Damage Calculations I: Ifrit's Cudgel vs. Lightning Brand (Meld I)

[minihalcyon]

I recently took some time to compare the differences in damage output between Ifrit's Cudgel, which I recently received, and my old Lightning Brand (single melded with INT+17).

Let's start by looking at the stats on these two items:

Ifrit's Cudgel

Fire Resistance +15
Attack Magic Potency +30
Chance to inflict Fire damage.

Lightning Brand

Attack Magic Potency +20
Lightning Magic Potency +10
Lightning Resistance +10
Intelligence +17 (from single meld Tier IV materia).

Now, we've been told that the intention is for raid equipment to outclass single-melded equipment of its level, but not double-melds or higher. Of course, this is an ambiguous generalization that will likely fail to apply in every circumstance.

My intention with this post is to compare damage when casting "Thunder" with the equipped weapons. Additional tests will be run at a later time to determine the effects when casting other spells, and how much the resistances come into play. However, since the goal of most thaumaturges in parties seems to be the casting of the "Thunder/ara/(aga)" chain of spells, I've decided to focus on this first.

The Setup

I chose to test against Molten Mitelings, found near Nophica's Wells. I took care to make sure I got data from an equal number of level 30, 31, and 32 mitelings, so that the averages would be more accurate when comparing damage. My sample size was relatively small, though not insignificant - I tested against 99 mitelings total for each weapon (33 of each level).

Care was taken to ignore critical hits, as these were special occurrences that would affect the results. Whenever a critical hit was scored, I ignored the result and retested against a miteling of the same level. The same care was taken to avoid damage that was resisted, although no hits were resisted by mobs of the level tested against.

The Data

After collecting my data, I averaged the damage dealt across each of the three levels of mitelings, and came up with the following numbers (these are averages, as level of each monster was tested 33 times for each weapon).

Ifrit's Cudgel

Miteling Lv. 30 1402.15
Miteling Lv. 31 1341.62
Miteling Lv. 32 1192.08

Lightning Brand (Single Meld, Intelligence +17)

Miteling Lv. 30 1440.77
Miteling Lv. 31 1386.38
Miteling Lv. 32 1356.69

The Results

By taking the above data and averaging it across all three levels tested, we can get our final numbers for the damage output (when casting "Thunder") of each weapon.

Ifrit's Cudgel
Avg. Damage 1311.95

Lightning Brand (Single Meld)
Avg. Damage 1394.61

Lightning Brand (Single Meld) wins out here, with about a 6% greater damage output over Ifrit's Cudgel.

This data would seem to suggest that if your goal is to have the highest-damaging Thunder, Lightning Brand with an Intelligence (Tier IV) meld would be your best bet. A double-meld should fare even better, and I am very interested in testing such a weapon further.

Please keep in mind that the implications of these results are very limited in scope, and that further testing is necessary to come to a completely conclusive result.

The Future

My future tests will pit these items against each other while casting spells of the non-Thunder variety, to see what the benefit overall would be. I'd also like to run further tests using "Thundara" and "Thundaga", and against different enemies, including those weak or resistant to the elements.

I will upload more data as I collect it in the near future. If anyone has any additions or suggestions, please comment below.

tl;dr: Lightning Brand with a single Tier IV Intelligence materia meld seems to be more potent than Ifrit's Cudgel when casting "Thunder".

[Jennestia]

Hm, while I understand the purpose of the tests -- Lightning Brand will have an advantage when casting Thunder based spells because it has potency specifically for enhancing Thunder based magic.

[Kaizlu]

Hm, while I understand the purpose of the tests -- Lightning Brand will have an advantage when casting Thunder based spells because it has potency specifically for enhancing Thunder based magic.

I'm also with you. In reality a "fair" setup would be Ifrit's Cudgel vs another neutral brand. Heck, you're telling me that a weapon that specializes in Thunder + Materia was just barely able to surpass Ifrit's Cudgel , well you made me want the weapon a lot more

[Answa]

I think some sort of deviation would be statistically relevant, especially given the (relatively) large and uniform sample size.

[Griss]

while i dig what you are trying to do. nuking 6 mobs and then calling it a test is a bit of a shallow test pool to pull anything conclusive from.

[Actus]

Old news and very poor test.

The Dev's don't play as mages. Their statement about NM weapons being greater applys for DoW, but not DoM. And as such, INT > anything for nuking so ofc it's gonna be a pretty significant increase with only one meld.

[Catapult]

The Dev's don't play as mages.

Yoshi-P does.

[Actus]

Yoshi-P does.

Yeah, I got onto him for using his I-Cudgel back in 1.19. I made him a Lightning Brand.

[minihalcyon]

My purpose was to post some small bit of information that might help players make a decision. I wasn't aware that this test had been performed, or it would have saved me a lot of time fighting Ifrit just to get the cudgel. I don't think 6% is particularly marginal. Although I agree that the sample size was small, I plan to expand upon it as I perform more tests.

Also, it was more than 6 mobs - I had to kill 99 monsters for each weapon, so that's 198 monsters, or about 20 mobs. Not amazing, but a decent start, to say the least.

I'm not trying to make a point that the devs "lied" to us about equipment. To imply that would be to miss the point entirely. I just wanted to create a starting point for equipment effectiveness for mages. Ideally, this could expand into something that might help us better understand how stats work in general.

For instance, I didn't know 10 Lightning Magic Potency > 10 Attack Magic Potency, as one poster commented above. Has this information been codified anywhere? If so, where can I find such information? It will save me a lot of work and give me a better starting point for further testing.

[minihalcyon]

Also, to clarify, the reason I chose Lightning Brand was because it boasted the most effective stats of a "craftable" weapon that would be of relevance to mages. Water brand is out of the question for offensive spells, since it can no longer be verified that it has an effect on anything beyond the +22 Atk. Mag. Potency boost it offers.