The Last Dance II: The Show Must Go On

Look what I started...
Uh, I apologize.
I didn't want to start a war or make people angry or being aggressive or anything else.

I was just sharing a concern I had on some jobs, among which DNC.
I don't use these jobs for really hard content (on those I'm usually on BRD, GEO or other mage/support jobs).
I tried to reproduce in the spreadsheet the type of content I usually deploy my DDs in (High tier battlefields, CP pts, some unity NM, some easier content) and in the majority of these situations I noticed, to my big surprise, that Thaumas was still providing a far greater DPS benefit than all of the other options I tested.

What's worse is that this difference was quite noticeable, it wasn't a matter of a very small one that I could've ignored it for the sake of an acceptable compromise, inventory saving (I'm always struggling for that) and so on.
I struggle so much to make updates to my sets for very minimal DPS increases, and then I noticed I was ignoring Thaumas that, by itself, could provide me with far greater increases than all of the other things I had been working on lately.
This thing kinda let me down a bit, and annoyed me to no end.

Hence I came here (and in other threads) looking for additional input, seeing if I had missed something, did some mistakes. I was hoping to learn that things were different and I just did some mistakes in my spreadsheet calculation.


It's just that I swear, I didn't want to start an endless arguing or disrespect anybody, Skudo in particular whose opinion I take into very high regard.
Anyway, thanks everybody for the precious inputs I received over the last posts.

We've been through this before. Ivlilla just plays a different game, and fights different mobs than we do. I used Thaumas previously, because Skudo's spreadsheets showed it winning in X and Y situations, and Gearswap automatically handles those swaps for me given those situations, so it takes zero effort to optimize. It took about a month for me to get Rawhide body, but in that entire time, never once did Thaumas Body prevent me from doing anything successfully. I don't know why Ivlilla is so paranoid of getting hit, or why his Whm is afraid to spend MP, but I can only assume it's because they're doing events I'm not.

Until I run into these events I'll continue to follow the theory of DPS.

I think I stopped using Thaumas when I got Qaaxo Harness (A-path). +77 defense, +74 evasion, various amounts of MDB, Meva, and other base stats at the cost of 3% QA, 1% DA, and 1% TA when I'm using Terpsichore (frequently with AM3)... If there is any slight DPS advantage to Thaumas, I'd still feel like using it was comparable to peeing on my healers.

It's not so much that we'd wipe and lose events if I used it, but just that the slight decrease in time in the event isn't worth the extra blood pressure my healers would suffer from.

I had a big tl;dr thing written up. This is as concise as I can make it, and it' still longer than I like:

My play time on DNC is divided between roughly 10% duoing or trioing content with one or two of my two friends I play this game with, and 90% being me helping other people get geared and get clears/wins.

In the former situation, I am usually the only DD and also the tank. In the latter situations, I am almost always the majority of the damage output and also the tank. In both situations my ability to deal damage is directly tied to my ability to live to deal that damage. In both situations Thaumas Coat is not beneficial to me.

Trivial content already dies so trivially quickly that Thaumas Coat does not represent a significant increase in speed, and difficult content might find it useful if not for the fact that I cannot rely on or assume there will be anyone else available who can tank or deal damage if I die. I would rather a delve run take 30 minutes to win than be lost in 25, so I'm understandably disinclined to wear Thaumas Coat when me dying is what will cause an attempt to end in failure almost 100% of the time because the vast majority of my playtime on DNC is where I am sole tank and sole damage dealer, or close to it.

Byrth tt made perfect sense in the period of time you're talking about.
People didn't use tanks except with PLD+RNGs strategies.
Everything else was about Melees tanking and hate was jumping left and right, there was no way to be safe from direct damage, be it from dangerous AoE or from straight hits.

The situation now is different though. More often than not if there's a tank your DDs won't be taking enmity, meaning only dangerous AoE moves remain. Many of which can be avoided by either moving or positioning behind/on the sides of the monster.

In such situations damage taken by DDs isn't really as big of a deal as it were in the one you described.
If people go crazy for 0.5 more DPS provided by an HQ ring over NQ, it sounds a bit incoherent that you're ignoring a much bigger DPS increase that you can get from the body slot by using Thaumas instead of other options.
It's exactely what I was doing, I was ignoring Thaumas (which could've provided me noticeable damage boosts) but then I was fapfapfaping over very negligible increases in other slots.

