Evisceration: Not really worth it... (?)Follow

Been mulling this over for a while now and I wanted to open a discussion on the evisceration WS. Yes I know its been around for a while, but with new toys (climactic flourish, feather step, critical attack bonus, moar DEX gear) I figured I do a lil bit of testing/math and try to get opinions on if its worth using over DE.

So lets break it down from the top:

Evisceration: Delivers a fivefold attack. Chance of critical hit varies with TP
-Basically the more TP you have, the better chance you can crit on each hit, but would be stupid to store 300% TP each time so kinda irrelevant

Modifier: DEX 30%
-We have quite a bit of DEX gear available to us to help this

Stuff to help us out:

Climactic flourish
-This will only guarantee a crit on the first hit

Critical attack bonus
-5% damage added to critical attacks (unknown if we got a boost to this from 80-85 so will just leave it at that)

Feather step: lowers enemy's critical evasion
-currently unknown as to how much each step adds (I'm currently testing this as well, but need HUGE sample sizes before I can come to anything conclusive)

Building flourish: enhances WS with +acc (unknown) +attack (unknown) and +Critical hit rate (unknown) with 3 FMs
-basically another way to get higher critical hit rates

So, an optimal evisceration will have the following: at least 50DEX over mobs AGI (cap @ 20% crit hit rate) full critical hit merits (+4% for a total of 24% crit hit rate) 3 FMs (unknown if this will help exceed the cap or bring you closer to it), 1 Climactic flourish hit, 5 levels of feather step (another unknown on cap), and any gear/traits that increases critical hit% damage.

OK, with all that said, I ran a parse against EP mobs in Ro'mave (was working on OA3 parazonium trial). Stats are the following.

WS Gear: (not my normal WS gear...missing 8 DEX from not using other kila+1 if you're wondering lol)
STR: 112
DEX: 130
attack: 500
Crit hit damage +7% (5 from trait, 2 on anwig)
All WS were done with 3FM for evisceration and at least 2 for DE. Also all eviscerations had at least 2 levels of Feather step. CF application varied.

Parse Data:

Evisceration: (avg) 1079 (high) 1511 (total WSs) 77
Dancing Edge: (avg) 1035 (high) 1361 (total WSs) 15

Conclusion: So with everything that can possibly buff Evis, it BARELY has an average WS damage over DE when done 5 Xs as much Obviously if the number of DEs matched the number of Eviscerations I would have topped average damage with DE. If these were higher level mobs, dDEX would be that much lower which would also favor DE over Evis. Of course there are variables that skewed my parse (WS acc, low WS parses from almost dead mobs, type of mobs, variable critical hits, etc). In a vacuum with perfect math variables maybe Evis would come out on top, but the fact that you have to spend at least 4 FMs to do that (1 CF, 3 BF) and only 2FM for DE gives DE the final advantage.

tl:dr DE > Evis

Disclaimer 1: yes I know that Evis has its advantages when it comes to SCing, not the purpose of this post though...
Disclaimer 2: yes I know my parse is a small sample size and doesn't have perfect variables, but I think its enough to come to a decent conclusion.
Disclaimer 3: yes I know I've been posting a lot lately...still got another week on vacation before I go back to work...so suck it =P

Edit: forgot to mention that all WS were max 6 hits for fairness (no double attacks from brutal earring or saber dance)



Did second parse to finish up my trial, number of WS are much closer to give a better look at the two WS
All above conditions were kept the same

Evisceration: (high)1538 (avg)1085 (number)72
Dancing edge: (high)1514 (avg)1272 (number)81

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 10:54am by Kalisa

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 5:00pm by Kalisa

hmmm.

i can't really remember, but doesn't crit ws usualy score more on highter lv. target ?

I didnt realize that it wasnt a true "forced" crit like SA, assassin fueled TA, mighty strikes etc. Mah bad xD I stand corrected. (/hides in shame in the shadow of dnc ignorance)

In that case I have a hard time imagining DE really holding up with the forced crit. I realize you guys have more base chr than thf, but is it really THAT significant? Or the combination that you also lack the dex/str gear Thf does for massive WSC thf can pull off to boost Evis through the roof? I suppose its the combination and will just take a bit longer to reach that threshold for evis to handily beat DE for dnc via more levels/daggers/gear upgrades on the road to 99 than it does on thf. At this point on thf, I am basically full timing Evis unstacked and using DE when stacked as that ~20% boost to 1st hit+chr mod on force crit still tilts SA/TADE over SA/TAEvis.

