Should we really care about attaining 120 INT?
As you may recall, lodeguy gave us data that suggest (informally) a critical point for ΔINT (caster's INT minus target's INT) that "connects" two distinct regimes of rate of change of overall magic accuracy with respect to INT. To summarize, before ΔINT +10, the rate of change is estimated to be 1% per 1 INT (actually a little less from statistical significance testing), and between ΔINT +10 and ΔINT +30, 0.5% per 1 INT. I only emphasize this range because there is no data to show what might happen beyond ΔINT +30. (Moreover, there was no data to suggest, as far as I can recall, the effect of INT below 50% overall m. acc. But, realistically speaking, no one is ever going to investigate these issues. This is the best we will ever get, probably.)
With that in mind, it might be interesting to get some sense of whether 120 INT is generally suitable in "endgame" to reach the second ΔINT range with the slower rate of change. To do this, one must compare 120 INT to the INT of various "endgame" mobs.
Regrettably, information about mob INT from English-language sources is either poorly documented (sequestered in obscure FFXI forum posts) or almost non-existent (seriously, does anyone give a fuck about anything other than Ebony Puddings?), and this annoyed me to the point that I attempted to calculate the INT (as well as magic defense bonus, or MDB, and reduction of magic damage taken, or MDT-) of various mobs that I faced over the past few months to get a sense of whether I was surpassing ΔINT +10 most of the time. As I said in the last post, magic damage is deterministic (level of resist is random), so it should be fairly straightforward to calculate mob INT in many cases. Of course, I could have made calculation errors or overlooked level variability for specific mobs. I will leave it to others to verify or refute my calculations.
There isn't much variety in what I do in FFXI, though. All I have is data for mobs in NW Apollyon and those for various ZNMs. First, NW Apollyon:
| Monster | INT | MDB | MDT- | |
| Bardha | 75 | 0 | 0 | |
| Pluto | 82 | 0 | 0 | |
| Mountain Buffalo | 60 | 0 | 0 | |
| Apollyon Scavenger | 62 | 0 | 0 | |
| Gorynich | 72 | 0 | 0 | |
| Kronprinz Behemoth | 74 | 0 | 0 | |
| Kaiser Behemoth | ??? | ??? | ??? |
As you can see, most of the "normal" mobs have low INT so that ΔINT +10 is easily cleared. As for Kaiser Behemoth, I didn't gather enough information, but I am pretty sure it possesses some combination of MDB and MDT- traits. I also collected similar data on some ZNMs I fought several months ago:
| Monster | INT | MDB | MDT- | |
| Lil' Apkallu | 60 | 0 | 1/4 | |
| Verdelet | 115 | 0 | 0 | |
| Experimental Lamia | 89 | 0 | 1/8 | |
| Mahjlaef the Paintorn | 112 | 0 | 1/4 | |
| Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon | 81 | 0 | 0 | |
| Vulpangue | 78 | 0.20 | 0 | |
| Dea | 62 | 0 | 0 | |
| Iriz Ima | 70 | 0 | 0 | |
| Gotoh Zha the Redolent | 92 | 0.28 | 1/8 | |
| Tinnin | 85 | 0.20 | 0 | |
| Achamoth | 65 | 0.16 | 0 |
Here, MDB is reported in terms of amount above 1.00. MDT- is reported in terms of fractional reduction of magic damage.
Other than Verdelet (an imp) and Mahjlaef the Paintorn (a soulflayer), all of the ZNMs have INT such that ΔINT is well above +10. Therefore, from the standpoint of optimizing overall magic accuracy (given what we know), it seems practical to exchange INT in excess of ΔINT +10 for elemental magic skill or magic accuracy. In particular, this could be useful for Tinnin, which seems to have higher magic resistance than the "lower-tier" ZNMs (probably a result of level difference) despite having "only" 85 INT.
