dev1069 Phantom Roll Effect Adjustments feedback

[Vagrua]

Just thought I'd share my opinions on the roll adjustments. By all means, posts what you also think of them. My views:

Healer's Roll will likely not even be considered in a Corsair's arsenal unless it exceeds the current Cure Potency cap of White Mages curing said player with the roll on.

Gallant's Roll would also need to break the pdt/mdt cap in order to even be considered to me. I can see this roll being extremely useful otherwise for tanks.

Drachen Roll, I can see being useful for a pet burn party maybe.

Puppet's Roll, idk what to really think of. It's one of those rolls I could see being useful if Corsair had an ability like Bard's Pianissimo.

Warlock's Roll is something I still can't really see being used. The boost is just too small to me.

Beast Roll looks good.

Choral Roll same as beasts.

I think you could have pushed Dancer's Roll more, but again that's just me.

[Seha]

Even if healer's roll exceeds cap it's worthless. You need to place it on the dds as it is potency received. There's no reason at all to dump reall dd rolls for that.
I see gallant as useful for soloing(like dyna or something), but that's it until we get a third roll slot(and even then the best idea in most cases would be to do chaos-tact-miser, or sam).

[Kristal]

Drachen Roll, I can see being useful for a pet burn party maybe.

Puppet's Roll, idk what to really think of. It's one of those rolls I could see being useful if Corsair had an ability like Bard's Pianissimo.

COR always had these rolls, they simply swapped the jobs and increased the effect a bit. I think they did this to actually match the pets to the roll effect. You needed a DRG to properly boost an automaton's magic, or a PUP to boost a DRG's wyvern. Breath attacks are affected by HP (and EMA?), not MAB or MACC as far as I know.

[Greatguardian]

Gallant is a Phalanx effect rather than -DT%, if that makes any difference. It does stack with Phalanx iirc.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I bet the first thing on everyone's mind when they logged in to look was, "Here somes the miser's nerf."

[cidbahamut]

Healer's roll went from niche to absolutely worthless. Kind of sad really.

[heartslaught]

Looking at these values, they seem to be the non supercharged values (looking at the values listed, this is a dead give away). Any chance of seeing the super charged values?

[Huevriel]

Healer's Roll -
Thank you for making this not apply to dancing. However, was satisfied as MP Healing.

Gallant's Roll-
This GREATLY helps solo parry skill ups. Thank you SE for answering my prayers. The fact that this stacks with Phalanx ----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwT702zhiRI
This is my all time favorite part of this COR-date.

Drachen Roll <--> Puppet Roll
Smart move. I approve.

Boosts to other rolls-
Boosted choral roll is pretty OP. Not complaining though, as I'm sure it's mostly situational and most bandwagon-COR wont use/buy it. Also something I'll use during parry skill ups. (see link above).

All around. Way to go SE!

[Seha]

With the adjustment to healing effects, Healer's roll now makes sense. But still not worth using over dd rolls in 90% of situations.

[cidbahamut]

What situations would it be used in?

[Mirabelle]

What situations would it be used in?

LS starting VW. No temps. Good PLD and so-so DD. Augmenting the PLD defense capabilities might end up being more useful than augmenting his offensive capabilities. That cactaur NM in altepa comes to mind. VW is still a challenge when people can't pop fanatics left and right.

Again not meaning to pick fights but there are times where a different strategy than what is popular will work for a group that has a different makeup than most.

Personally I still will likely end up in DD party rolling tacticians/chaos/misers type rolls. But I'd never say an roll is totally useless unless it clearly couldn't add anything to anyone (former Gallants roll fell in that category). We could argue that most BRD songs are useless too since they only sing a small selection for the most part as well.

If we get a 3rd roll I can see Healer's roll/Gallants roll/Tacticians roll helping me solo COR/DNC in Dynamis for some of those relic+2 quests.

[Greatguardian]

LS starting VW. No temps. Good PLD and so-so DD. Augmenting the PLD defense capabilities might end up being more useful than augmenting his offensive capabilities. That cactaur NM in altepa comes to mind. VW is still a challenge when people can't pop fanatics left and right.

Again not meaning to pick fights but there are times where a different strategy than what is popular will work for a group that has a different makeup than most.

Personally I still will likely end up in DD party rolling tacticians/chaos/misers type rolls. But I'd never say an roll is totally useless unless it clearly couldn't add anything to anyone (former Gallants roll fell in that category). We could argue that most BRD songs are useless too since they only sing a small selection for the most part as well.

If we get a 3rd roll I can see Healer's roll/Gallants roll/Tacticians roll helping me solo COR/DNC in Dynamis for some of those relic+2 quests.

You don't seem to understand how Healer's Roll works.

1) It doesn't affect Waltzes.

2) Healer's Roll is useless because any White Mage, Red Mage, or really Mage of any color should be able to cap Cure Potency already. If they have 50% Cure Potency in gear, then Healer's Roll does nothing at all.

[Mirabelle]

Yeah I just had a look again. I thought they were combining the effects of waltz and Cure Potency received to one effect. After re-reading it I realized its staying separate.

But they are changing the cap so that cure potency caps at 50% and Cure potency received is on a separate cap of 30%. So it makes Healer's roll less useless since most people can't cap cure potency received. Its just a shame that it likely has to be rolled on the people being cured rather than the mage doing the casting.

[cidbahamut]

Check the updates GG. The cure potency received effect is now calculated separately from cure potency and has its own cap of 30%.

I'm still skeptical of the need for increased potency at the cost of other rolls for the frontline jobs, and more than a little sore about the loss of hMP, but for now I'm gonna sit back and wait for the dust to settle a little before flying off the handle again.

[Greatguardian]

Check the updates GG. The cure potency received effect is now calculated separately from cure potency and has its own cap of 30%.

I'm still skeptical of the need for increased potency at the cost of other rolls for the frontline jobs, and more than a little sore about the loss of hMP, but for now I'm gonna sit back and wait for the dust to settle a little before flying off the handle again.

Derrrrp, I suck. This is interesting I guess.

[Babekeke]

Have to see what Legion offers in the way of atmas/temps too. Might be that melees will need dancer's/gallant's and healer's full time just so the mages don't have to stop and rest. But maybe not.

[Afania]

or really Mage of any color should be able to cap Cure Potency already. If they have 50% Cure Potency in gear, then Healer's Roll does nothing at all.

That's not true, at this point of time the max cure potency BLU can get is only 26%~31%......sword 10% shield 5% back 4% legs 4% head 3%, and 5% from hand+feet but you should be using AF3+2 hand +morri feet for BLU cure outside of abby.

Also 90%+ of WHM I met have no capped cure potency, just saying.

Either way SE is changing cure potency formula, so we'll see.

[Greatguardian]

WHM can cap cure potency in like 3-4 pieces of gear... that's pretty god awful.

[Camate]

As a result of the development team’s investigation as well as feedback we received, we will be once again changing the effect of Gallant’s Roll from “damage reduction” to “increased defense.”

This roll’s defense increase effect will increase a character’s defense by a percentage, so characters with already high defense will benefit largely from this.

As a different idea we looked into “physical damage reduction,” but the effect itself increased by a percentage, which made it not possible to make the effect values very large thus creating the concern that the roll itself wouldn’t be too useful. Paladin’s who have a wealth of damage reduction gear would cap out too easily and attackers/back-line jobs would become disproportionate by having this along with other high defense stats, so we determined this to be an unrealistic route.

[Greatguardian]

This is interesting, I suppose. However, it's not really going to do too much in the meta-game so long as Monster cRatio has a lower bound of 1.0.

As it stands now, there are literally no benefits to having Defense greater than any given monster's Attack. The whole stat is kinda broken =/.

Not so much a Gallant's Roll complaint as it is a tangent about player Defense in general. It's such a sad stat.

[Nightfyre]

So now we're back to Gallant's Roll being useless.

Honestly the Phalanx route was probably the best option, albeit still not very useful. Low amounts of PDT would have had a pretty similar impact (which is to say, almost none); even "non-tank" jobs can generally cap PDT these days so the complaint there seems ah... late? Ignorant of existing defensive options and the various benefits thereof? Something wrong, at least. Whoring defense isn't really conducive to maintaining hate, so it's more a strategy for managing various lesser NMs in a straight-tanking solo or lowman situation, or if you're holding something without any real chance of hate shifting. Even then it's best combined with other, superior stats given the very mediocre impact player defense has. Point being, you usually don't see CORs in such situations and this isn't going to change that.

The gains from COR's offensive buffs are overwhelming in comparison to its defensive options, which is more a testament to how broken the damage system is in FFXI than anything else. Given the equally broken status of enmity mechanics, it's unrealistic to expect a shift away from a heavily offensive focus in COR buff priorities unless it receives some seriously powerful defensive buffs.

[Rezeak]

THANK YOU ! ^^

ps ofc it'll be useless either way since tact/chaos + miser are the only rolls we use anyway.

But at least it's situational now/

[Seha]

As a result of the development team’s investigation as well as feedback we receivedJust who the pup told you that damage taken was bad and defense increase was better?

