Question about damage Dex vs. (Str + Attack power)

I'm a bit confused here on how all the stats work in favor of Arch damage. Not know the mod limits of arch and only that dex and pie increase it's damage I went ahead and maxed my dex as much as it will let me and put the rest on pie. With all Dex gear on I have 178 dex at lvl 35. I was starting to wonder about the cap so I asked a lvl50 arch if he knew what it was and he said he did not but before 1.20 it was 174. Well that made me think that maybe I've overdone it on dex and before I add any more I better test out to see if it has any effect. So....I set out and did a little experiment and these are my results.

(Only swapped out DEX gear, leaving everything else the same)

DEX 175, Mob lvl30

High: 146
Low: 129

DEX 155, Mob lvl30

High: 145
Low: 124

That's with 30 Mobs each.

Next test.

DEX 175, Mob lvl35

High: 118
Low: 102

DEX 155, Mob lvl35

High: 118
Low: 101

Again doing 30 each.

Finally just too see if maybe it effects weaponskill damage only I did 10 Heavy shots with 175 and 155 Dex and got...

DEX: 178

High: 262
Low: 226

DEX 158

High: 257
Low: 226

I do understand that this is not a thorough experiment but the numbers looked so close I didn't even bother increasing the sample size. So I'm left wondering what the cap on dex is % wise and what would increase my damage more substantially, Pie or Attack Power?

The old stat caps are from a very long time ago, pre-1.18. PIE should be worth more than ATK point-for-point.

Can anyone recommend a good parser that currently measures DPS accurately?

The best parser I've seen is ParseMod (you can find the main website if you Google - IDK if I'm allowed to link it directly here so have left it out to be safe), however, once it starts DPS calculation from fight #1, the timer keeps going even when you've stopped fighting so that when you start fight #2, if there has been a gap in time, your DPS calculation will take a hit as it's working out continuous DPS and not what you're actually doing in each fight (and then averaging that). The creator is working on a fix for this, but it's not available yet.

Until then it might be difficult for us to accurately/easily measure changes in stat alterations (I prefer DPS numbers over highs/lows).

If/when I do get an appropriate parser to do the testing, I was planning on doing 20 or 30 mobs for control/3x str+7 rings/3x pie+7 rings/3x dex+7 rings just to see for myself.

As we don't know what caps might be for stats now, i'll probably try and do this without other gear and using a simple non-materia'd bow to ensure all stats would definitely be significantly below any useful cap as my dex is now 272, and i'm not sure if that may be too high to see a difference with rings on if i'm close to cap.

If anyone else has experience of proper parsing tests (carraway?), then can you confirm if there are any other numbers you might want to see in the dataset? If i'm going to try and do this properly, i might as well try and do it properly the first time.

http://www.bluegarterls.com/forums/topic?id=8

+21 DEX vs +21 PIE vs +21 STR should be enough to observe an effect against L50 mobs (Amalj'aa Drubbers outside Zahar'ak are a great choice because they always spawn at the same level).

Can't wait to see the results here. Judging by the Str or Pie thread, Piety > Strength as far as Archer is concerned. The stats were listed as Bonus 1 and Bonus 2 so it's possible that Dex = Piety > Strength

Based on parses from the Moogle fight.

A comparison of Whiskerwall, Pukna, Pukni, and Woolywart. It appears based on our initial limited testing of 3 of our linkshell's archers that Attack Power has a significantly higher impact on damage when the mob in question itself has a high defense.

Archer 1:
Dexterity 287
Piety 233
Strength 215
Attack Power 531
Crit Attack Power: 34

Archer 2:
Dexterity: 315
Piety: 267
Strength 220
Attack Power: 502
Crit Attack Power: 0

Archer 3:
Dexterity: 316
Piety: 242
Attack Power: 502
Crit attack Power 36

Average of 3 parses (may do more testing now that we have the fight on farm status, however we are not guinea pigs our gear will probably have changed by the time I test again):


http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5581/37048419.png

Now based on this it appears that Archer 2 comes out ahead. Supporting the hypothesis that DEX/PIE > ATK for endgame archers. Note the inconsistencies however, Archer 1 retains comparable damage and has top damage in certain areas. What's more interesting is that Archer 3 also shows very good damage in many areas, despite having a lower overall damage (and lower stats for the most part, other than the crit attack which could explain it).

Still overall looking at this, and as I'm sure many of you have done looking at full encounter parses (not filtered by individual moogle) I'd guess that an archer's priorities should be DEX>PIE>ATK in that order. Though given the wide damage ranges, it is hard to say for certain.

Now let's look at Whiskerwall on the same 3 fights:

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8818/39384335.png

The results here are far more clear, with Archer 1 seemingly having a significant advantage in many areas due to his higher attack value. Again the damage range plays havoc on consistency.

