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

Melphina, I do think that we need to look at Samurai Roll with X's/Blau again, just because I think with decent rolls, you can get down to an 18 hits to 100 tp, and that would actually help the X's/Blau set a little, however, They will still get significantly less WS than Blau/SK and still have less DoT.

Evisceration is a difficult weaponskill to quantify because of the wording, but I have no reason to believe it is capable of breaking the critical cap hitrate of 20% (and 24% with merits). I have played with a dex build in farming and gone 3 (and RARELY 4) crits in a row, but i've also had streaks of 7-10 with no crits at all. In the end the parse dictates the true nature of a 24% crit rate over time, which was what I expected. When the sample size grew the numbers stabilized around this. However due to the fact that criticals CAN cluster together evisceration can sometimes throw out heartily fun numbers, but it's not common or stable like dancing edge is. The thing about the wsc I mentioned is then that when an evisceratiion hit DOES critical you get approximately 7-8 more base damage on that critical. But Had I used blau/sirocco and eviscerationed that critical would have happened anyway at base damage 77, so again the only difference is 7 base damage in a hit that crits because of the x's. is this going to help nullify it's gimpiness? Heck yeah, but it won't be enough to put it on par with dancing edge in the long run.

The thing about the x's bonus to criticals is that 10% of a low damage dagger just ISN'T THAT MUCH, and sneak and trick attack timers are on a limited use. Converting the formula to changes in base damage is an effective and reliable method of comparison, and when you view that you basically get one free critical for every 10 other criticals that would have happened. So for example if it takes me 3 minutes to critical 10 times at base damage 40, I get a bonus of 40 base damage every three minutes. Now if x's knife increased RATE of criticals by 10% THAT would be monstrous (almost twice that of destroyers O.O). You don't have to do anything fancy to make a critical awesome, a critical hit in and of itself is powerful no matter WHAT you have equipped. Because they happen naturally they are awesome alone.



I will agree here that the margin can happen. But truthfully it can also swing towards the blau getting bonus rounds. The samurai roll has 11 numbers it can hit upon, (plus the occasional bust). Of course if the cor rolls a 1-5 he will double up, so realistically you have 6 numbers it will fall upon. But when you consider you can add skadi's chausses to the rajas as well as rolls 6-11 it leaves a massive disparity of what can potentially happen (and a bust leaves you with normal tp gain). Furthermore, the brutal earring has store tp + 0.1. In the rajas and skadi calculations it would not affect anything, but with rajas, skadi's, brutal, and sam roll you can a very large radius of store tp ranges to calculate. Because of this calculating Samurai roll effectively cannot be done with any degree of certainty, but it is safe to assume that it will always favor the blau/sirocco over the x's blau combo in the end.

Oh and on the note of this



That's hardly a waste of time if you got the drop. X's can still be useful in shark bite, and on Gods where critical hits are worth more it has a nice situational application. Ballista adds a few things more, and its rarity makes it a trophy item that anyone who ownes one should be proud of. X's is not the optimal tp burn style dagger, but it's by no means useless and that will never make it worthless or bad. Because of just how horrible the drop rate IS (seriously soul crushing is accurate, you went over 100 runs which is 2 years) that is a sign of dedication and should be taken with pride. I have great respect for anyone who ownes one, and always will (even if it is just a lucky break 1/1, because after all I've gone through I can relate to luck (and also lack thereof))

Edited, Feb 14th 2009 7:15pm by Melphina

Since I still don't see anything wrong, unless the lack of weapon skills can make up for the difference in favor of X's with DoT, WS damage, SA and TA damage I'm still considering X's better :x

Well that's just the difference from DoT. We've yet to calculate the difference for SA, TA, and the difference in weapon skills, and factor in how many times I use shark bite at 200 tp because I wasn't paying attention. :p

I'm not including the wind damage from sirocco because I did the math on colibri, and I really don't want to pretend everything will work out exactly the same on other types of mobs.

I just have a feeling the damage difference is too close to try and calculate mathematically.

