theory crafting: potencies?

[Local_Custard]

Potency is a way to compare actions within a single job against each other. Unless an action has autocrit, autodhit, or elemental stance effects (BLM), or is a DoT, a 200p action on JOB does twice as much damage as a 100p action on JOB. DoT potencies will be just very slightly higher than listed if you have any speed at all, but this usually won't make a difference to deciding which action to use based on potencies.

If you want to compare them between jobs, you have to account for traits like Maim & Mend, and multiply the potencies accordingly.

very good point- lots for me to consider. I forgot to account for traits- I think I'll take a look at that

[Rongway]

very good point- lots for me to consider. I forgot to account for traits- I think I'll take a look at that

You only need to consider traits when comparing one job against another job. If you're only concerned with finding the optimal rotation for a job, you mostly* don't care about other jobs' actions, and you can just compare that one job's base action potencies against each other. For example, it doesn't matter that AST has Maim & Mend II for a +30% increase to all actions; a 200p action is still twice as much damage as a 100p action whether you consider that +30% increase or not: 200p/100p = 2, 260p/130p = 2. Any traits that are actually important to consider will reflect their changes in the Action Helps for the relevant actions, except for BLM whose elemental bonuses and penalties are hidden.

* Jobs' optimal rotations only care about other jobs' actions insofar as the alignment of party buffs affects them, but the timings for these are already set and unlikely to change in DT.