Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

[LeonstrifeLEV]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

kk i got a question about the sea torques now. would a justice torque beat a snow gorget for weapon skills? i always thought the gorget would win since it gives .1 to the first hit which is like 10% increase to base damage in my head, but some ppl say that the justice torque is better. Is it situational or...

[Armando]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

i always thought the gorget would win since it gives .1 to the first hit which is like 10% increase to base damage in my head

The damage contribution is stupidly small. For example Dual Wielded Rampage has 6 hits, with an fTP of 0.5 on the first and 1 the other 5 for a total of 5.5. The Gorget would just turn that into 5.6 which is a 1.8% improvement. The improvement will be comparatively small for other WS.

The reason people used the gorgets was for the accuracy boost, which has never been confirmed but if it's analogous to the fTP boost is probably +10 Acc.

Short answer, depends on how much you want to believe the Gorget's acc boost is.

[LeonstrifeLEV]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

the damage bonus is still small with single hit moves then too right?

[Armando]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

Unless the WS has a fairly low fTP mod, yes. For example, Tachi: Gekko has 1.875 fTP at 200 TP (I'm assuming a Hagun) so the benefit is 1.975/1.875 = 5.33%. But for something like 300 TP Steel Cyclone, the improvement is only 3.33%.

[LeonstrifeLEV]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

Now this has been bugging me for some time but is Cratio bonus on the great sword weapon skills separate from attack? If i had to put it into words the c ratio bonus on ground strike and spinning slash just closes the level gap penalty and doesnt increase my overall ceiling for damage right?

I might be wording this all wrong.

[Armando]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

No, your ceiling doesn't increase; you won't exceed the usual cRatio cap with the bonuses built into WS.

[LeonstrifeLEV]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

very well then. This would probably be my last question until i get into a near fist fight with someone on in my ls. At what point would you say attack is better then raising base damage? like +2 damage = 5 attack (or 7 if using str)?

Edit: on second thought this is probably a little too vague since 2 damage from str on things like guillotine could outweigh raw attack at that point.

[Armando]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

At what point would you say attack is better then raising base damage? like +2 damage = 5 attack (or 7 if using str)?

Edit: on second thought this is probably a little too vague since 2 damage from str on things like guillotine could outweigh raw attack at that point.

It's relative. The higher the mob's level compared to yours, the more important Attack is, due to the level penalty using subtraction. For example, if you had 300 Attack and were facing a mob with 450 Defense, and you're wondering the improvement that +10 Attack would make:

Against an EM mob your cRatios would be
300/450 = 0.6667 and
310/450 = 0.6889
Improvement: 3.33%

Against a mob 10 levels higher:
300/450 - 0.5 = 0.1667
310/450 - 0.5 = 0.1889
Improvement: 13.3%

The level penalty can cause your cRatio to fall low enough to start hitting for 0's. Attack is what keeps you from getting that low, and has big returns in that range when your cRatio is low due to level penalty. For a DRK this isn't too big of an issue, but for a THF eating sushi in a crab party, it's a really big deal.

[LeonstrifeLEV]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

ic, so speaking in general terms being a drk anything registering EM or lower stacking attack wouldn't be very potent till the mob has about 7 levels on me then?

[Armando]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

It's not necessarily that it won't be potent, but it's more potent when your damage is low and the mob's VT-IT. Best way to know is to just do a bit of math. Estimate how much your cRatio would improve with +X Attack (taking into account level correction in EXP), and compare it to how much your DMG would improve with +Y STR. /Check gives you a rough idea of an EXP mob's Defense since it /check isn't affected by level difference. How much Attack and STR is available to you and how important they are varies from job to job and level range.

Alternatively I've posted how to calculate mob stats here; if you know how to apply formulas in Excel you could very quickly calculate the stats for a WAR/WAR mob (the most common variety of mob in the game) of whatever level you want.

[Taskmage]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

In trying to understand how to best gear for blue magic, I had my friend do an experiment for me and I'm confused by the results we got.

D value ＝floor(D+fSTR+WSC) * Multiplier

^ This is the base damage equation for blue magic. It's essentially the same as a weaponskill except that D is a function of your blue magic skill that increases by 1 for every 4.5 points of skill. The test I asked him to do was the use Benthic Typhoon on a mob wearing Magus Jubbah +1 (STR+5, DEX+5, blue magic skill +15), wait for defense down to wear off and BT again wearing Loki's Kaftan (DEX+11, AGI+11), then to repeat with cruor strength and VV for +90 STR. Benthic Typhoon is a single hit physical spell with a 60% AGI WSC, so my hypothesis was that the kaftan would outperform the jubbah, since 60% of 11 would increase final D by 6, and +15 skill and +5 str would only increase it by 4. After +90 str I expected the gap to widen as fSTR capped and +5 str would drop out. I expected the +15 skill to push his weapon rank tier up by one, but didn't know how big of a change to expect from that.

