(by request) X's/blau versus blau/sirocco comparisonFollow

I posted this in omegag's thread as a reply to his question about how good x's knife was, but by his request I'm turning it into a new thread. Credit goes to him for asking the question, the analysis and my answer is below.
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Honestly X's knife isn't that great compared to blau/sirocco. Yes, yes, I know. Holy grounds, it's x's knife, I know. But honestly the 10% increase in critical damage isn't THAT much when you consider the 201 delay. I'm not even perusing getting one because I don't think it's worth my time, and that says a lot. I'll give a rough breakdown of what you get between the 2 daggers. There is a slight margin of error but the trend is pretty steadfast, and the numbers do show a clear choice in my mind about which dagger combo is actually better. I'm actually going to break this down by sections with clear headings this time, to ease the reading. As usal, if you want the answer, skip to the conclusion at the bottom. I also added a summary section this time to compile all the figures together in an easy to see fashion.


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Part A: Notes on wind damage


First off x's/blau has no wind damage proc, so on anything not birds or puks that's a bad thing. In situations you wear the thief knife offhand you should still use blau mainhand. You don't sacrifice blau except for possibly gods, but it wouldn't do much more there than the 16 attack and 5 accuracy on blau (remember, 16 attack is also an increase in pDIF), and i'll get into that in a second. The 16 attack and 5 accuracy with good delay/damage is just too powerful to ignore. On not gods blau dolch is just ... well... blau dolch!!.



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Part B: Notes on the critical pDIF increase of x's



That said I'll explain just how much that 10% critical increase on x's actually gives you. It adds 10% of your base damage when you crit by adding 0.3 to the pDIF, and that's it. The regular pDIF value applies by associativity. I'll give a few scenarios to exemplify this.


Scenario A:)
base damage 40 weapon with capped attack of 2.0. critical is 3.0
40 x 3.0 == 120 damage normally

Scenario B:)
base damage 44 weapon with capped attack of 2.0. critical is 3.0
44 x 3.0 == 132 damage after critical

Scenario C:
base damage 40 weapon with 0.3 added to the critical pDIF
40 x 3.3 -- 132 damage after critical


As you can see the extra 10% is exactly that, 10% of your base damage. That really isn't THAT much when you consider the high delay of X's. Now in sneak attack and a stacked weaponskill it will be more, but again take BASE damage and add it (not multiplied by pDIF because of associativity). Example of that below.

My sneak attack base damage is ~~~185-190, so x's would add 18-19 damage on a solo sneak attack. In dancing edge it applies to the first hit, and only the first since the rest cannot critical, and again it's similar in overall effect but adds the WSC and etc, so add about 25 base damage every weaponskill if stacked (my wsc adds approximately 55 base damage, but is stronger than most thieves)

now if I maximize my timers useage (I won't)

50 second sneak attack (merited 5 times) == 72 sa/hr x 18 == 1296
60 second trick attack == 60 ta/hr x 18 == 1080

Realistically however I do NOT get these anywhere NEAR optimized. Using Kparser I can find how often I may realistically get these used. In an 80 minute party at mamool ja's I used sneak attack 67 times and trick attack 59 times, missing about 30% of all attempted uses. That leaves me at 126 attempts in 80 minutes, or a 1.575 ratio of uses/minute. But with whiffed attempts it's actually closer to 90 successes, or about a 1.125 succes/minute. This is very close to what I'm actually getting so I can use this as a more accurate figure, thus

1.125 x 25 x 60 == 1687, if I apply all stacked and
1.125 x 18 x 60 == 1215 if I apply unstacked. I'll average these and grant it a much more realistic 1450 damage per hour on combined sa and ta crit increase to base damage/hr

Total melee DoT increase of SA and TA of x's == 1450 /hr

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Part C: Notes on delay differences and swings generated

Considering the above 2 concepts you have a better representation of what is happening in a live scenario with crits. Now it's time to calculate number of swings generated.

blau/sirocco. Delay 328, with dual wield and suppa 262.4. Base rate of swings is 823 rounds with no haste. With 15% magic haste and 10% gear haste it becomes 1097 rounds/hr

x's/blau == Delay 379, with dual wield with suppa 303.2, Base rate of swings is 712 rounds per hour with no haste. With 15% magic haste and 10% gear haste it becomes 950 rounds per hour.

