Random Question Thread XII: Don't Believe Advanced's Lies

[Chen]

i might be being stupid, but i'm pretty sure i have it (viridian abyssite of merit - bhumi kill. i have.)

which is why i'm questioning the 40%? is there another key item that's pushing it up from 30->40? (btw for reference, my MP boost from NPC increased from 10%->15% i think)

[Thorny]

I was going by a post I saw earlier(cited it as 20% without abyssite, 30% with). I have the abyssite myself, but honestly never checked, so my bad if it's wrong.

[Nightfyre]

Also. can anyone please explain exactly why a gimp sj like /sam is being paraded around by dancers? /drg and /war seem like they would do far more even halfassedly than some shitty meditate every 3 minutes.

/DRG is actually fairly bad for DNC 75+. You're giving up Suppa or Brutal and you should have at least 21% haste to begin with (Turban Rapp Swift Dusk Aurore Aurore), so the benefits of Wyvern Earring are diminished somewhat and continue to shrink as your gear improves. /WAR is a good choice when you can afford to drop some TP generation for damage, but for straight TP generation /SAM is king right now. Don't forget that it gives 15 STP in addition to Meditate.

Boroka's window open after maint?

EDIT: I somehow forgot Tiercel. Potentially 22%+ without much effort.

[Nightfyre]

And now for something completely different.

Previous macc tests utilized Qiqirn in Alzadaal. Is this still viable or do our higher base skills require a different camp for tests? If it's viable, what is their meva? If it's not, what can I use as an alternative camp? I don't necessarily need an exact meva value for my targets, I just need a camp where I know a 30+ macc difference will be readily distinguishable.

[Atoreis]

1) I would.

2) Each one is different. ZR I'd put around 390-400. SSR and AR have somewhat higher (perhaps +20). BR I think depends on which side chariot you kill.

3) I'd do Zhayolm or Bhaflau first. ZR because it's completely predictable, BR because you get tons of drops early on, mobs are easy, and you can let the big numbers you can hit on the rampart mobs distract you from the low pop/drop rates. ZR boss is far easier for new groups, though. BR can mess you up with Homing Missile if you're not good at pulling the gears.

Actually after my group lvled to 80 we tried not focusing on gears and just pull asap and kill maybe 4-5 for drinks from chests. We did 4 BR like that and we Killed boss 4 times (Also doing ramparts floor 1 and 2 to 50%). Tho strategy for that kill was specyfic. I was soloing on MNK footwork for lowest TP gain possible (also easy to erase bound on 1 person) and keep hitting from side to not trigger HM. HM is not something deadly even if once it was leaving me on 26hp from 2600hp but I was avoiding it for mp efficiency and loosing big chunk of hate (tho even after 2500dmg HM I was getting hate back in 2-3 hits or WS). Once we had 2 members couldnt come and we went in with BRD RDM WHM MNK COR + BRD mule. We got pops on 2 floor so we stayed till end on this rampart ( 3x skadi head w/o thf lol :D ). We killed about 6 gears on this run and our mages didnt get MP cells. So I soloed boss on MNK taking 1 hit (didnt break stoneskin tho) for entire fight. I was a little worried about mages without mp cells before fight but ended up RDM was on 100% mp almost all the time allowing him to nuke chainspell on last 10-20%.
Also for ppl wondering wtf I have WHM+RDM for 1DD (or even 2DD when our 2nd DD (SAM) is there) thats becouse of 3 things:
a) Our WHM is completly crap and leaving her as only healer would be suicide
(She has no hMP gear, she usually end up half naked even in BR cuz she has realy big problem with lotting cells, only thing she cares in her set is cure potency and maxmp and she basicly full time it, she also has 20M gil she refuse to spend on better equip and even that she has like 3-4 jobs with maybe 1-2 sets for each she is 80/80 on everything beside 77/80 inventory (Idk what crap she has there and how you can play with 3 inventory space)
She also lvling useless PLD (i dont mean pld is useless i eman her pld is useless) and she is close to 77 after 4 weeks and she refuse to buy abbysea cuz she has so much thing to do in game that she wouldnt have time for abbysea. When i asked how many sets she has and what on PLD she answered (better sit down..) "I have two sets on PLD one for solo one for party" (I was laughing for good few minutes).
b) Our RDM is pro on the other hand and he can nuke pretty good to speed up kill sometimes when healing isnt an issue.
c) I'm to good to just throw our WHM and if i need to choose between her WHM lolPLD and lolWAR I'm choosing WHM XD

[Neosutra]

I have a headache from reading that, for a multitude of reasons.

