A Christmas present of sorts!
First, feel free to skip to the update but I can't help but express some happiness concerning RL at present! I'm really pumped up over how this past season went! Semester is finally done, back at home again, and on my first real break in over a year! I haven't had any time to myself since around last winter break. This semester was also the most difficult one thus far, and despite feeling like I slacked more this semester than any other one I still (somehow) managed to score three 4.0s... As well as scoring two independent contractor jobs and an internship, all of which related to my major! Shiny resume go!
Although, next semester doesn't look so fun... I'll be taking the hardest class offered at the college, requiring an average of 12 hours of time spent outside of class meeting and working with your assigned group each week. This is on top of the normal 7 hours of class we'll have each week, and all of it is part of just one class. Add in the 4 other classes I'll be taking next semester and it just doesn't look fun. :(
Anyway, I just had to get some of that off of my chest. Back to the topic of the update!
I'm on my usual vampire schedule already where I'm going to sleep at around 6-8 AM and waking up at 1-5 PM... So it being about 3 AM now with the Christmas Eve festivities long over and the alcohol wearing off, I thought I'd put together a little update as a sort of 'present'! Or well, at the very least just as something informative. I'm just covering one topic in this update but it's something that comes up really often on the topic of deciding WS gear builds. The information in this post should help a great deal in assisting your decision as far as how to best optimize your WS gear for any job; especially jobs that use multi-hit WS.
However, much of what I cover has already been covered by billions of others, billions of times, so there isn't much new to see other than some equations if you're already rather knowledgeable of the endgame workings!
By the end of this post you should be able to understand, recreate, and manipulate the data in this table if you can't already:
As well as understanding how these numbers influence your decisions for WS gear. If you already feel you know enough about this stuff, then entertain yourself by finding mistakes I make!
Or, you could just skip to the end to find my take on what this all means as far as deciding what WS gear is best to wear.
Or, if you don't understand/don't feel like trying to do this just ask me what situation you want to know the numbers for and I'll do it for you.
Or, if it's a well-earned Xmas break and you feel like flipping the bird at anything involving math, come back to read this some other day! (I know this explains how I feel, but forced myself through this anyway!)
_______________________________________________________________________
Introduction
So, for a while now I've been making posts that may look something like this:
">> Can DA four times in Guillotine, the theory is every swing has a chance to DA so... Technically should be able to get up to four hits.
>> But the odds of a 4 DA Guillotine is .16% with 100% accuracy and a 20% chance to DA. Even less when you include accuracy.
>> Doing quick math all in all it looks like this... With 100% accuracy and a 20% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 40.96%
>> 2 DA: 15.36%
>> 3 DA: 2.56%
>> 4 DA: .16%
>> Now with 90% accuracy and the same 20% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 24.17%
>> 2 DA: 8.16%
>> 3 DA: 1.22%
>> 4 DA: .069%
>> And, with a more common build that is a little less accurate at 85% and with a 15% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 16.35%
>> 2 DA: 3.69%
>> 3 DA: .368%
>> 4 DA: .0138%
>> So yeah, it's uncommon for obvious reasons but it's definitely believed to be possible.
or this:
">> The acc loss isn't worth the small gain in STR/attack, especially at this point. Guillotine needs a lot of accuracy to put up reliable
>> damage if you're eating meat now. You should really strive for ~90-95% acc worth of gear (aka, the amount of acc it takes for you to get
>> 90-95% acc in melee gear) in your Guillotine setup, if not higher considering that Guillotine has an acc nerf.
>> Some statistics:
>> With 95% overall accuracy for WS, you only have an 81% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 77%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 74% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 69% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 66% chance.
>> With 90% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 65% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 59%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 53% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 48% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 43% chance.
>> With 85% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 52% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 44%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 37% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 32% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 27% chance.
>> With 80% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 40% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 32%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 26% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 20% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 16% chance.
>> With 75% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 31% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 23%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 17% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 13% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 10% chance.
>> I think that kind of illustrates my point on how much accuracy will effect your WS average. Just keep in mind, missing one swing on
>> Guillotine will flat out cut your damage by like 1/4th... Which is more than any small amounts of STR/Att will add in place of a good
>> amount of accuracy.
