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If they're anything like wyverns, they have medium base damage, but low attack. I notice my wyvern does about half the damage of me with thalassocrat (so, about 150~) on weak junk in CN vs. 30-40ish on merit mobs.

No idea if that's relevant or not, but it's an observation of mine.

Would you be willing to elaborate on this more, either here or in PMs?

I've always believed that everything follows the same damage function when it comes to melee attacks, unless there is specific NM properties that are unique (of which I have no specific examples) to that NM.

I'd like to know your reasoning in more detail, if you wouldn't mind.

I don't know how damage works, but avatars tend to cap about 100 below carrie on really weak mobs. Does it give any indication on how much lower the base damage is?

It's acc/eva, not acc/attk. Unless you mean indirectly mean Ecliptic Growl, and I hope you don't...

This is for Automatons specifically. I've also noticed it occuring with wyverns and pets, but summons I have no experiences/data of my own to back that sort of claim.

It's most obvious when you are fighting something like an EM steelshell that uses scissor guard. For the master, your cRatio will take an enormous dive, and you'll be struggling to hit above single digits without buffs. The automaton however, will only suffer a small hit to it's DoT, even without attack based attachments or fire maneuvers. The problem associated with this is that you risk losing hate to your automaton, which helps make the problem even more drastically noticeable.

If you think about it, soulsoother only has 240 melee skill with full merits, so 240 attack. 67 STR is another 33 attack. Full optimization is +25% attack, so you should expect it to have about 351 attack total. Not much more than a decently geared PUP without buffs. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Doesn't really help that pet stats are even more ambiguous when player stats are bad enough. The same thing applies to higher level targets like kirin, jailers, etc. It's remarkably hard for valoredge to hit for single digits on nearly ANY target, and that's with no buffs.

It could be that it just naturally has very high base damage (maybe 120-150 DMG weapon for VE at 75 and 360 delay, but not enough attack to exploit 20-25 DPS) that is skewing my perception of damage at low cRatio values. That doesn't quite seem to fit accurately though, as you would imagine your damage per hit would take a more significant decrease than it appears to. If I find some time tonight I'll tackle some level -1 bunnies on PUP75 and attempt to break down what VE's base DMG is at 75. It's one of many things I've meant to do, but haven't had the time for lately.





tl;dr: You can follow changes in damage via changes in attack or target defense for PCs quite easily with a basic understanding of cRatio and pDIF. That doesn't seem as applicable for automatons/wyverns/pets as it should be. Avatars I'm simply unsure of; I'm not a SMN.

A while back I remember someone mentioning Avatar melee damage being nerfed on TW mobs. Is this true? If so, what was melee damage like before the change? I'm under the impression that this didn't apply to BPs, which is why I've seen SMNs crank out several thousand damage BPs on TW mobs with ease.





Edited, Jun 3rd 2009 7:32pm by bsphil

So was base damage lowered then entirely? Just affected physical BPs but not melee? Does that nerf disappear as you fight EM+ stuff?

I don't particularly see the point in nerfing something like this, it's not like it costs less MP to obliterate a TW mob. I don't know enough about it though so I'm struggling to put together the pieces on what happened.



Edited, Jun 4th 2009 10:47am by bsphil

Someone once told me that pets (such as charmed monsters) don't suffer level correction penalties like we do, but I don't know how valid that claim is.

I do believe that would probably explain the difference though, but something like that is hard to show I'd imagine.

I had a lesser colibri (level 63-65) hitting Dea (Tier 3 ZNM Wivre, much higher level) pretty consistently for ~45-50 damage a hit I believe. Considering Dea is most likely at least level 80 that's kind of a big level difference.

Also in regards to that, Flamingos perform decently on gods in sky...

Anyone else ever hear anything about level correction and pets?

Still haven't had a good time to parse (queue regular whining about how nobody ever wants a SMN for anything on Phoenix server), but I did meripo some on my COR with filters off and noticed melee are less overpowered than expected.

SAM and WAR party members doing about 800-1.2k WSes, while I was hoovering around 700 on COR. I really expected those "super DDs" to be a bit further away from my COR's slugshots. We were doing mamools, but since both I and them were on the same mobs, it shouldn't matter too much.

The big difference of course is when they are hitting for 80-130 per swing, while I'm m.kris-ing away for 8 damage per swing. Kind of made me feel sorry for them. Their WS is just like a combined 5 attacks, while mine is like 100 combined attacks. It feels so much more rewarding on my end to WS and get a huge spike, than it seems to be for them.

Was double marching for TP burn though, so I bet stacking minuets instead would make a larger difference on WSes if you went all out power. I'm pretty sure they were eating food, but not sure if they were chicken like me and ate sushi or if they ate meat.

Fun eyeballing anyway. I feel much less gimp on SMN now that I know I'd do roughly the same damage on mamool as a SAM or WAR, just whiff more often and be generally slower.

Well, not to mention names (Acturus!), some keep insisting upping the damage is the most important part with the job. While not completely wrong, I think you are more right about speed being the real issue. (And potency on wards)

Myopia doesn't become you, Mellowy. You conveniently have forgetten that I leveled MNK. I've lived and breathed DoT since before you started complaining about how unfair it was to be a SMN at 75.

The goal I want is an over all DoT increase, which was birthed by wanting an Accuracy and Attack increase incrementally as the Summoner levels (in mirror of the existing T1 merits), and has become a much more robust Avatar Affinity trait that encompasses an accuracy/M.Acc., attack/M.Att., and delay modification.

I don't think that "upping the damage is the most important part with the job." I think a better return for my investment in Perpetuation Cost is the last necessary piece in rounding out today's Summoner.

I don't care if you channel your stupidity at me, Mellowy, just make sure you're not misquoting me.

Selective memories you know. I actually firmly remember the day I told you that delay reduction or haste on pets were vastly more important than damage increase and accuracy. I'd like to think of myself as the person who channeled enough stupidity into you to evolve your idea into including delay modification.

I also remember telling you that I too leveled MNK, I guess I just forgot about it since it didn't add anything to the discussion.

Something I do remember clearly though, is that the quote actually wasn't referring to you, but other people. I just threw in your name as a joke to provoke you into some good comeback.

I know, it is pretty annoying when people claim you say something when you really don't. Almost impossible not to reply. I'm sorry but I was tired and felt like teasing you. I hope you can forgive me.