SCH nuking suggestions

[Sechs]

I need some suggestions to solidify my SCH nuking gear and hopefully gain some inventory slots.
Given the premises we could say I'm not looking for the perfect item (BiS) but rather for the perfect compromise.

For instance Yaoyotl Gloves might not be as good as a perfectly augmented Hagondes, but I can find more uses for those gloves (BRD debuff) so I kinda prefer Yaoyotl.
also because I have no intention (or time, or gil) to spend mils and mils and mils in +2 Stones to augment Skirmish gear.
(have to say I've also been particularly unlucky so far on augmented Hagondes, let me just say I got better augments from NQ stones than over 3 stacks of +1 lol)

Ok here we go with mah questions:

• Options for nuking feet? Atm I still nuke with AF3+2 °_°'' Makes me wonder if it's still worth to use them during Weather/Klimaform. I guess not?
  Aside from the obvious Hagondes feet, how would Gendewitha feet perform, compared to AF3+2?
• Similar question for head. Is it still worth to use AF3+2 head during Ebullience, given the stats of Hagondes? I suppose there is a threshold, if you get above this threshold then you can just use Hagondes even for Ebullience. Wonder how much +mab do you need to get over this threshold?
• Back slot? Suppose Twilight still worth it when you use the right weather?
• Is it still worth to have separated sets for Helix and Nukes? Back in the days I used to have very different sets, one focusing on INT and one focusing on Mab and the same could be said today for High Tier nukes and Lowe Tier, but given nowadays gear there isn't really much space for options, I mean.... kinda all "good" gear with MAB also has loads of INT and vice-versa.

[Lyramion]

- AF3+2 Feet are better than my 15MAB Hagondes still. Not by alot, but they are. Gende inferior also ofc. For anything where you personally take damage anything with a high itemlevel is far superior tho for reasons of DEF, VIT, Meva etc.

- If you are lucky enough to get the SCH cape from Reives it beats out Twilight for smallnukespam. Other options should still easily get beat by Twilight

- Your helix set basically is your smallnukespamset now.

[Sechs]

- Your helix set basically is your smallnukespamset now.

Yes altough I reasoned in the opposite terms, as in "I can use my helix set for smallnukespam set".
Whichever way you want to see it, they're basically the same as they're supposed to focus on INT

But I what I was trying to say is that years go I had a ton of different items in my nuking and helix set.
Looking at my set today I have like... I don't remember, 2 different slots? Don't have my XML with me atm. I know I swap Eddy's Necklace for AF3 neck and my Mab ammo with a INT ammo. Don't think I swap anything else and that's because all my best Mab gear, also happens to be my best Int gear.
Which made me wonder: is it still worth to bother with these 2 sets? Because at least for the main slots it seems to me the way SE created new items, they're gonna have tons of INT and MAB together, so you don't really have any option to choose between. Or am I missing something?

Thanks for your suggestions anwyay

[Lyramion]

Also augmenting Hagondes really isnt that expensive. NQ Verdi Stones are the most costefficient option to trade for Fragments currently. NQ Stones give you up to 19 MAB while having a SMALL pool of options. +1 and +2 add more undesirable (for nukeing) things like -enmity and -prep to waste stones on.

I am currently sitting at +15 +19 +18 +17 +15 head to toe only using NQ stones. I did invest maybe 3 mil (including the 9k Fragments I turned to NQ) into it but I also got a good MACC set while doing it on a secondary set of Hagondes.

[Lyramion]

As for your Hat question I did some quick tests against Riverwashed Toads in Henne.

+15MAB Hagondes > Buremte Hat > AF3+2 Hat > Hagondes no MAB

Stone 3 was

2194 > 2167 > 2059 > 1881

[Sechs]

Also augmenting Hagondes really isnt that expensive.

If we're talking about NQ stones yes, and that's exactely what I'm doing on my Hagondes pieces.
Can still get decent augments even with NQ pieces, compared to other sets, and it's pretty cheap to try again.
Wasted over 3 stacks of +1 stones on Hagondes until I said fuck it. Can you believe me I got better augs with less tries using NQ stones lol?

NQ Stones give you up to 19 MAB while having a SMALL pool of options. +1 and +2 add more undesirable (for nukeing) things like -enmity and -prep to waste stones on.

Exactely! And it's more than 19. Think I have 21 or 23 on a piece? And that's the only one sadly. On the others I've been unlucky so far but I'll try again.

