Switching gear and enmity.

[sarlos]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

That's why I'm suggesting PLDs high enough to withstand all the unbridled fury of a level 1 bee for a while. If the +Enmity gear effects hate over time, the bee should eventually turn toward the PLD who leaves it on regardless. It's just a matter of how eventual "eventually" is.

Probably the best way to go is have a third party start the fight with, say, blind. Then the two paladins, one with +Enmity, one without, both Provoke at a pre-determined in-game time. Do this at least 10 times to establish consistency. The Paladin wearing +Enmity gear should wind up with hate.

Next, move to both Paladins wearing identical +Enmity gear. Both Provoke at a pre-determined time, but one Paladin removes the +Enmity gear. All things being equal, the target should end up on the Paladin who left the gear on. Again, do this multiple times, to establish consistency and rule out random variation.

This should at least give a rough idea of the mechanics of it.

[Ellipses]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

Probably the best way to go is have a third party start the fight with, say, blind. Then the two paladins, one with +Enmity, one without, both Provoke at a pre-determined in-game time. Do this at least 10 times to establish consistency. The Paladin wearing +Enmity gear should wind up with hate.

Next, move to both Paladins wearing identical +Enmity gear. Both Provoke at a pre-determined time, but one Paladin removes the +Enmity gear. All things being equal, the target should end up on the Paladin who left the gear on. Again, do this multiple times, to establish consistency and rule out random variation.

This should at least give a rough idea of the mechanics of it.

That's a much better idea.

My only concern with trying to have them both provoke at the same time would be lag/timing. If one has a better connection, he's going to be getting the voke in first nearly every time. So it might still be better to take turns explicitly provoking first and second.

[DakAttack]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

I think you guys are over complicating this.

This doesn't need to be done with two Paladins, just any other job that can equip gear that changes enmity. Let's take a Paladin, and a White Mage, and have them both attack any simple monster outside of Jeuno. Without much effort, you could have the Paladin equip gear that adds enmity as both players' enmity naturally decreases. Or the White Mage can equip pieces of gear that lowers their enmity as the Paladin equips his pieces of gear, and the shift in enmity should quickly override the natural deterioration of list enmity.

Making these things too complicated will only make the results too complicated to understand correctly.

[sarlos]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

I think you guys are over complicating this.

This doesn't need to be done with two Paladins, just any other job that can equip gear that changes enmity. Let's take a Paladin, and a White Mage, and have them both attack any simple monster outside of Jeuno. Without much effort, you could have the Paladin equip gear that adds enmity as both players' enmity naturally decreases. Or the White Mage can equip pieces of gear that lowers their enmity as the Paladin equips his pieces of gear, and the shift in enmity should quickly override the natural deterioration of list enmity.

Making these things too complicated will only make the results too complicated to understand correctly.

What you are suggesting may very well do what you are warning against. By having two of the same job with the same level and gear setup, you are minimizing the number of differences. If you are going by damage, you are introducing an uncontrollable random element in the amount of damage dealt. Further, tests have been done on this in the past clearly demonstrating that enmity *does* decay over time from Provoke, but dealing damage apparently grants 'permanent' enmity against that mob.

Essentially, two people went outside Jeuno. One person beat a mob to near death, then another started Flashing and Provoking to pull hate off. Eventually, the mob went back to the person who did original damage and stayed there.

What's being questioned is wether +/- Enmity affects that decay rate and the overall amount of the hate spike. Doing provokes timed to the in-game clock with identical Paladins ensures all variables *but* Enmity amount remain constant.

Gawd I'm a geek.

[Jinghles]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

how about this

2x pld same lvl
1x mnk or any high lvl which can stand around and get beaten endlessly

let the mnk pull a mob to camp and disengage

as soon as the mnk takes 100 damage

both pld's simultaneously cast cure I

and watch what happens in different scenarios

pld1 uses no +enmity gear
pld2 uses no +enmity gear

pld1 uses no +enmity gear
pld2 uses +enmity gear

... etc


jingy of ifrit

[Icemage]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

Ask any end-game WHM: +/- Enmity definitely affects each action you take, on each target you affect.