Once I noticed this behaviour of mine, I realized it didn't make much sense.
I was torn between two sides.
On one hand I hate using non-ilevel gear, period. Especially in TP sets.
On the other hand the difference was noticeable enough that it was really hard for me to just ignore it.



I'm talking about situations where I can make MEANINGFUL use of Thaumas of course. This doesn't include stuff with incredibly dangerous unavoidable AoE every 2 seconds, or stuff where I need every single bit of accuracy to be able to hit my target.
But I get the impression many people in here want to pass the idea that these two types of content represent 99% of the overall content.
Maybe it's true for them, but it's certainly not true for me. I could name a large amount of D and VD High Tier Battlefields, T1-3 Delve NMs, maybe even some T4-5, salvage bosses or sturdier stuff, CP pts, and so on.
Situations like these. It might not be a lot, but it's not even the completely irrelevant minimal stuff that some people seem to be thinking about, imho.

People actually use tank jobs now?! What is the world coming to?

The difference with Qaaxo was depressingly high.
Perfect Aug Taeon had a much smaller gap, but it was still something I wouldn't call "negligible".
For something that could virtually cost tenths and tenths of millions of gil (I've spent over 70mils gil augmenting other stuff weapons, and 99% of them still have ***augments, my in-game friends always joke with me about it) it's hard to justify the expense for something's that's actually even worse. ("situationally", of course. Could say "something that's not even remotely always the best compared to an old, non ilevel and free piece")

I don't remember about Rawhide D, I seem to recall it was more or less close to Perfect aug Taeon, but I'm not sure anymore honestly, I'll have to re-do my tests.

I can see Rawhide D being a better compromise. If it's better than Taeon then the gap has gotta be even smaller, plus the cost is quite affordable and you don't have to rely on annoying random number generators.

I need to test again on the spreadsheet and see wether this dps difference is still big, or so small that we can start talking about ignoring it and accepting compromises.
I know I personally didn't consider the Qaaxo difference acceptable.

It's heading towards a world where, depending on what you're doing, 5/5 Closed Position + Horos Toe Shoes might not be "worth it" anymore! ;-(

I've found myself shoving my daggers up random butts much more often recently, because many things have bad frontal stuff...

You constantly repeat the same thing.
Somehow you find a way to die on Dancer despite having a dedicated healer. It's not really helping your case, I assure you.

Maybe that's the norm, and I'm the freak, because in any situation where I have a dedicated healer, I basically consider it impossible to die. I mean hell, I play 90% of this game with Apururu, and still can't find many ways to die. Maybe it's because I know how to use Fan Dance, or how to hit F9, I don't know.

You refuse to use Thaumus anywhere, because of blah blah blah.
Just say 'I don't believe in min/max or optimization because I'm lazy, or because of Inventory issues'. People aren't going to fight you.

Your logical point, is that in scenario's where you expect to be filling a dedicated tank role, then Thaumus is a bad idea.
If you stopped there no one would have an issue with your statement, because it's true. But you insist that anywhere Thaumus wins qualifies as 'trivial'. Well guess what, A: If they're doing that event, and B: using DPS sheets to maximize that event, then it's not really that trivial to them is it?

It's the equivalent of someone coming in to the thread and saying the way YOU play the game is trivial. Tojil is trivial because 30 people show up to kill it, and they're going to kill it with or without you. It's condescending.

But the more interesting question here Ivlilla, is where do you draw the line? Why Horos body over Emet? Why do you use Epona's or Rajas, instead of full timing Dring/Vocane? Why not full time Griffon ring. Why asperity or charis necklace instead of twilight. Why Windbuffet over Flume. Should War never use berserk? Should Drk never use SoulEater? Should Sam never use Hasso?

Why is your line so firmly drawn on this single piece of gear, when you(we all) make the same sacrifices at other pieces of gear without any hesitation, for less DPS?

None of this really matters, as the situations in which Thaumas was winning, are shrinking with each update, Rawhide body knocked off a handful of them already. But as long as people keep finding these situations on the DPS for events they're doing, these questions will continue to come up. And just because you refuse to min/max doesn't mean everyone should follow in your footsteps.

