enmity +/- gear

[Starblaster]

I've recently been told that enmity gear does not increase or decrease the amount of hate that you receive per action, but rather, it affects the speed that your hate bleeds out.

For example: WAR uses voke with no enmity gear, and the hate from his voke is gone in 15 seconds. Another WAR uses voke with 5 enmity on, and his hate is gone in 20 seconds.

I have no data or experience to back this up, can anyone clarify if it works one way or the other?

[Sechs]

I always thought that was the way every enmity thing (gear/merit/spell) worked? ?_?

[Zosi]

This is one of those things that everyone has their own pet opinions on, since it's something that's hard to reliably test.

Personally, I think it affects both how much enmity you gain or lose through actions as well as how fast enmity deteriorates over time.

[riddaraan]

This is one of those things that everyone has their own pet opinions on, since it's something that's hard to reliably test.

Personally, I think it affects both how much enmity you gain or lose through actions as well as how fast enmity deteriorates over time.

This is correct.

To the OP:
Tell whoever told you that, the only reason their Provokes degrade too fast is because they don't have enough CHR.

[Ferien]

This is one of those things that everyone has their own pet opinions on, since it's something that's hard to reliably test.

Personally, I think it affects both how much enmity you gain or lose through actions as well as how fast enmity deteriorates over time.

This is correct.

To the OP:
Tell whoever told you that, the only reason their Provokes degrade too fast is because they don't have enough CHR.

And then tell them to post it to BG's advanced section.

[riddaraan]

This is one of those things that everyone has their own pet opinions on, since it's something that's hard to reliably test.

Personally, I think it affects both how much enmity you gain or lose through actions as well as how fast enmity deteriorates over time.

This is correct.

To the OP:
Tell whoever told you that, the only reason their Provokes degrade too fast is because they don't have enough CHR.

And then tell them to post it to BG's advanced section.

Since we're on the topic of PLD... what's with this "Team Gallant", "Team Valor" thing? I want to enlist!

[Atlasion]

I've always thought of enmity gear/merits as making you lose hate slower, making it easier for you to build hate. Never seen anything that would lead me to beleive that more enmity means voke pulling more initial hate.

Think most people have similar views.

[evilpaul]

This is one of those things that everyone has their own pet opinions on, since it's something that's hard to reliably test.

Personally, I think it affects both how much enmity you gain or lose through actions as well as how fast enmity deteriorates over time.

That's been what I've observed from a BLM and NIN perspective.

Since we're on the topic of PLD... what's with this "Team Gallant", "Team Valor" thing? I want to enlist!

Linkshell on Fairy headed by Rukenshin (the Walmart Paladin).

[riddaraan]

It's easy to test isn't it? Time Provoke goooooo!

[Sylphet]

As Zosi said: The bottom line is that nobody really knows except for the people over as SE who don't like tho share their little secrets with us. People can swear up and down that they know but until someone shows conclusive tests (I've never seen any) the verdict is still out.

While this doesn't pertain exclusively to + and - enmity on gear it is an interesting take on how enmity works generally. I also recommend following the link in the LJ entry to a semi-recent BG thread regarding enmity in FF.
http://kanican.livejournal.com/12192.html

Enmity management has come a long way in the past few years but it is also far from completely understood.

[theo]

Didn't elmer translate some Japanese guidebook that had a decent explanation of Enmity? If its not in the elmer subforum its probably buried somewhere deep in the advanced forum. I don't feel like digging around for it atm

[evilpaul]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21468

[Edrick]

As Zosi said: The bottom line is that nobody really knows except for the people over as SE who don't like tho share their little secrets with us. People can swear up and down that they know but until someone shows conclusive tests (I've never seen any) the verdict is still out.

While this doesn't pertain exclusively to + and - enmity on gear it is an interesting take on how enmity works generally. I also recommend following the link in the LJ entry to a semi-recent BG thread regarding enmity in FF.
http://kanican.livejournal.com/12192.html

Enmity management has come a long way in the past few years but it is also far from completely understood.

This site makes the most sense of enmity that I've seen yet. Thanks for the link.

