WHM Haste preferences/priority

[Muu Yi]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

I will create a post in Thief forum for this on-going discussion, since I'm sure most White Mage that are following this thread are getting tired of reading about whether or not post-60 Thief can or cannot get 100 TP in 30 seconds. What the video basically proves is that it is entirely possible for post-60 Thief to get 100 TP within 30 seconds and Rones said that it was not. All that the Hasting Mage really needs to gain from this discussion is that Haste lowers weapon delays significantly enough even for already fast-attacking jobs that they can achieve 100 TP in very quick times. Hundred Fists it is not, but it is still impressive in a way and certainly has its usefulness in a party.

[Caspian]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

What the video basically proves is that it is entirely possible for post-60 Thief to get 100 TP within 30 seconds and Rones said that it was not.

So, its possible. Many things are possible, but is it something you really want to count on happening in an xp situation? If the thf was fighting a too weak in the video, then ofcourse the accuracy is going to be great. I'd be willing to bet near 100% accuracy in an xp situation is nothing more than a pipe dream. MAYBE, if you subbed rng and used sharpshot in addition to every +acc item you could possibly have. But then you'd have the problem of only being able to use one weapon and no double attack. (Ofcourse you would get barrage, and once every 5 minutes you might be able to pull it off). Dont know of a lot of pt's that would be happy with you subbing rng, especially after the recent patch.

[Rones]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

What the video basically proves is that it is entirely possible for post-60 Thief to get 100 TP within 30 seconds and Rones said that it was not.

Actually I said it was not possible unless the thf was a leprechaun and got bunchs of triple and double attacks off within the 30 seconds which is what happened. As far as I know that is highly uncommon and not something you could design party dynamsics around like you were suggesting (having thf sa+ws and then ta+ws seperately ever 30 sec). So your video has not proven anything. Feel free to make another thread, I will repost all the same data and experiments that you have not addressed.

I still feel this holds some relevence for whms as it helps them see who gets the most out of each haste. Usually it is best to do as Icemage suggest of hasting the slowest one, but other times you need to know more of the mechanics and numbers.

[Muu Yi]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

There's several things you didn't consider though. There's many many possible equipment variables to make you attack faster than normal. I hadn't even thought about the fact that Thief can use ranged weapons in battle until Caspian mentioned it. I do use Crossbows in experience points party and can actually get about 75% hit rate. Since I'm always moving around anyways I don't have a problem with running about 5 steps backwards and then firing off a shot in the midst of battle from the optimal range for accuracy. And my crossbow gives me back about 12% TP per shot which certainly does help in getting 100% faster, Barrage does have possibilites for greatly increasing TP gain but I personally haven't tried out Ranger subjob as it is underleveled for me. Accuracy is not a problem for me in exp parties, I will eat Sushi if I need more accuracy on particular mob and that generally pushes me up to the point where I'm hitting it 95% with daggers.

If we want to consider about possible subjob abilities that can boost TP... Thief/Samurai post-60 will have Meditate for 60 extra TP over time of about 10 seconds. Or yet another unaccounted for equipment possibility: weapons that attack multiple times. Thief can equip Ridill and Kraken Club... I've seen one Thief with Ridill on Titan and at least 3 with Kraken Club. It doesn't really matter about the luck of Triple Attack occurrence if you have one of those to Dual Wield with, your TP gain will be ridiculous even if Triple Attack doesn't activate. And while I can only dream of obtaining a weapon like that right now, it's within the realm of possibility. One of my Warrior friends in fact got Ridill not too long ago although they still prefer to stick with their axes for exp situations.

Basically Rones, if you didn't want me to bring in other factors like Double Attack and Triple Attack (...compared to other possibilites these two job traits seem downright normal actually) you should say so and I would agree. Also there were reasons why I worded my initial statements the way that I did. You keep indicating 30 seconds as if skillchains happen exactly on the dot. But as I've said time and again I never specifically said 30 seconds. I specifically said around 30 seconds... it's more like 40 seconds in a party setting. In your initial reply you just said I typed BS and then followed with a bunch of numbers by someone else's calculations. The leprechaun comment came later on. And if that's the case then I am a happy Leprechaun who is going to Merit Triple Attack to max and become an even luckier leprechaun. I understand where your assumptions are coming from but as a White Mage you couldn't possibly consider all the options for Thief to becomes TP-machines.

