[JeyKama]

Disclaimer: I'm not a serious theorycrafter - if my math/tables/graphs are horribly laughable, sorry! Google Docs' tables were not making my day.


[long-ass intro]
One huge thing that really frustrates me about this game is how number-oriented it is with affixing, yet no one really understands what the numbers do. Like elemental damage... common sense says that monsters weak to elemental damage should take more damage from their weakness, right? What the hell does Ability do? How come my 50% ice sword outdamages my 20% fire rare on an ice-weak enemy?

The big problem with figuring this out is that there is no combat log. Makes things casual-friendly for sure, and the game isn't hard yet by any means, but I know some of us like to go the extra mile on our gear (not me... I can't afford it anymore :<) I wanted to do some concrete testing that would answer MY questions, and and being kind of a scientific person, hopefully my method will convince you of my results.
[/intro]


Mats
RA40 - Using 4 3* Vitalauncher+10: 50% Thunder, 50% Ice, 21% Ice, Non-element, no R-ATK/Ability affixes
Mag - lv134 Corvus 89RATK/30ABI, has Buff J but didn't use for testing.
Switched between maxed Ability skill tree and generic RA tree, both with some degree of Standing Snipe (not used)
Used a mix of Shoot/Rappy/Mizer Soul armors to swap ABI/RATK in and out of

Test Subjects
lv38 Gilnatches in Area 1 of Free Field Mines. Other than their Thunder weakness, these guys have no weak spots or hard points that I know of, and so Weak Shot Advance should not come into play. They also heal themselves and must have some crazy regen besides, because they're quite hard to kill. I would rush the map until I found a set, and if no element Boost PSE effects happened, it was good to go.

Method
I used launcher basic attacks to record damage, firing at the ground at the mobs' feet. In order to counteract any Standing Snipe/JA buffs, I would jump to shoot, then land before attempting another shot. A range of 50-80 shots were recorded for most sets that looked interesting.


All of my work so far is here, don't go blind:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Hc&output=html




What I attempted to test:
1) Comparison of max 50% elemental weakness damage vs. non-weakness vs. non-elemental (done)

Spoiler!

The maximum damage of a 50% Thunder (Gilnatch's weakness) Vitalauncher+10 was only 3.5%-4.5% higher than an equivalent 50% Ice weapon. Earlier testing using a field that had Thunder Boost lv3 yielded similar results, so I'm not sure what Thunder Boost really does.

To some, 3.5%-4.5% may seem insignificant to create two costly 50% weapons, but remember I only used launcher basic attacks, so PAs and JAs magnified this effect.

Comparing the non-elemental Vitalauncher to the 50% Ice on a non-weakness target (eg the Gilnatches), the 50% Ice outperformed the non-elemental weapon by 22-27% (the ratio decreased slightly as R-ATK went up). The 21% Ice weapon outperformed the non-elemental as well on the two data points I had. Basically this means that non-elemental weapons are not that great outside of Item Lab fodder and status symbols.

2) Damage comparison of moderate 20% elemental weakness damage vs. non-weakness vs. non-elemental (need to grind up a 21% thunder launcher to match the ice)

Spoiler!

Unfortunately I did not get around to testing moderate% weapons, so unfortunately I only have 3 points that look fairly linear at a constant ABI/R-ATK.

3) R-ATK vs. Damage Dealt comparison (done)

Spoiler!

Ability held constant + R-ATK modified.

Damage dealt by basic launcher attacks appear to scale linearly with increasing R-ATK. Mob defense values likely subtract directly from your ATK rating, though examples of extremely high defense mobs don't seem practical to come by to know what happens when DEF > ATK.

4) Ability vs. Min/Max & Average Damage Dealt comparisons (effectively done, but could use a few more numbers near the plateau)

Spoiler!

R-ATK held constant & Ability level modified.

While I cannot say I took enough samples to determine 100% the minimum damage value for each set, the data points are convincingly linear until the 429ABI point where the chart plateaus. This leads me to believe that somewhere between 399-429ABI is a curve, but for the most part I can connect a straight line from 327 to 399.

At 429 and 459 ABI, the damage ranged stayed the same at 96% variance, which leads me to believe that to be the 'maximum' proportion for the minimum damage.

Note, I am not convinced at what determines this plateau point, so ymmv with your ability level.

5) What determines the Ability plateau (theoretical)

Spoiler!

There is one theory going around that Ability must exceed the ATK stat of your weapon in order to get max stability. This does not seem to be true:

I took a 2* Alba-blaster (199 R-ATK ungrinded) to the Gilnatches. With 327 Ability, I got a crit of 241 (using Diffuse Shell) and then a low of 218 right after, already a disparity of 90%. (similar to 399 ABI with a 3*) I didn't do extensive testing, but tacking on another 30-60 ABI brought the disparity ratio to 96%.

It doesn't appear to directly be the equip requirement either, as an Alba-blaster requires 326 Ability and I had already surpassed that at the 90% disparity mark, however f an Albablaster plateaus at 327-357, and a Vitalauncher(req 393) at 399-429, it does seem possible that the equip requirement is where the "curve" to plateau slowly begins?

If nothing else, this seems to prove that the Ability plateau req is different for each weapon. My Tig Ridol has hit the 96% at 399 Ability already (where my Vitas were still at 90%) on Gilnatches - which seems to support the theory that rare weapons have a hidden Ability booster.

Some things to think about when deciding ATK vs. Ability:

As I mentioned before, I am using R-ATK vs. a very specific mob using specific weapons. However, Ability and R-ATK both appear to scale linearly (though Ability appears to cap out at its 'plateau'). Since both are linear, there does not seem to be a "sweet spot" as a reason to level both simultaneously.

