Parses after the patch

[RKenshin]

Wonder if I should give a SAM DEX build another spin as well with this change. I think I could potentially push well over 100 STR and DEX and still come close to if not cap attack in an ideal PT. But hoping I get better returns than just a 5% increase like in my other parse/Ryko's parse.

EDIT: Actually it'd be a lot more interesting to try out a 29% DA build! Seems more viable now too since accuracy isn't as much of a limiting factor as it used to be.

[underscore]

anyone know the actual dex tiers? or is 100 and every multiple of 5 afterwards the "accepted" tiers?
I've been running 102str 104dex on my regular 22haste build since the patch and all my long parses have me at right around ~15%, would one dex really make that much of a difference?

On another note, i've been using axe/rid and rid/joy with 5DA+zerk mertits for a while and never had a problem with it. It makes more sense now as well since madrigal is kinda useless now with any pt using a 2hDD which forces sushi for war if they're using 1hers.

and how does sam get 29% DA? 10base 5brutal 2askarbody 2aresleg 2polestrap 5x2roshihead+myochinkote+shogunriceball (assuming +5DA is equivalent to 5%+, i count 31%)? thats an awful lot of trouble

[Retrieving/C.D/Searain]

anyone know the actual dex tiers? or is 100 and every multiple of 5 afterwards the "accepted" tiers?
I've been running 102str 104dex on my regular 22haste build since the patch and all my long parses have me at right around ~15%, would one dex really make that much of a difference?

On another note, i've been using axe/rid and rid/joy with 5DA+zerk mertits for a while and never had a problem with it.

Regarding Crits: Your Critical hit rate, at least the component provided by your Dexterity pool, is highly dependant on the opponent's AGI, therefore there aren't universal "tier"'s that would allow you to reach a certain Critical hit rate on anything all the time, however the same Crits rate progression could most likely be observed on different mobs once you've reached the respective amount of DEX necessary to make your Crits rate jump of x%, in relation to the DEX/AGI ratio.

A truckload of data stemming out of a bunch of different tests conducted by players regularly posting on BG such as Nagamaki, myself, Kwon, Ravenlock, Zirk and many others I'm forgetting at the moment, as well as the research published by Studio Gobli on their website, demonstrated how, in order to cap out your critical hit rate, your DEX has to be 50 points higher than the target's AGI.

That being said, most of the typical merit parties favored targets' AGI varies between 60 and 80 (case in point being the Greater Colibri, whose AGI is supposed to be 67 according to the job stats ratings, against whom your Crits. hit rate would cap at +20% pre gear and merits, with exactly 117 total Dexterity), thence, in a camp with mixed mobs like Mamool Ja SP you're less likely to notice significant improvements to your criticals frequency below 110'ish DEX however the curve arises rather fast once you're approaching the cap, therefore after a point each unit of DEX deducted or added could have pretty significant effects on your overall Crits rate (hence the so-called "placebo effect", originally people were misled by the discrepancy of responses obtained with different amounts of DEX which combined with the fact that Crits rate from DEX is function of the target's AGI contributed to make everything overly confusing).

If you're interested in some numbers, this is the chart I was referencing too while the rest of the informations are readily available on both the wiki and this message board.

DEX/Critical Hit rate relation data



About DA and Ridill: Double Attack, even in the best possible rumored multi-hits distribution scenario, wouldn't have improved Ridill proc rate at all and at this point we can pretty safely claim that it wasn't a likely assumption anyway; the proc rate doesn't appear to be 33-33-33 in first place (definately not the case when the sword is in the hands of a Warrior) and DA from any source turns out to be slightly detrimental when applied to the sword since seems like it affects negatively your average # of hits, bringing down triple attacks by a considerable amount without filling the gap with as many single hits as previously expected whereas DA merits (and gear) over Aggressor ones with Ridill/Joyeuse would be downright foolish for reasons I'm not even going to restate because they should be within your grasp.

[Max™]

Wonder if I should give a SAM DEX build another spin as well with this change. I think I could potentially push well over 100 STR and DEX and still come close to if not cap attack in an ideal PT. But hoping I get better returns than just a 5% increase like in my other parse/Ryko's parse.