The tradeoff is thus 111 attack rounds with no haste and 147 attack rounds with 25% haste.

Base damage of blau/sirocco is 59, base damage of x's/blau is 67.

(Note: This does NOT include fSTR, but this variable favors the blau/sirocco over x's/blau anyway because it's the same bonus every time it happens, so the faster weapon naturally benefits more because it happens more often.)

Note: Accuracy of 85% will be given for this scenario

blau/sirocco no haste
----59 x 823 x 0.85 == 41,273 base damage/hr

blau/sirocco 25% haste
----59 x 1097 x 0.85 = 55,014 base damage/hr

x's/blau no haste
----67 x 712 x 0.85 == 40,548 base damage/br

x's/blau with 25% haste
----67 x 950 == x0.85 54,102 base damage/hr

x's critical bonus would have to increase damage by 725 base damage in DoT to keep up with blau/sirocco with no haste, and 912 damage with 25% haste.

I'll give an extremely generous 20% crit rate in melee DoT (that's 1 in 5 swings). This is 142 rounds of crits with no haste, thus 6.7 x 142 == 951 base damage increase with x's. With haste it's 190 rounds, so 190 x 6.7 = 1273 base damage increase with x's.

Summary-- X's gain's a marginal increase in melee DoT of 316 damage with haste, and 226 damage with no haste. I intentionally set the crit rate near cap to favor the x's as much as possible because of the next section. In reality this is also high in favor of the x's.

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Part D: How much damage does that dancing edge do again?

For the next section, that being weaponskill frequency, we must know how strong an average dancing edge will be in terms of base damage. I will give a low number that every thief should be capable of hitting, of 450 base damage. To give a more accurate example of what it's capable of using the below scenario

120 dex (seriously most competent thieves can do this)
46 charisma (base mithra charisma with no bonus)
(120 x .3 + 46 x .4) = 54 WSC
54 WSC x 0.83 alpha value == 44 bonus damage of wsc. fSTR should b at least 5-6 in most scenarios. Thus

33 + 44 + 5 == 82 base damage for 5 main hits, and 26 + 44 + 5 == 75 damage for the offhand hit of blau/sirocco. Thus (82 x 5) + 75 == 485 base damage. Realistically every dancing edge should average much closer to 500 base damage when you consider multi procs, but for this discussion I'll give a low number to further prove the discussion at hand. This accounts for anyone with a weaker weaponskill set, because it should never go much lower than 450 base damage (accuracy is unimportant here due to associativity of what is being compared).


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Part E: Weaponskill Frequency and TP gain

Ahhh finally, the crux of the matter at hand. The biggest factor in this comparison is weaponskill frequency. The blau/sirocco with store tp + 5 of rajas will be getting 4.7 tp per swing (and two swings per round of course). The X's/blau combination will be getting 4.9 tp per hit with the rajas store tp + 5.

Blau/sirocco with no haste

823 x 2 x 4.7 x 0.85 == 6575 tp/hr

Blau/sirocco with 25% haste

1097 x 2 x 4.7 x 0.85 = 8765 tp/hr

X'a/blau with no haste
712 x 2 x 4.9 x 0.85 = 5930 tp/hr

X's/blau with 25% haste

950 x 2 x 4.9 x 0.85 == 7913 tp/hr

In terms of weaponskill potential the x's/blau will be performing 6-7 weaponskills LESS with no haste than blau/sirocco, and it will get 8-9 weaponskills LESS with 25% haste. The difference is 645 tp and 852 tp respectively.

There is one final difference is damage to be mentioned here. The damage 34 x's versus damage 33 blau in main hand hit of dancing edge, but this is only a potential 5 damage in main swings before accuracy. The 33 damage offhand blau versus 26 damage offhand sirocco is the other part to this so 12 base damage on every weaponskill and a bit more if the offhand procs a triple or double, averaging to about 15-16 damage per skill higher. At no haste x's/blau will will see about 59 weaponskills thus 59 x 16 == 944 damage extra from this component, and 25% haste will see about 79 weaponskills thus 79 x 16 = 1264 damage. This is countered by the frequency of weaponskills, and the x's loses big time here. If you average a weaponskill to only 450 base damage (and remember that this is extremely low as an average) you will find the blau/sirocco combo gaining 1981 damage with no haste and 2561 damage with haste as shown below.


