Dancing Edge is still King over Evisceration outside abysseaFollow

It's been quite a while since I've created a new thread on the thf boards and even longer since I've done a mathy post, but today I decided to try something new out and solo some dreamlands dynamis mobs. After doing my homework to find statue locations and proc conditions I headed out to valkurm and entered with subjob unrestricted just to mess around. I chose to do the "ws proc" line so once I had my TE's down I started farming, and during the goobbue period I was alternating between various ws just for the hell of it when I began to notice something unexpected. My eviscerations were doing pretty standard but to my surprise my dancing edges were kicking some serious ASS out there (I have my skadi's cuirie in storage and was using the menue to dancing edge with no gear swaps). We've been telling people that evisceration >>> dancing edge no matter where you are because of our crit job trait bonus and gear such as lokis and etc; stating that it completely outmatched the 40% charisma secondary mod, but I wasn't seeing this in practice. Curious about this I loaded up Kparser and recreated a dancing edge gear swap and collected some data. The results are below



NOTES: In order to keep this sample as pure as possible I removed my ziskas and added my raiders boomerang, and weaponskilled at 50% or higher so that none of my weaponskills would deliver a finishing blow and get their swings cut short. In order to do this I was juggling two mobs at once most of the time, and one of my target swaps failed and I did finish off a mob at ~~ 30% with evisceration by mistake once, so I will be omitting that weaponskill from my analysis. All mobs were Nightmare Goobbues, and I paid close attention to keep food up 100% of the time (I was eating red curry buns and I consumed a second food within 10 seconds of my original wearing off). I never used sneak attack or assassin's charge at any point

I'm also going to post my weaponskill set with relevant stats



722 attack, 183 dexterity, 133 strength, 63 charisma. Also while it's not visible my hecatomb subligar +1 is augmented with critical hit rate + 3% and you're all familiar with Loki's Khaftan by now so the crits get a 13% damage boost via lokis + trait.

I used this weaponskill set universally between dancing edge and evisceration. There were no alterations for either weaponskill.
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Time for Analysis
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Basic Melee Information

My accuracy was capped at 95%, my crit rate was 28.5% which is 0.5 off from the expected 29% (20% + 5% (merits) + 4% (af3 +2 pants) == 29%). My weapons were Twashtar (lvl 85) and Flame kila +3 so average base D is 45 + fSTR which caps at 14. I have a feeling my strength was capped or damn close, so average base D is probably around 57-59. My average melee damage was 101 and my average crit was 169.5 which supports this. My average pDIF appears to be approximately 1.75-1.8 which is about expected since these mobs have the same stats they did at lvl 75, and my melee attack was 659.

Dancing Edge

Out of 23 weaponskills my low was 1,255, high was 2166, average was 1707.

Evisceration

Out of 21 weaponskills my low was 1145, my high was 1,950, and my average was 1615 (34,818 - 897 == 33921; and 33921/21 == 1615. This removes the evisceration that got a killing blow from the equation)

On average dancing edge was 100 points of damage stronger than evisceration
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Mathy McMathy Mathpants Analysis

This may or may not hold true for mobs with higher defense values (voidwatch), but if your pDIF is remotely positive (as it should be outside abyssea or voidwatch) it looks like dancing edge is STILL just as powerful as evisceration. We underestimated 20 levels worth of charisma gains. Further thoughts below

At 75 my blau dolch was D 33 (ftr cap 12), my dex was 87, chr was 47, my ws set had about 51 dex and 8 chr, so the charisma mod increased my base D by approximately 20% at lvl 75, raising it from approximately 80 D to 103 D. That was why dancing edge matched up with evisceration so well. My lvl 95 stats are weapon D 45,(fSTR cap 14), 107 base dex, 63 chr, + 86 dex and + 0 chr (gear). My charisma went up by 16 since lvl 75 which is a slightly higher point per level increase(47/75 == 0.626 points of chr per level, whereas 63/95 == 0.663 points of chr per level). Charisma still increases base weapon D by approximately 20% at lvl 95... the exact same as it did 20 levels ago, boosting base D from 104 to 127. The fundamental differences between these two weaponskills are almost identical to their lvl 75 counterpart relationships. Its worth noting that the general rule of thumb mages follow regarding the magic attack bonus formula of 2 int >> 1 Mab >>> 1 Int has also remained consistently accurate at level 95 (higher spell base D is a large reason why).

