Great Sword Quirks

[tdh]

Recently I've been toying around with Great Sword more and more as I'm nearing the Great Sword party of my DRK career. I have both Scythe and Great Sword leveled, but I prefer Scythe much more. I like the higher damage and I really dislike how Elvaans hold Great Sword.

TP Issues
With Scythe, I know my TP return per hit is 14.5% and a 100% Acc Guillotine with no Double Attack returns 17%. With Great Sword my TP return seems to be all over the place! I'm using a Zweihander currently, and the link says it returns 11.8% TP per het despite actual usage returns different results.

Starting with 0%TP, 70% of the time my first hit returns 12%TP. I was under the impression that it did not round up except maybe on WS usage, and it counted the .8% just doesn't show it to us. The other 30% of the time, it seems to randomly return 11%TP or 14% TP.

I mentioned this to the LS, and Taskmage asked the question that I thought I had the answer to, but now I'm posing to the Community. Do Critical hits return greater TP. He speculated that maybe I landed a Crit hit and that was why the return of 14%. I thought somebody had once told me that no, Crit hits return the same amount of TP as any other hit. Was that person incorrect?

Either way, working with these numbers, is a 12% return from Sickle Moon mean I landed both hits? Usually the numbers are in the 700's, but I have no idea if I'm landing that second hit or is SA just amping that first hit through the roof. (Finally saw last night how well Sickle Moon can close Distortion. 700~900 Sickle Moons returned me some 250 to 490 Distortions.)

Damage Output
Scythe damage seems to be more consistant for me, staying in a 15 to 20 point range. Even inside that 15 to 20 point window, I often get several hits that do almost identical damage, or only 2~3 pts higher or lower. Two nights ago the party I was in, I went DRK/WAR and ate sushi, and only had my standard TP/Acc build. (Acc+42 Hauby, Valk Mask, Ryl Army Collar, HQ Lv.55 earrings, Amemet +1) Scythe was doing roughly 100 to 120dmg at Lv.61, when I wasn't Double Attack Crit'ing. (COR was doing Fighter and Rouge Rolls due to THF and WAR in the group.)

Last night at Lv.62 eating Sushi, swinging Great Sword, same gear minus 5 Acc (Vassago's Scythe has Acc+5, while my GS has none.), I sub'd THF for hate control (Look for my BLU Tanking post later on the BLU Boards.) so no Berserk or extra STR. My damager per hit ranged from 85 to 115dmg, but was all over the place. I'd land a 85dmg and follow up with a 115, then 95, back down to 85. Nothing like what I see with Scythe.

Now I haven't had a chance to cap both Scythe and Great Sword, but I believe both of them are at Lv.209 with a cap of Lv.212 and Lv.211 respectively. Either way they were both cap'd for Lv.61, so it's not an issue of skill difference. Has anybody else come across things like these?

[Armando]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Regarding TP issues: I know for a fact Critical Hits do not give additional TP. You can cross that one out for sure. You are also correct in that the game does not round the TP decimals, they remain hidden but are still there, and are still being added in the background. Assuming Zweihander does give 11.8 TP per hit (while Studio's Gobli's formulas are notoriously accurate, since they are technically simply extremely close approximations of what happens in-game, they could be wrong every now and then at the "turning points;" there's a small chance Zweihander actually gives 11.7 TP. Let's disregard that for now...), then it should be returning 12.8 TP on Sickle Moon, which shows up as 12 in-game. The next hit would be an additional 11.8, which adds up to 24.6.

If you want to confirm that Zweihander is returning exactly 11.8 TP per hit and nothing funny is going on, go to a lowbie area and one-shot exactly 10 mobs. Divide your total TP by 10, and that's your TP per hit. This method never fails when done right (i.e. you didn't take damage, and you started from 0 TP.)

