Ternary Flourish uses: Anyone found one?

[autobot]

Just curious if anyone has found an actual use for this glorious new job ability we received yesterday.

I myself tried it on a normal hit just to die a little on the inside.

I then tried it with dancing edge (knowing it only applies to the first hit) also to notice absolutely no difference in damage.

Anyone try this with Sharkbite or any of the other 1 hit weapon skills to see if it does anything? i haven't bothered yet as i don't think i can take anymore let down.

Post some numbers if you have anything worth mentioning.

[Anethia]

My opinion from testing it on the test server and yesterday........ Total garbage. Don't bother using this waste of finishing moves. Your better off saving them for a climactic flourish or better yet pyrrhic kleos > reverse flourish > evisceration.

[autobot]

That's what i figured, but i thought maybe since more people have access to it now someone might have found something worth using it for.

I can't believe after all the negative comments received for this ability that they didn't at least lower the timer.

[Anza]

I can't believe after all the negative comments received for this ability that they didn't at least lower the timer.

That's actually doing DNCs who don't know any better a favor, saving them from wasting more finishing moves!

[Asymptotic]

I used it once to see the animation.
It's pretty, white and greenish.

[Vortex]

Nope, it pretty much joined aspir samba in the forgotten abyss of useless JAs.

[Byrth]

I used it once to see the animation.
It's pretty, white and greenish.

Honestly, I haven't even used it on the real servers.

[Asymptotic]

Honestly, I haven't even used it on the real servers.


I used it in Ru'lude gardens. :D

[Shibayama]

The fact that they pretty much said "Guys just trust the devs! We might be adding situational gear/Job weaponskills that would make it better!" means that we pretty much have nothing new to play with until December or so when the next update comes around.

I don't understand why you would give us a useless ability and then say "oh it might be good in afew months if you really wanna work for it guys!" New abilities should not be garbage until you can get AF2+2 or whatever...

[Soranika]

I'm still pretty new to DNC but I only touched Striking flourish twice... Still don't know what it was meant for. Same with Ternary. Though... there was this one DNC in my ls who decided to use while we were farming on Sobek, but to be fair, I don't think she play on DNC often.

[Serei]

Nope, it pretty much joined aspir samba in the forgotten abyss of useless JAs.

^^^ I have to agree with this.. what the dev were thinking when they gave us this ability i dont want to know. I dont see much use for this one, and to be honest i dont see myself ever using it.

[VZX]

Is the maximal hit on a WS round still 8-hit?
Then the only time this JA would be "useful" is when
- doing Pyrrhic Kleos
- Not DWing and doing Evisceration or Dancing Edge.

Why do you force triple attack on WS when the number of hit exceed the maximum number allowed in a WS?

[Byrth]

Triple Attacks only add 2 hits, so you're technically not exceeding the hits/round cap on Evisc and Dancing Edge just by using Ternary. That said, if your offhand procs a DA or TA you lose all of those hits.

But yeah, the weaponskill is worthless. It's good for WSs with low fTP and high mods, but we don't have any with low enough fTP or high enough mods to warrant it.

[Bayohne]

As we have explained before, we hope you understand that Ternary Flourish was implemented with future growth in mind. We plan on strengthening this ability through equipment and merits, and we appreciate your patience as we do so.

We plan on adjusting all jobs, but our highest priorities right now are adjusting puppetmaster, corsair, scholar, dragoon, and warrior’s firepower. We will be working on these job adjustments in order of priority.

In response to a comment asking for Charis Casaque (+1 and +2) to apply to Ternary Flourish as well... if Charis Casaque (+1 and +2) also increased the effects of Ternary Flourish, they would be too powerful as gear items, so we do not plan on implementing those adjustments.

Also, Flourish-type abilities are not separated by rank or effectiveness, but are separated so that they are useful in different situations, so even if an item were to increase the effects of Ternary Flourish, the effects would not be exactly the same as "increasing the effects of Striking Flourish."

Please continue to offer up your feedback on how you want dancer to shine and we will use them as reference points when we think of support abilities for dancers.

[Shibayama]

So more proof that these forums are pointless and that the devs know best...

Ternary flourish should not have been implimented period, especially if it wasn't ready. Last I checked, people don't like playing with things that aren't finished SE...

Also this whole "Well pup, cor, sch, drg and war are next on our list of updates so sit tight for however long until we get to you guys" thing... 15 of the other jobs who need balancing and purpose just got the shaft next update basically?

And guys... please... no... no ternary flourish merits - Nobody is going to want to merit a useless ability to make it passable! Waltz potency and timers, Samba effect, Regain, ANYTHING but continuing on with this line of thought. Giving us Ternary merits would only be further proof that these forums are only a way for the devs to give us their plans, not to actually have job direction aided by player feedback.

Reading the suggestion post forums should be enough proof that "enhancing ternary flourish" is last on our list - Please pass along the "Dancer Suggestions Round II" Thread to the devs because *that* is the type of direction dnc needs to go in.

[Byrth]

Flourishes I - Animated, Desperate, and Violent Flourishes - Utility Flourishes that you use when you want their effects, but in very different situations. Each has a place, though Desperate's place is fairly obscure.

Flourishes II - Reverse, Wild, and Building Flourish - Weaponskill enhancing/utility flourishes. All of these flourishes are designed to be combined with weaponskills, which means you use them all in approximately the same situation. Because of this, Reverse is really the only one that gets any play. Building is somewhat unique, in that you can store it up (1 minute duration), but ultimately it delays your next Reverse usage anyway.

Flourishes III - Climactic, Striking, and Ternary Flourish - Weaponskill damage enhancing flourishes. If any of these are worth using, you're only going to use the best one, and you're going to use it whenever you can. They're useful in exactly the same situations as each other... when you're doing a weaponskill and you want it to do more damage.


