Weekend update 17

This has little to nothing to do with the passed weekend, but I've started naming these entries this way and I am nothing if not committed to naming schemes! This is just a round-up of random things.

I was playing around with MNK sub-job, seeing if I could get any decent counter rate going. Unfortunately with Gnarled Horn and Counterstance I only got up to 60~65%. It's probably a bit higher. I believe I wasn't always facing all targets. This screenshot is to show the difference between damage taken with and without Counterstance. It's worth noting that Phalanx was on and that against mobs with high attack, the difference wouldn't be as pronounced.


Random picture of Chloris. He's a big boy.


This was the EXP alliance I was in when I was taking PLD up. There was no cleaving/aoe'ing so the number of TE's was a bit surprising. Rocking Vorpal Blade was a lot of fun once I was able to equip that Hannibal sword. It's surprising to see how you can go from basically leeching at 75, to leading the pack at 90.


I've had renewed interest in Salvage because of Dark Depths Atma. I'm not very keen on getting any pieces completed, since that would likely mean a bit of a grind despite the improved drop-rates. It also seemed like fun to go back at lv90 and see how the mobs that gave us a hard time would measure up now. I didn't have as strong a DD class as I do now in SAM, so it's not just the levels that are different. I'm aslo convinced that the group we went in with the last two times was more competent/versed than before. You live and you learn...

Here's parse data of Long-bowed Chariot:
Offense
Defense

That was two weeks ago. Last weekend we did Zhayolm Remnants. Made some poor decisions on the way up, because I suck at Salvage and don't even remember doing this zone ever. I ended up fighting Battleclad Chariot wearing just AF3 head and body because we went up on the wrong side on the first floor. A lot of HP, but otherwise a very simple fight. Going by the number of times I got hit and that the Long-bowed parse shows a low evasion rate, I don't see why we couldn't have done it at lv75. At least, that's what I like to tell myself.

Awesome Music Tip #6 (oldie)

Review of NM on Masamune path

This is perhaps a bit premature, seeing as how I've yet to finish the current set of GK Empyrean trials. However, I can always tag another entry on at the end when I have more experience with Isgebind. Out of the 10 or so times I've killed it I was in a group of at least 6 people. What I've learned about all the previous NM's is that it's easier to notice certain mob patterns/behavior once you've fought it at a slower pace with fewer people.

VNM's
I've posted about soloing Urd on SAM/DNC. If you can't get help this seems like a reasonable option. Thankfully I only needed to do it once. A BST can solo it despite the hate reset. Since Trance is a good warning for its triple WS, any DD+Mage duo should be able to take it out at level 90. The most annoying part is popping Skuld instead and trying to lose her. They fly pretty fast.

Lamprey Lord is a bit annoying. You'll want a "proper" evasion tank for it. Either that or get a bunch of melee to kill it quick. One of the pickup groups I did it with had a DNC and about 3 SAM spamming Violent Flourish, Tachi: Hobaku and Blade Bash. It was a short fight with very little damage taken as it was obviously stun-locked for a large portion of the fights. I'd recommend bringing a bunch of antidotes. They're not expensive at npc's and it's much easier to use it on yourself than to rely on a mage, whose first reaction is probably to cast cure before poisona. Antidotes can make the difference, but tanks should also try and blink tank like it's an HNM. Recast shadows as soon as possible, because evasion is random and it has a very high rate of triple and double attacks.

SAM can probably tank it in a duo due to decent evasion skill rating, but it's more prone to mistakes and bad luck than a NIN or a DNC. The hate reset on the Acid Mist ability is a bit of an issue. I don't recall if everyone hit by Acid Mist gets their hate reset, but it's a good idea to have the mage in range anwyay. Once Acid mist goes off the tank should try and get a spike in enmity to get it off the mage asap or avoid it going after the mage at all. Kiting just prolongs the time it's on the healer. If TP feed can be limited a duo is ok, but at least a trio would be my advice.

Chesma is a step down from Lamprey and can be duo'd without any issues. Losing hate in this fight means very little if the healer is prepared, because its damage output is much less threatening than LL. Just cast stona as soon as you see it charging up. As long as you haven't had to spam cure4 up to this point, the melee should be able to get it off quickly. Chesma and Tammuz were hard to find up when I did them. Japanese groups cycled through them continuously and yet I very rarely saw any shouts for them.

Carabosse
Farming pops for Carabosse solo is very simple if you have something with half-decent evasion and DNC sub or a crit hit WS. I'll tell you why in a sec. Baba Yaga only casts spells and throws arrows. The arrows have very low accuracy, but if they land the Amnesia will slow you down a bit (not dangerous) so some evasion here helps. Since it doesn't attack normally and casts mostly harmless spells like silencega, it doesn't really matter what job you're on. The key is to have some meds to cure if you don't have other sources of healing and a job with a lot of red WS to save time. The fly NM (La Theine Lieje) doesn't do TP abilities unless it successfully casts Aeroga3. In which case it will spam Venom 3 to 7 times in a row. A strong multi-hit crititical WS will interrupt its casting reliably. Moreso than Violent Flourish. However, if you're solo you may not manage 100TP more than once per spellcast. So if you want to try your red WS you need another way to interrupt its casting. Even if it does land the spell, you can outrun the 2nd+ Venom and recover with meds. I did both mobs on THF for the most part. Usually subbing NIN and equiping Mounted Champion Atma.

Carabosse itself has the potential to nuke very hard. However, once you learn that it can only do this under Winter Breeze, then you can forget about it until is changes seasons and then easily swap in some MDT gear if shadows are down or if it's Aeroga3. If you're lagging or not confident you'll be fast enough you can just keep it on until it changes seasons again, which shouldn't take long. You need to do something for each season so just make sure you have your chat-filters off and pay attention.

• Winter Breeze: Stun nukes and/or swap in MDT
• Spring Breeze: casts aoe debuffs. Remove debuffs and keep on trucking. Can wait to cast shadows until it changes out if you want to.
• Summer Breeze: Dispel Regain (or Aura Steal it!!! really nice to have 10 TP/tic). Ride out the the Mute off Torrent and reapply all buffs after Turmoil.
• Autumn Breeze: Dispel Regen. I guess you could stun cures as well, but she's fast.

Heqet
Maybe not worth its own section once you know how to do it, but I guess it can't hurt going over it. Bring some meds. I usually made sure to have Lucid potions 1, 2 and 3. You can get potion3 from Bastion Prefect for 50 credits. Occasionally doing some bastion between pops will keep your credits up. Another thing to get off the prefect is a Fool's Powder. It's not NEEDED, but it casts spells in pairs below 25% and it's nice to just kill it asap at low HP and not risk two Waterjas killing you.

Pulling it requires you to deaggro the train unless you get lucky with where it pops. I didn't bother pulling it when there was competition around. However, it IS possible to get it before it deaggro's and still have Squibs deaggro. Either it takes longer for Heqet to deaggro or it has longer detection range. Also, I can recommend engaging, hitting it once then fleeing away (sprinter's/powder boots/job ability). You'll then stop to put away your weapons as you get out of range. This does NOT always make its name go yellow. If someone steals it at this point, you'll still be the first person to act on it since the last time it was idle and so will get the KI if they kill it. After doing this once or twice you'll know how far you need to run before stopping. It's hard to explain the distance so I won't try. Again, I did this on THF because it has evasion and so will take very little damage from anything but spells. Take it down while doing red weakness WS if you have any. Use your meds. If there's no competition you could repeatedly deaggro it, since it stops to cast. I did not do this because I didn't want to risk running out of meds. SMN's, DNC/NIN's and NIN/DNC's have very little trouble soloing this without meds. I believe BST can too, but have no personal experience with it. I'm just trying to show that with meds other jobs can too.