[Draylo]

Stop wasting time on things like this that nobody will use!

[SpankWustler]

Was the goal of that investigation to maintain Gallant's Roll's current level of uselessness for the purpose of balance?

Defense is bad and defense should feel bad. Defense should go back to college and attend AA in an attempt to better itself and fix its broken life. Adding abilities that increase Defense are like giving Defense a jug of Charles Shaw's finest Cabernet Sauvignon and a pre-paid card for an MMORPG. It does nothing to help Defense get its act together.

[Bayohne]

Since we didn’t provide enough background information along with our last post, I wanted to inform you all why we decided to change Gallant’s Roll’s effect to defense boost.

We plan on setting the value of the defense boost at around 30% when the highest number is rolled. This boost will be applied to the final defensive value after the effects of gear, abilities and spells are factored in and will reduce physical damage taken. This effect will vary based on the opponent’s strength and the player’s defense stats, but we expect this defense boost to be more significant than the originally planned Phalanx effect. (In addition, players can still reduce damage even further through gear and Phalanx.)

The effects of defense vary based on the opponent’s attack strength, so defense boost is more effective when fighting against stronger opponents compared with Phalanx, which has a fixed damage reduction. Defense boost also has a cumulative effect, which makes it more beneficial to paladins than physical damage reduction which becomes useless once the maximum limit is reached.

Therefore, we decided that making the roll a defense boost would be a more beneficial effect overall.

[Byrth]

Harharharharharharharhar

Instead of getting Phalanx (useful in some situations) you'll get Defense, which is useful in almost no situations. Congrats, CORs.

[Greatguardian]

Stack this on top of a tremendous nerf to our most powerful roll and it is just not a good day to be a Corsair.

Are the Devs really so afraid of us having unique buffs that complement Bard rather than being completely obsoleted by them? Miser's Roll was our golden goose.

Screw it, I'm really just tired of this. The game finally moves into 2012 and suddenly the brakes are hit, bricks are shat, and everyone's scattering to turn the clock back to 2009 as quickly as possible.

You know what I remember about 2009? Dead game jokes.

[Karbuncle]

I think the core of the problem here is that Defense is pretty much the most useless stat in the video game right now. The Defense formula for PC's after level 50 or so becomes just so skewed in favor of the enemy its a meaningless buff.

Protect is generally just cast out of habit, not because it really does anything.

[Coldbrand]

No actually defense is terrible, sorry.

[Kenthedeviant]

SE, if this is your approach and you really believe that defense is "better," then why not do some of your own testing and listen to some player feedback about how useless defense has become? No matter how much you have, it will never outweigh the massive attack power of stronger foes... So, honestly, please either completely change how defense even works, or just delete this roll and pretend it never existed because it will NEVER be used in any situation anyway.

[SpankWustler]

The effects of defense vary based on the opponent’s attack strength, so defense boost is more effective when fighting against stronger opponents compared with Phalanx, which has a fixed damage reduction. Defense boost also has a cumulative effect, which makes it more beneficial to paladins than physical damage reduction which becomes useless once the maximum limit is reached.

It must be nice to live in a world where Defense actually does this.

[Greatguardian]

It must be nice to live in a world where Defense actually does this.

Hey now, it totally does!

Except it's irrelevant because monster cRatio has a lower bound of 1.0, which is why that Tiny Mandragora outside Windurst can hit your level 99 Paladin with 5,000 defense for more than 0 damage.

[KigenAngelios]

Phalanx is the best of all options and would actually be useable. Defense is terrible.

[Mirabelle]

I bet the first thing on everyone's mind when they logged in to look was, "Here somes the miser's nerf."

You called it. You clearly understand balance.

So next update COR gains a bunch of newly revised but still useless rolls and gets their only go to roll nerfed. Damn SE, this job is too expensive to get the nerf bat.

[Yinnyth]

Q. How many corsairs would use PLD roll if it was switched to a defense+ buff?

A. How many bards use Knight's Minne?

[SpankWustler]

Hey now, it totally does!

Except it's irrelevant because monster cRatio has a lower bound of 1.0, which is why that Tiny Mandragora outside Windurst can hit your level 99 Paladin with 5,000 defense for more than 0 damage.

I really should have included "effectively" because yeah, that is technically how defense works. In retrospect, saying "Much like my wiener is an effective device for extinguishing flames. Let me at that forest fire in rural Nevada, Chief!" would have been cleverer anyway.

I've been trying to find a decent explanation or model of monster pDIF/player defense effects/etc. so I can complain harder about this. I keep finding stuff about avatars and various pets instead. You actually have a concrete number for a concrete thing, so I'm hopeful you could point me towards some of this stuff or just provide a relatively thorough explanation if you can be bothered?

[Chamaan]

It's... a... Blue Mage buff...? *wonders*

Maybe it'd be worthwhile if it let us break 999 defense? Someone run the numbers on that.

[SpankWustler]

It's... a... Blue Mage buff...? *wonders*

Maybe it'd be worthwhile if it let us break 999 defense? Someone run the numbers on that.

Unless you mean just for Cannonball, the way I understand it is this:

A bottom limit in the formula monsters use never allows their cRatio (a function of attack and a target's defense) to fall below a certain value. This basically means that if something is difficult enough to matter than defense will not matter. Especially not at extremely high values compared to moderate values.

The current effects of Signet make monster pDIF calculations function more like player pDIF calculations by adding level correction. So, you might notice a decent effect from defense on something Even Match or lower in a Signet area or the past. I doubt a buffed group would be fighting that kind of stuff, though.

Something in that is probably horribly wrong, so I hope somebody provides more accurate information, but I think I covered the matter in spirit.

As for Cannonball, I can be more brief and way more confident.

It's generally more beneficial to either melee or use magical spells from a distance since both of those options have recently blossomed for Blue Mage, and there are now better spells to use with Sneak Attack if you really want to go that route. Cannonball can still be handy for the rare case of pinning something, but it's likely you'd be solo without buffs from others in that situation.

[Seha]

I think last time I cared about the defense value it was my second month of playing, maybe earlier.

And what the blooyd pup at SaveTP nerf. God forbid jobs that are not sam can spam ws frequently.

[Malamasala]

I find it hilarious that SE are working on changing pet rolls, when the issue really is that they only effect pets. All rolls need to hit all party members and pets. And when that is fixed, you need to change BST, PUP and DRG roll into something new. Right now you are sitting there and making meaningless changes to the pet rolls instead of correcting the flaws of the system.

It is also good to see that we have fixed attack BST roll, so that pet jobs will fall behind melee jobs from level 50 and forward. A handy proof when you want to talk about how SE tries their best to remove pet jobs from the game. And they got what they wanted in FFXIV.



It is kind of funny to read about the Gallant's roll defense choice though. I thought you hated Summoner when you gave Titan defense bonus aura, but apparently it was just your delusions that defense aura was the best defensive aura we could ever have.

PS. I've never had anyone ever request defense aura. Do you honestly believe someone would request a defense roll? No they wouldn't. Go change Gallant's roll to something useful, and FIX THE AURA ON TITAN while you are at it.

[Greatguardian]

I really should have included "effectively" because yeah, that is technically how defense works. In retrospect, saying "Much like my wiener is an effective device for extinguishing flames. Let me at that forest fire in rural Nevada, Chief!" would have been cleverer anyway.

I've been trying to find a decent explanation or model of monster pDIF/player defense effects/etc. so I can complain harder about this. I keep finding stuff about avatars and various pets instead. You actually have a concrete number for a concrete thing, so I'm hopeful you could point me towards some of this stuff or just provide a relatively thorough explanation if you can be bothered?

To be perfectly honest, I'm having the same problems finding the data that I originally read. The 1.0 cRatio bound for monsters was something that was brought up years ago at this point, I just have a fairly wonky memory. A lot of the current pDif discussion is focused on players rather than monsters, and it doesn't seem like BGWiki has been updated with the old monster pDif data (or if it has, I'm being dumb and can't find the page). A lower bound on cRatio makes sense, however, because you can see that monsters of any level never, ever have less than 0.38 cRatio as this would allow them to hit for 0 regardless of their base damage.

An exact lower bound on cRatio is fairly easy to test if someone needs to recreate the original data, it would just be immensely time consuming. As far as I know, the model it follows is the same as it is for players, aside from the lower bound and the general lack of level correction for monsters (aside from Signet). Byrth probably has a better idea of where to find data this old, if you want to pursue it further.

What this means in practice, however, is that the minimum pDif roll that any monster can hit with 1.0 cRatio is 0.699 on a non-crit - which is to say, even with "Capped" defense a monster will still be able to hit you for 70% of his total weapon damage (base + fStr). Considering the kind of base damages that the monsters you'd want to cap defense on have, and the stagnant curve for player HP growth, this isn't exactly stellar.

[doctorugh]

Is the mobs attack (at a given level) calculated just like its defense is?

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Defense

[Greatguardian]

I couldn't say with certainty. It's probably fairly similar.