Pre-buffs these are the results we got:

DC Frigatebird:
No body piece - 1207 damage
Magus Jubbah - 1325 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1301 damage

VT Gore Bats:
No body piece - 745 damage
Magus Jubbah - 740 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 730 damage

Small sample sizes, I know, but I didn't want to ask him to spend an hour collecting data. Anyway, I was surprised to find that the Jubbah outperformed the Kaftan, though the difference was small—small enough that their damage ranges intersected with the damage range for no body equipment at all when pDIF was lowered. After he got buffs, though, I was shocked:

DC Frigatebird:
No body piece -
Magus Jubbah - 1738 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1116 damage

VT Coastal Colibri:
No body piece - 1045 damage
Magus Jubbah - 1555 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1006 damage

Kaftan was absolutely blown away. So, I think we conclusively proved that Jubbah +1 > Kaftan for Benthic Typhoon, but I can't figure out why. The only advantage it should have is in raising the weapon rank, which I expected to have a noticable effect, but not to increase the damage by a factor of 50%. And if BT does in fact have a WSC of 60% AGI as the wiki claims, why didn't the Kaftan appear to make a measurable difference vs wearing no body at all? WSC mods for blue magic are supposed to always be in effect, even without CA.

[Cotners]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

In trying to understand how to best gear for blue magic, I had my friend do an experiment for me and I'm confused by the results we got.

D value ＝floor(D+fSTR+WSC) * Multiplier

^ This is the base damage equation for blue magic. It's essentially the same as a weaponskill except that D is a function of your blue magic skill that increases by 1 for every 4.5 points of skill. The test I asked him to do was the use Benthic Typhoon on a mob wearing Magus Jubbah +1 (STR+5, DEX+5, blue magic skill +15), wait for defense down to wear off and BT again wearing Loki's Kaftan (DEX+11, AGI+11), then to repeat with cruor strength and VV for +90 STR. Benthic Typhoon is a single hit physical spell with a 60% AGI WSC, so my hypothesis was that the kaftan would outperform the jubbah, since 60% of 11 would increase final D by 6, and +15 skill and +5 str would only increase it by 4. After +90 str I expected the gap to widen as fSTR capped and +5 str would drop out. I expected the +15 skill to push his weapon rank tier up by one, but didn't know how big of a change to expect from that.

Pre-buffs these are the results we got:

DC Frigatebird:
No body piece - 1207 damage
Magus Jubbah - 1325 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1301 damage

VT Gore Bats:
No body piece - 745 damage
Magus Jubbah - 740 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 730 damage

Small sample sizes, I know, but I didn't want to ask him to spend an hour collecting data. Anyway, I was surprised to find that the Jubbah outperformed the Kaftan, though the difference was small—small enough that their damage ranges intersected with the damage range for no body equipment at all when pDIF was lowered. After he got buffs, though, I was shocked:

DC Frigatebird:
No body piece -
Magus Jubbah - 1738 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1116 damage

VT Coastal Colibri:
No body piece - 1045 damage
Magus Jubbah - 1555 damage
Loki's Kaftan - 1006 damage

Kaftan was absolutely blown away. So, I think we conclusively proved that Jubbah +1 > Kaftan for Benthic Typhoon, but I can't figure out why. The only advantage it should have is in raising the weapon rank, which I expected to have a noticable effect, but not to increase the damage by a factor of 50%. And if BT does in fact have a WSC of 60% AGI as the wiki claims, why didn't the Kaftan appear to make a measurable difference vs wearing no body at all? WSC mods for blue magic are supposed to always be in effect, even without CA.

How large were these sample sizes? These results seem backwards. Was his blue magic skill capped/merited?

[Taskmage]

Re: Guide: Melee stats for dummies.

Thus my confusion. The sample sizes were tiny, though, so it might be mere coincidence that the jubbah got lucky attack rolls and the kaftan got crap ones. I'll do a more comprehensive test when I can do them myself instead of burning someone else's time, and try for a bigger swing in agi to make the numbers clearer.