Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

It hits like a truck but has the biggest delay in the game. The weaker ws are most likely a result of the owner spamming ws under 2k tp,trying to keep up with jobs that gain tp faster.

This was probably it. I don't have one and don't know what set the guy was using.

It seemed weaker in both HELM fights when they were trying to solo SC and during seg farms spamming WS. No full timing warcry but all the buffs all the time.

SWAGing they would be about the same as the 2H or Terminus, really high.

That's the catch with Scythe that balances it out. DRK doesn't have the natural TP gain/bonus of WAR,DRG,SAM outside of SP2.

DRK does have impact which is broken when used properly, but not during a battle. (save Aminion)

In other words no. I know only a few people have the bow. I wanted to know if there were definitive stat mod percentages known or any testing done on tp anchor tiers. I guess not.

It's like the GS, folks have done basic testing to determine a range but not enough to deal with forum users picking them apart. There is very obviously a pattern here, with all 1H weapon skill having low mods but high fTP, all 2H weapon skills having high mods but lower fTP compared to 1H and Terminus having even higher mods but lower fTP compared to 2H.

Our bow user has both Gun and Bow and his belief is the AGI mod is the same or damn near it.

What kind of testing conditions would it take to determine the mods? I want to know the math behind this weaponskill, and I'll have 3.5 million galla saved up by the weekend. I might just grab the stage 4 to get the numbers myself.

Bow is super easy to test, because it has no randomizer with capped pdif, but wasnt Sarv already tested somewhere here because of that?

I mean.. DRK can buff itself with 96STR and 41INT with absorbs and Scythe on DRK has massively higher base pdif cap, then there is Scarlet Delirium which even when used safely is still good +5-10% damage all the time (it has longer uptime than cooldown) and when optimized is +30-40% damage.

Optimally self buffed DRK is way stronger than unprepared DRK, but it takes effort and is not always possible.

Page 28 of this thread. But apparently the results were inconclusive?

And I'm going to have to ask. Is Ruthless stroke 25% dex and VIT mod or 35% dex and VIT mod. The wiki says it's 25%, but on page 28 and 29 of this thread it was suggested it was 35% mods? Which is correct?

I would say its 25% or less, definitely not 35%.

Gotchya. So getting back to the sarv testing, if the info on page 28 is inconclusive how much data would you need to determine the actual str and agi mods?

The 1H WS's are somewhere between ~30 but not enough of them to be certain. 2H seem to be ~60 and the ranged ~70.

Testing inside sortie is kind of a PITA, outside is easier since you can just WS a level 1 bunny at 1K TP.

Yes, but thats when the 99999 cap comes into play. You can buff us to the teeth but with DDs now hitting the cap Frequency is a huge deal.

I'm DRK 90% of the time for Sortie and DRKs just can't TP like WAR,SAM,DRG.

I'd say my initial appraisal of the NIN katana was slightly unfair. It's still kind of disappointing however it is close to NIN's best physical damage weapon while also offering very very good skillchain diversity and decent enough utility stats. I still use Heishi for pure hybrid spam but I've been using Dokoku for physical dmg almost exclusively over Naegling and it works, it just isn't really better.

Could any mathemagicians determine fTP/WSC from these data on Maru Kala?

Stage 4 prime (DMG+202). No buffs; no multiattack, WSD or PDL equipped. Targeted wild rabbits in West Ronfaure.

Seconded~

Ok. I promised I would gather some usable Sarv data and tonight I went and did it. I just hit 3.5 million galla tonight so i figured what the hey and I went and picked up stage 4 Pinaka. The testing methodology was as follows

In order to control my tp gain I built a ranged shooting set that returned exactly 200 TP per shot. This was accomplished with Stage 4 Pinaka, Crepuscular Earring, Telos Earring, Lehko's ring, and Tellen belt. Ammo was chrono arrows. This is with ninja sub. This allowed me to hit exactly 1K, 2K, or 3k with no variance, and it also afforded me shadows so whenever the random miss occured the resultant stone nuke or mob swing didn't mess up my tp gain and force me to start over. Once I had the requisite TP at exactly 1K, 2K or 3K I swapped to my weaponskill testing set. I'll mention what I wore and the stats alongside each data set below

Test Mob -- South Gustaburg Tunnel Worm

Ranged Distance from Mob - 20 Yalms


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Test 1 -- Determining TP scaling values

For this test my weaponskill set was as follows

ItemSet 393932

and the resultant stats and damage are listed here. Total strength was 280 and total agi was 421.



