Does ATK cap out?

[BobKat]

Now I hate myself!

Math is fun, but all these formulas for simplying smacking something disturb me greatly.

I just want to let you know I'm a n00b so if you don't like me you can just skip the rest.

1.) This is probably irrelevant by now, but on the 2nd graph on the 1st page it says that MNK's max damage was 30 and the DRK's was 45. But the Weapon Damage Comparsion charts starts these values at 0.0 Center. Shouldn't these values be at 1.0 Center?

2.) So in review
[Your STR-Mob Vit]= straight damage and
[Your ATK/Mob Def]=percent increase in damage * Weapon dmg?
but
A non-monk's weapon determines the maximum amount of damage? Regardless of how much how much boosted STR?
and there's no point in boosting your ATK against a "too weak" mob because the center itself is already very high?

I would thank you for clarifying.

[Mithrael]

Arkadya:

ok, h2h 160, and weapon with dmg+15

your weapon damage is:
3 + floor(160 / 10) + 15 = 34

your maximum non-critical damage would be:
[24 + 3 * floor(34 / 9 )] + [34 * 2] = 101
33 + 68 = 101

I meant the modifier through equipment and food. So, brown belt, spike necklace, str+ rings, maybe some RSE piece if you're no elvaan, meat mithkabobs, str+33 is lofty, but not impossible. It gets a whole lot easier as you level up and have access to STR+5 rings, etc. On the whole, it'll obviously be easier for an Elvaan to reach the STR cap than a Mithra (STR difference of 10 at lv.59 if you trust the stat calc), but you have other things working to your advantage. Having STR+33 modifier is in no way going to guarantee that you're at your maximum potential... It's just gives you a loose idea of where you might want to be.

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Bleegh:

Definitely. No way to tell, ever. Even if the Formula is pinned down to the exact equation used through heavy experimentation in PvP (assuming the PvP damage formula is even the same as the Player vs. Mob formula) you'll never be able to determine what the mob's stats are, since there are too many unknowns. We don't even know if two lv.58 crabs have identical stats at this point. It sure seems like they don't since two mobs of the same type who give identical EXP can be quite different in the amount of work they take to kill...

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BobKat:

Yeah, it is overcomplicated, isn't it? -.-;

1.) The 30 and 45 are are the number you'd achieve assuming your STR exceeded the Mob's VIT by so much, that any additional STR would go to waste. That's refered to as the maximum base damage throughout the thread, attack and defense are not considered in the base dmage. The rate starts at 0 since even with your STR way over the VIT of the mob, it's defense may be way over your attack. Really, the only point of the whole thing was just to show the obvious: 2 handed weapons have a greater range of damage than hand-to-hand weapons.

2.) MNK or non-MNK, your weapon will always determin the maximum damage you can do, both through increasing your STR, and through increasing your Attack. MNK's weapon damage is also determined by their hand-to-hand skill though, so weapons play a smaller part than for other classes.

I wouldn't say there is no point in increasing to against too weak to be worthwhile mobs. There is just less point. If you start farming and see that you keep hitting the exact same high number against all of the various mobs in the area, you've probably hit your cap, you can put on something else. You get to a point in farming where taking less damage becomes more important than doing more. I don't think there is a right answer or magic number to strive for.

[Halato]

One thing I'm not seeing on here is mob level versus player level. That seems to be the single biggest determinant I've seen.

Example:
Compare a level 20 warrior in primo gear with 35 bard that is naked with a level 1 staff. The warrior can have higher def, att, str, vit... and still not kill the same mobs, even if the bard sings no songs.

I'm *guessing* a ghoul in the maze of shakrami could prove this.

[Balodoth]

Need to read slower

Ctrl-D!

I've just recently saw that page for the first time, but had a hard time understanding it. I'm guessing that's because it's a .jp site.

I think it's great that you are making some sort of app to help us out. Could you start by simply reposting what's on the page in a more English manner, perhaps with quick term definitions? (Floor made absolutely no sense to me until you said 'rounded down.')

If there are accuracy equations I'd love to see those. Mostly our acc & dex vs. their evasion & agi, but from what I've been seeing, I think delay plays a role. I have great acuracy as THF, but it seems that if anyone in the party beats me they have a high delay weapon.

The final thing I'm interested is in exactly how dex & agi plays into SATA. Everyone says it does, but I'd like to really milk it for all it's worth.