It pays to kill Ephmeral Murexes (potion2) and Jala (potion3 and fool's) for temp items, it'll save you some cruor and credits. All in all soloing Heqet is just a matter of killing it fast and staying alive. With enough meds you could potentially do a lot of red WS. Something with evasion and a lot of weapon skills like NIN/WAR would probably be the best use of your time. Nobody wants to go 0/8 on the KI like I did. It's not a solo you'll tell your friends about, but it makes lv85 Masamune much more attainable, especially since Cep is soloable too.

Cep Camuy
Yea, why not? I think the reason why I want to talk about Cep is because I bought a Frenzy Sallet especially for this NM. Not having to take a 200-300 damage hit to wake yourself up, which could take a long time, and almost instantly continuing the fight is a big plus. It only cost me 400k and I'm not selling it back. Being able to wake up from sleep independantly is just great.

Seaspray and Leeching current are both annoying. So there's a 50/50 chance that its TP ability will be annoying. However, using some subtle blow (or if you're a Ninja) will make things a lot easier. I've come to appreciate Dragon Harness much more, thanks to its +10 Subtle Blow. It also helps me kill Ancient Orobon (decent amount of HP) for cheekmeat without them doing any TP abilities.

Cirein
Does the same annoying TP abilities as all Orobon with the addition of Mayhem Lantern under 50% HP. It uses TP abilities back to back. Always in pairs.

In all the fights I've done it NEVER used Mayhem lantern as the first ability. So under 50% HP you can run away after the first TP ability and avoid Mayhem Lantern's charm. However, while this is worth doing, if the first ability is Hypnic Lamp and you get slept, then it's pretty much impossible to avoid the charm unless you're constantly DoT'ed and can wake up form sleep asap. I suppose you could use pachira fruits for this as long as you start running each time it TP's. In that case, even if you get slept, you'll have already taken a few steps and be far enough away that you COULD outrunt he charm. Having Treasure Hunter is nice, so a THF+mage duo could use this strategy. If the mage can land gravity and/or the THF wears some dusk pieces to slow them down, charm can be dealt with relatively simply. RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM can save Manifestation Gravity/Bind for this purpose. Don't try to sleep charmed people, the charm is accompanied by drown effect (DoT). Just make sure you realise that if the last person who took action on CC gets charmed it may go unclaimed.

I almost forgot, it also does Deathgnash, which could be dangerous if shadows are down. A follow-up hit would kill you. I'd recommend a DD + THF + healer trio, where one of the melee stays out of range to avoid charm. Going in only for a few hits in between TP abilities. This gives you both TH and a decently fast killspeed. A kite+nuke strategy is just as good, but I expect it to be a bit slower.

Isgebind
So far I haven't really started on this one yet. The same Flail tanking technique as used on Azdaja (and perhaps other wyrms as well) can be applied here. A healer outside the party with claim won't get hit with it. However, it can still use the Wing ability, unlike Azdaja. The main benefit of this is that it won't use any Roar abilities (nor Terror), which is a hate reset and would make it hard to duo otherwise.

Fighting it normally (on paws) is a matter of survival. A pair of evasion tanks with some decent magic defense kits (Atma of a Future Fabulous is exactly that... fabulous) will not be in great danger of getting killed. The paralyze effect + aura will make it a longer fight, but that's pretty much it. Heroes NM's generally have a ton of HP, so it's gonna be long anyway.

Tachi: Fudo - day 2

I had a chance to test drive Fudo some more yesterday. I was sure that given my gear I should be able to crank out some more impressive numbers. So this time I subbed WAR and headed out to Misareaux to assist on some Cirein's and Heqets. I didn't bring food yet gain. I tossed out some kabobs the day before to make room for lanterns and forgot to buy some more.

I only started parsing a bit later on. If I filter out all mobs but Squibs I get the following:


Pretty good average Fudo damage, no? I admit, I cheated a bit by using Atma of the Griffon's Claw. That gives a 20% boost to WS damage, which is something you may use if you're planning on killing mobs with no concern for ruby lights or zerging NM's with 2hr and Sekkanokki. Otherwise RR or A&O will be better choices.

The next one is my latest record for Fudo damage.


The nice thing about this is that it's with Berzerk and Hasso, but not at full TP, without food and without BRD or COR. Guessing my PDIF to be at around 1.4, going to capped PDIF (2.25) would mean a 60% increase in damage. If my estimation of my own PDIF isn't too conservative. A similar Fudo would have the potential to do around 8k damage under more ideal circumstances.

Awesome Music Tip #5

Masamune 85!

I still can't hardly believe it, but last night I finished my lv85 Masamune. First an foremost I'd like to thank Lordapm, Kaidaa, Alexos, Doks, Appare and Oyasumi for getting me those 35 lanterns. Thanks to Auriban for setting me up. I would be short-changing some good people if I didn't mention those that helped on previous trials. So special thanks to Kingcem, Cyrille, Chaess and Xores for the VNM's and Carabosse.

It was a long night, but getting offered to finish the Masa seemed like a rare, maybe twice-in-a-lifetime offer! Being wednesday evening on Valefor, there wasn't much competition for Heqet. Mostly we just ran over and found it up unclaimed. We spread out and multi-tasked farming cheekmeat, popping Cep and camping Heqet. Doing it this way I can much better understand how people have been finishing Empyrean weapons so fast. Cirein died in about 5 minutes each time, and for whatever reason getting TH upgrades in that time was MUCH easier than a ~15 minute Carabosse fight. Admittedly, we did have two thieves.

So, I immediately go out to test the weapon. I have to say, the damage could have sucked and I'd probably still be happy. However, the damage didn't suck. I've seen what Fudo can do when properly buffed and geared, so if I metally compensate for not having attack buffs or food and BLM sub that I had forgotten to change due to excitement, then I expected to see what I did. This is my gear. Note that it's all the exact same gear I used for Gekko. As far as I know and with the exception of Kirin's Osode and STR ring, my WS set is very strong. Hachiryu Haidate is an upgrade, but the store TP on AF3 is usually necessary.


Ignore the Merman's ring, I didn't notice I had it on when I took the SS. That should obviously be a Rajas. This was the best one I could churn out in about 15 WS



Seeing as how Triple Attack is an important factor in getting big numbers out of SAM weaponskills, I am considering using Alpha and Omega instead of Razed Ruins. Alpha and Omega also has Attack, something that I will want to stack for Fudo. Unlike Gekko Fudo doesn't get a PDIF bonus, which means a big difference between high and low defense/level mobs. I didn't upload a screenshot, but I did manage a 836 damage critical hit.


I'll have to find excuses to play SAM now. Since I have RDM, THF and WAR with all red WS and WSNM's done, it may be difficult. Isgebind is an easy mob to pop and not all that hard to kill. However, for now I will go back and help others get their lv85 Empyereans done and upgrade some +2's.

Weekend update 16

I've experienced a renewed appreciation for THF recently. I've spent a lot of time on it while killing Carabosse and farming pops, so it seems natural that I'd want to gear it better. One of the three big upgradeable slots for my WS set was the head slot. I took care of that while in Attohwa recently.


Aias is likely better all-round than Hecatomb cap, though I'd still take the latter if some good upgrades become possible in the future. Special thanks to Anthx and Kingcem for tanking and blue'ing Yaanei.

Not wanting to risk bad luck I brewed Yaanei after we got blue weakness. I wasn't near a flux or martello so I lost some brew time. We looked desperately for stuff to kill, but in the end only managed a Whiro and Ironclad.