EDIT: Actually it'd be a lot more interesting to try out a 29% DA build! Seems more viable now too since accuracy isn't as much of a limiting factor as it used to be.

Oh yeah, I lost 20 Attack swapping to a Dex build, I gained 5-10 Accuracy from my previous meat build, on top of the base Dex gains, and if the numbers I've seen in testing hold true, I should be sitting at 12-15% Depending on Camp, +9% from weapon, and stacked with a Crit WS, it's an easy choice for me.

Thinking about it, I imagine Sam would benefit from the DA A LOT more.

No crits during WS, versus DA during WS.

I get boost from DA, but my damage is in the crits first.

Also, has anyone noticed stuff like Steel Cyclone procing doubles more than usual?

Got 16% (just one merit, put one into it, and then this update made me turn to crits first) DA, and I remember when I was tinkering with different Str Dex balances in Kuftal, I decided to try some Steel Cyclone @ 100, 200, 300 tests.

I had 4 DA's go off in like 9, maybe 10 WSes in a row, which is an incredible rate considering the number of DA's I remember offhand weren't that great as is, but were always stand outs.

Now all of a sudden I'm getting ready for a 650-800 Dmg Steel Cyclone against a crab, and POW 1100-1200 Dmg out of nowhere.

Are Sam WS's doubling more than usual it seems?

Maybe they ninja added a "chance of double attack varies with TP".

*drools*

[Amele]

Wonder if I should give a SAM DEX build another spin as well with this change. I think I could potentially push well over 100 STR and DEX and still come close to if not cap attack in an ideal PT. But hoping I get better returns than just a 5% increase like in my other parse/Ryko's parse.

EDIT: Actually it'd be a lot more interesting to try out a 29% DA build! Seems more viable now too since accuracy isn't as much of a limiting factor as it used to be.

shogun rice ball? I've wanted to toy with a setup utilizing these too, but unfortunately there's only been 5 sold in the history of the server, and I don't know any 100+3(or more) cooks.

[Max™]

Wonder if I should give a SAM DEX build another spin as well with this change. I think I could potentially push well over 100 STR and DEX and still come close to if not cap attack in an ideal PT. But hoping I get better returns than just a 5% increase like in my other parse/Ryko's parse.

EDIT: Actually it'd be a lot more interesting to try out a 29% DA build! Seems more viable now too since accuracy isn't as much of a limiting factor as it used to be.

shogun rice ball? I've wanted to toy with a setup utilizing these too, but unfortunately there's only been 5 sold in the history of the server, and I don't know any 100+3(or more) cooks.

/sea all bst 75

Odds are at least one of them has Cooking 100+3, and possible Nin 57+ with a Hocho for 100+6.

Making your own jugs turns many a Bst into a Cook too.

[Amele]

right. I know a bunch of 90+ cooks. just none 100+3.

there's precious little reason to go that high as far as I (a non-cook crafter) can tell, most of your tiers seem to break in the late 90's and not at the very top end, unless you have a hocho for 100+6.

[Max™]

Eh, I know of 3 on Carby that I can think of, and they mostly finished to have it finished.

[Don Katsu]

So I'm still wondering...
Weapon:
Wood/Man (No gil for juggy) or Byakko's? <.<

[SephYuyX]

So I'm still wondering...
Weapon:
Wood/Man (No gil for juggy) or Byakko's? <.<

or Fort Axe? (for me wondering)

[Amele]

which playstyle do you prefer?

all evidence currently is pointing toward 2h being slightly better at peak (which makes sense, it *is* the A+ weapon after all ) but if you're somewhere in the middle gear/skill/meritcount wise then it's pretty much whichever style you're more comfortable with.

[Max™]

Fortitude if you've got stones, I mean, it's basically a Dmg 64 Soboro with a Crit TP multi hit WS, hard to go wrong there.

When I run out of stones, I'll be swapping to my Rampager, cause I'm partial to the 20%+ Crit rates I've been getting.