Anyway I've put my post on the Thief's forum we'll see what other Thief say from their experiences and testing. I'm still willing to concede that your numbers in regards to delay in that 1 second = 60 delay are more accurate if I come to the same results while testing them for myself.

[Rones]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

There's many many possible equipment variables to make you attack faster than normal.

Yes, and I already pointed out the results of all the +haste equipment/spells would get you (and not get you). Mentioning kraken club to have to support your argument is rediculous. That is beyond the realm of reasonable. Your origonal requirements for a thief reaching 100% tp in 30 seconds was that they have haste. Ranged attacks won't help you as they delay your melee as well. Ranged delay stops your melee delays clock until it is finished.

I will eat Sushi if I need more accuracy on particular mob and that generally pushes me up to the point where I'm hitting it 95% with daggers.

I love to parse my party's as brd and I can say I have never encountered any melee with 95% accu on IT. I have partied with some pretty insane DD as well, Mnk's and Drk's with every piece of +accu equipment there is (Peacock charm, dual snipers, etc) combined with blade madrigal (+29 accu), they still only reach 85-90% accu. You can stack on all the accu equip you want, but you will be lucky to reach 90% unless you are fighting even match and below. Unless you have parser results to say otherwise, stop pulling numbers out of the air. I can post my parser results if you would like.

Basically Rones, if you didn't want me to bring in other factors like Double Attack and Triple Attack

I don't mind you bringing them up, but they are not something to rely on. If you wanted to sc every ~30 seconds, you could not rely on these to reach 100% tp, they are far to sporadic. Thus, trying to use them to support your argument is mostly a mute point. Even at best, you would need them to make for up over 50% tp every 30 sec (as 60% is your max in 30 seconds minus misses). You can't claim triple attack kicking in 3-4 times every 30 seconds and 100% accu at the same time in an exp setting

I specifically said around 30 seconds... it's more like 40 seconds in a party setting.

Then you should have said 40. However, even in 40 seconds you can not reach 100%. 40 seconds would allow 16 attacks with a 150 delay dagger (attack every 2.5 sec) times 5 tp per hit which is only 80% assuming 100% accu. I really don't even see how it matters, I'm not the one saying it has to happen within that time span or the sc has to happen every 30 secs. I'm only talking about tp accumaltion rate and what is and is not possible within a time period.

as a White Mage you couldn't possibly consider all the options for Thief to becomes TP-machines.

I do not condescend melees who try to discuss mages topics, I instead address their points they give as you should as well.

[Icemage]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

There's several things you didn't consider though. There's many many possible equipment variables to make you attack faster than normal. I hadn't even thought about the fact that Thief can use ranged weapons in battle until Caspian mentioned it. I do use Crossbows in experience points party and can actually get about 75% hit rate. Since I'm always moving around anyways I don't have a problem with running about 5 steps backwards and then firing off a shot in the midst of battle from the optimal range for accuracy. And my crossbow gives me back about 12% TP per shot which certainly does help in getting 100% faster, Barrage does have possibilites for greatly increasing TP gain but I personally haven't tried out Ranger subjob as it is underleveled for me. Accuracy is not a problem for me in exp parties, I will eat Sushi if I need more accuracy on particular mob and that generally pushes me up to the point where I'm hitting it 95% with daggers.

Ranged attacks don't make you gain TP any faster without a ranger sub. They appear to follow similar delay/TP rules as melee weapons, so without Rapid Shot or Barrage, you won't get any better TP generation over time using ranged attacks vs. melee (less in fact, because you're probably going to lose some time off of your melee timer by activating /ranged).

I've yet to see any melee in any party, at any level, hit an IT or IT++ enemy 95% of the time. Not even with Sushi and double Madrigal and Frost and Gravity. Even on VT enemies it's doubtful you could reach the 95% cap. The only exception to this is mid-level parties with WARs using GAxe and using Shield Break.