[Thorny]

26% without /DRG or dusk+1(Acubens/Tiercel/Rapparee/Dusk/Aurore/Dusk+1/Vbelt), and sekkanoki is a great tool for putting out damage without endangering the melee you're responsible for. /WAR has uses, but they're pretty limited as DNC already shits DA and berserk isn't as utilitarian as additional TP(though adds slightly more damage over time).

[Atoreis]

I have a headache from reading that, for a multitude of reasons.

Yeah I know. I's always like that when I'm trying to type short post but I'm getting new ideas and ending up on nongrammar longest sentance ever. I'm sorry XD

[Khajit]

26% without /DRG or dusk+1(Acubens/Tiercel/Rapparee/Dusk/Aurore/Dusk+1/Vbelt), and sekkanoki is a great tool for putting out damage without endangering the melee you're responsible for. /WAR has uses, but they're pretty limited as DNC already shits DA and berserk isn't as utilitarian as additional TP(though adds slightly more damage over time).

Question on the bolded part. Your party should already have a mage that can haste which generally means they can heal. If the pt was capable of keeping DD safely alive without the dnc then why is the dnc somehow causing enough danger than 20 seconds at most without tp is life threatening? That argument discounts the first use you mentioned of sekka and then comparing the sekka to zerk makes it seem even weirder that one is claiming that sekkanoki is adding comparable damage/utility compared to berserk.
If the mage in the pt already is enough healing(should be unless the brd is lv 80+ /whm) then after haste samba/steps why isnt DDing the primary responsibility after the buffing? It's not like rdm or whm suddenly gets to shit out nukes stronger than even a DD dnc now? I didnt factor in stp tbh but I dont see why /sam would magically go from a shitty sj for 1h DD(when not /nin) compared to /war to amazing.
EDIT: forgot about stp: ok so sekka, stp, and meditate vs zerk, DA, atk bonus.
Last I'd checked /war was superior to /sam for 1h DD jobs by far and sekkanoki (the only "new" thing)doesn't add enough as far as i know to make anything magically different. what am I missing out on that caused such a paradigm shift? Does sekkanoki have some combo that enables 20k damage extra because of sekkanoki?

[CDF]

And now for something completely different.

Previous macc tests utilized Qiqirn in Alzadaal. Is this still viable or do our higher base skills require a different camp for tests? If it's viable, what is their meva? If it's not, what can I use as an alternative camp? I don't necessarily need an exact meva value for my targets, I just need a camp where I know a 30+ macc difference will be readily distinguishable.

Given level 75, 65 INT, and 295 elemental magic skill (or 290 skill and +5 magic accuracy) and no elemental staff, the effective magic accuracy (rate) of Stone I should be around 55% for a level 78 Qiqirn Poulterer (which has 65 INT). This is based on pchan's observation that its effective magic evasion (given level 75) is around 290 (given that magic accuracy = magic evasion at 50% effective magic accuracy). Note that this is known to apply to Stone I only.

As a reminder, this was the basis for theoretically checking the accuracy difference between an earth Magian staff with "elemental affinity: magic accuracy +3" and Terra's staff (thought to be "elemental affinity: magic accuracy +2"). Not that this was actually done because there was some confusion about the level of the Qiqirn. The level 78 Qiqirn doesn't check low evasion with an accuracy score of 263, while the level 76 and 77 do (last time I checked).

If there is a 10% difference in magic accuracy rate for every 1 level (and 10%/level is actually fixed), then at level 80 and given the above (aside from being level 75), the minimum resist rate for Stone I could be achieved, but this is an unverified prediction. In any case, a likely magic accuracy change as a direct result of being above 75 is yet another issue.