Before Yaanei we finished my Titlacuan popset which is what I needed to finish this thing:



I'm finally sitting at 24~25.5% Haste in my TP set on SAM.

We did some Misareaux Abyssea and got me 1 lantern (yay...) and some Coins off Amhuluk. That got me Raider's Culottes +2 which is met 5th +2 AF3.


I gave Shinryu another go, but I'm starting to get annoyed with that dragon. Those two bodies are pretty high in demand, so getting people to share loot with while being very greedy is kind of hard. I want to save the cruor for other Abyssea zones where you can kill more mobs with one brew. That'd mean killing Shinryu without brewing. Several stacks of Holy waters, WAR or MNK tank, a THF and at least two healers should be enough to get blue and kill it several times in one sitting. I've got more Traverser Stones than I know what to do with. Cruor on the other hand...

Samurai 4-hit: What you do when you don't have a Masamune

My Samurai's been steadily getting good gear and it really needs to get Fudo so that all of that gear matters. Until then, however, I'll have to make due with my Kikugosaku. The last bit of gear I got for SAM that's worth noting is Tactical Mantle. It brings me very close to being able to 4-hit the Kiku due to its relatively high 480 delay.

The initial impression of the mantle is one of "Holy hell, I need to sacrifice 35 Attack for that Store TP". The 35 based on the assumption that you'd normally wear an Atheling Mantle in that slot. Although PDIF is more complex than Attack/Defense, like I've said before, it's a fairly good approximation. So assuming something along the lines of 560 Attack, giving up that slot is a pretty big 6.25% of your melee damage and it doesn't end there. I'd have to give up a ring slot for Hoard Ring as well as swapping out Sword Strap for Rose.

This blog entry is me trying to figure out if it's worth the sacrifices. To achieve the needed 58 Store TP in gear (minimum). I can't even get that realistically yet, so all of this is purely academic. I'm missing +2 AF3 body and head pieces before this becomes possible. The following numbers are just meant to be an argument to inform certain gear choices. They're not intended to be precise performance indicators. Enough moping, to the chalkboard!

Going from 5 to 4 hits
This will always be a difficult thing to calculate because of Meditate and other forms of Regain. Your WS rate would theoretically be 1:4 with a 5-hit. That is one WS for every 4 melee hits. This gets lowered by Meditate and Regain, which in turn give you a bigger benefit if you're taking breaks between fights. I've parsed a 4.3 WS rate with a 6-hit build and 3.7 with a 5-hit so it's not an exact science.

Once we assume a certain WS-rate it doesn't say anything about our damage over time yet. To guage the impact over time we need to calculate "WS DPS". I quoted that because the term DPS usually applies to melee hits. Damage over time may be a better term depending on who you ask. The 1 WS hit has a static delay of 2 seconds and the rest of the melee swings have a duration that is affected by Haste and other delay reduction. Only counting gear Haste I'd be at 24% using a 5-hit set and 3% from sword strap. At perfect accuracy that's

120 delay (=2 seconds) + 4 * 480 * 0.76 * 0.97 = 1535 delay (=25.6 seconds)

Using my intended TP set for the 4-hit I'd have the same Haste, but no sword strap:

120 delay (=2 seconds) + 3 * 480 * 0.76 = 1214 delay (=20.2 seconds)

That's a 26.5% increase in WS DPS under one big assumptions that we KNOW is wrong. Namely: equal WS damage. I know that concessions need to be made in a WS set as well as the melee set. Let's forget about that for now and run the same numbers as above for a capped Haste (delay reduction) scenario to see what the difference is.

1/(120+3*480*0.2) / 1/(120+4*480*0.2) = 1.235

So there you see a 23.5% increase in WS DPS. Generalize it by averaging out the two scenarios to 25%.

WS damage sacrifices
Now think about how much weaker your melee hits and WS would have to be to not see a benefit from this. Your melee DPS will be lower from the lowered Attack and the lack of sword strap (unless capped delay reduction). Your WS DPS will be lowered by not being able to swap out the slots dedicated to Store TP: head, body, ring, back and feet. That really adds up. In STR alone it's a difference of 12, 15, 11, 5 and 8 for those slots respectively. For attack it's 24, -24, 0, 35, 15 in those same slots. Totaling 51 STR and 50 attack. The biggest sacrifice in a single slot is likely to be Snow Gorget in favor of Unkai Nodowa. Gekko base damage inside Abyssea would be something along the lines of this:

(Weapon DMG + WSC + fSTR) * fTP * cRatio =
(111 + (~250*0.83) + 19) * 1.66 * 2.25 = 1260
going down to
(111 + (~202*0.83) + 19) * 1.57 * 2.25 = 1044

That's a 17% decrease in WS damage on average (as well as over time). Not factored in is the amount of average WS damage that 3% Double Attack form Atheling adds. Each time DA procs it'll add about 64% to your WS damage, because additional hits of a WS have a PDIF of 1. 64% damage 3% of the time (not taking into account the decreasing returns of Double Attack) is about 2% damage. Lower it a bit and you'll be closer to the truth. It's enough to matter, so let's up the WS damage loss to 18.5%

Melee damage sacrifices
This is pretty straight forward. Atheling, Sword Strap and Ulthalam's ring are the sacrifices which adds up to 39 attack, 4 STR and 3% delay. Last time I checked my attack inside Abyssea was somewhere around 620 attack, though I could be wrong. I can't check since the servers are down. STR is gonna be pretty insignificant. 3% more delay is about 3% less DPS. So less damage 6.4% from attack and 3% less damage over time from extra delay is 0.937 * 0.97 = ~0.91. That's about 9% total loss of melee DPS.

Together
Adding up the two forms of DPS or averaging them (it doesn't matter in this case since we're just multiplying) would be enough to compare the two situations. If I take a damage split of 65:35 for WS:Melee I can use those numbers for "damage".

1.25 * 0.83 * 0.65 + 0.91 * 0.35 = 0.99
= about the same if not weaker
= not worth your trouble
= what a waste of time!

Conclusion
Do we really need a conclusion after that last sentence? I believe so. One thing worth mentioning is that for some odd reason I decided to ignore the regain from VV while doing the WS damage calculations for inside Abyssea where you'd almost certainly use VV for SAM. The Regain isn't as clean as a true 5-hit, but if you drop the Tactical mantle you'll get 97 TP from 4 hits which is definitely enough for 2 tics of VV to put you over the top. That means you already HAVE a 4 hit inside Abyssea without much effort. On the other hand anywhere else you would still want the true 4-hit for which this calculation is a decent guideline. In fact, you can be quite certain that if the 4-hit is not worth it inside Abyssea then it most definitely is not worth it outside (where the sacrifices are more pronounced).

The hidden benefit of a 4-hit build is the possiblity to self-SC each time you get a Triple Attack. With Apocalpyse and Alpha&Omega atmas this can be very frequently. Since using Kiku implies not having Fudo, the best you can do is Gekko > Rana which in turn means that you'd usually need less Store TP after Rana. Food for thought, I suppose.

Awesome Music Tip #4

Urd solo on SAM/DNC at 90

First let me say that I don't consider this to be some grand achievement. It's odd I feel the need to post such a disclaimer/defense before even starting the contents of this post. It's likely been around forever, but to me it feels like recently there's been an increase in the arrogance and belittling of other people's achievements in FFXI. I dare anyone to go into any sizeable linkshell with an average age of 18 or lower and saying something along the lines of "I'm having problems with X mob" and I wager there will be at least one response along the lines of "That NM is easy!".

So yes, Urd.

