start abouit Axis Blade, transition to possible new guide

What Arth has done in his guide is similar to what I want to accomplish in a broader scale. his applies specifically to oretoises what I want to broadly apply to any available enemy at any point in the game. He takes a look at one enemy and considers the possible strategies relevant to party strengths. I want to give a party setup and reveal all relevant enemies to consider for that party at that time.

Its clear to me that its strategy that wins battles, not stats. this is why his guide is so valuable. However people aren't limited by strategy, they are limited by stats. its your stats that shape your strategies. Its much easier to build strategies from stats instead of building stats for strategies. that said I don't want to build grind times based on a specific strategy, but current stats. I'll have options on whether if certain buffs/debuffs will be used, but I'll leave it up to the player the freedom to devise their own strategy for each encounter.

My remark about max stats and equipment was merely one of the most extreme case. I'm certain people are smart enough to stop farming Oretoises when they no longer need the drops. It was merely a way of showing my point.


Now beyond all that.

I'm curious if anyone is able to capture the animation times (in frames or seconds, which ever) for Blitz and Ravage. By simple observation Lighting's and Snow's Blitz (not Ravage) have quite low animation times (i'm guessing ~.5 for light and .45 for snow). Light's Ravage is noticeably slower than normal and currently I haven't tried snow's ravage yet. with this they might actually have higher physical dps spamming Blitz over attack.

Fang's is pretty slow (~.75 sec), but her ravage is about the same. Sazh's takes forever (but it does do more damage and have a larger aoe) don't know about Hope's as I think I've only seen it once.
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well I went and got myself a stopwatch and loaded up my old 100% save to find these animation times. what I've come up with is slightly different from what Arthelinus had in his guide. I assume the duration for the mids, finishers, and recoveries all match up. but the first hit animations for both physical and magical are a little off. Even if I were to assume I'm a little off due to my reflexes (like 0.15 secs late), multiple retests confirmed that this isn't entirely the case. as I've been getting some times that were almost 0.5 seconds off. for example Snow's opening attack was clocked to about 1.3 seconds (he did state that he was averaging the animations to 0.7 but even the average in this case was nowhere near)

If I were to guess its because he started the timer at when the first ATB slot gets expended upto the next ATB slot gets expended. I started mine at the exact moment the Ability's name pops up over the characters name (for melee skills), or at the exact moment I execute the command (for ranged skill). I've looked closely and there is a small delay between when skill begins and when the ATB slot gets expended, and I assume its this small time frame that Arth didn't include in his timings. Either that or he may be using a PAL version and I the NTSC version and the timings may be off due to that (I think he has the NTSC version though, and even then I don't think it would make a difference). I'd like to get a reply from him and see why I'm getting such a discrepancy with his times.

That out of the way here are the times I've found for Blitz's, Ravage (for Blitz and Ruinga) and the durations for their specials.

For the specials I would try to pause the timer when certain specials would "freeze" for the pose shots, like Lightning does multiple times during her Army of One, so the times may be a little off on those. The idea behind that is to grasp the relative duration the other combatants actually experience. In the grand scheme of things I don't think it'll matter that much, certain exceptions is when you want to prevent stagger depletion to let your allies scourge the enemy like no tomorrow.

Ability-----------------Lighting-----Sazh------Snow------Hope------Vanille------Fang
Blitz [opener]-----------0.6---------1.72--------0.7--------2.04---------N/A---------0.92
Blitz [ Rest]------------- 0.6---------1.72--------0.6--------2.04---------N/A---------0.92
Blitz {Ravage]----------1-------------N/A--------0.6---------1.7----------N/A---------0.8
Ruinga [Ravage]------1.35-------- N/A-------0.98--------0.7----------N/A---------0.48
Special-----------------~6.55--------9.43------~2.3--------6.78---------4.8---------2.5

If it wasn't obvious, "N/A " implies that they never get that ability. I still want to time the openers of regular attacks, Ruins, and Ruingas. I've made DPS comparisons for 6 attacks, 3 blitz, and 6 Ruins each (I'll do Ruingas a bit later).

So far, Sazh's 3 Blitz stomps the dps out of everything I've checked with 7721 (Pleiades Hi-Powers), next highest is Fang's 3 blitz with Dragoon Lance (5618). Lights 3 blitz with Gladius (4492) has higher DPS than 6 ruins with Edge Carbine (3930). whats even more interesting is now I'm getting that Gladius 6 attacks (4120) is beating Edge carbine ruin chains. (Gladius ATB cycles a shift every 12.6 secs, Edged Carbine about 11.06 sec) I keep rechecking my numbers so I don't know where its wrong ( I assume it is, otherwise people wouldn't have lauded to go magic over physical on Light so much). I'll go a little more in-depth later after I make some more checks and finish timing Ruingas.
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destrian522 posted...

