Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[VZX]

Frightful Roar - Stronger than Acid Bolts

Err no, you got the other way around

Acid bolt (12.5%) > Frightful Roar(10.5%)

[FinalJustice]

Is it possible the rules for FR just might be different in besieged? Or do acid bolts overwrite it again?

Which effect overwrites which, isn't a good method of determining which is stronger, because enfeeble (and buff) priority are all kinds of fucked up, especially with blu spells. Hojo: Ni for example will overide a buffed up Slow 1, or Filamented hold, even thou it's less slow %.

Yea, kinda like how /whm SS will overwrite Diamond hide. But I'm wondering teh same thing about Ballista. Ballista rules are so wonky.

[Tonko]

Frightful Roar - Stronger than Acid Bolts

Err no, you got the other way around

Acid bolt (12.5%) > Frightful Roar(10.5%)

Welcome to the party!

[Delekii]

Is it possible the rules for FR just might be different in besieged? Or do acid bolts overwrite it again?

Which effect overwrites which, isn't a good method of determining which is stronger, because enfeeble (and buff) priority are all kinds of fucked up, especially with blu spells. Hojo: Ni for example will overide a buffed up Slow 1, or Filamented hold, even thou it's less slow %.

Yea, kinda like how /whm SS will overwrite Diamond hide. But I'm wondering teh same thing about Ballista. Ballista rules are so wonky.

/whm stoneskin with the right gear is much stronger than diamondhide. My bard stoneskin hits around 325, and I am a taru with no marduk gear.

That said, hierarchy is still not a good indication of strength.

[FinalJustice]

Yes but my point was balista often has wonky rules. My question was since it does have different rules at times, like that smn example, can't ballista results not be reliable a lot for testing of effects outside Ballista?

I'm familiar with the weird overwriting on some spells and effects at times.

[Delekii]

Yes and no... most of the modifications in ballista are the result of players whining about overpowered abilities/spells/whatever in ballista. Ballista is an afterthought for SE, they don't seem to pre-consider much in terms of changing rules for ballista prior to implementing something. Self-destruct is an example of this - when BLU was first introduced, it did full damage to all targets, and was later changed when people complained. The same is true of blood pacts and the damage that multi-hit ws used to do, so on so on.

At the very least, results from Ballista for debuffs rather than damage are a good indication of how they work outside ballista, even if you take them with a grain of salt. I guess what I am saying is that they don't change rules for ballista unless there is a reason to, since it is more work for them. Things like sandspin and frightful roar really never get cast in ballista except for testing purposes and certainly couldn't be considered unbalanced (especially against other blu abilities O_O), so I very much doubt they act differently to against mobs.

[Rheya]

Static duration @ % slow. 25% for 120 seconds.

Basically it's a Battlefield Elegy, that stacks with Elegy.

Stronger than Hojo: Ni (which is 18%.)

A nice graph showing Slow effectiveness.
[img]Rheya's awesome graph of slowness here[/img]

According to the graph, you can reach a higher slow percentage with both Lv1 slow2 and Lv2 slow2. Somehow, I call bullshit.

You'll notice that Slow2 3merit was not tested to as high a mind difference as 2 or 1 merit, and is still rising to the point where it ends on the graph. Chances are it would continue to rise to the same point as 1 and 2 merit stopped rising. For the duration of the graph where comparison can be made, slow2 3merit is about 2-3% higher than slow2 1 merit at the same amount of mind, and for the small part where comparison can be made with 2merit slow2, it is about 1% higher than that too.

Delekii is right.

I'm the one who made the graph. Granted, I did not do any of the testing at all...the data isn't mine. Whoever came up with it (I could dig around and find out if you really want) kept posting it (in other forums) in tables that were hard to read and draw conclusions from, so I made it a bit more visual by graphing it.

As a result, this graph only shows actual data points that were tested, nothing else. Since the tester apparently didn't test Slow II lvl3 at 80+ MND (vs. the target), there is no data point there. Had they done so, my bet is that you would see Slow II lvl3 cap around 36% reduction.

What I really need to do is make it a bit prettier and add all other forms of slow (hojo, sprout smack, filamented hold).