Moreover, there could be some patterns to mob INT despite the limited information available. Beastmen and other "sentient" mob types (particularly soulflayers and imps) could have higher INT in general than other types. Magic users have higher INT in general than non-magic users (I will treat this as self-evident).
But concerning the main question, it appears, at least for most ZNMs that are worth nuking and mobs in NW Apollyon, that ΔINT +10 is surpassed most of the time. If you happen to get close to 120 INT incidentally, that's great, but not necessarily at the expense of possible improvements to magic skill/magic accuracy. For example, Dea has only 62 INT, but it is still prone to resisting Thunder IV (compared to Blizzard IV). Therefore, it would be appropriate to use Sorcerer's Petasos instead of Demon Helm +1 for the sake of improving accuracy.
None of these mobs even have INT above 120, so it's not like you would get much of an improvement to resist rates whoring INT (such that ΔINT +10 is satisfied) compared to whoring magic skill/accuracy (all things being equal).
So what about beastmen "kings" and HNMs? Bahamut ("The Wyrmking Descends") is reported to have 115 INT (from Studio Gobli, if you can actually find the documentation). (Bahamut is sentient, right? Check.) Also Jormungand is reported to have 120 INT (also from Studio Gobli). (Perhaps the example of Jormungand motivated the 120 INT figure?) Other than that, I have no other information.
Anyone can calculate mob INT, but...
... magic defense bonus (MDB) and reduction in magic damage taken (MDT-) can get in the way of calculating INT. These factors may play a role in determining overall magic damage for things like Sarameya and Tyger. Without knowing MDB and MDT- and considering the incessant flooring involved in these calculations, it is somewhat difficult to arrive at a unique set of MDB/MDT-/INT that allows you to calculate magic damage exactly without using formal optimization methods, and I am not interested in doing that.
However, this post offers some very useful facts to determine what exactly a mob's potential MDB or MDT- is. In particular,
- 1000 Needles is not affected by MDB.
- Quick Draw is not affected by MDT-.
- Damage calculations for both are independent of mob INT.
First off, thanks for translating Lodeguy's testing in addition to adding your own thoughts on it. Reading this post, I have to believe that I am to blame for at least a good portion of the idea that Lodeguy's results supports the 320/120 build through this post:
ReplyDeletehttp://kanican.livejournal.com/34049.html
Which I think is the one that typically gets quoted on a debate such as this. In this post, I clearly highlight the statement:
"For those that don't really understand the meaning behind the 320/120 build, it is NOT a sort of "tier" where your resist rates suddenly drop or floor upon reaching it. The 320/120 build really refers only to a specific set of HNM mobs, namely Wyrms and lesser sky gods - it does not encompass every single resistant HNM in the game, but it does encompass a good chunk of resistant mobs fought in endgame."
In particular, the build was popularized by BLMs on Kirin, which has extremely high base INT (SCH Helices hit for 0 often on this, unresisted). Other HNMs such as say Jormungand have a ridiculous base INT as well, so it can vary widely, especially when talking about HNMs. On something like the Behemoth Family, which I don't think anyone nukes in resist gear on, I agree that the base INT is very low and adding INT does not go as far as adding skill (but then again, you don't need to add skill in the first place on something like this).
As I stated before, the 320/120 is really meant for a small, tiny subset of HNM mobs - the 5 gods of Sky, and Wyrms. It has been extrapolated into much more, which is a shame, but I still believe that it works for the 6-7 mobs it was originally MEANT to work on (sans Tiamat, which I'm pretty sure has an average INT). Based on the Jorm value you gave in the post, the info seems to at least back up it being reasonable for that HNM.
The 320/120 build is popular because of the mobs that actually require you to nuke in "resistance" gear. Really these only include Bahamut, JoL, Wyrms, Sky Gods. Everything else either won't resist badly in normal damage gear or resists so badly that nuking isn't a good idea. When you consider the small subset of mobs that nuking is still worth using on, but that requires resist gear, I find that the 320/120 build does have merit since a good portion or even majority of these mobs have high INT values.
