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Damage Dealing 101
Damage dealing jobs in comparsion to others aren’t that complicated. Atleast one would think on the surface. While mage jobs have a slew of spells that can be used for both control and strategy and tank jobs need to understand the inner workins of hate and how to stay alive, Damage Dealers need to understand how to optimize their damage and to limit the amount of hate they pull and MP they sponge.
This guide will go over the basics and the advanced ideas behind maximizing damage, and how to be a DD that not only brings the pain but makes the mages and tanks happy. It should also be understood that this guide goes over the “mechanics” of dealing damage and how to be efficient.
The Basics:
Skill level: Skill level is one of the most important factors In dealing damage compairable only by your weapons base damage. Many jobs have a variety of weapons in which they have skill in. WAR is probably the most divers in that it can use swords, axes, great axes, great swords, Polearms, ect. But this doesn’t mean that a WAR can just pick up any weapon and kick butt with it. Each weapon has a “Skill rating” This rating determines how high your skill can go in that weapon. Lets take a small look at WAR’s skills in Polearm, great sword, and Great axe.
Great axe: Rank : A+/ cap at 75: 276
Great Sword: Rank: B+/ cap at 75: 256
Polearm: Rank: B-/ cap at 75: 240
As you can see, each weapon is not equal in skill level for WAR. Great axe has the highest ranking possible for any weapon, A+. Each job has their own version of an A+/- Weapon in which they excel at. The question is, Why is skill level important? What does it do?
Every skill level point gives you 1 Attack and 1 Accuracy with that weapon type. So looking at WAR, a WAR with a great axe will have 20 Accuracy and Attack(that’s more than a haubergeon) over the same WAR using a Greatsword. To take that furthur, a WAR using polearm will have 36 Accuracy and Attack less (More than 2 Haubergeon’s worth) than a WAR using a Great Axe. That’s a gigantic difference. I’ll get into the Importance of Accuracy and Attack later. However, even just looking at it as is, you realize how much weaker Greatsword and Polearm are for a WAR than their prefered weapon.
DMG rating: This is the second most important aspect to Dding outside of equipment and food. The DMG is ultimately what gets modified and altered in order to create the range in which you’ll be able to deal damage. This effects base hits and Weaponskills alike. This will make more sense when we acutally get into attack and the DD formula. Just to give you an example that you can test yourself. Regardless of your skill level, take a low level weapon and a high level weapon of the same type (sword, club, axe ect.) and you’ll notice that no matter how much awesome gear you have or how much skill you have, the lower DMG weapon will completely fail to compare to the high level one. I actually recommend you try this yourself just to see. Every point of DMG is important. The other aspect to this is the delay that matches the weapon, but we’ll touch on that more in depth later. Just know that the higher the DMG number, the bigger damage range per hit you can get.
1 handed Vs. 2 handed- STR/DEX: 1 handed and 2 handed weapons are not equal. Back in the day, the rule was that for every 2 STR/DEX you had, you got 1 ARK/ACC respectively. An update a year or 2 back changed that. While this old rule still applies to 1 handed weapons(and hand to hand), 2 handed weapons get extra bonus’s from STR and DEX. For 2 handers, for every 4 STR/DEX you have you get 3 ATK/ACC. This might seem small at first ,but this is actually a fairly big difference. If a job has 68 DEX at 75, even without any gear modifications if he were to use a 1 handed weapon, that 68 STR/DEX would convert to 34 Atk/Acc. But on a 2 handed weapon that 68 STR/DEX would conver to 51 Atk/Acc. That’s “almost” 20 extra Attack and Accuracy just for being a 2 handed weapon. This also changes certain pieces of gear like Haubergeon and Kirin’s Osode which give a significant bonus to both STR and DEX. Osode on a 2 handed weapon would give 7.5 ATK and ACC with its STR and DEX +10, while a 1 handed would get 5. Haubergeon gets a 5 STR and DEX bonus along with its Atk and Acc hard bonus. Haubergeon would give an additional 4 Atk/Acc (roundiing up, chances are you will land on an umber that will give you 4 altogether instead of 3.75) Where as a one hander would get 2.5 Atk/acc. Just knowing this will help you look at certain pieces of gear that might not appeal to a 1 handed user, apeal to a 2 handed, and vice versa.