Current winner in the Flourishes III category is either Climactic (for Rudra's users) or nothing (for non-Rudra's users). In order for Ternary to be useful, it has to either beat Climactic (almost twice as often) or nothing. There's essentially no way that will happen, unless you do something totally broken with it. Adding extra attack rounds to weaponskills just isn't a very powerful mechanism for dagger users, because our weaponskills start with such high fTP.

[Alkalinehoe]

Except that Ternary Flourish and Striking Flourish are not useful in any situation, so they are in fact, not situational. Please tell the devs that if they want us to use them give them other effects than adding an extra hit or two because at this current state even with enhancing gear (Striking Flourish), they are absolutely worthless.

[Shibayama]

Honestly if they're going to keep coming back here and saying "it'll be fixed somehow at an undisclosed point in the future" it just makes me think that they personally have no idea what to do with it, and to be honest giving us an ability that has been, since its testing on the test server, has been *universally accepted as useless* and told to "just be patient" is unnacceptable. By now we should be told exactly what these magical plans are to make ternary flourish better besides "gear and merits". And either way, as people have pointed out, that will more than likely be a damage increase which makes climactic and striking useless as a result. Only one will be used unless ternary like... adds a dispel effect to our next weaponskill or something which seems like a dumb thing to do period.

We should not be at the point of game development where things that will be fixed later are being added as major content. Did the devs not learn from hunt registries, socketing and evoliths? Thats *all* content that was not well thought out and was useless from the get-go, but it was implimented not because it added anything period to the game, but because somebody had an idea they really liked and it got greenlighted. Now there's closer feedback than ever from the playerbase actively telling you what our problems in the current game are and we're told "nah... we wanna do this ternary thing instead guys - just wait." Really?

Long story short, like the content mentioned above, ternary flourish is useless content that added nothing but because somebody up there thinks its a good idea, its the area of focus for dnc to the point where an *incomplete concept* was implemented. It adds nothing to dancer in the current situation and making it do more damage wont do anything to remedy that. Lets pass that info on then.

[Byrth]

I'm pretty afraid of their "strengthening through merits." It looks like we can already set one of our neo-merits aside as worthless.

[Ophannus]

When you say "We plan on adjusting all jobs, but our highest priorities right now are adjusting puppetmaster, corsair, scholar, dragoon, and warrior’s firepower. " do you mean the firepower of:corsair,puppetmaster,dragoon,scholar and warrior" or is the firepower of warrior being adjusted?

[Byrth]

It's being adjusted downwards, yeah. Restraint nerf!

[autobot]

i dont know if i should be excited that my post got replied to or completely infuriated because yet again the player base has been completely ignored.

first we get lied to when we were promised more updates over a period of time, that lasted what, 2 months? Which if this was still happening the comment about this job and that job getting priority wouldnt be a complete slap in the face to every other job in the game because we wouldnt be waiting 8-12 months for "our job" to get looked at. Give us more updates regularly at least monthly and this wouldn't be such a problem.

then we constantly get asked for feedback only to have every bit of feedback ignored. not only have we provided endless ideas for what WE want to see but we have commented on this worthless ability since the day it was revealed to us. So i posted this thread just for hopes that somewhere for something this ability would be worth using, but i think as the player base can see we all got our answer straight from the dev team, no this ability has absolutely no use. Will it ever? possibly but most likely at the cost of making something else worthless. and once its made "useful" it will be at the expense of inventory and/or merits. i dont see any other job needing gear to make an ability worth using, though i could be wrong im too angry to give it much thought.

move past this horrible ability. seriously. chalk it up to another SE mistake and lets move forward. new abilities and better enhancements with merits (for useful stuff) please.

[Patrik]

When you say "We plan on adjusting all jobs, but our highest priorities right now are adjusting puppetmaster, corsair, scholar, dragoon, and warrior’s firepower. " do you mean the firepower of:corsair,puppetmaster,dragoon,scholar and warrior" or is the firepower of warrior being adjusted?

warrior's. it was the only one with a 's, so firepower would be referring to that

[Selzak]

At least they come in to tell you that they don't care what you're saying. Also, at least your job doesn't suck and you're irritated by useless abilities (see DRK forum).

I guess SAMs better pack up since SCH seems like SE's new favorite job. I understand prioritizing adjustments, but is SCH really higher on that list than PUP and COR? Is DRG higher than PLD and DRK?

After 10 years of utterly failing to balance the jobs, you'd figure they might be open to suggestions and not be so stubborn.

[Ophannus]

The grammar is ambiguous. the 's could be collective of everything preceding it due to the commas. The 'and warrior' could mean warrior is seperate from the preceding jobs, or it could just be that it was the last noun in the sentence and thus it gets an 'and' and not another comma. But it had both a comma and an 'and'. Just because only Warrior had a 's doesn't man it would be the only one with possession. "I'm going to Jason, Danny and Brian's party." In this case you don't need a possessive 's for all the names just the 'and' and a 's on the final noun means it's possessive for all the preceding nouns, unless my grammarology is failing me.

[autobot]

i've seen the other forums. and my comment about their request for feedback and our responses is across the board on all jobs. we get ignored, and we get ignored and....we get ignored. i agree with the statement that they already have decided on what they are going to do regardless of our feedback.

they just need to start being straight forward with us and cut the crap. stop asking for feedback, stop asking for suggestions and stop giving us false hope that we make a difference.

[Hashmalum]

As we have explained before, we hope you understand that Ternary Flourish was implemented with future growth in mind. We plan on strengthening this ability through equipment and merits, and we appreciate your patience as we do so.Ok, I admit that I'm not a DNC, but as something that yields insight into how the dev team does its job, this was not a statement that could go ignored, because it's greatly at odds with how the game is actually played. With player inventory constantly as full as it is, and with merits having a category cap, this approach to ability balance just doesn't work. When people see a piece of equipment that enhances some ability that's already been written off as useless, they're less likely to say, "Oh, Ternary Flourish might be good for something now!" and more likely to say, "LOL! /toss" and throw the item in the same mental garbage bin as the ability it enhances. Likewise when people see a merit category for a useless ability, they'll simply mentally narrow down their list of choices by one. The cap makes merit categories a scarce resource and people will not throw them away on sub-optimal choices. Even if by some fluke miraculous event the dev team manages to make a weak ability useful in this fashion, it's still likely to be ignored in favor of abilities that were worth using from the get-go, without an inventory and merit point tax. Bayohne, please tell the dev team these things, because I dread the thought of this same mentality being applied to a job that I actually care about. Thank you.

