SE, Temper Activation Rate

[Ophannus]

Gain-STR is a negligble melee boost at best, it's just happenstance that it helps melee but we were bound to get it anyway in line with the other Gain-Stat spells. Gain-STR is about +18 STR with good enhancing skill and will probably end up being around 20-25 at 99. That's nice and all but STR isn't very useful in melee damage calculations if your pDIF isn't capped. Considering RDM's sword skill is low and we lack any native +Attack boosting abilities, the +STR really doesn't increase the damage much of our pitiful little sword swings. If it was Gain-Attack and gave us +50-100 attack then we'd be talking melee boost. But +base stats hardly help DD since our accuracy and attack ratings are atrocious in addition to us having much of melee gear aside from Nashira/Expansion augmented gear and a few pre75 pieces. I wouldn't mind SE producing a new set for mages that enhances melee abilities, make it a synergy recipe. Pieces could have tons of +Haste/Acc/Att/ and maybe even an 'enhance sword enhancment spell+X"

[saevel]

Gain-STR is a negligble melee boost at best, it's just happenstance that it helps melee but we were bound to get it anyway in line with the other Gain-Stat spells. Gain-STR is about +18 STR with good enhancing skill and will probably end up being around 20-25 at 99. That's nice and all but STR isn't very useful in melee damage calculations if your pDIF isn't capped. Considering RDM's sword skill is low and we lack any native +Attack boosting abilities, the +STR really doesn't increase the damage much of our pitiful little sword swings. If it was Gain-Attack and gave us +50-100 attack then we'd be talking melee boost. But +base stats hardly help DD since our accuracy and attack ratings are atrocious in addition to us having much of melee gear aside from Nashira/Expansion augmented gear and a few pre75 pieces. I wouldn't mind SE producing a new set for mages that enhances melee abilities, make it a synergy recipe. Pieces could have tons of +Haste/Acc/Att/ and maybe even an 'enhance sword enhancment spell+X"

Wtf are you smoking. The purpose of STR is to boost fSTR not boost attack, more attack is a side effect not the primary cause. For low DMG / low delay weapons (dagger / sword) fSTR immensely effects damage potential. The lower your delay and the more attacks you get per unit of measurement, the more important fSTR becomes (until its capped). I'll illustrate.

LV 90 Almace
DMG 61 Delay 224
fSTR cap +14 (rank 6 weapon)

LV 90 Khanda +2 (DA 10)
DMG 55 Delay 252
fSTR cap +14 (rank 6 weapon)

To get +14 fSTR you would need 56 (14 * 4) more STR then the target has VIT, unless your fighting TW's this isn't going to happen on RDM outside abyssea. And thus more STR will ALWAYS be good for RDM. Now how much does capped fSTR improve those weapons ?

61+14 = 75, 75/61 = 1.229, 22.9% improved Damage over Time (DoT).
55+14 = 69, 69/55 = 1.254, 25.4% improved Damage over Time (DoT).
476 combined delay * .70 (30% DW) = 333.2 [334] * .90 (10% DA from sword) = 300.6 delay per attack round. 300.6/2 = 150.3 delay per swing.

75+69 = 144 DMG with capped fSTR, 144/2 = 72 DMG averaged per swing.
61+55 = 116 DMG with no fSTR, 116/2 = 58 DMG averaged per swing.
72/58 = 1.241, 24.1% increase in damage averaged per swing from capped fSTR.

Now lets use Ukon,
LV 90 Ukon
DMG 131 Delay 482
fSTR cap of +22, rank 16 weapon. Requires 88 more STR then the target has VIT, no WAR will have this on anything not TW outside abyssea in TP gear (73 required after the weapon's STR is counted). Thus more STR will always help WAR outside abyssea.

131 + 22 = 153/131 = 1.167, 16.7% increase in Damage over Time from capped fSTR.
Now since this is a 2H weapon I don't need to factor in DW or other non-haste based delay reduction.

That huge GAXE gets a 16.7% damage bonus from having 22 fTR (88 extra STR) while the swords above get a 24.1% damage bonus from only having 14 fSTR (56 extra STR), or 17 STR less then the WAR. Now lets go a bit deeper, the swords are getting that 24.1% bonus every 150.3 delay (once each swing) while the GAXE is getting its 16.7% damage bonus once every 482 delay.

482/150.3 = 3.206, basically the sword is swinging %320 faster then the GAXE for 2.1 times less damage (153/72). Everything else being equal the sword would win DPS (WS is a different situation). Now WAR's obviously have more attack / accuracy, haste (Hasso) and DA/TA for reducing average delay further.

Now I'm not comparing WAR to RDM, merely using their weapons to demonstrate that STR favors lower damage / faster weapons more then it does higher damage / slower weapons. STR is like enspells, it's calculated per hit with no respect to how fast your hitting and is a static value that doesn't scale well with higher DMG.

In short, I have +17 Gain-STAT now at 426 enhancing magic, the update between 90 and 95 is +7 skill per level for 461 skill (assuming no other gear), that equals a +21 STR bonus. 21/4 = 5.25 fSTR, we get +5 DMG for free with a 25% chance of +6. Assuming the skill scaling remains the same, then 99 will be 28 more skill or 489 skill for +23.9 STR. That is +5 with a 75% chance of +6, or if you can get 1 more enhancing magic for 490 skill you end up wtih +24 STR and +6 fSTR all the time.

So yeah Gain-STR is immense, it's fricking huge. I would take Gain-STR over Gain-DEX anyway, unless your fighting something weak enough to put you over 20 dDEX. Now if we got +crit damage gear and a ton more +DEX on +Haste gear, then Gain-DEX might be looked at for bumping our crit rate up (dDEX 40 to 50 is +10% crit rate).