The Damage Formula:
Attack, Defense, STR, VIT, and weapon DMG all come together into the same formula to calculate damage. It should be noted that the formula i'm going to give isn't the exact formula that has been found players who actually get deep into the game mechanics. Mine is a simplified version, nearly all the same exact a bit easier to understand (Though, still somewhat complicated). Normally certain aspects are broken into tiers as well as change depending on weapon ranking and type of weapon, but we won't get into that. The mechanics can be reduced to a general form since essentially it all works the same, exept in different tiers and ranges. By establishing this, you can get a general idea of how STR and ATK work against VIT and DEF to find damage. Knowing this you can see what is best to prioritize in not only dealing damage, but reducing it. So, lets get to it. Lets first look at the formula as a whole, then we'll break it down into segments.
Total Damage= (WDMG + fSTR) x cDif
WDMG:
First, WDMG is your weapons DMG rating. Thats the DMG number on each weapon. This then gets added into fSTR(We'll look at that in a moment). That number is then multiplied by a percent(cDIF) to establish tha base damage that will be dealt. But what is fSTR and cDIF? Lets first difine fSTR.
The basic principle of fSTR is that, for every 4-6 STR you have over the mobs VIT, your DMG rating will increase by 1, up to a limit. That limit depends on the weapon, but for general purposes no matter what weapon your using you won't likely hit the cap unless your fighting something very weak. It should be noted that 4-6 STR for 1 point is a lot in comparison.
fSTR = (Player STR - Mob VIT)/4-6
cDIF:
cDIF(corrected Difference) is actually broken up into 2 parts.
cDIF = pDIF + (.05 x(Your level - Mob level))
The first part is pDIF (Percent Difference). pDIF is a number that comes from your ATK Divided by the mobs DEF. pDIF has a cap of 2.0, from there it can't be Improved anymore.
After you get pDIF, this number is corrected based on your level compaired to the mobs. This can be a bonus (if your higher level than the mobs) or a penalty (if the mob is higher level than you). For every level you have Under the mob, your pDIF loses .05/ Vice versa for being over the mobs level. Lets use an example to show how this all comes together. Lets say you have 435 atk and the mob has 380 Def. The mob is also 6 levels above you, like in most experience party situations.
435atk / 380def = 1.14
1.14 - (.05 x 6 = .30)
1.14 - .30 = 0.84
cDIF then becomes 0.84 in our formula.
Applied Example:
Knowing all this, lets create a small example. Using the cDIF we generated above, lets assume we are using a Death Scythe as our weapon (97 DMG) and we have an fSTR value of 0. The formula would look like this:
Total damage = (97 + 0) x .84 = 81 Average damage per swing.
Now just for a comparison, lets change the fSTR value from 0 to 5 (would require atleast 20-30 additonal STR to change this value).
Total damage = (97 + 5) x .84 = 85 damage per swing. Not much of an increase for a 20-30 STR increase. The gear you would need to sacrifice would make this improvement is not worth it in the least. Lets go back and make the fSTR value 0, but instead lets assume that we're fighting the same mob but assume we have Minute IV and III both on us from a bard (103 atk bonus total).
538/380 = 1.41 (-.30) = 1.11
Total damage = (97 + 0) x 1.11 = 107
Some conclusions based on the formula:
The difference in damage here is much greater as you can see. The underlining conclusion here is clear. Stacking STR over other stats produces almost no bonus to damage. This is the first point I want to drive home with DD's. Don't stack STR, there are always better options. Instead, keep STR as a stat that you should add it when you don't need to sacrifice other pieces. Examples of this would be Chivalrous Chain for 2 handers (I prefer to stick to Royal Guards Color for 1 handers), Potent Belt, Haubergeon (simply an amazing body piece for any job that can use it for so many reasons), Fowling Earring and other pieces. Another conclusion is that the weapons DMG rating is important because its the easiest way to modify the number that gets multiplied by the cDIF.
Accuracy and Evasion - Hit rate:
Accuracy is Important. First thing to understand is that every 2 Accuracy = 1% hit rate. The other thing to understand is that For every level the mob has over you, you lose 2% hit rate.
When your accuracy is the same as the mobs evasion, you have 70% hit rate. From this point it takes 50 Acc to to hit 95%, which is the hit rate cap. If the mob is 6 levels higher than you, thats an additonal 12% hit rate you compensate for (48 acc).