Now as I said these tests are extremely limited, and while I'm thinking right now that endgame Archers should focus on ATK>DEX>PIE (which really boils down to choosing Heaven's Fist on your gloves) I wouldn't recommend you go out and spend millions you can't afford just yet.

What I will say is this though, testing on normal mobs has extremely limited usefulness if it is true that Mob Defense and Player Attack are checked against each other, We have also tested and there does appear to be a damage cap in place (using lower level arrows and increasing stats).

Hi Murugan,

Thanks for posting some data on the subject. :)

What was Archer 3's STR? (it's missing from your stat list above)

(And if STR raises Attack Power, which you think might be useful, have you tried switching in more STR to test?) Thanks.

Archer 3 I believe had 226 STR, however I'm not 100% on that #.

As for Strength being useful, well it doesn't raise attack on the character sheet so it is hard to say what the formula is for STR>Attack Power.

It is probably worth testing especially since all the tests I have seen promoting DEX/PIE were either done on regular mobs (which as I have said I believe to be pointless) or if done on the Moogle/Ifrit fight were wracked with inconsistencies which could as easily be explained by the wide damage window (something my limited test tries to address even without statistical analysis by at least openly showing a variety of data, and people can look at that and clearly see how that data can skew the results), however right now I believe Heaven's Fist materia to be the meld of choice on hands.

As far as gear goes, hands seem to be the battleground. Materia melding on Hands is where people differ most, and where the most significant changes to attributes affecting damage can be made by their choice.

Nice post Muragan though it seems some inconsistencies.

Archer2 Heavy Shot did vastly more damage in the 3rd attempt, its not even a min-max at that point. Either both crit or both were stacked w/ Blood for Blood. The same with the Quick Nock that did 276, it was either a crit or a BfB and Archer 1 didn't ever get a crit on it to have a comparable "max". Overall Archer2 seems peculiar, attempt 2 he did not have Raging Strike up or something?

Archer2 also has superior gear to Archer1, but sorta ties him? I guess is what the chart says overall. Moogle is just sorta a blah fight to do tests on because theres too many random factors and the sample sizes are often small. Also you did not test anyone with stacked STR, all 3 archers in that have similar gear sets.

My ARC stats are 298 STR, 271 DEX, 545 ATK, 240 PIE and I do 20k+ more damage than the 2nd highest ARC in the Moogle fight. Theres not really any way to tell if its my gear, skill, rotation, etc thats causing that due to how many different scenario's can unfold in the particular fight.

I would like to know though is your damage %'s. My set up gets me 35-40% of my damage through LS/Barrage and the other 60% through WS's. It would be interesting if these high DEX set ups get 50%+ damage through LS/Barrage, then you could make a case such as:

DEX/PIE only increase LS/Barrage damage where STR/ATK increase WS damage. If DEX and PIE also increase WS damage then the ratio of a high DEX/PIE build should still get 35-45% roughly of its damage through LS/Barrage.

That was my original assumption when I allocated my stats on ARC, is that DEX/PIE is only going to affect LS based damage moves (just LS and Barrage) and STR would have a more profound effect on WS's. Its already clear STR and ATK have a very marginal effect on LS/Barrage but it doesn't seem like anyone did a solid test of WS damage yet.

This would also lead to more variants of ARC to test to find out if its better to pump WS damage or LS damage, or find a happy medium between the 2.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Archer 3 I believe had 226 STR, however I'm not 100% on that #.

As for Strength being useful, well it doesn't raise attack on the character sheet so it is hard to say what the formula is for STR>Attack Power.

It is probably worth testing especially since all the tests I have seen promoting DEX/PIE were either done on regular mobs (which as I have said I believe to be pointless) or if done on the Moogle/Ifrit fight were wracked with inconsistencies which could as easily be explained by the wide damage window (something my limited test tries to address even without statistical analysis by at least openly showing a variety of data, and people can look at that and clearly see how that data can skew the results), however right now I believe Heaven's Fist materia to be the meld of choice on hands.

As far as gear goes, hands seem to be the battleground. Materia melding on Hands is where people differ most, and where the most significant changes to attributes affecting damage can be made by their choice.

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Hi Murugan,

Great thoughts.

And as you say, it's unfortunate that the Character Sheet doesn't change to reflect when you increase STR for Attack Power.

I would be curious as you say (and as Zdenka mentions) if someone does a pure STR / Attack Power test (as the only change) vs. DEX vs. PIE to see the value of STR.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

Nice post Muragan though it seems some inconsistencies.

Archer2 Heavy Shot did vastly more damage in the 3rd attempt, its not even a min-max at that point. Either both crit or both were stacked w/ Blood for Blood. The same with the Quick Nock that did 276, it was either a crit or a BfB and Archer 1 didn't ever get a crit on it to have a comparable "max". Overall Archer2 seems peculiar, attempt 2 he did not have Raging Strike up or something?