450 x 6.5 == 2925
2925 - 944 == 1981 damage lost to blau/sirocco

450 x 8.5 == 3825
3825 - 1264 == 2651 damage lost to blau/sirocco

Note 1: Had you applied a dancing edge build with an average damage closer to 500 base damage blau/sirocco would have an even greater lead. With no haste blau/sirocco has an extra 6.5 weaponskills,

6.5 x 50 == 325 extra damage

With 25% haste blau/sirocco has an extra 8-9 weaponskills

8.5 x 50 == 425 extra damage

This base damage would be created by a superior weaponskill build, and is powered by rate of TP gain which is favored by blau/sirocco. My personal build is 92 base damage each main hit, and 85 per offhand, or 545 base damage without including multi procs at all!!

Note 2: The store tp + 0.1 on brutal earring will not affect the tp gained per hit on either combo whether you add the rajas, skadi's legs, or both. Because of this it can be omitted with no concequence to the verdict.

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Part F: Summary

I favored this scenario to that of criticals giving x's some advantages in the case of a crit build, which is what it does best at. If I take the gains of x's below then

No haste
1450 (ability useage) + 226 (increased damage over beau/sirocco from normal melee DoT crits) + 944 (base damage increase of each dancing edge)

1450 + 226 + 994 == 2670 damage

Number of weaponskills lost to get this -- 6-7. At average 450 damage per weaponskill

6.5 x 450 == 2925 base damage, a net loss of 255 base damage over blau sirocco. This does NOT include wind damage OR a stronger weaponskill build.


25% haste
1450 (ability useage) + 316 (increased damage over beau/sirocco from normal melee DoT crits) + 1264 (base damage increase of each dancing edge)

1450 + 316 + 126 == 3026 base damage


Number of weaponskills lost to get this -- 8-9

at 450 base damage average per weaponskill

450 x 8.5 == 3825 damage, a net loss of 799 base damage to the blau/sirocco. This does NOT include added wind damage proc of the sirocco OR a more powerful weaponskill build.


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Closing Notes:

Realistically the melee portion of x's/blau will not be 20% crits for most people, and the sa and ta timers (and successful landings) are never close to optimized. If you then add wind proc the sirocco will beat out the x's hands down. While the 10% critical increase is nice the 201 delay of X's knife is too slow, and with a decent haste setup makes it a BAD choice. Even when I gave the x's a 20% critical hit rate in melee DoT (which is high for almost everyone) it could not pull ahead of the blau/sirocco. This does not even account for wind damage that will be going off on many mobs.

I know, I stomped on holy grounds here. I deserve to be drugged into the streets and burned at the stake for daring to question the might of X's. The X's knife has been viewed as the holy grail of the thiefhood for years, but it just is not so. The numbers do not lie, and this is why I haven't even bothered trying to get one. There are situational uses for it like ballista or certain gods, like khimaira or kirin if you deploy the SA and TA ONRY tactic, but on them with a HP pool of 50,000 that extra base damage wont make it die any faster considering you have an entire alliance next to you. In a realistic tp burn type scenario, the blau/sirocco will still outperform the x's/blau, and this is for the samae reason it has outshone everything else to date. It's a MONSTER TP gain, with awesome DoT, and if wind procs its even better.

To this date the only dagger combination I have found that can compare on toe to toe grounds with the blau/sirocco is Batardeau/blau. the Mandau/blau of course is far superior. However, short of stage 4 Batardeau/Blau I have not found anything that can stand up to the might of the blau/sirocco in a tp burn scenario. It's monstrous TP gain enhanced by haste, combined with great DoT and wind damage makes it a titan of titans. It may not be relic, but it's so damn close that nothing else even compares. The blau/sirocco is in a league of it's own, and in a tp burn scenario even the X's/blau cannot upstand that.

