Calculus & FFXI -- INT and MAB

Introduction

It has been long known to Black Mages that resists aside, Magic Attack Bonus, or MAB for short, is the stat that you want to focus on when it comes to raising your nuke damage. However, it is also known that for lower tier nukes, INT adds more damage than MAB.

Out of this comes the question of when the transition period is, and thus there is a need to relate the two together.

Today, a fairly common rule of thumb is that “2INT ≈ 1MAB,” which has been largely shown to be true from general observation.

However, I have not yet come across any mathematical support for this statement.

As advanced warning, there is a decent amount of math involved, which brings about two issues—first, not everyone likes math, so I’ll have to step away from the mathematics from time to time to explain what is going on. In addition, I have no idea what kind of math background my reader, you, would have.

To be safe, I am going to write for someone who has a high school background in Calculus, or someone in their freshman year in college.

Bear in mind that the mathematics detailed below will not necessarily make you a better player, nor will unveil some great profound secret that will change the way you look at nukers forever. It is simply an insight into the logic and reasoning that goes behind our decisions.

By providing mathematical support for the claim, not only do we get absolute, logical proof that the relation holds true (under certain circumstances), but we can verify its accuracy, and if need be, further refine the rule.

But in all honesty, I was bored. Very, very bored. ^^

By the way, if the equations don't display properly, your browser is probably blocking the HTML or Java script that takes the code and turns it into equations.

The damage formula

To begin, let’s start with the damage formula (D) for a nuke:

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

The equation above has a several variables, so I’ll briefly explain each component.

• k is the product of all the modifiers you get from elemental staves, day of the week, weather, magic burst, and type of mob.
• M refers to your total Magic Attack Bonus from both Job traits and equipment.
• B is the spell’s base damage, which can be looked up elsewhere.
• λ is the nuke’s tier-modifier, again, further details can be found elsewhere.
• I refers to total Intelligence (again, base INT and gear)- the subscript Y or M tells you whose INT the equation is referring to- You, or the Mob.

For more information, you can look at its FFXIclopedia entry here.

MAB is divided by 100 and added to 1 to signify that MAB is a percentage bonus. If you have a total of 32 Magic Attack Bonus, then your MAB multiplier is 1.32.

Model limitations

Bear in mind that this equation is not entirely accurate because of limitations in the computation, which is a topic that is usually touched upon in college under Numerical Analysis.

Because a computer can’t store an infinite number of decimal places, it has to truncate the working figure at some point, which means it just ignores all the numbers after a certain position.

For example, if you were to multiply 1.4 and 3.7 together, but your calculator could only store one number after the decimal point, your calculator would give you the answer, 5.1, instead of the real answer, which is 5.18. Because the calculator cannot store any more numbers past the 1, the 8 is lost through the truncation process.

In Final Fantasy XI’s case, all the numbers that go into the damage formula are truncated down to their integer values, and so because of this, our calculated values from the equation above will have a little bit of error in it.

Calculus

Once again, the equation for calculating your damage is,

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

The typical textbook question here would ask you to maximize your damage.

Notice that this question by itself does not make sense, because the answer would just be to make your Intelligence and Magic Attack Bonus infinitely large. The unspoken fine print is to find the maximum value of D within some kind of boundary, which would represent the gear selection currently available. This is a topic typically covered in a college freshman math course in multivariable calculus.

Still, the question is not very interesting because you can just go out there and try different gear sets yourself, or just plug in numbers to compare. The problem is easily solved by just going out there and testing it yourself, without having to actually using college mathematics to do so.

What is more interesting is the relationship between INT and MAB, which will help when evaluating gear choices, or to better understand in what proportions of INT and MAB work well together. Are Vicious mufflers better than Yigit gages? What if SE produced a pair of gloves that added +9INT? Which is best?

Differentiation

Because we want to find out how much INT we need to make up for 1MAB, we need to first determine the increase in damage by changing INT and MAB. Hence, we need to differentiate.

The first stumbling block is that the function has multiple variables. Most, if not all of the functions up until high school calculus involve only one variable, so what do you know when there are two?

Let’s re-examine what the differentials actually mean.

Taking the derivative with respect to MAB as an example, it refers to the change in damage with respect to your Magic Attack Bonus. In other words, how much would my damage change if I increased my MAB by 1?

This may sound familiar to those who have studied basic microeconomic theory, in particular, marginal costs and/or marginal benefits. In this case, the marginal benefit of hiring a new employee refers to the benefit (profit) gained as a result of hiring one more employee, and changing nothing else.

Likewise, what we are looking at here is the marginal benefit of adding 1 MAB.

The key here is that the only thing you are changing is your MAB, therefore everything else can be treated as a constant!

This is called the partial derivative, and is used in functions with more than one variable. The idea is, how much change would I expect by increasing this variable while holding all other variables constant?

Because we are only interested in the relationship between I_Y and MAB, we only need to compute the derivates with respect to those two variables.

Also note that it does not make sense to compute the derivative to any of the other variables, because they are just outside our control.

So, if

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

I can differentiate this using the product rule, but I personally prefer to just expand the brackets and rearrange to get

\[D=\left [\frac{k(B- \lambda I_M)}{100} \right ]M+\frac{\lambda kMI_Y}{100} +k \lambda I_Y+k(B- \lambda I_M) \]

So, in order to take the partial derivative of D with respect to MAB, I assume everything except MAB is constant.