Accuracy is first priority to cap before anything else. The logic behind this is simple. Until you reach the cap, there is damage that your always missing out on regardless of how potent each hit is. Lets look at a string of 10 hits. One with 90% hit rate and 80 damage per hit and another with 60% hit rate and 110 damage per hit. Both of these are realistic scenarios with different gear set builds i've seen on Merit pt's and typical party situations. The 90% hit rate gear focused on accuracy and a moderate build of Atk where it can fit. The other build focuses on atk and str, with mild accuracy (mainly from Haubergeon and Chivalrious chain).
90% hit rate would look like 9 x 80, (9 landed hits, at 80 per) = 720 damage
60% hit rate would look like this 6 x 110 (6 hits at 110 per) = 660 damage
The higher hit rate, even for smaller damage clearly shows that over time having higher accuracy near cap will deal more damage. This gap gets exceedingly bigger with the more amount of hits.
90% hit rate over 100 hits is 90 hits, 90 x 80 = 7200
60% hit rate over 100 hits is 60 hits, 60 x 110 = 6600
This also completely disregards Tp gained when hitting, and eventually a WS that will increase damage even more. Hitting more often Generates TP faster, which in turn adds even more frequency to Weaponskills and Damage. This isn't as easily laid out in numbers and test's, but its not hard to follow.
Accuracy is also a huge part of increasing weaponskill damage for Multihit Weaponskills. Guillotine and Penta thrust are good examples. each hit landed increases that damage in folds. Assuming Guillotine does 100 damage per hit, for every hit landed thats an additonal 100 damage. all 4 hits landing is 400 damage.
I can't stress the importance of ACC enough. It must be capped before anything else. Until you reach that point, your missing out on Potential damage regardless of how hard your hitting for. Once you reach that point, you can move on to Increasing damage in other ways.
Haste:
Once Accuracy is capped, the next step is to maximize speed. The faster you attack, the quicker you build TP and the more damage you'll deal over time, which is after all the idea. Haste gear is more readily available now than it used to be. Dusk pieces arn't as expensive and the addition of ToAU gave birth to the walahra turban. CoP also has the swift belt, which is easy enough to get once you have access. Its not hard to see why Haste is a big deal. Stacking March(song) + Haste(spell) + Haste from gear can turn the damage of a scythe and give it the speed of a 1 handed sword without any loss of TP. Its important to understand though that haste without Acc is just as useless as not having it. Haste is only effectve when the attack speed is increased for weapons that will actually land.
Delay also becomes a big part of this. Yes , having a high DMG rating for a weapon is imporant, but it also needs to be compaired to the Delay. The lower you can get the delay with a higher DMG number, the better. In some instances, depending on the amount of stacked haste, having a low DMG rating can be better if the delay of the weapon is signifigantly lower than another compairable weapon. For instance Perdu Blade for Ninja in the off hand. This becomes especially true when you consider the ATK and ACC bonus when below 100% TP(Also during Weaponskills). In a fast enough build, Perdu is an awesome Off hand. This also becomes true with Perdu Sickle. Much like the perdu blade, it has great DMG to delay ratio with a bonus to Acc and Atk when below 100% TP.
If you find that your hit-rate suffers too much from adding haste on Higher levels mobs (this should be particularly noted on HNM's) then sacking the haste to regain accuracy isn't a bad idea. This is something you should gauge yourself. With A bard/Cor in your party giving accuracy buffs as well as proper food, you might be able to keep Haste even on HNM's or mobs that otherwise evade like crazy.
Food:
Food is just as important as having an excellent gear build. Food Should be chosen to compensate for any other area that your lacking. For instance, lets say your gear has a really good accuracy build but not quite top notch. You also have a fair amount of atk and haste. Lets also say you have a Bard with Blade madrigal (+30 acc at cap) and giving you Valor Minuet III or IV. Your also fighting birds, so a cheap solution is what your really looking for. with your acc build and the bards buffs, your likely Going to hit things decently, so sushi would be overkill. Mithkabobs become an entirely Viable choice to use, this way you get a good balance of hit-rate and potency, without breaking your bank on really expensive foods like courel subs or other things.
Lets take this a different way. Lets say your fighting mamool at 75. Your on Samurai using Polearm so your skill is 240 instead of 276(A+ cap for GK). Your getting the same buffs and have the same gear. but you still have that 36 Acc to make up for because your a B- weapon. Crab sushi would be a good choice. Cheap for merit pt's and gives you the accuracy you need to hit 95% of the time and Land all hits on penta thrust.