>> Oh, and as far as 4 DAs go, since I know this'll come up... It can happen, but it is incredibly rare. The odds of getting 4 DA and landing
>> all hits with 75% accuracy and a 15% chance to DA, is .005%. Even with 95% acc, it's still a .034% chance."
and several other posts concerning stuff like that.
All of which I'm providing a statistical analysis of what kind of results certain situations will give you. These statistical analyses are actually very accurate in representing the real results you'd observe on average for your typical situation. So, if you understand them you can get a pretty good idea of exactly what you want to optimize in your WS gear.
_______________________________________________________________________
The Basics Before Proceeding
Before I elaborate into how to calculate these percentages for yourself, I want to make a few very basic points clear. These are things that most people already know, and have been proved numerous times in numerous different ways, so they really shouldn't need much further explanation at all than what I already provide.
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The Actual Equations
The great thing about getting these statistics is that you don't need a calculator, you don't need to find a piece of paper, you don't need to read or even understand the equations, you don't need to do any math, and hell you don't even really need to have much of a brain. Yes, that's right, that means almost all of the FF population should be able to do this for themselves with almost no trouble.
These are the best kind of equations; because excel has a function that does them for you! ::high-fives all the lazy people:: I don't mind math and I actually enjoy it usually, but I enjoy general laziness more! So this is all really easy.
Quite simply, you just make an excel sheet in the same fashion I've made one, which I'll get into shortly. Once made correctly, the only thing you have to do when you want to see a statistical analysis of either a chance to DA or a chance to land hits in a WS, or both combined, is type in a few numbers.
I suppose I'll make this into a step-by-step procedure... That's probably the easiest way to do this.
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Step 1: Open Excel!
You need to open a new Excel sheet, and I hope to (insert holy figure of choice) you can at least do this without further help needed. In the off chance that you don't, Start Menu > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Excel will do it if you're running Windows.
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Step 2: Put together a table.
Next, you want to setup a table that looks something like this:
Obviously you can do this any way you want to, but this is how I set it up. I'd recommend following my exact setup (colors, boarders, bolding, and other formatting decisions don't matter... but cell locations do) for the easiest setup. Written out it's:
Column B: Text to match the respective field to the right of that text.
- B3: Hits in WS represents the number of swings the WS will normally take without attempting to factor in DAs, TAs, misses, etc.
- B4: # of DA is a field you can manipulate to represent the number of times you DA in the given situation you wish to analyze. In this picture it's analyzing the statistical values for a WS that DAs 0 times.
- B5: Hit percent is your accuracy for the situation you wish to analyze.
- B6: Chance of DA is the percent chance of DA.
Column C: Numbers that fit the descriptive fields to the left.
- C3: 4 hits in WS would apply for a weapon skill like Guillotine.
- C4: A 0 value for the number of DAs, means no DAs take place.
- C5: 95% being the accuracy cap, so this is the best possible situation accuracy wise.
- C6: 15% being the combined chance to DA from /WAR or WAR main and Brutal earring.
Column E: Text to match the respective field to the right of that text.
- E3: Chance of DA represents the chances of double attacking the number of times specified in the "# of DA" column. If this value is 0, it shows the odds of double attacking 0 times.
- E4: Chance of hit takes the total number of swings (hits in WS + # of DA) and your accuracy %, and displays the chances of landing every one of those hits.
- E5: Overall chance takes the odds of landing all swings and double attacking [# of DA] times, and displays the combined odds. This field is often ignored unless you want a very specific result.
Column F: Equations that fit the descriptive field to the left.
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Step 3: Add equations.
This is the part where it's very easy to screw it up. It should all be simple to follow (I hope) though, and I'll try my best to make it as clear as I can. Apologies if I dumb it down too much and it gets annoying, but I'd rather be too specific as opposed to too general.
For the most part I'll be displaying what you have to put as an equation in each cell, and all you have to do is copy that cell over into your table.
Important: If you put your fields in different columns/rows than I did in my example, make sure that you reference the correct cells. If you copied my table exactly and matched all the rows/columns exactly, then don't worry about this.