And to the above poster, yes evis will perform better on higher def mobs than DE because crits 'pierce' through def in a way with a static Pdif boost while DE just gets shat on by higher def. Alternatively, low def mobs DE base damage comes out ahead with the atk to back it up. Ironically, on easier mobs it is easier to get capped crit rate also buffin Evis back up a bit.

Absolutely right. I was going with the 'technical' answer to the question, but as you stated, the practical answer is that man stab and SB do better for thf in those situations. But as a Dnc, SB is lame without SATA and mandalic stab doesnt exist.

DE and Evis have this wierd catch 22 thing goin on. On easy mobs the high atk boosts DE up making the crits less pronounced on Evis. But those mobs also have lower agi so you can more easily cap crit rate helping evis again. On the otherhand, higher level/def mobs DE is hurt by lower atk but evis crits are more valuable. But they are also harder to cap crit rate on due to higher agi.......

Its kinda wierd. Basically both work all the time :P

You can get more specific and say "on higher level mobs AND having large atk buffs DE wins because your crit rate on evis is low and you still can manage high atk on DE" or "On lower level, high def mobs (crabs etc) evis can do better because of high crit rate AND low atk". Those are kinda the extremes, but usually you land somewhere in the middle.

Just more reasons thie Evis vs DE is almost never very clear.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w218/Kayalan/Capture.png

Although I do love Evisceration, sometimes Dancing Edge goes and surprises me. This was on Crapaudy in Abyssea, which are pretty mushy, but you never get to see DNC DD'ing enough.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 2:19pm by Kayalan

They are very close regardless, personally I'd recommend using DE over Evi depending on your gear and race, don't forget that CHR is a mod for DE, and if what you have allows for large CHR/DEX combo stacking, seeing as 40% of the modified influence stems from CHR, you could see dramatically different results. For thf, I'd almost positively use Evi over DE in most situations where I had to choose between the two, but for DNC, native CHR is higher, and as a result I'd lean towards DE.

Now, as for 'is it worth it'... it is if you want the WS dagger from magian trials, as its required for parts of it. As for weather the WS dagger is worth it is an entirely different line of questioning ^^.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 5:07pm by FUJILIVES

:?

Uhh, I don't know what the hell you just said there (terms like WSC and fSTR and pDIF are all Greek to me), but my point was that Kleos makes a Darkness skillchain with Evis, and therefore that can make Evis worth using. Yet I didn't see Kleos mentioned anywhere in the thread, not even in any of the responses.

Correct. As I stated in the OP the purpose wasn't to talk about anything but Evisceration buffed with BF/CF/FS/crit attack bonus vs DE only buffed with BF. I wanted to show that even with everything in Eviceration's favor, overall it still isn't really worth using over DE that is simply buffed with 2 FMs.

Looks pretty tight and cant fault someone for using one or the other. I'm sticking with DE, as the build is easier for me.

Edited, Sep 25th 2010 7:54am by doctorugh

If you have capped accuracy, your chance to hit is 95%. A blanket statement can be made that approximately 95% of all your hits will not miss. Same goes to DE, if you do 100 DE's, no DW, DA, etc... 25 of the 500 hits in those DEs will miss on average. What you're talking about is the chance for all 5 hits to connect (which really doesn't have a whole lot of significance unless your interested in spike damage). The chance for all 5 of those hits to connect is .95^5 = ~ .7737. So theres actually a 77.37% chance to have all 5 of the hits connect. Meaning theres a 22.63% chance that 1, 2, 3, 4, or all 5 of the hits will miss. If you decide to do all the calculations you'll find that on average 95% accuracy will cause your DEs to do ~95% of the damage of full damage DEs, so basically multihit WSs are affected by hit rates just as much as other WSs are(except the WSs that SE buffed to hell during the 2 hander update that basically made them guaranteed that they wont miss even with virtually 0 accuracy gear on). Now if your not anywhere neared capped accuracy (which is probably a whole other problem) then +accuracy gear and hit rate does tend to help multihit WSs quite a bit more, but I don't think thats really anything of what you were talking about.

