A Filthy Casual's questions about SS melds on DRK and other tanks

[JackFross]

I missed you, Syz. You beat me to the punch. <3

I was going to point out (as I did in another thread) that 7 GCDs is the baseline. You don't even need to finagle it to get all 7. It's just the natural state of the cooldown.

The mistake people are making in these calculations is that, when you divide 15 by 2.25 (the default amount) and get 6.67 GCDs, they're neglecting to realize that this is 6 gaps between GCDs and not 6 GCDs. If you have 6 gaps, you have 7 GCDs, since if you hit one at the start, 6 gaps later you'll hit the seventh at the end of the sixth gap. As such, when you cross that threshold to 7 gaps, you'll hit the point where you can /barely/ hit 8 GCDs in that 15s window. You'll need more leeway than 7.009 to actually hit 8 in practice, though, which would require closer to Syz' number of 750 or so, to spread that gap from 0.02s leeway to 0.16s - a gap you can actually realistically count on hitting, if you handle it properly.

[Violette]

"Inarguably".

Given that Drk is the only class in FFXIV whose resource regeneration is TIED to their ability to output gcds, there will always be the argument about skillspeed break points and optional dps.

I.e., is the difference between 7gcd and 8gcds worth the det/crit loss (if you sacrifice both), for the extra gcd which could provide more potency over time than the equivalent amount of det?

Will the sks when not affected by blood weapon have a net positive effect again, over equivalent det?

These are the questions you must answer and prove before it becomes inarguable.

Also arguing that 'it decreases the return" isn't exactly a great argument. If decreasing your gcd by 0.1 results in blood weapon only decreasing by 0.2449 as opposed to 0.245, the net increase is still a positive total gain.

[JackFross]

"Inarguably".

Given that Drk is the only class in FFXIV whose resource regeneration is TIED to their ability to output gcds, there will always be the argument about skillspeed break points and optional dps.

I.e., is the difference between 7gcd and 8gcds worth the det/crit loss (if you sacrifice both), for the extra gcd which could provide more potency over time than the equivalent amount of det?

Will the sks when not affected by blood weapon have a net positive effect again, over equivalent det?

These are the questions you must answer and prove before it becomes inarguable.

Monk, Dragoon, Ninja, Black Mage, and Warrior all follow that same mold where SKS/SPS directly correlates with resource management. Three of these classes have SKS break points where they get massive boosts upon hitting a certain threshold. Only two of them actually values SKS beyond the first of said break points - one of them favors it above all else due to the fact that their resource is limitless - the other two want it as low as absolutely possible. DRK falls in the MNK/NIN camp.

See, here's the thing. I just worked out this long bit of math that basically shows that the difference of SKS from 497 to 750 will amount to ~25 v 26 GCDs in ~62.5s without BW and 28 v 29 GCDs with BW in ~58.1s. BW itself lessens the impact of SKS on your offensive output. The amount of GCDs you hit for this (coupled with all of the oGCD attacks you're using in-between) makes it incredibly stupidly unlikely for that +1 GCD to outweigh the impact on your stats that the equivalent amount of Crit/Det would have brought you.

[Violette]

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

[SyzzleSpark]

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

You could correlate these numbers to literally any job in the game that has a big hitting GCD that they will get to faster with more SS. It still doesn't change that a single crit for instance will pull ahead of the accumulated gains from hitting your GCDs fractions of seconds faster by thousands of points of damage. I'm no Dervy, but until someone comes along and mathematically proves him wrong, I'm going with his numbers, and his numbers put SS at the bottom of the barrel for DRK as far as DPS secondaries go.

I guess I'm just not sure what you're arguing. It sounds like you're trying to posit that SS is better for DRK than Crit or Det up to a certain threshold like it is with other jobs, when every ounce of research that we have on the topic suggests that this just isn't the case. If you have some math to discredit the data that is already out there on the internet, I would be thrilled to see it, but if you don't you're just muddying fact and misplacing the burden of proof.

STR: 1.000
VIT: 1.000
WD: 22.010
DET: 0.309
CRT: 0.368
SS: 0.259

Source: https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com/stat-weights/

[JackFross]

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

Mmh.

