Staff Relic/Empyreans/Mythics need adjustment

[Zagen]

Right but still not its original reason for being made, as Meteor didn't exist until after level 99 was released even.

With 290 TP when using WS it would give 19 additional MAB bringing it to 39 MAB on the staff which did beat HQ staves at 75. Depended on the target but the difference was around 100 damage.

I'm not up to date on BLM sets but at 99 with 295 TP the staff gives an extra 49 MAB for a total of 109 though I don't think that is enough to beat the TOM staves.

In either case the staves are useless in most situations, even with TP generation as a mage you still have to run up and use the TP at the right time which means if a Fanatic's/Fool's Drink isn't an option you risk death in any situation besides meleeing on trash monsters.

[Byrth]

At level 75, 39 MAB may have been competitive but there were no ways for BLM to generate TP and the aftermath duration was only 3 minutes.

At level 99, 109 MAB is better than +35% damage (ignoring Abyssea where it is probably better or worse depending on your atmas).

Situations:
For Voidwatch, which is the only BLM-friendly event where you can reasonably maintain Aftermath:
50 (base with merits) +
39 (4/5 Nares set and Akasha Chaps) +
29 (Novio/Hecate's/Othlia/Stoichion/Memoria) +
25 (Acetic's Tonic) +
25 (Shrewd/Destruction)
= 168 MAB, so Laev 99 is better.
377/268 = 1.407
Laev offers Damage +40.7% and the Affinity staff offers Damage +35%.

Other factors:
* The staves being compared have the same amount of MAcc.
* MCrits weren't factored in and favor Affinity slightly.
* Other Affinity sources (like Skyblaze) favor Laev heavily.
* Nuking off your merited elements favors Laev slightly.
* Laev does not reduce spell casting time.
* You cannot swap staves with Aftermath up or you will lose the effect, so you can't switch to a useful staff for Drain/Aspir if you're using Laev. Similarly, you can't macro in MAcc staves at all or start your cast with the MDamage staff to reduce casting time.

Outside Voidwatch without Aftermath:
50 (base with merits) +
39 (4/5 Nares set and Akasha Chaps) +
29 (Novio/Hecate's/Othlia/Stoichion/Memoria)
= 118
278/218 = +27.5% damage, so Laev is worse than a completed Magian Staff.

The viability of Aftermath outside of Voidwatch:
BLMs get get 5% of their spell MP cost back as TP (1 TP / 20 MP) thanks to Occult Acumen II. Assuming complete efficiency (aka ignoring flooring), you would have to spend 5900 MP every 4.5 minutes to maintain aftermath outside Voidwatch without meleeing. If you factor in Conserve MP, you only need to spend 5352 MP.

5352 MP = 60 MP/tick Refresh
Refresh - 7 MP/tick
3x Ballad+5s - 21 MP/tick
Evoker's Roll - 5MP/tick
Diabolos's Favor - 5MP/tick
Dark Arts - Effectively 6 MP/tick
Refresh equipment - Difficult to calculate because you won't always be wearing it and you will be casting constantly.
Oneiros Rope - Slight hit to damage/nuke, but a substantial decrease in the amount of MP you have to spend to maintain aftermath. Down to 3820 MP after Conserve MP.
You pretty much all of the above to reach about 60MP/tick (unless using Oneiros Rope, in which case you'd need about 45MP/tick).

I suspect the problems with this kind of setup would be:
1) How do you spend that much MP in 4.5 minutes? Can you actually cast that many spells in time?
- I'd wager that with Oneiros Rope the answer to this question is "yes" but otherwise I'm leaning towards "no"
2) Can you actually get that much MP without 2-hours in time?
- Maybe in a short burst with Oneiros Rope (Activation -> 295 TP -> Activation), but probably not over a longer fight.
3) What monster in game do people want you to come to and spam high-tier nukes on while they buff you?
The latter problem carries through to Voidwatch, where people don't care about your damage.

Summary:
The downside of the staff is that you basically need huge amounts of buffs to make it viable outside Voidwatch without meleeing. The upside is that Laev is the best possible staff in the only place BLM is useful at the moment.

