The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

So I got a lot of advice on my chi set. My average of 55k and spikes to 70k with that set seemed awfully high if there was a lot of gear that could have been upgraded.

I went back to try and duplicate it again with a none idris geo and I was lucky to see 20ks. I'll try again but on the original mob of Apex Raptors. Loving the discussion though. I'd like to see it used more in events with a proper set.

I have not seen any evidence that the magic portion can 'miss'. How sure are you that it's not just a heavy resist? It's certainly possible if there are only two resist states (Like enfeebling magic). This can easily be tested on elementals. I'll try it next go.

Definitely full missed hotshot before. Not zero damage, but miss.

You seem to have not understood what I mean. Watch the HP of the mob when you miss hot shot. Say it's at 100%, and it says

Eiryl Hot Shot => Apex Bats (Miss)

It will still have done damage and it won't have 100% HP anymore. That's what I was saying, not "0 damage".


The "magical" portion of hot shot is precisely the part that is prone to missing, it's the thing that does the lion's share of the damage. Also I keep trying to impress on people that it is Hybrid not in the fact that it has physical and magical components, but that the second hit is affected by both sets of terms, which is precisely why Fotia still matters for Hot Shot. It's also the reason I'm asking people to not refer to it as "magical". Hybrid implies magical properties, but saying it's "magical" ignores its physical properties.

As I said before, the way it works is... If you Hot Shot on a monster and it dies before the Hybrid hit takes effect, you will see what the first hit hit for, but the mob had enough HP to survive the first hit such that the Hybrid hit actually takes effect, it can suddenly say "(MISS)", yet the first hit's damage will still have been dealt.

Note: This comment has been edited to more accurately portray the way Hot Shot works.

Are you sure you are not simply using a weapons/gun with Magic damage on it and what you call magical miss and phsysical portion applied is actually a physical miss and magical portion applied but only based on Magic Damage from gear? Sounds far more logical, that physical hit can miss and it makes miss info in chat and magical hit can't miss, but can do 0 damage only if you have no source of Magic Damage in your gear.

I have also suspected that this is what is happening. In the one sample where I observed a 'miss' doing damage, the damage was less than 10% of the Groundskeeper's HP. I believe I was using a Malevolence at the time, so the magic damage would have been int(int(118 * 1.73) * 1.54) = 314. The Groundskeeper's have somewhere in the ballpark of 3~6k HP. I will test Hot Shot and Piercing Arrow on a Fire Elemental later to verify that there are more than two resist states. If that test shows that there are clearly more than 2 resist states than I think it's reasonable to assume that the magic damage on ilevel gear is causing this miss to do damage.

Magic attacks don't "miss" they get resisted. For hybrid WS's, their base damage is the total damage of the physical component and that component can "miss", meaning 0 damage as base. If there is 0 base damage then you will only have the +MDMG to be multiplied by all the magic multipliers meaning really low damage.

Guys there is no such thing as a "magic hit", hits are physical attacks. These are physical WS's that have additional effects that deal magic damage. This magic damage is subject to the normal resist checks and not accuracy / evasion checks.

Piercing Arrow on Fire Elemental - 331
3000 TP Flaming Arrow on Fire Elemental - 415
Magic Damage = 415 - 331 = 84
int(int(int(int(331 * 2.1)/16)*1.29)*1.54) = 84

It lines up perfectly with a tier 4 resist. Wasn't expecting anything else. This 'miss' damage is just the magic damage on gear, as others have also concluded.

Overall it is modeled nearly perfectly by the elemental WS formula where Base Magical WS Damage = Physical Damage * fTP + Magic Damage. The exception is the weird behavior of Fotia Gorget although it might be useful to test this on other magic weaponskills and see if there is similar weird behavior there.

I did a few more Flaming Arrows on Groundskeepers (not attack capped) and got some results that could not have been possible unless pDIF was re-rolled for the magic component or there is some truncation error with the formulas. It's hard to say which is which but it's mostly irrelevant except for how it may affect testing melee hybrid WS.

Some additional testing -

* Blade: Teki 3000 TP modifier seems to be 2.25
* Blade: To 3000 TP modifier seems to be 2.5
* The magic hit appears to use the sum of all physical strikes and procs last (this was already assumed, just good to confirm)

I didn't take averages for Blade: Chi but it appears to be 2.25 from the one sample that I took.

