Modus Veritas Revisted (now with Merits)

[FailureMidgard]

When I was testing, it seemed to be ticking at a different time than sublimation. This is just eyeballing it though, but I did specifically look for that.

[Spekkio]

FM, could you test one thing for me? have a corsair friend come with you. first, cast geohelix or whatnot on a mob, then have them quick draw it with earth shot. does the duration seem to increase or at least consistently be at a number? basically, can we conclusively demonstrate that quick draw is capable of increasing the duration of a helix spell? i'm unclear on if it's even capable of affecting any spell's duration b/c i hear yes in 1 ear and no in the other, so i'd be interested to know for sure.

second, if you find that the first question is answered affirmatively (IE, that it does affect duration) what happens if you use modus veritas before they use quick draw? can quick draw push an MVed helix back to full duration? if so, a party of 5 sch and a corsair could quick draw, fire off 5 rounds of veritas (assuming merited to curb the decay effect) random deal (or wild card), quick draw again and hit another 5 rounds and still maintain about 7s worth of helix duration after 10 veritas (if i remember my calculations correctly.) this would mean that you could pull this off without risking reducing the duration so low that the helix falls off w/o doing a tick of damage at the enhanced rate.

[FailureMidgard]

FM, could you test one thing for me? have a corsair friend come with you. first, cast geohelix or whatnot on a mob, then have them quick draw it with earth shot. does the duration seem to increase or at least consistently be at a number? basically, can we conclusively demonstrate that quick draw is capable of increasing the duration of a helix spell? i'm unclear on if it's even capable of affecting any spell's duration b/c i hear yes in 1 ear and no in the other, so i'd be interested to know for sure.

second, if you find that the first question is answered affirmatively (IE, that it does affect duration) what happens if you use modus veritas before they use quick draw? can quick draw push an MVed helix back to full duration? if so, a party of 5 sch and a corsair could quick draw, fire off 5 rounds of veritas (assuming merited to curb the decay effect) random deal (or wild card), quick draw again and hit another 5 rounds and still maintain about 7s worth of helix duration after 10 veritas (if i remember my calculations correctly.) this would mean that you could pull this off without risking reducing the duration so low that the helix falls off w/o doing a tick of damage at the enhanced rate.

Maybe? Heh, In a merit party at the moment (so I can pump more into MV merits!), and I don't actually talk to anyone regularly that has corsair leveled. Furthermore, what type of increased duration are we looking for? Like I said, with 2 MV merits, looking for a 10% increase in duration is quite difficult due to the random duration. I guess 10% of max duration will be a little easier to spot (up to 8 seconds instead of just 4?).

Seeing if it extends a MVed Helix sounds uhh...not fun, I'd definitely rather wait for 5/5 MV merits to test that.

Anyway, I may try to get a random cor to help test later.

[Spekkio]

Maybe? Heh, In a merit party at the moment (so I can pump more into MV merits!), and I don't actually talk to anyone regularly that has corsair leveled. Furthermore, what type of increased duration are we looking for? Like I said, with 2 MV merits, looking for a 10% increase in duration is quite difficult due to the random duration. I guess 10% of max duration will be a little easier to spot (up to 8 seconds instead of just 4?).

Seeing if it extends a MVed Helix sounds uhh...not fun, I'd definitely rather wait for 5/5 MV merits to test that.

Anyway, I may try to get a random cor to help test later.

i was assuming that QD would force the duration consistently to the same value. so if you used geohelix and a corsair earth shotted it, it would consistently be 70s long for example, even if the duration off the initial cast was 30 or 40 seconds. do a few mobs w/ a few helixes and a few earth shots and if they all wear a fixed time after the initial cast or the QD (depending on how it adjusts the duration) you now can draw some conclusions. doesn't matter how many merits you have on MV, the results of this will still be valid as long as they're consistent.

[FailureMidgard]

i was assuming that QD would force the duration consistently to the same value. so if you used geohelix and a corsair earth shotted it, it would consistently be 70s long for example, even if the duration off the initial cast was 30 or 40 seconds. do a few mobs w/ a few helixes and a few earth shots and if they all wear a fixed time after the initial cast or the QD (depending on how it adjusts the duration) you now can draw some conclusions. doesn't matter how many merits you have on MV, the results of this will still be valid as long as they're consistent.

