If people want to throw in their maths and theories, do it under this comment so everyone can work together on it instead of searching through them all (Assuming we get to that point)
Stacking Pdef was the only reason I beat EX3 sephiroth, it significantly mitigates super high single target moves. I had around 4k HP 150ish pdef and managed to tank a few octoslashes where previously I wasn't able to with 6.2K hp eventually just couldn't heal as much there was so much to heal back. Situational for sure. 137K f2p, I have a recording of the fight on my channel 😅
It defo feels like defence gets better with the more incoming damage there is. I'm not sure on the logic with it but hard hitting moves do seem to make defence far more viable
Pretty much your conclusion is my conclusion as well. To figure out at least a ballpark number, here is the test I propose (and I might run it and send you numbers if you like provided you have some sort of contact information): 1) Run 10 times same enemy, same gear... compare and see where it averages to see how much random factor applies to damage. 2) Do the same with your DEF up gear 3) Find an enemy with much more power (like very hard summons) and do the same. 4) Do the same with a number almost in between those two (140ish). See if reduction scales accordingly between 100-140-180 def (obviously on average). Once you do and you have a difference between high/low def, compare, in percentage, how much reduction is done, on average, as see if this percentage correlates somehow with the DEF number (for instance, if we see we get 30% reduction at 170-180, 15% at 135-140 and normal at 100). This still won't give us the exact mechanism, but we will have a rough idea of how the game calculates those percentages. What baffles me is that even purely defensive weapons don't increase def in raw stats, only provide r abilites to increase them percentage wise... it is like the game was designed to have this 100 base number. It isn't as straightforward as how atk is calculated. Therefore it must be part of a (as usual) stange equation for the defense formula. Judging from past mechanics in games like FFX, those formulas are way to "weird" to estimate, and once needs to datamine to figure them out. Still, number crunching is part of the hobby of playing Final Fantasy games ;) Cheers and kudos for your work and your videos. :)
If I did take the time to deep dive it like this, I don't think I'd be right person to try and explain it to the masses in an easy to understand form. I wouldn't be best suited for that. What we could do though, is if someone else takes on this task I'll happily pin the comment and stick the data in the description for everyone to see.
Great videos as always, can you do a video explaining how R abilities work or which are best for characters, cause my brain turns off whenever i try to figure out which weapons are best for who btw yeah the Gallonbaloir on rare occasions it doesn't do the initial rush. it happens often if you encounter a cactuar first
I could do that yeah, it might end up very similar to my power level guide though. Here's the basics in case that's enough: Look at a characters statstreams and what stats they are naturally high with. Aerith has high Heal and MATK for example. So build weapons that support those. f you want her as a DPS then build MATK, as a healer build Heal. That's kinda it. You can go further and say the likes of Cloud with the Murasame and lightning ability, try find weapons that do PATK and Lightning increase. Because then it'll help you twice. If you'd like a full video though, I'm absolutely down.
My brain didn't even come close to considering this. Deep diving maths is not a strong suit of mine at all. I also needed to do it in a way where a majority of people would just understand it without having to also dive in to their own math skills. It just makes the video more bearable to watch y'know? But if me showing those numbers and my take on it ends up helping people better suited for this then a wins a win
@@Tsuna_II I'd also like to point out that the percentage of reduction in damage cannot be directly compared to a flat increase in HP. You mention many times that HP is better because the numbers are bigger, and that's really only true for a single attack and assuming you even need the HP to survive. A 25% reduction in damage essentially means with everything else being equal, you can somewhat compare it to 25% more HP. But also remember there's healing, so that means you're healing is now more effective, as each point of health with worth more, so the same amount of healing would be 25% more worthwhile for a high defense character than a regular one. Also note that because increasing defense increases the relative value of your HP stat, having high defense means that every additional HP you add is more beneficial. The basic conclusion is that high HP by itself if better for dealing with burst damage as it's easier to add more HP, but balancing between HP and defense may be the better option. If you can trade 400HP for 10% reduction in damage that alone can make longer fights more manageable, especially the ones where you have to heal a ton. I.E. the harder Sephiroth stuff.
@@hyperbandit I'm amazed by all the points everyone is bringing up that I didn't consider. This is absolutely genius. You are absolutely correct. What I'm going to end up doing here is gathering everyones info from the comments and putting it all together to make a nice spreadsheet type thing to pin here forever. Thank you for all the insight!
@@hyperbandit I agree with you in regarding balance as it seemed to me that Def stat might help mitigate the spike damage from critical strikes. When I attempted to simply stack HP to survive, there were some attempts where Sephiroth would crit and wipe my character out even though they survived multiple Octaslashes before that point. You would probably need to start stacking HP at a pretty high rate to try and overcome the top limit of a critical strike.
