In general the new mythic WS's are pretty unremarkable, they don't do a huge amount of damage (normally) but they do skillchain very well. There is Drakesbane which is very good and on par with Dragoons other very good weaponskills. But I am not really interested in the general usefulness of these weaponskills, I am more interested in the strange spike damage that sometimes occurs on these weapons. 
This is my hypothesis: These weaponskills have the same kind of damage multiplier that the relic weapons have on normal attacks. That would mean that two-handers should get a 2.5 multiplier and the single-handers and hand-to-hand would get a 3.0 multiplier.
This is just my hypothesis right now, and it is going to need some testing. It would explain the spikes in damage and it's randomness. I don't know the frequency, but I am going to keep a parser open and I am going to doing a few more Ranas than I was doing before.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
On the strange damage effects of the mythic weaponskills.
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#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
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7 comments:
Drakesbane's description:
"Delivers a fourfold attack. Chance of critical hit varies with TP."
Tachi: Rana's description:
"Delivers a three-fold attack. Accuracy varies with TP."
I view both of those statements as saying the same thing.
In my normal WS set up, there are 4 possibl TP returns I get from using Drakesbane. 0TP, 3TP, 20TP and 21TP. Never anything else unless I've modified my gear, eaten some different food or I have a COR that put SAM roll on me.
0TP = fkn invincible/fkn perfect dodge/fkn shadows/fkn flash
3TP = lolelvaanacc
20TP = Normal
21TP = I knocked the shit out of something.
I don't know what TP returns are like with Rana, but I'm going to venture a guess that the returns are similar in the sense that there's only 4 possible returns. Up until Rana, SAM didn't have a multi-hit weapon skill. It's entirely possible that instead of these WS being multi-hit like their descriptions say, they're all single hit with a high probability to crit.
Remember that single hit WS can still have the same sort of returns. Wheeling Thrust for example could return 0TP, 1TP, 18TP, or 20TP (I might be off by a couple TP on the upper end since I haven't used it very much lately.) This same sort of formula may apply to each individual hit of Rana or Drakesbane, but we don't see each hit's TP return calculated like we would with say Penta Thrust (Can see anywhere from 0-6 and 14-20 return).
Tachi: Enpi and Tachi: Jinpu are both two-fold attacks, Qtipus. Besides that, Samurai do have access to polearm weaponskills--enabling them to utilize the two-hit double thrust and the five-hit penta thrust as well.
WSs also can't crit unless it says so within their description. If you're getting crazy numbers (like how I've done near 3k with Gekko in sky at times) then it just goes to show you how crazily skewed the formula for WS damage can get.
Ok I should clarify that SAM didn't have a useful, end-game, multi-hit WS for GK nor do I think you're going to be seeing polearm SAMs outside of merit parties. I'll be the first to admit a SAM with Penta Thrust subbing WAR can pump out some insane damage with max Overwhelm, Berserk, Hasso, and Warcry all stacked on top of each other on some colibri, but do you regularly see a penta thrust spamming SAM on a salvage boss sky/sea god and the likes? Nope...you see Gekko/Kasha/maybeYukikaze spamming SAMs or self-light chaining SAMs.
Enpi is about the only WS SAM has that's useful until they get Yukikaze, Gekko or Kasha and the insane STR bonuses associated with them. I don't think I've ever seen a SAM use Jinpu...
Based on TP returns, there are tiers a WS will fall into. I don't buy the whole argument of "weapon skills cannot crit unless it says so in the description" because of these levels. We can call the levels whatever, but regardless of their names, the highest level obviously has a higher TP return than the others and isn't something that is reached on a super-frequent basis.
Wheeling Thrust is proof of it. No crit in the description. You either miss it completely, do paltry damage, do average damage (vast majority of the time) or do near double average damage with additional TP returned as a result.
The formula is insane, but that's about the only thing I'll agree on when it comes to people trying to figure out the damage calculations and all the variables that go into it when they weren't the ones that wrote the game to begin with...
For the sake of furthering the discussion, What do you get TP per hit normally Q?
Anyone thinking about the possibility of a double attack proc? The extra swing can contribute that 1 extra TP, and potentially up the damage as well.
SO for the wheeling thrust example:
0 tp = miss
1tp should be rare, miss main hit double attack procs, and get a second hit to land, normal damage (1 hit)
18tp = normal ws hits
20tp = normal ws hits, and double attack procs and hits. (Damage spike, Looks like a "crit")
In my normal gear/food set up, I get 17-18 TP/swing currently.
My only argument against it being considered a double attack is that the additional attack should count for full TP return. When I use Jump, if double attack kicks in, I get 40TP, not 20. When double attack kicks in during a normal melee round, you get twice your normal TP return.
I believe that every form of melee attack has the same general base equation no matter if this is done through a JA, a normal swing or a WS. Obviously factors like your attributes, attack rating, mob's defense, various status effects (both good and bad) go into calculating it.
The tiers I was referring to earlier I feel like have a different multiplier per tier. Whatever the formula is for calculating the base damage of a WS (we'll call it "normal") x said multiplier. Something along the lines of:
Tier 1 - all out miss
Tier 2 - 10% of "normal damage"
Tier 3 - "Normal damage", no multiplier and pile on effects of various statuses and attribute modifiers.
Tier 4 - 1.5x, 2x, insert theory here x normal damage.
How do you enter those tiers? No idea. Random chance? Old school dice roll save against an enemy's defense? In the case of Drakesbane, I think the amount of TP you have just increases your chances of getting into Tier 4 or "crit proc" or "double attack proc" or whatever anyone wants to call it. I also suspect the attribute modifier plays more of a role on that upper tier than it does on the other 3.
There's a lot more to it that i'll probably run into reply limitations over, but this is the general idea that i've always operated with.
Double attack on a weaponskill works differently than in a melee round, or jump. It basically just turns the weaponskill into a multihit. So you only get ~1 tp for the double attack bonus. Depending on what you actually get for TP (like 17.5) and store TP effect (so the extra swing is actually 1.5) you can account for a bit of that variation in tp.
Jump is weird, as multihit weapons (Soboro, Joyeuse) can proc on it, thus it basically counts as just extra swings.
My theory is you are just seeing Double Attack proc, and the variance in damage depends on which hit is getting doubled.
Jump is just like a normal attack round except that it is modified like a WS.
Wiki says: Damage = floor((D + fSTR)*(VIT/256+1)) x pDIF
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