[Mithrael]

According to the author of that site, DEX and AGI are added directly to the weapon dmg before it's multiplied by rate, so it'd be:

(STR-VIT) + [(DMG + DEX + AGI) * (Rate + 1)]

The same limitation applies to the first part (str-vit) disregarding your DEX and AGI.
The +1 is added to rate since Sneak Attack guarantees a critical.
That's why sneak attack seems massive alone and trick is better than a regular attack, but still kinda weak. According to him (and I really can't test this since my thief isn't high enough level yet) AGI and DEX should have equal role in your S+T damage. If he's right, trading an AGI+3 ring for a DEX+3 ring should make no difference when you use both at the same time. I Suppose DEX or AGI may be more useful depending on your situation. i.e. if you need to use trick attack without sneak attack, you'd want more AGI, if you use sneak without trick, you'd want more DEX, etc.


As far as accuracy vs. DEX goes, I have no clue. I don't believe that DEX+2 contributes Accuracy+1 (at least not at my level), but I can tell you this much...

I am currently a lv.57 DRK, my equip looks like this...
RK Bascinet (DEX+1)
RK Chain (DEX+2)
RK Breeches (DEX+2)
RK Mufflers (Acc+3)
RG Collar (Acc+4)
Sniper Ring (Acc+5)
Sniper Ring (Acc+5)
Life Belt (Acc+10)

My accuracy is about 67-75% on leveling mobs, depending on how IT it is. Short of HQ Sniper Rings and the Peacock Charm, I have as much Acc as I can, and a decent amount of DEX. I'll find out tonight when I equip my Vassago's and Assault Earring what an additional 7 accuracy will do to my hit rate, I'm guessing very little...

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Halato, I have no idea what you mean. A Lv.35 BRD could beat a Ghoul bare handed, much less with a lv.1 staff to aid them. That's because the ghoul will rarely be able to hit the BRD. Accuracy vs Evasion and DEX vs AGI really have nothing to do with the damage you inflict.

Now, I have often considered that level does play some small role in damage, but it's again, nearly impossible to test. Certainly the difference is small enough that you don't do 30 more damage per swing just by level up once.

To test it you'd need:
1) Two people
2) Several levels apart (i'd say at least 5)
3) The enemy would have to be very easy prey to the higher level to ensure that both people have similar accuracy
4.) The enemy would have to be hard enough that you couldn't possibly hit your damage caps
5.) Both would need Identical strength
6.) Both would need Identical attack
7.) Both would need and Identical weapon

Assuming you could find two people with identical strength and attack who were also at least 5 levels apart, you could have them whack on mobs for an hour or two and parse out the damage per hit. You'd have to disregard all criticals and misses since accuracy is most definitely affected by level. Also, this test would not be possible using hand-to-hand weapons since as you level you immediately increase your weapon damage.

[bleegh]

Mithrael, I really appreciate all the work that you've done on trying to decipher the damage equations used in-game, but I'm not a full convert on the equations yet, due to a few vague spots that I feel need to be clarified. However, it's still an excellent outline of how the game may figure out damage, and the most accurate that I've seen yet.

That being said, I'm going to try to simplify the damage equation thus far into "plain english", without going into mathematical detail. I'm most likely not completely accurate on my summaries, so please correct me if there are any mistakes.

Basically, there's 2 parts to determing how much damage you do to a monster:

1) Weapon Damage - which I'm going to call "Base" to differentiate from the actual damage dealt.
2) Rate

The Basic Formula:
Damage = Base * Rate

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BASE
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For non-monks, your max Base comes from the damage rating on your weapon. For monks, your h2h skill and the damage rating on your weapon are both considered when determining your Base (if you want the formula for this, refer to Mithrael's post). Now, I emphasize "max," because that's what it is, the max possible value for base. Your actual, real Base comes from this formula:
Your STR - Enemy's VIT

What does this formula result in? Well, I'll take the example from the first post, and paraphrase it a bit. Say you have a Base of 30. If you're wearing STR+26 and eat a mithkabob, your STR will be roughly 31 points higher than *an enemy with 0 Vit*. If you use the elemental enfeeble spells to reduce the enemy's VIT, or the Absorb-VIT spell, this is even easier to accomplish. At this point, no amount of STR will increase your damage - Mithrael.

