LR Effect Vs SE Recast

For the longest time, I have had SE recast and LR recast as my tier 1 merits, and upon knowing that LR is going to be 3 mins, I took SE recast out and put 5/5 on LR effect. It seems natural as you are going to benefit from the 10% extra attack for 3 mins now instead of 30 sec. Yet I have heard players who have LR effect before update saying they are changing it to SE recast. I was just wondering what is behind that decision mathematically.

I did some comparison (obviously situational since we are talking about attack vs fixed amount of damage per hit), and the result didn't surprise me.

Assumptions:
Under situation that benefits SE, which is obviously high defense mobs where the fixed per hit damage is greater portion of the per hit damage. So I assume pdif is 1.0 for tp and 1.25 for ws.

Total time 3,000 sec
Haste under LR = 65% (25% gear + 25% DB + 15% haste) standard setup
Haste under SE = 40%

Assuming Caladbolg as main weapon, so 431 delay.

Assuming 130 per hit from SE, which is kinda high cuz you are losing HP at the same time but going to give benefit of doubt to SE.

Ball park per hit damage:

Tp with LR effect + SE under 1.0 pdif = 305
Tp with LR effect = 175
Tp with nothing = 140
WS with LR effect + SE under 1.25 pdif = 1755
WS with LR effect = 1625
WS with nothing = 1300

Tp with LR + SE under 1.0 pdif = 291
Tp with LR = 161
Tp with nothing = 140
WS with LR + SE under 1.25 pdif = 1625
WS with LR = 1495
WS with nothing = 1300

Swing under LR effect + SE = 199
Swing under LR effect = 660
Swing under nothing = 195
WS# under LR effect + SE = 40
WS# under LR effect = 132
WS# under nothing = 39

Swing under LR + SE recast = 239
Swing under LR = 620
Swing under nothing = 195
WS# under LR + SE recast = 48
WS# under LR = 124
WS# under nothing = 39

Notice I specified LR effect and SE recast, each indicates merit selections. And as you can see that the total swing are the same for both merit selection since neither merit improves swing speed, just the allocation of it.

Also noted that I assume all SE usage is under LR effect which obviously results in more swings under the benefit of SE. This is giving the benefit to SE yet again knowing there will be times that SE is on but LR isn't and result in less swing under the effect.

With all that in mind, the total damage under LR effect merit under the assumption is 53,854 (In my spread sheet I have more detailed numbers). Under SE recast it is 51,038. So the difference is about 5%. give or take with almost every assumption favoring SE recast.

However, this is obviously not considering lvl correction, which will drive the damage down and make SE a greater portion of the damage. But with we approaching lvl 99, lvl correction will be a thing in the past. This is also not considering Drain II giving more HP and SE recast its money, but all that will hardly make up for the 5% difference in the above situation. Also, if you are capped on pdif, then LR effect adds nothing, so in that case SE clearly wins.

So if you are a DRK looking for some math background of the comparison of the two merits, here you go. If you are a DRK who knows your own playing style and the mobs you generally face, this will help you decide what you want to put in. The assumption is obviously that you will use LR everytime it is up and SE everytime it is up, but some don't use SE everytime it is up making SE recast literally useless.

Hope it helps.

How will being at Lv99 Make Level Correction a Thing of the past? The max Level coded into the game is 255.

or........ you could just do 5/5 Last Resort Recast & Effect

I've always had LR Recast & Effect since, for the most part, back at 75 all you could so with SE was pull out one big WS and then remove the effect.
Not only did LR benefit from the DB merits, but it also provided a nice Attack boost which you could fully exploit until the end of the JA. Also, LR already had a lower recast time compared to SE.

Only Abyssea and the limitless MP pools had me thinking about actually putting some merits into SE recast because it was finally possible to fully exploit the JA.

With this new update to LR though, I guess my merits are just fine the way they are.

don't need SoulEater merits in abyssea if you're exping. Can just allow your party to build lights~ and pop every 2hr chest and keep bloodweapon/souleater/lastresort running indefinitely.

but with recent news of souleater hp adjustment and increase to last resort effect~ I changed my merits to
5/5 muted soul 5/5 LR effect/recast 5/5 desperate blows :D

If Stalwart Soul turns out to be a significant boon for Souleater, it's not impossible for it to be worth meriting the recast down, assuming you can ride it full time.

But right now, what we know about Last Resort, keeping the effect merited is the safest bet. Merits aren't exactly hard to come by anyway.

My feelings on Muted Soul: Hate Caps anyway. I'd rather be able to boost Accuracy on certain targets (Flame Skimmer For Example) than have 2-3 seconds less of hate.

Yeah, True hate does cap anyways~ but I'd prefer not to get hit for the first few hits, iono~ could be deemed situational, but for the stalwart soul with the soul eater riding.... would something like this benefit us?

I'd rather have the SMN pop the 2h chests to spam Odin heheh.

No one is sure yet on how the HP Adjustment to SE will work and I've always liked my DE merits for Acc needs. Of course those merits too will have to be checked once they release new content.