I would level sync to level 75 if possible but the equipment you are checking might be post-75. Alternatively, you can get on a job without native elemental skill and sub /SCH. I don't think anyone does the wind Magian staff but theoretically you could use that to check the accuracy associated with "elemental affinity" with Stone I.

[Dooom]

I'm a bit sleep deprived, but that made me facepalm a bit. Dancer allows your DD to go totally balls-out (full time hasso if /sam, can swap to /war if /nin or something like that) without making your mage totally burn out and go crazy. Plus it allows more MP for mages to do things like dia 2/3 instead of 1/2, deal with bad situations better (emergency sleeps and such in events), and just... idk. I'm sure Thorny or someone will argue this better than I, but you seem confused as to exactly what a dancer allows parties to do and what their role is. Things like

I dont see why /sam would magically go from a shitty sj for 1h DD(when not /nin) compared to /war to amazing.

Makes it clear that you're thinking of dnc as DD with extra support, rather than as a support job which just happens to do some DDing.

[Khajit]

I'm a bit sleep deprived, but that made me facepalm a bit. Dancer allows your DD to go totally balls-out (full time hasso if /sam, can swap to /war if /nin or something like that) without making your mage totally burn out and go crazy. Plus it allows more MP for mages to do things like dia 2/3 instead of 1/2, deal with bad situations better (emergency sleeps and such in events), and just... idk. I'm sure Thorny or someone will argue this better than I, but you seem confused as to exactly what a dancer allows parties to do and what their role is.

the DD should already be going balls out though. It's the DD's gimping their damage(for example 2h DD going /war or /nin instead of /sam) that causes more of the mp loss on mages normally that I see. I've been on both sides of that equation and a huge portion of my deaths came from DD that needed to start pulling their weight instead of letting me do 40~50% pt damage in the most extreme cases when i was a DD. /sam was previously viable for mages to cure properly.It might get a bit hectic when people are lazy as i mentioned earlier but adding a dnc for the purpose of curing(after sambas)seems about as useful as adding a smn or rdm for cures when I'm on whm. It just results in one person having fuck all to do.

[Onorgul]

Khajit, I think your brain is lodged in that wonderful world of forum theorycrafting where shit never hits the fan and problems never need to be resolved. In a perfect world, Monks can still sub Warrior, Samurai can use Hasso full-time, and Paladins never take more than single-digit damage whilst holding aggro. In real situations, something happens that is predictable or not and the last thing you need is to have your mages tied up coping with that and your Dancer(s) completely out of commission because they just fired off a weaponskill and don't have sufficient TP. Sekkanoki is a safety net, same as Utsusemi and Seigan. If your group legitimately never needs that safety net, props to you.

[Khajit]

Your attempt at logic fails because in a perfect world people would have deleted pld and started using mnk sam drk etc tanks for their hnms.

[Onorgul]

Monk/Warrior as a tank over an invulnerable Paladin capable of producing infinite enmity? I guess we have different views of perfect.

[Khajit]

I should sig that. INFINITE EMNITY.

[Nightfyre]

Given level 75, 65 INT, and 295 elemental magic skill (or 290 skill and +5 magic accuracy) and no elemental staff, the effective magic accuracy (rate) of Stone I should be around 55% for a level 78 Qiqirn Poulterer (which has 65 INT). This is based on pchan's observation that its effective magic evasion (given level 75) is around 290 (given that magic accuracy = magic evasion at 50% effective magic accuracy). Note that this is known to apply to Stone I only.

As a reminder, this was the basis for theoretically checking the accuracy difference between an earth Magian staff with "elemental affinity: magic accuracy +3" and Terra's staff (thought to be "elemental affinity: magic accuracy +2"). Not that this was actually done because there was some confusion about the level of the Qiqirn. The level 78 Qiqirn doesn't check low evasion with an accuracy score of 263, while the level 76 and 77 do (last time I checked).

If there is a 10% difference in magic accuracy rate for every 1 level (and 10%/level is actually fixed), then at level 80 and given the above (aside from being level 75), the minimum resist rate for Stone I could be achieved, but this is an unverified prediction. In any case, a likely magic accuracy change as a direct result of being above 75 is yet another issue.