Trust me, I definitely notice the difference when I forget to bring my -enmity gears to an HNM fight like Tiamat. PLDs might think they're the masters of enmity, but believe you me, a WHM can pull it off you quick if people are hurt and they've got a deathwish.

The order of people attacked in long HNM fights goes:

PLD (1st)
NIN (2nd)
BLM(3rd)
WHM (4rd)
BRD (5th)

PLDs and NINs are easy to understand - they're using Provoke and other tools to accumulate enmity. BLMs dish out massive damage, and have very little access to potent -enmity to offset it.

What do WHMs and BRDs have in common? They use a lot of area effect spells and abilities.

Despite the fact that I run ~-25 enmity on WHM when curing (Raven Beret -8, Cleric's Mitts -3, Blessed Trousers -5, Hedgehog Bomb -1, Penitent's Rope -3, Tamas Ring -3, -2 Enmity merit, sometimes accompanied by even more -enmity from things like Fenrir's Torque or Cleric's Duckbills), I still get nibbled on occasionally by enemies.

Case in point: a single Curaga II will net me more enmity than a string of Cure IIIs and Cure Vs. If I do more than two Curaga II's in a fight, even stacking as much -enmity as I can, I'll still get a love tap from Tiamat or Vrtra to the tune of anywhere from 300-1000 damage, so it's quite, quite noticeable.


Icemage

[Empedocles]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

even stacking as much -enmity as I can, I'll still get a love tap from Tiamat or Vrtra

Off-topic but I love'd that 'love tap' >.>

I haven't fought any decently long battles such as HNMs/Gods/BlahBlah but I actually think a better job for enmity testing would be WAR or MNK. From what I have experienced, PLDs have a natural or 'hidden' enmity built-in.

The reason I believe this is.. (This is a true occurence) I was in the dunes hanging about with a couple of friends, one who was a THF15 on my PLD when I was 60, and he randomly went and pulled a gob. He brought it back to me (we were near selby) and started fighting, as a semi-PL-we-may-as-well-while-I'm-LFP. So anyway, I'm standing next to the mob while he's beating it, I haven't done a single thing, and the mob turns on me and takes a swing. All three of us said "wtf?!" It has never happened again, but to be honest I haven't really attempted it again since then. It may have been a freak fluke, or maybe somehow some hate was left on me from the last mob he fought which I saved him from.

I haven't done any enmity equip swapping yet, and I'm probably not going to if I can help it. knowing me, I'd start to rely on it and when I'm unable to do it for reasons questionable, I'd suck.

[Karinya]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

BLMs dish out massive damage, and have very little access to potent -enmity to offset it.

Is this a joke? They have FAR more -enmity than any other DD. Some DD can't get any -enmity at all (IIRC), and most of the rest can only get like -5, maximum. BLM can get -20 or more... if they actually bother to try. IIRC, BLM AF (or AF2) alone has more -enmity than some jobs can get with any possible combination of equipment.

The reason you don't really notice this on a lot of HNMs is that the melees and RNGs are gimped on them anyway because they have 9999 EVA and DEF, 100 resist and no MDEF (or in some newer areas, *negative* MDEF). So the BLM's damage advantage over physical DDs is even bigger than their -enmity advantage (some use a hardcore MATK/INT setup with only the -enmity they get "for free", too). But if they were all doing equal damage, almost every other job would get enmity before BLM.


To return to the main topic: I haven't really experimented with gear swapping as PLD, but a friend of mine did and reported that it didn't work very well. Having your +enmity gear only on for high-enmity actions (like provoke and flash) made it significantly harder to hold hate than when he had it on all the time.

[Icemage]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

BLM AF1 has very little -Enmity. BLM AF2 has a bit more, but not so you'd notice.

BLMs could use Errant gear, but who nukes in Errant at end-game? Not to mention, in a lot of battles, BLMs are the ones casting Stun, and Stun has huge enmity.