Since we don't know how stats on monsters in-game, we have no idea what their VIT is, and as a result, we don't have concrete numbers on how much strength is enough to hit your max Base.

Basically, we have this. BASE(known) = STR(known) - Enemy VIT(unknown). Since we always have an unknown, it's always going to be a bit of guesswork to figure out how much strength you need before you get to the point where adding more is useless. This is made even more difficult due to the extra random factor that comes from the second part of the Damage formula, Rate (which I'll be covering next).

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RATE
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My explanation on this part won't be as structured and clear as the Base part, simply because the actual formula isn't that straightforward, and I tend to expand on the implications of the parts of the formula while I go through them... so bear with me ^^

This is the second part of the damage formula, and this is where the randomness comes in. You'll notice that the Base part of the formula is a constant. That means if Base was the only thing used when calculating your damage, all your hits would hit for the same on the same monster. We know that's not the case. This issue is addressed in the Rate formula, and this is where Attack and Defense come into play.

The Rate part of the formula basically looks like this:
Rate = (attack/def)^3 + (a random factor)

There's 3 parts - Rate, the (attack/def) part, and the random factor.

If you look at the Basic Formula, you'll notice that it's actually quite simple. It's Base * Rate, or in other words, your weapon damage and strength determine your base damage, while your attack and a random factor multiplies into a percentage of your base. From the perspective of your stats, strength increases the base damage, and attack increases the percent that the base is multiplied by. Rate will never be below 0, and never be above 2. Therefore, your damage can range from 0 => 2*Base.

We'll call the (attack/def)^3 part what the ffxi data site does: the Center. The Center formula goes like this: (attack/def) * unknown. Nobody knows what the unknown is, but it's guessed to be (attack/def) * (attack/def). Put that all together, and you get (attack/def)^3.

What this does, essentially, is take your attack to monster's def, and magnify the difference ratio. For example, let's take a few examples:
1 - you have 150 attack, and the mob has 100. (attack/def) would give you 1.5, take that to the third power, and you get ~3.4 as a Center.
2 - you have 120 attack, and the mob has 100. (attack/def) would give you 1.2, take that to the third power, and you get ~1.73
3 - you have 100 attack, and the mob has 100. (attack/def) would give you 1, take that to the third power, and you get 1.
4 - you have 90 attack, and the mob has 100. (attack/def) would give you .9, take that to the third power, and you get ~.73

What we see is that a mere +10 in attack can increase your damage by up to 25% (Base*1, as opposed to Base*~.73). Another implication in this is that higher damage weapons gain more from attack simply because their % increase is more. This is fairly important when looking at the effects of attack, so I'll elaborate. A dark has a very high damage weapon... for example's sake (taken from mithrael's post), let's say 45. That means that for +10 attack, he gets ~25% increase in damage, which puts him at 56.25. Monks, on the other hand, have low damage weapons, let's say 30, but they hit twice, resulting in 60. That means for +10 attack, he gets ~25% increase in damage on each hand, which puts him at 37.5 per fist, and 75 damage overall. Therefore, attack will help out less on the monk per fist, but when both fists are accounted for, the attack helps out the same.

In any case, that's what the Center is. The Center, like the Rate itself, is limited at a max of 2. That means even if you have enough attack to pull a Center of 8, it gets limited down to 2. "Wait, but if the Center is 2, that means the rate would be 2, and that means that every single hit would deal 2*Base" True, but the random factor fixes that.

Ranging from -.5 => .5, the random factor adds or subtracts from the Center to get the rate. Therefore, even if your Center is capped out at 2, you'll never hit consistent numbers because since Rate is also capped at 2, 2+.5 = 2 (i hope that makes sense).

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All that being said, let's see what we know.

Your STR - Monster VIT is needed to hit the max Base, which is determined by weapon damage.

Your Base, determined by your STR and the monster's VIT, is multiplied by a Rate to get your damage.

Rate is determined by your ATTK and the monster's DEF, along with a random factor.

Last thought: What's the difference betweeen boosting STR and Attk?
- Boosting STR raises your Base damage, while boosting ATTK raises the percentage multiplier of that Base damage. If you followed my number example above, you can see that a little Attack can make a BIG difference when it's multiplied 3 times. However, the random factor in that same part of the equation makes it... random ^^ - STR will boost your damage consistently, but much less than ATTK. However, ATTK has a random factor.

