Delaying the unanticipated.

The two-handed weapon fix appear to be put off in the short term. This means that the consternation of one-handers and the elation of two-handers is continued at least for a couple more days. I got a decent party on my MNK yesterday with Borin, it was fun, and I got to level 59. I am almost out of these silly RSE pants, and into my AF. I just look silly the way that I am dressed right now. The party wasn't too quick but it was fun. I found out that I already had Howling Fist, LOL. I didn't even notice it until someone asked me if I should already have it, and in general at this level it is a much better WS than Raging Fists. I was well underleveled for the party I was in last night, but I was still doing decent damage, but the WAR using a Great Axe was doing a lot more damage per Raging Rush, but was often holding to 200TP per use. They spiked out at 1150 on a Raging Rush if I remember correctly. Thats probably not how it is supposed to work. LOL. While writing this SE has announced that they will be fixing the problems on Monday and also introducing Pankration a day early too.

The next FINAL FANTASY XI version update is scheduled to take place on Sep. 10, 2007. Following are the details on features that will be implemented on next version update.

Details for the maintenance schedule will be released once they become available.

[Important Update Details]
- Addition of "Pankration."

- Adjustment on the accuracy of weapon skills "Guillotine" and "Penta Thrust."

The following issues will be addressed:
- Monster ability statistics are lower than intended.

- Ability statistics of Automatons and Pets are lower than intended.

- Graphic of Goblin Bounty Hunter continues to appear even after it is defeated.

- Players are unable to correctly enter Hazhalm Testing Grounds when checking the "Entry Gate" without a "Glowing Lamp" in their possession.

- All random number calculations for damage amounts are not being calculated properly.

- Amount of damage is not being corrected properly when characters are equipped with two-handed weapons.

- Both the attack and accuracy of monsters equipped with two-handed weapons are higher than intended.

- The TP of beastmaster's pets slowly continues to decrease while they were not engaged in battle.

- Attachments do not function properly when Automatons have both "Stealth Screen" and "Optical Fiber" attached.

- Automaton continues to cast magic on player characters that are KO'd.

- Under certain combinations of heads and frames, Automatons will try to cast spells continuously.

- When a "Chocobuck Slip" and Chocobucks are both traded, players may be able to carry more than the maximum allowed Chocobucks.

- When "Tandjana Wildgrass" is used during the Chocobo Hot and Cold Game, the cursor pointing to the treasure chest will not appear if the cancel button is pressed at a specific time.

- Item icons do not appear in the Delivery Box. (Xbox 360 version only)

- Macros might not function depending on how the name of certain items are included.
* To avoid this issue, please enter item names either in abbreviated format or by using the auto-translate function.

- When entering text commands, shortcuts such as "" will not function properly if a phrase using quotation marks (') is included.

This was posted on the information page instead of the main page if you are looking for the original.

I didn't really do much else besides get one level on my MNK yesterday, so I don't even have much inspiration for a focus on my post today. I guess I could go over something that has been bothering me about my Soboro and the way that a weapon that "occasionally attacks 2-3 times" works with Double Attack. Now, with no other effect I have assumed that "occasionally attacks 2-3 times" equates to an equal distribution of attacks from 1 to 3 attacks. If this is not the case then there are problems, but we will just go with that for now. Before I start going any further I want to say that my RL friend helped me with these stats and I didn't come up with them on my own. Now, this will help me determine what the detriment to subbing WAR with Soboro will be and I think it will also be helpful for those that use a Ridill too. Now, initially, the idea is that as you increase Double Attack procs you decrease both 1 hit and 3 hit rounds, because Double Attack overwrites the "occasionally attacks 2-3 times," so in the case of subbing WAR on SAM, or for Ridill users on WAR we need to determine the distribution. I had a bunch of neat math to go here that my friend gave me but it had a flaw. LOL Anyway, the point was that as you increase the number of Double Attacks, the average number of attacks will never change.
Ahh, my friend provided me with the correct math now.
Now for just a regular Double Attack trait which is presumed to be 10% the distribution of attacks would be:
30% one attack,
40% two attacks,
30% three attacks.
This still averages to 2 attacks, but it decreases the chance of an outlier to occur. With a Brutal Earring the distribution becomes:
28.3~% one attack,
43.4~% two attacks,
28.3~% three attacks.
This all doesn't really matter much because the average number of attacks would stay the same. This would work on the perfect mob that never dies and you could always just constantly attack it, the problem is that mobs die. When mobs die you will never complete your attack cycle, you will just stop swinging on the death of the mob no matter how many attacks you were supposed to make. This means that when a mob dies there is a chance that a one or two attack round would kill the mob instead of a two or three attack round. This means that if you get the killing hit with your first attack of a round that is supposed to be three attacks you are actually decreasing the number of procs for the higher attack rounds. This would have the affect of actually decreasing the number of three attack rounds, now again this would not really matter, or at least preventable if you couldn't adjust the number of two attack rounds, but since you can control that it may actually be beneficial to keep the number of double attack rounds lower because the killing round would already favor the lower numbers. I think that I am understanding this correctly. So in essence, the real problem with double attack with a weapon that attacks 1-3 time is that since the distribution is skewed by the killing round then you want to keep the total percentage chance of three attack rounds as high as possible. The average is skewed by the killing round. This is not a very high factor, but since double attack has no direct benefit to the number of attacks that a Ridill or Soboro does it is important to consider this if it will actually decrease the number of triple attack rounds because that will affect the total number of three attack rounds and thus decrease the number of attack rounds with additional attacks, decreasing melee damage done, TP gain, and WS's used.

That wasn't completely convoluted. LOL My friend is still working on the math for that one, I don't know if he will get it done by today. I hope this is helpful and if I might put it into more plain words; Double Attack does not increase the number of attacks that you perform with a Soboro or Ridill and, because killing rounds can trump two or three attack rounds, will actually decrease the percentage of triple attacks because a killing round has a smaller chance of making it to the second and third attack.

I will try to have more definite numbers later today or tomorrow. LOL Enjoy that mind bender. Or just ignore it.