u/thenotjoe

Grog heals an absolutely massive 65% of all damage dealt. That is undeniably great, especially when combined with a secondary damage source, such as a slow projectile weapon that can be fired then swapped out for the grog, a grenade, or an Amp or Nova shield.

The Rubi heals a comparatively tiny, but still significant, 12% of all damage dealt. HOWEVER, unlike the Grog Nozzle, the Rubi actually deals damage, meaning it alone can be enough to heal you. At OP10, a max DPS (according to Lootlemon) Grog deals 200 thousand damage per shot, while the Rubi deals 1 million. That’s *five times more*! Additionally, Rubi’s bullets explode on impact, whereas the Grog’s bullets explode three times along their trajectory, which is much harder to take advantage of.

At high level, the damage numbers are so inflated that a couple shots from Rubi can *easily* heal you past health gate. Plus, a fastball (the go-to tool for quickly healing a lot with a lifesteal weapon, or for a kill in FFYL) does 90 MILLION damage. Multiply that by 0.12 and you get 10.8 million, well more than any character’s maximum health. Even the Lightning Bolt deals 7.6 million (heals 900k), and the Chain Lightning 6.6 million (heals almost 800k). 65% lifesteal is the definition of overkill.

For completeness, I should note that the Grog does have a few notable advantages. For one, it’s always slag. Grinding for a slag Rubi can be a pain, especially since you’ll want to redo it every couple OP levels. Additionally, being a quest item, the Grog levels with you in UVHM, meaning you can grab it at the beginning and just hold onto it forever. It also can’t be sold accidentally, which isn’t a huge deal but is nice.

It also has a huge 400% crit bonus, so it can actually deal damage on a crit (although those are difficult to hit with the Grog), but it can also be used as a poor man’s Lady Fist. Finally, it can give you that weird drunk status, which lowers your fire rate and accuracy, but makes you fire MANY additional projectiles, and this persists when you swap weapons. I find that difficult to take advantage of, personally, but I am notably bad at video games.

Those advantages have some baggage, however. When you get Rubi, its parts are locked in. The Grog’s parts are reset every time you quit and reload. The Grog’s parts mostly don’t matter due to its low damage, but the Rubi’s parts can be significant! Second of all, being a quest item, the Grog disappears on every new game cycle. Plus, keeping it requires the quest to still be active, which can be annoying if you’re a completionist like me.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you, but I find the reputation of Rubi as a kind of “poor man’s Grog Nozzle” to be… misguided. Rubi is just another great healing item. I’d bet you can make a usable (although definitely not incredible) endgame build that’s just four Rubis of different elements. You’d definitely need a way to regenerate ammo (especially if you’re soloing digistruct peak or raid bosses), but you’d be really, *really* hard to kill.

I’m a monolingual English-speaker and I learned a little Spanish in school before I came out as nonbinary. I plan on picking the language back up eventually, and I want to know the proper way to talk about myself and others.

But I don’t want to limit it to just Spanish. There are loads of other languages w/grammatical gender. What do you prefer?

I have Aigis for buffs, Akihiko for debuffs, and I had Yukari for healing, although I may switch her to Ken. They’re all level 75-80 (probably not high enough?) and I’m level 95+ w/ Shiva for Pralaya.

Is there a better way to do this other than just, like, cheesing w/ omnipotent orb (have not gotten yet)? I kill the statues and mayas in 2 Pralayas (although the cycles are often off so I can’t get the AOA). I figured out the strat of using Tetrakarn to reflect Hermit’s Akashic Arts, but it’s still not nearly enough damage to negate the luck needed to survive for long enough to kill it.