[Tokitung]

Hi, I'm a 75 Mnk with a dismal Guard skill (112 atm >.>).

I main tank in my Salvage group and was wondering if your counter rate correlates to you guard skill.

I have my regular Mnk setup as well as a Guard setup (Boxer's Mantle, Pather Mask, Guard Torque, Melee Gaiters, total +34 guard skill.)

I notice that when I have my Guard setup in place, I tend to Counter more often (note, I do not use Counterstance as the lack of defense has not seemed to be worth it when magic/MP cells are not dropping well.)

Anyone know if this is a legitimate conclusion? Does your guard skill level increase your Counter rate in any way?

[Armando]

False conclusion. According to FFXIClopedia, the game checks for Counter before Guard, so they have very little to do with each other.

Counter is basically a 10% chance to attempt to hit the enemy when an attack gets through your evasion, shadows and (when applicable). Counter attempts can miss - only the successful counters are shown.

[Malacite]

Would be nice if SE would do something about Guard's abysmal proc rate though (parry too...)

[Tokitung]

I also have Sam 75 and notice that I parry a lot more than on my Nin (parry 177, so not a capped.) I know Agi is supposed to increase the proc rate of Parry/Guard/Shield (yes, I know that on wiki is is assumed and not verified.)

I actually got laughed at today by my LS for adding Agi gear to my Nin build, even though this is the second time I've leveled Nin to 75 (once on another Char.)

My belief of back in the old days was that Eva also had a soft cap, such as if you just stack Eva gear and no agi that you would not recieve as much of a benifit as if you had balanced between Agi and Eva. I was a pretty good tank back then with that theory, so I don't know if now days it is even applicable. [Note: I understand the bird party Att over Eva tanking]

[Raydeus]

You don't want to go there, you'll get flooded with formulae and how the calculator says everything you see on the field is nothing more than baseless guesstimates.




PS > Use what works best for you and only use wiki math as a reference.

[Armando]

PS > Use what works best for you and only use wiki math as a reference.

Uh, that's kind of like telling a physicist or engineer "do what works best for ya." The math behind the game is absolute as the laws of physics are to our reality. Whatever works best has to agree with what the math says works best - if it doesn't, then you're observing wrong or you're not properly modeling the situation (e.g. using irrelevant formulas or not taking the bigger picture into account.)

Anyways, getting back on topic. The truth is that due to our inability to find out a mob's offensive stats, Evasion testing is very difficult. The best we can do is theorize. What's most likely is that Evasion works for us in a very similar way than it does for enemies - there's no difference between pure Evasion and Evasion derived from AGI, just as for us there's no difference between pure Accuracy and Accuracy derived from DEX or Weapon Skill. Getting 1 Evasion for each 2 points of AGI isn't a very good way to increase your performance.

Either way, it's been found in practice that defensive approaches are inferior to offensive approaches for both PLD and NIN in the majority of EXP situations. The benefits of increased offense are numerous compared to those of increase defense. Obviously there's increased enmity generation - and is especially true and important for NIN because the job has no enmity tools of its own. The majority of its hate comes from damage, so a good increase in damage translates directly into a good increase in enmity. Increased enmity in turn lets the other party members do more damage without putting themselves at risk. Both of these factors result in the enemy staying alive for less time, which furthers both your goals - taking less damage and making more EXP.

There's also the fact that Accuracy have an exponential effect on your damage output. Not only does it boost your damage over time from normal hits and increase your average WS damage by making you hit less, it also increases how often you can WS. It's very much like Haste in that regard.

But the primary reason why stockpiling AGI is frowned upon is gear limitations. There's only so much +stats you can get since you can only equip so many pieces of equipment, and only one per slot. It presumably takes 2 AGI to boost Evasion by 1; and let's face it, most pieces of gear don't add a whole lot of any base stat. Finding AGI+10 on a piece of gear is exceedingly hard and you'd only get +5 Eva out of that, while finding Attack/Accuracy/Evasion +10 on gear is much easier. You'll just get a whole lot more mileage gearing towards other stats.

All in all there's room in any gear set, no matter how offensive, for +Evasion. You just have to smart about it and strike a proper balance. This is a reality that PLDs have to wake up to as well - blindly whoring out +VIT in every slot is nowhere close to being an efficient way to tank. However, old myths, stickies and guides have kept the masses rather ignorant to this fact. Even now, posting that Gluttony Sword is a bad weapon on FFXIAH will get your comment rated down into the negatives, invisible by default.

EDIT: I don't mean to lecture you. I'm sure you were a competent tank when you leveled NIN. All I'm saying is that just because something works fine (e.g. turtle-style PLD tanking), it doesn't mean it's the best. If there were a better way to tank and you knew what it was, you would do it, no?