[SpankWustler]

Thanks. That explanation makes sense to me and I'm happy to go with it.

It's easy for anyone to rule out that getting hit works like hitting because stuff with decent base damage never hits for 0 regardless of a player's defense. From there, the only two options are that every monster in the game has vastly higher attack than anyone would ever expect or that there's a lower bound of some sort. The first obviously isn't true, so yeah, a floor of 1.0 on cRatio makes sense to me.

I'd feel bad pestering Byrth about where to find information about something that sucks just so I can more bitterly express how hard Gallant's Roll is going to suck. It's not like anything will be changed either way.

[Huevriel]

We plan on setting the value of the defense boost at around 30% when the highest number is rolled. This boost will be applied to the final defensive value after the effects of gear, abilities and spells are factored in and will reduce physical damage taken. This effect will vary based on the opponent’s strength and the player’s defense stats, but we expect this defense boost to be more significant than the originally planned Phalanx effect. (In addition, players can still reduce damage even further through gear and Phalanx.)

I'm still ok with this. I am saddened, however, because I was really hoping for a phalanx roll that stacked with phalanx.
I hope the tests show positive results.
I'm biased with the player side on this one. Phalanx would be preferred in the situational sense that I'd like to see myself pull off 0 - 1 damage during parry skill ups, allowing me to pull groups of mobs at a time and expedite skill up rates.

If they say the def boosts will give better results than phalanx boost, then I'll wait and see.

I want to note that they talk about how this roll greatly affects jobs that already have high defense (i.e. PLD).
Corsair does not have too high of a defense. Will this new gallant's roll still have greater results than a phalanx roll?

[Neisan_Quetz]

No, it never will, ever, never. A phalanx type roll would at least be situationally useful. A defense roll won't be useful.

It's pretty clear the devs don't play this game or do not know how their own game works.


EDIT: Actually, whoever the flying hell on a handbasket said a defense roll would be useful needs to be taken over the hills and put down with a shotgun.

[Mirabelle]

No, it never will, ever, never. A phalanx type roll would at least be situationally useful. A defense roll won't be useful.

It's pretty clear the devs don't play this game or do not know how their own game works.


EDIT: Actually, whoever the flying hell on a handbasket said a defense roll would be useful needs to be taken over the hills and put down with a shotgun.

Yeah you'd think they'd know by now. I mean how many times have they seen a BRD use Knight's Minne?

[Camate]

There have been some comments from players mentioning that they don’t see the point of defense as a stat, so I’d like to go into some detail on it.

As defense increases over an enemy’s attack power, the amount of damage reduced gradually tapers off. If the enemy you are fighting is lower level and your defense is way higher, it becomes more difficult to gain large benefits even if you increase your defense.

In instances where your defense is reduced via an enemy action, where your character’s defense would normally be higher than an enemy’s attack power, and the gap between the two is narrowed, the amount of damage being reduced will start to vary largely. This shows that you’ll take more damage when your defense is lowered, giving meaning to the value of your defense.

Another easy way of feeling the effects of defense is to face off against an even match enemy and compare the damage received with your armor equipped and off.

Since the effects of defense increase as defense is stacked, the benefits are by no means small, so it would be really helpful if we could receive feedback with this in mind.

For reference, Mocchi provided some test data.

Setup

Compared physical damage taken between the following situations when fighting warrior-type monsters that were 15 levels higher than the level 99 PLD/WAR (defense 460) used for testing.


Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Results

Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage


Depending on the situation, the numbers may not be the same, but this is simply intended to serve as reference.

[Nightfyre]

The feedback you've received has absolutely been made with that fact in mind... and Mocchi's data really only proves our point. Not trying to shoot the messenger here, but this isn't helpful. If the devs really felt that it would be informative after several pages in which the benefits and limitations of defense have already been expounded in detail, I have to admit I'm kind of insulted.

[Greatguardian]

Don't insult our intelligence by presuming that the players don't know how Defense works.

[Quetzacoatl]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_iTPP_ZPqIsU/TVKV2O3zS6I/AAAAAAAAARk/Lu8FfNl3uqU/s1600/How-Not-To-Be-Bored.jpg

Sorry Camate, but it's like Nightfyre said...this is stuff we already knew.

[Bayohne]

Hey guys,

Just as a reference, I wanted to point out that while you may know a lot about how defense functions, it doesn't mean that every one reading the forums does. So while something we post may not directly influence you or your understanding of something, we post to reach as many people as possible. Nothing we post is ever meant to "insult your intelligence" when we try and provide context for things.

[Quetzacoatl]

I think we knew that as well :X

[Yugl]

Would you mind sharing the exact formula for pDIF? That would help players better understand the value of defense. It would also help if you told us whether the Cast Time Reduction on staffs stacked with Fast cast is additive (10FC+15CTR = 25% reduction total) or multiplicative ([1-0.1]*[1-00.15]).

[Greatguardian]

A fair point, but it only brings up an equally distressing problem. Those of us here who understand how Defense works have been fairly consistent in our evaluation of the usefulness of this roll and Defense as a stat with the current limitations in place on player characters (namely 1.0 lower bound on monster cRatio). We've brought up very specific problems that arise when using Defense at all, namely:

- Lower bound on cRatio causes players to quickly "tap out" or plateau in terms of damage mitigation from defense

- High attack values on notorious monsters make Defense worthless without extreme stacking as the gains from defense at high monster cRatio are minimal at best.

The Defense vs Damage Mitigation curve for players is an exponential curve, as opposed to the logarithmic curve used by Attack vs Damage dealt. This means that Defense is only ever worthwhile when it is stacked to the extreme. In combination with this, the game specifically prevents us from stacking to the extreme by placing a lower bound on monster cRatio (Essentially cutting off the most potent end of the curve).

Damage mitigation as a function of Defense (For Players) looks something like this:

http://images.bluegartr.com/bucket/gallery/540d8de797dcb3b18cfbb23ba4b3ce32.jpg

As it stands, most players can never bring themselves out of the far-left range on powerful monsters without extreme stacking of defensive gear and buffs. Likewise, when they finally do break out of that range, the curve instantly cuts off at 1.0 cRatio before the players are able to gain truly meaningful defensive benefits from Defense.

While explaining the basics of Defense to people who don't understand it is a noble venture, it does nothing to address the inherent flaws of the Defense stat. It's fine to say "Hey, Defense gets better when you have more of it!", which would be true (And is true for monsters!), but so long as monsters are given a "Free pass" on floored cRatio, Defense will never be able to be stacked high enough for it to be worth a buff slot.

[Afania]

There have been some comments from players mentioning that they don’t see the point of defense as a stat, so I’d like to go into some detail on it.

As defense increases over an enemy’s attack power, the amount of damage reduced gradually tapers off. If the enemy you are fighting is lower level and your defense is way higher, it becomes more difficult to gain large benefits even if you increase your defense.

In instances where your defense is reduced via an enemy action, where your character’s defense would normally be higher than an enemy’s attack power, and the gap between the two is narrowed, the amount of damage being reduced will start to vary largely. This shows that you’ll take more damage when your defense is lowered, giving meaning to the value of your defense.

Another easy way of feeling the effects of defense is to face off against an even match enemy and compare the damage received with your armor equipped and off.

Since the effects of defense increase as defense is stacked, the benefits are by no means small, so it would be really helpful if we could receive feedback with this in mind.

For reference, Mocchi provided some test data.

Setup

Compared physical damage taken between the following situations when fighting warrior-type monsters that were 15 levels higher than the level 99 PLD/WAR (defense 460) used for testing.


Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Results

Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage


Depending on the situation, the numbers may not be the same, but this is simply intended to serve as reference.

At this point of game, phalanx roll is more useful than defense roll, and opens up a few new situations where I'd use COR.

I want phalanx back ;(


Unless.....unless new event legion is full of HNMs that hits like a truck even on Ochain/Aegis PLD that survive-ability became an issue......is that the reason why Dev want to make it into defense roll so bad?

Or old cannonball BLU era coming back etc.

I'll just wait until Legion comes out I guess to see if there's any use for it......maybe it'd need it, idk .-.

[Nightfyre]

How does uninformed feedback provide an appropriate environment for good game design? Eyeballing was one of the biggest issues holding FFXI gameplay back in its early years. If you're going to educate the masses, give them the full story instead of a post that is obviously meant to sell people on the benefits without examining the drawbacks. As I said before, the players have expounded on both the benefits and the limitations of defense in this thread as part of our feedback.

For example, let's go back and look at Mocchi's numbers again.



Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage

Defender reduced damage by nearly 13.5%, but it also reduced attack by 25%. Given the constant decay of so-called "volatile enmity", this actually ends up reducing a tank's ability to generate and maintain hate by more than it will reduce their non-decaying enmity loss because spells and JAs are too infrequent to keep VE constantly near cap. You could have achieved the same defensive result with less than half the offensive cost on any job by instead using 12% PDT gear.

Food reduced damage taken by a further 9.5%. A PLD could gain twice that much in offensive output by eating pizza or red curry buns and instead wearing an additional 8% PDT. Let's also remember that PDT can be macro'd in and out for WS. As such, while your white damage and WS frequency is reduced, your per-WS damage remains intact.

