Test Server Findings

[Helel]

ZR
Third floor: 2 (if you really want to kill both ramparts...)
Fourth floor: 1+ (depending on how many times you want to kill wrong rampart)
Fifth floor: 35 archaic machinery
Sixth floor: 14
Maths: 52+

SSR
3rd floor: 33 (counting GG which can drop alex like normal gear)
4th floor: 21 (counting turtle rampart which can drop alex, but strangely only drops 1 cell)
Maths: 54

Conclusion: you're doing it wrong if you're getting less alex from SSR than ZR. Not only are there more gears, but you get an extra purse as well. While it's true that you could technically kill the wrong rampart fourteen times (to make up for the extra purse), why would you want to do that instead of going to SSR and finishing in 60-70m.

P.S. my numbers are probably a bit off, I kept adding to them (like I forgot the turtle rampart etc.), but the conclusion will always be the same unless I made some huge error.

P.S.S. some additional ZR info. If you have a THF, which you should, it's much easier just to aggro the madame and then use Hide to get rid of the links. BLU AoEing the mamools for MP cells would be more efficient than THF killing them one by one as well. I usually have THF flee to the north portal right from the start.

[Atoreis]

I was getting twice less alex when AoE with aeolian as a th source than I did with THF hitting every mob separately.

1gear/1alex is also very far from my experience.

From SSR i usually get 27-35 (I think 38 was record).

[Vyvian]

I just cleaved all the 3f mamools, they pretty much got 1 shot. I wound up with 5 HP cells and 5 MP cells, though I had thf aeolian as well. Next time, not that there will be a next time, because fuck zhayolm, I'd just round up all 12 mobs on thief, and then have war cleave them down right away lol.

But this, I dont agree with:

I cleared all the gears and ramparts on 5f (except the chariot, who I dont think drop alex, atleast I'm 0/3 on getting alex from them in zhayolm), as well as all the gears and one of the ramparts on 6f, and I wound up with 34 singles.

Area Gears
Bhaf 40
SS 33
Zhay 37
Arra 11
Bhaf 32
SS 26 (I got cocky and lost a lot of time being stupid..."hey lets cleave these fomor and imps down", forgetting that fomor share TP with imps)
Zhay 34

The singles from gears isnt any higher than SS or Bhaf. Arra doesnt have that many gears.

It was a strategy that started at 90 and carried over into 95. I probably could aoe kill them faster, but originally when doing this method, time was tight enough that if you didn't split from the start, you wouldn't make it in trying to run to the portal on the north end of the floor.

As for the averages, for whatever reason, regardless of how many machines you tell me are in the zone, I end up getting more singles in Zhay than SSR.

In purses, I did the North route, thinking the extra NM would make that the more efficient path. It wasn't for a long while later that I realized Powderkeg is 100%, and the Dekka/GG1 nms are not. If I did south route and killed all the gears, then I'd agree the average would be better.

edit:
Also, I realize with the math given, that people run their averages clearing both the east and the west rooms before porting up on the GG3 floor, and I've never done that, I just clear the room and GG3.

[InsaniacTHF]

I remember finding this post for hidden proc on Mandau:



Just curious if anyone confirmed Insaniac's testing done on 95 mandau for 3x damage proc? I only ask this because I came across another, larger sample, that suggest there may have been an error:



The only possible problem I can see from this is they seem to be suggesting they are thf main while testing this which makes me wonder if they were counting attack rounds or attach strikes, where as Insaniac clearly states they did this on a control job with no DA/TA to show that the results were of a control per attack round.

Additionally, I was wondering if anyone has been able to parse (not even sure if parse is still working for test server) the 99 versions to find out how much the increase in hidden proc rate is. From some messing around I've done it appears to be higher, but I don't have a parse to keep track of the information while doing a large sample test. I would also like to insure that human error doesn't cause incorrect information gathering during a large sample either (hence the request of parse data compared to my capability to do pen and paper tracking).

Any parse done on THF is gonna be inaccurate imo. K-parser can't keep up with muti-attack rounds on a weapon with a delay that low. All the 3x 2.5x and 2x weapons seemed to end up with the same proc rates respectively and we had a test from a Yoichi that showed 11.something %. I did a really small sample of Apoc on the test server and it seemed to still be 20% or very close so either the increased relic proc is referring to the increase at 95 or the increase is pretty small.

[Innuendo]

The drop rate for us was horrible when our THF only did aeolian edge. She used to do that, and then I would kill them with whirl of rage all at once, but we stopped doing that recently. She kills them one by one now and it seems to make a big difference. AoE WS does apply TH to all the mobs (tested with bounty shot), but dealing the killing blow with an AoE WS (or whirl of rage) seems to yield less alex for us.

SE nerfed AOE kill droprates years ago, including confirmation in update notes (after people complained about ga spell farming, I think).

[Kaliya]

Any parse done on THF is gonna be inaccurate imo. K-parser can't keep up with muti-attack rounds on a weapon with a delay that low. All the 3x 2.5x and 2x weapons seemed to end up with the same proc rates respectively and we had a test from a Yoichi that showed 11.something %. I did a really small sample of Apoc on the test server and it seemed to still be 20% or very close so either the increased relic proc is referring to the increase at 95 or the increase is pretty small.