If we want to consider about possible subjob abilities that can boost TP... Thief/Samurai post-60 will have Meditate for 60 extra TP over time of about 10 seconds. Or yet another unaccounted for equipment possibility: weapons that attack multiple times. Thief can equip Ridill and Kraken Club... I've seen one Thief with Ridill on Titan and at least 3 with Kraken Club. It doesn't really matter about the luck of Triple Attack occurrence if you have one of those to Dual Wield with, your TP gain will be ridiculous even if Triple Attack doesn't activate. And while I can only dream of obtaining a weapon like that right now, it's within the realm of possibility. One of my Warrior friends in fact got Ridill not too long ago although they still prefer to stick with their axes for exp situations.

THF have D in sword, and E in club. Even if you dual wielded them (god only knows why you would) your accuracy will be awful. Plus, anyone who shows up with a kraken club to one of my XP parties is going to be asked politely to put the toy away, or be kicked from the party.

THF/SAM is reasonable, but lacks the offensive kick of /WAR and the defense and attack speed of /NIN. Aside from Meditate's 60TP per 3 minutes, the Store TP trait doesn't seem to add much TP per hit at all, especially on low delay weaponry like daggers. I don't see how it's pertinent to this discussion.

I understand where your assumptions are coming from but as a White Mage you couldn't possibly consider all the options for Thief to becomes TP-machines.

Here's the real issue. THF's offensive production isn't liimited (as you seem to believe) by their TP. They are limited by the frequency by which they can use Sneak Attack and/or Trick Attack. Generally speaking, most thieves use SATA together. Occasionally I see thieves that split them post-60 because of Assassin trait. Without SA or TA, dagger weaponskills do extremely mundane damage. Theoretically if you could get 100TP consistently every 30 seconds, you could do precisely that and drop 2 WS per minute, but reality will show that under most circumstances you're going to be working hard to get 100TP in 60 seconds against IT enemies.

For the purpose of the original discussion, as far as WHM playstyle goes, you don't really need to know the exact details of how many attacks the DDs in your party are making. All you need to do is notice who's getting more TP over time, and if Haste will make the skillchain happen faster, by all means use it if you can spare the MP. That's all that really matters. Any other application of Haste in an XP party is an ego-stroke for the DDs (and an exorbitantly expensive one, at a cost of 40mp).


Icemage

[Muu Yi]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

Let's take a look again at what exactly were my statements since it sounds as if maybe my key points were just overlooked.

After level 60, Thief has Assassin job trait which lets them split up Trick Attack and Sneak Attack. Doing this will allow them to do sneak attack or trick attack with weaponskill around every 30 seconds which is much more efficient for speeding through exp chains if skillchain and magic burst are your biggest forms of damage. And it is entirely possible for Thief to have over 100% TP within 30 seconds if they're given Haste.

There are 3 separate statements here, and they don't aren't necessarily inclusive. I worded these statements as carefully as I could, so I was very surprised when you essentially said I'm lying. Okay firstly there's the "around 30 seconds" I keep telling you I typed from the beginning. I only stated 30 seconds because that's the optimal rotation for switching between using SA and TA. And I admit I perhaps was trying to make Thief sound a little bit more attractive by saying 30 seconds, but I swear it is in that general time frame + - 10 seconds. I did not say that doing sneak attack or trick attack with weaponskill around every 30 seconds was due to Haste specifically either. What if Thief is pulling and takes 2 shots and lands them prior to tank engaging? If they're using the crossbow that I am that's 24% TP to start with on top of whatever TP was left over from the previous fight (Even if Thief was the skillchain closer the weaponskill itself will return TP, Dancing Edge gives back quite a bit of TP if all 5 hits connected), and please don't protest that you don't believe Thief can get 2 shots off on a mob during a pull prior to everyone else engaging because you can. Entirely possible means within the realm of possibility. If it's outside the realm of your possibility to gain 100 TP within around 30 seconds, do not assume it's outside other's realm of possibility. 100% TP in 30 seconds given Haste... but what kind of Haste? Equipment gives +Haste, so does the other methods I had initially considered in their own fashion. I worded it this way because I was not only talking about the White Mage's Haste spell. If I was, I would say Whm's Haste. You probably did not realize it but I was actually considering several other methods of Haste besides.