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Test 2 -- Determining Agility Modifier

For this test I modified my weaponskill set to the following

ItemSet 393933

My Belenus Cape for this test was my ranged TP cape, with 30 agility, ranged attack/ranged accuracy, store TP and -pdt. The only relevant weaponskill stat is the agility. This resulted in 280 strength and 471 agility

The resultant data points are this



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Test 3 - Determining Strength Modifier

For this test I modified my weaponskill set to the following

ItemSet 393934

My Ranger cape for this test was my jishnu's radiance cape, which I have augmented with 30 strength, crit rate, ranged accuracy/ranged atk and -pdt. Since sarv cannot crit the only relevant stat for this testing is the strength. This left me with 325 strength and 421 agility. The resultant data points are as follows




So with that said, who wants to reverse engineer the numbers and figure out the math? I'd appreciate it if someone else could do this bit for me. Gathering all that data was fairly tiring and took me a few hours. I need to go get cleaned up and ready for bed in the meantime.

Can use this link, then add to set just below the item to get the proper stage:

https://www.ffxiah.com/item/22158/pinaka

Thanks. I updated the sets to use the correct stage. I didn't know you could do that. I appreciate the tip.

Would love to get more details/numbers you two are getting from Dokoku. Trying to decide on a first prime.

Get what you like. None are game breaking from what I have seen, stage 5 or otherwise.. In fact, on any content that matters (v25t3 for example) they are very underwhelming DPS wise and most are useless other than mitigating ws wall shenanigans. Polearm is nice for bee/Lion 25 fights in this regard if the DRG is paired up with a WAR or SAM. Allows them to impulse drive instead of other WS.

The exceptions are Bow/Gun. They are monsters even on the hardest content when in the right hands with the right buffs/debuffs. They put up huge numbers WS on v25 Lion from what I have seen. Especially for rangers. Not sure how much ahead/if they are ahead enough of Empy Am3 for fights like this though.

Staff is good too. Shield is nice too. Stage 5 Scythe was meh on even v20 Mboze for pure dps. It did the job, but other options are def faster. Otherwise, outside of the 'hardest' ***it's a damn monster. Most of them are, at least the ones we have seen/used/made/tested/whatever. GKT was dogshit on V25.

On older content these weapons, in general, do better than REMA from what I have seen (buffs dependent ofc). IMO, if only realistically planning to make one of these things at stage4/5, make w/e u like!. Otherwise, in terms of usefullness on the most difficult content, Bow-->Gun-->Staff/Shield-->Scythe/Pole--->rest. None of them are 'needed' either for literally anything you fight.

From your data it looks like it might be:
2.8/5.6/8.4 AGI65% STR65%

anyone else can verify?

I mean right now in the RNG thread Melliny + Celebrindal are bringing up points for and against Pinaka vs Gandiva... while the damage is nothing to laugh at vs the content that matters (Arebati), I'd say its not well and above what we have already and certainly not an end all be all to the point that a ranger should 100% no questions make this as their 1st prime... kind of the way your Prime hierarchy implies.

The Gun also is good, and for COR probably more so than RNG, particularly because on top of it being a direct competitor to Arma for best ranged weapon it boasts the bullet you can pair with your Savages that you use oh so much more than a ranger would.

All that being said they're both a bit more niche in application IMO than Staff/Shield which serve as just general purpose stat demons... and you're not even including the Horn here which is quite potent. Obviously the horn is a game changer for lower tier content, especially Sheol C boosting BRD and COR to be able to 1 shot floor 4 mobs.
Are you not happy with the results of Aria in 'top tier' content? or is it more that BRD doesnt fit into as many of the Tier 3's nor the Mage strat Sortie / Aminon run that you left it off the list? Just curious

From playing with others and peeking my head into all the threads where people discuss their prime findings, it seems pretty universal that 2 handed primes compete more with the current rema's than single handed primes. The GS (being somewhat equal to the GAxe but w/ more jobs on it), Pole and GKT jump to mind as next in line behind your hierarchy.. then I see alot of mixxed feelings on the rest. I think your advice to make whatever you want if you're only making one is sound, but someone like me who considers himself a Main BLU couldnt in good conscious make the sword. I think alot of career players of single handed weapons feel the same way.