Without RR/GH/SS atmas evisceration isn't as solidly ahead of DE outside of abyssea as we have been saying for the past half a year. Part of this is because we can raise our attack to more profound average pDIF levels over the older mob sets than we used, and an equal part of it is because despite the job trait bonuses evisceration is severely limited by its critical hit rate outside of abyssea. My heca subligar is augmented with +3 crit hit rate, so I'm still stuck at 28% crit hit rate without my atmas. Secondary mods at 95 look like this

My current Dancing Edge Base D breakdown
floor (floor(183 x 0.3) + (63 x 0.4) x 0.85) == 68
45 (D) + 14 (fStr) 68 (wsc) == 127 base D

My current Evisceration Base D Breakdown
floor (floor(183 x 0.3) + x 0.85) == 45
45 (D)+ 14 (fStr) + 45 (wsc) == 104 base D

Now considering that my average pDIF is solidly up there even with /nin sub at approximately 1.75 average pDIF

Average Dancing Edge damage per swing at 1.75 pDIF
127 x 1.75 == 222 damage per hit

Average NON crit Evisceration sweing at 1.75 pDIF
104 x 1.75 == 182 damage per hit

Average Eviceration Critical at 1.75 pDIF with trait + Lokis bonus applied

104 x 2.75 x 1.13 == 323 damage per critical

DE averages about 40 damage/swing more per non crit, whereas evisc averages about 100 damage higher per crit/swing, however evisceration's critical hit rate is stuck at 28% making it weaker than Dancing Edge's overall performance.
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Conclusion

Dancing Edge has retained the same relative strength to evisceration as it had outside abyssea at 75 over the past 20 levels in the same way the magic attack gearing general rule of thumb (2 int > 1 MaB > 1 Int) is also still true at 95. Abyssea BROKE evisceration with a symbism between a lot more crits at a lot higher strength each. However with the standard crit rate outside abyssea and a 1.13 job trait + Loki's bonus evisceration doesn't receive nearly as much leverage over DE's charisma mod as we gave it credit for. Dancing Edge is still very much a contender outside abyssea. If you don't believe me I invite you to try it out for yourself and see. Run your own parses and I'll let you be the judge

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Final Gear Note -- Rancor Collar and Skadi's Cuirie + Airy Ring --

My tonberry hate isn't high enough to cap out rancor collars effects, as such I've been using love torque/agagysea collar. However even if I did have its effects fully unlocked I'm confident nothing would have changed. To use the rancor collar I would be giving up the love torque, losing 7 attack and 5 dex. 5% crit rate still takes the lead, but if I am going to consider this piece I also have to consider another potential gear swap I wasn't using... my skadi's cuirie. My samples were done with neither my cuirie NOR a rancor collar, and skadi's cuirie is a stronger DE piece than Loki's kaftan is. Furthermore I don't own an airy ring anymore but that's yet another feather in Dancing Edge's cap. If I was to compare DE with skadi's + love torque + airy's ring versus Evisc with Lokis + rancor I have no doubt DE would still win. This also ignores the dexterity bonus love torque benefits sneak attack with, and while all my weaponskills were solo we DO stack them quite often (more so now than ever thanks to bully). Rancor collar still benefits SA evisc more but its just another factor that affects the overall relationship between the two weaponskills.

TL;DR version: Nothing has changed. Dancing Edge is just as strong relative to evisceration outside abyseea now as it was at lvl 75. So long as your average pDIF isn't in the dumpster (which it shouldn't be if you're using a multi hit weaponskill... ManStab/Shark Bite etc still hold a place on massive defense HNM) evisceration still doesn't measure up to it without the power of atma.

Edited, Nov 18th 2011 6:54pm by Melphina

It all looks solid. The numbers all work out pretty well and should be pretty widely applicable. However, there are a few variables that should probably be considered.

1: Though limited, the evis crit rate tests a few years ago (tentatively) showed roughly ~10% crit rate bonus at 100TP. (i dont remember what the margin of error worked out to be). Obviously that doesnt change the parser, but would affect our theory craft if we try to figure out at what point one passes the other, if ever.

2: The option to offhand TP+100 fusetto. I tend to lean on that offhand as a staple for rudras storm. This would favor Evis in most cases(TP crit rate bonus over just DE TP acc bonus). This is a little less common as it requires a specific, and rarely made dagger, but still notable.

This is probably a pretty good juncture to revisit evis crit rate tests. With a TP bonus offhand, it would be MUCH easier to test evis crit rate at 200TP and finally get some real numbers to stick on aa crit rate growth with more TP.

We probably should have looked at DE again when they did that stat growth adjustment that made our strongest stats grow more slowly and our weakest stats gain more as we leveled a while back, but better late than never.

