80% haste for melee jobs is plain BS.

[Arcon]

there are other stats in the game that are as relevant as attack speed, power, acc and the like, defensive skills and such. Often defense is as or more important than haste. Query: how much damage are you doing dead? How does haste prevent death? Only way I know of is Utsu, but /nin isn't the only character build used in game.

There are also many mobs with extremely heavy defense, Attack power is going to be more of a friend there, because the high def yields more 0 damage hits. Then there are mobs that evade like nobody's business (giant birds as an example), acc is your friend there. There are even mobs you only want to take with ranged weapons due to auras and the like, haste doesn't even work on ranged attack. For whatever reason, bard haste seems to only affect ninjitsu casting (not exactly fair to other casters but that's the way it is), so it's not really useful on mages unless they plan to melee as well.

Haste may be a decent default to build for, depending on your job, but you may get more milage out of other things. Galka pld may want MP, Taru may need HP or eva for survival, Mithra may need strength, pseudo casters may benefit more from magic acc/mab, bard want anything to speed casting but that's not haste-it's more a variant of fast cast, etc.

I've built my dnc to work on eva, not haste as an example. The Eva allows me to tank for 1. Hitting so I gain TP is more important than swinging often so I prefer acc to haste. I use a truckload of +store TP since TP fuels my abilities. And last but not least, haste LOWERS my samba effectiveness, meaning I drain for less. I haste samba situationally, when the mob is easy to hit and not doing much damage to my group, but if it's able to put out alot of damage I'll switch to drain (unless it's undead), if I'm working with alot of MP using DD (blue, dark, etc) I may use aspir samba, and if solo I'll use drain almost exclusively since it cuts the # of waltzes I need in half, letting me WS more often. That's just 1 job...

A few misconceptions:
- Marches do reduce other caster's recast times as well
- Haste doesn't lower delay (that would be dual wield), and as such doesn't gimp your sambas
- Capped haste with absolute zero accuracy lands more hits than capped accuracy, even with 5% Haste
- If a mob takes 0 damage, it's very likely that some Attack won't make a difference at all
- Gear can be situational, you don't have to fulltime one set for every situation
- More often than not Haste doesn't sacrifice other stats at all

[Greatguardian]

I certainly don't say that, but the haste meisters do...

Before this goes any further, I'm just going to assume you don't switch gear at all. That would explain a lot, really.

If so, carry on. You're a lost cause and there's no point arguing with you.

[Glamdring]

You're so misinformed I really just don't know where to start. Let's divide things up point by point.

1) No, additional attack rounds have nothing to do with the delay of the weapon. All weapons attack twice as often at 50% Haste no matter what the delay is. All weapons attack three times as often at 66% Haste. All weapons attack four times as often at 75% Haste. All weapons attack five times as often at 80% Haste.

2) Who the hell cares about retards who don't have capped skill? Are you one of them? No? Then this argument obviously does not apply to you and your gear, so you should be using Haste.

3) Paladin does not deal as much damage as a normal DD. This is true, and a good portion of why it sucks.

3b) Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with Enmity. Paladin can cap hate just as easily as anyone else. The problem with Paladin is not, and has never been, about Enmity.

4) Who the hell whiffs on anything aside from Neo-Xarcabard content these days? Combat skills, Level Correction, and Atmas where Level Correction isn't giving you a huge boost pretty much auto-cap accuracy.

You'd have a point in theory if players were hitting ridiculously low Accuracy numbers (like sub-60%) and had absolutely no outside Haste. The former is most definitely not the case unless someone just seriously sucks hardcore, like trying very hard to suck as much as possible, so your argument is invalid.

you apparently didn't understand what I meant by attack round, i.e. how often you swing. Unfortunately, if there is an accepted term for this I'm not aware of it. When I said I can't estimate it, that's because the guy using HTH might swing twice every 5 seconds with 0 haste, but the guy with a scythe is swinging once every 12 seconds with 0. If hasted to the point of swinging twice as fast our HTH guy is swinging every 2.5 sends, but our scythe guy is every 6. I know those aren't the actual game numbers for these attack types, just numbers to fill in x in the haste cap equation. So the extra attack round I refer to is the point at which-in the same 30 seconds-the haste value would grant you the extra swing. Sorry, terminology limitation there.

2. I chose not to use haste because I live longer and get more done generally with other boosts, eva and the like. If I don't need the eva, or def, or whatever more than haste, then yes, I'll usually use haste (depends on what gear I have).

3. I agree pld isn't about enmity, it's about enmity control. However, last guy to attck you is not the only factor controlling this. If haste is coming from uniform sources, and so is damage (i.e. a pld and war both swinging at mob with similar weap speed, acc and dmg) and so both have 60% haste the war will get the hate because they hit harder (and they prolly have an acc advantage, too), tie goes to the guy what hits harder.

4. in the face of all the jobs leeched to the moon without the skill to back it up, whiffing/doing no damage is exactly what I see alot of. It's also why most skill-up parties Ive been in with my bard I'm asked to madrigal, because it's more effective to that purpose than march.