Besides, unless you are cheating and can see your teammate's TP percentages you have at all times you'll have to do TP announce to let your party members know when you have 100% and if they're slower in TP gain you have to wait on them. So it's more like skillchain every 40 seconds anyways as skillchain is not performed on the dot at 30 seconds.

I did say 40 seconds, go back 2 pages. If you actually read every word I wrote instead of skimming my paragraphs and then picking apart choice bits you'd realize this. I think we just had a basic misunderstanding because you didn't realize I was including outside variables other than pure weapon delay and TP over time. If I edit all my posts to skillchain every 40 seconds will that make it easier for you to stomach? Otherwise it looks like you just refuse to acknowledge my examples no matter what. :sweat: The reason that jobs like Thief have abilities, traits, and equipment that greatly increase their attack rate is to break down the delay further. Ignoring those variables is tantamount to White Mage that neglects Flash completely. I'm not trying to be condescending at all by the way, I really enjoy figuring out the facts with people but you need to be a lot more open-minded here.

I'm not all that close to level 75 yet guys, so the mobs I fight don't have that crazy of an evasion yet. Besides, aren't most exp mobs at 75 Very Tough anyways? It should be easier to get a decent accuracy rating on VTs I'd think. I don't really like fighting IT + high defense mobs anyways, exp is good per mob but there's usually quite a bit of down-time after chain 4. VTs give good exp as long as party member's levels are kept no more than 1 level apart and can be speedkilled much faster with much less downtime. Parsers won't show I have 95% accuracy at any rate because there are times I will hit for 0 while eating sushi... not enough attack and will cause me to do no damage and gain 0 TP on those. I never said I have perfect attack or accuracy all I can tell you is that for some strange reason when I was eating sushi for 2 hours last night every single mob in that area of Boyahda Tree was conning as Low Evasion to me. And in that entire time of partying I missed only 15 hits with melee attacks. Ranged accuracy was a completely different story, however. Maybe it sounds crazy to you, but that's what happened and my party didn't have any melee damage dealer except for Paladin and I so I had quite a good chance of missing lots but somehow I was on a roll in terms of accuracy. You don't have to believe me if you don't want to, but that is what actually happened. There was a Bard and Summoner in the party actually, but the Bard was giving me Double Minuet and Summoner did not have Fenrir. Sorry guys, apparently according to you I do not operate under realistic circumstances. /sigh Would you believe me if I said that I can activate 3 TA and 2 SA in about 80 seconds? Pre-charging and being puller is key of course.

To Icemage, I agree that Kraken Club and Ridill should not be dual-wielded by Thief. They should be off-handed at best and only used to help increase the TP gain of the main hand and not for dealing damage. I have no illusions of doing good damage with a club with single digit base damage that probably won't hit most of the time due to E rating. I have used hand-to-hand which is also E rating before in exp party. (Fighting VT and low IT) mobs would con as regular evasion with Focus + lots of accuracy gear + sushi at the same time. Apparently Focus adds +20 accuracy which is quite a considerable amount but it still wasn't enough to make the mobs low evasion. That was an interesting experience, but sticking to daggers at least in main hand is still really the way to go post-50.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

Soooooooooooooooooooo........

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49394

[Icemage]

Re: WHM Hints and Tips

If your point was to prove that it's "possible" for THF to get 100TP in 30 seconds, I will concede that it's "possible". But as this thread is devoted to the topic of "WHM tips and tricks", kindly take the remainder of your discussion out of this thread, as it has ZERO application to the original post, which is stickied.

For practical purposes, it is NOT possible for a thief to get 100% TP in 30 seconds consistently. And without that, there is no point in them splitting SA and TA for separate weaponskills, which is why thieves almost always fall to the bottom of my priority list for Haste.


Icemage

[Rones]

Re: WHM Haste preferences/priority

Wow, some moderator did a nice job of moving this out of the whm tips section.