If you're trying to sell us on defense post-PDT, how do you propose the person this buff is targeting should maintain hate? Flash and Cure spam? The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

So I go back to DDing for hate and you're asking me to trade... Berserk, red curry buns, and Chaos or Fighter's Roll for a mediocre reduction in damage? Unless something is oneshotting me (in which case: hello Stun, Earthen Armor, Scherzo, all more efficient choices), I'm going to take less damage overall by going with the offensive buffs and making the monster dead faster. I'm also going to be able to kill more things in less time; hooray for efficiency gains!

[doctorugh]

There have been some comments from players mentioning that they don’t see the point of defense as a stat, so I’d like to go into some detail on it.

As defense increases over an enemy’s attack power, the amount of damage reduced gradually tapers off. If the enemy you are fighting is lower level and your defense is way higher, it becomes more difficult to gain large benefits even if you increase your defense.

In instances where your defense is reduced via an enemy action, where your character’s defense would normally be higher than an enemy’s attack power, and the gap between the two is narrowed, the amount of damage being reduced will start to vary largely. This shows that you’ll take more damage when your defense is lowered, giving meaning to the value of your defense.

Another easy way of feeling the effects of defense is to face off against an even match enemy and compare the damage received with your armor equipped and off.

Since the effects of defense increase as defense is stacked, the benefits are by no means small, so it would be really helpful if we could receive feedback with this in mind.

For reference, Mocchi provided some test data.

Setup

Compared physical damage taken between the following situations when fighting warrior-type monsters that were 15 levels higher than the level 99 PLD/WAR (defense 460) used for testing.


Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Results

Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage


Depending on the situation, the numbers may not be the same, but this is simply intended to serve as reference.

I would be interested in the numbers beyond 663 defense, perhaps at 850 and 999(to better prove the point that gallants is useless). If the mobs attack is 663, then thats the bottom value that can be achieved (ie no sense in using gallant roll to push higher or /blu and use cocoon for that matter). Makes harden shell (100% def) ... not really worth anything either.

[Insaniac]

Incoming footage of SE HQ!!

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leq8907p9l1qzhyic.gif

[Byrth]

Maybe I'm uninformed, but I haven't seen any strong evidence that the relationship between defense and damage taken is much other than piecewise linear, and mostly just linear over the normal defense range. The 1.0 "floor" you speak of is likely not actually a floor but a plateau in the equation, similar to the one that exists in the player pDIF formula. As evidence, I offer low level monsters outside of cities. They hit for 0-1, which means they have base damage greater than 0 and pDIF at or below 1. If I was a betting man, I would say that monsters likely use the same pDIF equations as melees except with a 4.0 Ratio cap and no level correction. You can't get below 1.0 on things that matter because they have such high attack.

Point is, no one is ever going to stack defense because +30% defense does not lower damage taken by 30%. If Ratio is directly proportional to damage taken, then changes in ratio are proportional to changes in damage taken. Adding 25% defense would reduce average physical damage taken by 20%.

* Cool, Defender does do something! But using Defender decreases your attack by 25%, so now how do you hold hate?
* Most dangerous monster attacks aren't physical damage, so why would you sacrifice your ability to hold hate to take 20% less damage from them?
* If you increase your defense too much, you run into this lower plateau or "floor." At that point, increasing your defense by 25% decreases physical damage taken by less than 20%.

[doctorugh]

The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

Hmmm, maybe make fantod lvl 49 or less, then paladin cap "cap" defense without reducing attack (hate) and get a nice hate tool to boot.

[Ophannus]

In before Devs respond of : "Lowering your damage taken decreases your enmity loss".

[SpankWustler]

Since people more eloquent than myself have focused on the problems with defense itself, I'll be brief.


Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Because dealing damage is the most effective way to increase enmity in today's FFXI, this person has a far more effective method of damage mitigation than defense available. This person will never be targeted by a monster on which any effective damage-dealer is engaged.

[Motenten]

Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage

To add a technical quibble: I'm not sure how you're getting 460 defense while naked. As a Taru pld/war (lvl 99), I have 238 defense while naked. I assume you actually mean "fully armored".




Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage




Ok, assuming a basic ratio function with level correction (and assuming it mirrors player attack level correction), we can solve that with a system of linear equations.

Level correction (+15 levels): +0.75
Base weapon damage: 133
Mob attack: 500


Now let's take a look at the effects of Defender and Berserk as the mob's level increases. For the attack side, I'll assume the mob has 500 defense and that the player has 500 attack as well (no food, and somewhat defensively geared).


First Defender:



Mob lvl Player Dmg Mob Dmg
100 -26% -19%
101 -28% -18%
102 -29% -18%
103 -31% -17%
104 -33% -16%
105 -36% -16%
106 -38% -15%
107 -42% -15%
108 -45% -14%
109 -50% -14%
110 -56% -13%
111 -63% -13%
112 -71% -13%
113 -83% -12%
114 -100% -12%



The percentages are the change in damage done compared to not having Defender active. You'll see that by having Defender active against a level 100 mob, the attack that the player does drops by 26%, while the damage taken from being hit by the mob decreases by 19%.

As the mob's level increases, you'll see that the negative effects of the lowered attack scale up rapidly, such that by the time you're fighting a mob 15 levels higher than you, you're essentially doing no damage at all.

On the other hand, the value of the defense you're adding is also dropping. You're only reducing the damage the mob does to you by 12% by the time you're fighting a mob 15 levels above you.

Overall, the higher the level of the mob, the more detrimental the attack loss is, and the less valuable the defense gain is.


Now Berserk:



Mob lvl Player Dmg Mob Dmg
100 26% 32%
101 28% 31%
102 29% 29%
103 31% 28%
104 33% 27%
105 36% 26%
106 38% 25%
107 42% 24%
108 45% 24%
109 50% 23%
110 56% 22%
111 63% 21%
112 71% 21%
113 83% 20%
114 100% 20%



And now we see essentially the same effects mirrored. The higher the level of the mob, the more valuable the attack boost of Berserk becomes, and the less detrimental the additional damage taken is. By the time you're fighting a mob 15 levels above you, you could use Berserk and put on 27% PDT (barely half the cap on PDT) and you'd be doing twice as much damage as without Berserk while taking as much damage as if you had Defender active.


As mobs reach even match, the relative defensive gain of Defender reaches its peak, where going from Berserk to Defender reduces damage taken by about 40%. It can arguably be considered useful against mobs that are within a few levels of the player, but its raison d'etre, reduction of damage taken from extremely high level mobs (the entire purpose around which pld is built), is shown to be largely an illusion.

If you look seriously at the above numbers, it becomes plainly obvious why players are largely indifferent to the idea of a defense boost. When it takes a 25% boost in attack to reduce damage by as much as a couple augmented Dark Rings, what's the point? You're losing a massive amount of damage output (Defender's attack penalty, defense food vs attack food, Gallant's Roll vs Chaos Roll, etc) for very little gain, that is *least* valuable against the very difficult mobs you're touting this as being useful for.



One could perhaps argue that the comparison should be made in terms of absolute gains and losses. After all, a 12% reduction on a 1500-damage attack can keep you alive, while a 12% reduction on a 50-damage hit is barely worth noting. And yes, if you consider it from that perspective, the reductions or increases in damage from Defender and Berserk can be considered static. That is, you get the same absolute increase or decrease in damage regardless of the mob's level.

In that respect, it could be considered the equivalent of Phalanx. A 25% increase in defense vs the sample mob is equivalent to a 29 point phalanx effect. Interestingly, considered as a phalanx-equivalent, it becomes -more- valuable the less defense you have. A DD with 300 defense would have damage reduced by 44 points per hit; a pld with 600 defense (ignoring the quirks of stacking percentage buffs) would have damage reduced by 22 points per hit.

It's also directly proportional to the base damage of the weapon the mob uses, so you could say that you get different phalanx values against mobs of different damage ratings, which maintains its relative value in all cases, whereas Phalanx itself is static and thus becomes exponentially more valuable the lower the base damage of the mob's weapon.



Given that consideration, treating it as a variant on a phalanx effect that scales up with mob damage, it's a decent option. In terms of the trade-offs involved, though (giving up an attack buff in order to gain a defense buff), the player usually loses far more than they gain.

[Chamaan]

Like other people have been saying, when you start dealing with higher level monsters, the small amount of damage reduction from increasing defense is impotent in the face of boosting offensive power. This wouldn't be an issue if we could put up as many buffs as we want, like how Whms throw up Protect just because hey, it doesn't hurt anything, but Cors only get two slots for their buffs. It's not resource efficient.

Here's the point where I make a suggestion. If you really don't want to give us Phalanx that badly. Change Gallant's Roll to reduce the damage from AoE abilities and spells from mobs. Something like Scherzo or Earthern Armor that only works on AoE. That's something you wanted to focus on in Voidwatch and Legion right? If it's a decent boost I'd sure use that in a tank party.

