Wise Strap

[Daiiawn]

As someone who in the past has had a near perfectly geared blm, it pains me when i see blms who have signifigantly better gear than me, yet also go with the wise strap.

So just to clarify to anyone using or thinking of using one (and they arnt cheap, they are around 500k on my server). Unless you are going for that one epeen nuke to go in a sig, you are far better off NOT using wise strap.

Why you ask?

A Magic Critical appears to be a random boost to nuke damage independent of day/weather bonuses. The effect seems to be a bonus of +10 MAB. By default, a player has a 0% chance of magic critical.

Wise strap gives you mag crit hit rate +3%. That is 3% chance of getting +10mab on one nuke. This averages out to 0.3mab per nuke. The 2 int on buggard+1 will by a very long way surpass the average boost you get from wise strap.

So in short, gear wisely, ditch the wise strap!

[Monkeynutz]

Buggard strap +1 has 1 INT. Your point still stands, but on slightly weaker footing since people will usually be wearing Goetia gloves +1/2 that enhance magic critical damage a bit further and perhaps some other gear that might pull the .3MAB on average up a bit higher. I'd imagine in the long run the difference wouldn't be substantial or anything. There are so few choices for straps it's really a matter of picking the least mediocre thing. Buggard +1 makes the most sense, but some people might think wise is more fun or something. Given that they're losing out on 1 INT, who really cares?

[Daiiawn]

I had actually overlooked af3+2 hands, but its unlikely they would pull the damage up alone to compete with the 1 int (id been away from the game for a while, so forgot that blm actually got royally screwed when it came to int on strap <,<).

Ive not been able to find an actual number for the increase on +2 hands, only the +1 (which is +3%). Which is far to low to make a difference when you are talking about critting 3/100 nukes (it would be an additional 0.09% damage per nuke on average).

As for the other gear, absolutly non of the other stuff that increases mcrit damage would ever be worth using over alternative gear (again, unless you were going for that one epeen nuke for a sig)

It might be fun to have the mcrit stuff as i mentioned for that one big "Epeen" nuke. But far to many blms are under the impression that it is the best strap and that using anything else is foolish, which is not the case. Some people think gearing for dex/str/eva in a tp set rather than haste is more fun, doesnt make them right or good at gearing their job!

Its also worth noting that in abys mcrit is going to be even worse than it is outside of abys because mab gives diminishing returns and the crit is straight up mab. (That is assuming you have some + mab atma(s) on, otherwise it will be just the same)

[Autymn]

The wise strap is good, like a lot of things in FFXI, if you stack up what it gives. 3% haste isn't gonna do much, but 25% does a lot. At the moment I have magic crit +19% (Wise strap[3], Selenian Cap[10], Goetia Gloves+1[3] and Hecate's earring[3]) which gives me a +23 on my crits (10 base, 10 for the tatsumaki sitagoromo and 3 for the Goetia Gloves +1).
math time, let's say I'm casting a spell that usually lands for 2k damage

2000*100=200,000 - this is what i'd be doing normally over 100 castings

2000*81= 162,000 - what i'd do the 81% of the time I don't crit.
2000*1.23= 2460 - how much damage a crit would do
2460*19= 46740 - what I do the 19% of the time I do crit
162,000+46740= 208740 - how much damage I'd do over 100 castings

208,740/200,000= 1.0437 - how much extra damage I'm doing, or roughly +4 MAB
Now admittedly that's a lot of gear to get +4MAB, but most of this gear has other nuking stuff on it. So once I get a piece of gear that replaces one of their slots that has more than 4MAb on it this becomes pointless, but until then its better in the long run.

I've done a lot of testing and found MAB heavily outweighs INT at the higher levels unless you're getting a butt load of INT (like with the MM atma), so it'd take a LOT of int to outweigh 4 MAB.

Again, this is only if you stack it heavily. The Blitz ring is a joke for being 1% haste, but every melee has a haste set.

[rog]

The wise strap is good, like a lot of things in FFXI, if you stack up what it gives. 3% haste isn't gonna do much, but 25% does a lot. At the moment I have magic crit +19% (Wise strap[3], Selenian Cap[10], Goetia Gloves+1[3] and Hecate's earring[3]) which gives me a +23 on my crits (10 base, 10 for the tatsumaki sitagoromo and 3 for the Goetia Gloves +1).
math time, let's say I'm casting a spell that usually lands for 2k damage

2000*100=200,000 - this is what i'd be doing normally over 100 castings

2000*81= 162,000 - what i'd do the 81% of the time I don't crit.
2000*1.23= 2460 - how much damage a crit would do
2460*19= 46740 - what I do the 19% of the time I do crit
162,000+46740= 208740 - how much damage I'd do over 100 castings

208,740/200,000= 1.0437 - how much extra damage I'm doing, or roughly +4 MAB
Now admittedly that's a lot of gear to get +4MAB, but most of this gear has other nuking stuff on it. So once I get a piece of gear that replaces one of their slots that has more than 4MAb on it this becomes pointless, but until then its better in the long run.

I've done a lot of testing and found MAB heavily outweighs INT at the higher levels unless you're getting a butt load of INT (like with the MM atma), so it'd take a LOT of int to outweigh 4 MAB.

Again, this is only if you stack it heavily. The Blitz ring is a joke for being 1% haste, but every melee has a haste set.

No, you're and idiot. Stacking mcrit does not make it more effective. In fact it makes it less effective.

You have no idea how int/mab work either. The more of each you have, the less you get from adding more. The difference is huge for mab, and very small for int. 8 int will always beat 4 mab, and if your mab is high enough, 7 int can beat it.

[Nacht]

2000*1.23= 2460 - how much damage a crit would do

No. Crit adds MAB, which you already have a lot of. So, assume you have 130 MAB in gear+atma, which is not unreasonable, and makes the math easy. You're only getting a multipler of (230+23)/230, or 1.1 multipler on your crits.

In general, gearing for Int and MAB far outweighs Crit. Magic Crits are a bonus that should rarely ever factor into gear choices.

8 int will always beat 4 mab, and if your mab is high enough, 7 int can beat it.

Correct. Quoting for emhpasis.

[Autymn]

I did some math and you are right, I had INT/MAB worked out all wrong. I am curious what your set up is, or what ratio of INT to MAB you go for.

[Mojo]

Ideal nuking set only involves Goetia Gloves +2 (in regards to any magic crit damage modifiers.) This results in crits going from +10 MAB > +13 MAB. Wise Strap increases the occurrence of this by 3%. So the effective gains are, under ideal conditions, (13 MAB)*(0.03) = +0.39 MAB. 1 INT is still better than 0.39 MAB in any circumstance. There is an atma (Atma of the Impregnable Tower, which you shouldn't be using under any circumstance) that caps magical crit damage at +30 MAB. If you had this, then it would effectively add (30 MAB)*(0.03) = 0.9 MAB. In this case, Wise Strap would be better. However, you would be giving up on either 50 INT, 50 MAB, or 30 MAB/30 ice potency, which is clearly a tremendously stupid thing to ever do.

[Mojo]

Also, as far as the 'big epeen' nuke goes, it's still better to just use Bugard Strap +1 cause you're epeen nuke will be bigger when you do end up critting.

[Autymn]

correct me if I'm wrong, because I am here to learn. At the moment my gear set up gives me +4.37 MAB over time from crits (23 MAB*.19) Lets say I replace the wise strap with the Buggard Strap (23*.16) that gives me 3.68 MAB over time.
Edit
is 2 INT better than the .69 MAB it replaces?

Most likely, nvm.