ARR Attack Magic Damage Test (beta3) Int, dtr & acc

[carraway]

Thanks for the information. I'd also like to add that, on the melee side, determination has a higher proportionate effect on autoattacks vs weaponskills; I would imagine that the comparison holds true for autoattacks vs spells, but it bears investigating.

I personally tested an 83 determination gap on DRG to deduce that, very roughly, with a 44 base wDMG (weapon damage) and 45.76 base aaDMG (auto-attack damage) rating, 1 actual damage point : ~3.89 STR : ~9.22 DET. With WSs, 1 dmg : ~4.12 STR : ~16.6 DET.

My guess is that you'll see a similar ratio with spells, 1 dmg : 4 INT : 16 DET.

edit: Actually, I could be really off on the actual numbers, because I'm not sure exactly what the relationship is between weapon magic damage and whether you can correlate it to weapon physical damage, but I believe the general idea will hold -- that it'll take a very large amount of DET to get one point of damage in return.

[indira]

Strength
Increases melee attack power and the percentage of damage mitigated by block and parry.

Dexterity
Increases ranged attack power and the chance of blocking or parrying an attack.

Vitality
Increases maximum HP.

Intelligence
Increases attack magic potency

Mind
Increases healing magic potency.

Piety
Increases maximum MP.

[Deli]

Intelligence
Increases attack magic potency

Mind
Increases healing magic potency.

One more thing to add to this is that during all the test I done above the Healing magic potency = mind value; Attack magic potency = int value; Clerk Cleric Stance didn't boost 10% to attack magic potency. so I guess they make the display more clear in 2.0. no more weird magic potency then you convert to actual cure/ damage.

[indira]

Clerk Stance swaps int and mnd. 10% attack is only gonna hit double digits extra.

[Deli]

updated the dtr scan test...

Really thanks for Hvinire's dev tag tho. I was seriously thinking that I should post more tests here or no.

[Hulan]

Good stuff! It confirms what's in my guide

http://www.abaddon.us/phpBB3/page.php?p=stat-guide

Hey Molly, in that guide, you suggest Dex as a tanking stat for the damage mitigation. I did a quick and dirty Dex and Parry test this last weekend (that, I admit, is hardly a rigorous examination of the stats, but my time and resources were limited, I plan on doing a much more in-depth study in Phase 4). My preliminary results show extremely disappointing returns on Dex and Parry on block rate, with a nice bump in Parry rate from the Parry stat only.

Originally I posted the results hyperbolously claiming "Dex is worthless", and I regret that claim now, as it clearly has worth, but until I have time to test further, I found Dex to be a marginal boost to damage mitigation at best (at least at entry levels of Dex). I'll repost my findings here, though when compared to Deli's I'm afraid the professionalism is somewhat lacking. When I do a more in depth test with more data points, I'll calculate a line of best fit and R² values.

[Molly_Millions]

Hey Molly, in that guide, you suggest Dex as a tanking stat for the damage mitigation. I did a quick and dirty Dex and Parry test this last weekend (that, I admit, is hardly a rigorous examination of the stats, but my time and resources were limited, I plan on doing a much more in-depth study in Phase 4). My preliminary results show extremely disappointing returns on Dex and Parry on block rate, with a nice bump in Parry rate from the Parry stat only.

Originally I posted the results hyperbolously claiming "Dex is worthless", and I regret that claim now, as it clearly has worth, but until I have time to test further, I found Dex to be a marginal boost to damage mitigation at best (at least at entry levels of Dex). I'll repost my findings here, though when compared to Deli's I'm afraid the professionalism is somewhat lacking. When I do a more in depth test with more data points, I'll calculate a line of best fit and R² values.

That being said, would you go for DEX or VIT as PLD for your 2nd stat? (STR is clearly no. 1 for tanking.) It seems to me like it's a toss up, since VIT now only increases max HP.

I'm thinking it may still be worth it to stack DEX assuming you stack Parry as well, since you've doubling up on the damage mitigation. Otherwise, a VIT and determination build might be worth considering. Maybe I'll spell out the different paths...

[Hulan]

That being said, would you go for DEX or VIT as PLD for your 2nd stat? (STR is clearly no. 1 for tanking.) It seems to me like it's a toss up, since VIT now only increases max HP.