Regarding damage issues: Remember that PDIF works in tiers! Also remember that our powers of observation and memory (i.e. "eyeballing") are incredibly selective and not to be trusted. Since in one setup you were going /WAR, and in the other /THF, Berserk was probably putting you in a different PDIF tier while it was up. If your Attack stays the same, then there should be no difference in consistency between both weapons; you may have been focusing on the consistency Scythe had when Berserk was up, and involuntarily ignoring it being less consistent when Berserk was down.

Out of curiosity, could you give me your exact stats for both /THF and /WAR, the mobs you were fighting, and what they checked Defense-wise without Berserk?

[tdh]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

I know there's a difference between damage output depending on sub, but reguardless of sub, there still seems be an odd range when using Great Sword. No matter my sub, Scythe seems to find a mark and stick to it. I've seen an entire fight where my damage per Scythe hit never varied more than 5dmg in any direction. Other fights the range was greater, but rarely more than a 20 point range.

With Great Sword however it seems completely random. Last night I was using Great Sword full time when we set that Skillchain up with the MNK, after the MNK left I switched to Scythe. My hour and half of Great Sword brought me fights were I'd land low to mid 80's damage, followed by 115, then 91. The second part of the night with Scythe gave me fights were I landed 110, 112, 108, 115. I've been trying to pay close attention to it since at first I thought I was getting my damage mixed up with other's, or was I just making it up because I would rather have been using Guillotine. lol

Thanks for the suggestion for finding TP. I'll have to do that tonight. 1 Shot some stuff outside of Windy and see if I come up with another number than the 11.8%.

[Armando]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Hm. You have me completely stumped. I mean, I know for a fact that at least with capped attack, the game distributes the damage perfectly evenly if given enough time...but the way game mechanics are set up, the higher the DMG of the weapon, the wider its possible range of numbers should be. And since Scythes have higher DMG, you'd expect it to be the more inconsistent of the two. Are these numbers parsed, by the way? A close look at the "Details" part of a parse would reveal a lot.

[Celeal]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Your damage output is very impressive ^^b The tanks in your parties should had fun time

The RNG/SAM (with fire staff i think, I usually don't check other's gear) in my last level 63 ~ 65 party was doing about 120 dmg per arrow on those Crawlers and "Hairly Spiders" in Ay[tab] in ToAU area, which /check VT.

I am not trying to campare your damage to the RNG. You number seems right:
Scythe --- max 120, min 100, difference 20.
G.Sword --- max 115, min 85, difference 20.

My WAR (G.Axe) and SAM at those level also have about the same difference per hit too (max - min = 20).

[Aeolus]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

I thought on ws at least you got an extra 1% for a crit? Sometimes I'll get 16-17% back from asuran fists when normally its just (8+1+1+1+1+1+1+1) 15%. I dont sub war so its not double atk.

[Celeal]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

*A little off topic

I am just wondering, when you guys /THF in exp. parties, would you guys really care about care about TP reach as close to 100% as possible from normal swings or swings after WS?

When I play SAM/THF, usually I clock the WS around the SA or TA timer, instead of TP at 100%. For the WS like Tachi: Yukikaze, more TP usually mean more damage, such as SA + Tachi: Yukikaze at 130% TP usually is higher than 100%, 150% higher than 130%, etc.

It does not seems to waste TP to me if the TP is not exactly at 100% when WS for /THF.

For /WAR of cuz I would want to WS at 100%, to do more WS over time.

[Armando]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

I thought on ws at least you got an extra 1% for a crit? Sometimes I'll get 16-17% back from asuran fists when normally its just (8+1+1+1+1+1+1+1) 15%. I dont sub war so its not double atk.

Pretty certain you don't, or it would be quite obvious every time a DRK or SAM does Sneak Attack WS. It could be you getting hit right after WS (or in the case in which you get 16%, also missed a hit.)

I am just wondering, when you guys /THF in exp. parties, would you guys really care about care about TP reach as close to 100% as possible from normal swings or swings after WS?