Chance of DA:
First, you want to mimic what you see in the picture below:
In cell F3, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =BINOMDIST(C4, C3, C6, 0)
If you care at all to know what all that means, it is the Binomial Distribution statistical function. It analyzes the chances of X occurrences, out of N trials, with a P probability to occur, for BINOMDIST(X, N, P, 0). The fourth position can be either a 0 or a 1. A 0 tells it to provide the statistical chance for exactly X occurrences, and a 1 tells it to provide the statistical chance for X occurrences or less. If you wanted to find the statistical chance for X occurrences or more, then you simply do 1 - BINDOMSIT(X, N, P, 1). If you want to find the statistical chance for anything but X occurrences, then you would do 1 - BINOMDIST(X, N, P, 0).
So, basically what we're doing here is... We're asking "What are the odds of double attacking exactly X times, with N chances to double attack, and a P probability to DA?" Or, to get specific with the exact example in the above table, we're asking "What are the odds of double attacking exactly 0 times, with 4 chances to double attack, and a probability of 15% for a DA?"
What does this number mean? The final number you get in this field represents the chances to DA [# of DA] times, in a WS with [Hits in WS] swings, and a [Chance of DA] chance to DA. Obviously filling in the corresponding values for the words in the brackets.
Chance of Hit:
Again, mimicking the picture below:
In cell F4, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =BINOMDIST(C3+C4, C3+C4, C5, 0)
We're using the same equation as the previous cell, but slightly changing what fields it's taking so that it calculates the chance of landing all hits in a WS. So, now we're asking "What are the odds of landing exactly X swings, in a WS that swings N times (keep in mind X = N in this situation), with a P chance of landing each hit?"
Or, for the specific example above... We're asking "What are the odds of landing exactly (hits in WS + # of DA or 4 + 0 = 4) 4 swings, in a WS that swings (hits in WS + # of DA or 4 + 0 = 4) 4 times, with a 95% chance of landing each hit?"
What does this number mean? The final number you get in this field represents the chances to land [Hits in WS + # of DA] hits, in a WS that swings [Hits in WS + # of DA] times, and a [Hit Percent] chance to land each hit. Filling in the corresponding values for the words in the brackets.
Overall Chance:
This is the easiest one, although probably the less useful of the two equations in the grand scheme.
In cell F6, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =F3*F4
Multiplying the two probabilities together, you're left with the combined probability of both. So this number represents the probability of double attacking 0 times in a 4-hit WS with a 15% chance to DA, and landing all 4 hits with 95% accuracy. This field actually isn't very useful outside of just seeing how abysmally low your odds are of (for example) double attacking 4 times in Guillotine and landing all 8 swings in a typical situation.
For most WS observations, you actually want to be looking at the chance of hit and not the overall chance.
That's it for what the table means and how to set one up!
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What Does This Data Mean?
This data basically represents how drastically your current accuracy is going to effect your WS damage and averages for multi-hit weapon skills.
In just about every situation, no amounts of +Attack or +STR are going to outweigh a near-equivalent amount of +Accuracy when you're not at the accuracy cap. If you're swinging 8 times, missing one of those hits is going to cut your damage by ~1/8th, which is more than any normal set of STR/Att gear will add to your WS average. This only gets worse as you reduce the total number of swings and each swing plays a bigger part in your total WS damage. Yes DRKs, that means that in many situations Abyss Cape is actually better for WS when using meat.
If you setup your own table, you can play with some values and see exactly how much your odds of landing every hit of a WS dive downward with every percent of accuracy you take away. This is why I attempted to guide people into making their own tables in this post, because nothing beats actually playing with the values and seeing this for yourself. Come to think of it, I probably could've setup a graph of some sort to represent this, but maybe some other time.
Anyway, countless different people have at one point or another made very clear points in the fact that your accuracy means a lot in your WS averages, and these statistics speak to that.
With all this in mind, you really should never have less total accuracy in your WS gear than in your melee gear unless you're already at the accuracy cap (and even then I wouldn't advice it). Which, usually is not the case with the meat revolution that's been going around for the last 1-2 years and now more than ever (even if you're using a 2h weapon, same applies).
However, don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. By all means this does not mean that every slot you have should be accuracy for every situation; it just means that it's important to keep this balanced with accuracy as a first priority and not STR/Attack/MND/whatever your fancy is. Too many people still seem to be gung-ho about STR>Attack>Accuracy, and while this is maybe doable for 1-hit WS it is not the same story for multi-hit.
