Hydor

Cheeky

as i understand it, your autoattack will hit on a cycle - 2.5s weap will hit unhasted at 2.5 5.0 7.5 etc..

say you hit a CA at 2.4s after your first swing, you will delay your second swing until the CA has finished casting .. and the next swing following will be 2.5 seconds after this swing -- providing you don't delay it again with another badly timed combat art

one thing i found with gbh is that i could get pretty close to well-timed with my own haste buffs with practice - but as soon as CoB triggered i could no longer do so

so the answer is yes 2 top end 2.5's > kama/gbh, although paradoxically kama/gbh will do significantly more dps than any 2x2.5's if you were just to autoattack

as for how FoB fits into this, as you said, time will tell ..

my money is on GBH

Blanka

My guess without any testing, go with kama/gbh. FoB will be easier to time but I think GBH dmg and double attack with make up for the lost auto attacks. Razor would be much closer and kama. tranq and cmayong weaps top it.

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Drakhammor

Yes, auto-attack (will just say auto) WOULD hit on a cycle if there is nothing either BEING casted, or in recovery. So, if left alone a 2.5 sec delay would hit 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, etc. (unhasted). 2.5 sec is enough to squeeze in 2 CA's, and let auto hit, 2 CA's, hit, etc. One way to think about it is your auto is an instant-cast, insta-recovery CA with a xx.x recast (2.5 sec in this case).

Let's say you tried to squeeze in 3 CA's:
First CA hits, auto is toggled while it is BEING cast, and WILL immediately attack, even if you happen to have another CA queued (you can verify this). So, your auto-attack "recast/re-use" timer begins it's countdown at 2.5, and you SPAM 3 CA's in a row. Your auto is actually ready to FIRE, but you're still in recovery from CA#3, so it won't fire until .5 sec AFTER the recovery countdown from CA is complete. (essentially, you've forced your weapon into a lower delay (3.0 in this case). You'd have to work out the math whether .5 sec of melee auto-attack is worth giving up for the CA you just cast.
Now, whether it is worth it or not for the individual is actually situational. Majority of time, most people will want to properly time their attacks, especially for longer fights. Shorter fights it usually doesn't matter much.
Those higher-delay weapons are easier to time around, and since they have higher-end damage, will benefit REALLY well when you start having higher crit %.

And regarding weapon choices: Since you're in the "etc." group, yeah it's difficult to do a side-by-side comparison, so I won't really comment on what you should choose. Just go with what feels right to you and enjoy DPS is important but not as much as enjoying your character.

Edit to add another word on longer-delay weapons: Let's say you are just absolutely HORRIBLE at timing your CA's. Average CA is 1 sec (.5 sec cast, .5 sec recovery), so just using tenth's of a second, the worse-case scenario is you could delay your auto-attack firing by .9 sec, and you would have to be absolutely braindead to do this consistently.
For a 1.8 dly weapon then, you would lose roughly 50% auto-attack dmg (.9/1.8 = 1/2 = 50%)
For a 3.6 dly weapon, you only lose about 25% (.9/3.6 = 1/4 = 25%)
So, longer delay weapons win out even when spamming CA's

Hydor

Thanks all.

Some feedback. I tried the kama/GBH combo in HoS. I haven't been there for months and I have nothing to compare it to but it seems to be working ok. I saw numbers I 've never seen before so I would say it works better than using FoB and timing CAs.
On the downside it feels very very uncomfortable and akward trying to time CAs with those two. So I did some math see if I can come up with a formula or something. It seems that no matter what the actual haste is at any given setup if you get a tempo on casting CAs with 2 weapons of equal delay, then equip GBH and maintain the tempo skiping one in four CAs you would normally cast, you will be losing very littlle auto after a while. No idea how easy it would be in practice. And it's not 100% accurate either but very close. I ll try it and come back with more feedback. I believe more people must have this sort of problem.

gungo

The reason people say you loose autoatk if you don't time your casting is becuase you do. While auto atk does queve once. Any additional auto atk queves DO NOT take effect. This is easily tested by going to any low con mob start auto atk, then cast a long spell such as "Call of XXXX" when you interupt yoru cast you don't hit the npc with the last 20 atks you queved.

Now with 2 2.0 wpns fully hasted your swinging each hand once every second in most cases plenty of time to cast combat arts between swings.

This is the same reason why its not benefiacial to cast your 2 sec casting aoe spells when you only have 1 (even 2) NPC in group. You actually loose dps.

At least that is the way i see it and timing can also be beneficial to a degree. Like you siad the GBH should (and does) do more dps then the bashing fist.

Hydor

Using GBH instead of FoB with Kama is clearly better. Tested it in my favorite group setup, Monk-Templar and I was doing a lot better in EH 2nd floor trash. So I guess that settles it.

I noticed something strange though. I casted a couple of CAs and then stopped letting auttoattack do all the work against a bixie once. It seems that both weapons were hiting at the same time! I am very sure of it. The fight lasted about 1:15 and I have a seperate window up while raiding that only shows hit-critical hit and miss. So I am very sure both weapons were hitting like they had the same delay. I was so surprised I checked if I had the right weapons equipped and then checked the actual delays. Has anyone noticed anything like that?