While it is impossible for me to be sure, I think it is safe to say that your times are off because you are measuring them with a stopwatch. Repeated measurements don't make a stopwatch measurement good because of systematic error.

You're giving me too little credit. The stopwatch is certainly calibrated, accurate and doesn't suffer from zero or "drift" error. It can measure to the millisecond, while Arth's frame evaluation can measure only to 1.6 centiseconds. its no less accurate than Arth's measuring tool, as both run on desktop computers.

Just to be clear, I always reset the timer to 0:00 every single time before starting up a new sequence of commands. I took multiple recordings separate from each other with varying number of commands. Ignoring any situations where the character wouldn't act instantly due to them having to turn to face the target, discarding times when the enemy would interrupt the character. I did state that my estimations may be off by as much as 0.15 seconds (again due to reflex) but these errors don't compound on each other and thus is not systematic. Arth's recordings can be as accurate to 1 frame, mine will be as accurate to 9 frames. the discrepancy I'm talking about is 15-30 frames off (out of 60 fps).

Only recordings which would suffer from systematic error are the ones where I would pause the timers on the specials and I noted those with a "~" (forgot to place the tilde for Fang's), which would have compounded multiple reflex errors. And I was okay with them being slightly off since only 1 of them has any real application for spamming for DPS, which doesn't suffer from systematic error.
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I think Chain durations are sufficiently documented in the GMG. the only problem I may say is that its not ALL in the Chain & Stagger section, though I don't think it was enough of an issue to even jot down in my notes over the GMG. I only have 2 notes about the Chain & stagger section:

-The explanation on the effects of stagger state that it drops the keep of all actions under 90 to 0. The wording omits BASE keeps which I believe is also implied.
- In the Conditional modifiers section the sentence of condition 1 for the 3rd "ALL" modifier is fragmented (as if a word is missing) and so its not completely clear what the condition is.

As you can see from my notes, my problems are more on typos than missing info for this section.

If you want to see the chain duration of abilities its depicted in the Skill List section. for special abilities like Powerchain and ravage you need to look at the "Misc & Special Case" sub section under Skills super-section

the chain duration for Quake isn't directly mentioned at all in the Guide. the only stats I can go by are the stats listed for Hecatoncheir's Quake spell which I assume is the same as the Party's version (from casual play testing, its looks to be the case). Quake has a ~26 second Chain duration which make it incredibly useful in pre-empts. Staggering and maxing out the chain duration of all enemies.

I actually used Quake to maintain the chain when Hope fights Ushumgal Subjugator (2nd fight) by himself when he had no other way of maintaining the chain. I get this good feeling every time I force the cutscene due to bringing the boss's Hp low, not Hope's HP.
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I actually just remembered to test if Physical Wall applies against attacks that ignore type defense. I just equipped Wall 30 and went up against Gigantuar. I can confirm that Physical Wall 30 definitely reduced the 10000 needles down to 9970.

I just now need to find an enemy which I can experiment with attacks that are both physical and magical (only one that comes to mind is the Lucidon from chapter 7/9). The GMG didn't really explain how those types of attacks work. Does having at least Shell reduce the damage, or do you need both Shell and protect to reduce it? or does having both stack the effect? Will a black belt reduce the damage or do you require a royal armlet? Do those types of attacks ALWAYS use the strength stat for damage calculation like Wlad's special attack? So many unanswered questions thats just the tip of the iceberg on my problems with just the Damage calculation section.
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I think I see what you mean now. The stagger bar interface is intuitive to me but I can see how others might confuse its meaning...

every time you increase the duration you add the skill's duration to current duration, and the stagger bar updates. so for example you start with power chain which adds 10 seconds to the duration. the current duration was 0 seconds so 0+10 puts the max duration at 10 seconds. you then wait 3 seconds before you use Ravage[ blitz version]. since 3 seconds passed the initial 10 seconds duration dropped to 7 seconds, and Ravage adds 7.33 to the duration so 7.33 + 7 =14.33 becomes the current duration.

The yellow bar on top of the red bar is just a visual gauge of how much duration you have left. while the yellow bar plus the red bar is the duration you had the moment you last increased the chain duration. in this case its 14.33. say to wait 5 seconds after that, the red bar denotes the 5 seconds that have passed since the last update, while the yellow is the time remaining (9.33 seconds). if you hit with another ravage the max duration becomes 16.66 seconds and at that instant no time has passed so the red bar is empty while the yellow is full.

The length of the bar has NOTHING to do with the duration, just how close you are to stagger. Its different during stagger however, its a measurement of how long the stagger will last.

