Random Question Thread VI: I'm No Mathologist, But...

[Seedz]

Doing Salvage with friends > doing Salvage with someone who may be 5% better at DDing but you don't know or get along well with.

[Eole]

You're not looking at the whole picture. It's 30 seconds off what is already an incredibly minor increase to your overall damage in any situation where you are meleeing fulltime. Furthermore Meditate's usefulness decreases as you add more TP-productive buffs to the melee in question (Haste, DA etc).

Just looking at how much the recast is reduced by is not a very useful way of comparing job abilities/traits/equipment stats/anything! Absolute values are not useful for comparison: you have to use relative values and consider overall impact stemming from these.

3:00 Minutes Meditate = 180 Seconds
2:30 Minutes Meditate = 150 Seconds
Salvage is 100 Minutes = 6000 Seconds

33 3:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 33 = 4950 TP
49 Weapon Skills

40 2:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 40 = 6000 TP
60 Weapon Skills

11 more Weapon Skills for 100 Minutes
~11000 more Damage if you do 1000 DMG WS Average

This is absolute I believe;
I don't understand why it isn't useful for comparisons because I'm doing really fine with my WHM and RDM not having Third Eye merited.

[Argettio]

That relies on on being engaged nearly full time (or atleast able to WS every time meditate is up), which isn't necessarily true.

There is quite a lot of time spent not engaged where your merited meditate become less valuable.

[Eole]

@Argettio

While what you're saying is true; I think I would still do more damage and still not need Third Eye merited.

I picked Meditate instead of Third Eye because I play offensively.

Nevertheless; I think Third Eye merits have their uses, maybe on HNMs where you can eventually co-tank (or do not want to SJ THF) for a long period and must avoid Physical Damage at all cost while still doing Damage to the enemy.

If that's what you will do most of the time, then sure go ahead.

As for low-maning, I'd like to think SJ NIN is safer/wise.

On the other hand, for someone that does only Merits, Salvage, IS/KS/BCNMs, Dynamis, Sea and Limbus; someone like me. I think these -30 seconds to Meditate are more of an improvement than Third Eye Merits.

Boss is only 10 Minutes in an Area where you might spend 100, my point is that Third Eye will serve less than Meditate.

[noodles355]

I'm trying to get the paintbrush of souls (need to farm tablets for ASA fight), but I'm having trouble. I got the Ugg. Key drop, and am now in the room, but I've checked all 3 worn books 10 times over and none of them is dropping the rusty key I need to open the locked box...

Does it have some random drop rate or am I doing something wrong?

Edit: nvm, after all that, I had the paintbrush already, I just missed it first times i looked through my key items >.>

feel free to move post to random fail thread.

[Bakthi]

Right now I'm sitting @ lv63 and I'm having trouble on what jug pet to use against Colibri. HQ Tiger Jug is starting to be a bit lackluster to me imo, so I'm looking into Lifedrinker Lars(HQ Diremite) and Chopsuey Chucky(HQ Antlion). Anyone able to offer some knowledge on the pros and cons of those two jugs?

I'd just go to Kazham and buy some funguars from the NPC. They are said to cap at 65, although you can use them for a few levels after that. Better still, they're only 33 to use, so you can use them no matter which pink birds you're killing (barring Greater Colibri). Their breath-type moves, which are generally the big damage ones, aren't amazing on colibri, but they're still a good (and very cheap) DD jug otherwise. You can really wait until merit-level mobs to start breaking out the diremites.

Maybe I should have clarified, provoke for the up to 60-90 minutes you spend not on the chariot. It's nice to not have to rely on hitting something for hate. Mages can curebomb as you pull if they want and someone is low, puller takes less hits, there's 0 risk of bad luck with missed attacks, etc. Provoke is also still "useful" to open up with on the chariot (or after a BJ in SSR), you can't really deny this, but no, I don't spam voke on chariots, as it does nothing once you cap VE.

Provoke is definitely a great asset for the climb; people who have it and don't use it while a gear is flailing around (chasing a puller or mage) make me want to kill. I'd prefer to have at least one SAM or WAR in my group for no other reason than this. And yes, after Brainjack too.

[Argettio]

@Argettio

While what you're saying is true; I think I would still do more damage and still not need Third Eye merited.

I picked Meditate instead of Third Eye because I play offensively.