There is a miracle food however, that can be used in almost all DD situations where you don't need to worry about the food being stolen. Marinara pizza is a 3 hour food for 4k. relatively cheap. Where it really shines though is in the fact that it gives almost the same accuracy bonus as sushi's As well as the attack bonus of mithkabobs. This way you hit all your bases if your not entirely sure you have enough ACC, or don't have a bard or Corsair to rely on but still want the potency of a decent attack bonus. I never use anything else for HNM's or Events (Except dynamis.... and i'm sure you know why).
All in all though, its good to research food and find where you stand with what you need and adjust accordingly. Take in jobs in your party, gear, mobs and their level and assess for yourself how to maximize damage by filling in the holes with proper food.
Weapon skill Damage - Another Gear Set:
Weapon skills all have interesting properties to them that make their damage capable of big numbers if taken advantage of. Weaponskills are essential the same as a normal hit. Attack is compaired to Defense and the Base Weapon damage gets multiplied by the cDIF. Weaponskills however, have 2 added differences that help push their damage even more.
Stat mods: Every weaponskill has Stat mods. The actual stat mods are different for each weaponskill, but how they effect the damage of the WS is pretty much the same. Lets take a quick look at Hard Slash, the Greatsword Weaponskill. Hard Slash has an STR 30% mod. What this means is that 30% of your current STR at the time of WS (Base as well as +STR from gear) is added Directly to the DMG rating of the WS. If you use Hard Slash with 100 STR. 30 DMG will be added to your weapons DMG rating after fSTR is calculated as well. It'll basicly look like (WSMOD + WDMG + fSTR) x cDIF.
fTP Mod: Every weaponskill has fTP mods. Like the stat mods, each weaponskill is different in what fTP mods it has. Looking at Hard Slash again, it has the following fTP mods. 100% = 1.50, 200% = 1.75, 300% = 2.0 . Any TP between those numbers will have fTP value's inbetween the ones listed. fTP works by taking the combined DMG numbers from WDMG, fSTR and WSMOD and then multiplies then by the fTP. So it would look like this ((WSMOD + WDMG + fSTR) x ftp ) x cDIF.
lets give an example of both of these together using Hard Slash: You have Naglaring (85 DMG), 100 STR when you WS, and you WS at 200% Tp. The numbers would look like so. For the example lets assume fSTR is 0
85(wdmg) + 30(STR 30% of 100) = 115 x 1.75 = 201 DMG. This then gets multiplied by the cDIF.
You can see how WS's mod things to produce big results. Let me also say that if your WS has an STR mod, it works more than just the % because of the fact that the STR plays not only into the mod, but also for fSTR. its like a double bonus on weaponskills. For single hit Weaponskills, stacking Mod stats is a good idea to help add as much damage as possible. For multi hits, its good to stick with accuracy and attack, fitting in mod stats where you can. As we talked about in the Accuracy section, a multi hit WS is best when you land all hits first, then increase the power of each hit. Just for fun, lets look at samurai's 3 Big weaponskills, Tachi Gekko, Tachi Yukikaze, and Tachi Kashi.
All 3 have STR mods of 75%(!!!) and fTP mod at 100% 1.5625, 200% 1.875 and 300% 2.50. These are powerful WS and why you usually see SAM's stack as much STR with them as possible.
Sea gorgets: Once you have sea access, you'll have the ability to gain torque's which will improve Weaponskills that match its element. The Sea torques When used with the right WS will improve WS acc by 10 and add .1 to the current fTP mod. this is a very decent bonus to any WS that you can match with it.
When deciding on a build for a WS, be sure to check its mods, fTP and if its single or multi-hit to really get an idea of what are good pieces to help maximize the damage it deals.
Critical hits and Sneak Attack - The importance of THF sub:
A lot of people question what it is exactly critical hits do. From just looking at when you perform a critical hit you can obviously tell its a Damage bonus, but in what way? Its simple. Critical hits are a direct 1.0 + to the pDif. Why is this important? because it means no matter how low your DEF is, a critical hit will do damage. On mobs like HNM's where they are 10+ levels above you, getting a high pDIF without bards and other modifications can be really difficult. Thats where /THF comes in. Sneak attack is a 100% assured Critical hit while behind the mob. This even applies to weaponskills *this is a big deal because Weaponskills can't critical unless designated to in their help text*. /THF and sneak attack is best used on Powerful Single hit weaponskills. Spinning Slash, Tachi Yukikaze/Gekko/Kasha, Steel cyclone, Wheeling Thrust, and weaponskills of that nature. This will ensure that Weaponskills will deal a signifigant amount of damage and by using TA, that damage and hate will be passed to a tank.