I failed the first time and beat it the second. I got help for the rest of the kills so there was no need to go back and fight it solo anymore. Two things that tell me a third try would be much easier. Number one, although I had high evasion rate in the fight, I now have better evasion gear and capped skill. In case I wasn't capped, I would be now. Secondly, I didn't realise until after I beat it that Dancer sub-job at 45 has access to Violent Flourish (stun). Although the accuracy of the stun doesn't seem all that high, it would have certainly helped with what I think is the second most annoying part of the solo: Stoneskin.

I'd rather Urd cure itself for more HP than what SS absorbs, because I can't get TP while hitting for 0. I was using Soboro and Urd's magic spell timer would very often be up a second or two after I broke Stoneskin and it would reapply it and in the meantime I'd have done less than 200 damage to it and worse of all, get no TP to cure myself with. The first time I fought it I WS'd whenever I coudl spare the TP, but the second time around I saved it to WS right after Stoneskin finished casting, this way I'd break it immediately and the next few attack rounds would get me that TP back. Needless to say, the speed difference between the first and second attempts was huge.

Trance was not an issue. Somehow Zephyr arrow only hit me twice during both fights. It seems like an inaccurate attack. When you see trance and start running you can easily outrun Cyclonic Turmoil. once the second TP attack (Lethe Arrow) in the series is canceled because of you being out of range you can stop running, wait for it to recover from the shock and outrun the final, and only really annoying ability: Cyclonic Turmoil. It can use it outside of trance, but there's a lot of abilities to choose from so it's not used very often. Turmoil is a full dispell and losing a fresh Seigan can be annoying. Sambas aren't a bare essential in the fight, so that's not as bad. Seigan and Third Eye, however, are very necessary. Without them you'd be hard-pressed to keep up with the damage taken. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I was not at capped evasion. I clearly remember having a few close calls before the end of the fight due to successive hits when Seigan got dispelled.

You can predict Trance, but it's clear as day once you know what the animation looks like. The point where Trance becomes the #1 most annoying thing about this fight is at low HP. You shouldn't have problems overcoming Urd's Cures and Stoneskin even with measly Soboro hits. However, at low HP it can use Trance an unlimited number of times. This was the reason I lost my first attempt. I saw it use trance a second and third time at low HP, but didn't perceive it as a threat when I went for the kill. After I blew my TP trying to self-SC and swapping to Radenotachi for the kill, I took a decent chunk of damage and had to run away from Trance. I'm not sure if Turmoil connected, but I didn't have the TP to cure myself.

On the second attempt I got it to low HP much faster due to WS'ing through Stoneskin. Since I got impatient the first time I waited longer and slowly took down the HP to around 5%-10%. It starts spamming cures pretty frequently now and here also I could have used Violent Flourish had I known about it. Once I reached that low HP I waited for it to use Trance. Assuming it was on some timer I chose to kill it quickly after outrunning Cyclonic Tumroil. I believe I also go lucky with it choosing to use several long casting spells, but I don't think that was required as long as you blow through asap after the first Trance at low HP. How low? I think anything under 10% is doable.

Grauberg the second time around (Alfard, Azdaja)

Maintenance forced our LS event back a bit, but people logged on pretty fast once servers were up so we still managed to get the NM's we set out for. Those NM's being Amphitrite, Alfard and Azdaja. The triple-A threat! We fought them in that order because it seemed that was the order of difficulty as well.

Zone Boss
Not much to be said about Melo Melo and Amphitrite. It's the same old story of people healing the mob because they're not being careful. This time we DID go for the Atma, because I thought it'd help people do weaponskills for weaknesses without needing a TP mob. It's still a risk, since if you end up doing anything OTHER than proc'ing weaknesses, it'll only get in your way. Melo Melo's atma actually sounds good, but I suspect a very low proc rate. Also, I'm secretly hoping that the damage you absorb is unadjusted by PDT and Phalanx, but that's probably too much to ask for. Some upgrade stuff dropped as well as the RDM sword.

Ningishzida + Alfard
Nothing good dropped! Ok, now that that's out of the way... The info on wiki was right. Tanking from the back guarantees that it will only use Serpentine Tail. While spectating it seemed like it would turn to face tanks everytime after Serpentine Tail. At first I thought this was built-in AI, but then when Nerve Gas went off 3 times and tanks died. I ended up tanking and another reason why it may have turned became apparent. The tail attack has a knockback which will send it running after you and in so doing turn around. So, next time we should try to position it so that tanks can back themselves into a corner while still in range and exactly behind Alfard. If turning around is indeed only caused by it running after you, then this should mean that as long as nobody else pulls hate, the risk of Nerve Gas will be minimized.


Deelgeed + Azdaja
Deelgeed has an Atma! I did not know that going in. Superior Accuracy+ will be nice when I level up WAR with my gimp G.axe skill. Azdaja lived up to its promise of being a tough sob. The plan was to have 3 lines of players like we should have had during Uleguerand fights (Pantokrator+Apademak). The front line consisted of a NIN and a MNK tank. With hate reset two tanks is the minimum. The second line consisted of a WHM, RDM and a BRD support. The final backline consisted of people to wake the second line up from Sleep + everyone else. The role of waking mages was important and it went ok-ish, but with better execution it would probably have meant the tanks survived longer. However, as it was the tanks went down due to a combination of slept support players and Doom. The Wyrm was only down to about 80%-90%. That's when two other DD's and I stepped up and attempted to tank it for the remainder.

Not too long ago I made a decent evasion setup for my Samurai. The motivation was the Urd solo, where my evasion rate was high. Followed by Lamprey Lord fights, where it was not high at all. I realised my evasion skill rating on SAM wasn't so bad, but it needed complimenting. The increasing returns of evasion support this line of thinking. This was the reason why I "for shits and giggles" decided to stack Cloak and Dagger and Siren Shadow atmas. Both have Major Evasion+. Stacked and combined with my evasion gear Azdaja missed... a LOT. I was very surprised at what I was seeing. I was subbing WAR for weaponskills, but with Third Eye I hardly took any regular hits. Of course such a thing can't be relied upon while killing Azdaja because it can dispel the Atmas. It dispelled Atmas on the tanks, but for w/e reason it never did so again.

The three melee tanked it with brave support from weakened mages all the way down to ~20% at which point I died. I HP'd and came back to find it at ~10%. At this point, despite having decent success holding it before, I decided to take it down asap. There were quite a few weakened people around and a single voke got its attention, meaning there hadn't been anyone alive on it for very long. Fanatic's drink, 2hr x2 thanks to a revitalizer did a good chunk of damage. Together with some damage from someone else (I don't recall) it died pretty fast. In the end only 3 or 4 people missed out on the kill and Atma.


The Atma off this seems off-putting at first, due to its innate self-inflicted DoT. However, looking back at the Azdaja fight itself, it seems like it could be useful here for waking people up. The major Damge taken-% is an obvious treat for its big AoE wing attack. Since all its attacks appear to be darkness based and the Dispel magic spell is also dark based, you COULD assume that the dispel effect of its baleful Roar is darkness based. If so, there are two Darkness resist Atmas available that could be stacked to resist its wing, the dispel, the sleep and doom. Before we even bother to try this we need the T3 VNM in Grauberg though.

Shinryu and more

After getting access to the Shinryu fight it took a day before I got to fight the actual thing. With a group of 6 we rotated using brews attempting for red and then blue weaknesses. We got the Atma during the second fight and a blue proc only once for the only 'big' pool. Several belts dropped, a dagger, a few capes and a scythe. I ended up with the scythe which I couldn't equip yet.