Thus, taking the partial differential with respect to MAB, I get:

\[\frac{dD}{dM}=\frac{k(B- \lambda I_M)}{100}+\frac{\lambda kI_Y}{100} \]
\[\frac{dD}{dM}=\frac{k[B+ \lambda (I_Y-I_M)]}{100} \]

Likewise, taking the partial differential with respect to your INT,

\[\frac{dD}{dI_Y}=\frac{\lambda kM}{100}+\lambda k\]
\[\frac{dD}{dI_Y}=\frac{\lambda k(M+100)}{100}\]

Thus, I now have a say of calculating the amount of change my damage will incur if I change either my intelligence, or my MAB.

Back to the question!

Going back to the original question, I want to know how much intelligence I have to add in order to match MAB. In other words, I want to know when the two partial derivatives are equal. In particular, I want to know how much intelligence I need to add (remember, that’s just dD/dI) when dD/dM is 1.

Using the principle of small changes, I can write:
\[\frac{dI_Y}{dI_M}=\frac{\triangle I_Y}{\triangle M} \]

In this case, ∆MAB=1, so
\[\triangle I_Y=\frac{dI_Y}{dM} \]

Finally, using the chain rule, I can now deduce an expression to find the change in I_Y with respect to MAB.

\[\frac{dI_Y}{dM}=\frac{dI_Y}{dD}\frac{dD}{dM} \]

Therefore,
\[\frac{dI_Y}{dM}=\frac{100}{\lambda k(M+100)}\frac{k[B+\lambda (I_Y-I_M)]}{100}=\triangle I_Y \]
\[\triangle I_Y=\frac{\frac{B}{\lambda}+I_Y-I_M}{M+100} \]

Voila! We now have an equation to calculate the amount of I_Y required to match 1MAB’s worth of damage.

Notice that MAB is found on the denominator, which indicates as MAB increases, less INT will be required to match that increase in damage. In other words, as your MAB increases, raising INT will become more and more damage-efficient.

Using the formula

To use the formula, pick a nuke and look up the required values. For example, let’s assume I’m nuking Thunder IV, which has a base damage of 541 and a tier modifier of 2, on an Ebony Pudding (89INT). I have 125INT and a total of 71MAB, including my Job Trait Magic Attack Bonus, so plugging those numbers into the equation, I get:

\[\triangle I_Y=\frac{\frac{B}{\lambda}+I_Y-I_M}{M+100}=\frac{\frac{541}{2}+125-89}{71+100}=1.792 \]

So I need roughly 1.8INT in order to match 1MAB’s worth of damage. Pretty close to the 2INT=1MAB claim!

Note that this number obviously varies from person to person, depending on that player's own stats, so if you want, you could quickly go through the calculation yourself to find your own INT:MAB ratio, but it should be quite close to the 9:5 ratio as suggested here.

P.S: Does anyone know how to get rid of the borders that frame each equation? >_<

Edited to clarify some things pointed out by Robonosto.

BLM solo in Xarcabard [S]- a.k.a. "1400 damage or GTFO!"

New personal record: Chain #41!

Okay, I know the actual picture says Chain #40, but I but forgot to take a screenshot of the Chain #41 kill. Of course, I finally got a resist on the next tiger and lost the chain there without a screenshot of that new personal record. Go figure. -_-

As you might be able to tell, I've been obsessing over this camp as of late. Not because the camp is good, although that certainly helps, but because this camp just feels like it has so much potential.

The actual meriting process is very simple- walk up to a Gigas’ Tiger and nuke. Parsimony whenever it is up, saving the other charge for Alacrity in case of emergencies. Rest for one or two ticks, depending on how far your next mob is, before continuing.

So, just how good is this camp? Tigers here are level 75-76, which is 100-130 base xp, which goes up to 150-195xp/kill once you're past Chain #4, or an average of 172.5xp/kill.

So, if you kill one mob every minute, your xp/hr will be about 172.5 x 60 minutes = 10,350xp/hr. Not too bad.

But in reality, I was killing one tiger every 50 seconds on average. 3600 seconds/50 seconds per kill = 72 kills = 172.5 x 72 = 12,420xp/hr!

So this camp is very, very good. You want in. So, what do I need?

Minimum standards

The entire camp revolves around being able to one-shot a Gigas's Tiger. This creates a very interesting bar to entry and I am very curious if the development team actually took this into consideration (though I think that’s giving them too much credit).

I think I’ve shown by now that this camp surpasses Puddings in terms of xp/hr, but note that is only applies to Black Mages that meet the minimum standard, so here it is:

The minimum standard: To deal 1400 damage on an unresisted nuke consistently.

If you cannot do this, your xp/hr rate literally plummets to the point where you would probably be better off sticking to Ebony Puddings. This number is a lot easier to meet with frequent ice weather and day bonuses, but such things are inconsistent- to truly benefit from this camp, you would want to be able to come here at any time.

Why one-shot? The obvious reason why is that two nukes obviously take longer to fire off, especially if you need to Bind or Sleep in the middle.

Secondly, one common speed bump in pet camps is that you have to wait for the mob to turn its back to you, or navigate your way around the camp until you are behind the mob so that the master does not see its pet coming after you.

However, if you can one-shot the pet, you can nuke from any direction because the master will not link with a dead pet.

Together, those two reasons result in immense time savings, which become invaluable when you need to meet the 60-second time limit for everything beyond Chain #5 and still rest sufficient mana to continue the chain.