[Okuza]

Kanican's LJ article is the best read by far of any that I've seen. It's how I've been thinking enmity worked myself more or less. There is no hard cap. It decays at the same rate for everyone. There is only one type of enmity. Adding +/- enmity items just alters the gain per action and has absolutely nothing to do with decay rate.

BTW, I loved his thundaga/sleepga example. It's sooo true and anyone that has voked or stunned things off sleepers in dyanmis has seen it in action.

The biggest reason I'd ague against enmity actively influencing decay is that in order for that to happen, the programming model has to become more complex. A dumb coder would check everyone's enmity every cycle. A smarter one still has to keep separate decay rates for every person based on enmity at the time of the action. What if you have different levels of enmity on at the time of each action, too? You really really don't want to save each and every action on the critter and decay it individually by enmity. Do you reset the decay rate of the previous ones? No. Decay by enmity is just too complex to code for a game programmer. They're typically underpaid and underskilled, but highly motivated because they just think working on games is "cool". And, any real professional would pitch that idea out based on it requiring excessive resources without yielding any significant difference over simpler methods. There are a lot of fights active on the server at any given time; coders will want fight processing to be fast and light.

So, based on coding practice, I'd punt: theories that require enmity to function outside of "at the time of action", theories that require anything other than a single enmity value per player to be stored by the server, and theories that require expensive decay calculations.

[aurik]

Kanican's LJ article is the best read by far of any that I've seen. It's how I've been thinking enmity worked myself more or less. There is no hard cap. It decays at the same rate for everyone. There is only one type of enmity. Adding +/- enmity items just alters the gain per action and has absolutely nothing to do with decay rate.

BTW, I loved his thundaga/sleepga example. It's sooo true and anyone that has voked or stunned things off sleepers in dyanmis has seen it in action.

The biggest reason I'd ague against enmity actively influencing decay is that in order for that to happen, the programming model has to become more complex. A dumb coder would check everyone's enmity every cycle. A smarter one still has to keep separate decay rates for every person based on enmity at the time of the action. What if you have different levels of enmity on at the time of each action, too? You really really don't want to save each and every action on the critter and decay it individually by enmity. Do you reset the decay rate of the previous ones? No. Decay by enmity is just too complex to code for a game programmer. They're typically underpaid and underskilled, but highly motivated because they just think working on games is "cool". And, any real professional would pitch that idea out based on it requiring excessive resources without yielding any significant difference over simpler methods. There are a lot of fights active on the server at any given time; coders will want fight processing to be fast and light.

So, based on coding practice, I'd punt: theories that require enmity to function outside of "at the time of action", theories that require anything other than a single enmity value per player to be stored by the server, and theories that require expensive decay calculations.

I can tell by this answer that you're not much of a programming whiz yourself, so you should measure your condescension carefully.

[Kaeko]

Anytime someone makes a bold statement about how something works, it's always important to check what proof or evidence there is to back up that statement. The enmity model I laid out in the LJ is based on anecdotal evidence, just like every other person's view on enmity in FFXI so far. I may have made a more convincing argument than some, but it's still based on stories, anecdotal evidence, and nothing controlled.

I'm glad some people find it interesting but it's far from perfect and horribly oversimplified, as many of the comments right below it easily state situations debunking the idea. It's one view which has some potential for testing if done correctly, but I don't think it's something to be satified with and it definitely should not be taken as "fact" until someone proves its validity. Honestly, it still has tremendous difficulty explaining even the simpliest of concepts in enmity that have direct meaning in game - the effect of +/- gear in various situations, exact nature of the 'hate cap', the effect on distance with enmity decay and losing aggro, etc.

I originally just wrote it because I was surprised how many people in the BG thread just took what the JP wiki said as fact even though it had 0 proof or testing. Just because you package something in a nice layout with fancy charts doesn't make it correct.

[Aymee]

I'd argue it's probably harder to prove the degradation over time matter of +enmity merits than the initial hate.

Two naked elf PLDs (eew!) with same sub/same base stats flash a mob that was pulled by a 3rd person, at close to the same time. It'll go to the higher +enmity merit, obviously. I don't see anyone here disagreeing with that. Do note that you can't test it via one person casting/voking on a mob first, then another of equal/similar enmity goes a moment later... in my experience whoever places first enmity on a target gets some sort of hate bonus. Back-in-the-day, in an old exp static I used to ask to voke-pull closer targets instead of RNG pulling and smacking something with a decent hit to start a mob. Since utsusemi didn't shed hate with shadows back then, once a RNG got started it was hard to get something back. ...It helped. Also, this is why the average voker can have a hard time yanking a Slept/SleptII'd mob off a RDM or BLM if they got initial hate.