[Byrth]

Ok, assuming a basic ratio function with level correction (and assuming it mirrors player attack level correction), we can solve that with a system of linear equations.

Level correction (+15 levels): +0.75
Base weapon damage: 133
Mob attack: 500

So Level correction applies as a bonus for attacking monsters as well? I didn't know!

[Ophannus]

Never seen Nidhogg hit low level players for like 800 non crit before?

[MarkovChain]

Those of us here who understand how Defense works

Kay, I'll make it simple neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit about how defense work. The pdif formula that have been used for years are notoriously wrong. Secondly a lower cap on pdif isn't excatly informative on how defense work since what matter is only the distribution between low and max damage received. Even when pdif has a lower cap the average damage taken is still partwise linear as a function of cratio and therefore as function of 1/DEF. It means that while static defense gear is technically losing power, stuff like defender is exactly as useful regardless of def.




You also said that high level monster have so much attack that stacking def may not be useful due to having a lower cap. This is definitely not true. What's not true is "the high attack part" being responsible for it. For instance you can do this simple test on monk against chigoes. With countestance and no gear you basically defense free :

your defense = 40 => 117,... damage taken on average
your defense = 54 => 107,... damage taken on average
your defense= 95 => 60,.... damage taken on average



Stacking def is actually beneficial but in your case (HNMs) the problem is not their attack but the level difference term.

[Yinnyth]

neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit

Kettle. Pot. Black.

[Mirabelle]

Calling people out over knowledge of defense stat is a bit childish. I think even those of us who have no programming or math skills at all have still seen the relative inefficiency of the stat over years of play, even if we don't know the particulars.

As Chamann said, a Protect/cocoon type roll would be so bad if it cost nothing to use. But it costs an attack roll which in the scheme of things is significantly more valuable both in enmity generation and in killing efficiency over a modest reduction in damage.

At least a phalanx roll sometimes has a bit of usefulness (ex. pulling EP/DC mobs for a Fell Cleave party). A protectra roll would be a waste of a buff roll.

[Yugl]

So Level correction applies as a bonus for attacking monsters as well? I didn't know!

I believe that was assumed, not asserted.

[Motenten]

So Level correction applies as a bonus for attacking monsters as well? I didn't know!
I believe that was assumed, not asserted.

Assumed, yes, however it's impossible to solve the equations for the damage values presented if there is -not- a level correction factor.

I also don't take any stance on the presumed 1.0 min mob cRatio, as the level correction factor makes that a non-issue for the content under discussion. In this case the player would need to have a defense of over 2000 before you'd even need to worry about whether that 1.0 floor existed.

[Motenten]

Just wanted to note that this is probably a reasonable estimate of an actual lvl 114 mob. Tossing in a base 415 defense (roughly what my nin would have with Protect V on; nin used because that's what I'm gear as at the moment), average damage taken when using berserk would be about 313, which is about in line with what I see from high level mobs. Accounting for level correction means mobs don't need d200+ weapons (as I often heard claimed years ago) to be hitting for 300 damage a swipe.

And yes, switching from Berserk to Defender does reduce average damage taken a fair bit; with Defender, average damage would be about 228, which increases the time it would take the mob to kill me by an extra hit or two. On the other hand, switching from Defender to Berserk triples my average damage done, going from 20 to 60 in this simplistic model (note: lots of things not accounted for, or fudged to keep the math simple; don't take this as absolutely accurate).


And a random thought that just crossed my mind as a suggestion for what to do with Gallant's Roll: Make it a boost to all defense skill proc rates -- Parry, Shield and Guard (but not evasion, since that's already covered by Nin's roll). With things like Shield Mastery and Tactical Parry, it could give a slight boost to offense while still performing the role of a defensive buff. Further, it would be a periodic full or very high reduction in damage, rather than a constant low-level reduction in damage, and there are times when that's the more useful form.

Caveat: I have not given any serious though to the full implications of such a roll, though I'll note that yes, it will be significantly more valuable for a pld (who would get both parry and shield) than it would be for anyone else, and I think that's probably a good thing.

[Byrth]

I don't see how single directional level correction would make it impossible to calculate. It would just always be the same as your EM case.

[Motenten]

I don't see how single directional level correction would make it impossible to calculate. It would just always be the same as your EM case.

Simple exercise: Figure out the attack and weapon damage of the mob used in Mocchi's example without using any level correction. Let me know what you come up with.

[Cursed]

How does uninformed feedback provide an appropriate environment for good game design? Eyeballing was one of the biggest issues holding FFXI gameplay back in its early years. If you're going to educate the masses, give them the full story instead of a post that is obviously meant to sell people on the benefits without examining the drawbacks. As I said before, the players have expounded on both the benefits and the limitations of defense in this thread as part of our feedback.

For example, let's go back and look at Mocchi's numbers again.


Defender reduced damage by nearly 13.5%, but it also reduced attack by 25%. Given the constant decay of so-called "volatile enmity", this actually ends up reducing a tank's ability to generate and maintain hate by more than it will reduce their non-decaying enmity loss because spells and JAs are too infrequent to keep VE constantly near cap. You could have achieved the same defensive result with less than half the offensive cost on any job by instead using 12% PDT gear.

Food reduced damage taken by a further 9.5%. A PLD could gain twice that much in offensive output by eating pizza or red curry buns and instead wearing an additional 8% PDT. Let's also remember that PDT can be macro'd in and out for WS. As such, while your white damage and WS frequency is reduced, your per-WS damage remains intact.

If you're trying to sell us on defense post-PDT, how do you propose the person this buff is targeting should maintain hate? Flash and Cure spam? The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

So I go back to DDing for hate and you're asking me to trade... Berserk, red curry buns, and Chaos or Fighter's Roll for a mediocre reduction in damage? Unless something is oneshotting me (in which case: hello Stun, Earthen Armor, Scherzo, all more efficient choices), I'm going to take less damage overall by going with the offensive buffs and making the monster dead faster. I'm also going to be able to kill more things in less time; hooray for efficiency gains!

Dear SE, this ^.
Couldn't have said it better. After reading a few threads, and this one especially, I have come to realize, more than ever, that the FFXI players are the ones who have really kept this game progressing and alive. I wish I could say the same for SE.
Kudos to the player base - we were given some utter crap and turned it into something enjoyable. Now if we could only do something about the devs that keep trying to turn it back into complete utter....... you know what I want to say.

[Byrth]

Simple exercise: Figure out the attack and weapon damage of the mob used in Mocchi's example without using any level correction. Let me know what you come up with.

So you're assuming that the numbers he provided are some kind of absolute average?

Unknown Attack enemy -> unknown ratio, assumed to be absolute averages of many hits. Increasing his defense by 44% decreased his damage taken by 20%, where we normally would have predicted 30% without level correction. If they were single hits, being off by 20 damage (10%) is nothing. Keep in mind this is the SE guy that went and "tested" TH10>TH9 by killing things.

[Motenten]

We can infer that they are supposed to be generally consistent representations of expected damage (I expect them to represent cRatio rather than actual average pDif, as that's the simplest way of conveying the value), otherwise the point he was trying to illustrate would be meaningless. If the numbers picked were some random sampling out of the full pDif range, there's literally no meaning in saying that defense reduces damage taken, since the numbers could be -anything-.

This is further backed up by Bayohne's post; if the intent is to provide a simple illustration of how defense works to those who may not be as math-savvy, and they choose non-representative samples of the damage done, they are effectively lying to their audience. I doubt they would want the fallout of being caught directly lying about basic game mechanics (as opposed to merely bad testing methodology, as in the TH post, where they didn't assert any actual numbers).

Regardless, it wouldn't be too hard to test for mob level correction with a little level syncing, to verify one way or the other.

[SpankWustler]

You're going off the assumption that the person conducting the test understood the subject matter and college freshman statistics; thus knowing there could be samples miles and miles away from the average, and knowing the importance of getting hit a bunch of times rather than just once for each defense value.

I really super-duper hope you're right, because otherwise I am probably going to snap this cheap 12$ keyboard over my own head in a demi-human feat of rage. Given some of the stuff that's gone on lately, however, I can not share your level of confidence.

Edit: Not that any of this has any impact on level correction's presence. I just enjoy complaining. It's good for the bodily humors or something.

[Byrth]

As I see it:
* Their point before was "Higher TH is better than lower TH."
* Their point this time is "Defense decreases damage taken."

I think those really might be cherrypicked single values. If they had been interested in giving us accurate game mechanics information in either case they wouldn't have had to do any experiments at all. They have the code, so they should be able to look at it and tell us the exact relationship between TH and drop rate, defense and damage taken, etc. Instead they do "experiments" with poorly defined methods.

For all we know, he is hand parsing this and has an N of 1 at each defense value. Like, pull a level 114 monster. It hits him once, he uses Defender. It hits him again, he uses BCB. It hits him again, he GM-kills it or lets it kill him.

I agree that it wouldn't be hard to test, though. You would need some way to keep your VIT/defense constant and survive something for a moderate period of time.

