Bard and MAcc

[QQ_Amun]

Hello BG, I'm planning on testing what is MAcc for brd. I see a lot of speculation on this but I have never seen it tested. So if it has been tested somewhere please point me there. If not my plan is to test this on hydra. hydra is resistant to elegy so I figured it would be a good place to start. I will have a basic set of gear I wont change because of the stats on the gear. I want to test Singing skill, Wind skill and CHR separately. Then a combination of singing/wind and finally if needed a combination of all. I plan on casting elegy 100 times with each test set while hydra doesn't have magic shield up. If anyone can think of anything I might be missing or a better way to do this please let me know. Advice is more then welcome.

[Tubbers]

I would strongly recommend looking at the thread Kaeko made about M.Acc, and the translation/analysis of the JP blogger's tests.

[dendryte]

Well, are you already able to enfeeble Hydra at a reasonable rate with your best gear? Because if you're looking for a ~1% or so improvement, I think your results will all be within margin of error of each other.

I used to be highly interested in these results and considered doing my own testing, but these days I'd rather just use full Marduk because it looks cool.

[QQ_Amun]

I was just looking at those. I know for blm and rdm skill is MAcc and INT/MND is potency. But there are several diffrent opinions out there for landing debuffs on brd. There has been testing into skill for march so we know that skill is what a brds buffs are based on. I am more interested in landing elegy often enough to not have to worry about being /blm. Might be hopes and dreams but we will see. You would think brd would be the same as rdm and blm but it seems like from what i have read that elegy with a +2 instrument is 52% slow no matter what the brd is wearing. I could be wrong?

[Talrandir]

You're correct that there's no way to increase the potency of Carnage Elegy beyond its cap, but the cap is 50%.

Also, Kaeko mentions on his blog tests that suggest wind skill is 1/3 as effective as singing skill. I don't have access to the FFXI Hunter's Bible to check out the details, though.

[QQ_Amun]

You're correct that there's no way to increase the potency of Carnage Elegy beyond its cap, but the cap is 50%.

Also, Kaeko mentions on his blog tests that suggest wind skill is 1/3 as effective as singing skill. I don't have access to the FFXI Hunter's Bible to check out the details, though.

Thats good to know. I have always suspected singing skill was MAcc for brd. I want to find out how exactly CHR, singing, and wind work better though. If someone has the info that would save me the work. But without the details I will still have to do some testing.

[Valyana]

I wonder how a naked BRD's elegy accuracy on the Qiqirn Poulterer would be, since they seem to heavily resist Stone nukes. Maybe I'll have to try it myself.

[Ultimagi]

I wouldn't bother testing on any Notorious Monsters, since they build resistance to any spell casted repeatedly. This would skew your results.

[mym]

When I was capping my skills @ level 72 bard, I found that casting threnody's naked against goldfish while wearing the opposing staff gave me a pretty good rate of resists. (about 60% from eyeballing)

I don't know what kind of resist rate you would get at 75.. especially if you are merited.. but it might be worth a shot. Goldfish are nice and safe.. and you can hold the same one for hours of testing without having to worry about you test popping at different levels, or trying to stay alive during the tests.

Maybe you could wear a Morgana's Cotehardie as well to help lower your accuracy.

[astura]

hmm if what kaeko said was true you could have a potential formula of:

(singing)+[(string or wind)/3]+macc gear+(chr/macc ratio 1:1 till 10 over mobs chr)+(chr/macc ratio 2:1 for each chr over 10 on mob).

in that case maybe something like this http://www.ffxiah.com/item_sets.php?id=55631 with caped magic merits would work
out to be the best with +43 chr +51 singing +45 macc +41 wind. (409.6 total acc then potentially before chr is figured out)

[Valyana]

I wonder how a naked BRD's elegy accuracy on the Qiqirn Poulterer would be, since they seem to heavily resist Stone nukes. Maybe I'll have to try it myself.

