Tachi's Guide to Paladin (post 1.22b)

[Sasagawa]

[ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ]

That looks like a relationship to me
0vit/odef

[Molly_Millions]

40 vit on legs
80 vit on body

Do you realize how rare pants with 40 VIT on them are? I think it's a pretty safe bet to say most servers don't have a single pair of such pants. This is not realistic in the slightest bit. I must have blown up 20ish pars of pants just trying to get 20 VIT on a pair.

Also on PLD, by putting VIT on your pants, you miss the opportunity to stack more HP. IMO, for PLD, it's HP > VIT. If there were some materia that could be put on pants that had STR & MND on them, I'd go for that, but it doesn't exist. If you really want the DEF (and imo it's not really worth it) stack stonewall on your shield or even on your chest piece. Since VIT is not a dmg modifier on PLD you are really only getting def from it (the HP boost is so small from VIT that it can be ignored).


Bear in mind, I say this as my best chest piece has VIT on it. My understanding of what is best for each class is constantly changing while taking part in threads like this one.

[Sasagawa]

Mollly I was speaking from a purely hypothetical basis given the formula stated and after reading through the raw dat from the testing.

I study maths at university and there are alot of assumptions and unanswered questions but the data does give us a good understanding of the dynamics.

but yeah 40 vit pants is very difficult I trhink ives seen a 30 in my time but thats it.

not debating hp is good but you will get a good return from investing in all 3 stats in certain ratios rather than purely hp for the reasons mentioned in the formula.

mind you as long as a mob doesnt one hit you then it really doesnt matter too much so i can see the hp argument.

Edit after re reading the formula this is a massive assumption and there is definitely an unknown relationship when introducing this variable into the equation because lets face it noone has 0 vit and 0 defense

[ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ] - [dLVL modifier] * { [ DEF ] + 0.67 [ VIT ] }

Also to me this is actually saying

Damage taken = damage taken at 0 vit and 0 defense - the difference in level * the sum of defense + 0.67*VIT

However there is a division symbol on there suggesting a relationship.

But ignoring the formula looking at the raw data and doing my own statistics along the lines of what has already been done this is still a large assumption along with other assumptions that are made until more data is collected on other stats.

its odd but I still think its not as simple as taking the last little bit of the formula and unanimously saying that vit is better than defence.

[Molly_Millions]

its odd but I still think its not as simple as taking the last little bit of the formula and unanimously saying that vit is better than defence.

That is what a lot of people are saying. It may be possible that def for pld is better than VIT. Since VIT doesn't have any affect on autto-attack on pld as it does on mrd, it's less of a benefit to pld. Really, what you are going for by adding VIT to anything for PLD is def, since VIT's effect on total HP is nearly nil. Once you see take that into account along with the fact that the effects of both VIT and straight def are effected by dlvl, you might start to wonder if either is worth it at all. To be honest, I'm not sure. I'd like to try a set of armor with a ton more HP and less VIT, but I don't have one yet.

[Tango]

ok i'm going to lay this out in more detail but the:
[ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ] - [dLVL modifier] * { [ DEF ] + 0.67 [ VIT ] }

Building the formula:

Push Towards a Formula

This completes the actual testing we'll be showing regarding physical damage taken for this post. To be honest, the results were quite surprising in terms of how simplistic this system is. To highlight why this system is what we both considered "simplistic", I would point to these main conclusions:

(1) Adding DEF produces a linear decrease in damage.
(2) This linear decrease in damage due to DEF is only affected by dLVL, and not mob stats.
(3) VIT and DEF appear to do the exact same thing for physical damage at a simple ~2:3 DEF:VIT ratio.