I am really curious how much 'evis favoring stuff' you need before it jumps up. I tend to use TP100 offhand, recently capped my tonberry hate, have crit rate heca sub+1 etc. Needs more tests and mathy mcmathy mathpants and we can have a really concrete idea of whate were dealing wtih :)

/thumbs up

Is this for the lv 99 trial? I havent seen anything on those yet. The lv 95 TP100 fusetto+3 is just 500 WS on beasts (over 400 damage). Not sure if im misreading you, or you mixed something up.

The 100 dice are just for the WOE path that gives the empy WS.

Edited, Nov 19th 2011 11:22am by Banalaty

Well the parse alone isnt conclusive, its just what sparked the idea. Melph did some preliminary mathy mcmath to show it has more potential than we have given it credit for. I personally used this as an excuse to update my homegrown damage SS to include crit damage boosts for evis and properly account for DA/TA with the 8hit cap that had been messing up my numbers by a fraction for ages.

With the (assumed) 10% crit rate bonus at 100 tp on evis from the testing thread, my evis gear comes to 13% crit damage and a 43% crit rate (rancor and 3% heca leg+1) it turns out that the break poit for me is at ~1.21 pdif. When over 1.21, my DE set beats my Evis set. When under 1.21, Evis beats DE. Thats actually a LOT of content. 1.21 includes all 75 content and all trash mobs and a great deal of higher stuff with a little atk buff. Heaven forbid we get DW3 and can /war at 99 ^_^ Zerk up=DE, down=evis or something fun like that :)

However, my personal gear analysis did not include the TP bonus from my fusetto+3 that I use for rudras. I have no idea how much +100 TP ups crit rate on evis as I have never seen any 200/300 tests, so the 'real' break point for my personal DE vs Evis is not truly 1.21, but somthing higher. How much i cant say until i know what +100 TP does to crit rate.

I also havent bothered to augment my heca+1 gloves yet for crit damage and only today updated my spreadsheet to accurately account for DA/TA/Crit damage boosts accurately, so i will probably check out AF3+2 vs Heca augs tomorrow in my own sets to see how aug heca compares to AF3. Then finish splicing in SA to the whole thing and tie it with a bow. I havent had this much fun checking stuff out in years ^_^

Anyway, at least i can finally accuratly compare the handful of items i hadnt before with DA/TA/Crit stuff. Time to find out if i need to go back and +1 my heca cap and aug my hands and possible future cap :P

Edited, Nov 30th 2011 12:02am by Banalaty

So to devils advocate a bit, will the new WS outshine both DE and Evis or is it too soon to tell? I've heard so many things so far (and used it myself a few times, but didn't do any extensive testing) but would like to see a final conclusion.

As breaze said, the WS are all still being tested, but so long as it doesnt have a negative atk property like some of the 2handed WS have been shown to have, it should be beating the pants off of both.

The FTP bonus applying to all hits 'seems' to only impact WS with less than 1.0 FTP on the 1st hit. I wouldnt hold my breath on that changing.

We also finally have a TAWS combo that doesnt sacrifice gear. I know my rudras are really significantly stronger using SA+Rudra since its all dex all the time. An agi WS equivalent sounds really appealing to beef up a TA+WS set. I dont know yet how it might stand up to rudra/mercy, but for everyone without relic/empy it should be really very nice at full merits.

Edit:
Ran some numbers, it does beat DE and evis.....if you dont need much acc to land hits. Our current agi gear is SEVERELY lacking in acc/atk and is basically, just raw agi. For example, my sets i tossed together for Exten has 48 acc and 51 less atk less than evis set. 58 acc and 63 less than DE set.On anything of any difficulty the 1-2 punch of bad acc/atk drops it real fast.

HOWEVER, their is some REALLY REALLY nice agi based gear coming our way next update. Check out upgraded denali stuff to see what i mean. So much new gear with ABSURD amounts of Agi+acc/atk. I think the pants had like 9 agi, 24atk or something like that. The new gear should really make this a powerhouse in the future.

Edited, Dec 6th 2011 5:35pm by Banalaty

Some of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous.

Kinda relevant, but I found that the Crit rate of Evisceration at 300TP was ~40%. I have a TP Bonus Fusetto, so I can try that the next time I get in a testing mood~! 300% was easy because I could just afk between mobs, lol.

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Talk:Evisceration

New WS Stomps DE and Evisc outside of Aby FYI...

You don't actually have to use exactly 200 TP, you just have to use 100TP or more. As long as you're just trying to nail it down within 5%, your TP doesn't really have to be precise.