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However damage is calculated one thing is for sure, there is a very wide margin in damage.

In the third attempt (on Pomburner) notice that Archer 2 only used Heavy Shot twice. It did not have the highest max damage, but merely the highest average damage. That average is skewed because again there are only 2 heavy shots from Archer 2 that fight.

On Whiskerwall Archer 1 is clearly ahead. Yes there are still some areas where it is inconsistent, but far less than in support of DEX/PIE.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

Archer2 also has superior gear to Archer1, but sorta ties him? I guess is what the chart says overall. Moogle is just sorta a blah fight to do tests on because theres too many random factors and the sample sizes are often small. Also you did not test anyone with stacked STR, all 3 archers in that have similar gear sets.

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Based on quick testing on patch day I did not feel it was worth testing STR at this time.

Also what the chart says is that Attack appears to play more of a factor the higher the defense the mob has, and that in general it appears to be more consistent with higher damage (when controlled for outliers caused by the wide margin of the damage formula)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

My ARC stats are 298 STR, 271 DEX, 545 ATK, 240 PIE and I do 20k+ more damage than the 2nd highest ARC in the Moogle fight. Theres not really any way to tell if its my gear, skill, rotation, etc thats causing that due to how many different scenario's can unfold in the particular fight.

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That is because you are focusing on the wrong numbers. Your total damage will be skewed if for example you hit Wide Volley and hit a bunch of Moogles (unintentially even), this contributes little to the fight unless as a group you are fighting them this way. The moogle will likely regen, and that extra damage and DPS you show overall may have actually meant very little.

This is not a comparison of DPS or Total Damage, this is a comparison of Max and Average damage. It is unaffected by how the scenario unfolds (except where you see invalid where I've had to invalidate Average results due to an archer hitting an immune Balloongle).

None of the abilities were used with buffs, there are no debuffs which could affect them. They are fighting a unique enemy (which should have identical stats every time), and they are wearing the same gear between the attempts. They are all using Ifrit's bow, with Cobalt Arrows.

The number of attacks is noted alongside the averages so that you can tell if the sample is smaller than usual (explaining inconsistencies in some areas).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

I would like to know though is your damage %'s. My set up gets me 35-40% of my damage through LS/Barrage and the other 60% through WS's. It would be interesting if these high DEX set ups get 50%+ damage through LS/Barrage, then you could make a case such as:

DEX/PIE only increase LS/Barrage damage where STR/ATK increase WS damage. If DEX and PIE also increase WS damage then the ratio of a high DEX/PIE build should still get 35-45% roughly of its damage through LS/Barrage.

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I have seen very little so far to support that hypothesis. As you see Archer 1's average light shot was higher in both fights with an Attack build.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

That was my original assumption when I allocated my stats on ARC, is that DEX/PIE is only going to affect LS based damage moves (just LS and Barrage) and STR would have a more profound effect on WS's. Its already clear STR and ATK have a very marginal effect on LS/Barrage but it doesn't seem like anyone did a solid test of WS damage yet.

This would also lead to more variants of ARC to test to find out if its better to pump WS damage or LS damage, or find a happy medium between the 2.

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Most people are testing theories on normal mobs. However if there are checks comparing the player against the mob, fighting a mob lower than you (with a much lower defense than your attack) would likely not show how useful Attack Power actually is in encounters that actually matter (which if we are talking about Parses generally means endgame encounters).

They may be encountering either the aforementioned issue with the large damage margin on attacks, or hitting the damage cap *which is possibly tied to weapon damage* (assuming there is one, and I am as a member tested it using Dated Red Coral Arrow and hit a max of 906 in damage with 15 additional points in both DEX and PIE alternatively).

Again I realize my sample is too small to draw definite conclusions, and I'd encourage others to contribute to the discussion with similar data to see if they can verify it. However, parsing against normal mobs means nothing to an endgame archer if it can't be verified that those results/conclusions actually translate to endgame encounters.

It's always interesting to see particular datasets; when I have time I'll take a closer look, but one thing I want to reiterate is that the patch notes were misleading. The assumption that different stats affect auto-attack/shot damage or weaponskill damage individually has never been corroborated and casual observation in 1.20 continues to demonstrate that that assumption is wrong. Even in 1.19., PIE affected WS and auto-attack damage for LNCs. Since 1.19, ATK has always affected minimum, maximum, auto-attack, shot, and weaponskill damage for all physical DPS classes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by carraway

It's always interesting to see particular datasets; when I have time I'll take a closer look, but one thing I want to reiterate is that the patch notes were misleading. The assumption that different stats affect auto-attack/shot damage or weaponskill damage individually has never been corroborated and casual observation in 1.20 continues to demonstrate that that assumption is wrong. Even in 1.19., PIE affected WS and auto-attack damage for LNCs. Since 1.19, ATK has always affected minimum, maximum, auto-attack, shot, and weaponskill damage for all physical DPS classes.