I'm personally wondering how X's compares to blau when not /nin.

Also, I'm correct in thinking that the X's special effect only affects X's knife and not the other knife it's paired with, right?

X's Knife is any and all melee critical hits. Does not apply to ranged criticals that I've noticed.

This.

You have a great hypothesis going here. Test it. Go parse. Save all your logs from meriting, HNMs, Salvage, Dynamis, do controlled tests in all those fields and really narrow down where each dagger shines.

This is the opposite of a controlled test actually. The reasons for doing a controlled test is to find and quantity hidden stats or how hidden stats affect our output. For instance, when the new pDIF caps were found, they were controlled tests because we knew we were hitting fSTR cap, we knew we were also hitting ATK cap, since we were going against TW. To find WSC, we do the same with WS, but use crits to ensure the variations we have are less.

However, what you're suggesting here is to place it in a bunch of fields with unknown variables, that can change every monster based on the actions of other players, and use that as data defining which is better. That won't help matters, and it really isn't necessary. Play style WILL change the results, but we can predict how it will change based on the numbers. Numbers aren't theories. These are the formulas the game are build on, so they are true, so long as the same exact methods are used in game. That is, of course, impossible.

Things that are obvious variables In favor of X's:
Over tp, Blau/Sk does more damage in tp produced. Going over 100% before WSing lowers that.
Feather tickle, stun, sleep, time between pulls, and other things that delay WS going off, but lower timers between SA/TA.
Outside buffs: lower ATK scores and higher crit rates(COR) support X's.
As mentioned, battles where you aren't meleeing much, gain tp, run in WS, run out.

Variables that negatively impact X's:
Merit party situations in general favor Blau/Sk more(atleast the way I and the people I seem to find play)
Examples: My most recent merit party, with ls members and old friends, I had 72 attempted SA but only 40 successful. TA also showed 70 attempted and 52 successful. This is because of moving people, moving enemies, and how party members often surround the enemy instead of being on one side. I've had parties where TA didn't have much problems, but SA did, because I had majority hate as well.
ATK buffs and strong debuffs will lower the increase you get from crits, lowering the additional bonuses X's provides.
Low crit rates: My crit rate with 4 crit merited is ~7.5% once SA/TA is removed.
I'm not sure if this was calced above at that rate, but your crit rate varies on enemies, so while some it could be stronger, some it could be worse.



In the end, with the playstyle that most agree to bring out the most damage(solo ws, SA and TA, unless they happen to line up) Blau/SK produces enough tp to surpass X's.
My last party I averaged ~680 damage per solo WS using this setup, a BRD using 1 minuet, and Crab Sushi. No Dia was cast on enemies. I made sure to use the THF section of kparser to check only solo WS, and removed those that were too high and had to be a misparsed SA or TAWS(I only used 1 TAWS that party anyway). So 10-13 WS(lowering the lower amount by alot just to give X's that extra advantage for overtp, it won't really lower it that much) should be ~7000-9000 damage. It really isn't close enough, especially since I know I will miss a great number of SA and TA, more than I'll over tp or get feather tickled, unless I get a perfect party where everyone always sits to one side and I can line up perfectly even when blinking gear(I've missed several TA just because it took to long for my char to reappear and I couldn't see where I was).

I don't really agree with the people who say the math isn't clear enough to make a judgment. It's the same deal with people who oppose Hagun. If the difference is a clear difference like in this and Hagun's case, but your results are drastically different, it's probably because you're doing it wrong(for instance, hagun pulls further away when you WS every 100 tp, and use a 6-hit, as well as using med on the dot and having it merited. If you don't use it that way, ofcourse Onimaru can pull ahead).

Finally, as Mel pointed out, there's the difficulty in getting a weapon that will generally be outperformed in merits, may be better in other places. Unless you enjoy it, don't bother killing yourself over getting it. If you have it, it isn't a crap dagger. However, you may want to reevaluate where you use it. You can be stubborn and keep using it because of the work if you like. It won't hurt you. However, don't try to justify and say you do better damage with it when you don't.