[Babekeke]

Ternary flourish should not have been implimented period, especially if it wasn't ready. Last I checked, people don't like playing with things that aren't finished SE...

It worked for ff14.... oh... wait, no.

[Keyln]

At least they come in to tell you that they don't care what you're saying. Also, at least your job doesn't suck and you're irritated by useless abilities (see DRK forum).

I guess SAMs better pack up since SCH seems like SE's new favorite job. I understand prioritizing adjustments, but is SCH really higher on that list than PUP and COR? Is DRG higher than PLD and DRK?

After 10 years of utterly failing to balance the jobs, you'd figure they might be open to suggestions and not be so stubborn.

Yes, because trying to balance 20 different jobs while adding in new abilities and traits with new content which makes balancing a moving target is soooooo easy, amirite?

[autobot]

i dont think people are going to deny the difficultly of balancing jobs, but when you keep giving jobs worthless abilities such as this one that doesnt add any balance at all and ignore the great abilities that would actually be used suggested by everyone on the forums for all the different jobs you got to ask urself if these dev's actually play the game or just have no idea what they are doing.

The thing that makes this ability so bad from the start is the cost of FM (or tp if u want to look at it that way), the recast making the useful flourishes unusable and the shear lack of enhancement that this ability provides.

People complained about bully and it was changed to be better without gear or merits. The same could be done here but even then it still probably wouldnt be enough change to make anyone want to use it.

[Selzak]

Yes, because trying to balance 20 different jobs while adding in new abilities and traits with new content which makes balancing a moving target is soooooo easy, amirite?
No, it's hard- Which is part of the reason why they should be open to suggestions from the people who have spent so much time playing and understanding their game. We have Excel spreadsheets that will predict exactly how much damage a spell or weapon skill will do at any given time, I think we deserve a little more respect when it comes to suggestions on game mechanics and balance.

Also, just because it's hard doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to do it (to an acceptable degree, at the very least). There's a difference between attempting, failing, then genuinely attempting to correct your mistakes and just stubbornly repeating the same mistakes over and over again for years. They have always been, and probably always will be, simply (simply has more than one meaning here) of the opinion that it's better for them to try and fail for 10 years than to be "open-minded" enough to listen to their players at all.

When this forum opened is when FFXI began to peak (in the context of the game, not popularity). It didn't take long at all to start moving downhill. They read suggestions, they thought about them, and they appeared to even consider them at first. Now, I doubt they do more than glance at the NA players' suggestions just to see if they can give us a translated response to something from the JP side- which they listen to but still don't honestly consider.

If you go back and read the "responses" to the opinions and suggestions we had after they originally shared the Job Manifesto you'll see this. We have RDMs discussing the significance of Cure-tiers and brainstorming directions for their job and then we get a reply from SE that quotes and answers Japanese players saying that they want to be able to melee and unlock more weapon skills. This sort of thing is just unacceptable. I'm not asking for NA players to get more attention than JP players because we make up such a larger portion of the playerbase, but I think that at least deserves us acknowledgement of some kind. It's like they don't even consider us to be the actual players of the game, even though we're the large majority.


It is hard, and I'd defend them too if we were in this together- but we're not. We've been trying for 10 years to share our experiences with the game and our ideas for positive directions with them, we complained about DRG for 5-6 years and laid out specific problems and different paths to fix them before they even touched it. After throwing comments and suggestions into their e-mail trash can for eight years, we thought they were changing- but it feels like they backed out at the last second.

[Motenten]

While Byrth detailed the usage perspective, I thought I'd go through things from a mathematical perspective.


First we'll look at Rudra's, which has the most to gain from the tier 3 Flourishes.

Ternary Flourish guarantees a triple attack. A TA is effectively +2.0 fTP to the weaponskill regardless of other factors.
Climactic Flourish guarantees a crit on the first hit. We need to see the limits of when this can give more than 2.0 fTP to see when it's better than Ternary.

Base fTP: 3.25
fTP with TP Bonus dagger: 4.25
fTP with TP Bonus dagger and slow usage (~150 TP): 4.75

To go from 3.25 to 5.25 (+2.0), crit damage must be an increase of 61.5%.
To go from 4.25 to 6.25 (+2.0), crit damage must be an increase of 47.0%.
To go from 4.75 to 6.75 (+2.0), crit damage must be an increase of 42.1%.

Worst case value of a crit is when pDiff goes from 2.0 (capped, no level correction) to 3.0, which is +50%. We see from the above that if we're using the TP Bonus offhand dagger that there will never be a time when a crit will not be at least that much (excluding facetious comparisons of a high random non-crit pDif to a low random crit pDif, such as 2.3 to 2.8; the math must compare the average values).

As you add in level correction, things swing further in favor of the crit flourish. In order for Climactic Flourish to beat Ternary in the the configuration most suited towards Ternary Flourish (no TP Bonus dagger, use at 100 TP), average pDif would have to be 1.625 or lower. That's guaranteed on any mob 8 or more levels above the player, though will also often be the case on many lower level mobs if you're not capping attack.

Therefore Ternary Flourish is better on lower level mobs where you're pushing capped attack, while also not using the TP Bonus dagger as an offhand.

Of course that doesn't account for the recast use on each of them: 1:30 for Climactic vs 2:30 for Ternary. Every 7:30 you can use Climactic 5 times vs 3 Ternary uses. The player will rarely be able to use them that exactly, but the general proportions of opportunities should be roughly the same.