I would level sync to level 75 if possible but the equipment you are checking might be post-75. Alternatively, you can get on a job without native elemental skill and sub /SCH. I don't think anyone does the wind Magian staff but theoretically you could use that to check the accuracy associated with "elemental affinity" with Stone I.

Shit, I didn't think about a potential macc modifier beyond skill/INT/macc...

Anyway, the test is not elemental based. A number of Blue Magic spells have additional effects not aligned with the primary elemental of the spell. For instance, Blastbomb and Regurgitation are fire and water based, respectively; both inflict an ice-based bind.

This presents a conundrum. If the effect is ice-based, is its macc effected by ice macc or the macc of the spell's primary element? If it's the former, I'm doing myself a disservice by casting Blastbomb in a Vulcan's Staff on more resistant targets, as that would weaken the bind and you don't really case Blastbomb for heavy damage. Of course, given that I currently cast Blastbomb in said Vulcan's Staff it may be that the former is true and I'm still doing it right due to a sufficiently large hidden macc boost.

I don't have access to an alt I could sync to and I don't wish to drag anybody along for the amount of time this test stands to take, so it will have to be conducted at level 80. Given the theoretical macc difference involved I'm comfortable with even rough results, but I'd hate to waste additional time testing on mobs where I cap macc on one or more sample sets.

[Yvonne]

I've been told for DRK to have a 5-Hit, I'd need a total of 39 sTP (True 5-Hit).

I was wondering if it was worth going through ZNMs for this:

15 - SAM sub
7 - Reckoning (Magian Trials)
7 - Aurum Cuirass
5 - Raja
4 - Rose Strap
1 - Brutal

Thoughts? Or should I just bite the bullet and get the OaT done with? LOL

[CDF]

I don't have access to an alt I could sync to and I don't wish to drag anybody along for the amount of time this test stands to take, so it will have to be conducted at level 80. Given the theoretical macc difference involved I'm comfortable with even rough results, but I'd hate to waste additional time testing on mobs where I cap macc on one or more sample sets.

Zvahl Fortalices might work (position yourself at the top of the stair flights on map 2 so neither Oglers or beastmen aggro, or use the two on map 1), but you would have to make sure that your baseline (without staff) establishes that you are nowhere near the cap or floor.

[requim]

Also. can anyone please explain exactly why a gimp sj like /sam is being paraded around by dancers? /drg and /war seem like they would do far more even halfassedly than some shitty meditate every 3 minutes.

You seem to have pigeonholed your opinion about dancer.

Often, if not almost always, a dancer can help the party more by healing and supporting than trying to improve their damage. They can put out some pretty impressive numbers sure, but they can also heal ridiculously efficiently, and /SAM is unquestionably the best SJ for TP gain. It might not be optimal for the DNC's DD, but it will potentially be better for the party as a whole.

the DD should already be going balls out though. It's the DD's gimping their damage(for example 2h DD going /war or /nin instead of /sam) that causes more of the mp loss on mages normally that I see. I've been on both sides of that equation and a huge portion of my deaths came from DD that needed to start pulling their weight instead of letting me do 40~50% pt damage in the most extreme cases when i was a DD. /sam was previously viable for mages to cure properly.

I don't see why you're being so angsty and semantic. The comparison is between one handers subbing WAR instead of having to rely on /NIN for survival (MNK, PUP, etc) and two handers full timing hasso instead of resorting to seigan. No one is suggesting that two handers should suddenly sub WAR or NIN over SAM, they are suggesting they full time hasso and a dancer in the party curing all the damage they could have avoided by using seigan.

If you party with shitty DDs that make bad SJ decisions, that is irrelevant. If you party with people who keep pulling hate and having to use seigan so they don't OOM the mage from cure bombing, it's practical.

And /SAM only helps mages when you use seigan, which means you wouldn't be using hasso...which goes back to the original point of why dancers are becoming increasingly popular.

It's not a hard concept. Dancer has far, far more potentially with healing and support than its DD, allowing everyone else to ignore defense for pure offense. Dancer can definitely put out some respectable numbers, but I wouldn't bother partying with one was deluded into thinking they were a pure DD.