[Greatguardian]

If these "tests" illustrate just one thing, it's that even the JP community reps probably do not have any access to the code or the ability to gain such access from the Devs.

It wouldn't really surprise me, to be perfectly honest. Sometimes (Er, more like every time a Dev post is translated) you're left to wonder how much the Developers even understand about the mechanics of their own game. I'm still working under the impression that they fired off their math geeks after the code base was finalized and only left Designers on the team, which would explain oh so much about the past 5 years.

Imagine trying to update an IE4 compliant website to work with Chrome, Firefox, iOS, Android, and IE9 with a staff that only knows how to use Macromedia Dreamweaver 6.0 MX.

[SpankWustler]

If these "tests" illustrate just one thing, it's that even the JP community reps probably do not have any access to the code or the ability to gain such access from the Devs.

The more I think about about this sort of thing, the worse I feel for the community teams of all nations. They've gone out of their way to provide information on multiple occasions, and all we players can often do is say "Thanks but we know that already." It seems like we have access to the same testing methods, sadly, if not quite the same information and resources.

I was pretty snappy about a possible sample size of one earlier, but now that I think about it in this context, I wouldn't blame the guy if that were the case. There may be deadlines for replies; getting hit 5,000+ times takes a while.

There should be accurate spreadsheets or other plug-stuff-in game mechanic simulations available for these folks who have to discuss game mechanics with a group of people who are dedicated to complaining about game mechanics.

[Motenten]

Post with testing: here (http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/108161-pDif-and-damage?p=5042484&viewfull=1#post5042484).

Conclusions:
Mobs get positive level correction of +0.05 per level above the player.

The 1.0 cRatio floor exists, but possibly only for pDif values below cRatio. This part was a bit weird.

Edit: Further testing indicates we can't reach a conclusion about a cRatio floor just yet.

Edit2: There is clearly not a cRatio floor; however the formula for the pDif range changes, and it's not the same formula as used by players.

[Tetsujin]

If defender (an increase of 25% defense) only dropped off roughly 30 points of damage, that's proof enough for why the defense stat feels so weak.

[Motenten]

More thoughts.

When considered in isolation, a defense boost is perfectly fine as a buff. It reduces damage taken at least some, and in a consistent, which is better than nothing, and the amount reduced is fairly comparable to the original proposed phalanx effect (at least for high-level mobs), which no one really seemed to have serious issues with. Much of the complaining, however, is because the players are considering things with respect to the larger picture -- what do you have to give up to get this boost?

As mentioned, with the Protect line of spells you give up nothing, so it's almost always worthwhile to use them (at least til you're fighting EP or lower mobs). With a Cor roll, however, you are intrinsically giving something up -- the option for a different roll. Plus, Cor doesn't get an analog to Pianissimo; if you're giving a buff to one person, you're probably giving it to at least half the party (can still keep the melee group separate from the mage group).

There are two things you're giving up with a defense roll: The potential for more attack of some sort (which is a fairly substantial loss if it's hitting the DDs as well), and the enmity that goes with the extra damage.

As for the attack itself? Honestly, if you triple a pld's damage output, you probably won't reduce the fight length of these tough fights by more than 5%. The pld will certainly take less damage overall due to the increased defense than due to faster kill speed if you changed rolls. The real problems are the secondary factors:

1) That damage done translates directly into enmity, and that doing damage is by far the best way to generate enmity in the game.
2) That placing the roll's effect on the DDs (due to not being able to single-target buffs) severely hampers their damage output potential.

It's possible to work around the second issue above through careful positioning (we did it often enough when levelling up pre-Abyssea). Annoying, but not crippling. The first issue, however, cannot be ignored.

Almost all the problems pld suffers from stem from deliberately inadequate damage output potential, combined with no other means of generating enmity that is anywhere near comparable with doing damage.



Camate mentioned a max of about +30% defense on an 11. I'd hope that that's without the job boost effect. In other words, I'd expect the defense bonuses on Gallant's Roll to basically mirror the attack bonuses on Chaos Roll (so up to +41% defense on an 11 with pld in the party). That would give a 17%-27% reduction in damage taken for the example scenario (though that's made somewhat less effective when combined with PDT gear).

If that were the intended buff levels, having reviewed the math for the resulting effects, I'd say that this is a fairly decent overall buff, *as long as* there are also plans to address the enmity issue for pld. Well, to be fair, it's a decent buff either way; it's just won't be used until those other issues are addressed.

[Chamaan]

Take a look at the stats listed in the update notes for today. Either we've got a bad translation fail or we may have won this fight.

=EDIT=
False alarm. Defense. Enjoy your worthless roll, boys.

[Motenten]

I'd also like to hear an explanation for the difference in the defense boost for Gallant's vs the attack boost for Chaos. A given amount of attack is -always- better than that same amount of defense, yet Chaos's percentages are about 30%-50% higher than Gallant's.

Lucky Chaos is +25% attack; lucky Gallant's is +15% defense
11 Chaos is +31% attack; 11 Gallant's is +20% defense
etc.

Both get a +10% bonus for job in party.

If we're going to get a defense boost, why is it not at least on par with the corresponding attack boost roll?

[Motenten]

Aside: Mocchi made a lengthy post detailing damage results for various attack/defense conditions vs Ig-Alima this morning (with specifics such as it being level 120 with 1059 attack). I hope to see a proper translation of it soon.

[Motenten]

~~ Review of Mocchi's post based on Google Translate


Known info:

Mob attack: 1059
Mob level: 120

Baseline case (normal attack), damage done vs.:
365 def (Berserk): 645
460 def (neutral): 645
575 def (Defender): 614
630 def (Defender+food): 563
831 def (Defender+food+Gallant's): 504


There is no difference in damage taken between 460 (neutral) and 365 (Berserk up). There's a slight reduction in damage taken between 460 (neutral) and 575 (Defender up).

From this we can deduce that it's using 1-hander mechanics, with a capped Ratio of 2.0 vs a defense of 1059/2 = 530.

Given the damage done with capped cRatio (645), and that there should be 1.05 worth of level correction for a mob 21 levels above the player, we can figure the base weapon damage for the mob.

645 / 3.05 = 211.5

This actually doesn't fit with either 211 or 212 cleanly, so it's likely there's actually a cap on level correction of +1.0.

645 / (2.0 + 1.0) = 215 (exact)

We can then see how things calculate out in the forward direction.

1059/575 + 1.0 = 2.84 * 215 = 611 [vs 614]
1059/630 + 1.0 = 2.68 * 215 = 576 [vs 563]
1059/831 + 1.0 = 2.27 * 215 = 489 [vs 504]


Note that these values do not match the results given by Mocchi. It's possible he's using the average pDif value rather than cRatio, since those are slightly different, but there's no way to really tell for sure. It's probable that there are other elements not being accounted for in the player model. At the very least, the vit from the food may have affected the value.



Additional issues:

The defense values do not add up.

Base def is 460
Def with Defender is 575 (460 * 1.25)

Def with Defender + food is 630, which means + 55 defense. That seems extremely low, especially with tacos not capping til +150 defense, and even fish mithkabobs capping at +90 def, but the wikis don't list that data. The actual percent increase for BCBs is +16% accoring to wiki, which would give +73 defense if applied only to base defense and not capped.

Def with Gallant's is 831, which is +201 over Defender+food. To get +201 defense with +30% defense (roll of 11 with pld), you need 670 base defense. That's not possible if Gallant's is part of the same term as Defender, in terms of +def%. Even if it stacks on top of Defender+food (which would increase its value), the total for those together is 630 defense, so it's still insufficient to explain the final total.


It could conceivably be that the percent increase on BCBs is listed incorrectly on the wiki, and that it's actually +12%. However no matter what juggling I do, I can't get the defense totals to add up. The closest is Base defense * 1.25 (Defender) * 1.3 (Gallant's) * 1.12 (BCB) = 836, though if you did it that way and also added in the 2 def from the 4 vit of the BCBs you'd end up with 840.

Camate -- please pass through a request that Mocchi review the numbers he used for his illustration post.

[Huevriel]

Ran into the Tree for more Parry skillups to test out this roll as a follow up to the last two posts I put in this thread.
Gonna note, that I'm quite sure this was absolutely not the "intention" the dev's had developed new Gallant's Roll. But, if you read my first response in this thread, I was absolutely ecstatic and giddy at proposed Phalanx. Here are some numbers.

TL;DR: 75COR still trying to parry skill up. Change to Def roll makes no difference because it was only sort of meant for high defense jobs.

Defense: (75COR/37RDM) fighting against Even Matched Korrigan.
Equips alone: 256
+10 [vs. Plantoids Evolith]. The +10 never shows up on actual defense value when engaged with mob type. Also using -28% PDT in gear.
With Protect IV: 311
With Salted Fish: 397
With Bonused 11 Gallant's Roll: 489
With Phalanx from support job RDM

Damage received on average of 25 hits with Bonused 11 Roll: 25.12
Damage received on average of 25 hits without Gallant's Roll: 28.00
Proposed damage received if original effect was implemented: 0 (28.00 - 30)

Will try /BLU for Cocoon which should boost DEF to roughly 730 and try again.

