Where is my elemental affinity pieces?

[Mageoholic]

Why the hell would I want to trade 8 staves for 8 swords (much less 8 of each.) More over why would I want to get stuck nuking with Fire, because my special Sashmir increases fire damage, when Blizzard or Thunder would still likely out damage it, even if I cast in a neutral sword.

The only way to make affinity viable and not cost TP is to put it in a slot that doesn't reset TP when changed out. Thats it. Or apply it to a spell. Such as an Enspell, or Enspell II (or Enspell III).

Liek OMG learn basic game mechanics noob.

(also your page of "math", ya my parser tells me exactly what my median damage was, for enspells, melee hits, and weapon skills, why waste time doing needles math when you can spend an hour finding your median values. Furthermore. 20*1.12 = 22.4, 40*1.12 = 44.8, 200*1.12 = 224 3 different weapon damages all increased by 12%, imagine that... one thing to copy paste calculations another thing to actually apply them. If you went that far why didn't you just finish comparing using the posters numbers.)

[Economizer]

Why the hell would I want to trade 8 staves for 8 swords (much less 8 of each.)

Yeah, the only way this should be on a weapon is if it is a Sword with Darkness Affinity (for Sanguine Blade, which Red Mage doesn't even get natively), Dagger with Wind Affinity (for Aeolian Edge), or Daggers that do zero damage with affinity to boost enspells (which is a very different playstyle that few people are even aware of).

Personally, I'm in favor of 1-2 shields that have a sizable but roughly half of the affinity of a staff, or enspells that a sizable but roughly half of the affinity of a staff (actually, both would be ideal, since then you could be equal to a staff user as another option).

Why shields? Honestly I think it is insulting how weak non-Paladin shields are... You are giving up dual wield so they should be as powerful as that, there is no balance in having weak shields. Becoming more powerful with magic but still being able to melee with a weapon that was actually designed for combat would be a good, balanced trade off, if not in the numbers, at least as a gesture.

[saevel]

Yeah, the only way this should be on a weapon is if it is a Sword with Darkness Affinity (for Sanguine Blade, which Red Mage doesn't even get natively), Dagger with Wind Affinity (for Aeolian Edge), or Daggers that do zero damage with affinity to boost enspells (which is a very different playstyle that few people are even aware of).

Personally, I'm in favor of 1-2 shields that have a sizable but roughly half of the affinity of a staff, or enspells that a sizable but roughly half of the affinity of a staff (actually, both would be ideal, since then you could be equal to a staff user as another option).

Why shields? Honestly I think it is insulting how weak non-Paladin shields are... You are giving up dual wield so they should be as powerful as that, there is no balance in having weak shields. Becoming more powerful with magic but still being able to melee with a weapon that was actually designed for combat would be a good, balanced trade off, if not in the numbers, at least as a gesture.

Unfortunately the trade off of losing DW isn't worth it, ~ever~. Your giving up 42.8% melee damage to use that shield. Refer to my above numbers to see how much of our damage is from melee to get an idea of how much you'd be gimping yourself. The only situation I ever see using a shield is when we have to go /DRK for utility reasons, you'd still be gimping yourself but at least there is a solid reason to it.

If you want a slot to put such a buff in then make it the ranged / ammo slot. It's incredibly underutilized for RDM's right now.

[Greatguardian]

Why the hell would I want to trade 8 staves for 8 swords (much less 8 of each.) More over why would I want to get stuck nuking with Fire, because my special Sashmir increases fire damage, when Blizzard or Thunder would still likely out damage it, even if I cast in a neutral sword.

The only way to make affinity viable and not cost TP is to put it in a slot that doesn't reset TP when changed out. Thats it. Or apply it to a spell. Such as an Enspell, or Enspell II (or Enspell III).

Liek OMG learn basic game mechanics noob.

(also your page of "math", ya my parser tells me exactly what my median damage was, for enspells, melee hits, and weapon skills, why waste time doing needles math when you can spend an hour finding your median values. Furthermore. 20*1.12 = 22.4, 40*1.12 = 44.8, 200*1.12 = 224 3 different weapon damages all increased by 12%, imagine that... one thing to copy paste calculations another thing to actually apply them. If you went that far why didn't you just finish comparing using the posters numbers.)