I'd have a hard time coming down on that decision until some more rigorous Dex testing is done (by myself or someone else). From a purely "how much health am I getting/mitigating" word of mouth says (I forgot to look myself, so I'll just have to take others' word for this) VIT returns ~8 HP per point, though other numbers have been quoted. Based on my findings, DEX returns ~0.13% increase in mitigation rate (mitigation in this case refers to in incident of either Block or Parry) per point. Each mitigation incident will block 14%-11% damage on a STR based PLD, resulting in an overall increase of 0.018% damage mitigation over time. On an enemy that hits for 1000 damage, that's going to result in a reduction of ~0.18 damage per attack (averaged out, in reality it's going to be a much more extreme distribution).

VIT is a sure thing, it will give you a flat buff to your survivability, at the cost of your healer's sanity (and MP). Dex is a gamble, where the more Dex you add, the higher your chances of winning but with higher returns than HP on a win. Stylistically, I want Dex to be a viable alternative. At this point though, I would need to find something very interesting at higher Dex/Parry values to make it worthwhile. It also depends on how high you can get your Block value with STR. If Block value can get up in the ~25% range, pumping Dex and trying to get that "win" to come up more often makes more sense.

[Molly_Millions]

I'd have a hard time coming down on that decision until some more rigorous Dex testing is done (by myself or someone else). From a purely "how much health am I getting/mitigating" word of mouth says (I forgot to look myself, so I'll just have to take others' word for this) VIT returns ~8 HP per point, though other numbers have been quoted. Based on my findings, DEX returns ~0.13% increase in mitigation rate (mitigation in this case refers to in incident of either Block or Parry) per point. Each mitigation incident will block 14%-11% damage on a STR based PLD, resulting in an overall increase of 0.018% damage mitigation over time. On an enemy that hits for 1000 damage, that's going to result in a reduction of ~0.18 damage per attack (averaged out, in reality it's going to be a much more extreme distribution).

VIT is a sure thing, it will give you a flat buff to your survivability, at the cost of your healer's sanity (and MP). Dex is a gamble, where the more Dex you add, the higher your chances of winning but with higher returns than HP on a win. Stylistically, I want Dex to be a viable alternative. At this point though, I would need to find something very interesting at higher Dex/Parry values to make it worthwhile. It also depends on how high you can get your Block value with STR. If Block value can get up in the ~25% range, pumping Dex and trying to get that "win" to come up more often makes more sense.

Here's something to consider. You can almost always add DEX to your tank gear, but you can almost never add much VIT. If you cap DEX, you can sometimes still add a little VIT. You have to consider how stat caps work in ARR, we can't simply add 5 VIT materia onto a chest piece any more.

As for STR, the value comes not only from damage mitigation, but from greater DPS and greater enmity by extension. That being the case STR is the best choice for primary stat. However, it also follows the same rule as VIT, the best tanking gear is almost always capped on STR. Really the debate is not over if STR and DEX are better than VIT, it's whether VIT is better than DEX, as STR is the best stat for a tank.

[Hulan]

Here's something to consider. You can almost always add DEX to your tank gear, but you can almost never add much VIT. If you cap DEX, you can sometimes still add a little VIT. You have to consider how stat caps work in ARR, we can't simply add 5 VIT materia onto a chest piece any more.

As for STR, the value comes not only from damage mitigation, but from greater enmity. That being the case STR is the best choice for primary stat. However, it also follows the same rule as VIT, the best tanking gear is almost always capped on STR.

That's certainly true. In some ways this is a academic debate, since at cap materia levels, you can pretty much guarentee 3-4 capped stats (though now that information about sub-caps on materia for stats outside of gear affinity has come out, you may be able to cap more). Based on what I know right now - which could change at any moment - I would cap Strength, then Parry, then Dexterity, then Mind, then Piety on PLD; Strength, then Vitality, then Parry, then Critical Accuracy, then Dexterity on MRD.

As you said, Strength really does reign supreme right now as a tanking stat; it grants damage reduction, more enmity, and allows you to be a meaningful damage dealer (though still lacking when compared to dedicated damage dealers).

Parry seems to have excellent returns on investment, increasing parry rates by 6-7% with +80 Parry in my test, which is incredibly easy to come by, it's also relatively easy to cap for PLDs.

Dexterity is still a black horse here as far as I am concerned, but the small imporvements I saw could have easily been due to the low levels of Dex, and honestly, it's probably still worth the effort when compared to Vitality, since Vitality comes so easily.

Perhaps this is my old FFXI days talking, but I also think PLDs would see some valuable returns on investment at late levels by bringing their Mind and Piety up closer to at level values; I'd want to see how healing enmity compares to spamming WSs to be sure on that one though.

MRD on the other hand, is going to benifit more heavily from raw increases in survivability, as well as attack power improvements to better the chances of a burst of HP absorb, so I would rate Vitality much higher and add Critical Accuracy in to have better HP absorption rates.