To give the reader just what kind of standard is required, this is my current nuking set for neutral day/weather:

As a Taru with full Elemental skill merits and full INT merits, I nuke with 133INT and +29MAB in gear. I also have maximum Lightning potency merits.

Yet, my neutral Thunder IVs land for just 1369 damage, off my estimated minimum requirement by 31 damage, so I still have to wait for Ice/Lightningsday to come around before I can merit in this camp! >_<

For BLMs who would like something more familiar to compare against, I use the same gear setup, to nuke Ebony Puddings with a /RDM subjob for 1515 damage without food, 1540 damage with.

BLM/SCH!

Today, /RDM has become the default subjob of choice for Black Mages everywhere, and it's not difficult to see why. Here's what you get from /RDM:

• Fast Cast II
  
• Dispel
• Gravity
• Phalanx
• Stoneskin
• Blink
  

Of these, the most valuable are Stoneskin, Blink and Gravity. These are all defensive in nature, and provide Black Mage with the survivability required to function effectively.

However, if you can one-shot pets, there is no need for defense!

Your concern shifts from survivability to one wholly focused on pure mana conservation, which is where /SCH shines. This is what /SCH has to offer:

• -10% mp costs through Dark Arts.
• -10% cast time and recast time.
• -50% mp cost through Parsimony (using one charge.)
• -50% cast time through Alacrity (using one charge.)
  

You are most interested in the mana conservation through Dark Arts and Parsimony, whose effects add up immensely:

Let's say that with a cooldown of two minutes, you would Parsimony every third nuke. Thunder IV costs 154mp under Dark Arts, and 77mp under Parsimony.

Thus, you consume 385mp in total for every set of three nukes, in the following cycle:

Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Parsimony → Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Repeat.

With Clear Mind V and +24hMP in my healing set, I get back 51mp on the first tick, and 54mp on the second tick for a total of 105mp restored through resting in between nukes, for a total of 315mp restored through healing per cycle.

If I nuke every 50 seconds, the whole cycle will take 2:30. With 1mp restored every three seconds from Sigil, Sigil restores 50mp in that time.

Thus, the total mana restored per cycle is 365mp.

Therefore, you have a net mana consumption of just 20mp every three nukes!

Camp orientation

Now that I've talked a little bit about the mechanics of the camp, one important final part is actual knowledge of the camp and its surroundings. First, you will never stay at one stationary spot. You will keep moving around, depending on several factors.

In total, I counted five Gigas Floggers in the area. One of them is to the far west, the other towards the eastern tundra. The other three are all clustered very close to each other in the center, and it is these three that you want to focus on.

However, you only need two Beastmasters to recur, so a good idea would be to just alternate between the two Beastmasters until one of them moves into an unfavourable location.



I'll be frank- this camp is very mentally taxing. Because you are /SCH, you have very little defense should something go wrong, other than perhaps Alacrity-Sleepga. Once you reach Chain #5 and above, pressure is constantly on you to keep the chain, which means you have to be able to answer the following questions quickly:

• Where is your next tiger? How far is it?
• Do I have to stand up early to get to the tiger in time?
  
• Where are the surrounding Gigas?
• Where are the Greater Amphipteres?
• How close should I stand when I nuke to avoid the pet moving out of range mid-cast?
• How far should I stand when I nuke to avoid aggro from the beastmaster?

As a rough gauge, if you have the Distance plugin on the unofficial Windower, a player character moves at a base speed of 4.0 yalms per second, so you can use that to decide whether you should stand up early to move to your next tiger.

Resists

It’s still a bit of a bummer that so far, my chain is completely dependent on not getting resisted. Theoretically, you can still keep the chain by timing an Alacrity-Tier III nuke in between tiger swings, but there are two problems to this.

One is more focused on player skill. Because resists are so unexpected, when they do occur, I find myself in a sudden state of panic even though I planned for such contingencies. With experience, I ought to be able to react accordingly and maintain a smooth flow.

The other, bigger issue is that if you nuked the pet in front of the beastmaster and your nuke was resisted, the beastmaster will see the pet and link, thus ending your chain even though you manage to kill the pet in time.

Yes, you could maneuver around the beastmaster to set yourself up for an ideal nuking spot, but if you focus too much on that, you forgo one large benefit of being able to one-shot pets. All I can say is that at least the Xarcabard [S] camp here has the benefit of choice, and with multiple Gigas Floggers around, at least you have the luxury of picking and choosing from the tigers available.

If, unfortunately you're forced into one particular tiger and you get resisted, well, that's life Final Fantasy XI. Just Sleepga, finish off the pet, curse, Retrace, and come back to start anew. :(

Black Mage Solo Chain #19+

So, did I mention I love Xarcabard [S]?

I thought I was loving the new beastmen pet camps as a Scholar, when I posted my picture of getting Chain #9 solo, but I just went back there as a Black Mage, and well, see for yourself:



Chain #19! Solo!

For those who are interested in trying this out for yourself, I went BLM/SCH, nuking with Thunder IV only, resting for two ticks between each pet and using Parsimony whenever it was up. Sometimes, if the next tiger was far away, I'd have to get up after only one tick of rest.

The fact that I managed to get Chain #19 and still have 566/1093mp suggests that with this method, I could very well see something around Chain #40, assuming no resists. That being said, my chain breaking around #20 does not surprise me, as with my magic accuracy capped at 95%, I'd expect one in twenty mobs to resist my nuke.