Edit: realized an error

[SpankWustler]

I feel ridiculous even talking about this situation, but it might be worth accounting for either Wizard's Roll (This makes Laev even more disappointing!) or Tactician's Roll (This makes Laev feel better about itself!) since a Corsair is already involved due to the necessity of a huge amount of refresh.

Also, are you planning to throw just whatever is on the beach towards the horizon or will you bring particularly weighty and aerodynamic objects with you? Given that there's already a Magic Attack Bonus staff coming down the line from the upcoming Meeble Burrows content, I think it's a safe bet that one guy is still wandering the office naked and occasionally adding inexplicable things to FFXI.

[Mirage]

No. They're only bad if you want to use them for a purpose other than which they were created for. In which case, you simply don't obtain them. Not useful to you personally != they are bad.

No, they are bad. If SE released a thf/dnc dagger with +50 elemental magic skill on, that dagger would also be bad.

[Alhanelem]

No, they are bad. If SE released a thf/dnc dagger with +50 elemental magic skill on, that dagger would also be bad.

no, it wouldn't. If it was the best dagger to use for attacking, you'd still use it reagrdless of what other stats it had on it.

If I do the most damage with my Killeverything Stick on DRG, what the hell do I care if it also happens to have Enhances Perfect Dodge on it? I got the weapon to do more damage. It does more damage, I don't care what else it does.

In any given game there are typically two kinds of weapons: Actual weapons, and stat sticks. The relics and empyreans are both Actual weapon weapons. The mythics are (or were intended to be) stat sticks more than weapons- especially for jobs less likely to use weapons as weapons. If you want a weapon, the staff relic and empyreans are as good as they get and are good weapons. Just because not many people on these jobs want weapons for that purpose doesn't make them bad- and saying "they're bad" just for the sake of trying to tell SE they're bad so they change them is a useless effort, because they're not going to change them. The only likely thing to happen is to get a new set of weapons that IS what a majority wants on these jobs. As others have come to realize, it may be a lot more worthwhile to focus on that.

[Mirage]

Now you're adding stuff to the weapon I used as an example to make it better. You're turning it around and saying "it would be good if".

Just like the mage RMEs would be good if they enhanced the main damage source of a mage. But most of them do not, and that's why they should be improved.

Actually, a better analogy would be if SE made an ultimate hand-to-hand weapon for thieves. This weapon would by far be the best h2h weapon for thief, and it would bring their damage potential with H2H up to 80% of what it would be if they used a fire path magian dagger. Is this weapon good? Yes, situationally, for killing skeletons! Should any of the current super-daggers be replaced by a weapon like this? Idkbro, you tell me.

[Pebe]

@Byrth: In order to spend that much mp on single mob, you probably capped your hate 3 times over, enmity douse only saves you once XD Also, going with your set up, the pt would be blm blm sch(or blm) rdm smn with brd and cor rotation. I'm trying to think of a situation where this combination would be useful. It could replace the RNG PT in legion if all your blms were decked out. Perhaps Arch-Ultima/Omega, arch-odin resists magic damage iirc. ADL would demolish the blms unless stuns were perfect. But then as I said before their is the hate issue, which is not a laevateinn problem but a game problem as a whole. Also, the blms have to run in range to use vidohunir, that is extremely dangerous XD. Furthermore, a 600M staff shouldn't only provide a 5% increase to magic damage.

Hey Byrth assuming Tupsimati gives the same aftermath values as alevateinn(I doubt it but maybe) could you work out similar math like you did above? I'm assuming you would see more value in magic attack on sch because they don't get their own native trait. But then again the trait they get from rdm sub is pretty potent. I think it will even out because tupsimati has less magic attack.

[Byrth]

RDM and BLM get the same potency MAB aftermath, so I'd be somewhat unsurprised to learn that SCH also gets that potency aftermath.

If this is the scholar nuking set:
Weapon/Wizzan/___/Memoria
Nares/Stoich/Hecate's/Novio
AF3+2/Nares/Icesoul/Icesoul
Taubran*/Othila/Akasha/Morri +1
*Not obtainable yet, but it will be when they release the next meeble update

In Voidwatch
+76 MAB from gear without the weapon
+24 from /RDM or /BLM.
+25 from Ascetic's Tonic
+25 from Atmacite
= 150 MAB

Using the same conditions as the BLM one above above, the Affinity staff is worth 87.5 MAB. Tupsi can give 89 MAB, so it is very slightly better in Voidwatch. (However, it has more MAcc than the damage affinity staff).
Tupsi is 0.4% better than an Affinity staff in Voidwatch (with the disclaimers above) with a perfect AM2.