Twilight Scythe
On saturday evening I leveled DRK for the sole purpose of trying out Twilight Scythe. The last time I played DRK was in the exp alliance that took me to 85. Now I played around with endark and I was parsing equally to a NIN for the top DD's in the group using Magnus Scythe. I still had a stack of magnus stones left when I hit 90, but of course I immediately switch to Twilight. It took me a while of trying, but apparently Death can not proc with Endark up. That alone was a big disappointment. Without endark it would fire off rarely and although it's eyeballing, it certainly doesn't look like it's anywhere near 10% which was previously reported. If I had to guess, I'd say it would fire every 5th mob. That doesn't say much about the actual proc-rate though.

It's going to be very hard to determine the contribution of Death procs on an alliance's performance. That's why I'm not going to bother saying how good I think it is compared to other options, but I will say it's a good weapon for farming and EXP. However, since AoE farming is more efficient whenever it's applicable, the niche seems pretty small. A thread on FFXIAH forums showed Twilight Scythe bypassing the PDT on elementals as well as going through a PLD mob's Invincible, leading some to believe it hits like Formless Strikes. I can't imagine this being a glitch, so as a hidden effect it seems very useful. Someone else claimed it never proc'd during a Dynamis run, which seems a bit odd.

SAM progress
I've set up some goals for gearing my Samurai. There's a lot left to do, but I'll slowly get there. For example, last week Thursday I got this:

As you can see the STR text on still hasn't been fixed. Truly a glorious day, as it was the same day I got the Twilight Scythe and Apocalypse Atma. A special thanks to Kingcem and Cyrille for helping me out. I've seen it drop once out of 6 fights, but 1/1 with blue proc. Immediately after we killed Chukwa and of course PLD AF3 neck drops without any weakness proc.

With the recently finished Unkai Haidate +2, Unkai Sugemino and Ace's Sabatons, I've made some decent strides in the last two weeks. My WS set is missing 5 key pieces and a few lesser upgrades that I didn't list in this image:

Everything is what it looks like. The Moonshade earring will have Attack and TP Bonus augments, of course. The TP set looks like it'll be harder to finish although it could be done in a short time with some dedicated farming.


The cape in there is Atheling Mantle, which has double attack on it. I didn't put Hoard ring in there (because it's buyable and cheap), but it will be needed for a 5-hit at 437 delay. My progress on Masamune is still stuck at VNM's (Lamprey Lord), but I hope to get those done soon. In the process I found out a SAM can solo Urd at 90. I will make a dedicated post about that soon, as it was a fun and interesting fight.

Weekend update 11

Duelist's Chapeau +1 in the making. I hope I remember to trade the items and coins in on Sunday before JP midnight. Got Valkurm Dynamis win for some folks and fairly decent number of AF drops. It's almost like Treasure Hunter has a level correction! I'm kidding, of course. So that was a good Sunday after a GREAT Saturday. Why great?

First of all, after getting 10 merits in an AF3 farming alliance (that ended in 2 pieces only) I decided to get some people from LS to farm gold boxes in Konschat Highlands. We started out with 4 and a got a fifth for about an hour before he had to leave. Kingcem and I on DD's made short work of bugards. Jinpu is a piece of crap, but it still didn't take too long to cap amber lamps. At one point I managed a 800+ Jinpu, but this was obviously an outlier. The only negative of that farming session was that I wasted 44k EXP from being capped after getting another 10 merits. Aside from that, it was all win. We managed 4/5 on an Eve pop and 3/3 on Kukulkan, which is the only other key item I need for the full Eve set. It's a shame we only managed to get 4 people out there. We could have gotten a lot more pops with two or three more parties. I think people have more confidence in our ability to get things done as a group now that we've merged with another shell. After finally popping a zone boss last week, finishing a pop set for the Attohwa and now this I'm pretty confident myself.

On the last mega gold pyxis Kingcem won the /random for a 5% PDT Dark Ring that obviously should have been mine! After the farming I begged the guys to go check if Khalamari was up and help me kill it if it was. I still needed the helm. Unfortunately it was claimed and nearly dead. I asked if the people killing it if they needed the helm or were going for the necklace (they were 2 DNC's). I didn't get an answer right away, but then this happened:


Now my WS set is a little more awesome. The helm is not hard to get, so it's not an "OMG DROP" item, but I didn't get Abyssea add-ons until Scars came out. There's quite a few more items/mobs I need to "catch up" with.

Weekend update 10

I was home sick the last two days, which made it a particularly long weekend. I thought I'd use my time to do all kinds of things on FFXI, but I ended up watching movies while chocobo digging and doing the regular LS events. It was relaxing.

I made it a point to finally put together a magic defense set. I had several pieces already, but not an actual macro. I sacrificed my Cure3 macro for it, which is no big deal since I use Cure4 almost exclusively nowadays anyway. It's still unfinished but it's already enough to survive Citadel Buster, which I found out during last night's Ultima. I died anyway, because after the second one I got hit with a Holy2. I was riding out the hate assuming a PLD would pull it off me. They did, but only a fraction of a second too late. Below is what the set looks like now. It carries over my PDT pieces in slots where I haven't got any magic defense pieces yet.



I know Limbus mobs are now DC with the level 85 cap and that any damage on them isn't going to 'wow' or impress most people. However, it was still a shock to me to break 4000 on a Weaponskill. The blobs in SE Appolyon are weak to piercing and so Penta Thrust was always going to do well [Correction: They're not weak to piercing. The crabs are though]. Be that as it may, it was the highest damage I've ever done in a single action on any mob on any job ever. Also, I beat Kingcem's MNK! Hahahaha, I know you're reading this! Woo!


The Gekko damage was also quite pleasing. I sacrificed 2 haste and tp'd in Perle hands and feet. I believe these are pretty reasonable trade-offs with only Haste spell backing you up, but I could be wrong.

On that topic, I recently thought of how Haste often doesn't produce ANY extra benefit. Take the 2% Haste trade-off I was talking about. Let's say in pushed me from 35% down to 33% Haste, which is about a 3% DoT increase. That means that in 97% of fights I will NOT see an extra attack. If you have a single long fight, the 3% means that I'll get an extra swing every 33 hits which is guaranteed. In contrast, the STR and Attack that I gain from wearing Perle hands and feet affect my damage on EVERY melee hit. It's guaranteed benefit versus benefit in the long run. When I look at it that way I'm more willing to sacrifice small amounts of haste when we're not swimming in it. Some would call such a situation suboptimal and that it shouldn't be considered anyway. I think it's me being realistic. Yes, that does mean that Ace's helm does not universally suck.

The world after "AF3": Samurai

Version update came around 5 days ago and introduced the Empyrean Armor which everyone is referring to as AF3 (as that is what someone from the dev team called it in an interview). The moment DAT miners found the stats on these people's minds have been continually blown. I'm trying to make sense of the implications as it's now pretty clear how attainable these new pieces of armor are.

Like many people I've been spamming the Cookbook quest in Abyssea Misareaux for seals. I've gotten the base armor pieces from the Bastion (Legs) and Cruor (Head) NPC's and started the Magian trials on both. Feet base pieces come from Gold Pyxis in the zones where those jobs' other pieces are purchasable, meaning SAM feet base armor comes from Vunkerl. After about 12 or 13 repetitions of the cookbook quest (can be repeated in 3 to 4 minutes) I ended up with 3 WHM, 3 THF, 2 BST and 1 SAM. People seemed to think there are patterns, but I believe it's completely random. As a result I think SAM legs +1 are just a matter of time and perseverance. I have yet to see SAM head seals reported from a quest in Attohwa, but at least we know that's where they come form. Seals from quests are grouped into 4 jobs per quest regardless of zone and one equipment slot per Scars zone (Misa: legs, Atto: head, Vunk: feet). Killing NM's is going to give better results when doing it in a group. Jewels and such come from higher tier NM's in Scars areas, which means there's little chance of doing them solo.

