Enmity - How It Works (All Paladins Should Read This)

The following is a link to Kaeko's (Kanican's) Blog, containing an abundance of testing and data on the FFXI Enmity System. Kaeko contributed the overwhelming majority of everything that we players know about how Enmity works in FFXI.

It's my firm belief that a comprehensive understanding of his conclusions, if not his entire methodology, constitutes the single most important facet of learning the Paladin job.

All Paladins Should Read This

http://kanican.livejournal.com/13235.html

Please reserve the remainder of this thread for questions concerning the conclusions presented on the above site. I will report off-topic posts. Questions and discussion are fine; being dense and arguing with mountains of data is not.

Have there been any updates elsewhere to the values for Cures 76-90?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zagen

Have there been any updates elsewhere to the values for Cures 76-90?

Not that I know of, unfortunately. I don't believe Kaeko himself plays any more. There are a few other FFXI Testing-Gurus that still play, but with the relative decline of PLD and RDM tanking, I don't think they've had much of a reason to test for the new Cure level modifiers with all the other new content to test out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greatguardian

Not that I know of, unfortunately. I don't believe Kaeko himself plays any more. There are a few other FFXI Testing-Gurus that still play, but with the relative decline of PLD and RDM tanking, I don't think they've had much of a reason to test for the new Cure level modifiers with all the other new content to test out.

That's disappointing but understanding since my meleeing > cures for hate even on PLD now.

Do you have any idea how they find the values? I'm rereading Kanican's posts to see if I can see more than just simplifications of the tests

This hasn't been tested, but after asking around on BG I got one of the math guys to give me a possible cure CE mod based on the rate of decline from ~75.

For curing a level 90 target, 40/64, or 0.625. Compared to level 75's 0.727 modifier.

We will, of course, want to get this tested once the servers are back up. But for the moment it seems like a reasonable number to use.

The trends in the CE/VE were different between the 1-10, 11-50, and 51-75.

Code:

Level CE Mod VE Mod CE Mod VE Mod 75 0.727 4.36 40 / 55 240 / 55 76 0.727 4.36 40 / 55 240 / 55 77 0.714 4.29 40 / 56 240 / 56 78 0.714 4.29 40 / 56 240 / 56 79 0.702 4.21 40 / 57 240 / 57 80 0.690 4.14 40 / 58 240 / 58 81 0.690 4.14 40 / 58 240 / 58 82 0.678 4.07 40 / 59 240 / 59 83 0.678 4.07 40 / 59 240 / 59 84 0.667 4.00 40 / 60 240 / 60 85 0.656 3.93 40 / 61 240 / 61 86 0.656 3.93 40 / 61 240 / 61 87 0.645 3.87 40 / 62 240 / 62 88 0.646 3.87 40 / 62 240 / 62 89 0.635 3.81 40 / 63 240 / 63 90 0.625 3.75 40 / 64 240 / 64

This is what the CE/VE modifiers would look like if the trend observed from level 51 onwards was continued. There's a fair chance that this might not be the case because trends in other parts of the game did not continue the trends they were exhibiting before. The alpha value used for WSC, for instance, decreased at periodic intervals from levels 1-75, although after that it increased ending up at 0.85 at level 90.

Either way, if you want to test what it is at 90, it shouldn't be too hard if you can get some people to help you. 40/64 is a good starting point value for going about these tests. I would recommend doing this.

You'll need three people with +/- 0 enmity. If you have merits find some gear to zero it out. Any job that can get Stoneskin works, one of you will need Cure III. I recommend BRD, the CE gained by some of its spells are convenient.

Player 1/2/3: Puts up Stoneskin, should all have full HP.

Player 1: Pulls a mob and pulls it near a zoneline where the other two people wait. Then, changes gear to reduce their HP total by 100, then change back (thus reducing their current HP to exactly 100 under its total.)

Player 2: Casts Cure III on player 1 to cure 100 HP. Then casts a Cure I on player 1 for 0 HP.

Player 3: Casts a Cure 1 on player 1 for 0 HP.

Player 1: Zones

At this point, player 3 needs to do actions to generate more CE. VE will probably be generated too, so be aware that you may need to allow it to decay before doing another action. I recommend BRD for player 3, after doing the 0 HP cure to get on the hate list, they can then move back (so their songs only hit themselves) and cast two of the buff songs that generate 20 CE each. This would put them at 41 CE. After the mob turns back to player 2 (from player 3's VE decaying, player 2 should almost certainly have more than 41 CE), have player 3 cast Cure I for 0 HP over and over until it turns. It will turn when their CE is equal to player 3's, which will be going up by 1 at a time.

Code:

Modifer CE Cures 40 / 57 71 30 40 / 58 69 28 40 / 59 68 27 40 / 60 67 26 40 / 61 66 25 40 / 62 65 24 40 / 63 64 23 40 / 64 63 22 40 / 65 62 21 40 / 66 61 20 40 / 67 60 19 40 / 68 59 18

This is a table for various CE modifiers and how many cures it will take player 3 to finally pull hate. It's highly likely that the modifier is in this table and it covers all of the distinct modifiers without any overlap. Since the numerator for the VE modifier is always 240 and the denominator always matches the CE denominator, this test will find that as well.

if i read that right the main reason it is hard for anyone to get real hate in abyssea is because with the amount of HP we all have the CE loss is so minimal that CE is always capped because we gain it so much faster?

Good stuff. I'll try this once I can get some friends online to help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jar

if i read that right the main reason it is hard for anyone to get real hate in abyssea is because with the amount of HP we all have the CE loss is so minimal that CE is always capped because we gain it so much faster?

It's not known which HP total is used for calculating enmity loss. Sorcerer's Ring, for instance, is based off your HP total before cruor buffs are applied (making mostly impractical to use.) If HP after cruor buffs is used, then it will impact enmity loss greatly (I have around double HP in Heroes zones.) However, the amount of damage Abyssea mobs do is also much greater than mobs in other parts of the game. It might balance out.

Enmity generation, however, has taken a hit. Cures and dealing damage only generate about 86%~ of the enmity that they did at 75 cap. The system still favors damage over cures if compared in a direct way though. Doing 100 damage would generate the same amount of enmity for curing 136 HP (assuming you're fighting level 100 mobs.) The ability to do melee damage has heightened greatly in Abyssea. The CE modifier would be 80/68 in that situation. Without any enmity modification, it would take 8500 damage to cap CE and only 2834 to cap VE. This is not difficult for any melee job to achieve in a very short amount of time.

Well. Firstly, I apologize for taking so long to get around to this. Finally borrowed my brother's bard and just tri-boxed the test.

Anyway, results! I followed the test procedures exactly. All characters were lvl 90, with 0 enmity merits and no enmity altering gear. Not counting the initial cure to get on the hate list, it took the brd 24 cures to pull hate back. Not sure a cure for 0 generates any VE, cause once the mob went for the brd, its stayed there.

So, according to your table, the new cure CE modifier would be 40/62. Yep... cure enmity sucks.