shifta aint what it used to be

[Alisha]

first things first all this info is from offline mode however i see little reason why it should be any different online. secondly leveling shifta doesnt not increase it's potency it only increases buff duration and effect range.

in pso shifta increased your total atp by a %,however in psu it seems to instead increase your actual damage output. so as you begin to be able to output more damage the effect you get from shifta increases. so it looks like shifta will always be more benificial to rangers then it will be to hunters due to the fact that gun damage appears to be elemental and rangers can adjust to any monsters weakness although im not sure if unequiped bullets makes your damage physical but in that situation you could just equip a melee weapon or stun lock a monster.

onto the numbers. i know for a fact now that tech has no influence because i equiped a Te/tech charge and there was no change. also the shifta effect item seems to be about level 10 it has a signifigantly shorter duration than shifta lvl 11 and support techs get a huge boost to duration at level 11. anyways onto the numbers. i felt i large sample size wasnt neccesery because there is very little variance out side of critical hits.



first i used ethan with a jitseen with no element and attacked a lvl 30ish tengough.

without shifta 67,63,65,63,67

with shifta 86,87,,86,87,83

next i tried a spear Mukrundi it had lightning element but thats meaningless since tengoghs are fire.

without shifta 124(crit),87,73,84,78,83

with shifta 107,98,106,109,95

for the record when i tried on a weaker enemey without physical damage resistance,one of those goemon things that uses barta damage was average of 130 without shifta 170 with this is why i think the boost is directly proportional to the damage you can inflict without shifta wich also keeps hunters inline preventing them from ever being able to outdamage a ranger or force on monsters that are physical resistant but weak to magical damage.(i really hope you enjoy the hive hunters it really sucks for you there)

next i wanted some bigger numbers so i switched to my beast ranger equiped an assasin(A rank rifle) with lvl 23 grav shot and started shooting those stupid robots in the parum underground that resist physical and magic attacks.

without shifta 269,269,260,262,257,259

with shifta 337,330,332,333,325,322,326,342

then against the same type of monsters i switched to bulletmaster(A rank twin handgun) with lvl 13 twin grav

without shifta 153,152,156,153,149,149,155,156,160

with shifta 188,194,205,201,208,200,193,202,199.

now im not too good with math so i'll you guys figure out the actual % involved. i dont even know how to figure out the % http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[Deja]

I have four types of spears, fire, ice, light, and earth. So uh...I get those elemental bonuses too.

[Alisha]

melee weapon dont get elemental damage they just get a damage bonus similar to pso style %'s

[entropyboy]

last time i checked this is PSU and not PSO and that we have no way of getting Shifta from PSO, so any attack boost is good in my opinion

plus we get many more buffs and debuffs then we did in PSO

[Alisha]

still zodial is infinately more useful if you must have shifta its probally better to cast megistar.

[Kent]

Hmm... This should be tested in conjuntion with Zalure, as well.

Just some quick number-crunching: Going by the average of the big numbers (that rifle, Assassin I believe), Shifta makes about a 25% increase in damage (don't expect exact numbers from me, when it comes to math, it hurts my brain). Unfortunately, since we can only see base stats on the status screen, and base with weapon on the equipment, we can't see the increase in ATP, but it should be roughly similar... I guess.

A little methodology: Find the average of numbers without Shifta by adding together the damage from individual attacks, then dividing by the number of individual attacks. Then, do the same for the one with Shifta, and find the difference. Then, find what 1% of the non-Shifta average is (non-Shifta damage, divide by 100), and see how many times that number will go into the difference you found.

Bam. Damage increase percent.

[Garnet_Moon]

Someone please tell me why Vahra Grunts hit for 100 and Vahra Commanders hit for 260+ with Shifta on. There has GOT to be a trick to getting double damage from Shifta. The Vahra Commanders don't cast any debuf on us so you can't say it's that. Don't tell me it's an uber Mob-only spell. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

This is from De Ragan A runs online, obviously. My Shifta offline is super gimped and it makes me cry.



EDIT: Unless it's not Shifta they are using. It looks like it but it might be something else. I'm not a force so i've never looked at the icons I get when I cast spells on myself offline. I just have Shifta and Deband.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Garnet_Moon on 2006-11-10 20:22 ]</font>

[roygbiv]

On 2006-11-10 20:20, Garnet_Moon wrote:

EDIT: Unless it's not Shifta they are using. It looks like it but it might be something else. I'm not a force so i've never looked at the icons I get when I cast spells on myself offline. I just have Shifta and Deband.




I believe it is the "I am going to kick your ass now" status effect.
Red-sword = extra strong attack
blue shield = extra strong defense (half damage?)
yellow crown = leader (I think it inherently includes the strenght buff and the defense buff)
white cane = (according to PSUpedia can used extra technics I haven't really seen anything like that though, but I don't doubt it)

Shifta and Deband have the traditional arrow up icon.

[Bahamut89]

Couldn't you easily test this online with an Agtaride? Might be more useful for figuring out what online shifta's going to be...

Anyway, I kind of remember jumping from 40 to 60 (50% increase) with an Agtaride, but maybe I just exaggerated the numbers in my head and it was really 48 to 60 (25%) or something.

[Ruyo]

Jitseen
65 average w/o
86 average w/
21 dmg increase
29% increase

Mukrundi
81 average w/o
103 average w/
22 dmg increase
27% increase

Assassin
253 average w/o
330 average w/
77 dmg increase
30% increase

Battlemaster
154 average w/o
199 average w/
45 dmg increase
29% increase

My math could be off, it's been awhile...
I let my sister use my good calculator for school and she lost it, so I used the Calculator on the computer...