Also, I'm not sure what your talking about for "back in the day" and "lumped" I've had a 75 drk before cop was released and I was spamming multihit WS, guillotine, for a long time and I don't remember them clumping the calculation together. Do you have a link on that? I'm some what curious about that.

Edited, Sep 25th 2010 12:53pm by palomaru

Edited, Sep 25th 2010 12:58pm by palomaru

If THF, a class with more base DEX, less base CHR, and many, many more +DEX gear options still can't decide which of the two is better, I'm sticking with DE.

i got atma of the razed ruins the other day and makes evis a clear winner in abyssea.
the atma give +50dex and a boost in crit damage and rate. i parsed a 55% crit rate, and my avg crits were doing 4x my regular melee hits (no food exping on colibris). my evis's were doubling DE easily :D fun stuff.

This. VV/RR Atmas in abyssea make Evis a beast. I was averaging 2.2k Evis on Orapodiums with a high of 2.8k when we were playing with RR after we got it. I was pretty skeptical when people were saying that Evis was way better than DE in abyssea when I was pulling 1.9-2.1k food/temps/SD fueled DEs on puks, but I have seen the light.

Gnarled Horn/Razed Ruins are actually the best for Dancer in Abyssea, in my opinion. But yes, Evisceration is undoubtedly better once you get good Atmas in Abyssea. My Evisceration average on normal (non-piercing weak) monsters is over 2500.

Edit:
Atma of the Razed Ruins is from Ironclad Pulverizer, who is spawned with Abyssic Cluster and Ironclad Observer's key items. He is somewhat difficult to proc Red !!s on, because his normal attack rounds count as TP moves.
Atma of the Gnarled Horn is from Sobek. He is much easier to proc Red !! on, and plenty of people want to fight him. This Atma shouldn't be very difficult to obtain.

To use them, you will need two Lunar Abyssites. You can get one by killing one zone boss in any zone (Abyssea - Misareaux's boss is the easiest in my opinion) and another by buying one for 100k Cruor from an NPC in a Scars zone.

Together the two Atma will give you a ~75% critical hit rate and somewhere between +35 and +50% damage from critical hits depending on your gear. That is why Evisceration damage shoots up so high.

Edited, Nov 11th 2010 3:00pm by Byrthnoth

Err... well, I disagree. Here's why:
VV - 5% DA, 50 STR (25 Attack), and 2TP/tick regain
GH - 50 AGI, 20% Crit rate (parsed it tonight), and Counter (kinda unknown, 5-10%)

50 STR does nothing for my fSTR or WS mods (Evis is DEX), so it doesn't increase my TP or WS except by virtue of also being 25 Attack. That reduces VV to 25 Attack, 2 TP/tick, and 5% DA.
GH boosts my crit rate from 54% to 74%. (Razed Ruins completes my dDEX and gives 30% crit rate, putting me at 54%.) It also has some -damage really, because the counter and the ~25 Evasion from AGI are worth something. I have a ~50% Eva rate on average Abyssea mobs in TP gear with it.

Maf:
[Average Crit pDIF]*[Crit damage modifier]*[Crit rate] + [Average Norm pDIF]*(1-[Crit rate]) = [dmgish]
[2.4]*[1.4]*[Crit rate] + [1.75]*(1-[Crit rate]) = [dmgish] <--- numbers from my most recent parse
[2.4]*[1.4]*[.54] + [1.75]*(1-.54) = [dmgish] = 2.6194 <--- ~VV and control
[2.4]*[1.4]*[.74] + [1.75]*(1-[.74]) = [dmgish] = 2.9414 <--- GH

+20% Crit gives you a 12% damage boost and evasion/counter. VV gives you 5% DA (<4% damage) and 2TP/tick, with 25 Attack (<5% damage on normal hits -well over 500 attack with minuets-, and probably nothing for my crits). GH is just a better option, and will only get better if I get Loki's Kaftan.

The benefit of VV for 2H jobs is that it caps your fSTR and often pulls double duty as a WS mod, which doesn't apply to dagger jobs because we're already fSTR capped with just cruor buffs, meat, and TP gear.