I did however, learn a few things:

First, you only really need two Beastmasters to go infinite. However, as I mentioned in my last post, there are five Beastmasters in the area, so this wasn't really a problem. You must also be decisive- interrupting your spell midway will break the chain, so I'd sometimes risk getting aggro from a Gigas that was walking towards me in order to keep the chain.

I also learnt that I was just a little bit short of damage once Lightningsday came to pass. The tigers would end up at just 1% HP after my Thunder IV, which leads me to believe that you need to consistently deal 1400 damage to fully utilize this method outside of Ice/Lightningsday. I am just 31 damage short of that. :(

(For the record, I was nuking with 133INT and +27MAB from gear.)

There are still gear improvements I can make- it's just a matter of getting around to obtaining the stuff. :P

But all that aside, the big question- just how much xp was I getting? I sat down to manually calculate it, taking the time from my first Thunder IV to the first Thunder IV of the next chain. Overall, I was getting about 11,300xp/hr! That's better than Puddings! :D

I <3 Xarcabard [S]

Wow, I'm liking this update. I haven't gotten around to trying out all the additions the update brought, but the first thing I did upon logging in was to beeline straight for Beaucedine Glacier [S] and subsequently, Xarcabard [S].

I think Xarcabard [S] must be one of my new favourite zones now.

I like the music, the mobs...and did I mention the xp?

The past couple of times I've been there, I counted a whopping five Gigas Beastmasters (Gigas Floggers) in the area. This would easily support two pet solo players, but when there's just one, the results are very, very nice. :o

Chain #9 solo. :o

Soloing here has been a very nice bridge between Vunkerl Inlet [S] tigers and Ebony Puddings, which has been a godsend to me since at SCH72, I really wasn't in a position to take on Ebony Puddings. I could kill them, but they'd take so much effort it really wasn't worth it.

Not to mention, you have your moments of {excitement} doing this camp, as you'll often have to dodge Gigas aggro and run in the path of a flying Greater Amphiptere (read: death from above) to keep your chain. :D

I stuck around Xarcabard [S] for a couple days, getting SCH72→SCH74 in the meantime. I think 74 would be the time to leave, since all the base xp goes down to 120-160xp/kill, and Puddings should now be a lot easier.

Best part of all though- the camp is right next to the Campaign Arbiter! Easy transport to and fro from camp, and to make things better, frequent Ice weather in Xarcabard [S] makes me a very happy nuker. :3

Ongoings.

On a completely random note, I am in love with the Star Onions remix of Gustaberg.



It has come to my attention that all last written posts (I hesitate to use the word “recently” here) have nothing to do with my actual in-game activities. Sure, there were a few videos of me soloing Brothers, and a layout or two on the Campsitarus revamp (which is trundling along very slowly, I might add), but nothing answers the question of just what have I been up to in game?

I’m not exactly sure what to think of that. On the one hand, much of the FFXI-related blogs out there revolve around one’s own accomplishments and gains in-game, and to be quite frank, this very blog was along the same lines too.

However, somewhere along the road, I had difficulty fathoming that anyone would be interested in reading about my own conquests in game, especially when the posts start to resemble some variation of “We did this, I got that and the world goes on anyway.”

Occasionally there comes an interesting issue or hot topic which warrants a response, like my last post a couple months ago about Elmerthepointy’s questionnaire, and more recently, the Gardening bannings.

So in recent news, probably as a result of all the Astralburning that's been going on, Windurst took over Gustaberg.


{Nice to meet you.}, Kuuwari-Aori, W.W.

I haven’t really been all that involved in-game recently. I suppose I am at the stage where I’ve played long enough and am stuck in that not-so-pleasant limbo of trying to find meaning in what I’m doing, which is about the same time most people decide to just pack up and move onto other worldly pursuits.

I joined TeamKanican back in October last year to try and experience playing in a committed HNM linkshell. Things were initially both hectic and jam packed, with us camping Ixion, Sandworm, Fafhogg, (King) Behemoth and to a lesser extent, Khimaira along with all the other events that go on like Einherjar and Dynamis.

While you could say that continually having things in game to do were good, I quickly found myself disliking the rush from one camp to the next, only to stand around checking Widescan every few minutes, or spamming Stun every half hour.

More recently, we've laid off camping Ixion and Sandworm, going down to just Kings and Khimaira, which isn't so bad. We seem to have put Dynamis on hold, and I haven't been able to make our Einherjar runs either, so things have definitely cooled down in-game, or so to speak. The problem still remained though- I wasn't sure what I was playing for.

I realized that the main draw to me for TK was the image that Kaeko had portrayed, that TK was a shell that pioneered strategic advancements and so-and-so forth, and while I can say that with Kaeko’s help, we still do some of those things, the reality is very different.

Our latest pursuit lies with the trio team up between LimitBreak, BBQ and TK into Awsomeland to try and take down Absolute Virtue.

For obvious reasons, we haven't succeeded yet. Besides, if we had succeeded, chances are you would've heard about it by now.

But our rehearsal did lead to the following exchange, where I somehow found myself playing the role of Absolute Virtue,

Aside from that, much of my in-game time now revolves around low-manning ENMs, primarily Brothers and Shell We Dance, with the occasional Apollyon NW duo thrown in here and there, splitting the drops afterwards. It’s purely a money-making scheme, especially as I try to push for lower and lower numbers to maximize our returns per person, but it’s been satisfying working with people I’m familiar with once again and trying to push limits (no matter how small) as a small group.