With only Horn+1 equipped, I stuck 11/11 Carnage Elegy. So, not resistant enough.

[Bakthi]

When I was trying to test the effect of +skill, back when people were just coming around to it possibly affecting debuffs, I used an unrelated harp (I think ebony +1) and cast lullaby. If you're trying to get a higher resist rate, I see no reason to use a) wind, and b) an instrument with relevant +song.

[Antithesis]

500 is the magic number. When your combined skill of Wind and Singing reaches 500+ you can comfortably start stacking MACC pieces.

[Valyana]

Antithesis: I would expect macc to be at least as effective as skill at any level of skill.

Bakthi: Yeah, I guess I'll try again with a harp and Auster's Staff sometime, but I was hoping to be able to measure the macc effects of wind and matching instruments, too...

[barber2006]

500 is the magic number. When your combined skill of Wind and Singing reaches 500+ you can comfortably start stacking MACC pieces.

This is so unbelievably not true if brd works anything like blm/rdm. First of all, CHR (up to 10 above the target mobs CHR), skill, and macc would all contribute to the overall success rate, and will keep contributing to it until the cap. Second of all, 500 is an arbitrary number. Where did you come up with this? By eyeballing? According to the macc formulas from blm we are now attempting to replacate on brd you will continue to get the same bonus from adding 10 skill whether you are at 400 skill or 500 skill.

In the third place, if Kaeko's sources are correct, singing skill is 3x as valuable as wind/string skill, so the COMBINED skill doesn't matter as much as how it is distributed. Saying 500 skill is all that's needed is like how people have been saying for 5 years how 120 CHR is the 'magic number' or the 'point of diminishing returns'. Well it turns out for merit type mobs that number is more like 90 and for HNM that number is more like 130 (even higher for WoTG/Tau HNM that perhaps have higher than 120 CHR). Spitting out dogmatic and meaningless numbers is something I hope all this testing will get away from.

For example, if you are not above 10 CHR over your target's CHR then errant slops blow Shadow pants out of the water (if its a similar debuff formula to that of blm). However, once you are over 10 CHR above your target, the shadow pants inch ahead.


All this is to say that gear for maximum brd debuff efficiency is tremendously situational and entirely dependant on the mobs CHR. Unfortunately we dont have the luxury of being able to easily check a mobs CHR like blms can by plugging nuke damage into the damage calculator. This is going to be the sticking point of the testing, the mobs CHR (and therefore the difference between the brd's CHR and mobs CHR) will be very difficult to know for certain. If there is indeed a single point of diminishing returns at 10 over the mobs CHR it will be very difficult to isolate that variable.



As far as testing is concerned. I think the first order of business should be to debunk or prove the idea of singing skill being 3x as valuable as wind/string skill. If it turns out they have equal weight, the rest of the testing gets much easier after that.

[Antithesis]

Bard skills don't work exactly the same like mages. When you sing songs you are using two skills not one. Singing is the base and Wind and String build upon it. It is logical to assume Singing is more valuable than Wind or String. Kaeko's testings are solid but Singing being three times better than Wind or String is giving me some doubts.

I say 500 because that's the point that, with merits, you are beginning to reach your limit. The amount of gear left available that augments those skills is limited. So what's the next best thing after Skill? Magic Accuracy of course. Those who say CHR need to realize Bard has an innate way of increasing its CHR. Most Bard's forget they have the two CHR Etude songs which actually help tremendously. Even if there is diminishing returns it still effects the accuracy greatly.

[Tsuko_Asura]

You have no basis for those conclusions.

[Valyana]

Yes, casting elegy on a Poulterer with Auster's and harp (and no +skill/macc/chr) landed 3/9 times, seems like a pretty good baseline setup for testing skill/macc/chr.

[Ultimagi]

Wouldn't it be easier to remove the variable of Instrument Skill and just use Singing?

[Valyana]

Easier perhaps, but the relative effectiveness of instrument skill is the main thing I want to test.