[Ferien]

Fort was insane between the two patches, but it seems they made base damage count for a lot more with the second patch, so it's dropped off quite a bit. I still pull more hate with it than with Rune Chopper though, and hopefully when I finish unlocking Rampager I can toy with it a bit. Really need to get my Assault ranks though...Perdu Voulge....

[aru]

by a small margin/sample size, i have been able to outparse myself using a perdu volge vs a fortitude axe as war/nin. i'm not sure how they would parse against themselves as war/sam though. i was able to outparse (12-17%) two other war/nins using axes as a war/nin using a GA, not to say that's definitive proof that ga>axes but it points me to that direction for my build.

[Max™]

Yeah, the sheer spammity nature of Fortitude would still be damn fun.

I'm hanging onto my Rampager til I get (a lot of) rank ups done and get a Perdu Voulge.

Damn Perdu should be Red/Gold like the Sickle though, the white horror voulge model again was a big ole' wtf.

[aru]

yea, i was pretty dissapointed in the look too after seeing the sickle.

do break-type ws's stack? i dont see much use in the fortitude axe other than enfeebling the crap out of hnm or being part of a couple skill chains.

[Max™]

yea, i was pretty dissapointed in the look too after seeing the sickle.

do break-type ws's stack? i dont see much use in the fortitude axe other than enfeebling the crap out of hnm or being part of a couple skill chains.

Well, Full Break has less effect overall than the rest, but it's still a really nice debuff all around.

I stuck it on Byakko once, noticed everyones damage perk up a bit after that, love using it against the Besieged mega bosses.

Sadly though they don't stack last I checked, not even sure if the duration stacks, though I'd kind of think it does.

I should go test that in ballista with some friends.

[RKenshin]

This isn't so much about the parse as it's about how insane the PT was, but... Wow.

The PT setup was BRD, BRD, COR, RDM, DRK, SAM. We also had some outside healing (mules ftw) so that we could get away with using Hasso nearly full-time. Both me and the DRK were just about fully equipped/meritted for both TP and WS gear, and eating Red Curry. The songs were Marchx2 and Minuetx2, along Chaos Roll and Corsair's Roll from the COR. The camp was Mamool Ja Staging point and we were clearing the entire main area of Puks/Mamool/Skoffins regularly. We pulled out 32k per hour, killing 164 mobs per hour, with the two DDs. I've never had exp/hour reach this high before.

The parse looked like this:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/481/ffxi2892ii0.jpg

Kaiten is still about as strong as it was before the slight 'nerf' in the last update, with a high of 2.5k and an average of 1.4k (maybe about ~150 damage lower). The DRK's WS average is obviously a little distorted as well from short TP returns, because mobs were literally dieing in ~20 seconds just from DoT alone. But we were both just about constantly capped on attack, so I think our melee/WS average are about as high as they get. With my gear changed a little from what I normally use I now sit at 661 base attack without any songs/rolls or berserk on, and 80+49 STR for melee. Even with the normal buffs and no Berserk I was hovering at about 970 attack.

Most insane part of the PT though (other than xp/h and such) was at one point we ended up linking a huge pull of 5 mamool + 3 pets while others repoppped on the PT, resulting in 12 mobs (most of which Mamool) being on top of our PT at once. Both BRD SV + lucky COR 2h + both melee's 2h'ing and we cleared them all in about 1-2 minutes with no deaths, each of us solo'ing individual mobs at once lol... It was hilarious, but crazy. I wish we could've made a video.

So yeah, that PT setup was broken beyond belief. I remember people were theorizing about it's potential before, but never remember seeing someone try it. Has anyone else given it a shot?

[Beckwin]

I did a brd brd cor drk/sam <dd> whm before all the patches; it was pretty nice. Mobs just melt with those kind of buffs. Question, was the drk in your parse /sam? Your parse seems to correlate pretty much with the comparisons Ryko and I have done with post-11th SAM and DRK, with your relic accounting for your advantage here.

Would be curious to see gearshots of the DRK personally; always looking for new ideas to try out.

[Tej]

Ruke could you please be kind enough to post pics of or list your Sam gear now. You keep saying you've changed alot of it since last LJ update and I like to base my gear choices off yours, so just wondering what has changed. Especially since the update. Thanks :D