pDIF testing and Damage formulas

[Nameless]

What I did is that I did this to find the average when negative is involved:

Max/2 * Max/(Max - (Min)) = average

Basically finding the average between Max and 0, and portion it, which gives the result I want.

But yea, pretty much what you said.

[Kirschy]

Back again to this.

At the moment, i'm getting serious doubts regarding the fSTR used as a base in all melee calculations.

I mean when i researched for data/testings done on this subject, all i found were fSTR2 table @ VZX site, which apparently were translated from some tests done by Japanese with Ranged Weapons. Only connection with melee weapons is that sentence:
"Melee damage bonus is half the value of ranged damage bonus"

Where are the datas to back this ? Anyone knows or have a link to some japanese site, whatever i'll take anything to reduce the number of fSTR testings...

Context is that with my current parses posted here, and the asumption fSTR function is correct, the resulting pDIF equations gets more complicated with additional scaling factors etc... to match only ~80% of parsed damage values.

I don't know of how much help it'll be, but if you remember shortly after the 2H patch, all 2H melee pdif capped at 3.0 including crits. It became very easy to cap attack on lower mobs and see the direct influence of STR. When hitting the beetles in Crawlers Nest's donut room, I was not capped fSTR and did 363 damage each hit. (Capped fSTR would have me dealing 366 damage, which I did do when I swapped to WS gear.) I might have pictures to show this. In any sense, I remember unequipping STR and seeing about 4-5 STR lowering my base DMG by 1. If the fSTR isn't perfect, it must be at least fairly close.

I believe ranged damage still caps on lower mobs, so you should be able to test fSTR2/VIT fairly easy using that method. As for testing melee fSTR now, not a clue~

(I'll search my files to see if I can find SS~)

[pahnphoenix]

I don't know of how much help it'll be, but if you remember shortly after the 2H patch, all 2H melee pdif capped at 3.0 including crits. It became very easy to cap attack on lower mobs and see the direct influence of STR. When hitting the beetles in Crawlers Nest's donut room, I was not capped fSTR and did 363 damage each hit. (Capped fSTR would have me dealing 366 damage, which I did do when I swapped to WS gear.) I might have pictures to show this. In any sense, I remember unequipping STR and seeing about 4-5 STR lowering my base DMG by 1. If the fSTR isn't perfect, it must be at least fairly close.

I believe ranged damage still caps on lower mobs, so you should be able to test fSTR2/VIT fairly easy using that method. As for testing melee fSTR now, not a clue~

(I'll search my files to see if I can find SS~)

i don't have SSs either, but i remember confirming the fSTR equation on MNK and SAM during that window too, as well as doing some WS testing. didn't realize they were going to patch it so soon, or i would have tested a bunch of shit.

edit: p.s. the way old pDIF worked made it super easy to verify the fSTR equation if you graphed your damage too. further edit: in other words, the old fSTR calculation was rock solid, but that's not to say that we know for sure that SE didn't change fSTR subsequently.

[Kirschy]

i don't have SSs either, but i remember confirming the fSTR equation on MNK and SAM during that window too, as well as doing some WS testing. didn't realize they were going to patch it so soon, or i would have tested a bunch of shit.

edit: p.s. the way old pDIF worked made it super easy to verify the fSTR equation if you graphed your damage too. further edit: in other words, the old fSTR calculation was rock solid, but that's not to say that we know for sure that SE didn't change fSTR subsequently.

Yea I only did minimal WSing testing, I wish I could rewind back to then and repeat like 50 tests I'd love answers too =(. I didn't know the fSTR was rock solid though, I thought it was iffy with higher fSTR ratings

[pahnphoenix]

Yea I only did minimal WSing testing, I wish I could rewind back to then and repeat like 50 tests I'd love answers too =(. I didn't know the fSTR was rock solid though, I thought it was iffy with higher fSTR ratings

i guess i should rephrase that the range whereby people regularly had fSTR in merits and endgame was rock solid, because people like starfox (and possibly even genome of all people) parsed everything and would determine BD (and thus fSTR) by the mode of their damage distribution at pDIF=1. because you could see that in a parse, you didn't need to test on too weak mobs and cap pDIF (though actually that was also a strong way to test, since you could easily cap cRatio but not fSTR with--especially--2hand weapons vs mobs like level 50~ [number pulled out of ass] and compare max crit damage. as you'll recall, getting pDIF=3.0 back in the day with sneak attack wasn't something it took hours to do).

so, if there are ranges that just weren't tested, there you go, but the JP are usually pretty thorough about such things, or at least they were back then. if i'm misremembering, my bad.