Edited, Feb 14th 2009 1:29am by Melphina

Great Job with that math, kudos to you for a well done job ^^d

Ken.

Melphina, I was asking around about 8 or so months ago, and I was told that the bonus from X's was not in the form of a pDif bonus, but was actually a damage bonus similar to how weaknesses work. I.E. (calculated damage) * 1.1, not (calculated pDif)+0.3. It wont make any difference in your example, but at lower pDifs it would make a huge difference.

Edit: As to weaponskills, I would say you loose about 10% of TP on average due to going over on TP, either with double/triple attack procs, or missing at hit, and other factors, so with no haste I would say blau/SK gets 5-6 extra WS and with haste 7-8. That is just me though. I have been thinking along the same lines as you about whether X's is really worth it or not though, I am interested in this line of reasoning.

Edit2: for clarity, the responses I got had testing on them proving it, I am going to try to find them to present. I wasn't aware the wiki was still presenting both theories.

Edited, Feb 12th 2009 12:12pm by Meldi

Obviously doesn't matter much, but just out of curiosity - if it's boosting crit damage by 10%, wouldn't it be

30 x 2.5 = 76 (Crit hit) x 1.1 = 83.6
?
Method B isn't actually increasing crit damage by 10%, it's increasing base damage by 10% when a crit triggers, right?
Again, unimportant because it's an even smaller "degree of lossiness", just curious.

Meldi: Jeebus I r retarded. Mr. Commutative says hi. Next time I will stop and use my brain first. Maybe.
Melphina: 30 x 25 = 75, not 76

I've always wanted to sport a X's Knife and WS in a heavy DEX/crit+ build and try out X's. I love closing Darkness w/ that WS and I think this could do some cool things.

Edit: And I think this could be potentially insane for a zerg, subbing /DRK, but I'm not exactly sure of dex needed for decent crit rates on higher NMs. It would be cool if someone w/ a reasonable set-up & X's could try it out on a few different NMs.

Edited, Feb 12th 2009 4:14pm by Shamanfoxl

On 2nd thought my analysis is a bit flawed in that my spreadsheet doesn't account for weapon rank of off hand so the blau is getting a bit of a boost there, and my hit rate is low (78%), higher numbers there probably favor blau/sirocco. Not sure anyone TPs in 100 STR either.

Nonetheless, I think "it depends" is probably the best answer. (most thf merits will favor X's though)

The average dmg of the wind effect will heavily effect it as well.

Nice job, and thanks for the research you did.

This is one of those dagger combos that doesn't destroy BD/SK but I would have no problem using this combo if I ever got one.

In all honesty, BD/SK is such a great combo that SE would have to release a dagger so incredible that we would all want.

Now, regardless of how good X's knife is I still would love to have one just so I can write a letter to SE saying "F U". Plus this is one of those items that, not always, shows that a thief is really putting a lot of effort on his job. It's a unique and very rare dagger. (Of course we can all hate that bst guy that did the quest to complete his quest list and it dropped for him /cry)

I'd like to see some mandau/x vs mandau/blau plz :o

So what if you had a Cor in the party doing Rogue's roll? Doesn't matter what number roll it gets.

Wrong.

Its: 33 + 10 and 26 + 10 = 43 and 36 base dmg then each of those is run through pDIF. Which is then floored.

Also: 34 + 11 and 33 + 10 = 45 and 43, which is run through pDIF then floored. If by not separating them you 'round up' by 1 on a low delay weapon that will skew your values over time quite a bit. You also made the same mistake I made and gave the Blau a rank 3 weapon when paired with X's. I'm pretty sure weapon rank is separate not together.

You're guestimations are close, but not entirely accurate, and the comparison is close enough that rounding/wind dmg proc. can make it or break it.

I originally used 10 dmg for wind proc. on Sirocco, bumping it down to just 8 was fairly significant over an hr. of time. (which is ~1000 hits thus 2k total dmg).