In fact, it requires 4.4 Ability to increase my average basic attack by 1 damage, and 4.2 R-ATK do to the same, so in my case R-ATK is superior on average.RA does not rely on consistant damage however, so really it appears to be fairly close in value - and everyone hates that low-end Sneak Shot on a Weak Bullet.

When comparing moderate% rares to 50% 1-5* weapons though by looking solely at ATK, remember that the % appears to be a scalable damage increase. It's up in the air though, if the rare weapon's hidden Ability boost increases the average damage enough to make up for it.

[Kirukia]

Very interesting. Thanks for the tests!

[Silver Crow]

but doesnt ability also affect min+max dmg crit or something?

edit: ah you mentioned that, so ability + r attack should be considered together imo since you want both of those stats

[Banjotron]

This is good stuff. Considering how small the PSO2 import (for lack of a better term) community is, any such data that we can get is useful, even if it's not 100% complete or thorough. Original research is helpful especially.

[Rob2003ert]

Stop calling it Element%. There is no % shown and no reason to believe it uses a % modifier anywhere. It's 50 Thunder, not 50% Thunder. It does not boost your damage by 50%, it does not boost your attack by 50%, it does not have a 50% trigger rate. Stop.

[Hrith]

We know ABL only affects damage output and does not affect damage variance. This stupid rumour has lived long enough.

Those tests are not relevant. How can you hope to conduct serious tests when you are not testing one element but several at a time? Do you even know the ABL and R-DEF of a Lv38 Gilnach?

This data is useless and, if anything, harmful to the community.

[Rob2003ert]

Jesus, there is so much wrong with that post. Your first sentence is completely wrong, it's very clear Ability does affect your damage range. If you can't outmatch your targets Ability, your low-end damage falls off completely and results in a vastly wider damage range. I think you actually realize this and are just trying to get in to a battle of semantics, when in reality your wording is even worse than others and you're just making yourself look silly. Either way, the only time you notice this is if you're fighting mobs a decent amount of levels higher than you. Once you surpass their ability it seems to function very similarly to Attack.

And what difference does testing multiple elements vs just one at a time make? If he did the exact same amount of shots with just one and posted the data, it would somehow be more legitimate testing than this? Fucking lol. There's also no such thing as harmful data. When people start posting ridiculous theories (with no numbers to back it up) and passing it off as fact, that's when it becomes "harmful". Mostly because idiots believe it and then pass it off as fact when they talk about it too. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the OPs data, as long as you don't take any theories as fact until more testing is done, there is no harm done. There is nothing wrong with theorycrafting. Idiots are gonna be idiots either way, if they choose to run with an incorrect theory the only people who suffer from it are those that are foolish enough to believe something without seeing numbers to back it up.

[jooozek]

Originally Posted by Rob2003ert

Stop calling it Element%. There is no % shown and no reason to believe it uses a % modifier anywhere.

Ever heard of the 属性強化＋５％ item? Guess how much attribute it adds.

[Rob2003ert]

Originally Posted by jooozek

Ever heard of the 属性強化＋５％ item? Guess how much attribute it adds.

Fair point, this seems to be literally the only thing that refers to it as a percentage though. Unlike PSO and PSU, PSO2 doesn't list it on the item itself as a % though, and the damage boost itself isn't (obviously, at least) a percentage increase. Everyone started referring to it as Element% and latched on to the idea that it was either a 50% damage boost (absolutely massive) or a 50% attack increase (again, huge) because of the wording. The constant spread of misinformation is annoying, and there's not enough data to conclude that it is a percentage currently. It should really be referred to as the game calls it, 50 Element.

[JeyKama]

Stop calling it Element%. There is no % shown and no reason to believe it uses a % modifier anywhere. It's 50 Thunder, not 50% Thunder. It does not boost your damage by 50%, it does not boost your attack by 50%, it does not have a 50% trigger rate. Stop

The only reason I call it a % is because of the item that increases it by 5% (as someone said already, oops), that happens to increase it by a flat +5%. So as logic goes... Either way, it's just a unit of modification that I use out of habit.

Going from 0 -> 21 -> 50 ice is a straight line in terms of max damage done. I can't really argue against the crit damage number from using the same R-ATK weapon on the same exact mob. If it isn't a percentage increase, it is a direct increase of some kind - I just don't have enough data to do a direct correlation.

it's very clear Ability does affect your damage range. If you can't outmatch your targets Ability, your low-end damage falls off completely

That's what my gut feeling is, yet my ABI range to reach reaching 96% variance was 399-427 with a 3* vita, yet 327-357 with a 2* albablaster, neither of which are 'rare' weapons.

We know ABL only affects damage output and does not affect damage variance. This stupid rumour has lived long enough.

Those tests are not relevant. How can you hope to conduct serious tests when you are not testing one element but several at a time? Do you even know the ABL and R-DEF of a Lv38 Gilnach?

Does it matter what the ABL and R-DEF os a lv38 Gilnatch is? All that matters is that it is the same (which it is for R-DEF at least, even across the 10-odd mobs I used, the crits were always 229) All the tests were conducted with controlled R-ATK and/or ABL and controlled elements when looking at certain data points. You want to shoot things a thousand times with variable ABL and the same R-ATK/element# to prove your point, be my guest.

I fully admit I haven't done enough testing to show what causes the 96% breakpoint for ABL - I never claimed to, that's something for another day because it's a huge undertaking of finding other level mobs to shoot at (preferably higher/lower level Gilnatches...) All I had wanted to know for this series was what the data looked like.

All I see is that with 327 ABL my damage was going all over the place, and with 427 ABL my damage never went below 220. Yet both would crit for 229.

I'm not interested with what "we" know, because as far as I've seen, it has only been based on "personal experience" and "anecdote" which doesn't satisfy my curiosity.