[Masamune]

i guess i should rephrase that the range whereby people regularly had fSTR in merits and endgame was rock solid, because people like starfox (and possibly even genome of all people) parsed everything and would determine BD (and thus fSTR) by the mode of their damage distribution at pDIF=1. because you could see that in a parse, you didn't need to test on too weak mobs and cap pDIF (though actually that was also a strong way to test, since you could easily cap cRatio but not fSTR with--especially--2hand weapons vs mobs like level 50~ [number pulled out of ass] and compare max crit damage. as you'll recall, getting pDIF=3.0 back in the day with sneak attack wasn't something it took hours to do).

so, if there are ranges that just weren't tested, there you go, but the JP are usually pretty thorough about such things, or at least they were back then. if i'm misremembering, my bad.

Np, my main concern is where are those JP tests posted ? I never said they were neglecting lot of things on their tests or anything: i simply don't know, not my concern, their data on other hand is. So guess i have nothing to exploit the possibility that fSTR maybe takes non integer values...

Regarding the method for testing fSTR, you are partially correct:
Mode: Value appearing the most within a parsed distribution.
If i m parsing vs a mob at cRatio>1.5, you can be sure the modes you ll get is NOT @ pDIF=1.
2ndly, if i'm parsing in the range 1.25< cRatio <1.5, i should notice not 1 but 2 modeS: the usual one + the second one due to all the values below cap pDIF=1 all set @ 1, making effectively the minimum parsed damage value's frequency lot higher than it should be. Example below with my parse @ 301attack with DeaeGratia (Ratio=1.281):

Spoiler: show

	44	182
	45	189
+	46	214
	47	43
	48	50
	49	41
	50	45
	51	48
^	52	59
	53	45
	54	43
	55	32
	56	45
	57	53
	58	46
	59	37
	60	40
	61	40
	62	22
	63	46
	64	47
	65	37
	66	45
	67	49
	68	42
	69	43
	70	38
	71	23
	72	20
	73	8

since you could easily cap cRatio but not fSTR with

That's interesting. How? which mob? more details please.

[pahnphoenix]

That's interesting. How? which mob? more details please.

pretty much any midlevel mob. eg an east ronfaure [s] lv45 colibri should have 41~ VIT since it's RDM/RDM, so you should be able to fight it with uncapped fSTR. with a 1h weapon you could surely cap cRatio vs those things (they can't have more than 300 DEF, probably closer to 200).

as for japanese testing, i haven't seen it. anonymous messageboards. i wasn't looking into that stuff back in 04/05 when they did it.

edit: note, fSTR testing will of course be harder now than it was back in the day, of course. then again, you'd know the validity of that statement better than i, as i haven't really taken in the hypothesized new pDIF.

[Masamune]

pretty much any midlevel mob. eg an east ronfaure [s] lv45 colibri should have 41~ VIT since it's RDM/RDM, so you should be able to fight it with uncapped fSTR. with a 1h weapon you could surely cap cRatio vs those things (they can't have more than 300 DEF, probably closer to 200).

That's where lies the problem: on Hpemdes crit% testing, i used my ultimate lowest STR ever which were 61, so if any midlevel mob have a vit around 40 that makes a dSTR > 20. My interest is for dSTR<15.

[mdkuser]

I posted this in random question thread the other day with no answer: the cratio page on wiki was modified, it says now that cRATIO is caped before taking level corection into account. Is that correct and is there any serious data supporting it? among various things it would mean that asuran fists is attack-caped on on merit mobs, and that tachi: gekko's average pdif is 1.85 instead of 2.1 ( which is a significant difference); or am I reading it wrong?

[Argettio]

I posted this in random question thread the other day with no answer: the cratio page on wiki was modified, it says now that cRATIO is caped before taking level corection into account. Is that correct and is there any serious data supporting it? among various things it would mean that asuran fists is attack-caped on on merit mobs, and that tachi: gekko's average pdif is 1.85 instead of 2.1 ( which is a significant difference); or am I reading it wrong?