I don’t know if I’m in a position to rightfully give strategic authority to others, but it was with that intention that I started taking videos of my solo runs with the intention of trying to improve other people’s play, by highlighting the general strategy required to win, as well as showcasing the mistakes to avoid.

It was this intention to share my knowledge and experiences that led me to agree when Ringthree asked me to contribute a mage-based column to his blog-turned-web magazine (though real life commitments have kept me from contributing much lately).

I also set up another personal blog along the same lines at thunderiv.blogspot.com which I hope will deal with my specific experiences as a Black Mage (and I suppose to a lesser extent, Scholar). It’s still largely empty though, but I do have several ideas I would like to put down on paper, but it’s just a matter of actually sitting down to write and flesh them out.

Then in addition, I also casually mentioned to Kallo back in April that I had an idea to talk about Campsitarus on Limit Break Radio, and we pieced together a brief outline which we just finished recording yesterday.

I’m not sure when the episode will air- it obviously depends on Aniero’s own schedule, but showing up as a guest speaker on the show was quite an experience and taught me a lot, even though the covered material itself was rather basic.

Honestly, camps and experience points is a huge topic, with lots of leads we could've followed, and in the interest of not wavering too far, we found it difficult to properly segment everything and just stick with the bare basics.

I definitely don't think we broke any sound barriers with what we spoke about, and I’m actually a little afraid people will think we’re talking about things that are overly basic, and I’m afraid we might've spent too much time just vaguely talking about things without really going down to things that might not be considered general knowledge.

Finally, I've been leveling my Scholar. It's currently sitting at SCH72, and once it hits 75, it'll mark my fifth 75 job along with BLM, RDM, WHM and SMN (notice a trend here?). It was interesting, especially in the earlier levels when I was trying to see just how far I could just on Beastmen pets only, but eventually, I just got sick of large tnls and started joining regular parties instead.

I did have a rather strange party the other day in East Ronfaure [S] though- it was a powerlevel TP Burn party, synced to 38, so I joked that I'd come SCH/DRK to melee with Attack Bonuses.

To my surprise, the party leader said "yeah, why not?" :o

It clearly didn't work out, so I decided to go and pull instead since we had no BRD with us. I ended up pulling an 11k/hr party as a SCH/DRK, and we were all set to leave East Ronfaure when we hit 41 until we found out that we were going 14k/hr afterwards. ^^

Don't try SCH/DRK pulling though- seriously, SCH/NIN would've been soooooo much better. >_<

Until next time!

My responses to the Japanese's questions.

Elmerthepointy has posted up the second round of questions from the Japanese, fired at us, the non-Japanese speaking community in an effort to bridge the cultural and language barriers. I figured this time around, I'd offer up my own answers on my blog, even though they're in the comments on JPButton.

First off, if you're not familiar with the project, what Elmer did was to gather a sample of questions from the NA players (NA in this case meaning "Not Japanese." :P), then translated and posted some of the questions onto Japanese forums for Japanese players to answer. He then reversed the roles around, gathering questions from the Japanese to ask us, translating along the way in the hopes that each side gets greater understanding of the other.

The first EN/JP questions project can be found here.

So, without further ado, here are the questions to the second round of questions from the Japanese. Questions are in bold, my answers are in plain text, and any additional comments I have will be in italics. ^^

{START button}!

1. Do foreign players have a lot of interest in joining social Japanese Linkshells? (Especially ones with only JP members) I ask because when I recruit for my shell in Japanese, I get a lot of tells from foreigners looking to join. Personally, I feel like even if they could understand my /shout, it still would be hard to keep up with regular conversation. They wouldn’t understand pop-culture references to old TV shows, for instance.

I was personally interested in joining a Japanese linkshell, if only because it allowed me to keep in touch with my Japanese language.

That being said, you are right in saying that even if foreigners did study Japanese, we wouldn’t get all the pop-culture references. However, that applies to any foreign language student that’s trying to take his language skills to everyday conversation.

Now that I am in a Japanese linkshell and I understand most of what’s going on, I get headaches after a while, and will switch into an English linkshell to relax. I assume most Japanese feel the same way too when put into an English environment.

Keeping in touch with my Japanese was indeed one of the reasons why I applied to TK, although now that much of the EN side has gone due to the Salvage bannings, the impact of what is essentially a Japanese only linkshell is hitting me. Honestly, I get such headaches trying to keep up with the chat sometimes, I just stop paying attention and come to once I realise my linkshell leader's scolding me for not reading the chatlog. :P

2. Parties that cycle in replacement members seem to be popular amongst foreigners, but a lot of times the party will just disband once the replacement arrives. Of course, there are times when the replacement is contacted before they get all the way there, but there are many instances when no one says anything. There are also many cases where inappropriate jobs are invited and the party can no longer function well.

To me, this is a big reason behind some of the negative images Japanese players have about foreign players. What do you think about this?

Ah, I was wondering when this question would get asked. ^^

I am personally not a fan of “replacement parties,” though I understand why some would do it. To some, they might think why they have to stop the xp party just because one person has to go, so they find someone to replace the leaving member and keep the party going for those that want to stay.

Unfortunately, what happens a lot of the time is that people get tired around roughly the same time, so one person leaving usually leads to a chain of other people leaving as well.

I honestly don't blame the Japanese for this kind of impression that they have, because I've only very rarely come across Japanese players that will look for replacements.

I've accepted it as just the way of doing things with English-speaking players, and try to accomodate, such as not expecting to stay as long as I might otherwise in a new party, or asking the existing members how long they plan to stay before looking for replacement members.

