[Armando]

Tested on: 75 PLD/37 RDM
Targets: Robber Crabs (Kuftal Tunnel)

Ice Shield
Procs: 54
Hits taken: 405
Proc Rate: 13.3%

Gothic Gauntlets
Procs: 36
Hits taken: 399
Proc Rate: 9%

Gothic Sabatons
Procs: 36
Hits taken: 400
Proc Rate: 9%

All 3 pieces produce a 15 damage Ice Spikes effect; I would assume this number is constant, because as an Elvaan PLD/RDM with only 50 INT and MAB1 I should only be doing 6 damage by the formulas.

Conclusion: None of the currently available Physical Damage: Ice Spikes equipment had a high proc rate on its own. However, all 3 put together would add up to approximately 31%, which is roughly 1/3, far better than the ~1/10 proc rate you would get with a single piece.

[Yellow Mage]

Pretty neat. 15 damage is pretty high for Ice Spikes. Maybe that was intended to offset to low proc rates?

ADD: I just thought of something. Did you try stacking this with Reprisal?

[Taskmage]

The real question is whether the para rate is as delicious as the ice spikes spell.

[Armando]

Originally Posted by Yellow Mage

ADD: I just thought of something. Did you try stacking this with Reprisal?

You can only have one spike effect at any given moment, and spells take precedence over equipment. I've had Ice Shield for months and I've never seen Ice Spikes occur with Reprisal up, just like Enspells will overwrite added effects on weapons or Platinum Grip.

Originally Posted by Taskmage

The real question is whether the para rate is as delicious as the ice spikes spell.

Yes, yes it is; although, like the real Ice Spikes spell, sometimes you'll need more than 1 proc before Paralyze will stick. Still, the string of paralyzed attacks that follows more than makes up for it. It's best used on /RDM since /RDM gets hit constantly, but I could see it being useful for PLD/NIN soloing too. Besides the obvious application of reducing the number of attack rounds the enemy can do, I think this really shines against Phalanx and Utsusemi's natural enemy: BLM mobs.

[Lmnop]

Take your time, Mr. ResearchMcTesty, but it occurs to me that they may not add linearly. Have you tested all 3 together to confirm this 30ish% proc rate?

I'm very much afraid of a Joyeuse + Brutal Earring deal where if one says "proc", then the other 2 don't, even though their "roll" said to.

[Armando]

That's a good observation. I knew this was a possibility when I posted, but I didn't mention it because I didn't feel like counting to 400 over the course of half an hour once more. I'll look into that tomorrow.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Armando

.Yes, yes it is; although, like the real Ice Spikes spell, sometimes you'll need more than 1 proc before Paralyze will stick. Still, the string of paralyzed attacks that follows more than makes up for it. It's best used on /RDM since /RDM gets hit constantly, but I could see it being useful for PLD/NIN soloing too. Besides the obvious application of reducing the number of attack rounds the enemy can do, I think this really shines against Phalanx and Utsusemi's natural enemy: BLM mobs.

If facing BLM monster, can try /BLU for Head Butt along with the Ice Spike gears.

I really would be interested in a quantification of how often monsters are paralyzed (along with the monster's hit rate).

[Armando]

If facing BLM monster, can try /BLU for Head Butt along with the Ice Spike gears.

That would be ideal for DCish mobs, but ultimately /RDM wins out against Ts. Soloability goes down a lot if you lose Phalanx and Enspells; even if you could remove the mob's ability to cast you just wouldn't last against its melee attackss. Lack of native MDB and Barspells makes that pretty risky against Ts as well, since a failure to interrupt will be extremely painful. But it is an alternative, especially to those who don't have /RDM available yet.

I really would be interested in a quantification of how often monsters are paralyzed (along with the monster's hit rate).

This is a bit hard to quantify precisely since I can't see which Ice Spikes proc actually stuck paralysis on the mob; I can only know that it did get paralyzed at some point, and when it wears off. Besides that, I have evaded attacks filtered out to make the counting easier should I ever lose track, or if I want to do a re-count later.

If you want I can post the chat log screenshots and you can take a look at it for yourself. I would assume a 60-70% hit rate on the crabs - I was evading, but I wouldn't say I was evading more often than not. I wore Haubergeon and 1 Woodsman Ring to gimp my Evasion (the other ring was Hercules' for the regen.)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

This is just me eyeballing, but Armando knows I've been rubbing his face in my Gothic Set for a bit. I do intentionally take hits on my BST when soloing and actively use these while doing so since other Attack gear at my current level is comprable to what Gothic provides. These effects would only be of value to jobs that want to take the hits, which in my case helps my pet last longer in fight.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the paralyze effect goes off about half the time, but only with both pieces on. I do remember the paralysis effect being much less common with just the Gauntlets but after I got the Sabatons, it was a pretty common occurance to see paralyze proc.