Are you getting the 14% crit from something like this or from parses?

I see the link Veggeto. I'm not surprised they found something to criticize me on. Actually the point


Is true. If normal pDIF is 1.0 then 2.0 would be a normal crit and using a base damage weapon of 40

40 x 2.0 == 80
40 x 2.3 == 92
44 x 2.0 == 88

so in the case of uncapped attack yeah, there's gonna be a bit of change. I would have had to consider pDIF after all, as is the case with everything. But it still doesn't change the overall trend by THAT much. In my OP I gave X's a 20% critical rate, which it usually isn't. I also accounted for a much weaker than average weaponskill build than most people should have. Considering the numbers deadgye gave in an actual scenario the trend still favors the blau/sirocco.



1/3 to 1/2 the benefit also isn't THAT big a change when you consider the volume of disparity in the calculated results. They knock my math because I'm posting on alla, but they obviously know nothing about me (or else they'd know I'm actually a woman, and wouldn't be addressing me as "he").

The point I wanted to make was that the belief that x's is the best dagger to pair with blau (barring relic) stems from the dagger update over 2 years ago, and I still haven't heard of any other people running actual numbers. If my math is really THAT far off and lolworthy then they're welcome to run the numbers themselves and see for themselves which combo comes out on top. I'm not out to start any cross forum wars by running my numbers, I'm just searching for the better scenarios because I love the job. I don't care about being called an allatard, nor having my math laughed at. It's still pretty close and the trend shows a significant difference in potential, enough that I'm pretty sure the verdict stands.

Again, I offer them to run the numbers themselves and give a better representation, but discrediting what I showed without knowing the first thing about me and assuming it's totally wrong because of the place it's posted on is foolish. I'm a very good thief, and I understand enough to make logical conclusions given the information at hand. If they can run math that shows contrary to my OP I'll accept that, I am human and capable of error after all. But if they tl;dr and just discard my input and throw it to the wayside without showing their own figures it doesn't help the discussion at hand, and barring some massive upset of what I calculated can be found I don't think the verdict will change at all.

Edited, Feb 15th 2009 6:52pm by Melphina

Edited, Feb 15th 2009 7:53pm by Veggeto

I just read that entire thread on BG and when it comes down to actually giving advice on anything it just seems all they can ever resort to is bashing OP or someone/something else in the thread. The first response is classic BG @#%^.

Yes I think there are plenty of "Allatards" but when I have any type of question or topic I think is worth trying to discuss I come here because posters like Melphina, LolGaxe, Milich to name a few, will actually give solid advice on what they truly believe is the right answers to the questions given.

Good work Melphina. We all appreciate you here.

LOL I just checked the BG thread and now they're making a pointless argument on whether or not it's worth it to always stack sa and ta with weaponskill or just fire the ability off ASAP. Thorny made the argument that fTP amplifies the difference in a stacked weaponskill and that you will ALWAYS be stacking sa and ta weaponskill, but Mel just accounted for the ftp bonus in her above post too. I wonder how many of those guys are actually gonna check the posts just made here or accept Thornys info as truth.

Either way, it's funny as hell to see BG get sparked like that over something posted here, because considering that all of them know everything there is to know, they sure as hell do argue a lot about the stuff that's already known as "correct". BG is no different than alla, and as much as they like to think so they don't all know as much as they think they do, they just have more people with elitist attitudes. Really they're no different than us though. Dare I say lolbg or at least, some of their posters who believe they are gods ultimate gift to the world?

I disagree.