If we look again at the best case in favor of Ternary above, Climactic gains an effective 1.625 fTP on the crit while Ternary gains 2.0 fTP. Ternary gets 3 uses, for a total of 6.0 fTP gain, while Climactic gets 5 uses for a total of 8.125 fTP gain. Therefore longterm, under the best possible conditions for Ternary, Climactic still wins.

Ternary is also devalued when there was already the possibility of a triple attack occuring. Outside Abyssea, that's not much (3% from Epona's Ring, at best). Inside Abyssea that will also likely factor in Atma of the Apocalypse; that gives 18% of the time when Ternary Flourish gains you nothing, since you would have triple attacked anyway.

And finally, any comparison that even somewhat favors Ternary must also use something besides the TP Bonus dagger in the offhand. Given the long delays between uses of the flourishes, however, any other dagger must be able to prove itself better in long-term damage of non-boosted melee and weaponskills. I will grant that this is conceivably possible since I don't want to have to math out what such a dagger would have to look like to reach that point.

Overall, for Rudra's, there is no reaonable situational usage for Ternary.



Next, consider someone without Rudra's. Weaponskills will typically be Dancing Edge or Evisceration.

Both are 5-hit attacks, made 6-hit with the offhand weapon. Ternary caps out the number of total swings for both.

Given their base fTP (1.18 or 1.0, respectively), Climactic Flourish will never compete with Ternary for total damage gained. Under absolutely miserable cRatio conditions (0.5), Climactic only gives a +1.5 fTP equivalent compared to Ternary's +2.0.

What it must compete with instead, however, is Reverse Flourish -- not for the Flourish slot (since they're in different categories), but for Finishing Moves.

For 3 Finishing Moves, Reverse gains you 48, 52 or 57 TP, depending on use of AF3 hands (none, +1, or +2). Essentially, half a weaponskill. That works out to the equivalent of +3.0 fTP over time, overshadowing the value of Ternary.

However it does bring out an option for one strong use of Ternary: open with Pyrrhic, Reverse with 5 FMs, No Foot Rise for 3 FMs, Ternary, and close with Evisceration for a gain of ~33% on the weaponskill and a comparable amount on the skillchain damage (which itself should be 20%-25% more than the weaponskill, excluding resists).

It's only slightly stronger than Building Flourish (eyeball estimate of about +25% damage on Evisceration when not capping attack), but Building competes with Reverse, so you couldn't add it to your closing weaponskill.

In other words, for the maximizing of the damage potential at one specific point in time (you need as much damage as possible Right Now), this can work well for non-Rudra's users. That's it's 'situational use', as far as I can tell.

[autobot]

The only way i can see this ability ever come into play was mentioned before by Asymptotic.

(http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/15404-Dancer-Suggestions-Round-II)
Glissade Dancer LV99 [Recast 5 minutes, shared with À ma guise]
The next Flourish may be used without resetting its category's recast timer.
** This ability would also give the other Flourishes III besides climactic some viability. It would open up a lot of possibilities. The name "Glissade" means to run two dance moves together in one fluid motion, so it's obviously meant to be used to combine Flourishes

That dude came up with enough good stuff for dancer to allow the dev team to not have to think (which they apparently dont do anyway).

[FrankReynolds]

Math Stuff

Out of curiosity, does double attack from saber dance factor in here? Seems like that would also negate some usefulness.

[Motenten]

Out of curiosity, does double attack from saber dance factor in here? Seems like that would also negate some usefulness.

Yes, DA would also devalue Ternary, but not the extent that a triple attack would. For example, if you have 10% triple attack, that devalues Ternary directly by 10% since you would have gotten the same benefit without Ternary 10% of the time. If you have 10% double attack, though, the DA only gives you half as much additional damage as the TA would, so it only devalues Ternary by 5%.

Given the ~21.5% DA rate (long-term) of Saber Dance, plus 5% DA of a Brutal Earring and 3% from Epona's, that means Ternary is devalued by up to about 15%. Combining with the Epona's TA outside Abyssea, overall devaluation is about 17%.

If you factor in the devaluation, then the average usage of Ternary would gain you about +1.66 fTP. That matches the gain from Climactic on Rudra's under even the worst case scenario for Climactic.


It's a bit more difficult to judge the change for Evis/DE since the weaponskills themselves devalue TA due to hitting the cap on number of swings with just a single TA. Overall, the devaluation should be significantly higher than the nominal case above.

Taking Evis for the easy fTP, Ternary moves it from 6.0 to 8.0.

Average fTP (ie: number of swings) with:

Brutal: 6.1
Brutal+Saber: 6.53
Brutal+Epona's: 6.269
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 6.673

Which gives you a percent gain of:

Nominal: 33.3%

Brutal: 31.1%
Brutal+Saber: 22.5%
Brutal+Epona's: 27.6%
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 19.9%


And these gear combos in Abyssea with Apoc atma:
Brutal: 6.627
Brutal+Saber: 6.938
Brutal+Epona's: 6.763
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 7.052

Brutal: 20.7%
Brutal+Saber: 15.3%
Brutal+Epona's: 18.3%
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 13.4%



Assuming a focus more on settings outside Abyssea, it looks like a potential gain on weaponskill damage of between 20% and 30%, depending on gear and use of Saber Dance.

Climactic will never come close to that number, especially on Evisceration which can already crit. Striking Flourish.... well, don't feel like doing all the math, but it looks like around a 15% gain without Saber Dance, and a 12% gain with Saber Dance, for Evisceration (slightly higher gain with Dancing Edge).

For instantaneous damage boosts outside Abyssea, Striking and Ternary Flourish appear to be fairly decent options for non-Rudra's use, as long as you can combine them with Reverse Flourish and use on the closing weaponskill of a skillchain. If you can't combine them (ie: insufficient NFR merits), Reverse + skillchain will be vastly better. For long-term damage (even excluding skillchains), Reverse Flourish will always be better.