I'm not saying it's overall a bad thing- I've been in excellent parties that were both good xp/hr and were long because of replacements, I've just found that it's usually more trouble than not.

In my experience, the unspoken guideline is that xp parties last around two hours from when you start fighting, so I plan around that.

3. Why does it seem like many foreign players don’t bother to bring medicines and potions to Missions and BCs? Many Japanese players make sure to have Vile Elixirs, Hi-Potions and/or Reraise Earrings.

From my observation, it’s accepted here that everyone has food and Reraise, while mages have Echo Drops in addition. I generally would not expect anything else, and if I really wanted Hi-Potions, Yagudo Drinks or something else, I’d specifically mention it in party chat before setting off.

I'm also going to call on some of the claims here, because I honestly do not remember an instance where a Japanese player came extra prepared to a mission. Honestly, taken to extremes, I can ask why you're not prepared with Opo/Sleep Pots or Icarus Wings. I know there are some people that carry around a Vile Elixir just in case, but to expect one is too much in my opinion.

As I mentioned in my answer- I will plan assuming members don't have these items outside of food, reraise and echo drops for the mages. I will say if I want other specific items before setting off.

4. Sometimes I see foreign pick-up parties recruiting for members using Auto-Translate, but then when I join the party, all the conversation and battle planning is in English. I’ll ask for them to {Please use the Auto-Translate function.} but nobody ever does. If you are going to /shout for help with the Auto-Translator, why not use it in the party? It feels like I was tricked.

Interesting point. I wasn’t aware full auto-translate shouts were even effective in recruiting Japanese players!

Sorry I can’t really help out here- personally, if I’m doing a mission and have both English and Japanese players, I explain what’s going on twice- once in English and once again in Japanese.

I honestly had never considered that Japanese could actually accept an auto-translated /shout invite and come face to face with a wall of English characters only, with little conscientious effort to translate the battle plan, etc.

That being said, it does strike me as odd that the question claims that even after he/she asks {Please use the Auto-translate function}, there is no noticeable improvement. It may be that we are so used to using the translator more as a shortcut function (like Sau"TAB key") as opposed to a translator that we're just not used to, well, actually using it to translate!

5. How many NA and EU players do Campaign? Any thoughts about the recent nerf to Fortifications?

I don’t do campaign, unfortunately, so I can’t comment here either.

6. What equipment do you think has great stats but horrible looks?
What equipment do you think has the best graphics?

Ugly: Zenith Mitts! The green gloves are sooo ugly!

Pretty: I personally love seeing all the classic FF costumes, so I love AF. In fact, my first job was WHM just because in my newbie days as a BLM08, a taru WHM rode past me on a chocobo, and I saw his Healer’s Briault, and I thought to myself, “I _must_ have that!” I was so disappointed when I found you couldn’t buy a briault off the AH. T_T

One thing I've noticed is that all the jobs I've leveled have a very striking piece of AF, be it the WHM or RNG body or BLM, RDM or SCH hats or SMN horn that really exudes the classic FF feel, and also why I didn't level say, WAR or MNK whose AF I do not identify as well with. Because of that, my first melee job will probably end up being DRG, despite my protests. :P

7. Outside of your normal party gear, is there any equipment that you go out of your way to get strictly for looks? What are your favorite pieces of casual equipment?

My Goldsmithing equipment. In town, I walk around in my Goldsmith’s Apron, Shaded Spectacles and a Vulcan’s Staff. I really wish I could get my hands on a Nomad Moogle cap though. T_T

I'm proud to be a Goldsmither even though I don't actually synth for gil. In fact, I fully understand why people would use their guild aprons as town gear. Apart from advertising, it feels good to show off the fruits of your hard work, especially for a craft like Goldsmithing! >_<

8. I’m a Mithra, and I find that a lot of foreigners seem to be into Mithra fashion. They examine me and ask where I got my equipment and such. Do you think male players enjoy dressing up their Mithra in cute outfits?

I’m not a Mithra, so I can’t comment. TARUTARU FOR LIFE!

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with playing a character who is of the opposite gender that you are in real life, if anything, it might even provide some insights into what people of the opposite gender may have to consider.

I wish I still had that bookmark on some university conducting a class in WoW, where one of the assignments was to create a new character of the opposite gender and observe how your own behaviour changed. I remember finding the student's paper quite interesting, but unfortunately, cannot remember for the life of me where it was now. :(

Second, did I mention TARUTARU FOR LIFE? ^^

9. I wonder if you calculate the XP/hr of parties, and if so, do you think that Skillchain/Magic Burst or Weaponskill spam produces the best results? Before parsing became widespread, Japanese players used to think Skillchain/Magic Burst was the best.

I think it’s been quite conclusively shown that weaponskill spam parties bring in the highest xp/hr rates, especially in merit parties. That being said, don’t neglect the power of a skillchain, but skillchains now are things that are done when the opportunity arises, rather than being something you’d plan a party’s strategies around.

Parsers did one very good thing- it gave you cold, hard, numerical results, which in turn allowed us to conclusively say that if you wanted to maximize your xp/hr, this style is better. I personally pay attention to the xp/hr gained in a party.

10. How come it seems like so many people don’t utilize Search Comments properly? Why don’t they write their camp location for others to see? Also, it’s strange to see so many people seeking without basic information written like available jobs and where they can access. Don’t you want an invite?

