TEST: Hi-Potion Enmity

[Armando]

This one's also related to my upcoming U/O fight, since Hi-Potions are practically mandatory for this fight to go safely and smoothly. Naturally with all the Hi-Potion spam going on, it's very practical to know how much hate is involved in the usage of a Hi-Potion. Here are my findings:

Test Conditions:
All characters involved had no Enmity merits or enmity modifying equipment. Stoneskin was kept up to avoid taking damage and ruining the test. All mobs were either Tiny Mandragora or Bumblebees (Level -1) from East Sarutabaruta.

Part I: Finding the CE

Procedure:
1) I pull a with Silence. This accumulates 201 CE - 200 for the pull and 1 from Silence. Given enough time, all the VE will dissappear.
2) My helper casts Stun (180 CE, 1280 VE) on the target. Then he proceeds to cast Cure I for 0 HP on himself 21 times. After the 21st Cure, he accumulates 201 CE, the same as me, and the mob turns to him.
3) I use a Hi-Potion on myself, recovering 100 HP. The mob turns to me. We wait over 1 minute to ensure any VE disappears.
4) My helper casts Cure I until the mob turns to him. The number of Cure I's required to turn the mob will be the same as the CE generated by using the Hi-Potion.

Data
Number of Cure Is needed to turn the mob: 1

Conclusion: Using Hi-Potions generates only 1 CE, even if HP is recovered.

Part II: Finding the VE

Procedure:
1) As before, my helper will pull the mob with Silence, accruing 201 CE.
2) I cast Sleep (320 CE, 320 VE) twice, Flash (180 CE, 1280 VE) once, and X number of 0 HP Cure I's. This accumulates 820 + X CE.
3) My helper uses a Hi-Potion. This generates 1 CE (putting the helper at 202 CE) and an undetermined amount of VE.
3a) If the mob turns towards my helper, then his total enmity after the potion was equal to, or greater than my accumulated CE.
3b) If the mob doesn't turn, then his total enmity after the potion was less than my accumulated CE.
4) The results are written down, and the number of Cure I's is constantly altered until the threshold at which the mob will turn to my helper after the Hi-Potion is found. The VE generated by the Hi-Potion will be 1+(820+X)-202, where X was the maximum number of 0 HP Cure I's that will still cause the mob to turn towards my helper.

Data:
Maximum number of 0 HP Cure I's that will still cause the mob to turn towards my helper: 16
EDIT: The above is wrong. The actual number is 21!

Conclusion: Using Hi-Potions generates 634 VE.
EDIT: The above is wrong. The actual number is 640.

BOTTOM LINE: Hi-Potions generate 1 CE and 640 VE, regardless of HP healed.

Note: When finding the CE, I made sure that the Hi-Potions healed for 100 HP. At one point I made a mistake and the potion healed me for 0, yet it still generated a substantial amount of hate. From this point on I assumed that the hate involved is independent of the HP healed, and continued to pop 0 HP Hi-Potions during the remainder of the VE tests.

For reference, Bind and Blind generated 640 VE, and Provoke generates 1800. In other words, a Hi-Potion is just over 1/3 of a Provoke, and slightly more than two Boosts. 640 VE isn't a trivial amount of hate; tanks can use 2-3 Hi-Potions in quick succession to get hate back if they lose it. On the other hand, DDs should exercise caution when using these in a group setting, as it could rip hate from the tank, or if the mob was already facing you, prevent the tank from reclaiming hate.

EDIT: Big thanks to Dragooncore, Sharu, and Friem for assisting me in these tests.

[Lmnop]

Re: TEST: Hi-Potion Enmity

Part II: Finding the VE

...

2) I cast Sleep (320 CE, 320 VE) twice, Flash (180 CE, 1280 VE) once, and X number of 0 HP Cure I's. This accumulates 820 + X CE.
3) My helper uses a Hi-Potion. This generates 1 CE (putting the helper at 202 CE) and an undetermined amount of VE.

For completeness' sake, I assume there's a large pause in time between steps 2 and 3 to make sure VE from your actions trickles to 0 before the helper sets in so you can compare your CE to his VE in terms of total enmity?

[Armando]

Re: TEST: Hi-Potion Enmity

Lmnop: Yes. Most of the time it takes so long to cast the Cures that I don't have to wait.

Actually, I just found out my values are wrong. I wanted to be extra sure (as opposed to just assuming) that it generated the same hate whether it healed any HP or not, so I did a repeat of the tests. Did 17 Cures, had my helper pop the Hi-Pot for 100 HP and...the mob turned. That struck me as odd, so we tried it again with 17 Cures, but with the pot healing for 0 HP, and it turned again. This differed from my earlier results; however, I noticed that this time my helper was standing outside of the mob's range. So we tried again with 18 Cures, and it turned again.

It should be noted that the mob loses hate immediately from my helper because VE constantly decays. It seems that if the mob is in melee range of the helper, we don't see it turn (because it switches targets so fast the game doesn't bother to show it pivoting?) but if the helper is out of range, you do see it turn and move. So my earlier tests are slightly wrong, and the real VE value is most likely 640. I'll confirm that soon.

[Callisto]

Re: TEST: Hi-Potion Enmity

With the new storage capacity coming up today this might open up some new possibilities for tanking strategies, especially in lower level things like CoP missions.

[Armando]

Re: TEST: Hi-Potion Enmity

Ok! I re-did the VE test, this time keeping my helper outside of the mob's melee range. These are the correct results:

Maximum number of Cures that will still cause the mob to turn: 21

This yields a VE value of 639 if we assume that the mob will turn on a VE hate tie (e.g. I have 841 CE, my helper ties with me with 202 CE and 639 VE) or a value of 640 if we assume that the mob will only turn if the helper generates more hate (e.g. 841 CE vs 202 CE + 640 VE.) I'm guessing it's the latter.

I'll confirm tomorrow by repeating the same test with Blind and seeing if I get the same results. Didn't think to try it at the time. And yes, this does open up new tanking possibilities in missions. It's quite exciting!

P.S. Thanks to Kamiel for helping me with this round of testing.

EDIT: Oh yeah. I did confirm that they generate the same hate regardless of the HP healed, too.

EDIT2: Looking back at Kanican's testing, I believe he always assumed the VE was a multiple of 5 or 10. I just found an exchange we had in the Enmity Testing (Part IV) page:

Me: "Quick question: When you say the VE generated by Provoke is 1800, don't you mean that the Enmity generated by Provoke is 1799 VE and 1 CE?"

Kaeko: "Generally SE seems to like to make both CE and VE either "1" or a multiple of 5, not TE a multiple of 5. So based on that, I just said Provoke is 1800, not 1799. Honestly, it is pretty impossible to tell based on the testing - there is a margin of error to it."

So conforming with Kaeko's conventions and methodology, the VE is 640, same as Bind and Blind. The original post has been edited.