Double Rainbow. What does it mean?
Well, the Unkai+1 (Samurai) pieces are good enough as is that they make new and more optimal setups possible. Both Store TP and Haste on head and leg armor pieces is something we clearly haven't had before and it makes for great TP pieces. Together with a 5 Store TP jump on the Magian weapon makes a 5-hit trivial to attain. So far I've been rocking Hachiman body and gloves, which is pretty good in low buff situations where accuracy isn't an issue.

At 464 delay you need a total of 64 Store TP to get 20 TP per hit. You can use this tool I made for other situations. Twenty is needed every swing to get 100 in 5 hits. You can check the math! Now any SAM that cares about strengthening their job will have or be working on maxing Store TP merits, which will put them at 35 Store TP from the Job Trait alone. Add a Rajas, which is almost standard issue nowadays and you're left with 24 Store TP to make up. Store TP Magian weapon now gives 10 Store TP and the head and legs Unkai+1 add up to another 10 and Brutal (which is both a good WS and TP piece) give 1 Store TP. This leaves 3 Store TP to complete the 5-hit. If you are aiming for the Unkai+2 (and don't care about the meantime) or have Usukane feet, you can skip the next part.

Completing the 5-hit
The easiest and simplest way to finish the 5-hit would be a Rose Strap, but there are other options like a Goading Belt, a pair of Ace's Sabatons, Askar Korazin, Hachiman Domaru, Hachiman Sun-ate. Some of these aren't very good at all, but I'm trying make a point. My point is that there are a lot of possible 5-hit builds depending on what's available to you. Also, don't forget to factor in how much Store TP you want to WS in. You can drop below 64 Store TP as long as you make up the difference in the 4 TP swings.

If NO gear is out of the question
When you're counting Store TP of your gear and are easily surpassing 64 because you are 1337 and have amazing gear, then I hate you! Your options to 5-hit are not limited to the Store TP Magian weapon. With Unkai+2 head/legs and Usukane body/feet you're looking at 28 Store TP from those slots alone. With another 11 you can even 5-hit a 450 delay weapon. However, if you're this decked out you would likely be interested in 5-hitting the "Occasionally Attacks Twice" Magian weapon, which is now so easy you don't even need Rajas.

How about a 437 GK? Masamune's low delay is amazing for it's melee DPS. It would be unfortunate to give up WS DPS by taking longer to build 100 TP. The same thing goes for the STR Great Katana. The crazy thing is that with the proper gear and possibly Carbonara the 81 Store TP needed to 5-hit it is actually already available. I'm going to refrain from doing the math on this extreme situation since it's likely to be refined in future updates and involves too many changes in stats which is likely to mess up the accuracy of my calculation.

Weapsonskill Damage Keitonotachi+1
A 5-hit is all well and good, but there ARE sacrifices in WS damage and accuracy and haste during the TP phase. Add to that the fact that the WS damage counterpart of Keitonotachi now has a generic boost of 10% to ALL weaponskills, then the 5-hit option for the average Samurai loses much of its shine. When fighting tough mobs the sacrifice of accuracy in giving up is costly. When fighting tough mobs while hasted by magic spells, sambas and Hasso the sacrifice of Haste on gear is even more costly. The Weaponskill damage +10% option is trivial to 6-hit, leaving room for as much accuracy and haste as you can find including the use of Pole Grip. When fighting tough mobs this weapon seems to take the lead.

Fire/STR Hyogugusarinotachi+1
It's considered the second best non-"relic" option after OAT Great Katana. I recently parsed it and it lost to a 5-hit Keito build in a capped acc low-buff situation. However, that comparisson doesn't really do it justice. A 6-hit build with this weapon (437 delay) should come at little sacrifice with the new Unkai+1 pieces.

That's all fine, but what should I pick?
Backed up with my trusty Damage Calculation spreadsheet and a hypothetical situation and guesstimations of pdif and gear stats I'd rank the easily obtainable weapons as follows:

6-hit STR Hyogugu+1 and 6-hit WS+10% Keito+1 are too close to call
Both allow for the same amount of Haste while the higher accuracy of the Keito build can let it outparse the STR weapon when you're uncapped. When your accuracy IS capped, the STR GK wins on paper.

The 5-hit Store TP Keito is the clear loser in any uncapped and buffed situation
Its sacrifice in Haste and accuracy are what do it in. Why then did my last entry said it won a parse. The short answer is: "I'm not entirely sure". The long answer is that the increased Meditate efficiency is very strong, but when plugging in my adjusted WS-Rates into my spreadsheet the difference is small but STILL in favor of the STR Great Katana. So, something in practice is different than my assumptions and estimations in the spreadsheet. I have yet to figure out exactly which factors are causing this relatively large discrepancy. I say "large" because even when messing around with my fSTR and pdif numbers the STR GK should never lose according to my own calculations. Perhaps the increased Meditate efficiency when I "discovered" it made me pay better attention to the timer as well as my gear swaps and general playstyle. This could have skewed it enough to make the GK win. I'm starting to see why people disapprove of parses as "evidence", but it's still worth confirming your hunches.

This is what the numbers vaguely look like. I'd like to add that I find any difference smaller than 2% to be too-close-to-call.

Magian Katanas in practice

I believe it's been two weeks since I finished the Lv80 STR Great Katana. Since then I haven't had the chance to go out and compare it to the Store TP Keitonotach until last friday. My expectations going into this were that the STR GK would win by a small margin. The reason for this were the broad conclusions I made after calculating DoT in my blog post a while back. There the STR GK won the contest over a 5-hit Keito because of its higher melee DoT and ability to wear Dusk Gloves while maintining a 6-hit.

The conditions were as follows. I went out to Boyahda to help Kingcem with his trial. I started with the STR GK (Hyogugusarinotachi) wearing Hachiman Domaru and Haste in all the regular places (W.Turban, Swift, Byakko's, Dusk, Fuma). After about 30 kills (4 of which I removed from the parse below) I switched to Store TP Keito and swapped out Dusk Gloves for Hachiman Kote. Target mobs were Elder Goobbues. These were the results for the STR GK:



And this was for the sTP GK:




As you can tell, the Store TP Keito won the comparisson. There are some interfering factors like the Paralyze gaze attack slowing down Kingcem or me, but I believe it's overall a fair comparisson. So why did the sTP GK win? The first thing I noticed going from 6-hit to a 5-hit was how efficiently I could use Meditate. Since there is no room for lowered Store TP in this setup, I WS in the same (albeit it slightly higher) Store TP as I melee in. Each Meditate tic is 20 TP and each swing is 20 TP. When I'm 1 Tic or Swing away from 100 TP I spam my WS macro and WS at the first possible instant. "Wouldn't this mean you could get a slower swing if you do a melee swing while wearing your WS gear?". Good point! However, think about it this way. The extra 20 TP you have left over now that you didn't wait for a visual confirmation of 100% TP is worth one swing, which takes much longer than the bit of time you may or may not have sacrificed by swapping in your WS gear before reaching 100% TP. So, it's a net gain as far as I'm concerned. In addition to the increased Meditate efficiency, there is also the benefit of higher WS rate. Look at the Kparser performance tabs and you'll see the balance of Melee and WS DPS is shifted in favor of WS on the 5-hit build by "a lot". This is pretty obvious considering you need 1 less swing to WS.

This farming level of mobs is not the typical scenario where you'll find yourself worrying about DoT. We lacked any magic haste and I didnt' use Hasso at all since we were both tanking so much and had no healer. The sacrifice in Haste would weigh much heavier if we had other forms of Haste. This is another reason why the 5-hit build gets a boost. Since my average attack damage was around 111, one can not argue that my pdif was capped and that the STR GK's DoT suffered because of it.

