Stringing Pummel ModsFollow

32% sounds a little odd for Square, we could probly just assume it's 30%? Very nice work, rate upz.

I thought it was 30%, but 30% makes the 217 SPs with 75 str impossible.

Just gonna point out for anyone not familiar with this guy, he's a @#%^in' boss whom I have mad love for. I can't test this sh*t myself, since 1) I don't have scorpion queen, and 2) I cba to reactivate my account right now, because I'm going on vacation in less than a week and may well be spending 2 weeks either without internet, or with a sh*tty connection.

That said, those numbers don't really sound that unlikely, based on my own experience (SP has always had a noticeably higher 100% crit rate compared to other crit ws, for me (in my case, compared to ascetic's fury, raging rush, rampage, and vorpal blade)), as well as, if you remember, stringing pummel was made and released for pup when it had C+ h2h skill, and was notoriously lacking in attack. The devs aren't the most intelligent game designers around, but they have always been good at accounting for sh*tty stuff and giving it something to at least semi-negate being sh*t some of the time, and I think Stringing Pummel was originally meant to be that sort of thing (especially when you consider that the ws it's most similar to is Hexa Strike). Even with merits/gear/berserk/food, atk at the C+ cap was always miserable, so a 50% atk boost isn't really that outrageous when you consider the circumstances (especially given it's fTP/stat mods that SE knows pup can't make much @#%^ing use of (for byrth/non pups, pup's two least available stat boosts are vit and str respectively, and SP's mods are (if you didn't read this thread) 32% STR/32% VIT). Also, when you consider the attack boost, that does help explain why SP and VS are so dead @#%^ing even for pup, because the numbers always favor VS a tiny bit, outside of DA/TA procs, but in practice, SP seems to pull ahead a tiny bit.

For those of you who can test this, though, don't think you have to be able to do the math yourselves. Just make sure you meet the criteria byrth listed and get a decent sample size for those of us who can run the numbers to work with.



Assuming you mean Shijin Spiral (seriously, we need to start working on differentiating a bit, we have like 5 different things abbreviated as SS), I'm not really sure how, unless there's a significant difference in the quality of WS sets you use, or you're fighting nothing but higher defense sh*t, unless you're just really unlucky with procing crits on SP . Given roughly equivalent gear, SP and SS should average roughly the same for pup (so will non-vereth VS, for the record), with SP having more variation and higher spikes/lower lows, and SS being more consistent. The higher the target's defense, though, the more the situation favors SS.

edit: List of crit atmas for people to make use of (Found one that can take the place of scorpion queen for those who don't have it, and is a bit easier to get)

Atma of the Thrashing Tendrils 	[Crit Rate +10%, CHR+30] 
Atma of the Scorpion Queen 	[Crit Rate +10%, Store TP+20, Resist Bind] 
Atma of the Gnarled Horn	[Crit Rate +20%, Counter+10%, AGI+50] 
Atma of the Dark Depths		[Crit Rate +20%, Evasion+20, AGI+20] 
Atma of the Razed Ruins		[Crit Rate +30%, Crit Damage+30%, DEX+50]

So basically, you can replace Scorpion Queen with Thrashing Tendrils, if you don't have it, but if you have neither, it'd be better to do Gnarled Horn+Dark Depths to still get 40% from atma. The basic idea is: "Will this give SP a 100% crit rate at 100% TP?" According to Byrth, it should, but obviously, it needs to be tested and he's not a pup. The basic idea is to find out how much crit rate is needed to cap out SP's crit rate at 100%.

Edited, May 26th 2012 1:39pm by Jinte

Stringing Pummel . . . is my enemy. I was having trouble figuring out why it doesn't destroy Victory Smite, but I may have found my answer. PUP gets sh*t for gear selection and there are very few pieces that allow them to take advantage of the VIT and STR mods at the same time. Still, I get that Stringing Pummel should have a minor advantage over Victory Smite (3~5%) in most situations with similarly awesome gear. Not worth using over VS if you don't have Aftermath up or aren't using Verth, but worth using otherwise.

Testing:
- Re-confirmed the fTP and mods using brews (and gorget/belt) on the test server. The ones proposed in this thread are correct. The data is on bgwiki's talk page if you care to see it. It's fairly unambiguous.

- Tried to narrow down the crit rate again. I think I got a non-crit with an 80% base rate, which indicates <20% crit rate. That would probably be 15%, but could be less.

- Re-analyzed my crit damage data vs. Bluffalo. If there's an Attack penalty, then it's less than 11%.


My final non-crit WS against Angler Tigers (Abyssea - La Theine) did 153 damage with Gorget/Belt on. This is what makes testing this WS so hard. 153 damage is approximately 2% of the monster's HP, which means I basically have to turn around and have my mule nuke the monsters from ~15% to 1% before I can WS. At the same time, I have to time it so I have 100~105% TP when he has 1% HP. It's a big pain in the keister and I'm tired of it. I probably will be done testing this for another year or more.

Other jobs have access to much more STR/VIT gear than PUP and modifiers are important for lower base damage weapons (like H2H).

Optimal Stringing Pummel vs. Dynamis DCs via. the spreadsheet (Haste, Boost-STR, Galka, /WAR, no JAs):

Deluxe Animator
Thaumas / Gorget / Brutal / Moonshade AttTP
Matanca / Athos / Spiral / Epona
Rancorous (Max) / Ele.Belt / Athos / Thaumas

^ This set includes three pieces that have both STR and VIT on them. If PUP could wear the Huginn set, for instance, 3~4 of the pieces would instantly be the best Stringing Pummel pieces. If they could wear Twilight Helm or Drachenhorn, they would beat Huginn Coronal. Their terrible access to STR/VIT gear is why Stringing Pummel's 32% STR / 32% VIT ends up being enough worse than Victory Smite's 60% STR to almost completely compensate for its (likely) higher 100TP Crit bonus and higher fTP. If they could wear the gear I just outlined, Stringing Pummel's advantage over Victory Smite would be more like 10% rather than the ~3% it pulls now (for Galkas. It is almost dead even for Taru).

It's actually the best place to test what he's testing, since he can tailor his critical hit rate and other attributes through Atmas, which allows for a fine tuning on testing the critical hit rate, fTP, etc of the weaponskill.


Edited, Feb 7th 2013 6:02pm by Vlorsutes