So when you multiply 3 numbers by 1.12, they all increase by 12%. Fancy that. Now I wonder what relevance this has considering Attack has no effect on Base Damage. Or did you skim over that part?

The point of posting the complete formula was to demonstrate that, while I can just plug in Saevel's numbers, I can also plug in any number I want for any situation and it's going to be a hell of a lot more useful than drawing single-scenario generalizations.

Example, using a level 107 monster with 450 Defense and 0 MDT/PDT/MDB:

Player weapon damage = 61, fStr we'll assume is maybe 3? Floor crit rate would be 15% if using a Rancor Collar so we'll roll with that, 0% crit damage. 500 skill for Enspells. Player attack is 633. Let's also assume that both weapons have the same D rating just to make it simple.

This means:

Average Enspell damage = [ 30 * (.95) + 15 * (.0125) + 7 * (.0125) + 3 * (.0125) + 1 * (.0125) ] * 1.0 = 28.825

Ratio = 633/450 = 1.40

cRatio = 1.40 - (0.05 * 8) = 1.0

Average Damage per hit = (61 + 3) * ( 1.9935 * .15 + 1.0060 * .85)

Average Damage increase on melee hits from Enspells = (28.825 + [64 * (1.9935 * .15 + 1.0060 * .85) ] / (64 * [1.9935 * .15 + 1.0060 * .85] )

Average Damage increase on melee hits from Enspells = 102.689 / 73.864 = 39%~

Imply a 50/50 WS/TP damage ratio and you get a 19.5%~ increase in total damage from Enspells.

Not only did that take about 2 minutes, but it's significantly more accurate and applicable than any number of hours you spend in the boyahda tree or anywhere else whacking moles. Since these numbers don't match Saevel's observations, it's most likely that he either had a higher fStr value or a lower MAcc value than I used when running them.

Let's step outside the box for a moment and pretend that Saevel had the same gear/weapons/etc but was using Berserk instead of Enspells. Let's see how this might have affected his damage.

Ratio w/o Berserk = 633/450 = 1.40

Ratio w/Berserk = 791/450 = 1.75

cRatio w/o Berserk = 1.0

cRatio w/Berserk = 1.35

Since changes in Attack do not affect WS frequency, frequency of strikes, or number of strikes, we can safely compare damage per strike for both TP and WS phases to reach a conclusion.

Damage per hit w/o Berserk was already calculated: 73.864, and is valid 40% of the time.

Damage per hit w/Berserk = 64 * (2.3592 * .15 + 1.3643 * .85) = 96.866, and is valid 60% of the time

Average damage per hit in TP phase is now 96.866 * .6 + 73.864 * .4 = 87.6653

That's a (87.6653/73.864 = 1.187) 18.7% increase in TP phase damage.

Weaponskill Damage = (Damage + WSC) * pDif * fTP

Using CDC, assuming the same Attack values and a 160DEX WS set and +15% Crit rate on WS, you get:

Average Weaponskill w/o Berserk = (64 + (160 * .6 * .85) ) * [1.9935 * .3 + 1.0060 * .7] * 4.25 = 805.8323 Ouch!

Average Weaponskill w/Berserk = (64 + (160 *.6 * .85) ) * [2.3592 * .3 + 1.3643 * .7] * 4.25 = 1028.9220

Average WS damage total becomes 1028.922 * .6 + 805.8323 * .4 = 939.6861

Average WS damage increase = 939.6861/805.8323 = 16.6%~

Assume a 50/50 WS/TP ratio and you get an ( 8.8 + 9.35 ) 18.15% increase in total damage from Berserk.

Wow. Well, that was unexpected. Looks like Enspells (19.5%) contributed more damage than Berserk would alone (18.15%) in this particular scenario. You're welcome to refute my numbers if you think I made a mistake somewhere.

Note: I do not even give a single fuck about your and Saevel's little pissing contest about Berserk and Enspells. The fact that you're wrong overall is actually mildly surprising. It doesn't much matter, however. Numbers are neutral. They aren't going to change due to personal preference.

Note 2: If these numbers don't match Saevel's observations, obvious reasons would be a lack of Double Attack in the WS averages (Hi, Temper!), but that would not change the proportion of the damage increase from Berserk and is thus irrelevant.