This is why i personally prefer to work in % increases than Xdamage/hour increases. The results are more or less the same but doesnt give the wiggle room for people to attack the numbers because its "unrealistic" for a party to function that way. Or otherwise try to poke holes in it because they arent "real" numbers you would expect to see. (although the results are the same as working with %)

So in another light (and i realize this is treading on dedhorse teritory and is a slightly simplified version in some ways. But primarily aimed at people that attack the Xdamage per hour needlessly)
_____________________________
TP
Blau/Sirocco is 4.7TP for 131.2 delay (9.4 for 262.4)
X's/Blau is 4.9tp for 151.6 delay(9.8 for 303.2)
*with Suppa/Rajas/Brutal


B/S=2.15tp/sec
X/B=1.94tp/sec

Blau/Sirocco gains TP 11% faster than X's/Blau. If you WS exactly at 100tp, 110tp, 200tp, or 270tp it doesnt matter. You will get to that TP value on average 11% faster. So regardless of your personal playstyle, you will still get to WS 11% more often.

There is no question of "well wasted TP isnt accounted for" etc because the combo itself gains TP ~11% faster. Therefore over ANY stretch of time, you will ultimately gain 11% more TP for you to use however you want. So long as you use the same playstyle regarding TP with either combo Sirocco will WS 11% more over time. Unless you intentionally hold TP with Sirocco and let loose with X's which would be an unfair comparison anyway.
_________________________
Similarly DPS can be done the same way.(no Fstr included)

B/S is d33+d26 with 262.4 delay puts the combo at 13.5dps
X/B is 35+33 with 303.2 delay puts the combo at 13.28
Puts sirocco at a somewhat minor ~1.6% increase in actual DoT.

However once you toss in any +Fstr, ANY wind damage (even the 0-3 on colibri) etc will widen this gap very quickly.
__________________________
Crits (giving a VERY generous 20% rate and a genrous 1.0 pdif for X's)
would make X's crits be 2.2x normal melee, while B/S is onle 2.0.

Crits in general (with 20% rate) would raise up the DPS from the current numbers with an extra 22% and 20% respectively.

B/S=16.2 now
X/B=16.2 now.
0% increase over the other

For comparison sake, heres the same calc with a 1.5 pdif and 12% crit rate (more realistic. Standard brd party). X Crits would be 1.83x normal damage and B/S 1.66x normal melee damage. Crits averaged over a 12% proc with the lower increases gives you only 7.9% for B/S total DPS bonus, X's/B gets 9.9% bonus.

B/S=14.57
X/B=14.59
Now a 1.36% lead for X's.

So after crits are accounted for for TPing, the DPS is very close, but this is still without any say from Fstr or wind damage. I would be completely shocked if Fstr and wind damage cant up your DPS by 1.3% in siroccos favor. Consider that a blau/sir (D33+26) at 1.5 Pdif and piercing bonus is about 110 damage cmobined. If sirocco needs only proc for an avg of 1.4 damage to make up the DPS difference for X's. Add Fstr, lower Pdif, less resistant mobs, non piercing mobs X's will fall behind very quickly.
_______________
WS damage (per WS)
X's needs to make up 11% more WS damage from blau sirocco. All its got is higher base damage on WS and SA/TA crit bonus to work with.

Using Melph's WS numbers


Xs/B will get +12 base damage over B/S.

B/S=450
X/B=462
2.6% increase for Xs on WS damage assuming a very poor WS set which is in X's favor. But a far cry from countering the 11% increased WS rate for Blau/Sirocco.
_______________________
SATA
Xs gets +1 base damage and 10% bonus over blau. For my SA/TA sets (mithra with 80+47 dex, 76+38*1.15 from AF) with blau base damage and capped Fstr gives me 170 base D for SA. X's would get +1 for weapon D and +1 for higher Fstr cap.

TA for me is 164 and a variable amount of Fstr as the heca is missing. Basically almost identical to my 170 for SA, but X;s wont hit capped Fstr. So using 170 vs 171.

SA=170 vs 172+10%=189=11% increase.
TA=170 vs 171+10%=188=10.5% increase.

About as expected SA/TA get a smidge over 10% bonus due to base damage and potentially making use of higher Fstr cap.
_______________________________

DoT: is virutally equal (in scenario favoring X's by ignoring Fstr and Wind damage)
SA/TA: gains ~10.5-11% bonus for X's
WS damage: X's 2.6%
TP gain: ~11% in Sirocco's favor.

