Zanshin proc rate and accuracy bonusFollow

So, I've been helping test crit rates over on BG. In doing so, a crafty trick was discovered (or rediscovered) to test by using a 0 damage weapon (d1, fStr -1) against Hpemdes in sea. I decided to use this to test Zanshin, since I've been curious about exact values, and it's come up a few times in recent discussions.

The below test was completed in roughly 20 hours against a level 72 Ul'hpemde. I set up as Sam/Blm, no Brutal, no accuracy/dex gear and -acc rings, in order to minimize hit rate and ensure no other source of double attack. The results are from the Extra Attacks plugin of KParser (including an extra bit of collated info that I wrote up and will be included in the next release). I removed the DA/TA/Kicks sections as they aren't relevant to this test.

Basic Data 
 
Player               # Melee Attacks    # Melee Rounds    Attacks/Round    # Extra Attacks 
Motenten                       31100             25410                1               5690 
 
Player               # +1 Rounds   # +2 Rounds   # +3 Rounds   # +4 Rounds    # >+4 Rounds 
Motenten                    5685             1             1             0               0 
 
Player               # MultiAttack Rounds    MultiAttack %     Kills w/Min Attacks    Kills w/<Min Attacks 
Motenten                             5687          22.38 %                       0                       0 
 
 
Treat As: 
 
Multi-attacks per attack (Zanshin): 
 
Player               # Missed First Attacks    # DA w/Missed First   Possible Zanshin % 
Motenten                              12636                   5680              44.95 % 
 
Player               Acc. Rate of First Attacks    Acc. Rate of Second Attacks 
Motenten                                50.27 %                        66.67 %

25,410 melee rounds. 12,636 of those missed the first attack, so 12,774 hit, giving a 50.27% hit rate on the first round with a 0.61% confidence interval. Predicted hit rate based on acc vs evasion should be 50.0%.

There were 5680 rounds that had a DA after the first attack in the round missed (12,636) -- that is, Zanshin procs. Zanshin rate is thus 44.95% with a 0.87% confidence interval.

Of the 5680 Zanshin procs, 3787 connected (not shown, but extrapolated from the acc rate on second attacks). This gives a 66.67% hit rate with a 1.23% confidence interval.

Accuracy bonus from Zanshin is thus between 15.44% and 17.90% hit rate, or between 31 and 35 acc. 35 seems the most probable 'round' number in that range.


You'll note that there are reported to be 5690 extra attacks, whereas there were only 5680 Zanshin proc rounds. In the second row you'll see that there was one +2 round and one +3 round (ie: rounds with 3 and 4 attacks). This is obviously a parser error. The Zanshin numbers are restricted to only rounds with 2 attacks, so those mistaken multi-attack rounds won't affect the Zanshin outcome.

There are also five +1 rounds (two attacks) where the first attack was not missed. Again, parser error. The second attacks of those rounds will also have no impact on the Zanshin results because the first hit of those rounds wasn't missed.


Summary: Zanshin proc rate at level 75 is 45%, and provides a +35 acc bonus to the Zanshin hit (subject to correction based on additional sampling).

I also plotted out the effect of the extra attacks and accuracy bonus in Excel across all base hit rates. Excluding the impact of Double Attack traits and gear, Zanshin is effectively the same as a War's Double Attack trait (+10%) when base hit rate is 81%. It's the same as a +20% DA rate when base hit rate is 65%. At 90% base hit rate, Zanshin is the equivalent of +4.75% DA, and at capped accuracy it's +2.25% DA.

It is better to treat the effect of Zanshin as if it were +DA rather than +Acc, in terms of impact on damage. Zanshin does not allow your hit rate to go above the 95% hard cap, for example, although it does raise your average hit rate in any instance when you are not capped. Instead, it gives you more chances to swing, and a better chance to hit on those swings.


Extra trivia: The maximum number of extra hits (not just swings) due to Zanshin occurs at 41% base hit rate, where it reaches 155.3 out of 1000 rounds. The percentage of extra damage due to extra Zanshin hits, though, declines all the way from 20% hit rate (where Zanshin increases melee damage/TP by 67.5%) up to capped accuracy (where Zanshin gives the above mentioned +2.25%).