In situations where I'm the only DD, and the only one getting hit with TP moves, taking all the damage, and you don't see how I could die?

Weakness + massive debuffs, constant en-dispel on attacks, things that can hit me for 400/+ damage on normal hits even through PDT, TP moves that deal 2k/+ damage through PDT, things that spam doom, anything that does chainspell death.

Having a dedicated healer doesn't do much when you can be oneshotted, or killed in 2 seconds by some unlucky crits and double attacks, or you get all your DT gear knocked off you by encumberence while weakened.

In situations where I'm not the only DD? That usually means I have a bunch of inexperienced people with me who don't understand positionining because they've never done the content before, and don't have experience with what to do and what not to do.

Hate reset move followed by the WHM or someone near the WHM getting hit with breakga, AoE doom effects, full dispels, pretty much anything that applies to being sole DD and tank applies here.

Sometimes all those nasty weapons that spawn in like five at a time teleport away before you have a chance to Aeolian Edge and then murder the WHM, then you, or no matter how much Cursna the WHM spams while you chug holy water with your "enhances cursna effect recieved" gear on the RNG just decides it's your time and you die, and then the WHM manages to get Arise off but then gets hit with Doom and also dies which doesn't matter much when you're weakened and about to get hit with it again yourself, or that goddamn goobbue NM from Unity gets of a couple of lucky crits back to back, or that goddamn Tiger in Escha levels up one too many times and you get hit with an 4000 damage TP move.

There are myriad ways that things can go wrong when any hate reset, even ones that are normally single target or partial mean that the new priority for the NM is the WHM. Especially on anything that has stun on its auto attacks, or, god forbid, en-paralyze, en-petrify, or knockback, as they can all prevent the WHM from being able to function.

Sometimes things just go wrong, and while the fewer people you have present the fewer people there are who can cause things to go wrong, there are also fewer people present who can help recover in a bad situation.

Greetings Dancers,

I would like to share something I noticed in a course of a week and I'm not sure if its a bug or something related to other factors.

for the past week I've mainly focused on Dynamis and was doing it because my play-times shifted.

herewith the premise of the mentioned week:
-2 dyna runs everyday collectively 14 runs.
-using DNC only with no support job for he chance of white proc so I can safely say this occurrence isn't related to support job attributes/abilities.
-This is the set I used for Rudra:
ItemSet 331717

-Now I managed to kill around 350-400 [Hippos,Leaves,Manticores] in Valkurm Dunes-Dynamis for 7 days thats around ~5,250 mobs.

-The anomaly or let me call it "the proc" happened 27 times during that week and its while I rudra... it doesnt use TP its like i weaponskilled for free.

-In regards to JP this is what I have so far and working on maxing it out:
Trance Effect 3 / 10
Grand Pas Effect 2 / 10
Step Duration 5 / 10
Samba Duration 7 / 10
Waltz Potency 5 / 10
Jig Duration 3 / 10
Flourish I Effect 0 / 10
Flourish II Effect 8 / 10
Flourishes III Effect 5 / 10
Contradance Effect 3 / 10

-The percentage of this anomaly is 0.5%

If there is any explanation why this happens it would be highly appreciated.

Jumping into "is Thaumas still worth it or no", dancer is usually the toughest or second-toughest party member and has a couple of hate tools, JA cures, JA erase, etc. If things are going badly, you want to be the last damage dealer left standing. Dancer can hold a mob and can help with recovering. Thaumas doesn't bring in enough extra damage to be worth the risk of giving that up except on absolute fodder.


The examples that you cite have zero dps benefit. For the Thaumas vs ilvl body debate, both pieces have dps benefit, but one piece is a large defensive sacrifice. I can't think of a slot where any melee considers making that great of a sacrifice outside of this one?

Also, we do hesitate to make that kind of sacrifice, situationally. That's the purpose of so-called "hybrid sets".


For Vagary, it's safer to do so, because of weakness TP move. And certain mobs there hit extremely hard even through PDT gear. Not sure about other content but that one is tailored towards having a tank.