[LeifofKujata]

If your graph is correct I call bullshit.

I just did a small sample on the same sheep in valkurm. (I physically tallied so margin of error is ~2 attacks)

My test Brutal Sheep lvl range is 20-23 assuming MND is 15-30.
Static Test Time = 10 mins
Normal Speed = 150 attacks
Capped Slow 2 with 70 total MND = 115 attacks = ~23-24% Slow
Capped Slow 2 with 96 total MND = 112 attacks = ~25-26% Slow

70 - 30 = 40 which on your graph should be over 30% Slow
96 - 30 = 66 which on your graph should be over 30% Slow as well

and using the lowerbound numbers would just up it more

Please check my math cause i did this quick.

[aurik]

Translating your base numbers

Normal speed: 10*60*60/150 = 240 delay
Capped slow2 with 70 mind: 10*60*60/115 = 313 delay
" with 96: 10*60*60/112 = 321.5 delay

313/240 = 1.3042 = ~30% slow
321.5/240 = 1.3400 = ~34% slow

I don't see any discrepancy.

[LeifofKujata]

ok I was doing it in terms of normal hits Vs. slow hits instead of turning it into delay, thanks for the clarification

[VZX]

Interrupting your slow's discussion
discuss blue magic "attack" now
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/vzx/blutest.jpg

As I predicted blue magic skill translate to "attack with" 1.5x~2.0x range multiplier
Current conclusion: blue magic "attack" = blue magic skill * y where y > 1.58 (1.6?)
hopefully I'll get a tank who want to skill up in boyahda tonight

EDIT:
doh, I'm dumb.
made a mistake.. forgot 1.75x TP multiplier at 0TP for headbutt... gonna redo the analysis again

[solsovly]

ok I was doing it in terms of normal hits Vs. slow hits instead of turning it into delay, thanks for the clarification

It's the same. You just transposed your numbers.
150/115 = 1.304 115/150 = .76, 1 - .76 = .24

[LeifofKujata]

I noticed that when I went back and looked at my math. Oh well, set straight now.

[VZX]

OK, this is the fixed data/analysis from robber crab one
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...lutest-fix.jpg

Me and Delekii duo on boyahda on steelshells few hours ago, and this is our result:
Me vs Lv73 crab
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...eelshell73.jpg

Me vs Lv74 crab
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...eelshell74.jpg

There's another set of data from me, but the min max mode from melee swing/headbutt didn't change, so i don't include it

This is delekii's data on steelshells
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...steelshell.jpg
no need to look at 86 on the sword swing column, I bet he put that data as critical hit/forgot to remove it

So for current conclusion:
Blue magic attack = 1.175 * blue magic skill
It seems physical potency adds 0.075 per upgrade

EDIT: dele just gave me another data set (robber crab vs sprout smack), I'm gonna do anaylsis after my break

[Kaslo]

ZOMG a test of what Physical Potency does exactly! :D

[VZX]

Dele's second set data (robber vs sprout smack) even weirder number. Now I don't know what to say... the coefficient ranging from 0.96 to 1.03. Even the base damage doesn't appear in the mode... it's really weird.

I gotta test it again later, but hopefully my conclusion still holds. (tired working on those freaking numbers)

[orson]

Physical potency was sorta a no brainer to merit before but nice to know how much the increase is.

[Delekii]

Don't take it as gospel just yet - its far from proven. I get results all over the frikken place with my data from robber crabs..

[VZX]

Yeah.... I haven't finalized it yet. Seems it's gonna be harder than I'd thought would be.

I tried few uppercuts (about 28 casts) and the number range is in 1.733~ coefficient (as opposed to headbutt's 1.175)

[LD]

Seems possible each physical spell has a different attack mod. That might explain how some of the spells that have 'damage increased by TP' don't always modify the base damage (or at least, don't seem to as dramatically.) That is to say some spells modify the base damage multiplier and others modify the attack multiplier. Now that I think about it, it would make sense to do it that way, since you can't increase your BLU skill with song or food and there are only 2 ways of increasing it right now.