If we put these three key points together, we can actually start to develop a fairly accurate portrayal of the damage taken formula. Because mob stats do not affect the rate of decrease in the damage taken we can set aside their effects and come up with this abbreviation of the damage taken concept:


Physical Damage Taken = [ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ] - [dLVL modifier] * { [ DEF ] + 0.67 [ VIT ] }


where the "damage taken at 0VIT/0DEF" encompasses all the mob's attack statistics such as STR and ATK power. If we were to find a way to bridge DEF and ATK, it would be very possible to develop a complete formula for physical damage in general. This is a point that we will definitely come back to when we discuss the physical damage dealt portion of our testing series.

the [ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ] part is only a simpler way of saying "the mob is going to do xyz amount of dmg and this XYZ amount of dmg varies by [dLVL modifier] * { [ DEF ] + 0.67 [ VIT ]

so if you were to take a hypothetical 1000 dmg at 0vit&0def then by adding 100vit you have the same effect as 67defense.

using this dlvl mod chart:


if we are attacked at base 0vit/0def for 1k with a dlvl 0 monster (r50 and were r50) take a base stat line of:
300vit 750def

then its:
(1000) - [(.77)[(750) + (.67)(300)]] = 1k - (732.27) = 267.73 dmg taken

increase stats to:
300vit 750def+(67def)

then its
(1000) - [(.77)[(817) + (.67)(300)]] = 1k - (783.86) = 216.14 dmg taken

increase stats to:
300vit+(100vit) 750def

then its
(1000) - [(.77)[(750) + (.67)(400)]] = 1k - (783.86) = 216.14 dmg taken

the part that is being missunderstood is:
[ "Damage Taken at 0VIT/0DEF" ] has nothing to do with your stats and just summarizes what the mob does dmg wise.

[Tango]

That is what a lot of people are saying. It may be possible that def for pld is better than VIT. Since VIT doesn't have any affect on autto-attack on pld as it does on mrd, it's less of a benefit to pld. Really, what you are going for by adding VIT to anything for PLD is def, since VIT's effect on total HP is nearly nil. Once you see take that into account along with the fact that the effects of both VIT and straight def are effected by dlvl, you might start to wonder if either is worth it at all. To be honest, I'm not sure. I'd like to try a set of armor with a ton more HP and less VIT, but I don't have one yet.

the only place I like def/vit builds is on trash mobs, everywhere else I find HP the superior build.

[Molly_Millions]

the only place I like def/vit builds is on trash mobs, everywhere else I find HP the superior build.

That's pretty much what I was thinking, and since I have a decently geared WAR, an HP build I think is the way to go for my PLD. Up until recently, my PLD and WAR shared a lot of gear, which is clearly not ideal.

[Sasagawa]

Despite the formula which if you read the early bits makes a whole buch of assumptions given we dont understand mobs physical levels type of damage IE blunt slash pierce and a whole other bunch of stuff.

I stil lthink its too simplistic ! and is more a guideline.

Anyways, I cant be bothered to run my own tests or any deeper analytics let me just end with the point that currently we only have one source of data.

Good science/maths is not based on one paper but an accumulation of peer reviewed papers amalgamated into excepted theories.

As such I will hold judgement until more data is collected by other sources or the devs just tell us the damn calculation !

but please dont get me wrong I see the merit of this data and the formula, I just want to believe there is something more to it.

[GreyJorildyn]

Yes, discredit a test that has deep analysis and solid procedural testing and then say you can't be bothered to do your own tests to prove or disprove it. /facepalm

You want to believe there is something more to it... too many people on this forum feel that way and it's a pipe dream. The game isn't as complicated when broken down into simple charts and no matter how much wishing you do, that doesn't make the data wrong and you right.

[Molly_Millions]

Yes, discredit a test that has deep analysis and solid procedural testing and then say you can't be bothered to do your own tests to prove or disprove it. /facepalm

You want to believe there is something more to it... too many people on this forum feel that way and it's a pipe dream. The game isn't as complicated when broken down into simple charts and no matter how much wishing you do, that doesn't make the data wrong and you right.

I don't think that's what she's saying at all. It's just that most folks only pay attention to the last part of that equation, when that's not really the whole picture. While it's true that the last part of the equation is the most important part, it's important to focus on the whole equation if you are to definitively determine that an HP build for example is better then a def/VIT build. If you read the last several posts, and not simply the very last one, you'll see that's what we were discussing.