This is no scientific breakthrough for FF and I bet a lot of people that read this post will just think "well, didn't learn anything new here...", as this is stuff a good amount of people already recognize, but I feel that this topic is still worth going into if nothing else for the fact that there are still people that don't quite understand this.
Screw it, here's a quick shitty graph:
X-Axis is the number of swings in a WS, Y-Axis is the percent chance of landing all swings, and each line represents the data at a given percent of accuracy.
So yeah, switching into all STR/Att gear for multi-hit WSs is usually not a good idea! The higher the amount of swings in a WS, the more every point of accuracy below the accuracy cap matters. Moral of this post.
At some points later in history I may update/add more fields to the table to calculate additional information to help optimize a set of WS gear. Specifically I'm thinking of adding a field that will take WS averages and display how much different accuracy percentages can impact them, but too lazy to do it yet! If I do that or anything like it I'll be sure to post here and walk through what I added, what it does, what it means, and how it can help.
As always, feel free to point out mistakes/ask for clarifications/ask questions/make requests/wuteva!
Silly FF stuff aside:
Happy Holidays everyone! :) Best wishes, and a Happy New Years as well!
Although, next semester doesn't look so fun... I'll be taking the hardest class offered at the college, requiring an average of 12 hours of time spent outside of class meeting and working with your assigned group each week. This is on top of the normal 7 hours of class we'll have each week, and all of it is part of just one class. Add in the 4 other classes I'll be taking next semester and it just doesn't look fun. :(
Anyway, I just had to get some of that off of my chest. Back to the topic of the update!
I'm on my usual vampire schedule already where I'm going to sleep at around 6-8 AM and waking up at 1-5 PM... So it being about 3 AM now with the Christmas Eve festivities long over and the alcohol wearing off, I thought I'd put together a little update as a sort of 'present'! Or well, at the very least just as something informative. I'm just covering one topic in this update but it's something that comes up really often on the topic of deciding WS gear builds. The information in this post should help a great deal in assisting your decision as far as how to best optimize your WS gear for any job; especially jobs that use multi-hit WS.
However, much of what I cover has already been covered by billions of others, billions of times, so there isn't much new to see other than some equations if you're already rather knowledgeable of the endgame workings!
By the end of this post you should be able to understand, recreate, and manipulate the data in this table if you can't already:
As well as understanding how these numbers influence your decisions for WS gear. If you already feel you know enough about this stuff, then entertain yourself by finding mistakes I make!
Or, you could just skip to the end to find my take on what this all means as far as deciding what WS gear is best to wear.
Or, if you don't understand/don't feel like trying to do this just ask me what situation you want to know the numbers for and I'll do it for you.
Or, if it's a well-earned Xmas break and you feel like flipping the bird at anything involving math, come back to read this some other day! (I know this explains how I feel, but forced myself through this anyway!)
_______________________________________________________________________
Introduction
So, for a while now I've been making posts that may look something like this:
">> Can DA four times in Guillotine, the theory is every swing has a chance to DA so... Technically should be able to get up to four hits.
>> But the odds of a 4 DA Guillotine is .16% with 100% accuracy and a 20% chance to DA. Even less when you include accuracy.
>> Doing quick math all in all it looks like this... With 100% accuracy and a 20% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 40.96%
>> 2 DA: 15.36%
>> 3 DA: 2.56%
>> 4 DA: .16%
>> Now with 90% accuracy and the same 20% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 24.17%
>> 2 DA: 8.16%
>> 3 DA: 1.22%
>> 4 DA: .069%
>> And, with a more common build that is a little less accurate at 85% and with a 15% chance to DA:
>> 1 DA: 16.35%
>> 2 DA: 3.69%
>> 3 DA: .368%
>> 4 DA: .0138%
>> So yeah, it's uncommon for obvious reasons but it's definitely believed to be possible.
or this:
">> The acc loss isn't worth the small gain in STR/attack, especially at this point. Guillotine needs a lot of accuracy to put up reliable
>> damage if you're eating meat now. You should really strive for ~90-95% acc worth of gear (aka, the amount of acc it takes for you to get
>> 90-95% acc in melee gear) in your Guillotine setup, if not higher considering that Guillotine has an acc nerf.