Changes in Saevel's Crit rate and fStr would affect the numbers, but as they were not provided I just slapped some in.

[Economizer]

Unfortunately the trade off of losing DW isn't worth it, ~ever~.

This is a massive problem, coupled with shield options that suck on top of it. The closest thing I've seen to a "solution" is SE pushing Fencer, but that doesn't stack up.

I think the biggest insult to this is that most shields have terrible stat boosts, particularly compared to what you could get from offhanding another weapon. So not only do you lose out on a huge amount of damage, but you also lose out on a huge potential stat boost!

SE has said things to the effect of them viewing Paladin as a very powerful job even when using a shield however, so I think this will make it very hard to convince them of making shields better for damage. Somehow I think their solution would be a stance job ability that virtually eliminates blocking for extra damage or something, but that would still be a trait tied to some traditional damage job, which defeats the purpose because you'd just sub Ninja for Dual Wield anyway.

An unlikely bit of a patch to this, I suppose, could be a new shield category for low defense shields that primarily give offensive stat boosts. It would have a low block rate and a low damage absorb rate, but in exchange it would add another hit to weapon skills like Dual Wield does. Perhaps under Fencer it could boost double attack rate or something. Unlikely, but it would be a start.

Still, we could get the other side of the fix, which is better shields. I think a potent and universal affinity shield (or it could just list stats like Magic Damage +X%, Magic Accuracy +Y, Perpetration Cost -Z) would be a strong option, as would shields that boost TP Bonus, weapon skill damage, and double/triple/quadruple attack rate, or shields that greatly increase accuracy, attack, or even a shield with an insanely large amount of Store TP on it. And if there ever came to be a new offensive shield category, these could all be set as those.

If you want a slot to put such a buff in then make it the ranged / ammo slot. It's incredibly underutilized for RDM's right now.

The problem with this is that you'd just stack it with a staff unless it only worked on WS and enspells. I think one of the other posters thinks that stacking is a good idea, but SE would never allow anything more then a small amount if it did stack and even then it would be on incredibly hard to obtain gear. As it is now the closest thing currently is day/weather gear, and you either rely on permaweather or a Scholar to use those.

I think an affinity shield is probably the best bet for more magic affinity gear for now... we might see other slots get magic affinity in the future, but the balance issues (when stacking with a staff) are bigger then something crazy like a new shield category.

[Seriha]

This is a massive problem, coupled with shield options that suck on top of it. The closest thing I've seen to a "solution" is SE pushing Fencer, but that doesn't stack up.

Main problem with shields is they're a defensive utility that only PLDs are really able to take advantage of. From the RDM perspective, in a party setting, it's unlikely we'll be holding a mob's attention for any appreciable amount of time, but then we get the double whammy of low shield skill hindering our actual chance to block.

This is something I've talked on before, and as I said in an earlier post in the thread, I'd really like to avoid situations where there's one super shield, basically invalidating the existence of all others for the job (Genbu's is close enough to that for us at the moment). Such also carries the risk of SE depositing it on some absurdly annoying NM with a low drop rate and no other incentive for people to want to kill it because gearing melee RDMs is hardly a community priority at present for collective reasons done to death here.

Basically, my thought was to change the Shield Mastery trait. It can still retain the TP gained on blocks, but it would also gain a property similar to MNK's Kick Attacks where the size of the shield can determine how often you "attack" with it and for how hard it would hit. Basically a latent Shield Bash minus the Stun (unless SE was feeling nice and allowed that to remain). From there, anyone with Shield Mastery would also have a chance to block physical attacks for anyone they're standing in front of. In RDM's case, this would allow us to put Stoneskin, Blink, Phalanx, and Spikes spells to better use despite the earlier mentioned scenario of rarely being the mob's priority.

DW would still be the superior offensive option, but shields would gain a greater utility with a slight damage bump on top. It's also something everyone can pretty much take advantage of instead of hoping for that rare drop.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Why the hell would I want to trade 8 staves for 8 swords (much less 8 of each.) More over why would I want to get stuck nuking with Fire, because my special Sashmir increases fire damage, when Blizzard or Thunder would still likely out damage it, even if I cast in a neutral sword.

You know, that IS a stupid question, why WOULD you do that? Gosh i didnt think of that, man how dumb am I? God forbid youd like to keep your TP and magic burst off a light skillchain you open with your STR shamshir you already have. /sarcasm.