[Asymptotic]

Using Ternary as part of your non-rudras solo-SC setup also requires you to use more finishing moves, which requires you to step more often, which causes you to lose more attacking time (fewer attack rounds) due to job ability delay. I'm pretty sure that more-or less takes care of devaluing it the rest of the way.

[Creelo]

So more proof that these forums are pointless and that the devs know best...

Ternary flourish should not have been implimented period, especially if it wasn't ready. Last I checked, people don't like playing with things that aren't finished SE...


Oh snap lol, that was awesome.

[FrankReynolds]

We skimmed over a couple of your comments, and decided that we don't really care what you think about this Job Ability.

The best thing someone could do with this ability is: Not use it.

In order for this ability to be good, you will need to add another ability or gear item. Why not just add and ability that works to begin with? That would be a lot less work, and make your "we are understaffed" line sound a lot more plausible.

[Motenten]

Using Ternary as part of your non-rudras solo-SC setup also requires you to use more finishing moves, which requires you to step more often, which causes you to lose more attacking time (fewer attack rounds) due to job ability delay. I'm pretty sure that more-or less takes care of devaluing it the rest of the way.

The only way it's really practical is to make use of No Foot Rise, though I suppose you could prep a Presto before the first weaponskill and get a 3-FM step in between the two weaponskills. Using a step is subject to missing (even if rarely), as well as a slight risk that you'd end up below 100 TP after the step, which would cause you to miss the skillchain.

Given the recast times (2:30 for Ternary and 3:00 for NFR), I thought it looked like it was geared more towards NFR usage than step usage. Climactic's 1:30 recast is too short to reliably use NRF with that, so that one would be more step-focused.

I suppose there's the other caveat: the above assumption depends on having at least 3 merits in NFR. I know common consensus for a while was to go with 2 merits to complement Presto (not sure if that's changed with the new info on Saber Dance's actual proc rates), so it may not be as practical for some.

And while it does increase delay time either way, it's a pretty minor devaluation (at best, 2 seconds every 150, or 1.33%, or 2 seconds every 180 if used with NFR for 1.11% devaluation; most likely usage will be rarer than that). It's a long way from "devaluing it the rest of the way". If comparing Ternary with Climactic directly, both have the same JA delay issue, so it's not really relevant to consider that aspect there either.

[Asymptotic]

I'll leave it to Byrth, because I don't actually have the resolve to do the math myself (being a math major, I get burned out enough on the math that I have to do), you should be using striking in the type of setup you're describing, not ternary.

Even then the following scenario:

Presto ---> Step ---> Weaponskill ---> Reverse Flourish ---> Attack Round ---> Weaponskill + Skillchain

Should be more effective, as it only requires one round of JAs per skillchain, should be able to be used every time RF is up, and over time, will result in more overall damage due to lessened JA delay and more TP gained from attacking.

It's a bit of a paradox though because this assumes engagement over time. In reality, anything for which non-evisceration multi-hits remain viable (trash mobs outside of abyssea) is going to be dead after a Presto-->Step-->DE --> RF---> DE ---> Scission (or whatever skillchain you choose to use), so there's actually very little value for boosting the damage of EITHER weaponskill. If you're fighting something with a lot of HP and would be engaged for a long time, this strategy becomes even more efficient because over time you gain a lot of attack rounds and TP over JA-heavy strategies.

Still, on just about anything where extended engagement happens, enemy defense begins to heavily favor forced Critical WS and the immense damage potential of a DoubleclimacticrudrasSC, and in general, our multi-hit WS drop heavily in effectiveness.

Anyway, basically what I'm trying to say is that if you're not using Rudra's Storm, there's really no reason to use the Flourishes III category at all except for "fun."

[Motenten]

Hate that it seems I'm defending this JA, but I do want to defend my conclusions about it...


you should be using striking in the type of setup you're describing, not ternary.

I'll get back to this point later; I'd avoided doing any elaborate analysis of Striking Flourish in the original post due to the heavy comparison that was being made with Climactic in the overall discussion.


Even then the following scenario:

Presto ---> Step ---> Weaponskill ---> Reverse Flourish ---> Attack Round ---> Weaponskill + Skillchain

Should be more effective, as it only requires one round of JAs per skillchain, should be able to be used every time RF is up, and over time, will result in more overall damage due to lessened JA delay and more TP gained from attacking.

I'll note that I already agreed that Reverse Flourish should do more average damage over time (though I don't agree that a single Presto+step is enough to maintain skillchain suitability; 57 + weaponskill~15 + one round~15 puts you at maybe 87 TP before second weaponskill). I was making a point that when you want the highest possible *instantaneous* damage, Ternary works out as a good option.


Still, on just about anything where extended engagement happens, enemy defense begins to heavily favor forced Critical WS and the immense damage potential of a DoubleclimacticrudrasSC, and in general, our multi-hit WS drop heavily in effectiveness.

As I noted, Climactic wins for Rudra's in the vast majority of cases, and in the cases it doesn't win for instantaneous damage, it still wins for long-term damage. Since it's clear that no case can be made for using Ternary with Rudra's, I focused on non-Rudra's instead. Plus, not everyone has Rudra's.


Anyway, basically what I'm trying to say is that if you're not using Rudra's Storm, there's really no reason to use the Flourishes III category at all except for "fun."

Situational cases:

1) Standard mobs, 5k-6k HP. In most cases, you'd be hard-pressed to have the mob survive a self-skillchain, in or out of Abyssea. Becomes more viable as you progress towards VT+mobs, but there's no real case where it's worth spending the coordination on creating the boosted skillchain to bother with.