Yes, this has been frustrating me too. Most of the time though, I’m only really concerned with what camps are taken, so I can figure out where to go, or whether to even start forming a party in the first place.

As for subjobs, it’s rare that I specifically want a certain subjob (although I have been asked to merit as WHM/DRK before) and as for areas, unless the camp is really somewhere that people might not be able to get to (like [S] regions when WotG just came out), I’ve found it a same assumption that people can go to camp, so I don’t bother looking at those in search comments, nor do I see how excluding those comments would affect your party invites.

I don't remember when the last time I invited someone based on their subjob availability was, with the exception of ignoring those with underleveled subs. Concerns with areas do crop up occasionally for me because of Campsitarus where I am usually found trying to explore any new areas (I was trying to party exclusively in WotG areas when it was released), but other than certain times like that, I'd only ask if there really were some definite barriers to entry.

11. If you know you are going to be busy, how come you don’t alert people at the beginning of the party instead of surprising everyone at the last minute?

I have no idea- this is not something I practice, although I have been the victim of such things before. If anything, I’d say this is a rather unfair generalization.

I can see where the question comes from though. Sad to say, while I have had my fair share of people suddenly leaving the party without any prior warning, the majority of such cases are from EN players.

Perhaps it's the idea that I have the right to leave if the party is bad, etc. After all, if we're stuck in a company we hate, most would say "quit your job!" or something to that extent (well, maybe not in these days...)

In the end however, these cases are few and far in between, so I do feel it's an unfair generalization of the entire EN playerbase.

12. Honestly, the largest difference in thinking between Japanse and foreign players exists in the Merit party. You often say 5 DDs and a RDM is so good, but having a single, solitary healer is hard on the RDM. Japanese realize that healers can be in short supply, so we make sacrifices to lighten their burden, like subbing a mage job, or using Utsusemi. I feel like many people don’t show proper respect to healers.

When we say JP ONLY, it isn’t always an issue of language, but the fact that we feel there are other dangers and demerits associated with a non-JP party, stemming from our different play-styles, that we wish to avoid.

This key difference in thinking, more than any race or language issue, is what really sets us apart as players. They are just looking to sit back, relax and earn some decent XP.

Please feel free to provide your own insight and thoughts.

I agree that the difference in merit parties might just come down to mentality. Personally, if I join a merit party, I want the fastest xp/hr rate, which means I expect to be pushed to my limits, mage or melee. I don’t expect it to be relaxing at all. I am there for merits first and foremost. If I really wanted to relax and get some xp at the same time, I’d party with friends exclusively, where the aim is more on socializing than getting merit points.

That being said, where’d the 5 DD and 1 RDM come from? I’ve never seen that formula around.

I was surprised to see that the OP saw merits as something relaxing, although I'll admit it's not too far fetched. I've already spelled out my thoughts on merits and how I generally don't view it as something to relax to.

The interesting point here is what is the disservice being done here- pushing the healer, or making the healer's job easier at the cost of limit points? From a WHM or RDM's perspective, as a healer, I cannot easily solo or get limit points by myself, so I'm personally out for merit points first and foremost! Thank you for the consideration towards possibly making my job easier, but I really don't mind you taking more damage if it means I have to work harder and get more xp.

I will definitely agree that if the "meripo is for relaxing" mentality is prominent throughout the Japanese community, then this might be why there is such a difference in style. On our side, merits can be seen as a chore, so get it over and done with! Besides, we all like being part of that uber party that pulls in 20k/hr, so why not work towards it? In other words, why settle for being good when you can be great?

Bonus question: What type of sushi do you like best?

Salmon! My host family in Japan were laughing at me because I love salmon, but don’t really like tuna. I hear salmon is really cheap while tuna is expensive in Japan, so my host parents were happy, too.

I looooove salmon. Actually I like fish in general although I'm not so hot with tuna and sardines for some reason. But salmon..../slurp.

Imagine my surprise when I found out salmon is the cheapest fish in Japan, too! :D


And that's it! Hopefully you found these answers insightful.

Picture lifted from vgcats.

Brothers ENM solo- after the April Update

Last month, I was working on trying to improve my BLM soloing, recording, documenting and commenting on my runs to pick out mistakes and areas of improvement.

I actually have three recorded runs, although I only put two up on this blog simply because, well, I didn't think they really appealed to the general FFXI audience. The third run can be found on my BLM blog, which is collecting dust at the moment, oh well. ^^;

Then the April version update came, and while people were dashing off to strange BCs and killing {Too weak} beastmen, I went up on my weekly routine Brothers BLM solo.

That was my first encounter with the 45-second Sleep II, and suffice to say, I didn't win that run.

Then came all the talk in the forums about SE adjusting sleep durations, as reports came trickling in. Mindertaurs, Ouryu, ghosts, bombs- all could not be slept for the full 90-second duration. The days of BLM soloing Brothers seemed over.

If this issue doesn't get rectified anytime soon, the question becomes whether a RDM could still solo Brothers, since a RDM's killing speed is faster than a BLM's for obvious reasons. (*cough* Chainspell *cough*)

So I decided to check it out. Never mind that I have yet to even attempt to do this ENM as a RDM, but seriously, the strategy should be more or less the same, right?

I am not used to soloing as a RDM (and this is my first time, too), so there are some incredibly newb mistakes in the following video. Keep that in mind! >_<

Well, there are a few changes, most notably that, as a BLM, I normally just suicide after the Eldertaur's dead so I can take on the Mindertaur with full MP. As a RDM, things change as I have Refresh and Convert, but not the firepower, so I need to maximize my MP before trying to nuke the Mindertaur down, and also try to reduce its HP as much as possible before nuking.