>> Some statistics:
>> With 95% overall accuracy for WS, you only have an 81% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 77%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 74% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 69% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 66% chance.
>> With 90% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 65% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 59%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 53% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 48% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 43% chance.
>> With 85% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 52% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 44%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 37% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 32% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 27% chance.
>> With 80% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 40% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 32%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 26% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 20% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 16% chance.
>> With 75% overall accuracy for WS, you only have a 31% chance to land all hits (assuming no DA procs). With one DA proc, it's a 23%
>> chance. With two DA procs, it's a 17% chance. With three DA procs, it's a 13% chance. With four DA procs, it's a 10% chance.
>> I think that kind of illustrates my point on how much accuracy will effect your WS average. Just keep in mind, missing one swing on
>> Guillotine will flat out cut your damage by like 1/4th... Which is more than any small amounts of STR/Att will add in place of a good
>> amount of accuracy.
>> Oh, and as far as 4 DAs go, since I know this'll come up... It can happen, but it is incredibly rare. The odds of getting 4 DA and landing
>> all hits with 75% accuracy and a 15% chance to DA, is .005%. Even with 95% acc, it's still a .034% chance."
and several other posts concerning stuff like that.
All of which I'm providing a statistical analysis of what kind of results certain situations will give you. These statistical analyses are actually very accurate in representing the real results you'd observe on average for your typical situation. So, if you understand them you can get a pretty good idea of exactly what you want to optimize in your WS gear.
_______________________________________________________________________
The Basics Before Proceeding
Before I elaborate into how to calculate these percentages for yourself, I want to make a few very basic points clear. These are things that most people already know, and have been proved numerous times in numerous different ways, so they really shouldn't need much further explanation at all than what I already provide.
- There is a limit of 8 swings for every WS and attack round. It's relatively easy to test for yourself, but one key point on this topic is that it limits your swings. Whether or not each swing connects does not change the fact you're limited to 8 swings. So, no, you can't DA in Asuran Fist to make up for missed swings. Asuran Fists just doesn't DA at all since you're swinging 8 times. This is easy to test and see for yourself through either seeing no difference between MNK/NIN and MNK/WAR+Brutal Earring WS accuracy, or just observing someone dual wielding a Kraken and Ridill; they'll never swing more than 8 times in an attack round regardless of how many actually connect.
- Every swing of a WS has a chance to DA/TA (assuming DA/TA traits are present). This obviously doesn't apply when a DA/TA would put you over 8 hits, but it does for every swing before that limit. This is also easy to see for yourself, and there are some tests that were done a while ago showing a DRK/WAR with Brutal averaging a 40% chance to DA once on too weak mobs with 95% accuracy. Which, is actually almost 100% accurate to what the statistical calculations show it should be.
- The accuracy cap is 95%. Another thing just about everyone should know, but feel I should make it clear anyway just in case. Now, one annoying thing I've seen people use as a counter argument to this is that they believe it is false because they once had an accuracy percent of 96 or higher. This is just a poor argument, because that's not how the game works. If you land 95 hits in a row, there is no mechanism in this game that will force you to miss your next 5 hits. The 95% accuracy cap is simply an average, and while you may not always hit the ceiling of 95% you will on average. And, really, if there wasn't a cap it would be practically impossible for a level 75 player to miss a swing on a level 1 mob wearing gear that would give them 95% accuracy on a level 85 mob. And you just know that isn't true. I just love when I'm in a home nation and someone asks if they can see Kaiten, and I go and miss the bunny in Ronfaure.
- WAR's double attack trait grants a 10% DA bonus, whether as a SJ or a main job. Brutal Earring grants a 5% DA bonus. Blahblahblah believe it or die.
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The Actual Equations
The great thing about getting these statistics is that you don't need a calculator, you don't need to find a piece of paper, you don't need to read or even understand the equations, you don't need to do any math, and hell you don't even really need to have much of a brain. Yes, that's right, that means almost all of the FF population should be able to do this for themselves with almost no trouble.
These are the best kind of equations; because excel has a function that does them for you! ::high-fives all the lazy people:: I don't mind math and I actually enjoy it usually, but I enjoy general laziness more! So this is all really easy.