I hope I explained this accurately and clearly. Post for questions, corrections, clarifications.

[2.0]

Here's the difference between ATK and STR. If you raise your attack you think that you do more damage. If you raise your Strength you know you do more damage.

[greysenn]

Neat stuff, I noticed that with a bard, berserk and food, it's pretty easy to hit that "plateau" (So it must be a fairly large range) where it seems like you're not doing that much more damage on leveling mobs.

As far as attack and str goes, I wouldn't pass up the chance to get either, I find attack to be very useful to up my average hit using bows.

[bleegh]

2 problems I have with this formula:

1st is - the lack of information on how skill effects damage. I know for a fact that a higher weapon skill equal higher damage, but it's not really explained.

2nd is - we know that high damage weapons have a "peircing" effect, where they will do more damage against a high def. monster. This isn't really accounted for, either.

Any clarifications, or are these just parts of the damage equation that the site doesn't cover?

[Mithrael]

1.) Your skill affects your damage by increasing your attack by 1 point per point of skill. If you're greatsword skill is 100 and your base attack is 100, your totall attack is 200. If you skill up greatsword to 125, your totall attack becomes 225. Using an unskilled weapon is weak becaue your weapon skill directly affects your attack stat.



2.) Damage modifiers are simple. IMHO, they're actually way too simple in this game to the point of being boring.

Piercing weapons (dagger, polearms, arrows/bolts/bullets) do 50% damage to skeletons, but do increased damage to flying creatures like bats and Dragonglies. Blunt weapons (hand-to-hand, staff, and club) do decreased (i'm not sure the percent, more like 75% than 50%) to crabs and beetles, but do increased damage to skeletons. There are no other modifiers for slashing weapons. People will say that crawlers are weak to slashing weapons like Scythe and Great Katana, but it's really just that they have lower defense and no immunity to any type of physical damage.

The effect you speak of where weapons with the piercing attribute do more damage to High Defense mobs does not exist. If it did, DRG would godly, since nearly everything will con as High Defense to them if they don't eat food. Mobs that con high defense only con high defense because your Attack (note: not ranged attack) stat is lower than their Defense stat.

Aside and off topic:
The Ranged Attack bit is a flaw in the design of the game in my eyes. I assume, though a RNG could probably say so for sure, that pretty much everything is going to con to a RNG as High Evasion, and probably High Defense too. High evasion because they are wearing melee accuracy- equipment which boosts their Ranged Accuracy, and High defense because their melee weapon proficiency is lower, often not skilled to cap, and their equipment goes toward Ranged Attack instead of Attack. To a BLM, everything is IT High/High. This doesn't mean that RNG and BLM aren't going to destroy the mob anyway. The whole /check system is flawed, especially at higher levels when level window for each becomes wider.

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Your STR - Monster VIT is needed to hit the max Base, which is determined by weapon damage.

Yes.

Your Base, determined by your STR and the monster's VIT, is multiplied by a Rate to get your damage.

No. Your Base is independant of your rate. It's bad terminology, but i kept what the author used for simplicity. Your base is static damage. It's determined when the fight starts, and will always be present throught the fight unless one of two things changes: your STR or the enemy's VIT.

You weapon DMG is the only thing that is multiplied by rate.

Rate is determined by your ATTK and the monster's DEF, along with a random factor.

Yes. Though it's not really (Attack/Defense)^3, it's (Attack/Defense) * some unknown factor. We know what the max is, and we know what we normally do, but it's hard to determine what the unknown is because there are too many factors to consider. Probable pieces missing from the "Unknown" are level and some exponent.

Last thought: What's the difference betweeen boosting STR and Attk?
- Boosting STR raises your Base damage, while boosting ATTK raises the percentage multiplier of that Base damage. If you followed my number example above, you can see that a little Attack can make a BIG difference when it's multiplied 3 times. However, the random factor in that same part of the equation makes it... random ^^ - STR will boost your damage consistently, but much less than ATTK. However, ATTK has a random factor.

Yes to everything except the part I corrected above.

STR will boost your damage the same amount against everything you fight, Even Match, Tough, VT, IT, or IT+++++++++.

Attack will boost your damage more against things that /check Low Defense than it will for things that /check High Defense.

