[lufia22]

So at level 47 I currently have +29 pure ACC (not counting ACC from DEX on gear). At 50 I have access to Spiked Finger Gauntlets, which would replace my Battle Gloves. Likewise, in the mid/upper 50s I will have a choice between Jaridah and Scorp Harness. As a DRG with ACC traits, is it worth taking the extra ATK over the ACC (~8 ACC sacrificed for 17 ATK assuming NQ gear)?

I currrently eat meat. Advice?

EDIT: Also, at 48 I'll be gaining another 5 ACC with Life Belt, though I also have a Swordbelt +1 in my inventory for whenever I'm fighting easy enemies. Any advice here as well?

[Reverent Knight]

Remember penta thrust as accuracy based, all the attack in the game doesnt mean anything if you miss. I always geared/ate food in the accuracy direction. Drg are great DD as long as they hit, with the long delay on polearms a less att geared drg could do a lot more damage than you if most of your hits miss.

I never ate meat because I didnt do much solo drg it was always in parties so I always had a stack of sushi handy

Also round 55 youll be fighting colibi that have high evasion so your gonna want to stack the accuracy for them. for easy prey-dc stack up the attack, you shouldnt be missing much, just macro in the accuracy gear for the ws.

[Sabaron]

As Reverent said, the effect of Accuracy is multiplicative for multi-hit WS like Dancing Edge, Asuran Fists, and Penta Thrust. The hit rate cap is 95%, so if you have a 5-hit WS:

95% * 95% * 95% * 95% * 95% = 77.4%
90% * 90% * 90% * 90% * 90% = 59.0% (5% Base Hit rate translates to 18.4% loss on Penta)
85% ^ 5 = 44.4% (5% > 14.6%)
80% ^ 5 = 32.8% (5% > 11.6%)

Now, if we look at it backwards, we get an 11.6% return on our Penta damage from just 5% more hit rate (+10 Acc) for going from 80 to 85. This is progressive, so when you stack accuracy on a multi-hit WS, the more you add, the greater the returns for each point until you reach the 95% accuracy cap.

The trick of Dragoon gear is that you are going to want more than just one or the other. Whether you want +Acc or +Atk depends on how much is available on that slot. For instance, Battle Gloves (+3 Accuracy) versus Spiked Finger Gauntlets (+12 Attack). You'll probably want to swap in the Battle Gloves on WS because the value of the Accuracy multiplies with Penta Thrust, and then swap back to Spiked when building TP.

Attack is probably one of the more complicated things to understand. Read through this guy:

Level Correction Function and pDIF - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki

Basically, you'll eventually want multiple gearsets for each of your primary weapon skills and one set for TP building:

TP building sets are usually Haste based.

Multi-hit WS sets are usually Accuracy focused.

Single-hit WS sets are Stat (for DRG usually STR) focused.

Jump sets are usually focused on STR and TP bonus.

Earlier levels, you will probably want to focus on Rice Dumplings, then switch to Sushi after Penta Thrust comes up. When you fight Colibri, I recommend you focus on price and go for Meat Mithkabobs and get your Accuracy from gear. As you approach 75 and (possibly) merit Polearm skill, you'll switch over to a combination of Coeurl Subs and Sushi depending on what you're fighting.

[Karinya]

Sabaron, your math is strange. The odds of getting all 5 hits are interesting, but ultimately, not that important. A 4-hit Penta doesn't do 0 damage, it does 80% of the damage of a 5-hit Penta. The effects of acc are basically linear except for the cap.

If some of your pentas are strong and some are very weak (on the same enemies), you have an acc problem. If *all* of your pentas are relatively weak but they're consistently around the same, you have an atk problem. If some are weak and others are pathetic, you have an acc *and* an atk problem, which generally means a level problem.

And it is never worth wearing 3 Acc over 12 Atk. Sure, you'll have (very, very slightly) more chance of getting all the hits from Penta, but the hits you do get will be weaker, so you'll end up behind in overall damage. 3 acc > 1 atk and 3 atk > 1 acc for pretty much all purposes, because you always need some of both.

