[Rob2003ert]

Originally Posted by JeyKama

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.

There's a number of things that could be happening there. Enemy DEF could play in to it in some form (the more your ATK outweighs their DEF, the less ABI you need?). Or your total attack may influence how much Ability you need to meet that Ability peak. I doubt the latter is the case though, given you can go hit level 1 enemies and you'll have a maxed out damage range no matter how low your Ability is or how high your Attack. Makes it seem like it's only a comparison between your and the enemy stats, rather than any correlation between your own ATK and ABI.

Edit: Derp, I fucked up with that first theory. Since you needed less ABI when your attack was less. Strange. Maybe the second theory is worth looking in to...

[JeyKama]

Originally Posted by Rob2003ert

There's a number of things that could be happening there. Enemy DEF could play in to it in some form (the more your ATK outweighs their DEF, the less ABI you need?). Or your total attack may influence how much Ability you need to meet that Ability peak. I doubt the latter is the case though, given you can go hit level 1 enemies and you'll have a maxed out damage range no matter how low your Ability is or how high your Attack. Makes it seem like it's only a comparison between your and the enemy stats, rather than any correlation between your own ATK and ABI.

Edit: Derp, I fucked up with that first theory. Since you needed less ABI when your attack was less. Strange. Maybe the second theory is worth looking in to...

Enemy DEF is worth thinking about, but I didn't really have a means to drop my R-ATK without changing my ABL. (and didn't feel like running out to make some variable grind Ice50 Vitas after all that) Either way in those tests it was a constant and the Crit damage vs. R-ATK was a straight line. Those are valid points, but as I said, my tests were designed just to show what the scaling/plateau looked like.

With the Albablaster test though, I had to use a PA, which may or may not be a variable. Ideally once I get more time, I'll drag out a 1-3* launcher arsenal out to those Gilnatches to graph some more points. I do have the gut feeling that ABL for the 96% point and current R-ATK is related in some way, but gut feelings aren't good enough.

Just need more data for that. And for that, I just need some time (and to grind some more meseta x( and stop levelling HU)

[Tycho]

@Rob2003ert:
To my understanding it's similar to other PS games -- a 50% fire weapon would get a 50% attack multiplier when hitting a monster weak to it. E.g. Damage = (Player attack + (weapon attack * element) - monster DFP)/5, ignoring ABL because I've no idea how it goes into the formula.
I think that's also why the OP concluded elements to be useless, as monster DFP did not quite seem negligible under these circumstances. Elements would likely perform better using high-attack weapons versus low-defense monsters.

[Saffran]

I don't understand how a 50"%" (for lack of a better term) weapon of the wrong weakness only does 9 points less damage on a critical.
I understand that the data is non-JA attacks and non-PA, but it stills bothers me.

[Rob2003ert]

Originally Posted by Tycho

@Rob2003ert:
To my understanding it's similar to other PS games -- a 50% fire weapon would get a 50% attack multiplier when hitting a monster weak to it. E.g. Damage = (Player attack + (weapon attack * element) - monster DFP)/5, ignoring ABL because I've no idea how it goes into the formula.
I think that's also why the OP concluded elements to be useless, as monster DFP did not quite seem negligible under these circumstances. Elements would likely perform better using high-attack weapons versus low-defense monsters.

That doesn't seem to be the case here though. It doesn't seem to be adding 50% to your total attack or weapon attack, nor is it a 50% final damage boost. Unless Ability is completely skewing the numbers and that is how it's working, hard to say with what we know currently. Element is also adding damage to enemies not weak to the element, as you can see in OPs numbers. Did it work like that in PSU or was it only adding damage to enemies weak to X element?

[JeyKama]

Originally Posted by Tycho

@Rob2003ert:
To my understanding it's similar to other PS games -- a 50% fire weapon would get a 50% attack multiplier when hitting a monster weak to it. E.g. Damage = (Player attack + (weapon attack * element) - monster DFP)/5, ignoring ABL because I've no idea how it goes into the formula.
I think that's also why the OP concluded elements to be useless, as monster DFP did not quite seem negligible under these circumstances. Elements would likely perform better using high-attack weapons versus low-defense monsters.

Well, "lower defense" is kind of a rough call - not much at lv38 that is considered low without using a weak point of some kind, and using a lower level mob also bring in the variable of level difference...

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I went and beat up some lv16 Sil-Dinians (the jumpy melee ones) using the same method and throwing out the 600+ numbers (since that means I hit their head while I was jumping x<). 264 max damage with Ice50 launcher(weakness), 250 crit with the Thunder50, 207ish with a non-ele, which ends up being roughly the same ratio as with the Gilnatches using a Shifta EX drink (the 990 R-ATK one), just reversing which weapon is the weakness.

So high R-ATK seems helps out non-elemental damage a little, but doesn't seem to change the element damage ratio much. Granted, I only got off around 40 shots between the non-ele/ice50 launchers, but the damage seemed within the 96% variance range.

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Also, I didn't say they were "useless" (especially not compared to a non-element weapon), just not enough for someone like me to build up more than one good weapon to 50 and tailor the element to the mob weakness. That +3-5% gets magnified with PAs and supposedly PSE Boosts increase elemental damage (though I did not observe this in the testing I did during a Thunder Boost lv3 effect). In this kind of game with no apparent soft caps on damage other than the 9999 single-hit hard cap, anything like this is good.

It COULD be that elemental modifiers are meant mainly for FOs who can easily switch up elements with almost no sacrifice whatsoever, and that HU/RA are meant to be penalized less for using an off-element weapon which can require a huge investment (not that there is a "penalty"... just not given as much incentive to grind up an arsenal). But that's just theorizing.

[Banjotron]

Yeah, trying to wrap my head around this. I really wish the devs would just clarify this, or that somebody would pick apart the client and figure it out. Currently, elements and how you build your stats (via affixes, mag, etc.) are really the core of character customization in this game. I don't care if they don't supply precise formulae for us. PSO2 is not a super hardcore game where endless theorycrafting dictates what is "right" and "wrong" and spawns constant fotm building, and the devs likely don't want it to be. I'm cool with that. I just feel like ability is a bit too big of a question mark, and that we're missing something fundamental to understanding how it works.

We know that the ability "cap" varies by weapon. Does it also vary by enemy?

Here's one idea that just popped into my head. Dunno if it's garbage or not. We have a pretty good idea that atk stats are a linear increase to damage, and that defense seems to be subtracted. What if it's not damage that's variable, but defense? Like the game simply spits out a value for damage, and a number ranging from 1 to the enemy's max defense is subtracted from that. Ability might simply be like armor penetration. Subtract ability from defense before doing the random reduction. Possibly? Maybe? I dunno.