If that were the case, Hot Shot wouldn't be more prone to saying "Miss" when you have lower magic accuracy, and yet it is. If it were the case for Hot Shot, the weapon skill missing it's physical portion with a Malaise bubble up shouldn't make too huge of a difference, and yet the difference is night and day.

It's fine to say there's a general, nearly unanimous rule to these things, but to insinuate that aberrations to that model can't exist seems a little strange to me.

I'm less sure about the first hit being physical (edit: Indeed, it's actually mdmg), but I'm going to go take a look at that, but we know the second hit is hybrid. People were saying it was "Magical" which is what I was taking issue with.

Besides, we know the WS can miss, and still do damage, so that would imply that in either case, it can in fact do magic damage and still say miss, even when it technically didn't.

Edit: Given that hot shot's initial damage is very consistent, and is not affected by Malaise, I will agree this first hit follows that model, in fact I feel we may be talking past each other.

The first hit is actually an MDMG hit, which is where I was mistaken, the part after it is affected by pDIF and MDB, which I was not mistaken about. People were implying the hit was magical, so I was saying that was not the case.

It is still true that you can miss the WS's Hybrid portion, which perhaps for that reason should not be referred to as "Magical" because as you said, if it were truly magical, it wouldn't be able to miss.

The additional hit is magical and there is nothing that about it that hasn't fit into the magic damage model. The testing in the past two pages shows 1/2 and 1/16 resists. The damage proc when the physical portion misses has already been explained by the presence of magic damage gear.

Why are we still calling it magical? Calling it hybrid still includes it's magical properties.

I won't deny I made some mistakes, but again, the purpose of what I said earlier was mostly to inform people that despite Hot Shot having some physical damage components in it's damage calculation it pulls even less hate than Leaden Salute, which is purely magical. What I don't know, is why.

I went ahead and fixed alot of the information in previous posts I made about the first hit of Hot Shot, but I also left a disclaimer that I had changed alot of information, so all of your comments wouldn't appear confusing to a reader.

While I apologize for being wrong in some aspects of what I was saying, that's a gamble you take sometimes. Besides, now I know better, win-win.

This has already been explained. If all the physical hits whiff the entire WS would normally deal no damage at level 75. SE has since introduced MDMG gear which would raise the floor from 0 to whatever the MDMG is, so instead of 20K you get a miss message and ~400 damage being dealt.


Likely because only the physical component is being counted for CE, though this is pure speculation from my part. Magic WS's generate less hate because only the damage before the multipliers is used for CE.

I think you're still somewhat confused about how hybrids function, so here's a summary:

The formula is probably best understood as being two-part. I'll stick to Hot Shot as an example. I'm skipping the flooring to keep it simple.

1) A physical hit

fTP 1.0 70% AGI

Physical Hit = ((Weapon Base Damage + (Ammo Damage) + fSTR2 + WSC) * fTP) * WSD * pDIF

*Subject to misses just like a normal WS
*Subject to piercing/ranged resistance/vulnerability
*Is given a pDIF roll


2) A magical hit

fTP 0.5@1k 1.55@2k 2.1@3k

Magical Hit = (((Physical Hit)*fTP)+mDMG) * MAB * (1/MDB)* Affinity * WSD * Day/Weather * SDT * TMDA

*The first formula feeds into the second formula
*Subject to the usual magic resistance mechanics (resist states, SDT, etc)
*Cannot miss, though if you miss the physical portion, the magical portion will have a base damage of 0 unless you have some +mDMG equipped

Total damage= Physical Hit + Magical Hit

Enmity is based off the physical hit plus the magical hit, but does not consider MAB/affinity/probably day/weather. Some of the particulars of this could probably use further investigation and/or re-verification.

edit: I forgot to include WSD, which should be listed explicitly, rather than being implicit, for the below reasons. Hybrid WS from a SAM also have Overwhelm to consider.

Note that both the Physical and Magical components get WSD applied to them and since the Physical is also the base for the Magical WSD becomes particularly effective.

Physical Hit = ((Weapon Base Damage + (Ammo Damage) + fSTR2 + WSC) * fTP) * pDIF * WSD


Magical Hit = (((Physical Hit)*fTP)+mDMG) * MAB * (1/MDB)* Affinity * Day/Weather * SDT * TMDA * WSD

That's not completely correct. It's this.

