Original setup for gimp SAMs

[Zhronne]

For gimp sams still using Kikugosaku I came up with an original idea to bring back the old /DRG setup which I used to like a lot back at the 75 days, thinking about the upcoming adjustments to DRG which will affect /DRG as well.
Currently the spreadsheet shows a very small increase with the /DRG setup, but it's hard to factor the differences /DRG gives compared to /WAR.
Both setups use the same WS set, which has no sacrifice at all because of STP requirements.
"Normal" setup is 5hit, the other one is a 4hit.
I'd love to hear more opinion from people able to math things out better than I can.
here are the two TP setups

/WAR one
Kiku / Pole / ... / Thew
Zelus / Justice / Brutal / Bushi
Unkai+2 / Ace's / Pyrosoul / Rajas
Atheling / Bullwhip / Unkai+2 / Ace's

/DRG one
Kiku / Pole / ... / Hagneia
Unkai+2 / Unkai / Brutal / Wyvern
Unkai+2 / Hachi+1 / Tyrant / Rajas
Atheling / Bullwhip / Unkai+2 / Ace's


Basically it's:
5hit, 13att, 26%haste, 10%DA, 5%Zanshin, Berserk, Aggressor
vs
4hit, 9acc, 25%haste, 1minJump, 1.30minHJump, Conserve TP+25%


Hard to factor in the JAs and the Conserve TP. Without considering Bers/Agg/Jumps/Conserve the /DRG build pulls slightly ahead (very very slightly). What's the outcome trying to consider these instead?

[Zhronne]

I forgot to mention it but my very personal feeling is that X-hit build these days for SAM matter much less than they used to back @75.
Hassanshin, Save TP and regain everywhere kinda make the difference between X-Hit and no X-hit smaller than it used to be at 75 imho.
Just my personal, unrational, non-mathematical feeling.

[saevel]

Once we know more about Shoha's attack bonus then we can factor in the whole /WAR vs /DRG debate. The entire point of /DRG @75 was that SAM's best WS (Gekko at the time) would cap attack with berserk and thus the potential of /WAR was mitigated. /DRG allowed more haste for your 6-hit.

After Fudo was made and it became much easier to cap haste, /WAR came back into style due to berserk and DA.

Now with Shoha, being pretty much the best SAM WS, having an attack bonus, it might make the berserk of /WAR invalid again. So your looking at various x-hit builds and haste setups.

If we talking hitting a brick wall with infinite HP, then the 4 hit should trash the 5 hit (assuming berserk does nothing for shoha, that's a REALLY big if). x-hit means that many hits from 0, most of the time you'll have a full swing in so it becomes Ws + 3 vs Ws +4, or a 25% increase in WS's. This doesn't take into account the extra hits from jumps nor the delay from activating JA / WS. If I had to ballpark I'd say in the 10~17% range difference.

[Zhronne]

Once we know more about Shoha's attack bonus

You're right. Wonder when we'll be able to see some extended tests.
So far my impressions are that Shoha has an attack bonus, but not as good as Gekko's.
Since we brought that up, I guess THIS is the thing you're talking about when you talk about Gekko "attack bonus".
If I recall it wasn't a straight bonus to attack, it was something different which I forgot about and that was tested on BG (wasn't ignore defense either).
Whatever it was, the "result" was that with Gekko you reached an "attack cap" much sooner than expected, meaning that adding further attack after that point would have provided 0 additional damage.

Still, unlike many sams believed, this doesn't mean that attack meant absolutely nothing for gekko, just that you reached it very fast. Like... Minuet or Chaos + a good Food, and you probably were very close to it.
With just your plain gear (no berserk either) I doubt you could easily reach the cap. Check the image above (which was just an example anwyay), on a mob like Kirin you needed bit less than 900 attack to be at the cap.
I don't know about everybody else's SAM but mine definitely didn't have 900 attack without food and without buffs. Of course I mentioned Kirin, on stuff like XP mobs you probably really reached the cap even without any sort of buff :P Which is probably what made /DRG shine particularly there.

Shoha's bonus might be something different. Straight attack bonus? Straight Def ignore %? But there is definitely somethin there, altough I feel it's not as big as Gekko's used to be.

The entire point of /DRG @75 was that SAM's best WS (Gekko at the time) would cap attack with berserk and thus the potential of /WAR was mitigated. /DRG allowed more haste for your 6-hit.

The point of /DRG @75 was rather a situational build with a different playstyle. For some setups (Amano? Futsuno?) it was probably the best SJ, or so I read everywhere, but for normal Hagun sams it was just a very valid alternative.
Personally I liked /DRG more @75, I was really in love with that playstyle.

x-hit means that many hits from 0

Oh I know that ^^
What I tried to say with my second post is that @75 there were very little variables.
No Conserve TP, no Save TP, no Regain, no random additional STP. You were always getting the same exact amount of TP no matter what, making X-Hit builds on SAM very solid and predictable.