Out of Voidwatch
+76 MAB from gear without the weapon
+24 from /RDM or /BLM
= 100 MAB

Tupsi would need to give 70 MAB to be better than an Affinity staff in this situation, which means it needs AM2.
Tupsi is 7% better than an Affinity Staff under these conditions with a perfect AM2.

Scholar gets back 7.5 TP per 100 MP spent, so they need to spend about 3933. However, they also get Conserve MP (I) and Dark/Light Arts. With these factors, they only need to spend 3300 MP. Similar to BLM, they could use Oneiros Rope if they wanted. This would mean they only need to spend 2600 MP. This requires about 29 MP/tick. Obviously Scholar could practically hit this threshold solo for one aftermath using pre-charged sublimation, /RDM, and Convert. To give you some idea of how much TP you get back per nuke, Thunder V would give 28.4 TP with Oneiros Rope. Fire V would give 26.1 TP. So you're looking at about 11 Tier V nukes with Oneiros Rope. Parismony won't decrease your TP return (I think), so you're free to use that too.

All the same disclaimers as above apply. You can't swap weapons, etc.


Summary
So Tupsi is barely better in Voidwatch due to the other sources of MAB, but substantially better in other situation (with AM). It's also pretty likely that you can maintain AM for it essentially solo (at least for 9 minutes) if you're clever enough.

Other Stuff
No one has tested whether Tupsi's enmity enhancement surpasses the 50% cap like Scholar AF3+2 body. If you could nuke in -90 Enmity (capped Enmity- in gear, Tupsi, and AF3+2 body), then it is probably feasible to both generate and spend enough MP to maintain aftermath even outside Voidwatch/Abyssea. Depending how you spend your strategems, you may even be able to do it without external buffs.

[Alhanelem]

Thanks byrth, that's quite insightful.

Actually, a better analogy would be if SE made an ultimate hand-to-hand weapon for thieves. This weapon would by far be the best h2h weapon for thief, and it would bring their damage potential with H2H up to 80% of what it would be if they used a fire path magian dagger. Is this weapon good? Yes, situationally, for killing skeletons! Should any of the current super-daggers be replaced by a weapon like this? Idkbro, you tell me.

Specifically in reference to Hrvelgmir, its usefulness goes beyond the situational benefit of doing damage with it. In combat or no, it grants you an ability to restore huge amounts of MP, and itself has a large bonus to MP (technically the WS mod). On summoner I can use this staff and use BPs like I normally would in a normal situation, and use this WS as an additional source of MP- After all, you don't need any perp- in the weapon slot at all in order to negate perpetuation cost. It can also substantially offset the cost of nukes on SCH or BLM if you're willing to sacrifice damage to nuke in it (Though I'm not sure if the MP savings is high enough to offset the amount of damage lost- e.g. if you save enough MP that you get enough extra nukes to offset the lost damage plus more- maybe byrth could work the numbers on this too?)

[Byrth]

On Scholar with Oneiros Rope, you get 9.5 TP per 100 MP you spend. Hverg linearly converts this TP into MP (based off your max MP), so there's no worry of TP overflow.

So the question is whether or not nuking in Hverg is better than an Affinity staff (the argument would be nuke frequency +35% vs. damage +35%).

10 Staffless T5s * 1.35 = 13.5 Staffless T5s
10 Staffless T5s = ~270 TP = 54% MP restore (assuming a 1600 MP build, this is 864 MP)
864 MP = about 3 more T5s

If you are limited by MP, don't care about the MAcc, don't care about the amount of time it takes to nuke, and you never want to swap to another weapon (like Arka IV), Hverg is competitive from a pure "I spent this much MP and did this much damage" standpoint. Affinity staves are better in all of the above ways and from a pure damage standpoint, though. This analysis ignores that using Oneiros Rope means you aren't using a different waist.


I used Scholar because it gets the most Occult Acumen. It is less competitive on BLM.