The most important thing this experiment taught me was that I completely underestimated the effect of a 5-hit on WS rate. It's not just one less swing, it's also a considerable boost in Meditate efficiency. The most important question this experiment raises is: At what point is the 3% Haste sacrifice enough to make the STR GK take the lead.

An interesting thing I discovered was that Store TP affected my Double Attack procs on WS. Apparently this has been known for a long time, but I just never realised it. With 68 Store TP during WS I got a 22 TP return after a WS where Double Attack proc'd. With 68 Store TP my WS return is 20.4. Add to that an extra attack at 68 TP it's 1.6 added for a total of exactly 22.0 TP after WS.


Now if you were able to play perfectly, you could swap out gear pieces so that you are left with 60 Store TP total and still maintain a 5-hit, unfortunately it's not enough to simply remove Hachiman Kote, as you only have room to remove 4 sTP total, because

(100 - 22.0)/4 = 19.5

for which you still need 60 Store TP to achieve. Considering the relative infrequency of DA procs I'm not going to try and make such a situational gear-set. WS rate is THE determining factor for a SAM DoT calculation. Since Meditate influences this and its effect on WS rate is also dependant on what your WS rate was like BEFORE considering it, it's a difficult thing to account for. I'd like to repeat this comparisson in a situation with less down time and more buffs to see if the STR GK does indeed catch up and/or beat the 5-hit build.

Great Katana options

Some people in the FFXI community have put a lot of work in trying to figure out all the math behind damage calculations. Some of it is over my head, so I keep to my own simplified logic which I then try to rhyme with what others are saying. Looking for the most ideal Great Katana to replace Hagun for my SAM, I tried to rely on my own formula.

DoT =
(WS_Rate * Average_Melee_Damage + ACC_Adjusted_Average_WS_Damage) /
(Actual_Delay * WS_Rate/Melee_ACC) + 2

Where WS_Rate is how many melee attacks are performed for each WS. This, is basically the make or break factor in my calculations. Although I'm confident that my estimation fits my personal situation (frequency of meditate usage and efficiency of TP usage), it may require some adjusting as I'll discuss later.

The idea behind the above formula is adding the melee damage and WS damage together in proportion to the WS_Rate and divide it by the time it takes per WS in seconds. You may notice the constant number 2 in there. From recording multiple WS and counting melee swings and the time it took, I've concluded that WS and ability delays are both approximately 120 delay or 2 seconds long.

The ACC_Adjusted_Average_WS_Damage may also require some explanation. Basically, in my formula I calculate the expected average WS damage for when all hits connect. Multiplying this value by your WS accuracy rate accounts for missed hits, or in case of single hit weaponskills, a complete miss. This way the formula also applies to other weapon types and weaponskills. The WS accuracy rate is also modified by an accuracy bonus which applies to Kasha, Gekko and other weaponskills. In this case I added 50% acc rate and capped the total value at 95%. This is based on info from this BG thread.

Using the WS_Rate and dividing it by the melee accuracy rate I come up with the average number of attack rounds needed per WS (not rounded). The Actual_Delay is the weapon's delay adjusted with the Haste stat.


To come up with Average_Melee_Damage I used the following.

(Base_damage + fSTR) * (Average_PDIF + MIN(1, 3 - Average_PDIF) * Crit_rate)

The contribution of critical hits to your average damage is dependant on your average PDIF. Normally you'd add 1 to your PDIF for a critical hit, but when your PDIF is 2 or higher the actual contribution is reduced since PDIF is capped at about 3. That explains the MIN function. The question of the origin of my fSTR and PDIF numbers can be answered by: I used estimates from parsed fights on Seaboard Vultures. So, it's not precise like some other people would prefer, but it's good enough for my own ends.

For average WS damage.

(WS_Base_Damage * fTP + WS_Base_Damage * (Additional_WS_hits + Multi_Attack_Rate)) * (Actual_WS_PDIF + MIN(1, 3-Actual_WS_PDIF) * WS_Crit_Rate) * WS_Damage_Bonus

Where

WS_Base_Damage = Base_damage + WS_fSTR + WSC

and

Actual_WS_PDIF = MIN(2.7, PDIF_During_WS * WS_PDIF_Bonus)

Since Gekko can't crit naturally (i.e. without Sneak Attack) the WS_Crit_Rate is going to be 0 in all my comparissons. I added it for sake of completeness. I split up the formula to make it more readable, but I fear it may still be a bit confusing. I multiply the base WS damage by fTP for the first hit and add it again for all expected additional hits, which also includes Double and Triple Attack procs. The WS_PDIF_Bonus is the 2x multiplier for Tachi Gekko and 1.5 for Kasha. Other weaponskills also have this property.

WS_Damage_Bonus represents the boost from Overwhelm and other gear like the AMK hat. One has to take into consideration whether or not the bonus from the Kasha weapon, Overwhelm and other gear is in fact the same stat. If they are not, then the effects would be compounded. However, I assumed for this example that they are in fact all the same stat and so can be added up respectively.

Even though I got PDIF, accuracy and fSTR estimates from parses, I still needed to estimate the different values for the same variables for when I change gear in between the different setups I want to compare. For accuracy this is not much of an issue, but for PDIF and fSTR I used some creative estimates.

Haste is based on 50% Hasso usage and Haste spell. The more Haste present, the heavier any haste sacrifice from gear will weigh.

Last, but certainly not least. Calculating WS_Rate for different setups and weapons. I had a baseline of 4.4 WS_Rate from my parses. This obviously includes Meditate usage. I needed a way to calculate new values for WS_Rate for the different weapons and gearsets. This is probably the most questionable part of my DoT formula.

WS_Rate = Hits_to_WS / Avg_Attacks_per_round - 0.4

This approximates my measured WS_Rate given my 6-hit Hagun setup. Hits_to_WS for a 6-hit is 5, because you get TP from your WS. Subtracting 0.4 to account for Meditate is going to be skewed if your WS frequency goes very high or very low. The higher it is the less Meditate contributes and vice versa.

Avg_Attacks_per_round is what the name implies. However, care needs to be taken when dealing with both double, triple and "Occasionally attacks" weapon properties. I didn't automate this in the spreadsheet I used and did it by hand for the OAT Magian weapon.

And now for what you've all been waiting for!


The percentage score at the bottom of each column is the DoT relative to the DoT of teh Hagun 6-hit build I'm currently using. All the variable names on the left should be easy to pair up with the names I used in this post.

Notice how both the Keitonotachi weapon options perform worse than Hagun with my gear selection. The Kasha damage obviously loses quite badly given the low PDIF I had on birds. Level correction plays a big role here. On low level mobs where my PDIF could easily be above the 1.35 needed to cap it during WS, the Kasha damage weapon would outperform the Hagun build.

The 5-hit build's sacrifice in Haste and accuracy weakens it considerably. Since this is just for myself I didn't bother doing the numbers for a build including Usukane. It's worth noting here that this setup too will beat Hagun when accuracy is capped. When considering zergs, then the Haste sacrifice become more costly and would make this an unattractive option.

Keeping Hauby and Dusk Gloves on, the 5 Store TP on the Keito can make for a 6-hit build with the same gear as my current Hagun build, but with a Sword Strap. This plus the Strength+Attack Magian G.Katana seem very close. This is the reason why I'm trying to do both of them.

If you have Usukane body and feet pieces and managed to get your hands on 5 more Store TP from Goading belt or something else, then you could 5-hit the OAT weapon and it would become much stronger than all the other options.

