The current battle system mainly calculate everything from Your Rank vs Mob Rank

[Chardrizard]

No proof needed. Its 1. Obvious and 2. Already proven. Kaeko did the math somewhere.

Need a field test? Go fight any HNM with a Lv1 weapon then switch to a Lv45+ weapon. Same damage.

quoting this again because people can't read.

this isnt directing to anyone but, u can try tanking current NM with r45, come back later when you are r50. you can bring friends with different ranks to test stuff out really easy, but like most of the posters in this forum. Most arent even playing or past r40. So..

[ApplePie]

It's one of the few people around the communities who says "PROTECT AND SHELL DOES NOTHING!" without supplying parse data, which is even easier to get now. The logic behind it does nothing is that it's no longer -50% dt buffs, then they always say "you show us proof it works" despite the fact it's not the other people saying it doesn't work.

You're better off just ignoring his posts or not asking for reasoning.

Your proof protect and shell works? Beyond you saying "it works," where is the proof? That isn't math. So excuse me while I don't use shell or protect because I take more damage with it on than off. Thx. Please get off your high horse. Is it that difficult to understand it doesn't work? You even posted they will "add more tiers" to protect in shell.

. . . People keep saying it's broken but they aren't posting their parses to prove it. They'll rebalance it and probably add tiers like in XI but as of now . . . .

You don't even know there are already multiple tiers of the spell available (ex. Shell I/II and Protect I/II) So please, you can remove yourself from this argument whenever you think possible.

[Elexia]

quoting this again because people can't read.

Or because there's a lot more to it than just using a different ranked weapon.

[Physic]

Your proof protect and shell works? Beyond you saying "it works," where is the proof? That isn't math. So excuse me while I don't use shell or protect because I take more damage with it on than off. Thx. Please get off your high horse. Is it that difficult to understand it doesn't work? You even posted they will "add more tiers" to protect in shell. You don't even know there are already multiple tiers of the spell available (ex. Shell I/II and Protect I/II) So please, you can remove yourself from this argument whenever you think possible.

Uhhh i havent done side by side comparisons, but i know for a fact that shell is very effective at reducing the magic damage i take.

Not in response to the above poster, but overall you guys are really bad at science. You have to test things only changing one variable, then you have to test it again on vastly different circumstances.

Using an NM as a test is a bad example, NMs have special properties, and you have no idea what those properties are. You have no idea what equations you could be dealing with for example

lets say the math looks like this,

damage = (minimum damage+ (minimum damage x(str/vit (attack/defense)) x differnce in level.

in this equation, if the monsters defense is high, your difference in attack becomes negligble,
so even if your str/vit was high with low attack, it would be negligable. also the weaker your str vs vit and attack versus defense are, the more your difference in level will become noticeable.
there is virtually no difference in this equation with having 20 attack, and having 120 attack, if the monsters defense is 900. your looking at cutting your damage bonus from stats getting cut from 1/10 to 1/100.
now in that equation, say minimum damage was 20, if your attack went from 20 to 200 you would only see 2 more damge per hit, and in range and you probably wouldnt even be able to tell the difference. however dlevel would be obvious, since your stats are getting negated by the monsters stats, it would just be your minimum damage and the dlevel that would be noticeable.

The point is testing on a NM hardest thing in the game, when your damage is doing 1/5th what it would be doing versus a normal monster its level, is foolish. It is a NM it has high stats, it may even have direct damage cuts.


however with this same equation, when normal monsters, and even high defense monsters have say 200-400 defense, you would notice a very large difference from 20 attack or 120 attack.

this is why UNTIL YOU KNOW A REAL EQUATION YOU CAN ONLY SPEAK OUT OF YOUR BUTTOCKS because there is any number of reasons for a behavior with only 1 test. i could write 1 million equations, and all could be wrong and fail to capture the true behavior of the relationship of stats in a variance

[Elexia]

You don't even know there are already multiple tiers of the spell available (ex. Shell I/II and Protect I/II) So please, you can remove yourself from this argument whenever you think possible.

Everyone knows there's multiple tiers and everyone knows their effectiveness overall was reduced, not broken, in November.