Magic Base = Physical Hit * fTP

Magical Hit = ((Magic Base + mDMG) * MAB * (1/MDB)* Affinity * Day/Weather * SDT * TMDA * WSD + Physical Hit * Modifier

Modifier is typically what people think of when they say fTP, but I think it's a misnomer. The modifier for the magical part of hybrid weaponskills is 0, but if you use Fotia then it can become greater than 0. The important distinction is that it does not get multiplied by the rest of magical WS hit terms (MAB, WSD, etc.) I haven't actually tested things like weather to verify that they are not applied to the Fotia bonus, just MAB and WSD, although I don't care that much so I probably won't check this.

So this is to say that the first hit, and second hit's damage are linked directly? As in the first hit is then put into another calculation for the second hit which is affected by both sets of maths? Or am I still misunderstanding this?

About the comment that was made for doing this at level 75 cap being able to 0 damage, was it not clear back then that there even were two hits due to the lack of mdmg gear?

I ask mostly because I tested on low level mobs and the damage when only the first hit went off was absolutely identical, regardless of TP each time I did it, which isn't what I would have expected if it were a physical hit.

So is it, that in that case, if the monster dies from the first "probe" hit then it simply deals that portion of damage that was going to be the base for the part that follows, but that back then it wasn't able to do that because of the lack of mdmg?

@Snapster: Additionally, how is the modifier 0 if it's a multiplicative stage in the calculation? Wouldn't that result in a 0 (especially if it's at the end like that)? Or is it that it counts as zero unless the physical hit connects... or? Could this be explained in a different way?

Thanks in advance guys, these weaponskills I'm sure were invented specifically to confound and infuriate me. The information I did have on Hot Shot was actually something I had tested myself, so I could have tracked down all the information for it I suppose, but I wasn't really sure where to look.

I think this is pretty common knowledge, but ranged physical hits has no randomizer and no upper and lower limits of Qratio. Meaning you will always do the same damage when everything else (pdif/damage on gun and ammo/fstr/etc.) is keep static between hits. So there is nothing shocking in your Flaming arrow doing the same damage when only the physical portion of WS was overkilling the mob.

I will explain the concept in super easy way because I think some people doesn't feel well when they see numbers mixed with letters and on top of that between ()

Hybrid WS:
- is physical hit or hits and magic damage that comes after physical hit/s
- physical hit/s damage is based on physical stats like attack, accuracy, so can be buffed by things like berserk, chaos roll etc.
and also debuffs like frailty, dia, angon, boxstep.
- magic damage is based on damage done by physical hit/s and magical stats like MAB, macc, Magic Damage and can be buffed by things like Wiard roll, Acumen and also debuffs like Malaise
- WSD works for both phsyical hits/s and magical damage
- Magic damage scales with TP
- Magic damage wont happen if physical hit/s kill the target
- Physical hit/s can miss, magic damage will then only happen if you have Magical Damage in gear, but it will be low.
- Physiacal hits can also proc multi attack (obviously on melee hybrid WS, not gun/bow hybrid WS)
- Magic damage can be resisted

So I suppose I will test using a STR bubble and see if the damage varies (not that I don't believe, you, it's just the way I am). If it is indeed physical, the damage should be affected, and if it's magical, then the damage should not be affected.

I also want to do more followup testing using Libra so I can get a better picture of how the Enmity generated stacks up at different damage values as opposed to regular RA's, and with particular emphasis on doing it with, and without skillchaining. After all, to me, that's the most interesting thing about the WS.

Still, I appreciate all the constructive feedback, I had not anticipated that I had been able to accurately predict damage numbers using my own model, and end up having it wrong in alot of important ways... yet this makes me thing I need to go back to what I was saying earlier about the WS, as I had originally assumed it was a Physical hit, then a Hybrid hit, which is ironically more accurate than what I had thought people were correcting me with. I suppose the main difference is just the fact that the damage when missing comes from mDMG, besides that I wasn't far off originally, which I suppose would explain why my numbers seemed reliable.

Keep in mind that you are probably fSTR2 capped on weak mobs, so STR bubble wont change the damage. You would need to check on something more serious, if you want to check it like that.

There are no "first" or "second" hits, there is just the physical WS and the additional magic damage it does. We sometimes use those words interchangeably but it's very important to remember the difference when dealing with multi-hit WS's, like every single one of NIN's.

Ex Blade: To and Blade: Chi while dual wielding.

To is 1 hit on main hand plus additional off hand hit + any extra MA's that proc. That all gets added together and serves as the base damage for the magical effect. WSD is applied on the first physical hit but not to the others. WSD also seems to be applied again either to the total damage of the WS or to the magic component, either way produces the same results. Chi is a 2 hit on main hand plus additional from off hand and any MA's that proc.

