrior

• Hold Inner Release for higher stacks to use 3 Fell Cleaves. Use Equilibrium while buffed by Thrill of Battle and use Raw Intuition and Shake It Off to heal yourself up. Warrior can largely self sustain a single Double Edge L even without a healer.

Dark Knight

• As Bloodspiller is your highest physical damage gcd, you will want to use 3 Bloodspillers under high Double Edge stacks. For this save your Delirium for 14+ stacks.

Paladin

• Magical attacks are unaffected by Double Edge, so do not use Holy Spirit while Double Edge is active. Just do your 1-2-3 combo. You can use Hallowed Ground at high stacks to help mitigate the damage. Use Fight or Flight at 20 seconds left and use Goring Blade at high stacks.

Gunbreaker

• Save your No Mercy burst window for high stacks. Use Aurora at high stacks to help out the healers.

Monk

• Use Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood at 10+ stacks. Use Tornado Kick at high stacks. Use Riddle of Earth when you are about to take damage.

Dragoon

• Delay Life of the Dragon for high stacks. Use your buffs (Eye Sight, Lance Charge, Battle Litany) and oGCD's at 10+ stacks. Use Nastrond at 15-16 stacks. Use a Life Surge buffed Full Thrust at high stacks.

Samurai

• Use Higanbana at 16 stacks. Save Kenki and use Shinten at high stacks. Use Third Eye before every raidwide, and use it on cooldown during star shape on Ozma.

Reaper

• Build Soul Gauge and spend it at high stacks. Use Arcane Crest before raidwides.

Ninja

• Spend mudras on Fuma Shuriken. Do not use Raiton as it is a magical attack and is not buffed by Double Edge. Use Trick Attack at 12+ stacks. Use Shade Shift at high stacks.

If you are planning on chaining Double Edge, you can largely ignore these specific tips (except the hybrid jobs) and stick to your normal rotation as you will be starting the fight with 16 Double Edge stacks.

Further Damage Optimisation: Chaining Double Edge

Only consider chaining if you have full elemental bonus gear and your physeos weapon if your job has one.

You can extend the duration of the Double Edge buff, by using Double Edge again before the buff expires. The Double Edge action has a 90 second recast timer, so the only way to use it again while the 48 second buff is still up is by switching to another action set that has another Double Edge or using Rapid Recast L before casting Double Edge L to reduce it's cooldown to 45 seconds. When you extend the Double Edge buff, it will stay at a maximum of 16 stacks for the full duration that you extend it for. This also means that you will be taking a lot of additional ticking damage, and will require a lot of healing. If you want to chain, make sure to ask your healer if they are okay with chaining specifically, and you can also remind your healer before the pull that you are about to start chaining.

Generally if you are chaining a boss let the raid lead know as you will want them to do a longer 60 second countdown so you can set up your chain and start your Double Edge at about 45 seconds before pull to be at 16 stacks when the fight starts.

Double Edge chaining with Focus L

This only really applies to a couple of jobs which can make the most of the Focus L opening gcd and shouldn't really be done till you are comfortable with normal chaining. For more information visit our article about Focus L.

Double Edge chaining with Rapid Recast L

The main use for this in a normal run is for jobs who are chaining who might not already have a Double Edge set active or jobs that can't benefit from Focus L fully. Melee DPS can use this pairing for longer chains but it comes at the cost of not only needing much more healing but also not having a Wisdom active for parts of the fight. This can make it particularly difficult to survive as you are also losing the HP bonus Wisdom of the Duelist provides. This is why it generally isn't recommended outside of purely building initial chains.