It should also be noted that increasing critical hit rate through merits or other means is an excellent way to improve damage. DEX increases Critical hit rate by 1% per 8 Dex. But like STR, going out of your way to stack this is more detrimental. However, where ever you can get it without sacrificing other important gear is good. Best example of this is Byakko's Haidate. Along with Haste +5%, it offers 15 DEX which is a decent bonus to Accuracy and Crit hit rate.
Ranged Attacks - A whole different game than Normal melee:
Ranged Attacks arn't equal to normal melee. The way they calculate damage is somewhat similar, but there are important differences that make ranged attacks really strong. First key difference is how STR is used to calculate ranged damage. In melee, it takes 4-6 STR to improve your DMG by 1. For ranged attacks however, 2-3 Str improves the DMG by 1. This is actuallya pretty big difference. For ranged damage dealers stacking STR once you reach the Acc cap is acutally very beneficial with how it modifies damage. Since 2 STR also increases ranged attack by 1, you gain 1 DMG and 1 ratk per 2 STR or so, double bonus. Kirin's Osode is a Piece that can be worn full time on RNG's, even in WS's. Don't be fooled by the Kyodogi, Its not much better, if at all, than Kirin's Osode and doesn't justify the price tag.
Another difference is that the pDIF on Ranged attacks has a higher cap than melee. Melee pDIF caps at 2.0, while ranged attacks can cap at 3.0 . This means that they can land a hit for almost 3x the base damage. Thats Crazy.
Ranged Attacks also suffer less of a level Difference penalty than with melee attacks. Ranged attacks lose .025 pDIF depending on the level instead of .05 per level.
Crits also work entirely different for ranged attacks. Instead of adding 1.0 to the pDIF, A crit will take the current pdif and increase it by 25%. with a pdif of 1.0, you'd end up with 1.25 and so on.
As a last little difference, Ranged attacks don't suffer as much Randomizing as regular melee does. Ranged attacks hit Consistant for the damage they are meant to do.
Damage Prevention - Tank jobs arn't the only tanks:
This is one of the most important points I want to make. Its important for DD's to be prepaired Defensively as well as offensively. This is most important in High level Pt's where damage and kills fly by so fast, that often times the DD's will pull hate regardless of how awesome the tank is. DD's that let themeselves get beat to death are just as bad as having a bad tank or a healer that sucks at healing. Becoming an MP sink can screetch a party to a halt, in both Lack of MP efficiency and requiring so much healing that the mages pull hate just tryign to keep you alive. Its important to always keep defensive options open to you.
Enmity is a DD limiting factor. Not many people consider this, they think "If I just keep attacking my DD doesn't stop". The ramifications of this however can turn a 10k/hour pt into a 6k/hour pt. Enmity limits your damage. Just like missing, not having enough atk to deal decent hits, or failing to build TP fast enough limits your damage. If your having to turn because your dealing so much damage, thats damage lost. If your continueing to DD even after that point, Your becoming an MP sink and slowing down kill speed. Both effect you negatively. Keeping this in mind, defensive options (like /nin) that allow you to maintain DD without limiting the parties Kill speed or MP efficiency means your able to deal more damage in the bigger picture of the party from start to finish. Sure, E-peen bost's in damage for a short period of time can be satisfying. However, ultimately your hurting yourself and your party if you make those numbers insignifigant to the amount of MP they are spending to maintain you.
Good examples of taking advantage of Defensive options:
If you are a well geared monk and pull hate regularly, take ninja as your sub job for shadows and survivability. Sure, this produces a bit less damage than subbing warrior, but ultimately you'll be doing your party more favors, and your free to spam damage and WS's without having to turn around which in that allows you to deal more constant damage.
If you are 2 hander, You have 2 options to you. you can either sub Ninja for the shadows or you can sub samurai for a balance of Offense and defense with hasso and seigan.
Its very important to Use and understand the importance of Defensive options at your disposal, regardless of what job your playing. Your responsible for the damage you take. If you don't atleast attempt in some way to help yourself or others from spending massive amounts of MP to keep you alive, your neglecting your role in the PT. A good DD is one that Deals lots of Damage and Doesn't become a liability or a burden for the rest of the pt. MP is not unlimited, regardless of what job they are *yes, Even RDM's have an MP limit. Convert has a recast timer* You need to balance the damage that you and the pt takes in compairison with the the healers ability to Recover that MP back through healing time, refresh effects and their Ja timers such as Convert.
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