Mercy Stroke

Ilax,
Maybe I can phrase this for you in terms you might have a chance of comprehending.

Le cerveau -- Chez toi? il etait en option.

:D

Where is Krizz, anyway?

So where is the equation math-boy? I am still waiting.

Likely face palming at the thread deciding when would be the best time to start deleting posts/banning peoples. :x

I just wanna toss out an apology to those who still use this thread as a reference in case it gets nuked.





(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Sorry!

Anyone can be wrong, that always a possibility. That apply for you as it apply for me.

Attacking someone just for the fun of doing it, is lame, but i can join that game anytime as it seem to amuse people.

Maybe i was wrong saying is not right to give Coruscanti Quad dmg as SUB, since mandau loose TRIPLE dmg as sub. But i doubt it make me the "worse player in FFXI".

Chill.

At 100TP, with no double attacks, you have a 52.2% chance to land a CDC with 0 critical hits. At 100TP with no double attacks wearing Dilarams, you have a 74.8% chance to land a CDC with no critical hits.

Do you just not understand how much of a damage boost critical hits are or something?

Crit hit give +1 pDIF(pDIF Max is 3.15), 52,2% to 74.8%, how did you even got these number.

lol

Sorry, I used 4 hits for CDC since I'm used to dealing with DW.

It's actually worse.

100TP CDC without Dilarams: 61.1% to not crit at all.
100 TP CDC with Dilarams: 80.4% chance to not crit at all.

tl;dr 80% chance your WS sucks.

Holy ***at this thread. Several of you need to step away from the computer, take a deep breath, maybe a walk through the park, and rethink some of the things you're typing.

never seen krizz swear whats this thread caused haha

wish there were some parks in baltimore :|

Fixed, we have children looking at these screens. :o

Anyway, I just want to point out that I don't criticize or point things out just to do it, or for fun, I honestly want everyone who plays this game to reach their maximum potential. I do my best to offer the most helpful advice that I can, even to those for whom most of the other "max/min" types on these forums have little patience.

I do however find it incredibly frustrating when someone chooses to deny reason and justify something that is detrimental with, what is essentially, bad and/or fallacious logic. I apologize for getting somewhat out of hand, Krizz, but as a mathematician, that just REALLY gets under my skin.

I would rather someone justify a detrimental gear choice because "I want to wear it" or "It looks cool" because at least then it's subjective.

When you start bringing in the STR/DEX/Attack in terms of fSTR/WSC/pDIF on Dilarams as benefits in defense of its -8% critical hit rate, which is a gigantic detriment to a critical weapon skill, not only are you flat out objectively and mathematically incorrect because of the huge penalty to your average weapon skill damage from -8% critical hit rate will far outweigh the boost from 8STR/8DEX/16Attack, you run the risk of confusing another player who might not be as knowledgeable as the rest of us into making the same mistake (the continued prevalence of elemental gorgets/belts in sets for WS that shouldn't be using them is an example of this).

When you make mistakes like that, and then say "when you get a relic, you'll know better," it should be relatively unsurprising that the forum base does not take what you say seriously.

The same thing goes for going around saying things like "Mercy FAIL." Mercy Stroke is a fantastic Weaponskill hooked to a fantastic weapon that THF is capable of using to its full potential. Trashing it because it's situationally unimpressive (just like most other WS have downsides, no WS is best in ALL situations) has the potential to mislead and discourage other players, when all evidence points to that you simply may not be using the weapon skill to its maximum potential.

I've said this many times, it's fine to play at reduced performance, but it's a problem when you consider it to be the ideal.

Understanding the best way to gear for something or the most effective way to play something will help you even if you don't have access to the best gear, or simply don't want to maximize your potential.

I don't always play at max efficiency because I either don't feel like it, or don't need to do so. But that doesn't mean that I don't know what I should be doing to maximize whatever I'm doing.

There are a lot of knowledgeable people on these forums. Some people consider me to be one of them, although like most people, I do make mistakes. If you don't want to listen to me, listen to one of the dozens of other people telling you that you're simply not correct.

tl;dr

Reasons Mercy Stroke is Fantastic:

1.) 3.0ftp isn't the highest around, but it gets the job done when forced critical. It is slightly weaker than Rudra's storm but...
2.) 60% STR mod is fantastic. THF gets access to a lot of STR gear. It also gets access to a lot of gear with STR/DEX/andor/AGI/Attack on it, giving it the gear choices to really pump up the damage with SA/TA.
3.) High level relics get a 25% damage boost, effectively making the FTP 3.75, which is a nice bonus.
4.) STR is one of the best mods around because STR passively increases attack, something that DEX mods can't do (Sorry Rudra's)
5.) Mercy Stroke has the benefit of being attached to a weapon, which when main-handed, increases attack by 35, has extremely high base damage for a dagger, and deals triple damage 13% of the time without having to have this effect activated by a specific WS.
6.) Mercy Stroke increases your critical hit rate by a decent amount, which is a nice boon to your overall DPS.

