Chanters vs. ElementFollow

Seriously?

Don't bother getting a Pluto's Staff just for resting. The hMP on Dark and Pluto's is the same, so its a waste of money. Only get Pluto's if you have a job that casts dark-based spells.

To cover all bases though, Elemental staves are useless for buffs. The added skill on Chanter's can break some buff tiers, so in certain special situations, it may still be useful to wear one.

Other than that, if your going to carry one, it's useful for a stoneskin build - Otherwise, get rid of it.

Correction - kind of. You had it right the first time you said it.



This. Stop. That's all the explination you need. Whether your fighting a lvl 1 mob or a lvl 9000! mob, your going to get a 10% bonus added to your overall MACC.



This is complicated, and incorrect. The ACC bonus is not based on anything. You get a flat rate of 10%. Because of how resist rates, level differences, weather bonuses, etc on-and-on, you can't possibly gauge how much 10% really means in terms of skill.

Furthermore, and a perfect case in point - There's some really old testing floating around on KI (i believe) showing that a 75 BRD that was decently geared, using a chanter's staff on Kirin and recording Ice Threnody lands and Elegy lands. Not surprisngly, none landed out of 30+ tries. The same test was done later with a nakked setup with HQ staves, and the staves gave at least a 10% bonus (I think one got close to 15% like it should be). While this doesn't really prove anything, it laid out more tests that eventually lead to the discovery that staves give a flat 10/15% land rate. (I actually think this was proven with a lvl 50 vs lvl 75 character on some high level mob)

ok Im going t o buy some staffs. What advantage will the HQ give over the NQ?

HQ is just more accuracy than the NQ staff. When I got apollo's and replaced my light staff, I had 0 lullaby resists chaining over 100 on colibri in merits. Granted that was a little bit of luck since mathematically I should have had -at least- 5... but that was way less than when I first merited there with a light staff.
My flashes on WHM also seem to be lasting longer, as in less resisted duration. I see the 12 second duration more often now. And Repose accuracy seems to have went up a lot too.

Apollo's is awesome.

People say 10 and 15% magic accuracy, though I don't know that the numbers are correct. I think they just assume 10 and 15 as per MAB on staves.

But Light staff will increase your lullaby accuracy a lot, and Apollo's furthers that even more.

Yeah...I guess it could be explained many ways. I didn't really mean to make it as complicated as it sounds after reading it again. I'll try to explain it again, and I'll follow up with something that hpsolo said that I don't quite agree with (don't worry, its not all bad ^^)

SE likes to repeat formulas for alot of things. While magic accuracy hasn't been determined, I personally mirror it to how the formulas for hit rate work. You can get alot of the information from wiki see how Skill, Eva Skill, ACC, EVA, DEX and AGI work together to come up with a single result.

The basis of my assumptions consider the "Hit Rate" for a spell, and I like to call it MACC%. This value, like hit rate, gives a single value that determines the chance of a spell landing. This is completely different than MACC.

We know that this MACC% is influenced directly by many things. Elemental Staves (+10%, +15%), Weather (+10%,+25%), Day of the Week (+10%), are a few that directly influence MACC% (also consider reverse effects!). We also know that base MACC% is calculated by things such as Magic Skills, Stats, and Levels.

This is where MACC and MEVA come into play. MACC also has direct modifiers (Alkalurops with its mighty +20!). Most of MACC however, is calculated by some formula using Skill and stats (chr). MEVA has only recently been known and has direct modifiers too - with roots starting from DNC's "Stutter Step" as well as the new RDM WS "Death Blossom". It is assumed that MEVA is also calculated in some way, with some of the better known pieces of the formula being based on stats (chr).

Once you have your MACC and MEVA levels, there is a bit of a calculated 'face off' of sorts, to determine your base MACC%. After this calulation is complete, a level difference/correction formula is applied, and you arrive at your final MACC% rate.

Hopefully this is explained a bit better. Unfortunately, this is how I have theroized how this works, and I could be completely wrong. But I do think this fills in alot of gaps to some questions like:

Why does completely gimp person with HQ staves beats someone with none (the flat MACC% bonus), or...
Why a well geared person can't seem to land spells any better than the next player on end-game events(the level correction), and others...

Which brings me full circle to...


A bit of a disclamer though - I know what you were implying, and you are absolutely correct. End-game wise, fighting higher level mobs, and general game-play where MACC% really matters, staves will probably always win - hands down.

The part I do want you to think about is this -
If your level 75, and walk up to a lvl 1 bunny and you have a choice of +20 MACC or a flat +15% MACC - which is really better?

+20 MACC at level 1 is an incredible amount, and I'm betting the bonus would probably outweigh the MACC% bonus. Of course, this is only theretical due to the fact that, who really cares? It's a level 1 mob! (The real answer - level correction wins. Even if you had severe negative stats, the level correction formula would give you a tremendous bonus)

However, by looking at this extreme, and swapping roles, you can see how some incredibly high level mobs, such as Kirin, will always be a pain in the ass!