Update:
Tried 75COR/37BLU with use of Cocoon.
Got DEF near 700. Fought EM Korrigan. Took more damage than without subjob Phalanx. /sigh. Gonna disregard Gallant's Roll and stick with good 'ol Regen/Refresh rolls on COR/RDM.

[Afania]

Take a look at the stats listed in the update notes for today. Either we've got a bad translation fail or we may have won this fight.

=EDIT=
False alarm. Defense. Enjoy your worthless roll, boys.


We plan on setting the value of the defense boost at around 30% when the highest number is rolled..

So where is our 30% def boost? Gallant's roll is nerfed, Save TP planning to be nerfed, and QD update/3rd roll still no where to be seen.

;(

Back to the topic, there may be a chance that this roll may be used in Legion if you're in a situation when PLD needs to hold the NM for some reason.

Edit: Nvm, just saw that 10% bonus.

[Seha]

So in the end you implemented the roll as defense instead of phalanx, despite ALL OF US saying that the latter was better. I would just ask you to stop claiming it's about your imaginary "feedback received", it's not, you're just doing whatever you want disregarding every bit of the real feedback.

[Greatguardian]

So in the end you implemented the roll as defense instead of phalanx, despite ALL OF US saying that the latter was better. I would just ask you to stop claiming it's about your imaginary "feedback received", it's not, you're just doing whatever you want disregarding every bit of the real feedback.

I think you're reading the wrong language forums tbh. They changed it from Phalanx to Defense in the first place because there was supposedly "a lot of feedback about it" and people asking for Defense. I certainly don't see that on the English forums, do you?

Sure, we recognized that Phalanx was only situationally decent, but I'm fairly certain that our preferred alternative was PDT.

[Motenten]

So in the end you implemented the roll as defense instead of phalanx, despite ALL OF US saying that the latter was better. I would just ask you to stop claiming it's about your imaginary "feedback received", it's not, you're just doing whatever you want disregarding every bit of the real feedback.

Also, to be fair, a defense bonus is more effective than phalanx would ever be against high level mobs. Phalanx gets more powerful the weaker the mob gets, while defense and PDT get more effective the stronger the mob gets.

And I'll also admit, it's easier to get a given amount of damage reduction in gear via PDT than it is via defense. For mobs like Ig-alima, you'd need something like +50 defense to equate to 5% PDT; how many rings or neck pieces can you get with +50 defense on them? Given that we're still capped at 50% PDT (aside from Burtgang), we'd lose more by having a PDT roll and trying to fill gear with defense than vice versa.

The main issue is still the elephant in the room, though: how do you hold hate when you're geared exclusively for defense?

[Greatguardian]

That's why I would have preferred a PDT roll tbh. Keep maxed Haste on all/most jobs even in PDT sets, and decreased white damage taken even in TP/WS sets. Hell, a Bravura WAR could possibly never change out of their TP set if they had a PDT roll.

The way I see it, anything worth defending against is generally going to cap or be near capped cRatio on me if I'm actually doing worthwhile damage to it (and if I'm not, then I don't have hate so moot point), so gains from Defense will be at their lowest.

[Motenten]

Indeed. And giving it more thought, for the Ig-alima case, a DD would need at least 408 defense before a +30% roll (11 w/pld) would even -begin- to have any effect on damage taken, and very few DDs will have their defense much above that even with Berserk down. For the purpose of being useful for everyone, PDT and phalanx are both more useful to most players.

Though I suppose that may be the point -- they want a roll that will help the pld, but not necessarily make it easy to yet again simply replace the pld with another DD. If it were a PDT roll, you could ignore pld and continue with using war/mnk/sam/etc 'tanks'. If it were a phalanx roll it would be somewhat useful for everyone, but not as useful for dealing with extremely strong/high level enemies.

So, again, it works for the (probable) intended purpose, but the intended purpose isn't functionally useful until something is done with the enmity system, or at least pld's ability to generate hate.

[Kyotomi]

Gallant's Roll, incorrect % listed? Not applying correctly?
Been running test for past the past hour in Whitegate.

SE stated
"11 +20%
Bonus +10% "
-----------------
DEF 401
Testing on rolls 11

DEF 480, Should be 401*1.2= 481.2 -1.2
With PLD
DEF 520 Should be 401*1.3= 521.3 -1.3
---------------------
Base with Defender DEF 501
Testing on rolls 11

DEF 581, Should be 501*1.2=601.2 -20.2
With PLD
DEF 620 Should be 501*1.3=651.3 -31.3
++++++++++++

Beside the slight 1.5def avg off, base def math added correctly.
Testing change when Defender is up. It seems the rolls only applies to base DEF (gear only) without buffs.
I did not try with Protect and Atma buffs. But so far, it isnt looking good. If I have some time, I will update new numbers.
"Yinnyth" Stated
"PLD roll probably stacks additively with defender, not multiplicative."

Correct, I didn't think about it last night, but math wise, it did add up...

Base DEF 401 Defender 25% + Roll at 20% = 401*1.45 or 1.55 for bonus... Which ya... blows...
Hopefully someone from Dev team will notice this and change it, because so far it really does not help with anything.

Btw if I recall, so far all other cor's rolls are additionally......not multiplicative:mad:

[Yinnyth]

I ran a quick test myself tonight on jackpot (XI) roll. Naked, I had 162 defense, and idle I had 369 defense before the roll. After the roll, I had 194 naked and 442 in idle gear, which is the expected values for a 20% boost in defense. So it seems to me that it's working as intended.

That being said, why does PLD roll give less defense than DRK roll gives attack?

[Chamaan]

Stop talking about Chaos Roll being higher before they emergency maint and nerf it down to Gallant Roll level.

[Yinnyth]

Minuet gives more attack than minne gives defense too, so I think it was intentional. Doesn't change the fact it's stupid. Also doesn't change the fact that minne and pld roll are mostly worthless.

[MarkovChain]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20989-defense-attack-damage?p=281584#post281584 brought to you by mew.

[Motenten]

Ah, forgot that Kyotomi copied her data to this thread. Copying my reference post here.

Fractional factor:
The percent increase is almost certainly in units of /256 (but maybe /128) based on other info. So +20% is 51/256 (0.19921875) and +30% is 76/256 (0.296875).

401 * (1 + 51/256) = 480.88671875 => 480 (match)
401 * (1 + 76/256) = 520.046875 => 520 (match)

And yes, it's additive with Defender:
401 * (1 + (64+51)/256) = 581.13671875 => 581 (match)
401 * (1 + (64+76)/256) = 620.296875 => 620 (match)

[Motenten]

Continuing forward on the discussion.

Initial post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/19453-%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AB%E3%82%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=278683&viewfull=1#post278683)

Follow-up (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20983-%E3%82%AC%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%84%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%8D%E5%85%B7%E5%90%88%E3%81%A8Ig-Alima%E3%83%87%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%81%AE%E4%BF%A1%E6%86%91%E6%80%A7%E3%81%AE%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C?p=283346&viewfull=1#post283346)

Earlier post with some of the defense values (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/19453-%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AB%E3%82%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=276713&viewfull=1#post276713) -- Translated version of that (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/19793-dev1069-Phantom-Roll-Effect-Adjustments-feedback?p=276997&viewfull=1#post276997)

Error confirmed (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20983-%E3%82%AC%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%84%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%8D%E5%85%B7%E5%90%88%E3%81%A8Ig-Alima%E3%83%87%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%81%AE%E4%BF%A1%E6%86%91%E6%80%A7%E3%81%AE%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C?p=283872&viewfull=1#post283872)


Summary:

Ig-Alima
Level 120
Attack 1059

Hypothetical Pld
Level 99
Defense 460

Black Curry Buns: +15% defense, +4 vit

Variations on defense:

With Berserk: 345
~~ floor(460 * 0.75)

With Defender: 575
~~ floor(460 * 1.25)

With Defender+BCB: 663
* Originally listed incorrectly at 630 defense
~~ floor(floor(((460 + 4/2) * 1.25) * 1.15)

With Defender+Gallant's+BCB: 821
~~ floor(floor((460 * 4/2) * (1 + (25% + 30%))) * 1.15)
~= (462 * 1.55) * 1.15
Note: this shows defense keeps no more than 8 fractional bits, and probably uses the same 7 fractional bits as spell recasts.
Final result of 462 * 1.55 must be 714; 714 can then be multiplied by 1.15 to get 821.
If 10 fractional bits: 716
If 9 fractional bits: 715
If 8 fractional bits: 714
If 7 fractional bits: 714

Food multiplier must be exact (n/100), like Fast Cast.


So from this we can see that it stacks additively with other percentile increases to defense. This is also confirmed by Kyotomi's post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20830-Gallant-s-Roll-incorrect-listed-Not-applying-correctly?p=279708&viewfull=1#post279708). I won't try for exact values in any further calculations, though.


I've not been able to find a listing of the percentage increases for all the values of the roll. The Dev1069 post only lists the old Phalanx-type numbers.