2) 'Easy' NMs (eg: Abyssea NMs that will die in about a minute after procs are done). This case lends itself strongly towards the boosted weaponskill since you won't have "long-term" averages to take advantage of. You do most of your damage in a short burst, and then spend time waiting for repops, during which JA timers reset. Can use the boosted weaponskill, but mostly just an e-peen thing, since the mob will be dead soon anyway.

3) 'Moderate' NMs: Will be spending a fair amount of time fighting them just to get through their HP. Gets most of the benefits of "long-term" averages, so weights far more towards the "Reverse Flourish and keep going" strategy.

4) 'Hard' NMs: Want to get as much damage done on the mob in one go as you can, as staying and meleeing is dangerous, and possibly detrimental. Also a high risk of death, so want to maximize damage output in the short term rather than the long term. In this situation there seems a reasonably valid case to be made for boosted weaponskill/skillchain damage.


In other words, the only situation it really makes sense to use this in is one where you're not going to be able to reliably melee the mob for long periods of time, but the mob is difficult enough that you want to maximize the damage you do in the periods you have available.

This being the only situational use I can think of where it makes sense to use Ternary, I do wonder what the dev's perspective on this is.



Now, back to Striking Flourish. First I'll consider the relative gain of the DA on the total fTP, as I did with Ternary:

Baseline: 6.0


w/o Striking w/Striking % Increase
Brutal: 6.100 7.050 15.57%
Brutal+Saber: 6.530 7.265 11.26%
Brutal+Epona's: 6.269 7.108 13.38%
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 6.673 7.316 9.63%

Dancing Edge's % Increase is slightly lower since its base fTP is 6.1875, but close enough that I'm not going to redo the numbers.

The other half of SF's benefit is the 50% crit rate (assuming +2 body for best-case scenario).

The value of said crit is dependant on the existing crit rate (0 for DE, 10% - 25% for Evis) and cRatio (will consider a spread of 1.0 to 2.0).


Effective average +fTP for:
1.0 cRatio 1.5 cRatio 2.0 cRatio
0% crit 0.5938 0.3959 0.2969
10% crit 0.4000 0.2667 0.2000
25% crit 0.2500 0.1667 0.1250

0% crit line uses the 1.1875 fTP of DE as a base; the others use the 1.0 fTP of Evis.

So now we have a range of values to add. To keep the table somewhat managable, I'll only use the 1.5 cRatio column.


Base SF DE SF Evis@10% SF Evis@25% Ternary Evis
Brutal: 6.100 7.446 22.1% 7.317 20.0% 7.217 18.3% 31.1%
Brutal+Saber: 6.530 7.661 17.3% 7.532 15.3% 7.432 13.8% 22.5%
Brutal+Epona's: 6.269 7.504 19.7% 7.375 17.6% 7.275 16.0% 27.6%
Brutal+Epona's+Saber: 6.673 7.772 16.5% 7.583 13.6% 7.483 12.1% 19.9%

At low cRatios using DE (0% base crit rate), IF you get a crit, then Striking is better than Ternary. However, for all practical purposes Ternary is better than Striking for DE and Evis.

Striking would likely be better in Abyssea where you have Apoc atma heavily devaluing the additional attacks. Don't feel like doing the math for it though.

[Asymptotic]

4) 'Hard' NMs: Want to get as much damage done on the mob in one go as you can, as staying and meleeing is dangerous, and possibly detrimental. Also a high risk of death, so want to maximize damage output in the short term rather than the long term. In this situation there seems a reasonably valid case to be made for boosted weaponskill/skillchain damage.

The problem here is that these targets also tend to have high defense, and dagger weaponskills basically do crap for damage (on average) unless you can force crits on them. Go do Voidwatch and use Dancing Edge. It's not pretty. It becomes one of those scenarios where "if you don't have Rudra's, then you should have come on a different job."

[Byrth]

My WS gear generally has about 28% DA and 3% TA in it, so any time I use a 6-hit WS I already have an effective fTP of ~6.65 (unless it's DE, where the fTP is ~6.84). Obviously I could swap out DA/TA gear to compensate for the fact that I'm using Ternary, but I can't get rid of Saber Dance which is the major source of it. That makes Ternary about a 20% increase in damage for 3 FMs.

Building gives about +20~25% Attack, some Acc, and some crit rate for 3 FMs, and it lasts for a minute (with a 10 second recast) which means you can stack it with opening weaponskills of skillchains if you're willing to delay one Step cycle. I'd argue that it would be better in situation 1 above, because we're hard up for attack and you note that they won't survive a self-skillchain. In Dynamis, which is especially relevant for Dancer at the moment, I still notice that adding attack has pretty substantial returns. /WAR and Red Curry buns push my Dancing Edges up a solid 50% over no sub and no food (eyeballed because my parser haets me). The harder the monsters get, the more useful it becomes, but the more viable it becomes to just do self-skillchains.

[Asymptotic]

In Voidwatch I tend to use Building Flourish to boost my damage during blitzes. There's little merit in attempting self skillchains at that point due to everyone using weaponskills at once. I'll get 5 finishing moves, Building Flourish, Climactic flourish, and then throw out 300TP Rudra's using an attack offhand. There's little reason to use a TP bonus offhand for Rudra's in VW as you're going to be WSing at 300TP most of the time.

I'd say /WAR is the best sub there because you can throw up Berserk/Warcry/BF to pump up your attack as much as possible for the 1-2 weaponskills you're going to get the opportunity to use during a blitz. Additionally, shadows aren't doing much to protect you against the higher tier NMs (most have AoE attacks) and anytime you're standing next to these mobs to trigger/search for triggers you should probably just throw on PDT/Fan Dance to keep yourself alive or use Fanatic's if you have it available. Enemies without AoE normal attacks don't really put you in danger aside from spellcasting anyhow.

In my experience, evisceration is the best non-rudra's performer, probably because of the advantages critical WS have against high defense targets.

[Motenten]

I added the different cat. 3 Flourishes to my spreadsheet, so wanted to take another look at how Ternary pans out compared to the others in a more comprehensive set of numbers.

