Helix Question

I'm somewhat new to Scholar and have been noticing talk about helix damage and what effects it, etc. What is the best thing to stack?

Is it just the same as regular Elemental spells?

Is the only reason people say they're stacking INT is because of 5/5 merits in Helix Dmg/Acc?

Should I have a separate set of gear from my nuke set and my Helix set?

in a nutshell.. yes..


so basically if your casting accurately which the merits help with a ot then your INT and m.ab make a great deal more to you.

bearing in mind that 5/5 in that category gives you:

+15 magic accuracy
+10 magic attack.

Probably a bit confusing, as it was and still is slightly to me, but hope this helps a bit more

My current helix build. Could use work but this is more or less how one should look, stacking on lots of INT.

Helices have low base damage, so MAB does less for them than your high-damage T4-5 nukes. That's why people stack INT over MAB in most slots for Helices.

So this is pretty much what i have available to me.

Guessing it's pointless to use corresponding hq staff when the +5 INT from Aquilo's is a lot better?

What else would be better? +Elemental magic maybe? I know there is some high-end gear that is obviously a better choice, just no access to them atm.

Nightfyre- That actually cleared up a lot for me, good info. Thanks for pointing that out.

Staves aren't MAB, they're a straight potency bonus and far superior to 5 INT even if you disregard their macc.

This usually.

That being said if for some crazy reason you are /nin 2 wands might be more dmg. Especially non ice spells

Elemental magic skill does not affect your damage, only your resist rate.

It also affects spell interruption rate for Elemental Magic spells.

Should focus on getting a plethora of sea obis for just about everything you do. Most important ones are probably light thunder and ice.

negative..... I did EXTENSIVE testing on Int (Kirin's Pole) Vs ToM staves as well as teal body Vs Errant.. teal body + slops Vs Errant body + mahat slops

MAB+ with the int already on teal blow the full int build out of the water.... by quite far... my Varuna's Staff +1 (ice+5) with teal was doing about 50 more/tick over the full int build and kirin's staff.. so i highly highly doubt 2x int wand are gonna do anything remotely close to that dmg

You do realize you say I'm wrong but don't actually contradict what I said right?

I was comparing 2 10int wands to a HQ staff. not just 1 10 int pole to a TotM staff lol. Btw no testing needed. The math doesn't lie

that other 10 int from the 2nd whatever wand+1 isn't gonna amount to the potency+ of the ToM+1 staves though

edit: considering the different in int between full int build and teal + ToM for me was about 18 int on full int build

Again not what I said

Though if your dint with the ToTm staff is less than or equal to 38 2 10 int wands would actually beat it... granted if that's the case you should rework your build anyways

how am i misunderstanding what you said...? you said /nin 2 wands might be more than an ele staff....which it isn't when you use ToM staves (those are ele staves to me)


if i'm misunderstanding sorry..but thats what i got from what you said, and i read it a few times >_<

Read the things I quoted. nightfyre was referencing a guy talking about HQ staffs. Hence the whole 5int part of it since they were talking about using aquilos for all helixes

i get what you're sayin... sorry...but this is confusing the crap out of me, cuz people are saying stack int onry on helix spells



This is what I don't understand.. I got far better numbers with MAB+ gear like teal, that had both int and MAB and my set isn't even 100% complete... am i doin it wrong? I was getting 50 dmg more/tick over my full int build.... i used low level mobs to test the resist rate...maybe that was my issue? idk... i did minor testing while soloing Cep Kamuy and still came to the same conclusion...ToM staff + teal won by leaps and bounds over kirin's + int gear

That's because you don't understand how magic damage is calculated (you may have also been looking at resists with Kirin's Pole). It's the same reason why Moldavite and Novio are better than +2 INT earrings. If the percentage is big enough, it ends up being worth more than what increasing dINT will give you.

INT adds to your base damage, MAB and staff bonuses are multipliers. The lower the base damage is, the less of an increase the multipliers will give.

so you say that MAB can weigh heavy on helix..which is the conclusion I came to *edited*


But Nightfyre says they don't add that much.. nor does the person who had the gear set I originally quoted... *edited*

those are 2 very different view points on the subject...so whom is correct? I mean I did my own testing, but again it was low level mobs..... does the formula completely change when the mob is high level?

Use the appropriate elemental staff (Either lv51 Staves or ToM staves) and a super INT build. No dual wands, no kirins pole, no full teal. Appropriate staff, INT build, use mab where it far outweighs the INT (moldy/novio vs int+2 earrings, for instance).

http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/111598

It highly depends on the amount of dint and MAB.

If you rearrange the magic dmg formula you can get a formula that will tell you how much int would be equal to 1 MAB which is what I use to chose betwee two peices in 1 slot


Btw it would be: xint = (V+M*dint)/(M*MAB*100)

For helixes V=25 and M=1. dint= mob int -your int

normally most spells you nuke in have much bigger V values (like 700 lol) which makes small changes in dint not effect the result much so you can use very approximate values. But for this I'd recomend trying to find mob int within at least 20 if not 10 for better calculations. And if it wasn't obvious yes this means low lvl mobs compared to high lvl ones make a huge difference

now obviously that is just a quick check. For 100% accurate you need exact mob int and should just use the full magic dmg formula for each gear in question

Cymmina's post agrees with mine. *In sufficient quantities* MAB will be superior to INT.

oh ok sorry Night..again a lil misinterpretation... ok go go Yhel Jacket!!! lol :P

idk why people say is mainly affected by int when is not, the higher magic atk bonus the better, you can easy tell that is true by casting helix with ebullience a lot of scholars don't know that we have Vicious Mufflers i rarely see them wearing it

so you basically saying that mab is not better than int again.. same as previous posters that have been adressed ,i think you need to read the entire thread again and i can do more than 430dmg helixes with my mab set, int based dmg is very inferior to mab, unless you need int for landing with accuracy, you need a lot do match MAB gear damage

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Magic_Damage

The math does not match your experience. If your choice is +10 INT or +10 MAB, the INT wins. If you look at how magic damage is calculated, you will understand why.

Helix has 25 base damage. If dINT is 0 (it usually isn't, but this is just for simplicity's sake), that +10 INT will increase your helix to 35 damage because dINT increased by 10. If you went with the MAB instead and have no other MAB from gear/traits, you will increase your damage by 10%, which only increases your damage to 27 (27.5 rounded down).

I'm gonna ask something off-topic, but I've allways been wondering about this..
Why do people write helices?
Is it some kind of wierd way to write helix when there's more than one?

using my example in my previous posts, Cymmina said I was probably getting resists when I was using the all int+ set, but I was doing mobs like 50 levels under what I was so I'm not sure a resist is even possible at that point on my helix dmg. And I tested full int vs my MAB set and MAB won by leaps and bounds.. plz guys that are saying the contrary of me and Emanuelle.. plz plz post SS of both your gear and your helix dmg and your atmas/food (my tests were done outside of abyssea) because I would like to improve my helix set as its a great way to deal nice DoT...

yes thats the plural of helix