Single hit ws (ie wheeling thrust) have an inherent acc bonus, which is why you can *usually* neglect acc to pile on atk and str for them. On the other hand once you get drakesbane it's back to a mix of acc and atk - you want to get the hits, but you want them to not be weak hits.

(On the other hand, since jumps have no inherent acc bonus, you need just as much acc for them as you need for regular swings.)

I would not recommend ever eating sushi as DRG. If you're having trouble hitting, /SAM and use Hasso. (Actually, it's a good idea to do that anyway after 50, IMO.) It stacks with native acc bonus traits. If a drg/sam with hasso can't hit, nobody can hit and you shouldn't be fighting that mob outside a manaburn; sushi won't stop that party from sucking.

Oh btw - if you're in the level range for it, check out marinara pizza. It's basically meat and sushi at the same time and only costs 3-4k for 3 hours. Actually, I might try it at 75, too - you lose 20-30 atk compared to high level meat foods (other than arrabbiata), but might gain at least that amount of acc.

[Armando]

The problem here regarding Penta Thrust is purely one of interpretation.

As Reverent said, the effect of Accuracy is multiplicative for multi-hit WS like Dancing Edge, Asuran Fists, and Penta Thrust. The hit rate cap is 95%, so if you have a 5-hit WS:

95% * 95% * 95% * 95% * 95% = 77.4%
90% * 90% * 90% * 90% * 90% = 59.0% (5% Base Hit rate translates to 18.4% loss on Penta)
85% ^ 5 = 44.4% (5% > 14.6%)
80% ^ 5 = 32.8% (5% > 11.6%)

The numbers you're cranking out are the probability of landing all hits in any specific Penta Thrust attempt, which does in fact go up exponentially with your Hit Rate. However, looking at the bigger picture, if you have a 80% Hit Rate during WS then you'll land 80% of all your Penta Thrust hits over the course of a party, just as you'll land 60% of all your normal hits if you have a 60% hit rate. If it makes you see the difference easier, look at it like this: your math is like saying "If I flipped a coin 5 times in a row, these are the odds of all of them landing heads." But we don't want to know the odds of them all landing head (unless you're doing a BC where your success depends on whether you get a "good" or "bad" WS), we want to know how often the coin's going to land heads if you flipped it a large number of times.

[IfritnoItazura]

Sabaron, as Amando and Karinya said, you were calculating the wrong thing.

How many hits one lands on average for multi-hit WS (w/out TP->acc modifier) is just:
(Number of hits in WS) * (melee hit rate) = (average number of hits from WS)

* * *

Instead of looking at that, though, the better answer may be to use a parser; if one is not at the hit rate cap (95%), consider adding more accuracy. Either do it from food, or do it from gears.

How much accuracy to reach cap can be easily determined from the current hit rate. Say, a player has 75% hit rate:

(95 - 75) * 2 = 20 * 2 = 40 Accuracy

From gears, it's pretty easy to add up things to see how much accuracy each additional piece gives compared to how much more is needed/desired.

Food is trickier, since it requires knowing your "base" accuracy from gear, skill, and traits. A good way to find out how much food adds for a given job and gear setup iis to use FFXIGEAR.com

I don't think DRG or other two-handers need sushi anymore in most parties, but some accuracy from food should still be a good thing for exp/merit parties. Mariana Pizza is the best standard/default food Lv.25 to Lv.75 now for two-handers in non-Colibri parties, IMO. Lv.75's with exceptional accuracy in TP'ing setup may want meat for STR instead, since the pizza doesn't provide any.

On Colibri, though, the cheap Crab Sushi is probably the way to go if your hit rate is less than 85%. (Not a mathematically derived threshold; just a number I pulled out of the air because I prefer TP'ing faster to hitting harder, especially when fighting those TP and food stealing birds.)

[lufia22]

I'm also a little curious how STR fits into this balance. I, at level 53, currently have +0 STR from gear, opting for mostly ATK and ACC gear. Is this a bad thing to do?