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ruyo on 2006-11-10 23:06 ]</font>

[hypersaxon]

Megistar > Shifta

[Realmz]

On 2006-11-10 21:05, roygbiv wrote:

On 2006-11-10 20:20, Garnet_Moon wrote:

EDIT: Unless it's not Shifta they are using. It looks like it but it might be something else. I'm not a force so i've never looked at the icons I get when I cast spells on myself offline. I just have Shifta and Deband.




I believe it is the "I am going to kick your ass now" status effect.
Red-sword = extra strong attack
blue shield = extra strong defense (half damage?)
yellow crown = leader (I think it inherently includes the strenght buff and the defense buff)
white cane = (according to PSUpedia can used extra technics I haven't really seen anything like that though, but I don't doubt it)

Shifta and Deband have the traditional arrow up icon.



while the shield add def it doesn't halve damage, the crown (denoting a leader character) halves all damage delt to it and double all damage delt to you by said monster.

the ice spewing centuar guys on newdaiz have a sword shield (at least) my dagger still does over 120 damage an attack on them. on the leader barta caster things, my dagger goes down to 70s

[Itsuki]

Agtal + Defdeal and my damage goes from ~200 to ~300. Its not so bad I think.


secondly leveling shifta doesnt not increase it's potency it only increases buff duration and effect range.
Someone else found this out in another thread back in the japanese offline version. But online I don't think we've tested it yet. Probably will have a definate answer to that tomorrow. I haven't seen any difference in effect from my guntechers to a level 11+ version.

[Feelmirath]

On 2006-11-10 20:20, Garnet_Moon wrote:
Someone please tell me why Vahra Grunts hit for 100 and Vahra Commanders hit for 260+ with Shifta on. There has GOT to be a trick to getting double damage from Shifta. The Vahra Commanders don't cast any debuf on us so you can't say it's that. Don't tell me it's an uber Mob-only spell. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif
The commanders get an ATP boost on top of that ;(

[Tycho]

I've read this thread, and I now feel even more confident that the support Techs still affect ATP rather than damage directly, and still as a percentage too. If it influenced damage directly, either the damage should be increase or multiplied by a certain number (of both if they made it more complex perhaps), which doesn't appear to be the case.

[Itsuki]

Very well could be. Because the defence formula isn't linear like it was in PSO, its hard to tell wether its the ATP or the damage itself being modified.

[Alisha]

tonight when i get home im onna try leveling shifta to 21 and see if anything happens. also megistar may seem better than shifta but its a major pain to level it up because it only goes up by 1% exp per cast compared to shifta,zodial etc. going up by 3% per cast. megistar also hits you with 3 potent tics of infection so if you keep casting it throughout a stage eventually that damage takes it's toll even if you are a ranger that rarely gets hit.

[Garnet_Moon]

Extra damage is extra damage. It adds up at the end of the current mission to be thousands extra.

Every little bit helps. As for Deband? Well, it wouldn't hurt to have it up all the time either.

[Alisha]

deband blows in comparison to zodial. no damage recieved > less damage received. plus support techs are quite costly at lvl 11 they jump to 40 pp.

[Garnet_Moon]

On 2006-11-14 17:27, Alisha wrote:
deband blows in comparison to zodial. no damage recieved > less damage received. plus support techs are quite costly at lvl 11 they jump to 40 pp.


You make it sound like you only carry one Staff and Rod.

As for Zodial if any force casts that on my Fortefighter and I lose a ton more PP because of evading hits, i'm going to go on a murderous rampage against Rappys. And I love those little guys.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Garnet_Moon on 2006-11-14 17:36 ]</font>

[Alisha]

on my beast i much prefer evading to not evading in fact its one of many reasons why i think casts are crap.

[Garnet_Moon]

On 2006-11-14 17:39, Alisha wrote:
on my beast i much prefer evading to not evading in fact its one of many reasons why i think casts are crap.


I'm not kidding when I say i've run dry on my Twin Rippers on my Beast F because of evading hits shortly after pressing the PA button. I cry, and cry, begging to be beaten to a pulp, yet I continue to evade. T_T

Evading and losing PP is not fun. Not fun at all.

[ViciousXUSMC]

did i miss somthing? you lose PP when you evade a hit? or you mean when the enemy evades your hits?

and 40pp is not bad for a support tech since they last a good while, resta cost 40pp and you have to spam it regularly, the Gi spells and stuff will be more than 40pp

[Itsuki]

They are actually referring to the fact that if you use a skill and get hit while doing the skill, you'll just continue the skill animation (Assuming you're not hit with something that launchers or something). Now, if you are doing a skill and the enemy attacks you but you evade, the animation for the skill stops and you go into a block animation. Now heres where the problem comes in. Lets say you use a skill and before the first hit lands, the monster attacks you and you evade. You've just used PP to do nothing.

[Alisha]

who cares i'll trade PP for no damage any day especially when you consider that beasts will come to a point where anything other than a trimate or a star atomizer seems like a waste. as for gi techs i dont know if it will be different online but offline gidiga costs 20 pp and is my favorite tech.

[Itsuki]

Gidigga is 20 -> 30 -> 40 online. So as a fortecher, it'll probably cost you 32. (thats for all Gi-techs actually)

And I'm not saying that the PP thing is a big issue, but it is for some. Online you have to consider that the missions are long. High rank missions can last 30-40minutes easily. If you're loosing say... 20% PP to evasion, than its the difference between having to bring 10 weapons and having to bring 12. Which can be significantly more expensive than bringing along a few extra mates.

But nobody is really going to complain about Zodial because things are also hard to hit on higher ranks, and that added ATA makes a huge difference. Especially to rangers. Certain areas you just can't hit things without it.