Sounds like you're accidentally using either the combined WS gorget or WS belt for Rudra's.

Like Byrth said, it's a Fotia trait - your itemset has Fotia belt in it now, and that will certainly do that.

Yes I just realized! made it recently and didnt pay attention to depletion ratio!!
Thanks a lot.

If you don't think there's a DPS difference between:
Charis Necklace vs Twilight Torque
Windbuffet +2 vs Flume Belt
Epona's Ring vs Vocane Ring
etc
etc

Then you and I are never going to see eye to eye, and we should just agree to disagree now.


This I agree with. Which is why i mentioned above, that I know how to use the F9 button. I can swap between a full PDT, a Hybrid PDT, ACC, EVA, EXP, Normal, you name it. It's far easier for me to have a simple button I push to 'survive' than to gimp my entire DPS with an 'end all' set. Again, which is why I keep laughing anytime someone like Ivlilla refuses to accept situation gear. Thaumas has places were it excels. Period.

If you aren't min/maxing your gearsets, or you've maxed them for extremely narrow minded events, then that's fine. I have no issue with Ivlilla's playstyle or gear choices, based on what he's described. I agree and support his logic and decision.

But don't tell other people they shouldn't use it either, just because you don't use it for X. FFXI is a situational game, with situational pieces. Always has been, and it's why things like Gearswap exist.

Tl;dr Thaumas has it's place, albeit rarely these days.

Reading all of the min/max-ing for relatively minuscule increases reminded me of something else seemingly unrelated: I beat myself a few times by not main-handing a Mythic. Same mob, same buffs, fights lasted about 5 minutes. (Namely Avatars v2 on D.)

Now, how does this relate to min/max-ing? I think I got lazy in my brain somewhere, because of my Mythic. I might have maxed out my gear, but I actually shrunk my actual performance on my way there. I haven't got to go back and "tried harder" with a Mythic in my hand yet, but it was a useful lesson to me that while having appropriate gear can push up the theoretical maximum performance, it does not actually mean that all that gear automagically translates to better performance.

So on the way to maximising your actual performance, reviewing your lines of action etc. might yield more significant result than e. g. swapping in Thaumas Coat for Rawhide Vest. If you however play perfectly, then ignore all this anecdotal blabla and believe in the power of spreadsheets!

(Talking about spreadsheets, I think something is amiss with Boost-STR. I'll have to look into that rq...)

Edit: Found the mistake; I probably *** up slightly when I updated the spreadsheet the other day. It ended up overestimating WS #1 when fSTR was capped by assuming a wrong fSTR cap. This only affected WS #1 damage, so if you were comparing Thaumas Coat (Sets #1) against something else (Sets #2), you might want to re-run your numbers, because the results might have been skewed towards Thaumas Coat; or the other thing, if flipped around. In general, the capped fSTR during TP blabla claim of mine remains valid though.

I think they meant something else.
The example you made are pretty easy since you're comparing a piece which has clear DPS purposes and others who bring no DPS increase at all.

For the body slot it's slightly more complex since the comparison was between bodies which ALL bring DPS increase. It's just that one (thaumas) does so at the cost of defensive skills, whereas the others have statvomit etc.

I think your point still stands somehow, but at the same time comparing Thaumas with those bodies is not exactely the same as the examples you made.


For who was looking DPS vs Defense things, there's Rancor Necklace. (personally I always hated TPing in that, especially outside of Abyssea, but many people did it).
During the 75 era and before Adoulin there were several other pieces which brought DPS at the cost of something.
Tbf it was quite the standard. The majority of items were created like that.
Post Adoulin I can't think of anything.
(well there are a few unity items without proper statvomit, like the ilevel Emperor's Hairpin and some others like that, but they kinda suck so I doubt anybody bothers to use them)

I hope you're right that he meant something else, but at the end of the day whether a piece has DPS or not is irrelevant.
All that matters is the DPS difference between A and B, and whether that is worth losing the survivability of the alternative.

For example... When I initially brought this up, looking back at my post I listed the DPS difference of Thaumas Body vs Taeon Body as 54DPS.

Right now looking at my current sheet, on the same target, it's 83DPS if I switch from Rawhide to Thaumus Body.
Eighty-Three Damage Per Second.
4,980 per minute.
298,800 per hour.