Hmm, yeah that was what I was finding do through small samples, but also recall that anything under 1~2000 rounds tends to have a 2~3% error range which is why I wasn't trusting the small samples I had.

Anywho, the person also responded to where I got the comparison stating they were not aware relic proc was limited to first attack of every round which explained their difference in data to yours.

[NynJa]

SE nerfed AOE kill droprates years ago, including confirmation in update notes (after people complained about ga spell farming, I think).

theres a difference between training 50 yagudos and cyclone killing them all, and grouping up 5 gears, aeolianing for TH, then cleaving/aeolianing them down with most kills coming from melee shots.

[Innuendo]

True. However, the person I quoted specifically mentioned dealing the killing blow with an AOE attack.

[Helel]

They nerfed BLM -ga spells so you couldn't train tons of quadav in the mines, or yags in giddeus, orcs in ghelsba etc., and blow them up all at once. No idea if this nerf applies to WS or BLU spells because, at the time, there were no good AoE WS, and BLU didn't exist. I'm assuming that it does, and it was just a general AoE nerf like in CoP, but you never know.

Regardless, applying TH with cyclone also sucks, which was my other point.

I am curious if the nerf does apply to BLU spells though because I've always mass-killed stuff to get pop items without any issues.

[Ophannus]

THink with mass kills you only get gear/items/exp for the first 8 mobs that die simultaneously or something.

[NynJa]

Regardless, applying TH with cyclone also sucks, which was my other point.

Why does it suck? its not that hard to equip TH gear while doing aeolian lol. youre not losing out on that much damage.

[fantasticdan]

They nerfed BLM -ga spells so you couldn't train tons of quadav in the mines, or yags in giddeus, orcs in ghelsba etc., and blow them up all at once. No idea if this nerf applies to WS or BLU spells because, at the time, there were no good AoE WS, and BLU didn't exist. I'm assuming that it does, and it was just a general AoE nerf like in CoP, but you never know.

Regardless, applying TH with cyclone also sucks, which was my other point.

I am curious if the nerf does apply to BLU spells though because I've always mass-killed stuff to get pop items without any issues.

I'm fairly sure it applies to all aoe. Go fight some mobs with huge loot pools that average 2+ items per kill on blu/thf, than try aoeing them down and watch as most drop nothing.

[Helel]

Why does it suck? its not that hard to equip TH gear while doing aeolian lol. youre not losing out on that much damage.

It's not the damage. I'm saying that instead of having the THF engage each mob one by one, and just using an AoE WS to put TH on the mobs, that the drop rate is much lower. I don't know why personally.

3 ways we used to farm alex:

1. Full-blown cleave farming. She does AoE WS, and then I kill them with AoE spell. The worst method by far.

2. She does AoE WS and then I pick them off one by one with BLU spells (non-AoE). This is the method I was talking about above. Better than 1st method.

3. No AoE WS, but we still use whirl of rage to lower their HP down. Then she picks them off one by one. Best method.

It's possible the 2nd method is worse than the 3rd because the mobs are not always claimed when they die (if spell one-shots them). But I don't know; I just know it's worse for us.

[Atoreis]

It's not the damage. I'm saying that instead of having the THF engage each mob one by one, and just using an AoE WS to put TH on the mobs, that the drop rate is much lower. I don't know why personally.

3 ways we used to farm alex:

1. Full-blown cleave farming. She does AoE WS, and then I kill them with AoE spell. The worst method by far.

2. She does AoE WS and then I pick them off one by one with BLU spells (non-AoE). This is the method I was talking about above. Better than 1st method.

3. No AoE WS, but we still use whirl of rage to lower their HP down. Then she picks them off one by one. Best method.

It's possible the 2nd method is worse than the 3rd because the mobs are not always claimed when they die (if spell one-shots them). But I don't know; I just know it's worse for us.

Exactly the same for me.
Whenever I was simply Aeolian for TH then kill I was getting half less Alex than I did with THF poking every mob separately.

[kamugi]

THink with mass kills you only get gear/items/exp for the first 8 mobs that die simultaneously or something.

I can tell you this is definitely true with regards to EXP, as for other stuff I'm not sure, but it's not dieing simultaneously that does it, it's for 1 action or spell. Let's say you're fell cleaving, if one fell cleave hits 10 mobs and all 10 die from that 1 WS, you only get exp from 8 of them, but if you fell cleave and only kill 7 and 3 die to retaliation at the same time, you get exp for all 10. ( '-')b

[Churchill]

Okay so we've established AoE doesn't apply TH. Next

[fantasticdan]

Okay so we've established AoE doesn't apply TH. Next

No, we really haven't. Even without TH, the difference between single kills and AoE kills is pretty obvious in my experience. I would guess you're missing out on some amount of loot rolls entirely when things die yellow.

Whether or not you could apply TH with AoE that doesn't kill the mobs is a different story.

[Hirronimus]

How is this relevant to test server findings?

[Ophannus]

Last 3 pages have had nothing to do with Legion.

[NynJa]

How is this relevant to test server findings?

Its a discussion that has stemmed off a different discussion, it happens...