What conflicting info are you getting about the Procyons?
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I'm certain it doesn't affect pre-stagger duration if it did it would be crazy good and Sazh could maintain duration even in RAV with T2 I never tested it to make sure but I'm positive of this. My belief on what happens is this:

Say the enemy is nearly staggered and the current duration is 18 seconds. sazh uses firaga which has a duration of 0.9 seconds and staggers. what happens is that the 18 secs and 0,9 secs are added, then doubled from stagger bonus, then boosted by stagger maintainence, then clipped between the 8-45 time limits. such as this:

no Stagger Maintenance:..[8, (18+0.9)* 2 * 1.0 ,45} = 37.8
Stagger Maintenance I:......[8, (18+0.9)* 2 * 1.1 ,45} = 41.58
Stagger Maintenance II:.....[8, (18+0.9)* 2 * 1.3 ,45} = 45 (clipped from 49.14 secs)


it could also possibly be:
no Stagger Maintenance:..[8, (18+0.9)* (2 +0.0 ) ,45} = 37.8
Stagger Maintenance I:......[8, (18+0.9)* (2 +0.1) ,45} = 39.69
Stagger Maintenance II:.....[8, (18+0.9)* (2+0.3 ) ,45} = 43.47

but my moneys on the first mechanic. I might get into testing this later,but I don't have a section purely devoted to chain and stagger. Mostly just using chain values for Damage and Debuff effect chance calculations. Building a section for it might be good since the conditional modifiers can be hard to keep track of and it'd help give estimations of how long it would take to stagger enemies with 100 chain resist.
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destrian522 posted...

There's something here that I'm just not understanding. You're talking about how your measurements don't have error because your "stopwatch"...but then you say that some things depend on reflex. Which is it? Is there reflex dependence, or is it accurate?

I was specifically stating that my "stopwatch", itself, is accurate as a measuring tool. I, on the otherhand was prone to slight inaccuracy.

Estimations based on reflexes are generally systematic because you're reflexes are not particularly variable (systematic error has nothing to do with compounding error sources. It's just based on inaccurate measurement. For example, a systematic error could be introduced into a measurement because a stopwatch is stopped x seconds after whatever visual cue the tester is looking. It takes time to see something, process that information, make the decision to stop a stopwatch, and then stop the stopwatch).

I am aware of that, which is why the first thing I said was that my times can be as far off as 0.15 seconds. I took many retests just so I could get the feel of when timer should stop to greatly reduce being off (kinda of like listening to a beat of a song long enough that you can maintain the tempo without listening to it. this is unrelated, but I also had the music turned off at the time). I wanted to make my recordings with acceptable accuracy, even though I had limitations to that.

I'm also not sure about the example you gave (Snow's first Attack). Arth did say he didn't measure these, so if that's your main discrepancy then it might not actually exist. You'll have to talk to him about it.

Mostly it was Snow's opener and Sazh's Blitz (i forget exaclty what he had but it was way off in my recordings)

I haven't tested P&M abilities, but Wladislaus and the second and third final boss fights have attacks that are both physical and magical and don't ignore type resistance.

None of those which I can casually test post-game. I could do the end game bosses, but I think I just wait till my current playthrough brings me to Wlad.
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I actually haven't played since I defeated Neochu for mission 55. I can go to chapter 12 right now if I want to. So I can either continue on with the game or move to mission 18.
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Thanks for that. Problem though is that its gonna have to wait for 2 reasons. First off, I moved onto chapter 12 because I didn't want to get max CP before unlocking level 10.

Second and the primary problem is that the secondary monitor I use for this PC has just fizzed out. I use a dual monitor setup and the secondary monitor is to have access to my spreadsheet while the main one has the game up. With the secondary down I'm left with just one monitor. I could switch the monitors back and forth between PC and Console and while my Xbox will detect and display the monitor just fine, my PC will somehow forget it had a primary monitor. It will detect it but not "activate" the monitor, which makes it very problematic if you don't have that secondary monitor to go to the setting and manually activate it. It really sucks.

So I'll need to go get it repaired before I can continue in this playthrough. when I do get my screen back I'll just use my 100% save to play around with Geiseric. and while I'm there I might as well enter his moves into my "attack libra"ry.

Off the top of my head Geiseric has a normal smash attack, a jump, a wail (or scream... I think), and then the murderous might from his fist. If I were to guess it has a variance of 14% (I assume the P&M attack applys to the note "Delivers devastating physical attacks" and is ranged. and it being his scream) or 19%, if P&M attacks get an extra 5%. If I'm looking at this correct Geiseric has 0 for his magic stat which make doesn't allow me to explain some of my questions like...will the game calculate the damage using the stat which will grant the greater damage?

I will be able to check and see if effects like protect and shell stack
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