If you farm something 'trivial' for an hour... how many more would you have killed in that same hour, by dealing an extra 300k damage?
Obviously things don't work out that perfectly, but it kind of sets the image doesn't it? How many more Escha mobs, how much more silt did you acquire in that hour?

Now... how much survivability do you lose from Rawhide to Thaumas?

Is sacrificing 83DPS for that survivability the effeceint answer?
Asperity to Twilight Torque is a loss of only 27DPS, but you gain -5% Damage Taken.
Rajas vs Vocane is 14DPS for 7% DT.

That means, that someone who uses:
Rawhide + Asperity + Rajas have a DPS of +41
Thaumas + Twilight + Vocane have a DPS of +83

The former gets: defense, stat vomit and iLVL
The latter gets: -12% Damage Taken.

So unless you can show me, that Thaumas is taking well over 12% more damage than Rawhide... then Thaumas is the correct gear decision.

But as stated previously, now with R15 Rawhide, Thaumas' uses are limited to events where survivability is not a factor, because the only situations I can find it winning, are situations where you can't possibly die. So, again, I stand by the fact that, yes, you should be using Thaumas Body, in the rare situations you find where it even wins on the sheets.

Tl;dr
Use Thaumas everywhere the sheets say you should, until you die. Upon death, reconsider your DPS vs DT gear choices.
But until you die, who cares.

@Skudo
Are you sure the ToeTapper WSD version is working correctly?
The difference for PK from the DW version to the WSdmg version is only showing as 45 damage. (5444 vs 5489) on SoundSplitters.

Yes Cambion you're pointing out exactely the thing I realized all of a sudden some time ago.
I was making a sacrifice in a single slot (body) without realizing how big of a difference it was.
In some situations you could probably keep Thaumas and swap another single accessory slot for one strong defensive item, and the final result might still provide higher DPS with similar defense compared to other options not including Thaumas.

It's things like this that made me realize how, in some specific situations, it was really stupid of me to avoid using Thaumas just because I have a personal bias against non-ilevel stuff.

Almost certain: Pyrrhic Kleos has 5+ hits and WSD+ only works on the first hit. At 1k damage per hit, the increase of WSD+5% is that: 50 damage.

I can check Mote's implementation of WSD+, but so far, I don't have reason to believe it's wrong.

Edit: Skimmed through Mote's implementation. Looks correct.

Edit: Thanks Skudo, completely forgot about 1st hit only. Apologies for wasting your time.

Side note... does anyone have a fancy GearSwap script for avoiding Moonshade Earring if TP is @ 3k? (Or even > 2750?)

function job_post_precast(spell, action, spellMap, eventArgs)
if spell.type == "Rudra's Storm" and TP=3000 then
set_combine(sets.precast.WS["Rudra's Storm"], {ear1="Bladeborn Earring",ear2="Steelflash Earring"})
End

Something simple like that?
And while I'm at it...

If spell = Climactic Flourish and finishing move = 0 then
input delay 1.1
send command /ja step

Every now and then I fail at counting...

Hrm, Mote's include files. No idea about those, tbh.

Generally:


Put that wherever you feel it should belong. Also, I'm too lazy to check the actual turning point for when 2nd Jupiter's Pearl outdoes TPB+250.

I do it in a pretty simple and maybe unconventional way.
I have basic sets for difference accuracy levels etc which get equipped in the WS line inside my precast function.

Then at the end of the function I have a second cycle that basically checks for TP and if it's higher than a certain threshold amount, then it swaps moonshade for another given option.

Thanks, that's exactly what I meant.

Finally got Nibiru Knife to drop today after about 8-10 kills.

Was playing with the spreadsheets again with Odium/NibiruC
Maculele Tiara +1
Ginsen
Onieros
Come out on top for CP party SoundSplitter Bats.

vs

Charis Feather
Taeon Head
Rajas Ring
For NibiruC x2

Looks like the same applies to Odium/Iz, Iz/Nib,
Not Iz/At though.
*This is max haste

Might help some in similar situation as me (lolNonTerp)

Actually, as I go down the list of haste tiers... not having Nibirux2 makes things very touch and go through the whole process...

