Are melds and super gear really necessary?

[Belial]

(and btw, our top dps tested a moogle run with unmelded gear and a NQ crab bow and still did 79 dps)

I don't think that's fair, I'm pretty sure he's some kind of wizard.

[syntaxlies]

I don't think that's fair, I'm pretty sure he's some kind of wizard.

is that him in the middle

[Molly_Millions]

Oh but it does, I'm one of the players the OP is taking about.

[syntaxlies]

Oh but it does, I'm one of the players the OP is taking about.

i was just doing what you asked, sheesh

[Jinko]

now somebody tell me that a 200% damage increase doesn't matter.

It's situational though, it depends on the type of monster and its level.

Kaeko mentioned to just parse furryfoot and whiskerwal but whats the point, yes you see how the damage works but isn't it overall damage that matters.

If the DPS over the whole fight was a constant 200% then I would have to agree that stats and gear mattered, but it doesn't work like that.

Of course 10% extra damage across the whole fight is Something but is it enough to make the effort for.

When you start adding everyones DPS together with 10-20% it does start to make a much bigger difference though.

But at what point is it considered enough to be worthwhile.

[Rydin]

The difference between "naked gear" and "good gear" is most noticeable in situations where your raw damage per hit is low. This is due to the fact that adding stats and ATK provides a raw linear increase in damage as opposed to a % increase. Evidence for this is provided in the link someone gave earlier (I am "kanican", one of the 2 players that extensively tested this, and the one that wrote the public version linked). To cite you two simple examples:

Say you have 2 ARC with Ifrit's Bow...





If you are skeptical it works this way, I encourage you to parse a naked vs. well geared ARC on the moogle fight sometime, but specifically ONLY parse furryfoot and whiskerwall instead of overall damage. You will see the average damage per shot difference be pretty sizable on Whiskerwall but be pretty small on Furry.

As illustrated by these 2 situations, the difference between poorly and well geared players is extremely dependent on the mob. Rydin is correct in that I stated the formula as "elegant" in a previous thread. One reason for this is because you really only need to increase "endgame" mob stats to make more mobs like Whisker and fewer mobs like Furry and you'll get your "gear check" fights.

Everyone wants to assault the melee-defense formula for being broken, but you really just need harder fights. I could go into a lot more detail but this isn't the forum or thread for it I think so I'll leave it at that.

Best of luck gearing your ARC out.

Kaeko, you know the test we're all waiting for?
You already know what test we all want to see....
If you had the little paypal donation thing I'd actually put money towards seeing "the test" come into fruition

On a side note... I hate Dlvl. Feels like an easy way out

[Rydin]

It's situational though, it depends on the type of monster and its level.

Kaeko mentioned to just parse furryfoot and whiskerwal but whats the point, yes you see how the damage works but isn't it overall damage that matters.

If the DPS over the whole fight was a constant 200% then I would have to agree that stats and gear mattered, but it doesn't work like that.

I think the increase percentage (being relative) should be towards the MOBs total HP and not based on per hit damage....
So instead of saying I was doing 10 per hit and now I'm doing 30... thats a 200% increase you would say I am doing 20hp more per hit against a MOB with 10,000 HP (because the increase is linear, that is the only way to really compare increases universally)
At which case the increase per hit is .2 percent of the MOBs total HP... makes your 200% seem a little insignificant

[Molly_Millions]

It's situational though, it depends on the type of monster and its level.

Kaeko mentioned to just parse furryfoot and whiskerwal but whats the point, yes you see how the damage works but isn't it overall damage that matters.

If the DPS over the whole fight was a constant 200% then I would have to agree that stats and gear mattered, but it doesn't work like that.

But there is more to take into account than simply DPS over all mobs. You have to consider how quickly you can take down moogles right after the song. While those two easier moogles are still up for the lesser equipped party, they will be taking more damage than a party that takes them down faster. It can be a snowball effect from there.

[Kaeko]

I will also point out something about parsers, particularly Tachikoma's popular BG parser:

When you kill-shot moogles in "A Feast of Fools", the damage displayed is only the amount needed to kill the mob. For example, if the mob has 5 life left and you break out a Thundaga full combo critical hit that should do 1000+ damage, it's only going to show up as 5 damage in the log. This SKEWS the parse result heavily. Anyone who has repeatedly parsed LS moogle fights will readily tell you this.

ARCs especially notice this on their Barrages and Quick Nocks that killshot moogles because multiple arrows will be doing 0 damage (and they lose significant damage on their parser result). Because of this, a single parse or a small sample or parses does NOT accurately portray the true DD potential between players and various gear sets. If your best DD gets unlucky and kill shots moogles with all his quick nock's he's likely to lose the parse.

Yet another example is what the ARCs choose to use their most damaging skills on. Barrage and QuickNock are the 2 strongest DD moves. If you have your strongest ARC use these moves on the strongest defense moogles (Whisker, King, Ruffle), his damage potential will look lower than the weak ARC using the same moves on Furry and Pom. Again to go back to my earlier post, the mob you fight matters a great deal. I used to joke with Seiken Valk (the other player who tests all the stuff people are linking here) that he could cheat on the parse by simply timing his Barrage/Quick with easy moogles in the kill order. If he did this, he could break 100 DPS easily.

The parser is a tool. Not a be-all-end-all metric. For all its advantages, you still have to know how the game works to interpret the result correctly. Simply breaking out a DPS number and call it a day is a very misguided way of assessing things.

[Jinko]

On a side note... I hate Dlvl. Feels like an easy way out

It's more like the lazy way out.

Kaeko agree with that, I like that in WoW they have dummies that you can test your DPS against, of course this game will never see anything like that.