Black Mage Theorycrafting - Best In Slot

[Darkstarz]

Hi there, just a quick question as a fellow BLM

Right now im geared with relic+1 and full DL set (including accesory) with the exception of an AK ring. What Mythology gear will you recommend me to get first? Right now I have 900 tomes to spare and considering between Myth Body or Ring. However, getting either of this will reduce my accuracy to below 430. Right now I'm standing at 435 accuracy. Will this greatly affect my efficiency in all turns of Coil?

What im personally in the process of doing is Getting the Myth chest next week, and crafting a Vanya Hat, for 150k or so, you should have enough tomes to buy the Potash and i think its a great item to fill if u need Accuracy.

[Sleigh]

I'm curious on why did you went full Allagan accessories instead of mixing it with Hero's? Spell Speed is useless to BLM's.

Wouldn't it be better to substitute the neck, wrist with Hero's instead?

This is true. Hero's accessories are undeniably BiS from a DPS stand-point. Only case to be made for non-Hero's would be turning one into an iLVL70 HQ Craft for some Piety, to reach breakpoints, and Accuracy so you could possibly replace an armor piece picked for Accuracy for one with more DPS.

[glim]

shouldn't best in slot be 420+ something accuracy? because deviled eggs (or the ilvl 70 counterpart) is still better than buttons in a blanket (or it's ilvl 70 counterpart)

even if you are already at accuracy cap, 24 crit, still beats 16 det + 10 crit.

edit: nvm, did not see the fourth BiS list.

[glim]

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[diamondfish]

Thanks for the write up, I appreciate you taking the time to share. On a side note I always wondered why MMO companies never freely share their algorithms for damage, healing, stats etc. I think if they would release this type of information to the player base it would make min/maxing a lot easier, as well as more eyes to catch mistake their team may have missed. Validating buffs and nerfs would go over smoother if we had the math and other facts to back it up.

Yeah I agree. It will always come out decent formulas anyways, why just not make the game funnier and more interesting from the beginning? I don't like guessing and playing games in the dark.

Hi there, just a quick question as a fellow BLM

Right now im geared with relic+1 and full DL set (including accesory) with the exception of an AK ring. What Mythology gear will you recommend me to get first? Right now I have 900 tomes to spare and considering between Myth Body or Ring. However, getting either of this will reduce my accuracy to below 430. Right now I'm standing at 435 accuracy. Will this greatly affect my efficiency in all turns of Coil?

I also had that problem. I temporarily solved it by buying a Militia Hat HQ and melding spell speed materias. The expensive solution would be buying a Vanya hat and melding accuracy to it.

And yes. Your efficiency in coil will be drastically affected if your below 430. If you're at like 425 it's not that big a deal, but try to aim for being able to reach 430+. Buy accuracy food buffs! They help a lot.
I ran the numbers for you assuming you have full dl, ak ring and relic+1.

Swapping to sorcerersChest and militiaHatHQ (+14ss from melds): +1.64%
Swapping to herosRing: +1.75%

So it depends on how good head you can get. With the militiaHatHQ the ring is slightly better.

Out of curiosity, did you get anything for the stat weights? Seems they would be needed for the program to find the best. I'm leveling my bm next and would love to know the results

I did get these numbers by playing around with the formula a bit a couple of weeks ago.

1 int = 4.6 det = 4.85 ss = 5.9 crit

I don't think Critical Hit Rate should be the focus of BiS for BLM. If my testing results are correct, DET >> CHR =/> SS

I tested Determination vs Critical Hit Rate in a mixture of iLVL70 + iLVL90 gear for BLM by attacking training dummies 3,500 times per test. The two tests I did had the same equipment except for the pants: a non-materia melded Vanya Breeches of Casting vs Darklight Breeches of Casting, the only thing different being +18 DET on the Vanya against +27 CHR on the Darklight. Using Blizzard II for the attacks against 3 training dummies, which is a burst attack and where 90% of a BLM's DPS comes from, I came up with the following:

Vanya Leggings
305 DPS
240 average non-critical damage
12.69% critical chance

Darklight Leggings
303 DPS
238 average non-critical damage
14.36% critical chance

As you can see, the +27 CHR definitely manifested, but criticals are so weak in this game, even something like +2 average damage to a 100 Potency attack will give more DPS, and that was +18 DET vs +27 CHR. It takes an average of 2% actual critical hit rate to increase your base DPS by 1% (1.5X damage on criticals), which is just not a strong increase compared to Determination (though both are minor increases). Even in top level gear, CHR shouldn't surpass DET, the gap is just too large. See, the thing about criticals is, it actually gets worse compared to Determination since it only multiplies your base DPS. If you add 2% CHR and increase your base DPS by 1%, you're not actually multiplying your current DPS by 1.01. You're just multiplying your original damage, independent of criticals, by 1.01.

We'll need a lot more base DPS before Critical Hit Rate can topple Determination, from the looks of things.

Yep, I agree that crit is pretty "useless" atm, since the crit bonus is a fixed 50%.

I'm curious on why did you went full Allagan accessories instead of mixing it with Hero's? Spell Speed is useless to BLM's.

Wouldn't it be better to substitute the neck, wrist with Hero's instead?

How did you end up with conclusion that spell speed is useless lol. It's not.

[rwarr]

How did you end up with conclusion that spell speed is useless lol. It's not.

Ok I worded it wrong. It's not entirely useless but you need quite a substantial amount to notice a difference. You didn't answer my question though.

[diamondfish]

Ok I worded it wrong. It's not entirely useless but you need quite a substantial amount to notice a difference. You didn't answer my question though.

I use the damage formula that I found the most accurate and then I brute force all combinations of gear. Did you read the post? It's not "me" choosing full allagan. It simply is the best possible choice due to the formula.

[Starkbeaumont]

I'm certain that spell speed only wins in a perfect scenario, where you basicly auto cast whenever possible. If you consider moving around, input lag and even human failure, DET and CRIT should come out ahead.

That being said BiS should be:

Allagan weapon+shield, left side full allagan, right side earring and 1 ring allagan, rest hero's (119SS, 135CRIT, 66DET)

more accessible should be:

Relic+1, AF2 head, chest, hands, Allagan waist, legs, feet, right side like the other set (152SS, 150CRIT, 34DET)

Feet are interchangable with AF2 of course

Earring could be argued about, but going by stat weights 16 crit > 8 det (as long as you are not at the 15% cap)

[diamondfish]

I'm certain that spell speed only wins in a perfect scenario, where you basicly auto cast whenever possible. If you consider moving around, input lag and even human failure, DET and CRIT should come out ahead.

That being said BiS should be:

Allagan weapon+shield, left side full allagan, right side earring and 1 ring allagan, rest hero's (119SS, 135CRIT, 66DET)

more accessible should be:

Relic+1, AF2 head, chest, hands, Allagan waist, legs, feet, right side like the other set (152SS, 150CRIT, 34DET)

Feet are interchangable with AF2 of course

Earring could be argued about, but going by stat weights 16 crit > 8 det (as long as you are not at the 15% cap)

I agree that spell speed is hard to value. But a good BLM shouldn't be forced to move around too much. I know that I don't have to move around much in coil t1-t4, and I feel that spell speed does matter. Maybe it would be more "all around fair" to lower the spell speed weight some, but I do feel that anything lower than 85% would be too low.

[diamondfish]

I've updated the data with the new relevant items from Patch 2.1.

You can find the files here.
I've grouped up all new items (iLvl 80 and iLvl 90) of use and named them eighty*, ex. eightyHead.

You can find BIS items for Coil (acc>=435) and for everything else (acc>=0).