dev1069 Phantom Roll Effect Adjustments feedback

[Quetzacoatl]

I think we knew that as well :X

[Yugl]

Would you mind sharing the exact formula for pDIF? That would help players better understand the value of defense. It would also help if you told us whether the Cast Time Reduction on staffs stacked with Fast cast is additive (10FC+15CTR = 25% reduction total) or multiplicative ([1-0.1]*[1-00.15]).

[Greatguardian]

A fair point, but it only brings up an equally distressing problem. Those of us here who understand how Defense works have been fairly consistent in our evaluation of the usefulness of this roll and Defense as a stat with the current limitations in place on player characters (namely 1.0 lower bound on monster cRatio). We've brought up very specific problems that arise when using Defense at all, namely:

- Lower bound on cRatio causes players to quickly "tap out" or plateau in terms of damage mitigation from defense

- High attack values on notorious monsters make Defense worthless without extreme stacking as the gains from defense at high monster cRatio are minimal at best.

The Defense vs Damage Mitigation curve for players is an exponential curve, as opposed to the logarithmic curve used by Attack vs Damage dealt. This means that Defense is only ever worthwhile when it is stacked to the extreme. In combination with this, the game specifically prevents us from stacking to the extreme by placing a lower bound on monster cRatio (Essentially cutting off the most potent end of the curve).

Damage mitigation as a function of Defense (For Players) looks something like this:



As it stands, most players can never bring themselves out of the far-left range on powerful monsters without extreme stacking of defensive gear and buffs. Likewise, when they finally do break out of that range, the curve instantly cuts off at 1.0 cRatio before the players are able to gain truly meaningful defensive benefits from Defense.

While explaining the basics of Defense to people who don't understand it is a noble venture, it does nothing to address the inherent flaws of the Defense stat. It's fine to say "Hey, Defense gets better when you have more of it!", which would be true (And is true for monsters!), but so long as monsters are given a "Free pass" on floored cRatio, Defense will never be able to be stacked high enough for it to be worth a buff slot.

[MarkovChain]

Those of us here who understand how Defense works

Kay, I'll make it simple neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit about how defense work. The pdif formula that have been used for years are notoriously wrong. Secondly a lower cap on pdif isn't excatly informative on how defense work since what matter is only the distribution between low and max damage received. Even when pdif has a lower cap the average damage taken is still partwise linear as a function of cratio and therefore as function of 1/DEF. It means that while static defense gear is technically losing power, stuff like defender is exactly as useful regardless of def.




You also said that high level monster have so much attack that stacking def may not be useful due to having a lower cap. This is definitely not true. What's not true is "the high attack part" being responsible for it. For instance you can do this simple test on monk against chigoes. With countestance and no gear you basically defense free :

your defense = 40 => 117,... damage taken on average
your defense = 54 => 107,... damage taken on average
your defense= 95 => 60,.... damage taken on average



Stacking def is actually beneficial but in your case (HNMs) the problem is not their attack but the level difference term.

[Yinnyth]

neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit

Kettle. Pot. Black.

[Nightfyre]

How does uninformed feedback provide an appropriate environment for good game design? Eyeballing was one of the biggest issues holding FFXI gameplay back in its early years. If you're going to educate the masses, give them the full story instead of a post that is obviously meant to sell people on the benefits without examining the drawbacks. As I said before, the players have expounded on both the benefits and the limitations of defense in this thread as part of our feedback.

For example, let's go back and look at Mocchi's numbers again.

• Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
• Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
• Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage

Defender reduced damage by nearly 13.5%, but it also reduced attack by 25%. Given the constant decay of so-called "volatile enmity", this actually ends up reducing a tank's ability to generate and maintain hate by more than it will reduce their non-decaying enmity loss because spells and JAs are too infrequent to keep VE constantly near cap. You could have achieved the same defensive result with less than half the offensive cost on any job by instead using 12% PDT gear.

Food reduced damage taken by a further 9.5%. A PLD could gain twice that much in offensive output by eating pizza or red curry buns and instead wearing an additional 8% PDT. Let's also remember that PDT can be macro'd in and out for WS. As such, while your white damage and WS frequency is reduced, your per-WS damage remains intact.

