A potential rework to the level-sync system.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

snip.

Of course you do pitiful damage, because you're a level 80 that unequipped all your gear, your pitifully small stats are getting annihilated by the AP function lvl scaling variable. That 323 STR you had is only 1/3rd of its actual strength post AP calculations. But:

a) you aren't wielding a level 1 weapon in Sastasha in actual content.
b) your weapon damage is already synced to what's acceptable for the dungeon anyway, so it's not like you're getting any advantage compared to anyone else. (hence my point on why its irrelevant; it affects all your skills the same way0 so its a static variable in any damage calculation between rotations & skills, WD won't suddenly make a 400 potency attack do less than double that of a 200 potency one.)

But that's not even the point. Here's the damage formula for FFXIV:

Direct Damage (D)
D1 = ⌊ Potency × f(ATK) × f(DET) ⌋ /100 ⌋ /1000 ⌋

D2 = ⌊ D1 × f(TNC) ⌋ /1000 ⌋ × f(WD) ⌋ /100 ⌋ × Trait ⌋ /100 ⌋

D3 = ⌊ D2 × CRIT? ⌋ /1000 ⌋ × DH? ⌋ /100 ⌋

D = ⌊ D3 × rand[95,105] ⌋ /100 ⌋ × buff_1 ⌋ × buff_2 ⌋

I could go into ultra depth and breakdown every single step and variable, but it's irrelevant when there's only one I need to talk about. You see that Potency variable on the first line?

It controls the base damage that then gets multiplied all the way through. You could solve every other variable in the entire equation but change potency from 200 to 400, and the final result would be double damage. A better way to look at potency is to assume 100 potency is base damage. Then, take any abilitiy's potency and / 100, and that's literally how many more time damage you'll do. Like, this isn't even a debate.

To even show you my point, I went into Sastasha, lvl 80 WAR, lvl 1 axe, no gear, same setup as your level 80 PLD, lvl 1 sword.

That 120 Total eclipse potency you did equaling 45 damage? My WAR's decimate did 106 damage in the exact same scenario (about 2.1 times as much damage...curious; 250 potency is also about 2.1 times as much as 120 potency...hmmm). His chaotic Cyclone will do 300 damage (Chaotic cyclone post DH-CRT is 720 potency; 6x as much potency, and also close to 6x as much damage...it's almost like there's an extremely obvious pattern going on here). My heavy swing did 77 damage in Berserk. My inner Chaos did 637 damage. You can set WD to whatever the heck you want, potency is the ultimate variable in the damage calculation. A 400 potency attack will deal 2x as much damage as a 200 potency attack, it's pure, cold, uncaring numbers.

Dungeons are designed for certain WD ranges, hence why they nerf your weapon down to the WD acceptable for that dungeon. They are NOT designed for characters that can deal literally 3-10x as much potency in the same number of GCDs. Chad will still be utterly crushing Billy into the ground, it won't even be a remotely close contest. While Billy will be doing 77 damage Heavy Swings in berserk, Chad will be doing 640 damage Inner Chaos's, and his IR will be filled with 425 damage FC's. When most enemies in sastasha have about 800-1000 HP....yeah. Chad could 2-hit kill a Sastash enemy synced while normally it takes about 2-4 GCDs of the entire party's damage combined. Once again, I need to re-iterate this is a WAR, not only a tank that does less damage than an actual dps, but is a slow, GCD bound one. NIN could literally delete an entire pack of enemies in 1-2 GCDs + OGCDs with the potency I was calculating on it before I stopped because of how hilarious it was getting.

You let level 80's use their full kits and they'll be unleashing infinitely more times as much potency as a level 30 can do, completely shattering any hope Billy has at ever obtaining parity with Chad, and completely destroying the purpose of the dev's intention with the level sync.

There is no system you could ever design that would allow access to a level 80's toolkit and allow them to maintain parity without making every single skill not found at that level non-existent (1 potency, 1HP shield, etc). And that's why you better get comfy, it's not changing. Period. They'll adjust the rewards on roulettes before they devote even a nanosecond of brain power to ever change their syncing system.