The over time bit is a little more complicated. Again, I see agreement that shedding over time is lessened with +enmity, but that's damn hard to prove. There's no reason not to believe it, however. A test for that would have to involve a mob that had zero chance whatsoever of hitting anyone placing enmity. A lvl1 bee might work. If any of the testers took any dmg or lost any shadows, it would screw with the experiment since both those conditions result in lost hate. You could test the rate of degradation based on CHR fairly well this way, too.

I'm also of the opinion that 'a little' +enmity will have a more substantial initial difference in hate than someone with +a billion. I don't have any scientifically-tested proof to this, but it's the general feeling I have from me PTing on various jobs in various situations with +3 in merits and +none in gear, compared to a PLD friend with +2 who's trying BLM (and dying. a lot.), and a taru blm i know has 0, and one with -whatever. Basically, I'd expect it to be a decreasing exponential improvement in hate generation with more and more +enmity... so from +1 to +3 would have a larger impact than from +11 to +13. Like basically everything in the game, hate must have a cap somewhere, and other caps are reached via some sort of exponential equation. This does follow my idea of the mage with no -enmity or +enmity getting beat up a lot more than one with even a little bit of -enmity.
Plenty of other examples I can think of off-hand, but wow I talk too much as it is.

Question-- Theories on if a DoT spell from a mage continues to generate hate as it continues to do damage? Or is it just the initial from the casting? Even if it did, would it be possible to detect, given the shed hate over time from the initial casting?

[evilpaul]

Enmity+/- helps in EXP, but only a little. It's in longer fights where you don't get drawn-in after 15 minutes of nuking that it's more noticeable.

Enmity+2 on a BLM probably has very little to do with why he's dying all the time. Either he's casting one of this strongest spells as the mob arrives at camp, or the tank is awful (and/or has awful support).

[Aymee]

Enmity+2 on a BLM probably has very little to do with why he's dying all the time. Either he's casting one of this strongest spells as the mob arrives at camp, or the tank is awful (and/or has awful support).

Well, the ironic thing is that she deliberately plays her BLM lazily because she's sick of our LS making her use it in sky, and her spells are almost always resisted because of this... casting in full Goliard set and all, lol. She still dies way more than our career taru mages. Though I wouldn't count out our tanks not being so fantastic, she really does die... a disproportionate amount, even while doing inferior damage and saving nukes for the end of a mob.
She's a smart girl, she's not going to BurstII BB on pop or anything and she does carry -enmity. ...This is why I figure a little +enmity is a bigger gap in total hate.

Alternate theory-- the +2 from merits are calculated in after all of the -enmity from gear on a casting, thus she'll always draw more hate even if she has more total -enmity during casting and does less damage. Kinda like, the enmity is from the action not the result... or would it be the other way around? Hopefully this makes a little sense.
Say... BLMwith+2 casts BurstII for 1100. BLMwith-4 casts BurstII for 1600. Both had total enmity -10 upon casting (including merits). However, because of the gap in natural enmity, the mob <3s the lower dmg casting anyway. Kinda like how a +skill is calculated in differently (and potently) than a +acc/+attk for a melee... natural enmity is 'stronger' than gear +/- enmity?

[Whatinthe]

There is a post on the Kensho 14 thread (121-124 VZZxrzHz) that details how emnity affects hate. Basically, >>121 tested that emnity does affect hate value, but the decrease in hate is constant regardless of your emnity. There is a loss of 65-75 HP cured worth of hate every 5 second that was constant, but the time it took the other char to gain hate by voke was different (210 hp - 15 sec for 0 emn, 235 hp - 15 sec for -3 emn).

I believe the commonly accepted hate ramp for provoke is 28 seconds with 0 emn. There is a hard floor of -50 emnity in which hate will drop out after 14 seconds. (http://ness.cside2.com/blog/archives/2007/0115_1501.php)