I get 65% STR/AGI with 2.75/5.5/8.25 but off by a base damage or two or a fractional result for the ftp

Most likely a factor of the decimal math FFXI implements which saevel has mentioned on multiple occasions. That everything is divided by 1024 tends to throw off a lot of calculations by a hairs margin. This is most likely the values, and if not the variance is so tiny it wouldn't actually affect anything.

I have seen a similar trend throughout the entire prime heirarchy. When S-E released the prime weapons they stated in a developer interview that they aimed to tweak their power level so that they are competitive with the current best options, but not so powerful that players will feel like they should be required to have them over existing alternatives. That's almost word for word what they said straight out of their mouth. I remember that interview very well.

And from what I've seen of the prime weapons that interest me the maths hold up astoundingly well. I've mathed the difference between Mpu Gandring and Twashtar and come to the conclusion that they're nearly clones of one another, albeit I do give a slight nod to Mpu Gandring as having a small edge over twashter in the final verdict. Mpu's Ruthless stroke has a slightly higher maximum scaling at 3k TP than twashtar's rudra's does, but because twashtar has that 10% rudra's bonus it keeps up with Mpu all the way to the 2250-2500 ish mark.

And these numbers confirm for me a similar mirroring of Pinaka to Gandiva, and I will once again give Pinaka a slight nod as being a bit better overall. It's important to keep in mind that empyrean aftermath is better against high defense mobs like V25, whereas Prime aftermath favors mid tier mobs where you can cap attack. You are not going to cap your ranged attack on V25 arrebati. I'm sorry. It just isn't happening.

When I was gathering my data points for Sarv I fired off a few sidewinders to get a feel for where I expected the lines between the two weaponskills to intersect, and I hypothesised roughly the 1300-1500 TP mark would be where sarv and sidewinder were nearly equivalent. These numbers line up with that expectation pretty well. That's just a little beyond moonshade earring, so sarv is definately the better weaponskill here. However the scaling is not so extreme that it outright crushes sidewinder. You reduce weaponskill frequency to utilize sarv's tp scaling, whereas winder and jishnus are happily maxed out as soon as you hit 1k. So there is a tradeoff. The scaling will ultimately favor pinaka, but not to the point that if I already owned Gandiva (and I do) I would feel like it was a necessity.

This is my take on ALL of the prime weapons, so I don't feel bad about picking any one of them for the jobs I play. I have stage 4 Great axe, and now I have the bow. I will get stage 4 Mpu Gandring in 3 months and be happy with it. Eventually I will take these 3 to stage 5, but I don't feel pressured or rushed. I don't see a great performance difference between the existing options. But they are new and they are shiny and they offer alternative ways to play jobs that I enjoy playing the most. That makes them valuable enough for me, and worth the time invested. Also I apologize for the slightly off topic blurb here. I'll end my rambling and get to bed. It's late and I'm tired.

Thank you for doing gods work

This needs to be said for those who forum watch in order to be "told" what to make- there is almost zero incentive for someone to bring any kind of testing to ffxiah.com, as even when done with the best intentions the response is typically complaint.

If folks want more data points to work with in order to make their decisions, be supportive of amateur testers who don't always know the best procedures for such things. I know I'm straight up garbage for testing- the limited results on Sarv I posted were not considered solid enough to build real data from, and for days I asked for help on it without any response except "where are the results?"

So I reached a personal decision where I was happy with my own choices, and lost any motivation to provide others with information to expedite their choices. I will still defend Pinaka as the only bow I've used on RNG that actually feels like it keeps up in any physical damage situation; that the weaponskill damage for those 100% physical times cannot be matched by any other non-prime option while still preserving TP phase damage that even just at stage 4 keeps up with other "white damage" weapons; Sarv holds its own even without a Bayeaux Arrow so life between Scavenges isn't a death sentence for the weapon; that the ODD/OTD aftermath aspect of Prime Weapons suits Ranged Attacks better than it will ever service melee attacks.

Just don't expect the detailed numbers from the likes of me, as I'm sure most don't.^^

Not sure what you're whinging about, both myself and Austar told you exactly how to refine your numbers and what we thought was wrong with what you posted to help you along. Whether you took that personally or not is on you.


There were no open ends here. Nothing else could've been given to you that wasn't already short of teaching you all the math which no one has the time to do.