sa+sidewinder.. {Yes please}

[Spider-Dan]

SA cannot miss. If you missed, then there was an alignment problem or the mob turned.

Go try SA on a NIN mob with shadows up (or a PC in Ballista). Observe how you land your attack. Observe how your next attack is absorbed by shadows. (If you are dual wielding, your offhand hit is guaranteed, too.)

If that doesn't prove SA's power, I don't know what does.

To get back to the original post, while SA+Sidewinder doesn't work, SA+Blast Arrow should (but I don't think it does). It has a melee component, after all.

And why has no one mentioned that Sidewinder is not 5X damage, nor is it the damage of 5 hits? It's one hit, quadruple damage, enemy defense is only subtracted once.

[Rones]

And why has no one mentioned that Sidewinder is not 5X damage, nor is it the damage of 5 hits? It's one hit, quadruple damage, enemy defense is only subtracted once.

I've seen this brought up a few times. From what I've read, the JP game guides put it at times 5 instead of times 4 despite the weapons description. I believe I've seen Apple Pie post a list of these various formulaes some place.

Found one of the threads that discussed it.
Here is an excerpt from it. Damage multiplier is listed after the ws name.

Archery WS 100% 200% 300% #Hits Secondary Attribute TP Adjustment
Flaming Arrow 1.00 1.00 1.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25%
Piercing Arrow 1.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25% Def Down
Dulling Arrow 1.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25% Crit Rate
Sidewinder 5.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25% Accuracy
Blast Arrow 2.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25% Accuracy
Arching Arrow 3.50 1x STR_16%, AGI_25% Crit Rate
Empyrial Arrow 2.50 2.75 3.00 1x STR_16%, AGI_25%

Here is the main source of the data. Developed from several years of research.

[ZQM]

I'd just like to state that my Sneak Attack + Weapon Skill against Seiryu got blinked.

Might have moved but no animation (which does happen) though.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Rones
I've seen this brought up a few times. From what I've read, the JP game guides put it at times 5 instead of times 4 despite the weapons description.

And now we have progressed from disagreeing with information stated in interviews to information given inside the game. I wish I could say I was surprised. Apparently, when Squenix gives an interview with a well-known and respected NA MMORPG site, that info is not to be trusted because it could be made up, but when someone posts a link to a JP geocities site, all bets are off!

Since now even information directly in the game isn't good enough for you, how do you decide what to believe? Maybe Emperor Hairpin doesn't really give 3 AGI and 3 DEX, even though the in-game stats say it does. Maybe it actually gives 2 AGI, 2 DEX, and 5 defense instead.

I can't read Japanese, so if you can, perhaps you can tell me what amazingly detailed information and supporting data is on that site that is reliable enough to contradict information directly from Squenix (which, according to you, is "99.9% reliable").

One piece of data that stood out to me is that according to that chart, Flaming Arrow has the same damage modifier at 100%, 200%, and 300%. This does not exactly instill supreme confidence in their testing methods.

[Regulat0r]

SA cannot miss. If you missed, then there was an alignment problem or the mob turned.

It has missed, but there is no point in arguing with you.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Regulat0r
It has missed, but there is no point in arguing with you.

I agree, there is no point.

Given that SA even hits through Utsusemi, if your strongest counterevidence is that sometimes it randomly misses (but it is not reproducible), there really is no argument to make. Lots of things randomly happen sometimes in this game. Sometimes after I land the killing blow on a mob, it will attack me. This doesn't prove that dead mobs can attack.

If your point is that sometimes the SA icon can be showing and your next attack misses, that's fine. But we all already know that. The point that I (and others) are making is that if you are correctly lined up, SA connects, and if it doesn't connect, then (based on the volume of evidence) it's much more likely that there was an alignment problem than that SA decided to arbitrarily insert an accuracy check (which failed).

To put it another way, on any "SA" that misses, even if that hit had landed, you wouldn't have gotten SA damage, because you weren't lined up right. I'm sure that we've all seen situations where it looks like we are lined up, yet we don't get proper SA-type damage. Applying your reasoning, does this mean that sometimes SA doesn't increase damage?

[Rones]

And now we have progressed from disagreeing with information stated in interviews to information given inside the game.