Oh, didn't realize that forced consistency, I was assuming it would be +10% duration.
Anyway, hoping to get enough merits for 4 pts in MV from this party (went and capped my helixes first, heh). Will definitely try to find a cor if that is the assumption, should be very easy to test.

[Spekkio]

Oh, didn't realize that forced consistency, I was assuming it would be +10% duration.
Anyway, hoping to get enough merits for 4 pts in MV from this party (went and capped my helixes first, heh). Will definitely try to find a cor if that is the assumption, should be very easy to test.

i don't know either! hell, i don't know for sure that it even increases it at all! i'm just hypothesizing and attempting to test what's easiest (and probably most valuable) first before moving on to the trickier tasks.

[Aemora]

I was the one that originally concluded that Helix spells tick every 7th second of 10 on the in-game clock.

What I did was much like my %=tick that I did in my previous SS, this time, I just hit /clock on every time that I saw a tick land, and it was a perfect 10s between ticks, starting ALWAYS on the seventh second of every 10. I noticed at first when I was running Timestamp, that my 45=7 jargon was coming up every [##:##:#2] on Timestamp... Then I started hitting clock (and if you know Timestamp, it isn't the most accurace of things with the in-game clock), and it turned out that the Helix spells proc every seventh second in 10. So, again, little calculation, I worked out how long the Helix cast is (5 seconds), then nuked it as the ten-second mark turned, and sure enough, Helix landed at :#6 and it would ALWAYS tick again a second later. I tried Helix at the :#4 mark, it landed at :#9, and the tick didn't occur for another 8 seconds.

This is my original finding when I first tested what caused the fluctuation in the "ticks" of Helix spells; they have fluctuating unknown properties that I marked down as resist rates, that inevitable lead to varying time durations, and thus damage output over time. Now, I just checked again to see if this theory was still valid, because I read this topic in work on my phone and wanted to back my claims up rather than someone shoot them down...

Not true. And if it used to be, it isn't anymore because I just tried it.

So I geared up my Sch and went to Sea and did some Hpemdes. I could accept that perhaps my theory was wrong now because I always thought that it was run off of the servers, and that whenever a server was reset, perhaps the tick damage of the Helix was off too (due to reset, or whatever), or that perhaps it is different on every server because of this idea; servers run at different times.

Tested it again tonight, and indeed, the ticks go off every 7th of ten seconds. It takes 5 seconds to cast a Helix nuke, so if you can somehow figure out how to cast the nuke at say, ##:#0 on the ingame clock (the one that tells you the realworld time), then you'd get the next tick straight away because of the mechanics of the game.

This does NOT work with Timestamp. Timestamp is a tool that runs from your COMPUTER clock, NOT the FFXI clock.

[FailureMidgard]

I was the one that originally concluded that Helix spells tick every 7th second of 10 on the in-game clock.



This is my original finding when I first tested what caused the fluctuation in the "ticks" of Helix spells; they have fluctuating unknown properties that I marked down as resist rates, that inevitable lead to varying time durations, and thus damage output over time. Now, I just checked again to see if this theory was still valid, because I read this topic in work on my phone and wanted to back my claims up rather than someone shoot them down...



So I geared up my Sch and went to Sea and did some Hpemdes. I could accept that perhaps my theory was wrong now because I always thought that it was run off of the servers, and that whenever a server was reset, perhaps the tick damage of the Helix was off too (due to reset, or whatever), or that perhaps it is different on every server because of this idea; servers run at different times.

Tested it again tonight, and indeed, the ticks go off every 7th of ten seconds. It takes 5 seconds to cast a Helix nuke, so if you can somehow figure out how to cast the nuke at say, ##:#0 on the ingame clock (the one that tells you the realworld time), then you'd get the next tick straight away because of the mechanics of the game.

This does NOT work with Timestamp. Timestamp is a tool that runs from your COMPUTER clock, NOT the FFXI clock.

Well, it works with your timestamp also, the last digit will just be something different than 7...for me it goes off on every ##:#5.

[Acorn]

@Aemora - When I checked it I was going by the vanadiel clock under the compass, not the actual clock.