Edit: As for the set you posted, I don't know if it enables you to stick to a good X-Hit build, but a few items you seem to have overlooked would be bloodbead gorget and Verthandi's gem. Also aenotherus mantle comes to mind.

I'm not entirely familiar with the proper X-Hit builds for DRKs these days, but I'd say it's still best to work around the gear options and save your original X-Hit.

LR recast is a given, I don't think it needs to be pointed out. Since you can only put 5 more merits in, the decision becomes 5/5 LR effect or 5/5 SE recast is what this topic is all about.

As for lvl code being 255, I will have to see when the mob lvl goes above 99 first. From what I understand, it hasn't happened yet, and back then when lvl cap was lvl 75, they had no problem making a mob lvl 95, 20 lvls above us, so why hasn't there been a mob lvl 110 yet. That's the logic behind my assumption. But even if lvl correction stays in the future, attack actually weights slightly more when lvl correction is applied anyway, so there really shouldn't be a huge difference in term of output.

For example. Assuming mob lvl 100, player lvl 90, player attack 500, mob def 500. Adding 50 attack moves cratio from .50 to .60, a 20% increase. Assuming mob lvl and player lvl is the same, adding 50 attack moves cratio from 1.00 to 1.10, a 10% increase only. So you get the idea on how lvl correction would actually enhance the result of extra attack. The biggest limitation on LR effect is obviously when you are capped on cratio, then you wouldn't get anything out of it while SE is still effective in those situations.

I also think a large factor will be: future mobs and the effect souleater has on them.

That's right Ashman. From my assumptions, you will notice that souleater is already close to adding 100% damage of a regular attack (140 base + 130 assumed SE damage). So I already tried to make the situation favors SE recast. When you are able to achieve 1.5 cratio, regular attack would do 210 while souleater damage stays the same, which is a far less %. I think the situation goes both way, LR effect's primary target is somewhere between cratio .8 to 2.0, while SE recast will likely be better when cratio falls below .8 or higher than 2.0. If it wasn't a tough choice this wouldn't be a huge debate for me, but I think I am set with LR effect base on my playing style, not to mention Torcleaver is a one hit WS that depends largely on attack, making LR effect that much appealing to me.

does it matter if the mob would be Lv 99+? i'm sure SE could just put in a mob lvl 99 and give it a crap ton of stats and abilities that would make it just as hard

Just to put things in more of a perspective. With LR recast as a given and the assumptions. Adding LR effect, which is jumping from 15% to 25% attack, is a 6.8% overall damage increase. Adding SE recast, which is going from a total of 500 sec of SE to 600 sec of SE out of 3,000 sec, is a 1.2% increase in overall damage. Looks kinda odd but I can't find any mistake in my math.

Well, the easiest way for the mob to be hard is to make it higher lvl. As lvl correction function is 0.05 ratio per lvl difference, which is a pretty significant penalty. FFXI mobs stats are systematic so each mob type and job follows a slope. The stats are usually not going to go out of the slope making it extremely difficult for a mob to gain any substantial base stats such as attack, str, vit, and defense in one lvl that is going to outweight the 0.05 penalty.

Changed my merits to this aswell.
Cant wait to play around with it >=)

If they changed muted soul to negative enmity when attacking.........

Then that would be real hot. I do still have 5/5 DB and 5/5 DE. I like to have the option of having more accuracy when I need to. However, I haven't used DE since abyssea came out, so if the mob difficulty don't improve and I find myself spamming SE with too much hate, I might give muted soul a try. After all, 50% enmity during SE duration is better than never used DE.

Oh man... if only... that'd be an awesome idea.

I have 5/5 LR recast and 5/5 SE recast as well~

with voidwatch/dynamis changes. it seems that a shift to "get our *** out of abyssea" is on the horizon. I completely agree that DE is not useful in abyssea, but outside it has its uses, much more so than muted soul.

stalwart soul is such a welcome boon, before the only way to fully utilize SE was have a mage capable/willing to let you (unlikely to find one) or have a 150mil weapon. This makes SE recast merits so much more viable for universal drk builds.

I'm actually concerned most healers won't be able to keep up with the HP loss if we use SE to its full extent outside of Abyssea.

From the videos shown so far of people fighting the Void NMs, the melees still need some considerable amounts of healing, and a DRK giving up HP on each swing is still a threat to himself and the healers' MP pool.

On the other hand, this may be the chance for BRDs and CORs to come to action again and shine again with their support abilities.

Either way, DRK just got a very nice boost to his dmg capabilities. The only thing that's left to brag about is:

SE WHY YOU NO GIVE DRK A CRIT WS INSTEAD OF AN oneiros rope Q_Q ?!?

I honestly don't think DRK needs a crit Weaponskill with the new LR duration Torcleavers average is much higher, its very rare now for me to drop below 3k inside of Abyssea spiking as high as 5-6k.

It's pretty damn great I got some playtime on DRK again. But I have a feeling once Ukons done I'm going to be too thrilled with Ukko's Fury. Though once the novelty wears off Im gonna try and get my gems/lanterns done eventually. I really want to +2 my DRKAF3 though badly.

Merit Wise I went pure LR effect/recast myself.