Aside: While the sample post used Black Curry Buns as food, and is useful for showing that food applies after all other buffs are calculated, there's actually not much point in using BCBs. Presumably they have a higher cap than Tav Tacos, but since you need to reach 1000 defense -before- food for them to even -match- the def from Tacos (caps at +150 defense at 600 base defense), that's less useful in general.

The effect of Gallant's Roll on defense in these examples is exaggerated due to the food used. Going from 663 to 821 gets the additional defense of Gallant's, along with the 1.15 multiplier from the food. However, as already pointed out, BCBs aren't an effective choice for total gain in defense, and you'd be better off with Tacos.

Example defenses using Tacos instead of BCBs:

Def 1: 460 (baseline)
Def 2: 575 (Defender)
Def 3: 722 (Defender+food)
Def 4: 866 (Defender+Gallant's+food)
Def 5: 345 (Berserk)

Def 4 ends up with a higher value, however the addition of Gallant's only increased the actual defense value by 144 (866-722), instead of the 158 (821-663) it added when using BCBs. Therefore there's a false inflation in the value provided by the roll.



Since Gallant's is additive with other multipliers, it's effectively only increasing a fraction of the unmodified base defense (plus any vit from food).

A fully def'd up pld should be around 580 defense before buffs (as illustration for maximal value of Gallant's Roll), and an 11 roll would thus give an extra +175 defense. Add Defender, and base before food is 900 defense, hitting 1035 def with BCBs and 1050 with Tacos.


Anyway, going back to the original data posted by Mocchi. Have to make guesses on some of the move translations, since I've not actually fought Ig-Alima myself.

Def 1: 460 (baseline)
Def 2: 575 (Defender)
Def 3: 663 (Defender+food)
Def 4: 821 (Defender+Gallant's+food)
Def 5: 345 (Berserk)

Attack 1 (Mow down; not sure which TP move this translates to)

Def 1: 645
Def 2: 614
Def 3: 563
Def 4: 504
Def 5: 645


Attack 2 (Earth Strike; Kurnugi Collapse?)

Def 1: 967
Def 2: 920
Def 3: 845
Def 4: 757
Def 5: 967


Attack 3 (Triple attack round)

Def 1: 1743
Def 2: 1659
Def 3: 1521
Def 4: 1361
Def 5: 1743


Because of the mob's high attack, you literally take no additional damage from using Berserk. The mob is already at capped attack vs a 460 def player (ratio of 2.3, which is above both the 2.0 1H cap and the 2.25 2H cap).

I can't get the values to exactly match up, but it *appears* to be approximately a 188 base damage weapon with +1.1 level correction (not the expected 1.05 for +21 levels), with nominal attack cap at 2.0 Ratio. (math not shown)

Attack 1 probably has a 25% WSC mod on some ~100 stat, and a 1.0 fTP. Attack 2 is the same but with a 1.5 fTP.


Now that we have those numbers, I'm going back and looking at the value provided by Gallant's when using Tacos instead of BCBs

Attack 1 (Mow down)

Def 1: 645
Def 2: 614
Def 3: 563 536
Def 4: 504 499
Def 5: 645

Reduction due to Gallant's while using BCBs: -59 damage
Reduction due to Gallant's while using Tacos: -37 damage


So you can see that the actual reduction in damage due to Gallant's Roll when it's not being inflated by the food chosen is significantly less than advertised.

[Motenten]

Given the estimated base damage and level correction, we can determine that capped Ratio is 2.0. 3.1 * 188 = 582, and capped damage on the triple attack round is 1743/3 = 581 (so probably some missing rounding in there). Therefore the minimum defense necessary to have any effect whatsoever is 530.

An interesting consideration: Would you rather have Gallant's + Dia III, or Chaos + Bio III? Assuming that either the increased defense or lowered attack is necessary to survive the fight, while the other buff/debuff is to improve damage done.

One would then want to compare the value of Gallant's Roll with Bio III. -15% att from Bio III would put Ig-Alima's attack at 900 instead of 1059. Minimum useful defense is 450. Using the BCB defense values:

Def 1: 460 (baseline)
Def 2: 575 (Defender)
Def 3: 663 (Defender+food)
Def 4: 821 (Defender+Gallant's+food)
Def 5: 345 (Berserk)

Default triple attack round

Def 1: 1743
Def 2: 1659
Def 3: 1521
Def 4: 1361
Def 5: 1743

Reduce that to a single hit value

Def 1: 581
Def 2: 553
Def 3: 507
Def 4: 454
Def 5: 581

And look at the results for various defenses to see how it compares.

Def 1: 575
Def 2: 501
Def 3: 462
Def 4: 413
Def 5: 581

We see that Bio III isn't quite as effective as Gallant's Roll, resulting in 462 damage taken instead of 454 without adding Gallant's. Still, it's quite close.

A 30% attack boost (from 900 to 1170, Chaos Roll 11 without drk bonus; assuming 600 defense) would double an attacker's damage (cRatio going from 0.45 to 0.9). Dia III in those same circumstances would increase damage by 59% (0.45 to 0.715).

So in the overall combination of those effects, Bio III + Chaos is better than Dia III + Gallant's.


Let's also take another look at the value of Chaos Roll for a pld. While it's usually considered the better option for hate, if the pld is turtled up it may actually not even have any effect at all.

Assuming that same 600 defense, an attacker would need an attack of at least 630 just to get above a 0.0 cRatio. If the pld is using defense food and Defender (-25% att), and then given a +30% Chaos Roll (net +5% attack), they'd need at least 600 attack just in gear to get above the cRatio floor, and that is highly unlikely. They'll probably be lucky to have better than 500 attack before buffs. Even if you add a Stalwart's Drink to that, that will still only barely move you above the 0.0 floor (650 attack total vs the 630 needed).

So in that sense, yes, there's no value in giving an attack buff to the pld, while a defense buff would at least do -something-.


So if we're going to turtle up, might as well do a proper job of it. Going with a generally high-def gear set, plus Proctect V, for 650 base defense. We can actually broach 1000 defense with that, but since that depends on an 11 from Gallant's Roll, I'm still going with Tacos. Since you lose a point of def from 4 vit instead of 6 for BCBs vs Tacos, Tacos still end up 1 point ahead anyway.


Def 1: 650 (baseline)
Def 2: 812 (Defender)
Def 3: 966 (Defender+food)
Def 4: 1160 (Defender+Gallant+food)
Def 5: 487 (Berserk)

Damage taken for single-hit:
Def 1: 513
Def 2: 452
Def 3: 413
Def 4: 378
Def 5: 581

Fully turtled up results in a 32% reduction of damage compared to using Berserk. Adding Gallant's Roll to Defender+Food reduces damage from 413 to 378 -- 35 damage, 6% of Berserked defense, 6.8% of nominal defense, or 8.5% of Defender+Food.

So, depending on how you measure it, Gallant's Roll is worth 1-2 middling to good Dark Rings.


Now compare that to the best possible Chaos Roll bonus. 40% attack with drk bonus. Given somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 attack before food (closer to 700 for a drk), 40% attack is worth a good 240 attack. I cannot think of any gear that would give you anything remotely close to that much attack in just 1 or 2 gear slots.

One could argue for the actual numeric defense increase, which is 194 in this case. Creed body+legs is 135 defense, but it would be difficult to get another 60 def in one more slot. However since Creed legs also gives you 5% PDT, it already surpasses the value of Gallant's Roll.


Overall, in any sort of comparison of worth -- point-for-point reduction, buff trade-off, equivalent debuffs, gear equivalence, etc. -- Gallant's Roll fails miserably. That doesn't even get into the value of defense as a stat in the first place.

If you want to even pretend that this roll has any value whatsoever you'd need to practically double its defense increase (ie: +60% defense on an 11 with pld). At 20%-30% (and even that's on an 11; average will be a fair bit lower), it's an absolute joke.

[Motenten]

Oh, just for another bit of equivalence, Gallant's Roll (in the last high defense config) is worth about 3.7 levels of level correction. If you use the 'soft' defense setup from Mocchi's post, it's worth about 5.6 levels of level correction (but that's boosted because it's using the increased defense from the food buff as well).

Defining attack in equivalent amounts of level correction removed, you'd need about 104 attack to get 3.7 levels' worth. An 11 on Chaos Roll counters about 6 to 9 levels worth of level correction.

[SpankWustler]

Some part of me worries that the Development Bros are going to mull over the information that has been presented. Ruminate over this information for a fortnight and a day. Meditate over this information while naked under a freezing waterfall somewhere on Mount Fuji. Steal and drink the toner from the FFXIV team's fax machine and hallucinate about this information.

Then, they will carefully decide to make Chaos Roll, Berserk, Minuets, Dia III, Angon and the like worse. Because, for the past near-decade, they just plopped out a lot of numbers and never considered the very positive effect these things actually have.

Fortunately, this train of thought is beholden to about as much logic as "it rains a lot in the Spring because the sky hates me". Unfortunately, I'd put the odds of a nice change to Gallant's Roll even lower than the nutty stuff I just said.