Since when have the in game descriptions been reliable? Think of all the items with hidden effects that aren't even mentioned in the description. By your logic, since the description doesn't say my light staff affects divine spells, I'm just imagining the +10% nuke dmg on Holy, etc. Latent effect is another case, it means many different things on different items. In game descriptions aren't completly reliable. Perhaps it was even a translation slip up.

Really, I don't even understand why you feel the need to specificaly flame me this time. I just repeated the information others on this server have stated and supported (eg: imac2much and Applepie). If you want to be nasty and flame people, why don't you try them or post your feelings in imac's thread.

But just to bring a point you have repeated against me 10,000 times, you haven't seen the code. So for all you know the multiplier could really be x20, but you would just go with whatever the description says. I don't pretend to understand SE all the time, but if they want to make a description that doesn't match what it does exactly, more power them. Maybe they decided to give it a upgrade in power after the beta, but didn't change the description (easy thing to miss when working with such large programs since you would have to look through pages upon pages of formulaes to find that the multiplier didn't match the description). Someone could have easily modified the dmg formulae for the ws and not known that there was something in the ws description that needed modifying (most ws description don't mention a modifier so they would be in the habit of leaving those alone while tinkering with the formulaes).

which, according to you, is "99.9% reliable

I never said that. I stated they had spent years researching it. Yet I shouldn't be surprised, this is just another attempt to personally attack me.

Edit: Spelling :sweat:

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Rones
Since when have the in game descriptions been reliable? Think of all the items with hidden effects that aren't even mentioned in the description.

WTF? Failing to mention a hidden effect is not remotely the same as stating incorrect information. We're not talking about Sidewinder having a hidden effect; we're talking about the in-game description for it containing a false statement. To wit:



That directly and conclusively states that Sidewinder does quadruple damage. This is a direct contradiction of the statement that it does quintuple damage.

You're trying to compare a lack of full disclosure (on Light Staff, for example) to a direct lie. They are not even close to the same thing.

which, according to you, is "99.9% reliable

I never said that.

Originally posted by Rones
Stuff like SE's offical web page and pol I would say are 99.9% reliable.

So if direct info from Squenix is 99.9% reliable, why are you so quick to dismiss the in-game description?

Or is your point that POL is more reliable than the game itself?

[greysenn]

Sure seems like it does more than x4 most of the time. Could be armor cutting that much off though *Shrugs*

Anycase, square isn't infaliable, they had the kaiser/koenig shields mislabled in the NA version for a long time.

[imac2much]

The bow, markmanship, katana, and GK testing is still not super high on that site, as I listed in my post. Mostly, they have not tested much of the TP effect on these weapons. However, they are still pretty certain the Sidewinder uses a 5x modifier.

Weapon skill descriptions have never been 100% accurate. For instsance, Swift Blade's description says damage increases with TP. This is definitely not the case, as any PLD can tell you, and you can check a ton of websites (both NA and JP) if they have done any testing at all, you know that TP affects Swift Blade's accuracy, not its damage.

Ingame definitions are usually correct, of course. However, WS definitions aren't always totally accurate, since WS damage calculations can be tinkered with and modified with patches but the descriptions are almost always left the same.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by imac2much
Ingame definitions are usually correct, of course. However, WS definitions aren't always totally accurate, since WS damage calculations can be tinkered with and modified with patches but the descriptions are almost always left the same.

Two points:

1) My position has never been that Squenix can't be wrong, but just that if one is going to claim something that contradicts one of their statements, one better have a damn solid foundation to make such a claim. Without any evidence for why the cited site thinks Sidewinder is 5X, it is only logical to defer to Squenix.

2) Admittedly, I haven't had Sidewinder for very long, but I do not recall any mention of RNGs noticing that their Sidewinders started doing way more damage after a given patch (at least since the game has been out in the US). If, at some point, Squenix changed Sidewinder to 5x instead of 4x, that's a 25% increase. That's not a minor difference.

[Timoham]

If sidewinder did consistant damage to the same mob with the same debuffs with the same amount of TP everytime, I might agree with Dan. But the fact of the matter is I can use sidewinder twice in a battle and the first one can do 800 and the second break 1k damage. This usually happens fast enough that NO debuff has been lost and NO buff has been added meaning NO change in defense. 200 damage variance with the same defense on the mob and same TP amount? Does that not seem a bit odd?