It is certainly one of the possible theories being thrown around:

* Ratio (Att/Def) floors at 0 caps at 2.2
* CRatio is ((Ratio)-(dLVL *0.05))*Attack bonus (1 for normal WS, 1.5 for Gekko etc) Which is recapped at 2.2
* Pdif is calculated based on the Cratio value

And it certainly fits an lot of the data out there, but it isn't proven.

Based on this theory the attack bonus is added after the level correction, it is very likely that Gekko etc will still have a cratio of 2.2.

Edit: The above theory is nothing to do with me, I am just keeping an eye out as there are 2-3 groups working in this area. Hopefully they will all find the same result.

[Kirschy]

So guess i have nothing to exploit the possibility that fSTR maybe takes non integer values...

You could take my word or dig into some real old research, but when pdif was capping at 3.0, and when mob pdif was capped at 4.0, it was very easy to see that base DMG and and consequently fSTR did not use non-integer values. DMG on a weapon can never be an non-integer, secondary mods were proven to floor, and the base damage portion of the equation was shown to only use integer values. (Damage was always divisible by 3 when pdif was capped for PCs, and damage was always divisible by 4 when pdif was capped for NPCs.) Either fSTR is an integer only or is floor'd when the base damage is calculated, which should answer that question. This is still easy to see with ranged crits, but not with melee/NPC damage anymore.

[pahnphoenix]

You could take my word or dig into some real old research, but when pdif was capping at 3.0, and when mob pdif was capped at 4.0, it was very easy to see that base DMG and and consequently fSTR did not use non-integer values. DMG on a weapon can never be an non-integer, secondary mods were proven to floor, and the base damage portion of the equation was shown to only use integer values. (Damage was always divisible by 3 when pdif was capped for PCs, and damage was always divisible by 4 when pdif was capped for NPCs.) Either fSTR is an integer only or is floor'd when the base damage is calculated, which should answer that question. This is still easy to see with ranged crits, but not with melee/NPC damage anymore.

yeah, we were even able to confirm exactly where the flooring in WSC occurs. i think the whole equation looks like

BD = WD + fSTR + floor((floor(STAT1*X%+STAT2*Y%))*LV.COR)
damage = floor(BD*pDIF)

base damage has always been an integer, unless our understanding of pDIF was somehow off such that we ended up with miraculously integer-like speculated BDs. in fact, of all the things i've seen questioned, i've never seen WD+fSTR called into question in my 4-5~ years of knowing what those things were (except for posts by genome, of course, and the misconception that h2h WD was some crazy equation instead of h2h skill * .11 + 3).

[Nameless]

It is certainly one of the possible theories being thrown around:

* Ratio (Att/Def) floors at 0 caps at 2.2
* CRatio is ((Ratio)-(dLVL *0.05))*Attack bonus (1 for normal WS, 1.5 for Gekko etc) Which is recapped at 2.2
* Pdif is calculated based on the Cratio value

And it certainly fits an lot of the data out there, but it isn't proven.

Based on this theory the attack bonus is added after the level correction, it is very likely that Gekko etc will still have a cratio of 2.2.

Edit: The above theory is nothing to do with me, I am just keeping an eye out as there are 2-3 groups working in this area. Hopefully they will all find the same result.

The current theory on that, which fits almost every data, is that cratio is capped at 2.25, and that ws multiplier is applied to ratio not cratio. Long story short, you are not going to have 2.25 cratio on any mob that is higher than lvl 75. I know you have been following that alla thread, and that's what was concluded in the end, which was back to the original theory. If ws multiplier is applied after cratio, the SAM would have done 1k gekko easily with that much attack on kirin. Just for your info~

[Argettio]

The current theory on that, which fits almost every data, is that cratio is capped at 2.25, and that ws multiplier is applied to ratio not cratio. Long story short, you are not going to have 2.25 cratio on any mob that is higher than lvl 75. I know you have been following that alla thread, and that's what was concluded in the end, which was back to the original theory. If ws multiplier is applied after cratio, the SAM would have done 1k gekko easily with that much attack on kirin. Just for your info~

Ah it must have moved on since I last looked. (I just copy and pasted my post from mid way through the thread).