[Callisto]

Originally Posted by Armando

Either way, it's been found in practice that defensive approaches are inferior to offensive approaches for both PLD and NIN in the majority of EXP situations.

ftfy, it was a bit confusing, lol.

Edit: Relevant to the thread, I've never seen a successful MNK tank, especially in Salvage, that didn't use Counterstance. Your shadows and healers are there to keep you alive, you're there to hold hate and kill the target. Chariots hit like trucks regardless of your Defense rating, the 10% chance to not take the punch in the face when shadows are actually down is worth it. I don't recall any of them having a straight Physical DD move that couldn't be either A) Blinked to some extent by Utsusemi or B) hit hard enough to kill you in one shit with CS up. Use it and hope for Guard procs when Counter doesn't proc.

[Celeal]

To OP:

When you say you counter more often with your guard skill+ gear setup, do your have actually count, tally or parse for that? What I mean is if guard skill increase counter, how much counter is increase by guard skill +1? Without raw data, it is really hard to say.

In the past, Armando posted some interesting data for monk's accuracy/hit-rate affect counter-rate. Very interesting post, I suggest you to take a look =)

/side-track
For NIN evasion tanking, it used to work and party member used to care about hate control. But nowadays the DD is getting more powerful (those 2-handed weapon, more gear choice, etc), supports have more ways to keep party going, and exp mob choice is different from the past.... ways of NIN tanking changed.

[Tokitung]

Originally Posted by Callisto

Edit: Relevant to the thread, I've never seen a successful MNK tank, especially in Salvage, that didn't use Counterstance.

Well, I can say that I am a very successful Mnk tank then. I've tanked (and beaten) all the Salvage Megas in my Salvage group and almost all of the NMs without using Counterstance once. Same with the other two Mnks in my LS, which we rotate based on numbers and jobs that are available. We normally have about 6-10 people, of course the 10 is when we hit up Megas. I have one Taru Whm that cures me (love ya Acc!) and we do very well. The only time we fail is when we get hosed on Cell drops (Ability and Magic/MP being the killers.)

To Armando, thank you for the post. I remember a lot of the math from way back when, though still fuzzy on a lot of things. Prettu sure though that 2 Agi = +1 Eva AND +1 Parry. As for the Att vs Eva, as I put in my second post, I understand the advantages of it's usage in Bird/Imp parties as the mobs die very quickly. The way I build my Nin is more old school, using a blend of Acc>Eva>Enimty>Att>Stats. I do macro in key items for specific things, i.e. Hauby for WS and Enimty earrings/Rings for /war JAs and Ninjitsu.

Originally Posted by Raydeus

PS > Use what works best for you and only use wiki math as a reference.

Originally Posted by Armando

Uh, that's kind of like telling a physicist or engineer "do what works best for ya." The math behind the game is absolute as the laws of physics are to our reality. Whatever works best has to agree with what the math says works best - if it doesn't, then you're observing wrong or you're not properly modeling the situation (e.g. using irrelevant formulas or not taking the bigger picture into account.)

I have to agree with Raydeus, as I've seen some very strange combinations work even though sometimes they didn't make sense to the masses. As for the laws of phiysics, how many times have they been bent or broken in the last 100 years? Unless someone actually unravels all of the games coding and/or SE tells us point blank how their universe works, most everything that isn't told to us directly from them is theory. True, there are some very good theories out there that have been "verified" by a multitude of parsing tests. But that's to say that everything that we see on stats are exactly how they translate into the game, that there are no hidden variables or unaccounted for circumstances (i.e. Full/New Moon, elemental weather, etc.)

Celeal, I have been thinking of parsing it. I figure Salvage is a perfect place as you can more directly see the effect of specific attributes/armor as it unlocks instead of everything combined.

Wow, I just looked at all of that O.o I guess it is custom to end /rant.

[Armando]

As for the laws of phiysics, how many times have they been bent or broken in the last 100 years?

Never? There's never been a machine that violates the law of conservation of energy, or mass, or momentum, for instance.

[Tokitung]

I incorrectly put "broken", when I should have put "modified". Laws of Physics are theories that are currently in place that have yet been able to be disputed. Remember, the Laws of Physics are for man to try and understand how things work. Through out time, theories have been changed due to new found information. Many of those who offered different perspectives on "widely knows facts and laws" helped shape science as we know it, even though many were shunned by the scientific community at their time.

Everyone basically wants to know "How something happens". Before science became the powerhouse that it is in modern times, everything was explained by God[s]. "What makes Thunder?" Has to be a god doing it. Clinging to Laws is different from understanding the Laws. It is the same to be said about clinging to Religion and understanding Religion. To use them to try and make new discoveries and possibly modify/bend them is different from using the Laws to say things are impossible and shutting out new/different ideas without a second glance.

As for the game, there are too many variables to be 100% accurate. I mean, look at the level possibilities of exp mobs in an area. Normally you have a 2-4 random level difference in a mob. So the stat differences could drastically change your information as it is not a closed system. I woud say NMs with specific attributes and a defined level would be the best place to do your calculation.

