dev1069 Phantom Roll Effect Adjustments feedback

[Mirabelle]

Calling people out over knowledge of defense stat is a bit childish. I think even those of us who have no programming or math skills at all have still seen the relative inefficiency of the stat over years of play, even if we don't know the particulars.

As Chamann said, a Protect/cocoon type roll would be so bad if it cost nothing to use. But it costs an attack roll which in the scheme of things is significantly more valuable both in enmity generation and in killing efficiency over a modest reduction in damage.

At least a phalanx roll sometimes has a bit of usefulness (ex. pulling EP/DC mobs for a Fell Cleave party). A protectra roll would be a waste of a buff roll.

[Yugl]

So Level correction applies as a bonus for attacking monsters as well? I didn't know!

I believe that was assumed, not asserted.

[Motenten]

So Level correction applies as a bonus for attacking monsters as well? I didn't know!

I believe that was assumed, not asserted.

Assumed, yes, however it's impossible to solve the equations for the damage values presented if there is -not- a level correction factor.

I also don't take any stance on the presumed 1.0 min mob cRatio, as the level correction factor makes that a non-issue for the content under discussion. In this case the player would need to have a defense of over 2000 before you'd even need to worry about whether that 1.0 floor existed.

[Motenten]

Just wanted to note that this is probably a reasonable estimate of an actual lvl 114 mob. Tossing in a base 415 defense (roughly what my nin would have with Protect V on; nin used because that's what I'm gear as at the moment), average damage taken when using berserk would be about 313, which is about in line with what I see from high level mobs. Accounting for level correction means mobs don't need d200+ weapons (as I often heard claimed years ago) to be hitting for 300 damage a swipe.

And yes, switching from Berserk to Defender does reduce average damage taken a fair bit; with Defender, average damage would be about 228, which increases the time it would take the mob to kill me by an extra hit or two. On the other hand, switching from Defender to Berserk triples my average damage done, going from 20 to 60 in this simplistic model (note: lots of things not accounted for, or fudged to keep the math simple; don't take this as absolutely accurate).


And a random thought that just crossed my mind as a suggestion for what to do with Gallant's Roll: Make it a boost to all defense skill proc rates -- Parry, Shield and Guard (but not evasion, since that's already covered by Nin's roll). With things like Shield Mastery and Tactical Parry, it could give a slight boost to offense while still performing the role of a defensive buff. Further, it would be a periodic full or very high reduction in damage, rather than a constant low-level reduction in damage, and there are times when that's the more useful form.

Caveat: I have not given any serious though to the full implications of such a roll, though I'll note that yes, it will be significantly more valuable for a pld (who would get both parry and shield) than it would be for anyone else, and I think that's probably a good thing.

[Byrth]

I don't see how single directional level correction would make it impossible to calculate. It would just always be the same as your EM case.

[Motenten]

I don't see how single directional level correction would make it impossible to calculate. It would just always be the same as your EM case.

Simple exercise: Figure out the attack and weapon damage of the mob used in Mocchi's example without using any level correction. Let me know what you come up with.

[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.

[Byrth]

Simple exercise: Figure out the attack and weapon damage of the mob used in Mocchi's example without using any level correction. Let me know what you come up with.

So you're assuming that the numbers he provided are some kind of absolute average?

Unknown Attack enemy -> unknown ratio, assumed to be absolute averages of many hits. Increasing his defense by 44% decreased his damage taken by 20%, where we normally would have predicted 30% without level correction. If they were single hits, being off by 20 damage (10%) is nothing. Keep in mind this is the SE guy that went and "tested" TH10>TH9 by killing things.

[Motenten]

We can infer that they are supposed to be generally consistent representations of expected damage (I expect them to represent cRatio rather than actual average pDif, as that's the simplest way of conveying the value), otherwise the point he was trying to illustrate would be meaningless. If the numbers picked were some random sampling out of the full pDif range, there's literally no meaning in saying that defense reduces damage taken, since the numbers could be -anything-.

This is further backed up by Bayohne's post; if the intent is to provide a simple illustration of how defense works to those who may not be as math-savvy, and they choose non-representative samples of the damage done, they are effectively lying to their audience. I doubt they would want the fallout of being caught directly lying about basic game mechanics (as opposed to merely bad testing methodology, as in the TH post, where they didn't assert any actual numbers).

Regardless, it wouldn't be too hard to test for mob level correction with a little level syncing, to verify one way or the other.

[SpankWustler]

You're going off the assumption that the person conducting the test understood the subject matter and college freshman statistics; thus knowing there could be samples miles and miles away from the average, and knowing the importance of getting hit a bunch of times rather than just once for each defense value.

I really super-duper hope you're right, because otherwise I am probably going to snap this cheap 12$ keyboard over my own head in a demi-human feat of rage. Given some of the stuff that's gone on lately, however, I can not share your level of confidence.

Edit: Not that any of this has any impact on level correction's presence. I just enjoy complaining. It's good for the bodily humors or something.