Harder to test,but theres also the chance in this game with so many hidden mechanics that DEF values start being useful only on Defense stance...but even then since we are in attack stance most of times it should be still always worse than going the HP route. Also, I wonder if Elemental resistances work the same way (like if it adds a bonus to your DEF stats when being attacked with that element, or is a true % dmg reduction)
Sounds very complicated to test. That'd be out of my ball park. But there's a lot of comments going on with math and theories so maybe between us we can work it out together and I'll pin all the info for future reference.
@@Tsuna_II I dont think is complicated, just takes longer to test. For instance to test raw DEF : Do the exact same thing that in this video but with an enemy that uses special NON ELEMENTAL attacks (knowing beforehand what type or damage, physical or magical, does) and just track the damage (on defensive stance and attack stance) to see if the total % of damage reduced is the same on both stances. To test elemental damage : Fight a summon and wait till they do their special attack while using elemental damage reduction passives on your team (and without them). You dont need to check "how low is your total HP" cause to test this you need to take damage beforehand and you may not have full health BUT you can just screenshot the exact moment you take damage to see the numbers you are looking for. The only problem I see is testing this "live" like in this video could take longer to your TLDR standards xD ,but you could test/record that beforehand and just show the results to make a short video.
Not a good test coz damage and Defense are random. You don't get full 11k damage of an ability with Cloud all the time. Sometimes it's 10k, sometimes it's 12k. Defense also works same way. It's proven that having high Defense works a lot specially with Crash Sephiroth currently going. I had 100 pdef and a Mid barrier and he dealt 600 damage each attack, while having 124 pdef and a Mid barrier reduced it to 350. That just means Defense is really good and I got lucky with the random damage, since it might been the minimum damage he dealt and I got the highest Defense I can get also in random close to my actual defense. Probably a 5 - 15% min-max randomized value.
I dont believe the damage is random, but instead you were receiving critical damage at different points. I suppose the real question is how the game calculates critical damage when taking defense stats into account.
Yeah, I did mention that damage and defence is random due to margin of error. And that the more damage an enemy does does in fact effect your defence stat too. I can't claim to know how the system works or even that I'll put in enough time to figure it out. But with this test I got just enough info to be able to help others start their investigations and do better than I did
If people want to throw in their maths and theories, do it under this comment so everyone can work together on it instead of searching through them all (Assuming we get to that point)
I learnt a lot watching this, absolute follow! 🙏🏻
Thanks Pliyo!
Great video wonder if you could do a vid that shows how much differance buffs make like deff boost or sephiroths matk boost makes :)
I could attempt it? I can't promise to go heavy on math and come out with a definitive answer but I can lay ground work for others to maybe start from
This was really helpful. Thank you.
Glad to hear!
Stacking Pdef was the only reason I beat EX3 sephiroth, it significantly mitigates super high single target moves. I had around 4k HP 150ish pdef and managed to tank a few octoslashes where previously I wasn't able to with 6.2K hp eventually just couldn't heal as much there was so much to heal back. Situational for sure.
137K f2p, I have a recording of the fight on my channel 😅
It defo feels like defence gets better with the more incoming damage there is. I'm not sure on the logic with it but hard hitting moves do seem to make defence far more viable
Pretty much your conclusion is my conclusion as well.
To figure out at least a ballpark number, here is the test I propose (and I might run it and send you numbers if you like provided you have some sort of contact information):
1) Run 10 times same enemy, same gear... compare and see where it averages to see how much random factor applies to damage.
2) Do the same with your DEF up gear
3) Find an enemy with much more power (like very hard summons) and do the same.
4) Do the same with a number almost in between those two (140ish). See if reduction scales accordingly between 100-140-180 def (obviously on average).
Once you do and you have a difference between high/low def, compare, in percentage, how much reduction is done, on average, as see if this percentage correlates somehow with the DEF number (for instance, if we see we get 30% reduction at 170-180, 15% at 135-140 and normal at 100). This still won't give us the exact mechanism, but we will have a rough idea of how the game calculates those percentages.
What baffles me is that even purely defensive weapons don't increase def in raw stats, only provide r abilites to increase them percentage wise... it is like the game was designed to have this 100 base number. It isn't as straightforward as how atk is calculated. Therefore it must be part of a (as usual) stange equation for the defense formula. Judging from past mechanics in games like FFX, those formulas are way to "weird" to estimate, and once needs to datamine to figure them out. Still, number crunching is part of the hobby of playing Final Fantasy games ;)
Cheers and kudos for your work and your videos. :)
If I did take the time to deep dive it like this, I don't think I'd be right person to try and explain it to the masses in an easy to understand form. I wouldn't be best suited for that. What we could do though, is if someone else takes on this task I'll happily pin the comment and stick the data in the description for everyone to see.
@@Tsuna_II As this is indeed my hobby, I will do so and get back to you. :)
Perfect, thank you!
Great videos as always, can you do a video explaining how R abilities work or which are best for characters, cause my brain turns off whenever i try to figure out which weapons are best for who
btw yeah the Gallonbaloir on rare occasions it doesn't do the initial rush. it happens often if you encounter a cactuar first
I could do that yeah, it might end up very similar to my power level guide though.