If someone nails down the INT values of these NMs the 320/120 is meant for and they fall low 100s or lower, then I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong though.
Kaeko/Kanican
Thanks for the feedback. I don't have any objection to the 320/120 idea per se but it's been hard to find any justification for it aside from a posteriori rationalizations (referring to lodeguy's results). Thanks for clearing it up.
ReplyDeleteEven looking at some recent forum posts (within the last month), repliers either referred to HNMs generally (BG) or "kings and sky gods, etc." (Allakhazam). It makes a lot more sense now that you brought up specifically Wyrms and sky gods as the likely impetus behind the 320/120 rule.
I spent some time combing through Japanese sources and this is what I found for the intended NMs (from 2006):
Kirin: 149 INT
Jormungand: 120 INT, +124 MDB
Tiamat: 120 INT, +100 MDB
Ouryu: 120 INT, +100 MDB
I couldn't find anything for sky gods or Jailer of Love (just a quick search). I'm guessing the 320/120 "best practice" trickled down from Japanese discussion on 2ch and the like based on results from sky gods and wyrms.
In light of all this, to me 120 INT is eminently reasonable to shoot for in general (few important tradeoffs between skill equipment and INT equipment are involved to get close to 120), but nevertheless is way overkill for most "endgame" things especially when magic accuracy is arguably not capped and the appropriate tradeoffs can be made. It makes me wonder about ToAU HNMs since I would assume off-hand that those are similar in INT to those in the "middle lands" (that is, pretty low). Then again, Hydra is not at all similar to Tinnin w.r.t. magic damage.
I'm not entirely sure where the 320/120 thing came from, so it is entirely possible that it trickled down from 2chan year ago. Back then, everyone took anything off JP sources as true so it could have easily stuck. I do remember hearing a theory year ago called "match INT", where the idea was to match the HNM's INT, then stack on as much skill as possible. This may be where the idea truly came from if the Wyrm INT values are 120. I remember this idea led to the 'super INT' build where you just try to stack as much INT as possible on Kirin, which has a near unreachable base INT.
ReplyDeleteEither way, I think pushing for a '320/120' build or something similar is still the best way to go for an endgame nuker (BLM or SCH). You simply wouldn't nuke in a resist set outside of the 6-7 mobs I mentioned. ToAU HNMs and Ixion just kill magic damage and I think even if you were to get SV INT songs with a 360+ Elemental Skill BLM you would get resisted. The average player likes the idea of "do this and you'll be ok" as opposed to "it depends on the mob's INT value because...", so I think in the end, regardless of how definitive these tests are about MACC, you will still see things like 320/120 persist (and hence a misunderstanding of what it really means).
Also, as a trend, I think SE has gone from stacking mobs with massive INT to lower magic damage (Zilart/CoP), to just stacking massive MDB and straight -% over INT stacking recently (ToAU/WotG). So you're probably right in the 320/120 build having no merit if you're really trying to get unresisted nukes on anything post-CoP era.
I'm not sure what you mean in your last paragraph. Are you implying that the magic resistance of ToAU HNMs (without contributions from INT and possible level correction) may be inherently higher than those in Zilart/CoP? MDB and MDT- alone would make nuking these things inefficient just because potential damage would then be so poor to begin with without reference to accuracy criteria such as 320/120.
ReplyDeleteHere's a "bonus" for those who seek out primary sources and don't parrot what others tell them: I just determined that Suzaku and Genbu have 132 and 140 INT, respectively. Both have +12 MDB. (I started with Gobli's MDB for Byakko, and the calculations happened to fit.)
ReplyDeleteThis is based on the "base damage multiplier" being reduced from 2 to 1.5 for Tier IV nukes and from 1.5 to 1 for Tier III when delta(INT) is negative. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to nuke freely (just 1-2 nukes...) on even these since the enmity generation of the "tanks" was extremely poor, so maybe some people out there could verify whether these INT values are valid. (Remember to round after each step.)