First, setting things up to favor Ternary Flourish over the alternatives to as high a degree as possible:

1) Cap attack - higher attack makes crits less valuable
2) Lower level correction - higher level correction increases the value of crits
3) Outside Abyssea - Atmas increase the value of crits
4) Minimize DA/TA - Reducing these values increases the relative gain from a triple attack; this includes gear choices such as Vimukti instead of Atheling
5) Increase crit rate (for Evisceration) - lowers value of a forced crit
6) Use Building Flourish (helps with above adjustments)

Note: Striking assumes Charis +2 body. Arbitrarily set with Fire Kila + Thunder Kila (even for Rudra's), and otherwise all gear is the same.



No Flourish Striking Climactic Ternary
Dancing Edge 1430 1791 1632 1806
Evisceration 1380 1684 1449 1755
Rudra's Storm 1118 1610 1705 1550


So, Climactic wins handily for Rudra's, while Ternary takes third. On the other hand, Ternary barely beats Striking for DE, and has a decent lead over Striking for Evisceration.

Add in Saber Dance to see if replacement against DA shifts things noticeably:


No Flourish Striking Climactic Ternary
Dancing Edge 1474 1813 1675 1813
Evisceration 1422 1705 1492 1763
Rudra's Storm 1164 1633 1752 1573

Ends up being only slightly shifts in totals, and no real shifts in placement except that Ternary ties with Striking on Dancing Edge.


Drop Building Flourish and Berserk (allow pDif to drop substantially), but refine gear for max damage (broad, but not exhaustive adjustments, tuned for either forced multi-attack flourishes or none/Climactic where DA/TA still matters):


No Flourish Striking Climactic Ternary
Dancing Edge 1131 1432 1322 1400
Evisceration 1087 1348 1164 1371
Rudra's Storm 899 1322 1463 1214

Ternary is still third for Rudra's, has lost some ground on Evisceration (but still ahead of Striking), and is now slightly behind Striking for Dancing Edge.

Shift target from Fodder to Bukhis to further reduce pDif.


No Flourish Striking Climactic Ternary
Dancing Edge 647 873 822 796
Evisceration 685 897 758 882
Rudra's Storm 507 853 1003 692


Minor caveat: noticed that I need to update the chr stat in the gear listing for a bunch of pieces; only real effect is that DE is slightly lower than it could be. Fixed this and another minor bug and uploaded a new version, but not really relevant to the numbers above.


Overall, Climactic is still clearly the best for Rudra's, but Striking and Ternary each hold top spots for DE and Evis (with Ternary being the more likely winner). DE with Ternary appear to be the winner at near capped attack, while Rudra's with Climactic wins when cRatio is lower. Evis with Striking or Ternary appears the best option for non-Rudra's owners as the difficulty of the target goes up.

Most importantly, Ternary appears to be situationally side-gradish to superior for non-Rudra's owners, so it's not a complete waste of time.

Comments welcome, as well as criticism of any of the spreadsheet's math. If you have questions about any of it, just ask.

[Fyreus]

I could see this ability having some use if they removed it from the flourish category and drop the timer down to 30 secs with no finisher uses. That way it's a weaker meditate at best... idk...

[Byrth]

The Dancer job is complicated and there are situations you can think up where you might consider using Ternary, but the above post shows just how rare those situations are. For instance, if pDIF is uncapped (the no Building case) and you aren't skillchaining, you're still better off using Climactic -> Rudra's than Ternary -> Dancing Edge for damage.

If we're using Ternary to enhance the closing weaponskill of a skillchain (Evisc or Rudra's), it's better to use Climactic/Rudra's in all the above situations, I'd say. Assuming you spend 3 Finishing Moves on it (the same as Ternary), you force four critical hits. Ternary->Evisc has at most a 50 damage lead on Rudra's, so 115 including the +65 to the Darkness Skillchain. Three additional crit hits (all with Damage+20%) are going to more than make up a 115 damage difference.

You can pretty much apply the above logic to every situation and write Ternary off as useless, except that Climactic consumes all your finishing moves and Ternary only consumes 3. You could theoretically go Ternary -> Building -> Dancing Edge and spend 5 FMs. Again though, realistically it'll be better to go Building -> Climactic -> Rudra's in the same situation (it's best to just self-skillchain most of the time, but some situations don't allow it).

Random questions:
*Did you give the first hit of Climactic'd WSs the 20% damage bonus from AF3+2 head?
*Why does adding Saber Dance increase Ternary->Dancing Edge's damage? You allow for replacement of misses, I presume? Does that happen?
*How much of a Crit rate boost do you give Building Flourish?

[Motenten]

Random questions:
*Did you give the first hit of Climactic'd WSs the 20% damage bonus from AF3+2 head?
*Why does adding Saber Dance increase Ternary->Dancing Edge's damage? You allow for replacement of misses, I presume? Does that happen?
*How much of a Crit rate boost do you give Building Flourish?


1) No, didn't account for AF3+2 head. Forgot about that. Will fix.

Question: Is the +10%/20% damage multiplied after crit damage, or added to crit damage? IE: is a base crit 1.08 * 1.20 (for +2) or 1.28? Also, does it need to be equipped at the time of the weaponskill to get the crit boost, or is that granted at the time the flourish is used?

Going conservative for now and adding to crit damage, and requiring it to be used on ws.

2) Good question. It shouldn't allow for replacement of misses. Let me check again.

Hmm. Actually, you're right. The probabilities do allow for replacement hits. 1 hit in the first extra attack set could be a triple that missed 2 hits, but in doing so it allows for a double attack on the offhand to fill in the missing hits to the max of 8. I'm going to have to rethink how I handle the probability calculations.

3) Arbitrarily set to +10% crit rate. Also uses +20 acc, and the vaguely tested +25% attack.