[METDeath]

Condinsed version from an interview with square-enix about the game:

str affects max damage, atk affects min damage in the range of your str cap

so, at some point +atk becomes useless and +str becomes needed, where that point lies is hard to tell, i'm sure someone with enough time on their hands can come up with a line of +str/+atk for different job/races, mnk however, (from what i remember of some damage calaculations i saw at some point) has the greatest need for +str, just get all your +atk from HQ earrings and either kote or amemet mantle +1 and then get HQ str where possible (spike necklace, hq str rings, etc)

on a side note, i first tried whoring +str in bcnm40 had roughly +17 str without food, i would have had higher, except for my lack of brown belt, and i opted for fuma kyahan over my rse boots...
the great axe wielding war (who's equip i forget, ash if you read this post your gear that you bcnm40 with) had a good deal of trouble tanking any of the mandies, despite my number of misses due to low acc from my ogyogyo's braclets (level 40, +5 str -3 dex -3 agi) my damage was exactly even with the drk, on average, but my crits were quite high...

and yet another thead hijack, if you bcnm40 with a mnk, let them pull a mandy with combo, it will not hate the brd anymore

[bleegh]

No. Your Base is independant of your rate. It's bad terminology, but i kept what the author used for simplicity. Your base is static damage. It's determined when the fight starts, and will always be present throught the fight unless one of two things changes: your STR or the enemy's VIT.

Interesting... So that means that the damage boosted by STR really is consistent. Good to know. Also, since rate is exclusively attached to weapon damage, that changes my perspective on some things. Thanks for the clarifications.

Also... if Base has nothing to do with the rate, then that means the total damage dealt is Base + weapon dmg* rate?

Clarification requested ^^

[Mithrael]

Yes, Total Damage=Base+(DMG*Rate)

And yeah, I just did several BCNM runs last week. My MNK did 45% of the party damage Standard BCNM party, except we had a DRK in the "Other Melee" slot instead of a SAM or WAR.

The interview you speak of is an interresting read, but poorly translated. I'd be interested to see the original and see if someone can see what the Dev actually said...

Anyway, I can tell you with 100% certainty that neither STR nor Attack affect maximum damage. I can go nude or fully dressed (STR+9, Attack+30 with berserk and food) and kill stuff in Beadeaux. My maximum damage does not change regardless of how much STR or Attack I add, nor does it change if I Absorb-VIT+Absorb-STR and lower the mob's defense with Dia. However, the moment I change weapons, the maximum damage change accordingly. I've spent hours testing this since I spend hours farming for my gear and crafting. As a result, I dump anything with a negative stat penalty (Earrings/Rings) while farming since they offer no benefit.

I can say now (long after this thread was started) that the formula is slightly off. Now that I have my Vassago's, my maximum damage is 4 (about 2%) above what the formula says it should be. I think there is a rounding error somewhere.

[Balodoth]

I agree

I was looking at the equations last night, and I too thought the max damage didn't make sense. For some reason, a static # like 24 just doesn't make sense to me. The damage range includes my STR, ATK, and weapon's damage rating, but max damage doesn't?

Besides, the math would seem to imply that my SATA can get a huge boost just by upgrading my weapon so the damage makes it to the next muliple of 9. For instance, if I were using a weapon that had a 26 text damage, upgrading to 27 would not only increase my average damage but would increase the ceiling for SATA damage by 36(ish). We know that Trick Attack makes it an automatic critical (ONLY a critical if subbed), so rate gets in the way much less. Further, adding DEX & AGI can easily reach maximum damage since it has the same effect as adding STR for normal attacks. In the end, it's only the dmg limit and the multiplyer that could possibly screw THF over. Getting your weapon to the next multiple of 9 would help tremendously, assuming the math's correct.

One other thing I've deduced that affects THF directly, is that it isn't worth wasting a ring on DEX or AGI unless you really need it. If you can get bonuses for them in your armor, go for it. Otherwise, use the ring slots for +STR. It directly increases your damage the same as DEX & AGI for SATA, but it also increases your damage over time. THF benefits from better average damage than better possible damage, just like MNK.

[fyrewyre]

I havent been here in ages but i did come across something a long time ago i thought i'd throw in:


Q11312


Many might not know what this means or how to use it, but if you go to your help menu in game then type this in then this might be of some help when it comes to your damage output (except mnk) but it doesn't tell much about max output but you can always check this against your current formula to see if its correct. Back to playing...