Edit: Bah, messed up some of the numbers. Fixing.

Edited, Nov 7th 2009 7:58pm by Kinematics

Edited, Nov 7th 2009 8:05pm by Kinematics

It doesn't change anything in terms of how you gear, no, but it does indicate that the trait itself provides a pretty respectable benefit. Also, with numbers available you can show exactly what effect Zanshin has on gear changes instead of just hand-waving it all away.

For example, how much is +5 Zanshin (such as what you'd get with maxed merits) actually worth in terms of final damage? +5 Zanshin would take it from a 45% activation rate to a 50% activation rate. I'll just plug that into my Excel spreadsheet cause I don't feel like doing the math by hand (number of additional hits can be directly correlated to total damage because they provide TP for weaponskills as well):

Hit rate    % Improvement 
60%         2.10% 
61%         2.05% 
62%         2.00% 
63%         1.95% 
64%         1.90% 
65%         1.85% 
66%         1.80% 
67%         1.75% 
68%         1.70% 
69%         1.65% 
70%         1.60% 
71%         1.55% 
72%         1.50% 
73%         1.45% 
74%         1.40% 
75%         1.35% 
76%         1.30% 
77%         1.25% 
78%         1.20% 
79%         1.13% 
80%         1.07% 
81%         1.01% 
82%         0.95% 
83%         0.89% 
84%         0.84% 
85%         0.78% 
86%         0.72% 
87%         0.67% 
88%         0.61% 
89%         0.56% 
90%         0.50% 
91%         0.45% 
92%         0.40% 
93%         0.35% 
94%         0.30% 
95%         0.24%

Hit rate is the base hit rate, not the parsed hit rate, since the parsed hit rate will be inflated by Zanshin itself.

This could also be used to calculate the benefit of Ikishoten. Ikishoten can be considered 1 extra hit's worth of TP for every Zanshin hit, so total TP percent increase is (Zanshin hits + (Zanshin + Base hits)) / (Zanshin + Base hits).

Hit rate    % Add'l TP 
80%              9.66% 
81%              9.11% 
82%              8.58% 
83%              8.05% 
84%              7.53% 
85%              7.01% 
86%              6.51% 
87%              6.00% 
88%              5.51% 
89%              5.02% 
90%              4.53% 
91%              4.06% 
92%              3.58% 
93%              3.12% 
94%              2.66% 
95%              2.20%

And then scaled relative to total weaponskill damage percentage.


Of course the regular Double Attack trait (Brutal or /war) complicates all of this, but we can at least be sure of the basic benefit.




Edited, Nov 8th 2009 1:45am by Kinematics

This needs to be added to a sticky. Was a great read, thx Kinematics.

Excellent stuff, thanks a lot for this information, Kinematics.

no, regarding meriting zanshin or buying equip for the +zanshin it has, zanshin is as crushingly lol as it's ever been. also, it's likely that zanshin can't proc on WS, but hard to tell since y/g/k are all uniformly 95% ACC anyway.

however, this *does* show that (for example) my comments in a recent thread about zanshin never changing any gear comparisons were misguided. basically, in cases where +ACC vs +something else were a close comparison, the +something else is more likely to win if you consider zanshin. i can't think of concrete examples offhand, but there's bound to be some (askar body vs NQ haub in certain situations, probably).

edit: i say that it's likely that zanshin can't proc on WS b/c i've never got 1% TP return WSs while soloing SAM/DNC. people on ffxi wiki report otherwise, but to be blunt, i don't believe them. in the thread kinematics linked however, someone suggests a (i thought) rather ingenious way of testing for zanshin on WS: WSing mandragora. you can zanshin guarded hits even if you do damage. a 2-hit gekko (maybe with wooden katana? SAM/NIN vs black mandies?) with no DA gear would be definitive proof of zanshin on WS.

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 2:13am by milich

i do, but i don't think it's too likely to see my 5% DA kicking in at the same time as my 5% miss chance. possible (inevitable, really), but if i saw it a lot, i'd think it was zanshin.

A crafty trick method of testing indeed. I wonder what sly genius 'discovered' it and thought to apply it to the crit testing in the first place.