So let's look at Syz's stats:

ACC 701
CRIT 740
DET 634
SKS 497
GCD 2.44

If we assume that we need to bump SKS to 750 to get that 8th GCD, that's a net difference of 253. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we can just transfer 253 DET to SKS:

ACC 701
CRIT 740
DET 381
SKS 750
GCD 2.35

With this change in GCD, it will take approximately one minute (62.5s = ~25 v 26 GCDs) for you to gain +1 GCD over the previous set. So, it comes down to whether or not 253 DET would give enough of a gain for 25 GCDs to give you the equivalent of +1 GCD's worth of damage. For that to be the case, we'd need 253 DET to give each of those 25 GCDs a 4% boost (since 25x4% = 100%). This would mean each single point of Determination would need to boost the damage of any given GCD by 0.015%, at least, to account for this difference.

However, if we then as well add Blood Weapon into these calculations, we have patches of 15s with 90% of our GCD and 30s with 100% of our GCD. It becomes a bit trickier to calculate, for sure, but we can estimate it by just looking at a 45s chunk. We assume that the latter gets 8 GCDs at 2.12 (16.96) while the former gets 7 GCDs at 2.20 (15.4). It's a bit tricky. In the remaining time, the 2.35 GCD player will get 14 more GCDs, ending at 47.51. 2.44 player will get exactly the same amount of additional GCDs, ending at 47.12.

Therefore, we can see that the 2.35s GCD will gain an entire GCD on the 2.44s GCD player over the course of 47-ish seconds. When 2.44 is hitting their 21st GCD, the 2.35 is hitting their 22nd 0.4s later. If we extend this, we'll see that (re-applying Blood Weapon), the 2.35 GCD player will eclipse the 2.44 GCD player at GCD number 27. When 2.35 hits their 27th (58.11), the 2.44 GCD player hits their 26th (58.12). They both started at 0, with BW starting immediately, so this can be considered to be a standing pattern going forward... more than likely.

It falls in line with the non-BW approach, with one VERY SIGNIFICANT caveat. In the case without BW, the time it takes for lower SKS to beat out higher SKS is shorter than that when BW is included - as such, it's pretty damning evidence that supports the fact that SKS and BW do not play well together. More SKS makes BW less effective. BW's existence makes SKS less effective.

Not saying it does - just saying that the correlation between SKS and DPS is most similar when comparing DRK to MNK/NIN than when comparing it to other Jobs. The breakpoint for BW is not significant. Higher SKS makes BW less effective. BW itself makes SKS less effective. It DOES change other things, such as access to Syphon Strike and all that sort of jazz.

I haven't bothered touching on Scourge clipping, because I don't believe the DPS lost from clipping Scourge will be important to discuss when looking at the overall difference in DPS from SKS to non-SKS builds. There is a model out there for Dark Knight, and Dervy has calculated weights for the class, which drop SKS to a significant bottom rung (.139 det v .117 sks with AP = 1), but I won't use someone else's numbers to explain myself. I'll go ahead and humor you on the value of SKS in relation to Mana gains. Since I've shown above that BW makes the impact of SKS LESS effective, I can use the baseline case of 2.44 (A) v 2.35 (B) having a 25:26 GCD relationship. For every 25 GCDs done by A, B will perform 26.

Let's first consider BW before considering Syphon Strike.

Every cast of BW, we can assume that B will get precisely +253 Mana that A would not have gotten (since SKS does not impact AA's or cooldown resets). Translating that into DA is ~7 shots of 253 for +1 cast of DA - thus you need to use 7 Blood Weapons to gain +1 Dark Arts. The seventh Blood Weapon (used on cooldown) will finish 4:45 after the encounter starts, assuming you CAN use every single one as it comes up AND you get 8 GCDs out of each one, while A gets 7. So BW gives +1 DA+SE with higher SKS 4:45 into the encounter, at best. It would then take over 9 minutes (9:30 or so) to get +2.

Now, we'll consider the non-BW SKS relationship and treat these independently and then sum up our additional Dark Arts Souleater casts. This will be an overestimation of the actual additional amounts of DA we will get, because the number here will be higher than it is in actuality due to the way in which BW and SKS interact.

A full rotation for Dark Knight is 13 GCDs long. After one cycle of B gaining +1 GCD, we have:
A - 25 : just hit Syphon Strike
B - 26 : just hit Souleater/Delirium

After a second run of this, we have:
A - 50 : just hit Hard Slash = 50 x 2.44 = 122s = 2:03
B - 52 : just hit Souleater/Delirium

So, every 2 minutes, you will gain +1 Syphon Strike over your lesser-sks friend. Every 4 minutes, then, you'll gain +1 Dark Arts cast. This is an overestimation of how many you'll gain, because you need to hit 125 v 130 GCDs before you see +2 Syphon Strikes, which would be ~5 minutes, not 4.