Apply these to your personal SATA/DOT/WS damage % split. A fairly general split is 40% WS, 20% SATA, 40% DoT.

DOT: X's is AT BEST equal in DoT to B/S in a scenario favoring X's. but once wind damage, Fstr are tallied, It would get the edge easily there.

WS:Blau/Sirocco stomps all over it with 11% higher TP gain rate and looms over the 2.6% more WS damage on individual WS(again favoring X's).

SATA: the saving grace of X's. a solid 10-11% bonus here. But it makes up the smallest section of our total damage and thus is overshadowed by the WS gain by itself, and likely moreso once DOT is considered more realistically favoring Sirocco. And final nail in the coffin is the ability to miss SA/TA in a merit party despite our best efforts. We WILL miss SA/TA on occasion which shoots down X's biggest gain.

Oh and of course Haste helps to kill X's more. It increases DoT and TP gain exponentially while SA/TA are stuck on their timers. Haste favors siroccos strong points and leans damage away from static timed bonuses like SATA/Jumps/Meditate etc. Unless you TP in a Dex build (more crits), terrible Pdif(making crits more powerful), zero haste (favoring SA/TA damage over DPS+WS)and only WS with SATASB once a minute (nulifying TP gain bonus and increasing X's bonus to include WS) Then X's can handily win. But, then your doing it VERY wrong. However, aside from the dex gear, that sounds more like an HNM strat. And has already been said, X's excels at tough mobs.
______________________________________
The end

The trouble is no matter how you spin it, only in the MOST IDEAL circumstances favoring X's (which include sucking with terrible WS gear, low haste TP builds, Not splitting SA/TA/WS, sitting on TP etc) X's can MATCH sirocco.

No one is saying X's is a bad dagger, but the speed of blau/sirocco wins again. It rivals the DPS of any combo we know of and once Fstr and wind damage are in it stomps all over any competing combo DPS. The TP gain is just off the charts and has been the deciding factor in EVERY Blau/Sirocco VS XX/XX combo we have ever run across.

Sure you can argue about how you personally disengage after every mob, Stack SASB and use Evisceration with X's, but your still doingitwrong. Disengaging constantly slows down exp. Using worse WS and stacking unnecisarily still gimps you and your party. Gimping down a playstyle to cater to X's is still worse than maxing damage on Blau/sirocco. Over time, Blau/Sirocco is the highest DoT combo sans relic we have. Period. (once accounting for Wind and Fstr). It gains TP faster than ANY respectable combo. Add those together and Daggers like Pharpe/X's/Azoth just lose out on every front. Better DoT and VERY high TP gain just kills everything.

There is no arguing that. Arguing that we "waste" tp doesnt matter because if you waste tp you waste it on X's/Azoth/Pharpe too. But you still gain it faster with Sirocco. If you avg WS at 110 TP instead of 100 fine. In the time it takes you to gain 1100 TP for 10 WS, Sirocco just did it 11% faster. You wanna save 200TP? OK sirocco will STILL get to 200 faster than anything. TP gain scales no matter how wasteful and inefficient you are. Ignoring the TP gain only says that you hold TP using sirocco and dont hold it using other combos which is retarded.

Edited, Feb 16th 2009 5:44pm by Banalaty

From now on I'm just throwing all DoT calculations out the window. Math can be used to prove which SA gearset is better than the other, but I still think it can't be used to tell us what setup gives the better DoT. Especially when you try to factor in things like crit rate, solo SA usage, solo TA usage, WS usage, SAWS usage, TAWS usage, etc. Even percentages can go astray with DoT, the more you fight with tp>100 the more X/blau pulls ahead of Blau/Sirocco because the 7damage 16 attack 5 acc loss hurts blau/sirocco more than X/blau and that's just an example of something you can't factor in.

It's an interesting read for me. If you don't like the way I post, then simply ignore than and don't reply. I don't force you to respond.