I never said you should make one for each element, im saying it would be a nice bonus because if you're already swinging it, wouldnt it be cool if it had an additional utility? It having a NQ elemental staff affinity wouldnt damage the affinity magian staffs, and, stay with me here, YOU ARE ALREADY SWINGING/WIELDING IT. So even if thunder IV would beat fire IV (and ill have to check that with a NQ staff outside abyssea) why not just grin and go "Oh thankyou, i can fire off a semi-powerful nuke of an element im already using, hell i can even pop spontaniety and do it, and whats more! i basically get a Thunder IV at the cost of a Fire IV!" Making 8(16 for dual wield?) of the swords would be up to you. (Not sure why you would need light or dark affinity swords for spells on rdm where you would be dual weilding other than magic accurady but whatever.) But wouldnt it be nice to have something that is primarily for your melee, but atleast throws you a bone while you do it?

I can imagine a blu being told their dual dex shamshirs they made for whatever reason (Charged whisker?) would give them a nice boost to lighting spells on top of that would make their day! But like I also said, less than half the jobs in the game making these weapons would be able to benefit from it due to the way SE has segregated the jobs onto separate weapon classes.

But if YOU want to make 16 swords for nuking, show up to all events /nin or /dnc and nuke in swords with inventory issues, well thats your right, course if that were the case you could just get the ele staffs/grips/obis and sub sch if you planned specifically to nuke. Over-react more, think less, i forgot thats how the forums here work.

[Mageoholic]

Not only did that take about 2 minutes, but it's significantly more accurate and applicable than any number of hours you spend in the boyahda tree or anywhere else whacking moles. Since these numbers don't match Saevel's observations, it's most likely that he either had a higher fStr value or a lower MAcc value than I used when running them.

So arbitrary numbers gave you arbitrary data and you are passing it off as factual information. 7% is quite the stretch in difference, not to mention your max WS (assumed) is only 66% of his average WS landed. So two things are relevant your numbers are either grossly off, or Saevels parser is ineffective and must not be recording/displaying LOG data properly. (or he made it up but that is a lot of work to make a point that is redundant.)

But congratulations you figured out the expected total damage of an arbitrary situation. Bravo.

The only numbers you need are your weapon D, your average pdif, and your average enspell damage that is it. None of the other variables are a factor as they provide the same bonus to both sides of the equation (thus cancel each other out.) (thus crit rate, is a number not needed, nor is fSTR) we already know the total damage each aspect applied.

To get a 12,98% increase (his enspell contribution) with an assumed 1.0 Cratio (looks like less but w/e)

Max Pdif = .4+1.0*1.2 = 1.6
Min Pdif = -.5+1.0*1.2 = .7
Avg Pdif = 1.6+.7/2 = 1.15

AVG WD = 61*1.15 = 70.15D
Increase by 12.98% = 70.15*12.98 = 79.25
Effective increase = 79.25/61 = 1.29 (29%).

In order to achieve this value we need an average Pdif of 1.29


(.1= -.4 +.5 to cancel min/max from the equation)
Cratio = (1.29*2)/1.12+.1) = 1.20 Cratio

Level Correction (lvldif*.05) = 1.20 + .4 = 1.6
% change = 1.6/1.4 = 1.14
1.14*633 = 721.62 (722req)

Check.
722/450 = 1.60
1.6 - .4 = 1.20
(1.20*1.12 + .4) + (1.20*1.12 -.5)/2 = 1.294
61*1.294 = 78.93
(considering the amount of decimals dropped i am happy with a .3 difference, better than your 7 and 33% differences I think).

Done. and done. to match the value that enspells added you would need to add 89ATK Berserk adds 94 (effectively the amount is actually 158 but uptime/downtime should be factored in). 15 more attack which will affect your damage output marginally more.

(edit, I dunno why I thought berserk was an effective 17% it is only an effective 15%, I must have included all of the benefits of the +10 from Attack bonus. 643*1.15/633 = 16.8% my mistake.)

THIS IS AN AVERAGE. something you can only calculate having known quantities.

It doesn't matter either because Enspells and Berserk stack. This applies to every weapon, and can be done to check the average increase in any equipment change vs attack.