Quite simply, you just make an excel sheet in the same fashion I've made one, which I'll get into shortly. Once made correctly, the only thing you have to do when you want to see a statistical analysis of either a chance to DA or a chance to land hits in a WS, or both combined, is type in a few numbers.
I suppose I'll make this into a step-by-step procedure... That's probably the easiest way to do this.
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Step 1: Open Excel!
You need to open a new Excel sheet, and I hope to (insert holy figure of choice) you can at least do this without further help needed. In the off chance that you don't, Start Menu > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Excel will do it if you're running Windows.
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Step 2: Put together a table.
Next, you want to setup a table that looks something like this:
Obviously you can do this any way you want to, but this is how I set it up. I'd recommend following my exact setup (colors, boarders, bolding, and other formatting decisions don't matter... but cell locations do) for the easiest setup. Written out it's:
Column B: Text to match the respective field to the right of that text.
- B3: Hits in WS represents the number of swings the WS will normally take without attempting to factor in DAs, TAs, misses, etc.
- B4: # of DA is a field you can manipulate to represent the number of times you DA in the given situation you wish to analyze. In this picture it's analyzing the statistical values for a WS that DAs 0 times.
- B5: Hit percent is your accuracy for the situation you wish to analyze.
- B6: Chance of DA is the percent chance of DA.
Column C: Numbers that fit the descriptive fields to the left.
- C3: 4 hits in WS would apply for a weapon skill like Guillotine.
- C4: A 0 value for the number of DAs, means no DAs take place.
- C5: 95% being the accuracy cap, so this is the best possible situation accuracy wise.
- C6: 15% being the combined chance to DA from /WAR or WAR main and Brutal earring.
Column E: Text to match the respective field to the right of that text.
- E3: Chance of DA represents the chances of double attacking the number of times specified in the "# of DA" column. If this value is 0, it shows the odds of double attacking 0 times.
- E4: Chance of hit takes the total number of swings (hits in WS + # of DA) and your accuracy %, and displays the chances of landing every one of those hits.
- E5: Overall chance takes the odds of landing all swings and double attacking [# of DA] times, and displays the combined odds. This field is often ignored unless you want a very specific result.
Column F: Equations that fit the descriptive field to the left.
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Step 3: Add equations.
This is the part where it's very easy to screw it up. It should all be simple to follow (I hope) though, and I'll try my best to make it as clear as I can. Apologies if I dumb it down too much and it gets annoying, but I'd rather be too specific as opposed to too general.
For the most part I'll be displaying what you have to put as an equation in each cell, and all you have to do is copy that cell over into your table.
Important: If you put your fields in different columns/rows than I did in my example, make sure that you reference the correct cells. If you copied my table exactly and matched all the rows/columns exactly, then don't worry about this.
Chance of DA:
First, you want to mimic what you see in the picture below:
In cell F3, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =BINOMDIST(C4, C3, C6, 0)
If you care at all to know what all that means, it is the Binomial Distribution statistical function. It analyzes the chances of X occurrences, out of N trials, with a P probability to occur, for BINOMDIST(X, N, P, 0). The fourth position can be either a 0 or a 1. A 0 tells it to provide the statistical chance for exactly X occurrences, and a 1 tells it to provide the statistical chance for X occurrences or less. If you wanted to find the statistical chance for X occurrences or more, then you simply do 1 - BINDOMSIT(X, N, P, 1). If you want to find the statistical chance for anything but X occurrences, then you would do 1 - BINOMDIST(X, N, P, 0).
So, basically what we're doing here is... We're asking "What are the odds of double attacking exactly X times, with N chances to double attack, and a P probability to DA?" Or, to get specific with the exact example in the above table, we're asking "What are the odds of double attacking exactly 0 times, with 4 chances to double attack, and a probability of 15% for a DA?"
What does this number mean? The final number you get in this field represents the chances to DA [# of DA] times, in a WS with [Hits in WS] swings, and a [Chance of DA] chance to DA. Obviously filling in the corresponding values for the words in the brackets.