Edit: Evisceration average last night was ~2800, would have been higher if I hadn't been killshotting mobs with it and if we'd had a second puller so our DDs (and consequently singing bards) didn't get spread out and leave me without minuets half the time. Spike was over 3500, but the damage was very regular due to it being a multi-hit with a 74% crit rate.
Double Minuets (124 Attack iirc) increased my average crit damage 6% and my average normal hit damage 8%, so if we expect VV to do 1/5 of that (which would be the max that it does), then the bonus from 25 Attack would be approximately 1-2%. +1-2% damage from Attack, +~3-4% damage from Double Attack, and 2TP/tick regain vs. a straight 12% boost in DPS and WS damage. Unless VV is affecting your x-hit or fSTR, Gnarled Horn is better.

Edited, Nov 12th 2010 10:59am by Byrthnoth

Not sure about this, but is there a cap on Double Attack? I was going to say something about it on my last post, but all I could find around the internet was a ~32% max most jobs could get with natural JA/gear, but that obviously was before SD and atma bonuses. If there is, the 10% DA from VV would be diminished if you're fulltiming a 5/5 SD + brutal, but if there isn't, that's a 65/55/45% increase constant, so it wouldn't really be a wash. Again, I'm basing that on something I'm not 100% sure on, so I can't say that for fact. The only mitigating factor in that sense *would* be oa2-3 dagger, but DA would still factor in mainhand and non 2-3 proc offhand swings, raising the per-round attacks, which increases TP gain speed and WS frequency.

I will have to pick up GH and play with it, but I'm not sure the increase in per hit/WS damage would outweigh the increased WS frequency of VV. This concept goes way back when people started realizing that in most situations, setting up a full SC+MB is actually decreasing DoT since it slows WS frequency WAY down and wastes TP over 100% even though the damage done by the entire SC+MB does far more than any single WS or spell alone. Again, I'll have to pick it up and parse, but I'm *very* skeptical about it.

Also, in your group where you were averaging 2.8k with spikes to 3.5k, were you getting 2x minuet 2x march, min/march, or just 2x minuet?

You guys all get to DD on DNC it sounds like......lucky bastards....

Inside Abyssea, infinite MP and no appreciable change in DNC's curing abilities shifted the balance of power among healers. WHM is now clearly the best healer, with DNC and RDM trailing behind. DNC's healing role is more of a spot curing deal within my group these days, with buffs/debuffs and DDing being my main priorities. Outside Abyssea, things are pretty much as they've always been; Refresh II and Ballad III helped some but DNC still has the edge.

Also, Razed Ruins and Gnarled Horn or VV is ridiculously sexy. Even before Abyssea, a well geared DNC had more TP than they could reasonably spend even with a Waltz timer Anwig... Atmas leave no excuse not to make use of that blindingly fast TP gain for damage as well as support.

Atmas are everything in Abyssea. Someone wearing Weapons, Haste gear (Turban/Harness/Dusk/Swift/Aurore/Ballerines) and using the right Atma could demolish a perfectly geared player without good Atma. Anyway, most people don't have atmas, so pickup party DDs don't really compete. Forgive me for sounding conceited, but if I'm in a pickup party, the odds that I'm the strongest DD there are very good. In those situations, if I have one WHM to Haste me and cast Cure 5/6 at regular intervals, I pretty much solo their monsters for them. In general, everyone realizes that this is the most efficient way to go rather than forcing me to Waltz DDs that WS for 1k. Sometimes they don't, or I get one of those parties that literally has 0 healers awake enough to Haste and Cure. I just leave at that point and go solo crap.

In Abyssea groups with friends, generally I go WAR or BLM because we're building time and Fell Cleave and -agas blow other options away. Sometimes I forgo the benefits of building time and go DNC (depending how serious we are about building time quickly), and then warp, change to WAR, and burn stones for the rest of the night. If I was using a single-target WS, the damage discrepancy between WAR and DNC wouldn't be very large at all, but Aeolian edge doesn't stand up to Fell Cleave.

But its just addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.....oh well, nvm.

It might seem overwhelming if you are trying to understand all parts of the equation at once. Break it down to its constituent parts and it is more manageable.

Start with Ratio, your attack/enemy defense. 600att/300def, ratio is 2. Simple enough.

Then move to cRatio (level corrected ratio), each level takes off 0.05 (for melee). So if this mob is 5 levels higher: 2 - 5(0.05) = 1.75 is your cRatio

Just proceed through each step. You can do it.