[Reverent Knight]

Dont quote me on this butI think double thrust has a 30% str mod and penta thrust is a STR20% ; DEX20% mod. so yes strength does come into it. Its just a balance, I had this duscussion for samurai about what goes into weapon skill damage.

check this post out Guide: Melee stats for dummies. for how the damage is calculated.

[Mog]

Originally Posted by Reverent Knight

Dont quote me on this butI think double thrust has a 30% str mod and penta thrust is a STR20% ; DEX20% mod. so yes strength does come into it. Its just a balance, I had this duscussion for samurai about what goes into weapon skill damage.

check this post out Guide: Melee stats for dummies. for how the damage is calculated.

Rule of thumb for multi-hit weaponskills. Focus more on accuracy. Accuracy comes first and forehand, and after you have decent accuracy you can beef up whatever mods you need. No point in throwing a ton of an attribute on the mob if you're missing most of your shots.

[Reverent Knight]

true but if your ws has a modifier isnt it a better idea to at least add a token amount to it just cause its there, and itll boost your damage a bit? I mean theres some slots with no bonus accuracy so you could macro in some str there.

[Mog]

Originally Posted by Reverent Knight

true but if your ws has a modifier isnt it a better idea to at least add a token amount to it just cause its there, and itll boost your damage a bit? I mean theres some slots with no bonus accuracy so you could macro in some str there.

All depends on what kind of gear setup you have, but yes. Anywhere you can't throw in accuracy, put in whatever mods help your weaponskill.

[Lmnop]

Good rule of thumb:

Never pay attention to stat mods unless you're already doing good damage. Secondary modifiers, especially ones with values of under 50%, are icing on the cake.

Remember though, that STR affects (WS and normal hit) damage just the same as Armando explains in the melee stats for dummies thread. So even if your WS has a "Charisma Mod", it's still mainly affected by Attack and STR just like any other WS (except maybe elemental WSs? I don't have a clue how those work... and I don't care).

DRG acc traits add up to +22 acc. For reference, Monk's Focus is 20 (30 with AF) acc and Aggressor is +25. Both of those abilities are significant. And you basically have them full time as of level 50. Add in the 2-handed DEX->Acc rate, and you should be doing better than most in the acc department. In fact, I don't think a DRG should ever need sushi.

SFGs, life belt, acc rings, and peti would do just fine.

Dunno about the merits of Swordbelt +1. I guess it'd be nice for EM-T but at that point, I'm not sure what impact it'll have. I'd sell it when you get a life belt.

[lufia22]

So what is essentially better for WS? Stat mods or ATK? Any sort of ratio for Stats vs ATK for WS?

[Armando]

It's impossible to set a ratio because because how useful Attack is depends on how many levels higher than you the mob is as well as how low/high your Attack/Defense ratio is; and because how useful stat mods are depends on how high the stat mod % is and how high your total DMG already is. Even if you made certain assumptions and came up with a ratio for one WS it wouldn't be the same for another WS either way.

In short you gotta know the math and use your best judgement. If your WS has a STR mod then STR will most likely beat any other mod. Between STR and Attack it depends on whether you're fighting VTs/ITs or something lower, and how Attack is available in a slot VS how much STR is available.

Every Polearm WS save for the Relic one has at least 20% STR as a mod and Polearm is a two-handed weapon type though, so STR is a good stat in general. If you wanted a rule of thumb off the top of my head with no real number crunching to support it, Attack would have to be roughly twice as much as the STR available in an equipment slot for you to favor it. Something like 6 STR vs 6 Attack is no contest since 6 STR gives 4 or 5 Attack besides raising your fSTR by 1 and your stat mod DMG by 1. So the Attack offered has to be considerably higher for it to be worth it (like I said, around x2).

[Lmnop]

For Secondary modifiers that aren't STR, I wouldn't suggest caring unless you can get a lot in one slot (Dragon Kick is 50% STR, 50% VIT, but Genbu's Kabuto's +15 VIT is worth more than 3 or so STR or whatever else you can get in that slot).

The one time I can say I do like to pay attention to the mods is for SA+single hit WS, since SA forces a critical hit (which is essentially a very large attack boost).