[Armando]

I incorrectly put "broken", when I should have put "modified". Laws of Physics are theories that are currently in place that have yet been able to be disputed. Remember, the Laws of Physics are for man to try and understand how things work. Through out time, theories have been changed due to new found information. Many of those who offered different perspectives on "widely knows facts and laws" helped shape science as we know it, even though many were shunned by the scientific community at their time.

True, but the earliest theories and laws were nothing more than blind guesses. I was more referring to the more current laws, which are backed by solid mathematical models and for which no exceptions haven't found in decades or centuries.

But I fear that we're focusing on the wrong part of the metaphor. Just look at it this way: Raydeus' comment is like saying "Screw the math, these "laws of physics" could change at any moment and aren't necessarily right!" It's a straw man; throwing the validity of the laws of physics - or the facts that we already know about the game - into question isn't anywhere near that easy. It's precisely because the current laws that we know are precise that technology has advanced so far. Likewise, the vast majority of the things we do already know about the game (things like the TP formulas, damage formulas, etc) might as well be set in stone - they can and do precisely model the game's behavior.

As for the game, there are too many variables to be 100% accurate. I mean, look at the level possibilities of exp mobs in an area. Normally you have a 2-4 random level difference in a mob. So the stat differences could drastically change your information as it is not a closed system. I woud say NMs with specific attributes and a defined level would be the best place to do your calculation.

It doesn't have to be a closed system. Most of the times the level variance isn't enough to change the pattern of things as long as that variance stays within certain bounds. E.g. A 50+ PLD (barring bird camps) will be better off eating sushi any time the mobs are between 4-9 levels higher than him. In many cases the level variance is absolutely irrelevant. 5 Acc is always better than 4 VIT in your ring slot whether your party goes for VT mobs or IT++.

[Raydeus]

Armando...

Pointless rant ahead, click at your own risk.

Originally Posted by Armando

But I fear that we're focusing on the wrong part of the metaphor. Just look at it this way: Raydeus' comment is like saying "Screw the math, these "laws of physics" could change at any moment and aren't necessarily right!" It's a straw man; throwing the validity of the laws of physics - or the facts that we already know about the game - into question isn't anywhere near that easy.

Huh? Armando stop reading what you want to read. You already know what I'm talking about when I say stuff like that because we've been through this before.

Remember Warwolf belt? You were so sure acc +10 was better than all the benefits from Warwolf put together. And it didn't take long for me to (using your own math) disprove that notion. And that's not even counting that simply playing the game I came to the same conclusion without going through the math of it.

But I digress, let's go through this again.

Originally Posted by Raydeus

PS > Use what works best for you and only use wiki math as a reference.

"Use what works best for you..." As in: While playing the game you'll notice certain pieces working better with your, playstyle, monster you are currently fighting, etc. If you feel better about one particular piece of gear than what the numbers on wiki tell you it should be then my suggestion is to go with your gut. As a gamer you've been there many times before, and using the suggested weapon is never the only, nor the best way to do what you want to do.

"...and only use wiki math as a reference." As in: I'm not in any way saying you should toss math aside, but rather use it as what it is. A tool. A tool, a reference, something that can give you an idea of what stats do and how they can affect your performance. But it is all for the sake of playing the game more comfortable with your performance and thus making it more fun for you. So enslaving yourself to what the numbers and calculators say and tossing aside what you are actually seeing can not be considered as playing the game.

Also, the fact that you compare the laws of physics and others to wiki math would probably make quite a few dead mathematicians want to die again. You can not possibly believe wiki math is to be grouped in the same cathegory as all those fields you are trying to invoke to give more weight to your argument.

Not to mention except for math theory everything you see in math applied to the real world is only a very informed reference at most. You say it is because of current laws that we have advanced so far, like the knowledge popped out of nowhere from pure common sense alone. I say you are wrong, it is because people used math as a tool without letting it blind them from the facts happenning before them that we got to the degree of development we have in the world, and refined our knowledge in the process. Many times in human history "the rules" have been proven to be bendable or completely wrong, it's a process that never ends. Even though there were many people who labeled them as facts, the undeniable truth and so forth at the time.

So, long story short you need to keep an open mind to consider all the different angles while at the same time using all the tools available to you to find what you are looking for. All that without letting your ego blind you from what's going on in front of your eyes.

This isn't NASA here, it's FFXI. A videogame. Guides and numbers are only meant to enhance your playing experience, not take it over.

[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Tokitung

I incorrectly put "broken", when I should have put "modified". Laws of Physics are theories that are currently in place that have yet been able to be disputed.

Let's not drag Dark Matter and Stephen Hawking into this please >_>

[Tokitung]

>.> What about Zero Point energy?