If you're trying to sell us on defense post-PDT, how do you propose the person this buff is targeting should maintain hate? Flash and Cure spam? The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

So I go back to DDing for hate and you're asking me to trade... Berserk, red curry buns, and Chaos or Fighter's Roll for a mediocre reduction in damage? Unless something is oneshotting me (in which case: hello Stun, Earthen Armor, Scherzo, all more efficient choices), I'm going to take less damage overall by going with the offensive buffs and making the monster dead faster. I'm also going to be able to kill more things in less time; hooray for efficiency gains!

[Cursed]

How does uninformed feedback provide an appropriate environment for good game design? Eyeballing was one of the biggest issues holding FFXI gameplay back in its early years. If you're going to educate the masses, give them the full story instead of a post that is obviously meant to sell people on the benefits without examining the drawbacks. As I said before, the players have expounded on both the benefits and the limitations of defense in this thread as part of our feedback.

For example, let's go back and look at Mocchi's numbers again.


Defender reduced damage by nearly 13.5%, but it also reduced attack by 25%. Given the constant decay of so-called "volatile enmity", this actually ends up reducing a tank's ability to generate and maintain hate by more than it will reduce their non-decaying enmity loss because spells and JAs are too infrequent to keep VE constantly near cap. You could have achieved the same defensive result with less than half the offensive cost on any job by instead using 12% PDT gear.

Food reduced damage taken by a further 9.5%. A PLD could gain twice that much in offensive output by eating pizza or red curry buns and instead wearing an additional 8% PDT. Let's also remember that PDT can be macro'd in and out for WS. As such, while your white damage and WS frequency is reduced, your per-WS damage remains intact.

If you're trying to sell us on defense post-PDT, how do you propose the person this buff is targeting should maintain hate? Flash and Cure spam? The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

So I go back to DDing for hate and you're asking me to trade... Berserk, red curry buns, and Chaos or Fighter's Roll for a mediocre reduction in damage? Unless something is oneshotting me (in which case: hello Stun, Earthen Armor, Scherzo, all more efficient choices), I'm going to take less damage overall by going with the offensive buffs and making the monster dead faster. I'm also going to be able to kill more things in less time; hooray for efficiency gains!

Dear SE, this ^.
Couldn't have said it better. After reading a few threads, and this one especially, I have come to realize, more than ever, that the FFXI players are the ones who have really kept this game progressing and alive. I wish I could say the same for SE.
Kudos to the player base - we were given some utter crap and turned it into something enjoyable. Now if we could only do something about the devs that keep trying to turn it back into complete utter....... you know what I want to say.

[Insaniac]

Incoming footage of SE HQ!!

[Byrth]

Maybe I'm uninformed, but I haven't seen any strong evidence that the relationship between defense and damage taken is much other than piecewise linear, and mostly just linear over the normal defense range. The 1.0 "floor" you speak of is likely not actually a floor but a plateau in the equation, similar to the one that exists in the player pDIF formula. As evidence, I offer low level monsters outside of cities. They hit for 0-1, which means they have base damage greater than 0 and pDIF at or below 1. If I was a betting man, I would say that monsters likely use the same pDIF equations as melees except with a 4.0 Ratio cap and no level correction. You can't get below 1.0 on things that matter because they have such high attack.

Point is, no one is ever going to stack defense because +30% defense does not lower damage taken by 30%. If Ratio is directly proportional to damage taken, then changes in ratio are proportional to changes in damage taken. Adding 25% defense would reduce average physical damage taken by 20%.

* Cool, Defender does do something! But using Defender decreases your attack by 25%, so now how do you hold hate?
* Most dangerous monster attacks aren't physical damage, so why would you sacrifice your ability to hold hate to take 20% less damage from them?
* If you increase your defense too much, you run into this lower plateau or "floor." At that point, increasing your defense by 25% decreases physical damage taken by less than 20%.

[doctorugh]

The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

Hmmm, maybe make fantod lvl 49 or less, then paladin cap "cap" defense without reducing attack (hate) and get a nice hate tool to boot.