Credit to the Allagan studies and their lovely resource for the damage calculation formula: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...4lP1ZE08/edit#

[Deceptus]

That 120 Total eclipse potency you did equaling 45 damage? My WAR's decimate did 106 damage in the exact same scenario (about 2.1 times as much damage...curious; 250 potency is also about 2.1 times as much as 120 potency...hmmm). His chaotic Cyclone will do 300 damage (Chaotic cyclone post DH-CRT is 720 potency; 6x as much potency, and also close to 6x as much damage...it's almost like there's an extremely obvious pattern going on here). My heavy swing did 77 damage in Berserk. My inner Chaos did 637 damage. You can set WD to whatever the heck you want, potency is the ultimate variable in the damage calculation. A 400 potency attack will deal 2x as much damage as a 200 potency attack, it's pure, cold, uncaring numbers.[/url]

I understand how potencies work, but those potencies are based on weapon damage and your main stat modifier. Those higher damage numbers you were bringing up? Wouldn't happen in synced content if we kept our skills. Because you were running on 323 strength and not the 75 strength you would be synced down.

You literally had 4.3 times the strength you would have normally. That's an extra variable in the math you're not taking into consideration, or are just ignoring to try to prove your point.

That matters. I'm not saying you'd be doing 4 times less damage to do the strength variable, but you'd be doing orders of magnitude less damage with 4 times less main stat.

I'd love to be able to do an undersized party with min ilvl checked just to do a realistic experiment but we can't for some reason. It syncs abilities down.

You let level 80's use their full kits and they'll be unleashing infinitely more times as much potency as a level 30 can do, completely shattering any hope Billy has at ever obtaining parity with Chad, and completely destroying the purpose of the dev's intention with the level sync.

(Emphasis mine) No need for hyperbole to try to make your point because it's just factually incorrect.

There is no system you could ever design that would allow access to a level 80's toolkit and allow them to maintain parity without making every single skill not found at that level non-existent (1 potency, 1HP shield, etc). And that's why you better get comfy, it's not changing. Period. They'll adjust the rewards on roulettes before they devote even a nanosecond of brain power to ever change their syncing system.

Again, no need for hyperbole. There are ways to make it work, you just need to think outside of the box a bit. For example?

If a group joins the roulette, and the dungeon is lower than all the members? Allow them to keep their old skills. A bunch of level 60s get stuck in Sastasha with no newbie bonus? Literally zero people are harmed letting them keep their skills.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I understand how potencies work, but those potencies are based on weapon damage and your main stat modifier. Those higher damage numbers you were bringing up? Wouldn't happen in synced content if we kept our skills. Because you were running on 323 strength and not the 75 strength you would be synced down.

You literally had 4.3 times the strength you would have normally. That's an extra variable in the math you're not taking into consideration, or are just ignoring to try to prove your point.

Not ignoring it, I already stated Your STR is being annihilated by the AP scaling formula, it looks like a big number compared to a level 15's 70~, but that 343~ STR really isn't that impressive as you think for a level 80. In the actual attack power formula, you effectively only have 100:

f(ATK), (level 80, tank): f(ATK) = ⌊ 115 × ( AP - 340 ) / 340 ⌋ + 100
I have 343 STR (my xaela) at level 80 with no gear & level 1 sword equipped.

(115 * (343-340) / 340)) + 100 = (115*(3) / 340) + 100 = (345/340) + 100 = 101

Contrast a level 15:

f(ATK) formula (1-50): f(ATK) = ⌊ 75 × ( AP - Level Lv, MAIN ) / Level Lv, MAIN ⌋ + 100
min ilvl synced gear, my PLD has 70 STR. Lv.Main for a 15 is 46.

Plugging in numbers: (75*(70 - 46) / 46) + 100 = 139.