Here's the basics in case that's enough:
Look at a characters statstreams and what stats they are naturally high with.
Aerith has high Heal and MATK for example.
So build weapons that support those. f you want her as a DPS then build MATK, as a healer build Heal.
That's kinda it. You can go further and say the likes of Cloud with the Murasame and lightning ability, try find weapons that do PATK and Lightning increase. Because then it'll help you twice.
If you'd like a full video though, I'm absolutely down.
also not taking into account DEF stance which would increase ur def 50%
strange mathematics, easiest results I was expected to see 148/563 = 26,28%, 241/953 = 25,28%, so those 74 pdef gave you around 25% damage reduction
So we're looking at about 1% damage reduction for every 3 points of added def.
My brain didn't even come close to considering this. Deep diving maths is not a strong suit of mine at all.
I also needed to do it in a way where a majority of people would just understand it without having to also dive in to their own math skills. It just makes the video more bearable to watch y'know? But if me showing those numbers and my take on it ends up helping people better suited for this then a wins a win
@@Tsuna_II I'd also like to point out that the percentage of reduction in damage cannot be directly compared to a flat increase in HP. You mention many times that HP is better because the numbers are bigger, and that's really only true for a single attack and assuming you even need the HP to survive.
A 25% reduction in damage essentially means with everything else being equal, you can somewhat compare it to 25% more HP. But also remember there's healing, so that means you're healing is now more effective, as each point of health with worth more, so the same amount of healing would be 25% more worthwhile for a high defense character than a regular one.
Also note that because increasing defense increases the relative value of your HP stat, having high defense means that every additional HP you add is more beneficial.
The basic conclusion is that high HP by itself if better for dealing with burst damage as it's easier to add more HP, but balancing between HP and defense may be the better option. If you can trade 400HP for 10% reduction in damage that alone can make longer fights more manageable, especially the ones where you have to heal a ton. I.E. the harder Sephiroth stuff.
@@hyperbandit I'm amazed by all the points everyone is bringing up that I didn't consider. This is absolutely genius. You are absolutely correct. What I'm going to end up doing here is gathering everyones info from the comments and putting it all together to make a nice spreadsheet type thing to pin here forever. Thank you for all the insight!
@@hyperbandit I agree with you in regarding balance as it seemed to me that Def stat might help mitigate the spike damage from critical strikes. When I attempted to simply stack HP to survive, there were some attempts where Sephiroth would crit and wipe my character out even though they survived multiple Octaslashes before that point. You would probably need to start stacking HP at a pretty high rate to try and overcome the top limit of a critical strike.
Harder to test,but theres also the chance in this game with so many hidden mechanics that DEF values start being useful only on Defense stance...but even then since we are in attack stance most of times it should be still always worse than going the HP route.
Also, I wonder if Elemental resistances work the same way (like if it adds a bonus to your DEF stats when being attacked with that element, or is a true % dmg reduction)
Sounds very complicated to test. That'd be out of my ball park. But there's a lot of comments going on with math and theories so maybe between us we can work it out together and I'll pin all the info for future reference.
@@Tsuna_II I dont think is complicated, just takes longer to test.
For instance to test raw DEF : Do the exact same thing that in this video but with an enemy that uses special NON ELEMENTAL attacks (knowing beforehand what type or damage, physical or magical, does) and just track the damage (on defensive stance and attack stance) to see if the total % of damage reduced is the same on both stances.
To test elemental damage : Fight a summon and wait till they do their special attack while using elemental damage reduction passives on your team (and without them).
You dont need to check "how low is your total HP" cause to test this you need to take damage beforehand and you may not have full health BUT you can just screenshot the exact moment you take damage to see the numbers you are looking for.
The only problem I see is testing this "live" like in this video could take longer to your TLDR standards xD ,but you could test/record that beforehand and just show the results to make a short video.
correct, we want HP % on all equipment
I have run this fight almost 500 times and I have never seen him not attack!
Same! Kinda funny I got it on video
Not a good test coz damage and Defense are random.
You don't get full 11k damage of an ability with Cloud all the time. Sometimes it's 10k, sometimes it's 12k. Defense also works same way.
It's proven that having high Defense works a lot specially with Crash Sephiroth currently going.
I had 100 pdef and a Mid barrier and he dealt 600 damage each attack, while having 124 pdef and a Mid barrier reduced it to 350. That just means Defense is really good and I got lucky with the random damage, since it might been the minimum damage he dealt and I got the highest Defense I can get also in random close to my actual defense. Probably a 5 - 15% min-max randomized value.
I dont believe the damage is random, but instead you were receiving critical damage at different points. I suppose the real question is how the game calculates critical damage when taking defense stats into account.
Yeah, I did mention that damage and defence is random due to margin of error. And that the more damage an enemy does does in fact effect your defence stat too. I can't claim to know how the system works or even that I'll put in enough time to figure it out. But with this test I got just enough info to be able to help others start their investigations and do better than I did