Now @99 things are much more unpredictable because a lot of times you get regain, savetp, random conservetp procs and also random hassanshin procs (with 4/5 ikishoten they give much more TP than normal), making everything much less unpredictable and usually just giving you overtp for your WS instead of making your build one hit smaller.
I just meant to say that @75 the difference between an X-hit build and someone who was just swining their GKT was huge. Right now it's... well there still is a difference but it's smaller, because even someone randomly swinging their GKT may get occasional X-hit situations even without gearing for it (thanks to Ikishoten/Hassanshin, Conserve TP, Save TP, Regain etc).
This is what I meant but, again, it's just an impression... maybe a wrong one actually.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Gekko is listed on BG wiki as having a 100% attack boost, Shoha's is unclear but seems to be approximately ~37.5%.

[saevel]

You're right. Wonder when we'll be able to see some extended tests.
So far my impressions are that Shoha has an attack bonus, but not as good as Gekko's.
Since we brought that up, I guess THIS is the thing you're talking about when you talk about Gekko "attack bonus".
If I recall it wasn't a straight bonus to attack, it was something different which I forgot about and that was tested on BG (wasn't ignore defense either).
Whatever it was, the "result" was that with Gekko you reached an "attack cap" much sooner than expected, meaning that adding further attack after that point would have provided 0 additional damage.

Still, unlike many sams believed, this doesn't mean that attack meant absolutely nothing for gekko, just that you reached it very fast. Like... Minuet or Chaos + a good Food, and you probably were very close to it.
With just your plain gear (no berserk either) I doubt you could easily reach the cap. Check the image above (which was just an example anwyay), on a mob like Kirin you needed bit less than 900 attack to be at the cap.
I don't know about everybody else's SAM but mine definitely didn't have 900 attack without food and without buffs. Of course I mentioned Kirin, on stuff like XP mobs you probably really reached the cap even without any sort of buff :P Which is probably what made /DRG shine particularly there.

Shoha's bonus might be something different. Straight attack bonus? Straight Def ignore %? But there is definitely somethin there, altough I feel it's not as big as Gekko's used to be.



The point of /DRG @75 was rather a situational build with a different playstyle. For some setups (Amano? Futsuno?) it was probably the best SJ, or so I read everywhere, but for normal Hagun sams it was just a very valid alternative.
Personally I liked /DRG more @75, I was really in love with that playstyle.



Oh I know that ^^
What I tried to say with my second post is that @75 there were very little variables.
No Conserve TP, no Save TP, no Regain, no random additional STP. You were always getting the same exact amount of TP no matter what, making X-Hit builds on SAM very solid and predictable.

Now @99 things are much more unpredictable because a lot of times you get regain, savetp, random conservetp procs and also random hassanshin procs (with 4/5 ikishoten they give much more TP than normal), making everything much less unpredictable and usually just giving you overtp for your WS instead of making your build one hit smaller.
I just meant to say that @75 the difference between an X-hit build and someone who was just swining their GKT was huge. Right now it's... well there still is a difference but it's smaller, because even someone randomly swinging their GKT may get occasional X-hit situations even without gearing for it (thanks to Ikishoten/Hassanshin, Conserve TP, Save TP, Regain etc).
This is what I meant but, again, it's just an impression... maybe a wrong one actually.

Gekko's "Attack bonus" was a straight multiplier of 2. It flat doubled your attack prior to Ratio caps and LCF. So a SAM with 600 attack using Gekko would in effect have 1200 attack during that gekko. It made attack useless as you'd be more then capping ratio on anything you'd be fighting. Once they fleshed it out a bit more then we can make builds around it. If Shoha's attack bonus isn't that great then /WAR will be the dominate sub.

[Zhronne]

You talking about Yarko's testing? There also was This older (and less accurate) discussion, and also a third where I took part and where the screenshot I posted above was originally posted, can't find it anymore atm (yes, it was on BG).

I always got the impression that the conclusions weren't that simple :3

[saevel]

You talking about Yarko's testing? There also was This older (and less accurate) discussion, and also a third where I took part and where the screenshot I posted above was originally posted, can't find it anymore atm (yes, it was on BG).

I always got the impression that the conclusions weren't that simple :3

That was before they figured that there is a random +0.05 tacked onto the end sometimes. Really screws with max pDiff testing. Also before they figured out the sequence of when caps were applied since SE changed it.

Ratio -> cap -> LCF applied for cRatio -> Critical applied (place cap if crit applied) -> pDiff (min/max) -> random 0.05 added.

Gekko is 2.0 multiplier to attack, so your Ratio will almost always be capped, but then the mobs LCF kicks in and reduces it further.

I'm not sure if crits are added before LCF or after though.

[Zhronne]

I see, that definitely makes sense. Thanks! ^^

[saevel]

I see, that definitely makes sense. Thanks! ^^

Its also why that while Gekko / Shoha may seem awesome, their weaker then other WS once you have enough attack / accuracy buffs that other WS approach the Ratio cap. Hence StarDiver is stronger then Shoha when fully buffed.