Nevertheless; I think Third Eye merits have their uses, maybe on HNMs where you can eventually co-tank (or do not want to SJ THF) for a long period and must avoid Physical Damage at all cost while still doing Damage to the enemy.

If that's what you will do most of the time, then sure go ahead.

As for low-maning, I'd like to think SJ NIN is safer/wise.

On the other hand, for someone that does only Merits, Salvage, IS/KS/BCNMs, Dynamis, Sea and Limbus; someone like me. I think these -30 seconds to Meditate are more of an improvement than Third Eye Merits.

Boss is only 10 Minutes in an Area where you might spend 100, my point is that Third Eye will serve less than Meditate.

I am not taking either side (I am good like that), I was just pointing out that your estimated increase in damage was an overestimation of the truth.

Take that how you will

[Demosthenes11]

Also, do you know what friendship is ?

YA CAIR, DO YOU!?

[Raen Ryong]

3:00 Minutes Meditate = 180 Seconds
2:30 Minutes Meditate = 150 Seconds
Salvage is 100 Minutes = 6000 Seconds

33 3:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 33 = 4950 TP
49 Weapon Skills

40 2:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 40 = 6000 TP
60 Weapon Skills

11 more Weapon Skills for 100 Minutes
~11000 more Damage if you do 1000 DMG WS Average

This is absolute I believe;
I don't understand why it isn't useful for comparisons because I'm doing really fine with my WHM and RDM not having Third Eye merited.

Human reaction times will skew this somewhat as Argettio suggested, also you have to consider how much your projected 11,000 damage is out of the whole. If you do 50,000 damage over an entire salvage session without merits then it's quite significant, whereas if you do 250,000 for instance, considerably less so. I honestly have no idea on how much damage one outputs on average.

[Ocara]

3:00 Minutes Meditate = 180 Seconds
2:30 Minutes Meditate = 150 Seconds
Salvage is 100 Minutes = 6000 Seconds

33 3:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 33 = 4950 TP
49 Weapon Skills

40 2:30 Minutes Meditates
150 * 40 = 6000 TP
60 Weapon Skills

11 more Weapon Skills for 100 Minutes
~11000 more Damage if you do 1000 DMG WS Average

This is absolute I believe;
I don't understand why it isn't useful for comparisons because I'm doing really fine with my WHM and RDM not having Third Eye merited.

This is flawed in quite a few ways when talking about salvage. You won't have hands/head from start so your 150 avg tp/med is wrong. Human errror has been pointed out, and time spent engaged where you can actually use said tp won't be anywhere close to perfect (in a way where you can ws on 100 and make full use of each tic of med) Not to mention you won't avg 1k ws in full gear, let alone with stat downs and gear restricted, which is a decent portion of that 100 minutes (depending on zone, setup, etc) You can use third eye merits as soon as you get JA to full effect to tank and reduce mp loss at start and continue to use them throughout the zone without any complications. I think you're vastly overrating meditate merits in salvage. Med vs TE merits anywhere else is a debate that's already been had.

[pchan]

I think even if you're hitting 98-99tp, with uncapped acc...

it's 2.5%~ hit rate v 4-5% WS rate +, and small crit/possible fstr raise on weapon

personally i'd use rajas if my acc was anything above 80%~ then again i'm pretty terrible at FFXI math, someone better at it will likely correct me

I'm tired of repeating the same shit about rajas page after page.

[FailureMidgard]

With half decent mages, I've never had problems with 0 third eye merits, but I think a lot of people are being delusional here on this debate.

Yea, no hand/head cell from the start makes meditate merits a small bit less valuable, it's still more TP than otherwise. If you want to get into it exactly, on shit like SSR chariot, meditate merits let you meditate basically right as you come out of charm every time, where a 3minute meditate means you can't. That + a voke are very nice for re-establishing hate.

Human reaction time plays a part, and technically the lower cooldown is more...volatile...but really, we're not talking about using something the exact second it comes up. You should easily be using it within ~3-5 seconds, depending slightly on haste, and that isn't exactly a hard feat to accomplish.

Also, I've always argued for 1 point in Shikikoyo. This entire debate is part of the reason. Between that and Shiki (and even the fact you can use both together basically if you hit 300 tp), you really shouldn't have issues with meditating during downtime (At 300 you can Sekka a WS, then Shiki, then WS, and get 3 full WSes out of it).