I realise this formula isn't mechanical enough to be completely accurate. I honestly don't know how to factor in Zanshin or if I should at all. I chose not to, because that's what makes the most sense to me right now. Another unknown is how Double Attack acts during weaponskills (some claim it can only proc on the first two hits). Having narrowed down my choice to two weapons and generally knowing which is better in which situation, I'm not bothered with being more precise than this. Still, if you see any mistakes or errors in logic, please let me know.

Grinding the new level cap

I'm now a happy lv. 80 Redmage. I'm not sure how many parties it took, but regardless it wasn't as bad as I expected. I think RDM gets a lot from hitting 80 as SCH sub becomes interesting and also the added Enhancing Magic Skill makes Phalanx stronger. I haven't played around much with Stone and Water4 nukes, but I'm looking forward to finally breaking 1.000 damage with a nuke on RDM.

Also, I leveled my SAM up to 77 and was glad to do very well in all parties I joined. I'm using a regular 6-hit build with Hagun and it was amazing to see me leading so many of the parses. I don't know if it's players skill or knowledge, but never seeing myself as a DD player I was pleasantly surprised. The last party on SAM was a record setter. Previously the highest chain I ever got in an EXP pt was ~83. That party had a single Ridill Warrior doing almost all the damage. I was on RDM at the time. All other parties just didn't kill fast enough or sponged up so much MP that the healer had to rest and the chain broke. In this party we had 3 DD's all doing their fair share of damage. We also had a Dancer with fully meritted Haste Samba which made for some pretty fast swinging stacked with Hasso and Marches. A Scholar and a Bard rounded out the party. I can only imagine the speed at which we'd be killing if we had Haste spell on us. I'm sure the Monks would have torn things up even more. And of course, I would have too. I lead that parse of that party with 31% of total damage with the only other DD that was there for the same duration (a MNK) doing 24%.


I noticed I'm still approximately 5% below accuracy cap while fighting birds in Misareaux at level 76 eating Marinara Pizza. The true acc gap is larger due to Zanshin. I bought a Fowling Earring and am considering other pieces to make up for this. However, the most obvious improvements would be a HQ Haubergeon and Usukane feet. I'm gonna postpone both of those things for the time being as I don't see myself playing SAM a lot despite really enjoying it.

An interesting bit from the parser was my WS rate. I did a WS for every 4,37 melee hits. The usage of Meditate is what puts this number below the 5 you would expect from a 6-hit build. The two gear pieces that enhance Meditate have been a great improvement in my opinion. I can usually get 2 weaponskills off before Meditate wears off which results in 3 weaponskills in quick succession. Samurai is a very strong job. I realise this more and more the more I play it.

Weapon of choice

The recent 'epic' update that raised the level cap also introduced new weapons up to level 80. My first impression after parsing the list of new items is that armor pieces aren't being eclipsed as much as weapons are. I like the idea of working for a strong weapon through the Magian trials. SE tried to make half-decent craftable alternatives through Synergy as well as numerous RA/EX weapons with unique stats. We don't know where all these come from yet, so only time will tell how realistic obtaining them is.

I personally am still only persuing one Magian trial path. That of the PDT sword. Some of the requirements were lowered and the path itself extends all the way up to a 8% PDT Samshir at level 80. Since PDT is a stat that scales so well I'll keep at it. Thanks to an extremely long sandstorm a pair of friendly Monks that I could level synch to, I managed to make some good progress after putting the trial on the backburner for a while.


However, this sword is purely for my own personal obsession with PDT. It probably won't see much application outside of unimportant melee solos. What about Samurai? People say Hagun at level 80 compared to other weapons comes up short. By how much? It's hard to quantify these things without making certain assumptions about your stats and the mob you're fighting. I wanted to compare Hagun to Masamune to see how big the gap was. When I reached the important component of weaponskill damage I made the following equation:

Hagun WS = Masamune WS
75+fSTR+WSC * 1.875 * P-Dif = 97+fSTR+WSC * 1.5625 * P-Dif

So basically asking: "when are the WS damages of Hagun and Masamune equal?"

p-dif is the same on both sides and the difference in fTP can be represented simpler. So you get:

75+fSTR+WSC * 1.2 = 97+fSTR+WSC
becomes
90 + 1.2 fSTR + 1.2 WSC = 97+fSTR+WSC
0.2 fSTR + 0.2 WSC = 7
fSTR+WSC = 35

Masamune and Hagun WS damage will be the same when fSTR together with secondary modifiers add up to 35. The moment it adds up to MORE than 35, hagun actually wins. So, when stacking fSTR you're always going to have at least +4 fSTR when you're at the same STR as mob VIT. So in a worst case scenario you need WSC to add up to 31.

With level correction you get 0.83 x mods = 31 => mods = 37.3 STR

With a 75% STR mod, you only need around 50 STR to reach this goal. Considering you can do a Sneak Attack+Gekko to a Sky god for over 1K damage, that means that even on high level mobs (assuming p-dif of 3) fSTR+WSC can add up to more than 100. Base damage on a weapon seems to play a much smaller part in a Samurai's weaponskill damage than I expected.

Yesterday I obtained this beauty:

Its effect on fTP makes Hagun's WS boost slightly smaller relative to that of any other weapon at 100 TP (18.7% instead of 20%), but still puts Hagun's WS damage higher than that of Masamune's when you can stack a lot of STR. In turn Masamune's damage on regular melee hits as well as its lower delay makes up for its 'likely' lower WS damage.

Hagun will eventually be fully eclipsed, but until the next update it's still a strong competitor.

The sky's the limit

As you can see from the image, I've upgraded from Byakko pants to actually wearing Byakko AS pants. We did some sky gods with WoA and I got myself a pair of Suzy Sune-ate and Seiryu's Kote, but more importantly W.hands. I've been wanting these for drains and a new tier of Bio damage since I haven't bothered getting any dark skill gear other than Glamor Jupon. For when I finally finish DRK these will be part of a relatively strong dark magic build along with a torque, AF head and relic legs.

I got to go SAM/THF to sky. Along with 3 other melee DD's of which 2 others were SAM we did the vast majority of damage with BLM's not coming very close at all. Of all the pops there were only two fights where I was competitive. One fight I died and on one Byakko I was paralyzed for quite some time. The fights were very short and I believe none lasted more than 5 minutes. It was a race to fire off as many WS's as we could before the damned NM's were dead. I think the most I got off on any fight was 4 and that's WITH sekkanoki opening and a fresh meditate. With a melee accuracy of usually 70%+ that should give you a good indication of how fast they were dying. Here's a parse of a Seiryu.


I was quite annoyed at my WS damage being low. Since the fights were mostly around 4 minutes I could have waited for the SA timer to be up for about 3 WS. I didn't do this since the mob's were turning to and fro leaving a lot of chances for screwing up. Instead I split TA and SA and even Solo WS'd a few. I think it would have improved my overall damage if I had waited for SA timer more often. In this fight Fuurinpuu got pretty high with his damage on BLM, but most of the other parses show BLM's at around 5-7% total damage. I was using Kasha for the Paralyze, but looking back that may not have been the best decision. According to some testing Gekko gets a higher Attack boost than Kasha.

I still have some things to finish on SAM to improve my WS damage:

• Snow Gorget
• Alky's for Great Katana
  
• Triumph Earring
  
• Kirin's Osode
• Balm Sachet
• Smilodon+1 for Great Katana
  
• Overwhelm upgrade 4 and 5

I expect a HQ Haubergeon will benefit me more overall, so I'm not sure about all of these yet. I don't own any of the add-ons so I don't have the augmented gear pieces. If I did I would probably make a nice WS headpiece to add to the above list of upgrades.