[Francisco]

For those who don't know - 100% Haste would basically be 0 delay - meaning anything you engage would die instantly (if it didn't actually crash the game due to some logic fail).

You could engage Absolute Virtue with a DMG: 1 Delay: 999 weapon with 0 skill that hits for zero on every swing, but has a 0.0000000000001% chance to crit hit for 1 damage... with 0 skill, while slow, blinded, paralyzed and being Rambus and it would still instantly die and your skill for that weapon would cap itself (likely considering it'd take hundreds of thousands - maybe millions) of swings (all firing off instantaneously) to kill it... Either way, it'd break something... even if the software was programmed to understand what's going on, the amount of data being forced at once would probably overwhelm your computer's memory or knock the FFXI server offline. If you're on PS2, it'd probably just catch on fire... or evolve ... ending the era of PS2 Limitations.

[Mirage]

uh...what?

I just can't think of many other jobs that would hit for that little damage at level 90. Except for on a few NMs.

[Arcon]

[..] If you're on PS2, it'd probably just catch on fire... or evolve ... ending the era of PS2 Limitations.

I vote 100% Haste cap.

[Arcon]

I just can't think of many other jobs that would hit for that little damage at level 90. Except for on a few NMs.

Try any job (even heavy melee) that actually has no native skill in a weapon. WAR with a Katana for example.

Edit:
Bollocks. My first double-post.

[RaenRyong]

you apparently didn't understand what I meant by attack round, i.e. how often you swing. Unfortunately, if there is an accepted term for this I'm not aware of it. When I said I can't estimate it, that's because the guy using HTH might swing twice every 5 seconds with 0 haste, but the guy with a scythe is swinging once every 12 seconds with 0. If hasted to the point of swinging twice as fast our HTH guy is swinging every 2.5 sends, but our scythe guy is every 6. I know those aren't the actual game numbers for these attack types, just numbers to fill in x in the haste cap equation. So the extra attack round I refer to is the point at which-in the same 30 seconds-the haste value would grant you the extra swing. Sorry, terminology limitation there.

This is a common fallacy and only works in a vacuum. There are so many factors involved such as variable time length, more DDs... etc.

To put in on a parallel: accuracy? If you add 1% to 90%, how many attack rounds must you go through to see this on average? I guess accuracy sucks too.

STR? How much do you need until you "save a hit"? I guess STR sucks too. Etc...

2. I chose not to use haste because I live longer and get more done generally with other boosts, eva and the like. If I don't need the eva, or def, or whatever more than haste, then yes, I'll usually use haste (depends on what gear I have).

Gimping yourself to live longer is dumb (exception: full PDT to MACRO IN in a desperate situation), especially with the healing power we have nowadays.

[Sayelle]

you apparently didn't understand what I meant by attack round, i.e. how often you swing. Unfortunately, if there is an accepted term for this I'm not aware of it. When I said I can't estimate it, that's because the guy using HTH might swing twice every 5 seconds with 0 haste, but the guy with a scythe is swinging once every 12 seconds with 0. If hasted to the point of swinging twice as fast our HTH guy is swinging every 2.5 sends, but our scythe guy is every 6. I know those aren't the actual game numbers for these attack types, just numbers to fill in x in the haste cap equation. So the extra attack round I refer to is the point at which-in the same 30 seconds-the haste value would grant you the extra swing. Sorry, terminology limitation there.

2. I chose not to use haste because I live longer and get more done generally with other boosts, eva and the like. If I don't need the eva, or def, or whatever more than haste, then yes, I'll usually use haste (depends on what gear I have).

3. I agree pld isn't about enmity, it's about enmity control. However, last guy to attck you is not the only factor controlling this. If haste is coming from uniform sources, and so is damage (i.e. a pld and war both swinging at mob with similar weap speed, acc and dmg) and so both have 60% haste the war will get the hate because they hit harder (and they prolly have an acc advantage, too), tie goes to the guy what hits harder.

4. in the face of all the jobs leeched to the moon without the skill to back it up, whiffing/doing no damage is exactly what I see alot of. It's also why most skill-up parties Ive been in with my bard I'm asked to madrigal, because it's more effective to that purpose than march.

The fact that you are a solo Dancer explains sooooooooooooooooooo much.

[Korpg]

Just thought I'd spread the whining so people against PDT can see how broken their melee jobs are as well.



Logically you should not be able to reach even 50%, since you double your TP gain and damage output. Ever see a mage or pet job double their damage? (That is like -30 BP timer... twice todays cap).

For sake of balance, the cap should be 25% haste. That would make you do like 1.5 times the damage, which is still a large increase in damage compared to many other sources of damage than melee.

I don't particularly care if you make it 25% in either magic, gear, JA or make it like roughly 10 cap on each.

Of course this is only for balance. If you want to keep melee the superior DDs, and leave pet jobs and magic users behind, you can always keep the game unbalanced. Though then it would be nice with some other nice bonuses, like 100% PDT for the jobs who can't do enough damage to get party invites due to the haste system.

/slow clap

Good job!