I just search FFXIAH for someone with X's equiped (not me, I just clicked on the first name that came up), so I used this gear in the calcuations below, 10% crit rate. only 1 TA merit, no other merits. 8 dmg per wind process. The spell haste was cast.

http://www.ffxiah.com/item_sets.php?id=6640

Here's the numbers.

 
Totals:	        AvgHit	#Hits	TotJA	TotMele	AvgWS	TotWS   Total DMG 
X's/Blau	74	1099	41340	81326	348	34452	157118 
Blau/Sir	72	1271	33060	91512	341	33077	157649 

Blau/Sirocco by a hair, but this assumes no gear swap for WS, and using DE (which is inferior with X's). It assumes TA, SA every 60 seconds. interesting tidbit: TP gain is better with X's/Blau will get 99 ws off in an hr. instead of 97. If you're gear swapping I'm sure X's will pull ahead because the WS will be much more powerful (particularly if you use Evisceration instead).

Of course giving Sirocco 9 or 10 average wind process will push it up too, also if you remove the spell haste X's/Blau ends up with more dmg.

My conclusion: the wind process from sirocco > crit hit from X's for tp, particularly in high haste situations - (say 30%). However the pDIF mod and higher dmg of X's will outweigh the wind proc. and low delay sirocco in any other situation. Whether that makes getting X's 'worth it' is up to the individual.


Edited, Feb 13th 2009 10:38am by BrimstoneFox - one of these days my table will post right!

Edited, Feb 13th 2009 10:39am by BrimstoneFox

BrimstoneFox: I am sorry to say, I think your calculations are mistaken. One, average melee fSTR for a thief is going to be between 4-6. Not capped, that is a point in favor of blau/SK. Second, X's/Blau by any calculation will not get more WS than Blau/SK, by a long shot. The numbers I have been checking myself are reflecting more or less what melphina is putting up in her OP. Blau/SK outTPs X's/Blau by a significant amount (900+ tp after 1 hour in a specific gearset), even with no outside help. My numbers are also showing Blau/SK up by about 1k damage after an hour (not even adding any wind damage).

I have to agree with Melphina out right on this one, I think the Azoth/Blau vs. Blau/SK comparisons actually came out much closer. Ouside of a crit build + rogue's roll, I don't think there is really a reason to consider using X's knife aside from the novelty of the item itself. Maybe if it had 183 delay or something...

Edited, Feb 13th 2009 11:02am by Meldi

Actually, just on a whim I put in X/Blau vs. Azoth Blau in my DoT calculator and it came out with X/Blau up ~350ish damage after an hour and Azoth/Blau with 1 extra WS. Hmmm..... Seems the comparison that should be made is which setup comes in second..... lol

Since more often then not, I am WSing between 105-115 tp on any setup due to double/triple procs, I just took out 15% of TP gained to find the difference of WSs. It seems to represent an accuracte depiction of wasted TP, probably slightly more to the high side, from the parses that I have started doing. Even so, Blau/SK gets significantly more WSs than X/Blau.

TP gain on WS really doesn't make much of a difference in the setup, unless you have Skadi/Enkidu's/Cobra Legs. Then you will start seeing 15% TP returns on WS, and start shaving hits to 100. However, you still have to deal with not hitting 5/5 on the WS.

Lol, I just put that in to my DoT calculator, and for straight DoT X/SK looses to Blau/SK by over 10k+ damage and 800+ tp in an hour.

Only because Blau is just that damn good.

Thanks for this melph. I have been tossing this idea around in my head since the Azoth/Blau vs. Blau/SK. I kinda hinted at being a non-believer in X's towards the end. Like you said, I was way to afraid to pull that one out fearing the mob.


^^b

Only thing I know enough about to disagree with. That's too general a statement to make. I have X's because I can round up 3 other blm for 20 minutes once a week. Getting help and finding time to camp Kreutzet is another matter. If you have a lot of unscheduled playtime, that's a different matter, but I mostly get on for specific events and log when they are done. Getting the letter is a no brainer if you and your friends use Tav ring in lieu of a warp stick like many people do. The fight itself is a short joke with black mages, so you're just factoring in tele and run time. The trick, of course, is getting people to do it over and over, so either you are counting on friends who can be convinced 20 minutes a week is not asking for much or who can be told that expensive crafting items might drop that they can lot. The first plan is much more adviseable since they will quickly realize that nothing good drops from Requiem. Ever. No matter what anyone else says or what screenshots they have. It's all lies.