Basically, use DPS sheets, because each tier uses a different head piece, Skormoth makes an appearance, Taeon and Maculele... Rings go back and forth, as do ammo slots. The rest is the basic logic of DW to cap delay.

tl;dr: The level all this spreadsheet-ism is reaching is... scary.


w

This reminds me of Ihina's recent post on the THF forums, stating they're going Jugo HQ + Jugo NQ for CP over Vajra + something else, because that's yielding better results. Except that their thinking completely defies spreadsheets and yet I think they're right, whereas here it's wondering what to do with an extra 300k damage.

I could probably gimp away my Pyrrhic Kleos set, reducing my spreadsheet'd damage output by something like 200 dps and it still would not change anything at all, because overkills. Despite being short 720k damage over the course of an hour. That happens when you break the spreadsheet assumption of unlimited HP mobs.

On a more serious note: Which TP set do you use when there are two different optimal TP sets for the very same setting, except for the WS used. Clearly, you don't use one TP set when you plan to use Eviseceration and another TP set when you plan to open/close Darkness with Pyrrhic Kleos. What if you're not alone and actually have to react to people doing their WSs.

I'm fighting a losing battle, because you're smarter than me, you know more about DPS than me, you know more about game mechanics, and you're a better Dnc than me I assume. But even with that being the case...

Where do you draw the line?

At what point are we all turtled up 100% because 'Dmg doesn't matter'? Spreadsheets don't matter. If 300k/hr isn't noticeable in the game, is 500k? 800k? Why are we even engaging at all? What's the DPS cutoff to be noticed?

Basically you're telling me that your Terpischore is no better than my Odium; you wasted countless hours and 300M for town gear? The DPS difference will never be noticed unless we melee kill things to death? Anytime a Weaponskill is involved, DPS sheets are useless?

Where is the cutoff of when gear matters? A mob needs 30k HP to notice it? 50k? 100k? How long does something have to live, for anything we do to matter?

Overkill? Well who overkills quicker?
If I TP faster, and WS faster, does overkill matter, or am I engaging the next mob quicker. Or is that the cutoff? A mob has to live a single attack round beyond your 1st WS, and then the measuring begins? So any mob that outlives 17 attacks and 1 WS, would matter? And that number is for solo. Because if a 2nd person is attacking the mob, it needs to outlive their damage combined with my 17+WS, for the '2nd cycle' to begin, and DPS to matter. What if my WS DPS's 200dmg more than yours, just enough damage for 17 attacks + WS to kill it, but your WS set isn't as strong, so every time I kill a mob, you're 1 attack round slower per mob. Then by the time you kill 8 mobs, I've killed 9. (2.2attacks, 8 mobs, 17 attacks=1WS and a full mob killed)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your TP question, but the answer is the F9 key regardless. I suppose you're asking about a Supernatal(?) Chapuli gearset? Where no WSs can be used so you maximize DPS via the 'Melee DPS' line on page 1 of the spreadsheet, and have that gearset listed as sets.engaged.Melee and cycle to it when the situation fits. Like when I'm not sitting at my computer, and like to engage things and walk away, or when you're alt-tabbing a lot, so that you can farm silt while doing other things. Or situations where you're holding 3k TP, waiting for Beist to pop, but you don't want to use your TP, so you just kill with White damage until you get your NM. Is that what you're referring to?

Should anyone bother with +1 gear? Or Augmenting gear? Will R0 Nibiru Knife be the same as my R15?
Yesterday I saw Ivlilla running around with the Reive Dagger and Reive Neckpiece. Why? Why bother optimizing a trivial event? Reives don't even hit back. You want to talk about a situation where you SHOULD be using Thaumas, congratulations you found it.

Lines in the sand.

On a more productive note, is there a way to have a Rudra set for Climactic active?

One situation where that can (slightly) matter is when you're fighting lots of foddery stuff (such as in Dynamis) and you have to choose between killing something in 1 hit (Rudra's) or 2-3 hits (Evisceration, Kleos, whatever). While just obliterating the monster with Rudra's might be the way to go in terms of DPS, the extra DPS is meaningless since the monster would have died either way and the extra TP return from a weaker multi-hit might have been helpful.