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Hi carraway,

Ah thanks. :) So in your last sentence "ATK has always affected minimum, maximum, auto-attack, shot, and weaponskill damage" you mean "whatever Stat SE is now listing in the patch notes that raises that class' specific Attack" to be what you're talking about right?

I'm still curious as to why SE made a separate entry under Strength that lists it affecting "Attack Power" but it's starting to seem like STR really doesn't do anything at all for ARC.

I'm talking specifically about the stat named attack power, but yes, all stats that affect physical damage output have done so across all types of actions, and as far as I can tell thus far, that hasn't changed.

Very interesting results. I was having problems with the parser but was able to eventually read the logs by manually removing them after each test. It seems dex does have an effect but nearly as much as atk does in equal ratio. I did 3 tests and Min/Max dmg as well as Avg. dmg all increased by ~6 when adding to my DEX or ATK stats. I did add an extra 2 DEX to my last test but that's because the atk gear had 2 dex on it so I couldn't really prevent that but 2 dex should have had a very minimal if any effect on the test. I'm currently lvl35 Arch fighting lvl30 bombs, I know it was mentioned that fighting normal mobs is useless but being so close to level I don't think I was hitting the damage cap by far since I've done over 732dmg on weaker mobs. I would ignore the dps as it's clearly off due to the way the experiment is carried out and total dmg may as well be off and I'm thinking this is due to the way FFXIV logs data, I.E. start, stop.

Results.

T1: DEX: 175

STR: 129

PIE: 136

ATK: 250

Atks: 49

DPS: 73.76

Crit: 10.20%

Min: 138 Max: 162

Avg: 150.97

CrtMi: 192 CrtMa: 207

DMG: 5728



T2: DEX: 145

STR: 129

PIE: 136

ATK: 250

Atks: 50

DPS: 53.83

Crit: 13%

Min: 132 Max: 155

Avg: 142.88

CrtMi: 182 CrtMa: 201

DMG: 5531


T3: DEX: 177

STR: 129

PIE: 136

ATK: 261

Atks: 50

DPS: 16.45

Crit: 20.90%

Min: 144 Max: 169

Avg: 156.37

CrtMi: 199 CrtMa: 224

DMG: 8194

Conclusion, while Dex does seem to have an effect on overall dmg, the ratio of DEX needed to Dmg increase is lower compared to Atk needed to increase dmg. It looks something around DEX5: DMG1 vs ATK2: DMG1. Not sure the cap on either though and I'm interested in doing or seeing someones results with STR, PIE and a lot more ATK. Would also like to see a more thorough experiment on normal mobs near same lvl since that is whats most important to me at this time as I'm solo lvling Arch.

Can someone help me make sense of this? Went back for a fourth test.

DEX: 155

STR: 129

PIE: 159

ATK: 250

# of atks: 51

DPS: 29.06 (irrelevent)

Crit: 3.92%

Min:131 Max: 154

Avg: 142.94

CrtMi: 179 CritMa: 203

Dmg: 5528


Somehow adding 10 Dex and 23 PIE gave me nearly the same results as Test 2, this isn't making any sense to me. Shouldn't I see atleast 3dmg increase within min and max or AT LEAST the avg?

Double meld of attack materia on gloves continued to show a significant difference, especially on the Paladin moogle. (this was compared to a double melded Dexterity pair of gloves)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Double meld of attack materia on gloves continued to show a significant difference, especially on the Paladin moogle. (this was compared to a double melded Dexterity pair of gloves)

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Hi Murugan,

Nice find. Thanks for the info. :)

Do you have a rough estimate for how much increase you got with +Attack Power vs. +DEX Gloves you were using?

Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kiara

Hi Murugan,

Nice find. Thanks for the info. :)

Do you have a rough estimate for how much increase you got with +Attack Power vs. +DEX Gloves you were using?

Thanks!

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The ratio is about the same as in the first test you should notice an around 10-20% boost in damage on high defense mobs such as Whiskerwall when using Attack in the place of Dexterity materia (16 dex-26 attack).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Double meld of attack materia on gloves continued to show a significant difference, especially on the Paladin moogle. (this was compared to a double melded Dexterity pair of gloves)

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i agree i have tested this also felt bracers 50+atk vs 30+dex gloves and a significant difference in ws damage also

a theory to be tested str to atk: the more and more i play around with str gear attack gear and my dex gear the more i think that strength doesn't convert to atk on a point by point basis but a percentage of your str is treated as atk

I have notices alot of stats have a 10% modifier, such as SS/Protect are modified 10% by vitality. Meaning 10 vitality adds 1 def to protects buff. Perhaps STR is 10 str for one ATK?