Icemage

[DakAttack]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

What you are suggesting may very well do what you are warning against. By having two of the same job with the same level and gear setup, you are minimizing the number of differences. If you are going by damage, you are introducing an uncontrollable random element in the amount of damage dealt. Further, tests have been done on this in the past clearly demonstrating that enmity *does* decay over time from Provoke, but dealing damage apparently grants 'permanent' enmity against that mob.

Essentially, two people went outside Jeuno. One person beat a mob to near death, then another started Flashing and Provoking to pull hate off. Eventually, the mob went back to the person who did original damage and stayed there.

What's being questioned is wether +/- Enmity affects that decay rate and the overall amount of the hate spike. Doing provokes timed to the in-game clock with identical Paladins ensures all variables *but* Enmity amount remain constant.

Gawd I'm a geek.

Minimizing the differences is the whole point. How can you test the effectiveness of enmity if there's so many other factors involved? Same level, same job, barefisted, both hit an enemy once. They wont do the same damage, but the difference should/will be negligible, because if all you're testing for is the idle effect on enmity you'll be able to overcome that slight hate difference quite easily.

Personal experience quite easily proves your test outside Jeuno to be erroneus. I have observed countless times enemies switching targets seemingly at will, which suggests a deterioration in hate. This occurs from the tank to the DD, from the DD to the tank, from the tank to the mages, from the mages to the tank, and many other combinations. If damage dealt becomes constant hate, than how can enemies turn from one player to another without the players making any action other than their usual attack?

The in game clock is useless for precise timing, it would be like timing your abilities to an NM spawn. The way the clock updates and skips two or three numbers at a time makes it all too obvious.

[kuu]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

Minimizing the differences is the whole point. How can you test the effectiveness of enmity if there's so many other factors involved? Same level, same job, barefisted, both hit an enemy once. They wont do the same damage, but the difference should/will be negligible, because if all you're testing for is the idle effect on enmity you'll be able to overcome that slight hate difference quite easily.

Personal experience quite easily proves your test outside Jeuno to be erroneus. I have observed countless times enemies switching targets seemingly at will, which suggests a deterioration in hate. This occurs from the tank to the DD, from the DD to the tank, from the tank to the mages, from the mages to the tank, and many other combinations. If damage dealt becomes constant hate, than how can enemies turn from one player to another without the players making any action other than their usual attack?

The in game clock is useless for precise timing, it would be like timing your abilities to an NM spawn. The way the clock updates and skips two or three numbers at a time makes it all too obvious.

Enmity gear is not the point here.

If a paladin is getting hit for his dear life, your -50 enmity means nothing, because you've stock up 1 more enmity then his zero.

It is unknown if sitting has a default +1 enmity, which would be a good test, to have 2 different eq setup sit and and have the puller DisconnectConnect, seeing who the monster goes to.

If you want to test enmity do the same with both standing, and see if the monster randomly goes to one, or will always go to the one with the most enmity.

[DakAttack]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

Enmity gear is not the point here.

If a paladin is getting hit for his dear life, your -50 enmity means nothing, because you've stock up 1 more enmity then his zero.

It is unknown if sitting has a default +1 enmity, which would be a good test, to have 2 different eq setup sit and and have the puller DisconnectConnect, seeing who the monster goes to.

If you want to test enmity do the same with both standing, and see if the monster randomly goes to one, or will always go to the one with the most enmity.

I find it quite humorous that you're telling me enmity gear isn't the point in my thread or quoted post about switching enmity gear in and out. The rest of your post doesn't make much sense at all, except for the last part where you basically reiterated what I said earlier.

[Elesirdur]

Re: Switching gear and enmity.

When the Windower broke and I lost all my macros, my equipment switching was nerfed. I noticed a big difference in enmity when I wasn't automatically swapping in my Hercule's Ring and Harmonia's Toqrue for my Provoke and Flash uses. I keep those two items swapped in for about 2.5-3 seconds to allow the JA and spell to go off and process, then my regular gear (Shield Torque and Topaz Ring) goes back on.