Yesterday I spent some time with Mewn (or actually I personally just looked up a few numbers and gave suggestions) to figure out what the damage formula in PSU is like; also, this morning I compared some Grinder info from the Bible with the info accumulated on the wiki sites. Results:

Damage:
Damage = 1.5^CH * 0.2 * 0.5^Guard (PAM * AEM * Attack - random(0,variance) - DEM * Defense)
where:
* CH is one on a critical hit (~5% of the time at 100 LCK); otherwise zero. For LCK, would it be true that the 150 LCK Protransers get a CH ~7.5% of the time?
* 'Guard' is usually zero, but equals one in the cases the defender has inherent protection to the type of attack in question (melee, ranged, tech); some monsters possess these abilities in order to balance out the classes; leader monsters always possess all three of these, despite otherwise having the same stats. Do these stack? Do Lentis and Dizas work the same way?
* 'AEM' and 'DEM' stand for 'attack element modifier' and 'defense element modifier'. Only applicable when the elements are opposite or the same; the defense one is determined either by the monster's appropriate stat or by a player's Shieldline (and Rainbow units); the attack one is determined by the attacking weapon's or PA's elemental attribute. It should be noted that an additional 5% is added to the elemental stat (so 35% -> 40%) before the calculation is done! So, a 20% elemental PA/weapon of an opposite element would yield an AEM of 1.25; one with 50% of the same element would yield an AEM of 0.45.
* 'variance' is the difference between the weapon's high and low numbers for its attack stat, of which the low number is invisible in-game.
* PAM stands for any used PA's attacking modifier, which for Skills is different for each 'stage' during the combo; still needs some testing.
* 'Attack' and 'Defense' are total numbers, referring to either ATP and DFP (melee/ranged) or TP and MST (techs), depending on which is applicable.
* I know only little about the support techniques. Would anyone test these or the booster items (perhaps offline or later on online) to check on their effects? Additionally, variable ATP/TP and support techs may still affect each other, complicating things even more.
Grinding odds:
In-game messages and their minimal ranges using percentages:

00~00 %: There is no chance of success.
05~15 %: The probability of success seems very low.
20~35 %: The probability of success seems low.
40~55 %: The probability of success seems to be about fifty-fifty.
65~75 %: The probability of success seems high.
?~? %: The probability of success seems very high.
100~100 %: There is no chance of failure.

It would be plausible to assume that the categories are 0, 1~19, 20~39, 40~59, 60~79, 80~99 and 100, but it is hard to tell, especially since there have been reports of 'guaranteed' grinds failing; perhaps the two extreme categories cover 0~4 and 95~100% instead.
In any case, for anyone that's up for it, there are still a few more percentages of which it is not yet known to what range they belong; of three particular cases of online B-grinders at the lowest level of Luck or Photon Fortune to grind weapons from +9 to +10, it is not yet known what kind of message the clerk would give:
* B+3 (16%)
* B+7 (37%)
* B+10 (63%)
That's it for now. I hope this could inspire people to find out more of the details.

- Tycho

Edit: Mewn pointed out I failed to include the extra 5% elemental bonus.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tycho on 2006-12-10 05:13 ]</font>