Evis MusingsFollow

So while i was spamming my WS for my fusetto i was toying around with evis/de a lot and realized Evis isnt doing as poorly as i expected (eyeballed i know, dont shoot me!). So i was thinkin about it and realized something thats rather obvious but i didnt think about before.

Higher damage daggers close the gap between evis/DE.

The str DE has over Evis is the 40% chr mod and a piddly bonus to the 1st hit FTP. As a level 80 our stats have only increased marginally, and the dex obviously helps both the same in net damage (but evis more as a % boost also closing the gap a TINY bit). This leaves some 2 chr boost for DE compared to D38+ daggers we are all using now. Its rather common sense once i thought about it. With low damage weapons, stat mods make up a larger part of your WS damage. This favored DE with high mods and hurt evis by comparison. Now we are rapidly boosting up our weapon base D without much if any boost to our mods so the base damage ratio of our WS is skyrocketing.

The gap is closing between DE and Evis as we get better weapons but our stats creep along. Unless we start getting some crayzee dex+chr combo gear, DE wont be gaining as much as evis considering our weapon damage will rise faster than our stats.

For example, using my current lv 80 stats/gear:
DE wsc=50
EV wsc=34

With old trusty blau D33:
DE=50+33=83
Ev=34+33=67

DE has a 24% damage bonus. THis is why you needed a LOT of crit damage for Evis to keep up.

Using A D39 kartika for example:
DE=89
EV=73

Now DE only has a 22% boost.

For some more example #s, in the 1st example at 1.0 pdif, you need a 24% crit rate for Evi to match DE, higher if Pdif is high, lower if Pdif is lower. In the second you only need a 22% crit rate at 1.0 to match. In the future we may be pummeling things at level 99 with D50+ daggers or something. If were using D50 daggers with more dex gear available but minimal boost to chr gear Evis may only need ~17ish crit rate to keep up which will basically mean Evis>DE.

This is excluding our current crit damage trait, future boosts to that trait, new and future +crit damage gear, potential future crit RATE gear etc. When you start adding up the higher base damage and new crit damage/rate traits/gear I have no doubt Evis will overtake DE in the future for general use (it may have already, i havent run any serious #s on it).

I dont know why i didnt consider this before. I am always thinking about base damage vs wsc relationship, but its centered around drg and multi hit lances (love halberd and now Magian OAT). Frequency vs damage and how wsc can make a lower damage multi hit weapon stay competative if it has high wsc (like drakes/wheeling spam on drg) but not so much on lower wsc WS (the same OAT setups dont work as well using penta). But i just never put 2+2 together and applied this logic to thf with Evis/DE and new higher damage weapons. /shrug.
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Anyway, ramblings aside, the higher our weapon damage goes, the more dex we get (looking at you thunder trials!), the more str we get, or any other direct bonus to WS base damage that applies to both DE+Evis will close the gap between them. Then crit damage/rate gear/traits will obviously push Evis mcuh higher. The ONLY way to widen that gap is to add lots of chr on DE. As that is highly unlikely, its only a matter of time until Evis edges out DE if it hasnt happened already.

Edited, Jul 21st 2010 11:21am by Banalaty

I am guessing that as the WS Fussetto progresses, it seems it could possibly move to Dancing Edge 10%, Sharkbite 10%, etc, which would of course add another factor for us to consider. I would also be willing to bet, that somewhere between 80-99, there is going to be another multi-hit WS that trumps both DE and EV. It would be odd to progress 20+ levels without getting another multi-hitter, which again will further dilute things. If the new WS is noticeably superior, not much to think about. I can see us getting a new WS, and the lvl 99 WS Fussetto providing 10-15% to that WS.

Nice comparison and thought though.

I though about Fstr, but just left it alone since it was mostly an illustration to point out how the trend works to people without a perfect damage formula understanding, not so much a final "You need X dex on Y mob with Z buffs to use evis stacked/unstacked/feinted/situational blabber!". I figured the regulars/mathheads would be able to figure out the nuances :P (and i did mention str as a factor at the bottom)

I fully agree there are lmitations in gear balancing, but I imagine our gear will only be able to improve with new options. If your a mithra with a half decent dex build you have the capability to hit ddex on a LOT of mobs. iirc my personal dex build (which is by no means avg joe) is 82+56=138 meaning i can basically cap Ddex on any oldschool exp style mob in the game (agi 88 or less) with the (estimated from evis thread) ~10% boost on top of 24% cap should get a ~34% crit rate. Though it is probably around ~125ish for my more acc oriented solo DE/evis build. (though i lack skadi body which would replace heca in the acc build and bump that dex back up significantly)

However, also as a mithra I have low chr and monster dex. For an elvaan, DE should have a larger lead due to lower dex wsc on evis, high chr wsc for DE, and also secondary effect of lower crit rate due to lower dex.

But once you start adding in our crit damage bonus, and look farther down the road to future high dex gear (+11 dex/agi, 0chr body nommnom) and unreleased future gear and expected crit bonus trait boosts and higher damage weapons, Evis is going to be gaining a lot of ground. I am curious about how the fusetto will develop. I currently have the STP fusetto and that path is rather simple to predict. +damage, -delay, +stp. But the WS damage cna go a few different ways. Either split up into job specific ones (dont forget its Brd/Dnc/Thf and Brd cant use DE/SB/, and Dnc cant use MS) and boost WS to that specific job. Mordant ryme(brd), Mandalic stab(thf) etc. Or it could just boost Evis more and more. Or it could just upgrade to "all" WS+ X%. Or it could branch off to something else entirely. Who knows. Im excited to see where fusetto goes (even if i have to restart one for teh evis path :P)

I wouldnt mind if Evis takes centerstage. It looks badass and has awesome SC properties :P But as with everything were talking about lately, Im just curious to see how things will end up after the changes. New trials, new gear, new WS, new JAs/Traits, new mobs, new events. FFXI doesnt seem so static anymore. Lots of exciting things happening ^_^

Edited, Jul 21st 2010 2:17pm by Banalaty