That level 15 is getting more from his 70 STR in the damage equation than a level 80 is from that 343 STR due to scaling values and 'base' values which get subtracted during calculations (This is the same reason why you can have 380 DH, but have 0% chance to DH, because the 'base' is 380 which is then taken away during DH % calculations, or how you have 340 DET with no gear on, but it gives you literally zero bonuses). The only reason a level 80 with a level 1 weapon deals more than a level 15 is due to the fact the level 80's WD is worth more per point due to an increased lvlMain attribute and unfortunately there's no way to equalize that while keeping the 80's 343 STR the same which I'd love to test (which I'll agree with you on as far as a test server.) Theoretically if we could mix and match formulas to use the level 15's WD formula but the 80's AP formula, some quick napkin math would show that 343 STR would be about ~28% weaker than the level 15's 70 STR. (101/139) * 100 = 72%

TL : DR, Bigger number =/= always better. 340 CRT on a level 80 is weaker than 100 CRT on a level 15, as an example. The only thing that matters is the relativity between the numbers and scaling values for functions.

That being said, Mikey pretty much covered what else I wanted to say. potency is static. 400 is x2 stronger than 200, it's simple math, and all the formula show it. You could have 1,000,000,000 weapon damage or 1, that 1000 potency attack is going to do 5x as much as that 200 potency one with the same WD.

And when WAR can fling out 1600 potency attacks (Inner Chaos post CRT-DH), Chad will still be doing 3 rotation's worth of Billy's damage in a single GCD (Main + HS is 500 potency, 1600 potency / 500 = 3). You can even go into Synced content and verify it for yourself. I went into Sastasha and fast Blade & Riot blade were doing right around the damages Mikey listed (shocker!). For any given 45~ damage HS ( I checked with a synced WAR), Inner Chaos will be doing ~370 damage (400~ with SE). Again, with enemies that have around 800-1000 health. And that's just the tank alone. Yeah....you can see why the Devs will never, ever listen to such a request.

And you're the one complaining about Standard step doing so much when it only does about 250 damage to its first target in Sastasha when a single lvl 80 skill already does 1.5x as much damage as it? Mutiple level 80 jobs would be able to crush a lvl 15 DNC's output into the dirt if they were given their 80 toolkits. The fix isn't to slippery slope unleash the floodgates and let every job do OP damage, its to nerf skills like standard step at low levels.

If a group joins the roulette, and the dungeon is lower than all the members? Allow them to keep their old skills. A bunch of level 60s get stuck in Sastasha with no newbie bonus? Literally zero people are harmed letting them keep their skills.

Except now you:
1) inadvertly promote people kicking the one guy that's not synced to fish for a guy that is synced so that way everyone can keep their skills, on top of speeding up the run nearly 2-3x over. *clap*
2) promotes ilvl cheesing roulettes since the likelihood of getting a lower level dungeon increases your odds everyone is synced and thus, super fast runs.
3) Addendum to #2, inadvertly promotes making full parties and ilvl cheesing leveling roulette so that way you can blow through an ARR dungeon that was never designed with such hyper-inflated potency rotations in mind in 5 minutes that they can practically afk through than spend 15-25 on a more relevant one. Which means less randos queueing for leveling roulette on their own when they otherwise might have, which could actually hurt queues, much to your assumption otherwise.

Look no further than CT as a prime example of how people will by far and large choose the most efficient method if it is that much better than the alternative, or even Castrum <-> Praetorium.

Rule 1 of software design: You give people an inch, they'll take a mile, time tested unto eternity. You can continue to list ideas, and I'll take the 10s and use my own experience of software development to easily poke flaws in them that the devs would have thought about in 2011-2012 when they were first designing the sync system.

Unfortunately, this topic will continue to be brought up again and again, the exact same points will be spouted, the math will be put out that utterly curbstomps why they'd never implement such a thing, and it'll be a cyclical process. Which is a shame since there's far more important topics to discuss that actually have a chance at being changed/fixed.