And I've seen videos myself that PROVE that it is a multihit weaponskill, not a one hit weaponskill that does extra damage. There are some ballista videos of SAMs using third eye and then getting hit with sidewinder. It still hits them THROUGH BLINK but does less damage than it does without third eye. No where in the weapon skill description does it mention it's a multihit weaponskill, but to me that's pretty conclusive information that it is.

[imac2much]

I don't care whether you want to believe it is 4x or 5x at all. It is *OBVIOSLY* not just straight up 4x damage, so that means the weapon skill description is wrong anyway. On too weak things i can hit for 180-200 but my sidewinder does 1000-1300. Last time I checked 200 x 4 = 800, which is less than that. I have never done only 4x damage of my regular shot damage on a sidewinder. Ever.

So that leads us to this fact: weaponskill damage is calculated in different methods than just multiplying your normal damage by a number of hits. So who should we trust about the damage modifier for the weaponskill; a random joe or a group of people who have gone to extensive testing to calculate a weaponskill damage formula?

You don't have to trust them if you don't want to. Suffice to say, Sidewinder does MUCH more damage than just 4 x a regular hit, so what do you have to back up the claim that it is a 'quarduple damage hit' ?

Some additional testing, my flaming arrows generally do same or 10 damage more than my regular hits. Sidewinder will do about 5x or more of my regular hit. Hm..

And I didn't say that Sidewinder ever changed. I just offered an explanation why some of their descriptions may be f'ed up. More likely than not, S-E just made a small mistake and wrote a wrong description, much like my Swift Blade example.

So are you trying to tell me your sidewinder only does 4x your regular hit damage? Rangers will tell you that's not the case.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Timoham
If sidewinder did consistant damage to the same mob with the same debuffs with the same amount of TP everytime, I might agree with Dan. But the fact of the matter is I can use sidewinder twice in a battle and the first one can do 800 and the second break 1k damage. This usually happens fast enough that NO debuff has been lost and NO buff has been added meaning NO change in defense. 200 damage variance with the same defense on the mob and same TP amount? Does that not seem a bit odd?

How much do your hits vary on a given mob? When you consider that Sidewinder is 4X damage, and then look at the amount your hits vary, then take into account that defense is only subtracted once instead of four times, it's easy to see a large hit variance. Any small difference in the randomness of the damage calculation before it gets to the quad damage part will result in a huge swing, when you aren't subtracting defense.

And I've seen videos myself that PROVE that it is a multihit weaponskill, not a one hit weaponskill that does extra damage. There are some ballista videos of SAMs using third eye and then getting hit with sidewinder. It still hits them THROUGH BLINK but does less damage than it does without third eye. No where in the weapon skill description does it mention it's a multihit weaponskill, but to me that's pretty conclusive information that it is.

Sidewinder is one hit. Look at your TP return. Case closed.

This is ancient information.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by imac2much
I don't care whether you want to believe it is 4x or 5x at all. It is *OBVIOSLY* not just straight up 4x damage, so that means the weapon skill description is wrong anyway. On too weak things i can hit for 180-200 but my sidewinder does 1000-1300. Last time I checked 200 x 4 = 800, which is less than that. I have never done only 4x damage of my regular shot damage on a sidewinder. Ever.

...

I already explained how Sidewinder works.

Originally posted by Spider-Dan
It's one hit, quadruple damage, enemy defense is only subtracted once.

To be honest, I thought this was quite well known by all RNGs, by this point. This is far from new information.

Obviously, Sidewinder does not do the damage of four hits. That would make it worse than Barrage (RNG gets five arrow barrage at 50). Sidewinder is one hit, quad damage, but unlike Barrage or multihit WSes, where the enemy defense is subtracted for each hit, Sidewinder (being a one hit WS) only has the enemy defense subtracted once.

This is why Sidewinder does far, far more damage than four normal hits added together.

As far as testing against TWTBW mobs, one of two situations occurs. Either their defense is so low that you are hitting the damage cap on normal ranged attacks (in which case Sidewinder does a lot more damage than four hits because Sidewinder is not capped), or their defense is high enough to keep you from hitting cap on /ra (in which case Sidewinder does a lot more damage than four hits because their defense is high enough to make the single-defense-deduction significant).