Furthermore, the math that guy posted with # of WSes is wrong, as every 100TP meditate gives you is actually 116 TP, or, you get a WS out of every 85ish TP. So all you people saying human error, downtime, etc, realize there is error in the other direction as well.

Finally, if you want to play super safe, sub ninja. We all know this is the case, yet everyone here arguing for third eye merits disagrees with subbing ninja, probably to all sorts of events. Why are you suddenly arguing to lower your damage here for 3rd eye? If you want to tank HNMish stuff (DD's bouncing hate is the best way to do DI, in my personal opinion) such as SW Guivre, SW Serket, Odin, any Jailer, etc, you really should be /nin, and third eye shouldn't really be a "normal" thing to use, but more something you fall back on after getting shadows wiped at a bad time, or DA'd at a bad time, etc.

[Callisto]

/WAR in salvage seems odd to me, typically that's the only place our SAMs always /NIN, unless we're farming BR or something. If you can in fact meditate right after each charm with lowered timers, a Gekko is probably going to do just as much if not more for your hate compared to Provoke. I don't know anyone who actually has 3E merits instead of sTP/Meditate though so I don't really know anyone who could defend their usefulness.

[NynJa]

In before you should be taking shots to the face with hasso like a boss and kill it before it kills you.

[FailureMidgard]

This is flawed in quite a few ways when talking about salvage. You won't have hands/head from start so your 150 avg tp/med is wrong. Human errror has been pointed out, and time spent engaged where you can actually use said tp won't be anywhere close to perfect (in a way where you can ws on 100 and make full use of each tic of med) Not to mention you won't avg 1k ws in full gear, let alone with stat downs and gear restricted, which is a decent portion of that 100 minutes (depending on zone, setup, etc) You can use third eye merits as soon as you get JA to full effect to tank and reduce mp loss at start and continue to use them throughout the zone without any complications. I think you're vastly overrating meditate merits in salvage. Med vs TE merits anywhere else is a debate that's already been had.

Oh, I need to add a reply to this. First off, if you're even bothering hitting 3rd eye on the first floor, you're probably doing something wrong outside of perhaps the mobs right before Hammerblow. With phalanx, they hit for 0. With a Regen2, they hit low enough that you never have to cure as a mage basically. Put up Hasso and pretend you have 2-3 slots unlocked that are giving you those stats.

Also, why are you "not avging 1k". Do you parse or pay attention to salvage at all? First floor mobs are pretty weak, in Arrapago and Bhaflau you should definitely be doing 1kish averages on first floor. SSR maybe not, Zhayolm is still pretty squishy.
But how does this even matter? TP is TP, you should be doing a similar proportional increase with meditate merits.

Finally, the only times you -should- even need to use Seigan, in my opinion, is chariots, and perhaps Powderkeg room. If all your DD are top notch, and kill things faster, then /shrug. I'm not actually sure why I feel I have to use it in Powderkeg room, just seems that those do more damage for the gear level we're at than anything else in salvage.

[isladar]

In before you should be taking shots to the face with hasso like a boss and kill it before it kills you.

^

[Deader2818]

On the topic of Salvage but nothing to do with SAM,

Would you use a SCH or WHM as your 2nd healer?

[Callisto]

SCH

[Nevex]

On the topic of Salvage but nothing to do with SAM,

Would you use a SCH or WHM as your 2nd healer?

Depends on zone.

WHM for Arrapago since SJ/JA/magic cells are limited and SCH needs them to be useful.

SCH for Bhaflau definitely, makes ramparts a utter joke. SCH can nuke gears to weaken boss as well.

SSR and Zhayolm depends on your setup and on the path you intend to take, but either choice seems fine to me. Zhay's boss is easily countered by WHM or SCH regardless(Cura/Auspice vs Stoneskinga/Regenga).

[Fottiti]

In before you should be taking shots to the face with hasso like a boss and kill it before it kills you.

If you're with a cookie cutter 6 man group (2 DD, RDM, WHM, BRD, THF) and you have half decent players you can fulltime hasso on everything short of boss chariots and turtle. You can fulltime hasso on ZR boss quite safely also but thats beside the point.

Whm's new JAs combined with the extra refresh you can get from sanction/ring means mp should never be an issue. Ofcourse if you are doing a run with less or different setup then this doesn't apply but suggesting your whm and rdm shouldn't be making the most of their mp is retarded.