This was especially nice when intimidation effects were also triggering on turns the paralysis wasn't. I feel the Gothic Set has actually helped the survivability of my pets as well as gotten me out of a few jams.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Armando

That would be ideal for DCish mobs, but ultimately /RDM wins out against Ts. Soloability goes down a lot if you lose Phalanx and Enspells; even if you could remove the mob's ability to cast you just wouldn't last against its melee attackss. Lack of native MDB and Barspells makes that pretty risky against Ts as well, since a failure to interrupt will be extremely painful.

Agree on MDB, but bar- spell is a bit difficult unless one knows the element of attack ahead of time--at least for people who lack twitch speed reaction time, like me. Head Butt is nice in that it's the same reaction on the player's part no matter which spell is incoming--and if smashed the macro on an unimportant spell by accident, the recast timer is short enough that one will usually have it back before the next spell.

Then again, I mostly used /BLU only with RDM, so I take for granted RDM's good stuff and forget how nice it is to have /RDM.

Originally Posted by Armando

This is a bit hard to quantify precisely since I can't see which Ice Spikes proc actually stuck paralysis on the mob; I can only know that it did get paralyzed at some point, and when it wears off. Besides that, I have evaded attacks filtered out to make the counting easier should I ever lose track, or if I want to do a re-count later.

Hmm. Ultimately, we want to know "How good of damage mitigation is this piece of gear?"

- number of actions paralyzed
- number of actions taken (by monster)

Add those two together, we get the total action potential. Divide the number of actions paralyzed by the total action potential, and that should be a pretty good figure to represent damage mitigation ability of any particular Ice Spike gear. (With qualifications for a particular level target, monster family, and monster's actual hit rate, of course.)

Would be nice to know how often an Ice Spike proc results in paralyzed condition, but I don't think that is as useful as being able to quantify the damage mitigation capacity.

[Armando]

I haven't noticed any increased potency in paralysis; naturally I haven't parsed this, but like I said I'm pretty reluctant to parse paralysis. If I had to take a guess I'd assume it's just that since the spikes proc rate is relatively low with a single piece, you'll go longer bouts of time between the last paralysis wearing and the next proc. I don't know for sure though, nor do I think I care enough to test this. I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot-pole much like I won't dirty my hands with stuff like resist rate testing. Doing a thorough analysis would be way too much of a time sink. But I wouldn't be opposed to a single "parse" as per Itaz's request.

I do have to say though, I can definitely feel the improvement. I've managed to take down T(+3) Greater Manticores in Terrigan while trying to finish off Staff. And honestly in the long run I think I do slightly worse with Staff than with Sword and Shield (the damage reduction from S&S is beyond comparison when Reprisal is up despite Spirit Taker. Naturally that wouldn't be an issue in a "real" fight since I could make a point of switching to staff specifically when Reprisal is down.)

---------- Post added at 01:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 AM ----------

Ack. Itaz posted while I was posting.

Originally Posted by Itaz

Agree on MDB, but bar- spell is a bit difficult unless one knows the element of attack ahead of time--at least for people who lack twitch speed reaction time, like me.

This is true, but it really helps a lot that /RDM is only worth it at 68+, and by then any BLM mob's nukes will take at the very least 6 secs. I do keep a macro set handy for barspells, and I have them sorted according to nuke power (i.e. barthunder | barblizzard | barfire | baraero | barwater | barstone.) I find that if I order them that way, I can find the respective barspell fairly quickly, since after seeing so many nukes, or being nuked so much, one comes to naturally associate Thunder and Blizzard with more power, and Stone with the bottom tier of nuking.

Hmm. Ultimately, we want to know "How good of damage mitigation is this piece of gear?"

- number of actions paralyzed
- number of actions taken (by monster)

Add those two together, we get the total action potential. Divide the number of actions paralyzed by the total action potential, and that should be a pretty good figure to represent damage mitigation ability of any particular Ice Spike gear. (With qualifications for a particular level target, monster family, and monster's actual hit rate, of course.)

Would be nice to know how often an Ice Spike proc results in paralyzed condition, but I don't think that is as useful as being able to quantify the damage mitigation capacity.

For now refer to the bit I said above about the Manticores. Without a shield, they hit me for 60-70 a pop through Phalanx pretty consistently so every single paralysis proc rate shaves off plenty of damage.

Like I said I filtered out evasions from the crab "fights" (it's really just me standing there for 20-30 minutes) so I don't really have a total number of actions. If you want though I could ghettoparse a single fight against a T Greater Manticore (I don't filter out stuff during normal fighting).