The number we see on the screen is the sum of both the physical and the magic components, if the physical kills the monster then there isn't any HP left for the magical to proc and it gets left of. This extremely easy to see by WSing level 0 bunnies with and without MAB on.

The physical component has an "fTP" of 1.0, the magic component has it's fTP based on TP. I went out and SA Koki'd a bunch of level 0 bunnies at 1K/2K/3K TP and the damage didn't change, it was the same time I was testing MAB to verify the magic component didn't proc if the monster ran out of HP from the physical attacks.

Basically it's treated as two separate WS's that are added together for the final damage. The first is a regular physical WS, the second is a regular magic WS that has it's base damage determined by the sum of the physical. The TP Bonus multiplier is on the magic side, which is what makes it so hard to verify.

This was for hot shot which is a ranged WS so fSTR2, otherwise regular fSTR is used.

Note on fotia, we tend to treat fotia as +100/1024 fTP to every WS but that's not actually what it's doing. It's +100/1024 multiplier on all WS's that SC property match's the current day. It doesn't work on WS's that don't have SC properties, like Energy Drain or Sanguine Blade. The first physical component of Hybrids doesn't have a SC property and thus Fotia wouldn't work on it, we're not sure about the magic component as that is far harder to test without knowing the result of the physical one.

All the magic multipliers are changed together so it doesn't matter their order, only that the physical is calculated first, then multiplied by the fTP then has MDMG added to the result. This was proven awhile back when someone did hybrid WS's on that Zitah NM that takes no slashing but full magic damage, with their physical WS zeroed out only the MDMG was used as the base.

That's not quite right. The physical component carries the skillchain attribute because if it misses it doesn't create a skillchain. You can also look at the data in the last few pages. The equation I posted will match up with the data whereas the one you provided will not.

Here's the data again.

To be clear, it's mostly the same as what we already thought with some nuance. Fotia does 'double dip' for hybrid WS but additional damage from the second dip will not get multiplied by all of the other related magic WS terms (WSD, MAB, affinity, etc.) I don't think they intentionally designed it to work this way, it's more likely just weird behavior of legacy code that was written without the scope of newer items like Fotia Gorget.

If only we had WSD belts and necks that didn't lie to us. /sigh

This seems especially pernicious, given Fotia is 100/1024 fTP, yet in the case of Hot Shot with a fTP of 0.5, you would THINK that Fotia would be god tier for it, but then you have to explain all of this to show why it isn't as good as it seems. I can already see someone's head exploding when I try to explain this to them.

like, on paper this would look like a 20% increase per Fotia slot.

I'm a little confused at this. I thought Fotia applied on WS that had SC properties, because it's based on belts that had to match the SC properties, and that it was Gavialis helm that had to match the day. Did I miss something?

I did some Blade : Ei (Wild Rabbit) testing with results that are strange. 195 WSC, 119 level weapon, 65 MAB (including gifts), 42 WSD (including gifts) and 20 magic damage

1000 TP - 1049 damage
2000 TP - 2905 damage
3000 TP - 4759 damage

I did another set of tests with an 119 level weapon, 199 WSC, 55 MAB, 52 WS and 0 magic damage.

1000 TP - 1016 damage
2000 TP - 2901 damage
2139 TP - 3159 damage
3000 TP - 4786 damage

This indicates the following -

* The dstat term is capped at 157.
* The dstat term is capped at 32.
* The scaling is 0.732375~ - 2.86575~ - 5.0 for 1000, 2000, and 3000 TP
* The scaling is 1.0 - 3.0 - 5.0 for 1000, 2000, and 3000 TP

I'm skeptical because they're totally weird numbers but it was able to predict every WS I did to within 1 damage. The exception was the 2139 TP WS, which was off by 3 points of damage. I tried other misc sets at 1000, 2000, and 3000 TP. You can try jiggling the numbers around to fit an n/1024 model but the 2139 TP result is still off. I also did a test switching out 10 STR for 10 INT and the damage was the same, indicating that dSTAT really was capped (unless it's some other stat being used.)

I don't want to believe these numbers because they are ugly and weird, although so are the other elemental WS modifiers (Trueflight, Leaden Salute) so it is in line with them. It's worth noting that the dSTAT calculation must be wrong on bg-wiki or incomplete as I only had 219 INT at most, which is not enough to cap according to the formula there.

Overall it's a much stronger WS that what bg-wiki makes it out to be, especially for Heishi users.