So, the basic strategy is now to just blast the Eldertaur down, and then DoT/kite the Mindertaur until the following three conditions are satisfied:

1. The Mindertaur's at 50%HP.
2. I have full(ish) MP.
3. Convert is ready again.

Once all three conditions are met, I'd start nuking the last 50% HP by cycling through Thunder III, Blizzard III and Fire III, hopefully overpowering any Cure Vs along the way.

There were several (rather major) mistakes made during that run. I tried to make a full version, with the boring parts just sped up for completeness's sake, but silly Windows Movie Maker apparently doesn't like processing movies when the source files involved go beyond a certain total. Ah well.

[1:16] I'm not exactly sure why I'm casting Thunder III here, or why I haven't Chainspelled by this point. With the change to Sleep duration, it's even more important that I fell the Eldertaur quickly, which cold-casting Thunder III doesn't not accomplish. You can make the argument that I could've Chainspelled into Gravity to be safe, and save myself the trouble of having to wait for Gravity's cooldown later.

[1:31] /panic. :( Could've definitely kept my cool better here.

[2:00] The clock here was added later to first give the viewer a sense of the time pressure involved, but also to keep track of just how much time you really have before the Mindertaur's in a position to actively play a role in the ENM again. Remember that either taurus may cast Cure V if one of them is below 50% HP, so I definitely got very lucky here that the Mindertaur didn't Cure V the Eldertaur.

More importantly, it gives us a timeframe to work with in planning future runs- we can plan based on the assumption that you have approximately 55 seconds to knock off the Eldertaur.

Unfortunately, I can't show the entire fight here because of memory constraints (that, and it was a pretty long, boring fight), but some things to note are:

• For some reason, I had a hard time getting Poison II to stick.
• Eventually, I just settled on whittling its HP down through Bio II with a few III-nukes here and there.
• Elemental Seal-Silence also wears off too quickly.
• Composure is fantastic here!

Some things I was not happy about is that even with Convert and Refresh, it still took all my available mana to nuke down the Eldertaur, and to nuke down half a Mindertaur.

If you look carefully at the various snippets I put in here and there, you may notice that my Convert timer actually increases after a certain point- I actually set things up and was getting ready to kill the Mindertaur, but even after a Convert, I found myself unable to kill the Mindertaur, so I had to wait for Convert to cooldown again and redo that 50%. Thankfully I merited Convert down to an 8:20 recast- I'd have timed out if I left it at 10:00.

If I were to do it again, there are definitely some changes to be made, particularly at the start- I know that bit was screwed up bigtime. >_<

For one, the pull was completely wrong. I'll readily say I screwed it up bigtime, because just looking at the video reveals a lot of error. I probably slipped back into BLM mode, and just did things as I would've if I were BLM instead, thus revealing the dangers of playing on autopilot. :P

See, the whole reason why you pull the Mindertaur to the back of the tunnel when soloing this ENM as a BLM, before the Elemental Seal-Sleep II is to buy you a few extra seconds to take down the Eldertaur.

The point is, because of Manafont, a BLM's limiting resource is not mana, but time! Assuming the ENM was just a 1v1 fight against the Eldertaur, a BLM would have no problems blasting through, backed by Manafont because time is on the BLM's side.

But time is not your limiting resource as RDM because of Chainspell! Instead, mana becomes your limiting resource (for obvious reasons), but that is still a very soft limitation because of both Refresh and Convert.

So what I think I should've done instead was:

• Enter the ENM, buff, rest up.
• Run in towards the two taurus, and Elemental Seal along the way.
• When they aggro and move into range, immediately Chainspell and Sleep II the Mindertaur.
• Gravity the Eldertaur, and start nuking away with Blizzard III.

The difference is that as a RDM, you wouldn't even bother to drag the Mindertaur to the back of the tunnel, because moving back within nuking range of the Eldertaur wastes time, not to mention that you still need to cross the Eldertaur and get to a safe range on the other side. It took me eleven nukes to down the Eldertaur. Counting the Sleep II, Gravity, Convert and maybe a couple of Dispels, it shouldn't be too difficult to get 15 spells off under Chainspell, even within the 45 second naptime the Mindertaur has.

You could even get gutsy and Convert without curing yourself if time really was that tight, and plan out the following scenario (using my HP/MP as an example:)

Starting MP: 983mp

1. Sleep II: 954mp
2. Gravity: 930mp
3. Blizzard III #1: 810mp
4. Blizzard III #2: 690mp
5. Blizzard III #3: 570mp
6. Blizzard III #4: 450mp
7. Blizzard III #5: 310mp
8. Blizzard III #6: 190mp
9. Convert into 190HP/796MP
10. Blizzard III #7: 676mp
11. Blizzard III #8: 556mp
12. Blizzard III #9: 436mp
13. Blizzard III #10: 316mp
14. Blizzard III #11: 196mp
15. Blizzard III #12: 76mp

Which isn't even counting the extra MP you save/gain from Conserve MP and Refresh.

In any case, it seems that SE has now officially come forward and classified this as a "Current Known Issue," so hopefully it'll get fixed. Given SE's track record though, I think it might be a matter of when it gets fixed.

I'd really like to go back and try again before the fix though, just to prove to myself that I can do the solo smoothly on RDM, even with the enfeebling "nerf" in effect. :P