It's also that the weather NPC being not completely reliable, because wind weather can happen even if it said otherwise.

I just went 1/1 on X's.. 5ls members 1random, 1ls member not lotting. Random wins with a 921. :/

Still can't believe we all went 1/1, only to have it go to the only person we didn't want it to go it. :/

latent on blau alone makes mandau/blau win, there's no comparison. your offhand is best augmenting the already amazing mandau, not trying to compete with it. x's slows you down, and that's it. i'd be shocked if any detailed comparison goes against this...

edit: posted that under the impression it wouldn't affect mandau crits, but the situation is the same. mandau has a bunch of ATT--mitigating crit--and does considerable melee DoT (most of which is guaranteed to not be crits).

1 base dmg and 10% (or whatever) crit damage is not going to beat 5ACC, 16ATT, and the small delay difference. i guess it's a bit interesting, but i can't see how X's would win.

further edit: though, if i'm way off, if you read and understand the OP, you should be able to work out the essential thing dictating the winner of the comparison, and then roughly decide mandau/blau vs mandau/x's (or mandau/x, for a sort of pun).

Edited, Feb 14th 2009 12:56am by milich

Good lord, this is all very hard to take. I've grown so fond of my X's Knife, and went through so much to get it, that shelving it seems wrong. I do have Sirocco Kukri lying around though, so it isn't like I'd have to go camp it, but...arrrrrrrrrrrgh. Giving up about 130-140 from critical hits a minute, losing the benefit of a level of fSTR on birds for my weapon skill gear, and weaker Eviscerations. And on top of that I have to hear that constant wind sound again. Bleh.

Although there is something to be said about what buffs you're getting, I think. Most people think Rogue's Roll when they think X's Knife, but Samurai Roll is another, and much more common, buff that will help the X's Knife/Blau Dolch more than it would the Blau Dolch/Sirocco Kukri.

If nothing else, I will continue to use X's Knife in spike damage situations. For Shark Bite and Mandalic Stab, it's akin to getting two merits of Overwhelm (okay, so like 1.8 for Shark Bite), and for Darkness closing it's kind of a no-brainer. It'll also continue to be my zerg piece of choice, because otherwise I have no excuse to ever break out my Hydra Tiara.

Oh, and on the whole Mandau debate, has the critical rate increase from Mercy Stroke's aftermath ever been pinned down? I remember hearing it wasn't a whole lot but I'd imagine it could make a difference in that debate.

My 130-140 came from my rough averages in a normal bird party. about 450-500 for Sneak Attack, 550-600 for Trick Attack, and an assumed 14% critical hit rate for normal swings. Nothing fancy, just a ballpark.

Guess I was looking at the Store TP backwards. Had it in my head that it would improve the ratio of weapon skills to normal melee swings, and if weapon skills make up more of the damage then X's Knife has an advantage, being the higher damage weapon.

I do still like Evisceration, though. Being told about modifiers is one thing, and I understand that part of it, but since I became able to throw more dexterity at it while keeping my accuracy up it really has made a difference in the damage. Next time I get a chance to duo with my buddy, I plan to parse every which way I can to see if it's all in my head or what.

I do want to say thanks for going through all of this, Melphina. Just makes me a bit dumb for wasting my time and the time of my friends.

So Best Dagger combo's now are - M/BD, BD/SK, PH/BD? or is PH/BD slightly better then BD/SK? from the outlook I would have said PH/BD is slightly better from the slightly higher DPS, and higher ws dmg.



I think another reason why ppl were so oOO Ahhhh on X's, was people have this facination with crit's. Ppl talk about gearing for crits when they obviously have no idea what they are really talking about, wanting to sacrifice all their acc/haste gear to put enough DEX into your tp build (+50 over mobs AGL) for a 20% crit rate (24% with merits).

I only wrote that becasue of this:



Think more about Haste/acc/HP for your /DRK zergs, and maybe an M.Kris.