It isn't bad at all. Especially on several of the events you mentioned:
Kited mobs or things like Kirin, though, personally, I'd think it's better to just go /WAR or /DRK, then the combo is moot. You'd wear X's because the WS damage will be higher with SA or TA.


No, because the Blau/Skukri shines mostly in TP gain, whereas X's shines in higher base damage and crit bonuses. It depends on playstyle, but I separate my WS from SATA and use DE. That makes the crit bonus useless. 5 of the 6 hits will only be from mainhand, so it comes down to X's having +1 base damage and +1 fSTR cap on WS vs Blau. Since blau makes more tp, changes in WS damage affect it's output more than X's in the fight, if you play like me.

Like others said, if you stack most of WS, don't use DE but EV or Mandalic Stab or something of the sort, and have a great party where you can land every SA and TA(I haven't had one yet) then X's can definitely take the lead. For me anyway, I doubt that type of circumstances will be readily available anytime soon.

More like ignore everything and not declare a winner at all since doing calculations based on assumptions(play style, maximum realistic performance, etc) is silly. Sure if we use pure math then blau/sirocco has the highest potential on lolibri, but it is theoretically impossible to hit that potential. It's not a matter of bettering yourself to meet that potential, it's a matter of factoring in human error and the other members of your party; something that math just can't do. There's never been a way to determine a winner in a DoT race when you had to factor in other things besides pure DoT. If you're comparing DoT to DoT you're fine, if you're comparing SA to SA you're fine, it's when you try to combine comparing DOT+SA+WS to DOT+SA+WS then everything becomes screwy.

Here's my objection:

If you are going to take the position of "math can't account for human error," then you'd better not point at math to try to win future points.

It's kind of disingenuous to loyally rely on math right up until the point that it says something that you don't like.

As chanchan has said above me, and I have said before, I try not to do math like this because it doesn't work. When I use math to compare X's knife to Blau dolch on SA damage, it works. When I use math to compare X's knife to Blau dolch on TA damage, it works. When Banalaty uses math to compare the TP gain of X's to Blau it works. When I did the math to find out how much faster blau/sirocco /nin gains tp than blau /war, it worked.

Those are all singular comparisons. They are all perfectly acceptable. It's when you start to compare two or more things at once by attempting to stick them into a realistic example of overall DoT that things get screwy. I apparently forgot this when I attempted to do the math at the top of this page. I knew there was a reason I was avoiding this thread for a while, but I guess I eventually forgot what it was.

What we can do is the math to see how much X's outdamages Blau on SA in multiple conditions, the same for TA, the same for DoT%, the same for TP gain%, the same for SAWS, the same for TAWS, the same for soloWS, multiple conditions for everything and we can see what does better in what. What we cannot do is try to combine all these situations hypothetically to determine who the overall winner is. Something like that would require a lot of work, not something easily done like when I tested if homam corazza was actually broken.

(double post)

Edited, Feb 20th 2009 1:23am by Lobivopis

This is a farce, no one has been calculating the TP correctly in this thread.

I think we can all agree on 9.4 and 9.8 per round. Good.

I'd hope we can all agree if you're using DE you should add about 4 tp onto the first towards the next WS.

So after 10 rounds (assuming they all land, no extra attacks):
X/B: 98 tp
B/S: 94 tp.

Remember that 4 tp?
XB: 102 BS: 98

Lets go 1 more round:
XB: 13.8 BS: 107.4

Fact: XB takes 10 successful rounds to get 102 tp. BS takes 11 successful founds to get 108 tp. XB uses tp more effiently. (this does not mean it gains tp faster or is the better combo, but it does mean the numbers are closer than anyone here (seems) to think).

finally got to the bottom of this thread but thx so much Melphina for some good info. Now i'm less sad about losing 1/2 of my static on getting this knife (although i;ll still try, just not as gung-ho for something that wasn't as good as being the 'no relic combo' i had hoped for)

I currently have a blau and a sirocco offhand and now im glad that im doing it right for the most part (read the part about situational use for X's... SB and stuff XD)

thanks again for all the hard work and keep it up :D