You just make it abundantly clear you have something against her.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

quoting this again because people can't read.

this isnt directing to anyone but, u can try tanking current NM with r45, come back later when you are r50. you can bring friends with different ranks to test stuff out really easy, but like most of the posters in this forum. Most arent even playing or past r40. So..

The one who can't read are you. Everyone is bringing valid reasons, until something like you , evangela or kuro bring in this empiric sh*t.
Yes, rank vs rank it's the major factor in damage formula, BUT because stats aren't working. And when something isn't working, how your point is any good ?

[Kurokikaze]

ok people talking about hitting a rank 1 marmot and comparing it to something else, you should really stop, there are numerous reasons why this is often the case. point blank what i as a level 44 can do to a rank 1 marmot is totally irrelevant, because i get no exp for this. Take data based on monsters within a reasonable range of your charachter. test on things that are within 10 levels of you, or up to +15

Yeah you know... Cause hitting Lv1 bunnies wasn't how we figured out the damage formulas in FFXI?

Lv1 mobs are fine because they are a controlled variable. Unfortunately the results here are way too skewed in the direction of DRNK > everything else.

No math yet, but this is what Kaeko/Kanikan posted on BG:

[dev1027] Balancing of enemy attributes

This was the best tag I could find to fit this. One of the biggest balance issues in the game is currently the over-importance of level difference (dLVL) on all aspects of combat formulae. This is most apparent when fighting a mob much higher level than you and getting 1 shot for 3000+ damage; or likewise, being level 50 and fighting a lvl1 rat.

In XI, level difference affect formulas, but not nearly to the extent they do in XIV currently. The biggest issue with this is that the dLVL component of the formulas are so important that they make all other components like stats almost irrelevant. In order to balance stats, you must first balance the dLVL component of the formula, or stats will never matter.

Because of this, the current best attacks for high level mobs, especially NMs, are moves that IGNORE the level difference component. The best example is Shadowsear, which has static damage. DoTs also would count as they do the same damage regardless of level. Others include Punishing Barbs and Bloodletter. In case you haven't seen the trend, a lot (or most) of these moves are THM moves. This is why THM is the strongest damage dealer on hard mobs - they have the most moves ignoring the level difference in the formula.

The above quote is also from the same person that did most of the theorycrafting for SP calculations - so not your average poster.

[Kurokikaze]

quoting this again because people can't read.

this isnt directing to anyone but, u can try tanking current NM with r45, come back later when you are r50. you can bring friends with different ranks to test stuff out really easy, but like most of the posters in this forum. Most arent even playing or past r40. So..

Actually no. I tanked Uraeus at Lv48 and Lv50 with the exact same gear. The difference was night and day. A much bigger difference than it should be. Also when I was fighting it at 48 we did another attempt with bronze gear... Same exact damage.

Edit: Is that the same Apple Pie from Beta on Wutai? I played Sagara Sousuke. lol

[ApplePie]

Everyone knows there's multiple tiers and everyone knows their effectiveness overall was reduced, not broken, in November.

You just make it abundantly clear you have something against her.

I have something against people who argue "show me proof". But the burden of proof is wholly on everyone's part. Can't claim it works and demand proof when you cannot yourself show proof.

Uhhh i havent done side by side comparisons, but i know for a fact that shell is very effective at reducing the magic damage i take.

Where is your proof? Am I supposed to assume you are correct? Excuse me while I leave this topic now. It is people who have rank 50s and have done content and people who are less than rank 50 and assume they know how content works.

Edit: Nope, but I like your thinking nonetheless!

[Elexia]

I have something against people who argue "show me proof". But the burden of proof is wholly on everyone's part. Can't claim it works and demand proof when you cannot yourself show proof.

It's on everyone's part, but when someone slams a document down on your desk and says "THIS DOESN'T WORK!" don't you think normally, to support their assessment, you're given proof as to why it doesn't? And what's wrong with it? Then told to correct it? Even yoshida says the complex calculations for these spells need adjusting, but it wasn't broken or a bug, which was in one of the few premiere site Q&As sometime in feb or march.

You can eyeball that there's a small benefit to using protect and shell vs not using them (theres no way you can take more damage using -dt than not, I know I don't and I'm currently leveling conjurer on a new character), whereas you need parse data (more accurate assessment) to really see if it does what it should. It was overpowered prior to the novemeber adjustment, now it's just not as effective as it should be.