(it is nice to see someone who know how to calculate expected total damage however, but when dealing with RNG that is FFXI's combat system, average is more accurate than total, thus parses are the most useful tools we have.)

(currious at the 20 ATK change however from 75 cap, the new levels of enspell damage/macc must have closed the gap on ATK required, then again I did use 1.0, which is likely less by a bit considering the wonky array of WS numbers he has oh well.)

You need to learn the difference between expected and average.

Last Post on the subject, I return you to your silly swords discussion, when enspells are clearly the better choice, (provided its no limited to 1 hand weapons.)

[Greatguardian]

Gee Willickers, drawing expectations of DPS that ignore Double Attack and non-floored Critical hit rate are ... off when the target has Temper and possibly a non-floored dDex? Who knew.

I already accounted for those things. They change the numbers for both With and Without Enspells/Berserk by an equal proportion, so they have a net 0 effect on the %-difference between the average damages - which is the only important number in this situation. Trying to find fault with the static WS damage numbers because he's using at least 25% more DA than I was running is silly.

But for fun, let's poke holes in your numbers:

1) Your max pDif is wrong. Max non-crit pDif for 1.0 cRatio is 1.129 + .485 = 1.504, not 1.6

2) Your pDif Average is wrong. You can't just average the min and max pDif because you assume a regular distribution where there isn't one. pDif non-crit average for 1.0 cRatio is -0.12311 + 1.129179 = 1.006

3) You are multiplying Attack by Weapon Damage. You can't do that. Damage on any given hit is represented by [Weapon Damage + fStr] * pDif.

4) You're solving backwards incorrectly, because you still assume a regular distribution on the pDif curve where one does not exist.

5) Reiterating that the reason my numbers did not match Saevel's exactly was due to Temper, fStr, and non-floored Crits. These don't change the expected proportions much/at-all, only the numbers themselves.

You need to learn not to over-simplify equations and make faulty assumptions when performing your work. Average pDif is not the same as (Max pDif + Min pDif) / 2.

Edit: Also, completely ignoring crits is borderline retarded. Same with fStr. fStr adds to base weapon damage. Crit rate adjusts your average pDif, because total average pDif is actually equal to (Average Crit pDif * Crit Rate * Crit Damage + Average Non-Crit pDif * [1 - Crit Rate] ). Both of these affect your average damage/hit. Enspells always add 28.825 average damage with capped MAcc, which means their %-effectiveness is determined entirely off of your average damage/hit before they're applied.

You grossly oversimplified the whole process in order to get the results that you wanted.

Edit 2: To show how much DA probably adjusted his WS numbers, we'll look at what DA actually does on WS: namely, increases fTP some % of the time.

Assuming he has 25% DA (Brutal, temper, w/e), that means that there's a 37.5% chance for 1 DA and an 6.25% chance for two DAs. If you don't know how I arrived at those numbers, we'll look a little closer.

With a 25% chance to DA on two hits of the WS, there is a 0.75 * 0.75 = 56.25% chance that he will not DA at all. The chance to DA twice is 0.25 * 0.25 = 6.25%. The remaining 37.5% must be single DAs.

What this means is that average fTP changes from 4.25 to:

4.25 * .5625 + 5.25 * .375 + 6.25 * .0625 = 4.75

4.75 / 4.25 = 1.1176, or a 12%~ increase in average WS damage from 25% DA.

All things considered, he probably had a non-0 dDex and additional DA/TA gear. More information would make the scenario more accurate. Things like DA and Haste are independent of per-hit damage, though, so it's a non-issue in this situation. The only relevant values we're missing are fStr and Crit rate.

[saevel]

Stuff I mostly agree with but removed to save space.

Giving RDM native Fencer, then making it actually worth a damn (+10/15/20/25/30 crit hit or damage) would be a good start. It wouldn't compete with the 30% DWIII+Suppa reduction but it would get a way forward.

Another idea, something I doubt SE will ever do, is to alter it so that if your wielding a 1H weapon without an off hand weapon (grips excluded), that it's treated like a 2H weapon. Program wise this shouldn't be hard to do and wouldn't unbalance the game in the slightest. It only ends up being additional attack / accuracy, but combined with the above fencer modification would make single wielding swords actually somewhat useful.