Un-gimping magic procs in dynamis

[HimuraKenshyn]

Glass is half full or half empty the adjustment hammer to JA and WS would even the playing field so MA proccers have nothing to cry about it's the SE way to fix a problem...

[Aldersyde]

If that's what they were bitching and whining about, they'd be asking for JA and WS procs to be nerfed. No one is asking for that. They're asking for magic procs to be buffed. DNC is good at JA procs, good for them. PUP is good at WS procs, good for them. Everyone sucks at magic procs.

That's not the vibe I get from people pointing out dnc ja timer's being so short or automaton's attachment abilities counting as ws. It sounds more like: "..but, but, dnc jas and automaton abilities are on short timers too! Why shouldn't they suck as much as magic proc?" Pointing out what's unfair (to them) is the exact same as saying they want SE to look at it.

That's exactly what people have been doing the last few pages. I'd like better rates on magic procs too. but whining about ja timers being on short timers isn't going to change SE's minds about their reasoning concerning magic proc. All it's going to do is make them look closely at dnc jas and automaton abilities and possibly get them "adjusted." Then everyone will get to suck together.

[Yinnyth]

That's not the vibe I get from people pointing out dnc ja timer's being so short or automaton's attachment abilities counting as ws. It sounds more like: "..but, but, dnc jas and automaton abilities are on short timers too! Why shouldn't they suck as much as magic proc?"

The vibe you're getting is incorrect. No one here wants procs in Dynamis to be made harder in any way. And I'm sure you don't want people to only half-read your posts then invent a false point you're trying to raise which makes you look like a petulant child because that's the vibe they got from your post.

I have PUP, I have DNC. If I know I'll need JA procs, I /DNC. If I know I'll need WS procs, I'll PUP or /PUP. If I know I'll need magic procs, I'm screwed. And that's not how it should work. I should have an option for all 3, and those options should be roughly equal in effectiveness.

[Aldersyde]

The vibe you're getting is incorrect. No one here wants procs in Dynamis to be made harder in any way. And I'm sure you don't want people to only half-read your posts then invent a false point you're trying to raise which makes you look like a petulant child because that's the vibe they got from your post.

I have PUP, I have DNC. If I know I'll need JA procs, I /DNC. If I know I'll need WS procs, I'll PUP or /PUP. If I know I'll need magic procs, I'm screwed. And that's not how it should work. I should have an option for all 3, and those options should be roughly equal in effectiveness.

Of course no one wants that, but there's a possibility that's what's going to happen. This is SE were talking about here.Or have you been playing a totally different game than I have this past decade or so? Actions have unintended consequences? Who knew?

[Motenten]

I did not math out the fact that I could do 12 threnodies in a minute. I went outside Jeuno, stood next to a lizard, set a digital timer to 1 minute, then started spamming threnodies as fast as I could until the timer went off. I got 12.

You're under-estimating the delay after the spell casts. Just because a spell has 2 seconds casting time, and I have song cast -50% doesn't mean I can get 60 casts per minute. I can't even get 30.

You are correct. I had assumed a 1 second next-spell-cast delay, but testing indicated that that was quite wrong.


First, basic testing agrees with Yinnyth. I was able to consistently get 12 threnodies per minute once I got the recast timing down (with only occasional errors). So next I tried to figure out why.

FRAPS analysis of casting time.

I don't have a perfect brd gear set; missing 6% in cast time, and don't have Minstrel's Ring. End up at 40% total.

Changed subjob to /rdm for the extra fast cast to see how it would affect things. That puts me at 55% fast cast.

After adjusting to the slightly different timing, I was able to get 14 spells cast per minute.

14 spells per minute is 4.28 seconds per spell. Can figure the 0.28 is human error, in that I can't cast the next spell at the perfect recast moment, and it's a 4 second recast on a 1 second spellcasting time (after fast cast is applied). That's a 3 second casting delay.

To test this effect, I retried using Minuets. Nominal cast time is 8 seconds.

With /rdm and fast cast gear, time between start of Min4 and Min5 is 7.233 seconds. Actual cast time should have been 3.6 seconds. Difference is 3.6 seconds; with allowance for human error, we still get the 3 second delay.

Tried again with /whm and no fast cast. Time between start of Min4 and Min5 is 11.367 seconds. Subtracting the nominal cast time leaves a 3.367 second window, for 3 seconds plus human error.


Overall conclusion: Minimum delay after the completion of one spell before you can cast another is 3 seconds. Using the fastest casting spells available, plus accounting for human error, lowest realistic time per spell cast is 4 seconds, allowing for 15 spells cast per minute.

[Motenten]

Now, as this applies to the magic proc system (ie: 3 second delay between casts), that means up to perhaps 7 spells cast per mob (30 second kill time).

Since this is a universal casting delay, blu does not get a significant advantage due to its fast-casting spells. Rdm's high fast cast mainly just opens up more spell options (ie: spells with 3 second base cast times can be brought down to the 1 second region).



Considering the limit of how it compares with JA usage: Spells can be used far more frequently than any single JA, however JAs are not limited by the universal delay effect. JAs can be stacked sequentially with just 1 second delay between each one (aside from the last), so you could do something like Box Step + Violent Flourish + Provoke in the space of 4 seconds, whereas you could only cast a single spell in that time period. On the other hand, you can keep casting spells during the period you're waiting for JA recasts to come back up.

