AF3+2/Striking Flourish Testing

Hey guys! I'm interested in testing this JA, but I can only use it once every 2 minutes. 30 samples takes an hour minimum, and I'm more likely to afk at least once out of boredom and only end up with 20-25 samples. Alone I'll get the answer eventually, but if you're as bored as I am when I test this, you can help me speed it up!

Test protocol:
1) Unload spellcast if you use it. (So no gear swaps ever)
2) Go to a starter city and change your sub to SAM if you have it.
3) Put on STR gear you have AF3+1/2 hands if you have them, and AF3+2 body, and single wield a dagger of your choice. Write down the gear and weapon you're using.
4) Turn on kparser.
5) Make a macro for Viper Bite (/ws "Viper Bite" <t>). I made several other JA macros, which you'll doubtless discover you'd like as you continue to test.
6) Get 100 TP and 2 Finishing moves (easiest way is to engage a monster backwards and spam Steps, then Reverse Flourish)
7) Disengage, activate striking flourish
8) Hit "Attack" or "Fight" while within melee range of a monster that isn't piercing weak (bats, bees, and mandragora are piercing weak iirc), and spam your viper Bite macro.
9) Repeat steps 5-8 ad nauseum and report all the data here.

The idea is this:
Viper Bite has no mods and doesn't naturally crit. It's just a normal swing with doubled attack. We can use this to easily tell which are crits or not, because they'll have the same ranges as your normal swings and crits. Though I said to do it in a starter zone, this technique should actually work on anything where you can cap fSTR due to Viper Bite's increased attack. You could theoretically use a low base damage dagger and do this on higher level monsters. There are benefits to that and perhaps we can extend the test in the future, but lets stick with starter zone mobs for now until we figure out the proc rate on the first swing.

NO BYRTH, I WONT DO IT, ugh lazy!

how many do you want done roughly?

At the moment, 29 (coming in around 75% so far with a huge confidence interval). It took me approximately an hour and a half, but I get TP in about 30 seconds and then afk for 1.5 minutes. Change the laundry, do the dishes, etc, you collect data much slower than you'd predict.

I think I'm going to try and keep myself at the computer by leveling Synergy on my mule while I wait for recasts to come back up, but leveling Synergy is also about as interesting as watching paint dry so I don't know how long that'll last.

PS. nice avatar change.

thanks i had haseyo do it for me, i <3 miku

also i'll do a 100 after i get up if you like, it's after 1pm and i have been able to get to bed until now.

100 would be awesome. I'm probably going to end up doing more when I get home tonight, so we can probably hammer out what the crit rate boost is (approximately) by tomorrow.

Got a little distracted helping a friend with Orthrus tonight.

Update, 60/118 crits. Probably 50%. 51+/-9% for the 95% confidence interval

I should note that the DA can definitely crit too. I've had four 1TP returns that did crit damage and one that did normal damage. It could be that the DA gets a different crit rate, but I pity the fool that tries to test that.

I'm done with this for a while.

using 2 crit dmg yataghans on 100 rarabs outside sandy i got 53 crit'd viper bites.

i was /nin for the shadows (didnt want to chance getting hit)
nfr twice, 1 for the 100 tp and the other used for striking.

113/218 then, or approximately 52% +/- 7%. So it's probably either 54% or 50%, and my money is on 50% because I don't have a 95% crit rate with SF in Abyssea.

Some people are reporting the only changes to the JAs listed in the update notes were changes to their animations. Can someone confirm that Striking Flourish's animation changed?

I play with animations off because my computer isn't the hottest.

was just testing it, the base animation is different, but interesting thing is that it will have a Dinging sound and your hands will have an enlight affect animation. this affect is only evident before my rudra's dmg shows the appropriate dmg for criting. so you can use striking and if you dont hear the dinging sound use evisceration over rudra because your ws will not crit. it's weird that this ja has this change because the ja it'self does not posses the potential to crit but the change in animation is definately tied to your next hit being a critical hit. im gonna continue testing but im 99% sure that is the case, which is pretty huge if you ask me, no more guess work with rudra dmg.

My own testing of this is less supportive. It seems the animation and sound for me are always the same regardless of whether or not it is going to crit.

Yeah, I get the same sound and animation even if I'm not wearing AF3+2 body.

It definitely has 2 different animations

I've heard the dinging and not heard the dinging, but I haven't seen a correlation between that and crit or not. I guess I'll test more later.

By the way, in case people were interested. Climactic Flourish, Striking Flourish, and Sneak Attack are all mutually exclusive. I paused myself on a box today to find out, lol.

what do you mean?

also on the ones where you ding, your hands flash with enlight effect

I always see the enlight effect, and I always hear the ding. When servers go back up, you might want to try "//blinkmenot alwaysself on"

When I turned it on, I always heard the dinging and always saw the light.

it's possible that the crit chance is no longer tied at 50% then, i was testing with RR OMNI SS and i'd occasionally not hear the ding sound, when that had happened my rudra would only do roughly 3k~ average, when it did ding it was atleast 6k.

i'll have to check with animations again i could be wrong, it was roughly 4 am my time before i figured it out in an altepa dolls exp party. but i did notice the correlation with the dinging.


what do you mean?

You can't do SA -> Climactic Flourish, activating Climactic Flourish replaces SA. The same is true for Striking Flourish and both those JAs.

ah i see.

im in port jeuno right now spamming striking wearing af3 body and mirke body so gimme a few. it's dinging everytime now though so far, which is interesting cause i've had several people agree with me when they heard the ding or not hear the ding last night but 7 times so far all dinged.

outside jeuno killing mobs with striking -> rudra

everytime it has dinged so far, but on another note the dmg has been the same everytime (within 100)

edit: i quit, either i was smoking something crazy last night, or the emergency maintenance broke it. as i see just looking at what i've done right now (not including last night) the only thing different with the ja is the animation looks different, i see no change in the ja itself.


brb looking for drugs i must have been hiding last night.

byrth when you get the opportunity can you test af3 hand's sc bonus? they were re-released in the update according to the dat mine, i've heard that other sets had changes to their traits.



additionally, i just spoke with a GM and i WASNT LOSING MY MIND HAHAHAHAHA (maybe i am now who knows). striking was preforming as i was describing before the emergancy maintenance, and according to the GM there was a change to the ability that "may" gone in affect in the wrong way and he/she will bring it up and that it would be wise i'd do so on the official forums myself.

Ah, okay!

Also, I already did the AF3+2 hands tests. It's a constant +10% skillchain bonus now instead of an inconsistent +5%. I did dozens of skillchains while leveling my NPC, and they were all +30% damage.

so adding the pants from expansion u can get up to +35% sc dmg very nice

Presto appears to give somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 Step Acc:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/103597-Temporary-Random-Facts-Thread?p=4591035&viewfull=1#post4591035

I'm doing level 2 Feather Step testing at the same time. Also, because of the relative lack of competition, I'm updating my findings and past research onto BG's wiki.
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Dancer

I still have a ways to go, but I've updated quite a bit in the last few days. It's probably the most accurate Dancer wiki at the moment.

This is a little late, but...

Byrth...

You are a saint.