I mean - truth be told - I don't know that I need to further explain to you how it is that Skill Speed, given these results, is just not very effective compared to the Det and Crit you'll sacrifice to bump it so high. Sure, you're hitting a breakpoint that allows +1 hit under Blood Weapon, but all that does is shorten an extra GCD. It's important to note the gain in time of the two casts of BW:
A: 0.244 x 7 = 1.708
B: 0.235 x 8 = 1.880
Net savings of 0.172s each cast of BW compared between B and A - which is honestly not a very large number. Yeah, it compounds on the gain of +0.09s per GCD, but it's really not significant enough to write home about - it's not significant enough to sacrifice over 200 points combined between Critical Hit and Determination for a gain that is small enough to be realistically debated.


But, to each their own. If you think Skill Speed is really as useful as you say it is, more power to you - run the 750 and show everyone up with your superior DPS. I don't personally believe it's worthwhile for a Dark Knight to stack it. That doesn't mean I think it's worthless - I just value Determination and Critical Hit Rate far more than it, and don't believe the Skill Speed breakpoint is anything special.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

What he said. Math is hard. <3

[Violette]

I would be thrilled to see it, but if you don't you're just muddying fact and misplacing the burden of proof.

STR: 1.000
VIT: 1.000
WD: 22.010
DET: 0.309
CRT: 0.368
SS: 0.259

Burden of proof lies on claimant, not the questioner. You claimed an "inarguable fact", and I questioned this status. You cannot claim a fact without proving so, and your only proof is someone else's value. No mathematical considerations of other possible effects.

i.e. You claim God exists. It is not my job to prove God does not exist, it is your to prove He does. That is how the scientific burden of proof functions. If I claimed "SkS is the best stat for dark knight", it would be my job to do so. But I am not claiming this. Mathematical modelling shows that for reachable values of Crit/SkS, Crit does outscale SkS. But Det/SkS is a closer race, and it's the relationship I test against when I'm testing things such as animation cancelling and breakpoints.

What I'm putting forward is that Dervy (who had to rely on someone else's Dark Knight rotation at a time when the rotation itself was not well understood) did not fully understand all the gain/losses of MP that happen during a dark knight's rotation and as such all the possibilities were not considered, given that Dark has the key difference from every other class, i.e. that dark knight requires MP as well as TP to function. Nor would he have done much on animation cancelling, which AFAIK very little work outside my own has been done on.

So I'm not saying "SKS IS BEST STAT" nor that "YOU ARE ALL WRONG". All I'm saying is "you can't say that without proof, have you considered x/y/z", none of which has been considered theoretically or practically before (it's on my personal to do list).

Not to mention Dervy doesn't give us a stat weight for Parry, despite it existing. (We're talking less than 0.0001, but it does exist.)

[JackFross]

Not to mention Dervy doesn't give us a stat weight for Parry, despite it existing. (We're talking less than 0.0001, but it does exist.)

Coughs and points to the post below the one you quoted. Burden of proof absolutely falls on both sides of this argument, though, not just one. You claimed that the additional benefits of SKS (which Dervy accounted for since he's not negligent when it comes to numbers - he is dragging his feet in BLM and MCH and healer weights because of variables he is still trying to iron out) would potentially beat out the loss of an equivalent amount of Crit and Det - this implies that SKS would potentially be optimal to raise to 750 to reach the break point. This runs counter to popular belief, so it falls on you to prove how this is the case just as much as it falls on us to prove it is not.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

The crux of the matter here is that you are stating that there are unknowns (sure, there are) and that based off those unknowns SS may or might be better. And sure, it might be. But we don't know. And when supplying someone like the OP of this post with accurate information I'm going to go with what IS known and say Crit/Det till you're blue in the face, and THEN SS. Because that's what we know to be true currently. And that is Crit>Det>SS. Any caveats only serve to misinform when they are about unknowns.

The Earth revolves around the Sun. That's what we currently know to be true. Modern science doesn't know EVERYTHING though. We may learn that this is all an elaborate virtual reality simulation and that the Earth actually revolves around Uranus. Until then, I'm going to tell anyone who asks, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, just like I'm going to tell any DRK that asks that Crit and Det are better than SS, lest we get more threads on the tank forums further confusing the meta about an already really poorly understood (and played, by many) job.