[Byrth]

1) No, didn't account for AF3+2 head. Forgot about that. Will fix.

Question: Is the +10%/20% damage multiplied after crit damage, or added to crit damage? IE: is a base crit 1.08 * 1.20 (for +2) or 1.28? Also, does it need to be equipped at the time of the weaponskill to get the crit boost, or is that granted at the time the flourish is used?

Going conservative for now and adding to crit damage, and requiring it to be used on ws.

2) Good question. It shouldn't allow for replacement of misses. Let me check again.

Hmm. Actually, you're right. The probabilities do allow for replacement hits. 1 hit in the first extra attack set could be a triple that missed 2 hits, but in doing so it allows for a double attack on the offhand to fill in the missing hits to the max of 8. I'm going to have to rethink how I handle the probability calculations.

3) Arbitrarily set to +10% crit rate. Also uses +20 acc, and the vaguely tested +25% attack.

1) I seem to remember testing that it's separate from crit damage (twice), but here's the one I linked on bgwiki (http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/103597-Temporary-Random-Facts-Thread?p=4588669&viewfull=1#post4588669).

2) Hokay! I'm unsure whether misses are replaced on WSs, but I always assumed they weren't because I don't think they are for normal attack rounds. Like, I think that if you mainhand K-club and offhand an Axe, you can have attack rounds where K-club hits 8 times for low damage and the Axe hits 0 times even if one of those 8 swings with the Klub was a miss. My k-club has been gone for months though, so I can't test.

3) That sounds fine to me. I don't have any data related to the crit rate and was just wondering.

[Motenten]

Updated to use the multiplied form instead of the added form. Still requiring that the AF3 head be worn to get the damage bonus, unless testing indicates otherwise.

[Byrth]

Yeah, you need to be wearing the head to get the damage bonus. Wearing it at activation gets you the +1 forced crit, so you actually have to wear it both times to gain the full benefit.

With that change, it seems that Climactic Rudra's beats Ternary'd anything in every situation even without considering the additional forced crits.

[Motenten]

Have done a complete rebuild of the probability table. Looks like it's all working properly; adding Saber Dance to a Ternary'd weaponskill doesn't change the average damage. Uses up far more space, but it looks like I can use the same tables on any weaponskill and just change a single number for the number of secondary hits in the weaponskill, and it'll all work fine (previously had to build separate tables for every weaponskill that had a different number of hits).

Actual difference in the numbers produced is fairly small (eg: 1833 down to 1809 is the highest shift I saw), but it's good to get improved numbers regardless.

Now the work of copying this to all the other weaponskill pages....

[Motenten]

Uploaded a new version with the modified distributions. The more bits I fixed, the more variance there was from the originals. I left the original weaponskill sheets in place, in case anyone wanted to compare (and maybe find anything I've messed up).

At present, it looks like Ternary is a decent to good option for everything except Rudra's, where Climactic blows everything else away. How well that evaluation will hold up on further review, will have to see...

[Motenten]

Another upload, more bugfixes. With Rudra's, the gap between flourishes is huuuge (like a 20% gain from one to the next). Climactic trounces Striking, which stomps all over Ternary.

For the other weaponskills, the difference is far less pronounced. With Kleos there's very little difference between any of them. With DE and Evis, Climactic is the weakest of the bunch, while Striking and Ternary are pretty close to each other, Ternary generally having a bit of an edge.

[Byrth]

Awesome! Really getting complete now!

I'll try to bring some less common weapons into Dynamis tomorrow so I can get an idea for EP enemy Defense. Considering Dynamis is probably Dancer's "main event" at the moment, that's probably pretty relevant.

[Byrth]

As we have explained before, we hope you understand that Ternary Flourish was implemented with future growth in mind. We plan on strengthening this ability through equipment and merits, and we appreciate your patience as we do so.

We plan on adjusting all jobs, but our highest priorities right now are adjusting puppetmaster, corsair, scholar, dragoon, and warrior’s firepower. We will be working on these job adjustments in order of priority.

In response to a comment asking for Charis Casaque (+1 and +2) to apply to Ternary Flourish as well... if Charis Casaque (+1 and +2) also increased the effects of Ternary Flourish, they would be too powerful as gear items, so we do not plan on implementing those adjustments.

Also, Flourish-type abilities are not separated by rank or effectiveness, but are separated so that they are useful in different situations, so even if an item were to increase the effects of Ternary Flourish, the effects would not be exactly the same as "increasing the effects of Striking Flourish."

Please continue to offer up your feedback on how you want dancer to shine and we will use them as reference points when we think of support abilities for dancers.

Okay, so this was 9 months ago now. Ternary Flourish still doesn't have a real use.

Carry on.

[tyrantsyn]

LoL also see enfeebling magic thread, same story over there.

[Eri]

Okay, so this was 9 months ago now. Ternary Flourish still doesn't have a real use.

Carry on.

Its acutually not that it has no Real use. Its that you can't use it all. In which world you would want 2:30 recast on your Flourishes 3 vs. 1:30 recast Climactic?

It would be intresting to know how much you would have to reduce the recast of Trenary to outmatch Climatic.

thats without force critical WS of course.

[Byrth]

If they reduced the recast to 30 seconds, I'd consider using it.

[Eri]

Pretty much Byrth unless you wanted to force Crit Rudras lol.
Other than that i'd vote for removeing it and give Dnc something worth its recast on F3.

[Byrth]

Bump again.

Ternary got a slight buff from Exenterator being added to the game, but simply using Climactic Flourish is still competitive in terms of overall damage due to the fact that it gives you 4 crits for 3 FMs. Also, though it wasn't mentioned earlier in the thread, Wild Flourish is probably Ternary's real competition in situations where you'd one-shot the monster with a Reverse Flourish self-skillchain. Wild Flourish -> Tier 1 skillchain does 61.5% of our closing WS damage when unresisted (which it frequently is), and Ternary can't compete. It also costs fewer FMs.