Virually all players in Dynamis are using dnc or /dnc. Almost all jobs have a ~3-5 minute JA to add on to the Step/Flourish available from dnc. Together, the maximum average rate of JA attempts would be one attempt per ~8.25 seconds. Spells have a maximum average rate of one attempt per 4 seconds.

A naive implementation might then put the raw proc rate for magic at 10% if the raw proc rate for JAs is 20%. However one must also recognize that on the JA side, the player is free to take a large number of actions in between the JA uses, whereas the magic user does not have that luxury. If you allow for the time for the magic user to actually perform their normal job (hasting, marches, curing, etc), the proc attempt rate drops quickly.

Every spell a magic user casts deducts from their ability to cast proc spells, whereas meleeing and weaponskilling does not detract from the JA user's ability to proc (and in fact aids in killing the mob, which is almost as important as the procs). Every 4 seconds you have to run to the next mob is another proc attempt lost, whereas it would take ~10 seconds to lose a proc attempt for the JA user. The JA user only has to pay attention to the recast time on the ability in question, whereas the magic user's next cast is dependant on an invisible delay factor, which makes them far more subject to human error.

In other words, everything involved in actually using their respective abilities to proc is far more favorable to the JA user than to the magic user.



Now, let's look into per-mob proc rates. While the raw proc rate is (for example) 20% for JAs, that does not mean that every 5th JA attempt will be a proc. Mobs must eventually be killed, regardless of whether they were proc'd or not, and we can analyze the probability that any given mob will be proc'd based on the number of proc attempts.

Let's assume we have a duo: one DD, one mage. Either the DD can attempt JA procs, or the mage can attept magic procs. We'll ignore the fact that a duo of DDs increases both the kill rate and the proc attempt rate, while a pair of mages (if you were to try to increase the proc attempt rate on the magic side) would be horribly ineffective at getting good kill speed (aside from maybe blu).

If you spend ~30 seconds per mob, the DD can get 4-5 JA procs per mob. With a 20% raw proc rate and 95% hit rate (since Steps and Flourishes can miss), that gives a per-mob proc rate of 57% to 66%.

The mage may get 6-7 spells off on the same mob, if allowing for normal buffs and light curing. In order to have the same 57%-66% range of per-mob proc rates, the base proc rate for magic must be:

     7 casts    6 casts
57%: 11.5%      13%
66%: 14%        16%

Overall, roughly 14%. However, as mentioned, that's assuming perfect performance. To allow for human error and the general unfavorableness of using magic procs, I'd want to bump it up to 15%.

[Yinnyth]

Of course no one wants that, but there's a possibility that's what's going to happen. This is SE were talking about here.Or have you been playing a totally different game than I have this past decade or so? Actions have unintended consequences? Who knew?

So a person points out magic is harder to proc than JA or WS, hoping to get magic proc rate buffed. SE nerfs JA and WS rate as a result. Obviously that person's fault, not SE's.

You're criticizing the wrong group of people. Do you also troll through the PUP forums saying it's their fault embrava and PD are getting nerfed? Because they've complained about their 2hr not being as good as other 2hrs?

[Motenten]

With apologies to the community reps, I do hope you can provide a complete and proper translation of that to the devs, so they can fully understand the objection. Simply saying "The NA players think magic proc rates are too low" isn't at all useful to a programmer or developer. They'll have their own models of how they believe things work, but that doesn't necessarily match the player's view of the world. It could very well be that their estimation is based on the same mistake I made, calculating the actual rate at which you can cast spells by looking at the raw spell data vs actually using it.

As an aside: I don't have a definitive parse on magic proc rates. Generally rumored value is 5%; I intend to test that in the near future. However, given the above analysis, if it is indeed 5%, I hope you can see the massive gulf between the usefulness of magic procs vs other types (even weaponskill procs).

[Byrth]

With apologies to the community reps, I do hope you can provide a complete and proper translation of that to the devs, so they can fully understand the objection. Simply saying "The NA players think magic proc rates are too low" isn't at all useful to a programmer or developer. They'll have their own models of how they believe things work, but that doesn't necessarily match the player's view of the world. It could very well be that their estimation is based on the same mistake I made, calculating the actual rate at which you can cast spells by looking at the raw spell data vs actually using it.

As an aside: I don't have a definitive parse on magic proc rates. Generally rumored value is 5%; I intend to test that in the near future. However, given the above analysis, if it is indeed 5%, I hope you can see the massive gulf between the usefulness of magic procs vs other types (even weaponskill procs).

This 5% proc rate was from back when I used to kill Mage-type monsters in cities. I looked for mage monster kills and counted the number of spells on each (pre-proc). Still, the sample size was lower than I would have liked to draw a large conclusion from it. I can't find the specific sample anymore (it's somewhere in the Neo Dynamis thread) but I want to say it was approximately 80 casts.

My Weapon Skill proc rate was based on Energy Drain usage. I only used Energy Drain if the monster was unprocced, so I could count the number of Energy Drains and the number of resulting procs. Again, though, maybe only 40-50 WSs.

Also, I replied to your post on BG.

[Sarick]

They post short answers and people cry for more of an explanation/justification. Can't have your cake and eat it as well.

Contact an ingame GM and ask them to email a user survey about support. The reps are here to provide limited support while the actual movers and shakers are in Japan. Even if the reps report the discust they are only one voice and part of the red tape. It's their job to report the complaint but they ultimately don't make the choices. They're just messengers of choices made by higher ups.

If the support team is being filtered out then perhaps they too have red tape. Get past that red tape an contact the sources of the issues because, apparently the support teams hands are tied in most of the customer request.