When I play SAM/THF, usually I clock the WS around the SA or TA timer, instead of TP at 100%. For the WS like Tachi: Yukikaze, more TP usually mean more damage, such as SA + Tachi: Yukikaze at 130% TP usually is higher than 100%, 150% higher than 130%, etc.

It does not seems to waste TP to me if the TP is not exactly at 100% when WS for /THF.

For /WAR of cuz I would want to WS at 100%, to do more WS over time.

Technically holding that extra 30% isn't cost-efficient (since a 200 TP Yukikaze does less damage than two 100 TP Yukikazes, etc.) The Multiplier-to-(hundreds of) TP ratio for Yukikaze at different TPs are as follows:
100 TP: 1.5/1 = 1.5
200 TP: 2.0/2 = 1
300 TP: 2.5/3 = 0.8333

Obviously, Yukikaze is at its maximum efficiency at 100 TP, as you already know. If we compare the Multiplier/TP ratios for 200 TP and 300 TP to the one at 100 TP, then at 200 TP Yukikaze's TP efficiency is at 66.66% (2/3) of its maximum, and at 300 TP it's at 55.56% of its maximum. Assuming the multiplier increases linearly from 100 to 200 TP, then at 130 TP you're losing approximately 1/3 of the efficiency you lose at 200 (1/3,) which is 1/9th.

From a mathematical viewpoint, being at 90% TP efficiency isn't really very bad, especially for a SAM since you can get TP quickly (and with Meditate, also at the right moments.) In any case, the damage boost you get from using SA on your WS, and closing a skillchain more than make up for whatever potential damage you lost in the process. From a practical point of view, I don't care as long as I don't end up holding up to like 150 TP before SA is ready - I won't go through the trouble of rebalancing my gear so I have less acc and more damage just so my TP ends up being closer to 100 by the time the SA timer is up. So, it's mostly a non-issue for me. Sorry to hit you with the math once more :3

[Aeolus]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Its not me getting hit because I have shadows up most of the time when it happens, I cant say 100% of the time but like 80%. Ive always been lead to believe its +1 to ws TP if it crits in game anyway and I do seem to do more dmg when I get more TP.

[tdh]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Your damage output is very impressive ^^b The tanks in your parties should had fun time

Why thank you! /bow I've put a lot of time and gil into trying to give any and all tanks as much trouble as I can! lol I've stacticed 90% of my DRK career with the same tank, and he's insane with how much hate he draws. Partly due to how well he knows me. He knows I plan to make him sweat! He enlisted a THF to help keep me alive, and we are uncanny about knowing when Cover /recast is up. ^^

On a side note, S-E was pretty rude to give us Lesser Colibri to EXP off from Lv.55~60. I could easily do 175~200 damage against them at Lv.59, and recorded my 1579 Guillotine record. Then you move on to Puks and feel inadequate due to a 75~100 point drop in your damage. /sigh

I thought on ws at least you got an extra 1% for a crit? Sometimes I'll get 16-17% back from asuran fists when normally its just (8+1+1+1+1+1+1+1) 15%. I dont sub war so its not double atk.

I was under the impression that 8 hit was the MAX for a weapon skill, so you are unable to Double Attack during Asurian Fists. Did I hear incorrectly?

As for poping TP right at 100%, I don't currently have any real reason to hold on to it. Extra TP for Guillotine just increases the Silence effect, and extra TP for Sickle Moon isn't very useful since I'm already using SATA. Fortunate enough with Absorb-TP I have TP before the timer's up usually, so it's just an issue if the mob still has enough TP to warrent me using it.

Saving TP would only be worth while, I'd think, when TP adjusts your chances to critical. So Rampage, and Vorpal Suck/Scythe come to mind.

[Armando]

Re: Great Sword Quirks

Everything I've read would point to 8 hits being the max, yes. And, actually, saving up isn't worth it even for Rampage/Vorpal Blade/Vorpal Scythe. Just about the only WS that are more efficient at 300 are the quested ones (although three non-quested WS still do more damage.)

EDIT: Oh, and Full Swing and Spirits Within. But those are special.