Atm I'm using Head/Legs. For Body I have a R15 Bokwus which is arguably worse than Hagondes but the difference is so small that I didn't want to bother with the Inventory+1. Hands-wise I'm using Yaoyotl and on Feet I was kinda wondering what to do but I'll stay with AF3+2 now =/

Thanks for the head question, gueess I need to update my SC rule, I kinda don't need an ebullience rule anymore now, I can just use my normal nuking set no matter if Ebullience is up or not

[CDF]

% damage increase from AF3+2 head is a fixed ~8.33% (accounting for rounding) so easy to overcome with newer gear. I keep it in inventory for dat marginal benefit to Embrava and Regen

Less straightforward for AF3+2 feet. % damage increase from AF3+2 feet from nothing in feet slot is [(1.10)(whatever multiplier from 8 additional INT is)-1]*100% So feet would be categorically better in lolAbyssea (~10% vs something else very likely to be < ~10% increase with all the INT and MAB available) and/or whether you have very high dINT and/or MAB.

In situations with lower dINT, if you have a good Hagondes MAB augment (let's say MAB+21), in non-Abyssea Savant's Loafers +2 might be better for higher-V, lower-M nukes for a given tier (ex: Thunder) and worse for lower-V, higher-M nukes for a given tier (Stone and Water). Motenten has discussed this peculiarity w.r.t. to the new magic damage calculations before, at least on FFXIAH.

Regarding AF3+2 feet, difference in damage is not relevant to me (lolAbyssea and outside Abyssea maybe 30 points for tier V nukes, which I don't like to use anyway and single digits maybe for Thunder tier 1 and helices and actually worse than my Hagondes for Stone and Water... this is at least on paper as I don't go out of my way to verify thoroughly to see if results agree on paper). I hate maintaining Klimaform b/c there is no Dark Arts analog of Perpetuance so I stored AF3+2

For nukes, on junk stuff I do Voay +1 for tier IV, V, ja, AM/AM2, Comet, -ga III, Kaustra (magic damage attribute doesn't affect Kaustra damage; I mention BLM-only spells b/c nuking is the same for me for both BLM, SCH). Main purpose for junk is so I can guarantee one shot with Voay +1 if it saves me time; it might be acceptable in Skirmish these days but I don't need it to one-shot. Atinian everything else.

(In case this comes up, I don't have all Magian damage staves for high-V nukes in Abyssea. But if your nuke benefits from atma affinity Voay +1 will be better for that nuke. I generally don't need to cycle among various elements. It's Abyssea anyway)

You could make a rule for Buremte Hat (or anything else that provides a lot of magic damage+) for low-V nukes but that is too OCD for me (usually just spam low-tier nukes anyway on SoA stuff. I would full-time Buremte b/c I wouldn't care about higher-tier nukes)

[Sechs]

Yeah, as I said in the first post SCH for me is just a toy-job. I don't have the time, skill or patience to aim for a supersetup. It's more a job I enjoy to play every now and then and want to be decent enough but in the current state of the game (and of my inventory) I tend to prefer Inventory+1 over Mab+5.
I know it sounds bad to say it... but still it's how things are for me.

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

[Warusha]

I've found that play style is a much better crucible for job performance than just gear on SCH. I wouldn't fret missing 20-30 MAB off max hagondes set.

[Sechs]

Not a nuking suggestion but still an SCH releated question.
Does the Embrava formula take into account partial values? Or does haste increase only every 20 enha skill?

Let me formulate in another way.
480 skill = 24% haste.
Would 493 give 24,6% haste or still 24?

[Byrthnoth]

Haste probably increases in 1/1024 increments.

[dasva]

For instance Yaoyotl Gloves might not be as good as a perfectly augmented Hagondes, but I can find more uses for those gloves (BRD debuff) so I kinda prefer Yaoyotl.
also because I have no intention (or time, or gil) to spend mils and mils and mils in +2 Stones to augment Skirmish gear.

While not saying to do it having other uses for the gloves isn't necessarily the best excuse since you can have more than 1. This is really nice if for example augmenting for brd one you get a nice mab one first. Also bgwiki lists 20 mab as the minimum with +2 stone which should beat out yaoyotl so don't really need perfect

[Sechs]

Haste probably increases in 1/1024 increments.

I'm a bit embarassed to say it but I'm still confused about this D:

Do you mean to say that any increase inferior to 1/1024 doesn't count and that, hence, 493 skill would give the same exact haste amount as 480?

[Byrthnoth]

I'm a bit embarassed to say it but I'm still confused about this D:

Do you mean to say that any increase inferior to 1/1024 doesn't count and that, hence, 493 skill would give the same exact haste amount as 480?

The formula on bgwiki is Enhancing/20 = Haste%. That's probably not right. It's probably something like floor(Enhancing/2000 * 1024)/1024 = Haste amount.

So 496 skill : Floor(253.9)/1024 = 24.7% Haste
480 skill : Floor(245.7)/1024 = 23.9% Haste

The answer I'm trying to give is "yes, you likely benefit from adding <20 Enhancing skill but the gains still come in discrete steps." We can't know exactly where the steps are until someone figures out the embrava formula more precisely.

[Sechs]

That's excellent, thank you