So yeah, Mercy Stroke fails.

To be fair, when Mandau first came out there was a radically different environment for melee. Mandau holders would pretty much be using ONLY Mercy Stroke because there weren't haste levels or TP buffs that permit the type of perma-WS spam that characterizes melee play these days.

I think the issue isn't that Mercy Stroke needs to be updated to be great without stacking, it's that Sneak Attack and Trick Attack need to be updated to keep up with today's lower WS cycles.

Not really. Stacked WS numbers from THF and DNC aren't all that dissimilar (although probably slightly lower, on average) than that of the normal WS of a WAR or SAM. The difference between dagger jobs and something like WAR or SAM is that the dagger-wielders, in general, put out an extremely large amount of non-WS (white) damage.

It would be pretty immoderate if THF and DNC could constantly WS almost as hard as a WAR and still put out the potent melee DoT that they do currently.

1. And in my experience as a WAR, with ODD Aftermath (or a relic hidden triple), you do significant DOT/non-WS/white damage. This perception that 2Hs do less DoT is because there is a large skew in distribution of WS to DoT damage comparative to dual wielders because 2H play these days centers around maximizing WS frequency.

2. I don't think it would be imbalanced at all. I think it would do a great deal to buff Thief to balanced levels. Even as the biggest proponent of "THF is a DD" I have to admit that if we are talking equally skilled players with relatively equal levels of equipment, it's not a question. I'm a main THF and I own both a Mandau and an Ukon. But if I'm required to do DMG and other factors are not an issue, I definitely prefer WAR. Since August 07, the general skew of the game has favored 2Hs.

As I've mentioned before, Ukko's Fury is like a gattling gun whereas Mercy Stroke is like a sniper's rifle. The rifle is always extremely dangerous in the hands of skilled sniper, but the pure destructive power of a gattling gun need only to be channeled, no matter how inefficiently, to be somewhat effective. A bad Ukon is like a toddler with the gattling gun. He will still do damage, no matter how much potential he wastes, due to the compensatory nature of the weapon he wields.

The potency of our melee DoT is extremely dependent on the mobs. Prior to the August 2007 2H patch, the fatal flaw of dual wielders in HNM end game was that their low base damage suffered disproportionately compared to 2H. In the same way, 2H high delay suffered disproportionately compared to dual wield when fighting easier mobs. Then the 2H patch came out and crutched 2Hs to keep up much better against weaker mobs, while we still lag behind on tougher mobs.

I agree on reducing sa/ta timers. If not, a new JA to force crit with (same thing as reducing sa/ta to 66%). That update concept notice they published actually talked about this. Sadly never came to be..

/Tanakad

Yeah right. The only way to bring THF's damage output to the level of other DDs is to turn SA and TA into job traits rather than JAs. Can balance them out by only enabling them for WSs. Every DD can spam their strongest WS back-to-back-to-back. Even if SA/TA was on a 30 second timer each, it still won't be enough to keep up with WSs in vwnm.

@Sylow Some great points there my friend, but I do have to ask. After the damage boost of 25% and THF FTP mod effectively reaching 3.75, would it not be better to use a ele gorget to break the 4.0 tier?

3.75 x 0.1 = 0.375
3.75 + 0.375 = 4.125

Just curious is all, or is my thinking completely wrong? If so correct me please :)

As a trait? That would be kinda wierd!
Also we would'nt have the option to just use SA/TA for TH procs anymore then :<
But just putting the recast down a bit would surely help.
To like 45 seconds? and cut it all the way down to 30 with merits? (To maaybe make this a bit realistic)

Actually this is how WoW handles Rogues. While behind a target, your crit rate skyrockets. The code is feasible -- it would be similar to our accuracy bonus from Ambush

And they would need to go all the way down to 30s, 20s with full merits imo.

Crit rate skyrocket is very different from just SA and TA tho, that would be like comparing sneak attack to innin.
But yeah, an innin-like ability on thf would be nice.
But that would'nt help any in the ws-department, unless this ability would be like mighty strikes and force crits even on weaponskills that can't usually crit?
Which would be overpowered, kinda.