Chance of Hit:
Again, mimicking the picture below:
In cell F4, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =BINOMDIST(C3+C4, C3+C4, C5, 0)
We're using the same equation as the previous cell, but slightly changing what fields it's taking so that it calculates the chance of landing all hits in a WS. So, now we're asking "What are the odds of landing exactly X swings, in a WS that swings N times (keep in mind X = N in this situation), with a P chance of landing each hit?"
Or, for the specific example above... We're asking "What are the odds of landing exactly (hits in WS + # of DA or 4 + 0 = 4) 4 swings, in a WS that swings (hits in WS + # of DA or 4 + 0 = 4) 4 times, with a 95% chance of landing each hit?"
What does this number mean? The final number you get in this field represents the chances to land [Hits in WS + # of DA] hits, in a WS that swings [Hits in WS + # of DA] times, and a [Hit Percent] chance to land each hit. Filling in the corresponding values for the words in the brackets.
Overall Chance:
This is the easiest one, although probably the less useful of the two equations in the grand scheme.
In cell F6, enter the equation you see displayed in the fx text box. Which is =F3*F4
Multiplying the two probabilities together, you're left with the combined probability of both. So this number represents the probability of double attacking 0 times in a 4-hit WS with a 15% chance to DA, and landing all 4 hits with 95% accuracy. This field actually isn't very useful outside of just seeing how abysmally low your odds are of (for example) double attacking 4 times in Guillotine and landing all 8 swings in a typical situation.
For most WS observations, you actually want to be looking at the chance of hit and not the overall chance.
That's it for what the table means and how to set one up!
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What Does This Data Mean?
This data basically represents how drastically your current accuracy is going to effect your WS damage and averages for multi-hit weapon skills.
In just about every situation, no amounts of +Attack or +STR are going to outweigh a near-equivalent amount of +Accuracy when you're not at the accuracy cap. If you're swinging 8 times, missing one of those hits is going to cut your damage by ~1/8th, which is more than any normal set of STR/Att gear will add to your WS average. This only gets worse as you reduce the total number of swings and each swing plays a bigger part in your total WS damage. Yes DRKs, that means that in many situations Abyss Cape is actually better for WS when using meat.
If you setup your own table, you can play with some values and see exactly how much your odds of landing every hit of a WS dive downward with every percent of accuracy you take away. This is why I attempted to guide people into making their own tables in this post, because nothing beats actually playing with the values and seeing this for yourself. Come to think of it, I probably could've setup a graph of some sort to represent this, but maybe some other time.
Anyway, countless different people have at one point or another made very clear points in the fact that your accuracy means a lot in your WS averages, and these statistics speak to that.
With all this in mind, you really should never have less total accuracy in your WS gear than in your melee gear unless you're already at the accuracy cap (and even then I wouldn't advice it). Which, usually is not the case with the meat revolution that's been going around for the last 1-2 years and now more than ever (even if you're using a 2h weapon, same applies).
However, don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. By all means this does not mean that every slot you have should be accuracy for every situation; it just means that it's important to keep this balanced with accuracy as a first priority and not STR/Attack/MND/whatever your fancy is. Too many people still seem to be gung-ho about STR>Attack>Accuracy, and while this is maybe doable for 1-hit WS it is not the same story for multi-hit.
This is no scientific breakthrough for FF and I bet a lot of people that read this post will just think "well, didn't learn anything new here...", as this is stuff a good amount of people already recognize, but I feel that this topic is still worth going into if nothing else for the fact that there are still people that don't quite understand this.
Screw it, here's a quick shitty graph:
X-Axis is the number of swings in a WS, Y-Axis is the percent chance of landing all swings, and each line represents the data at a given percent of accuracy.
So yeah, switching into all STR/Att gear for multi-hit WSs is usually not a good idea! The higher the amount of swings in a WS, the more every point of accuracy below the accuracy cap matters. Moral of this post.
At some points later in history I may update/add more fields to the table to calculate additional information to help optimize a set of WS gear. Specifically I'm thinking of adding a field that will take WS averages and display how much different accuracy percentages can impact them, but too lazy to do it yet! If I do that or anything like it I'll be sure to post here and walk through what I added, what it does, what it means, and how it can help.
As always, feel free to point out mistakes/ask for clarifications/ask questions/make requests/wuteva!
Silly FF stuff aside:
Happy Holidays everyone! :) Best wishes, and a Happy New Years as well!