The Sealed Dagger: A Ninja Guide

Brittle Rock testing might provide some insight. I think dual wield gives you an extra ws hit 100% of the time. If the magic portion is calculated as a lump sum of physical damage, then you could expect 2+1 "strikesworth" of damage. If there is a magic component for each strike then you could expect 2+2.

Additionally, if Chi is not fTP replicating then the additional strikes would be 1.0. The scaling is 0.5 - .75 - 1.0 on at least the first strike. Would be good to verify this on some level 1 mobs as they are listed with different notation than purely physical ws on studio gobli and I don't know what the distinction means.

Another explanation is that it's actually just a two phase weapon skill. The first is the physical part with 1.0 ftp or the listed value and the second is a magic with the lump sum of the first serving as the physical damage and the listed http://ftp. I can do some testing later this week probably.

According to this page

http://wiki.ffo.jp/html/17166.html

fTP for hybrid weaponskills is indeed a multiplier for the magic damage portion. I think that the physical portion simply has an fTP of 1.0 (this should be tested) and that the magic portion is the sum of all physical damage and is a single hit that is multiplied by the fTP portion. For instance, if the total physical damage was 1000 and you had 1000 TP when you used the weaponskill, the magic damage portion would be 500 (1000 * .5). If you had 2000 TP, it would be 750 (1000 * 1.0). I'm unsure how magic damage gear affects this and how fotia gorget/waist affect this. Seems like some testing using hot shot would be helpful.

mDMG just gets added onto the magical portion in the manner you would likely expect. It's easy to tell on physically immune but magically vulnerable enemies.

There is still some ambiguity. If it's a compound weaponskill then I'm guessing that the physical damage simply replaces the (152 + floor((WeaponLevel-99)*2.45) + WSC) part of the equation although they might actually have a special way of calculating this. If this is the case than magic damage stat would not be affected by the 0.5~1.0 multiplier.

It's not. As with other forms of magic, +mDMG is only subject to MAB/affinity/etc modifiers.

Used Gokotai yesterday on a Gin run. Had Frailty, Full songs, and Chaos/Sam (probably would have been better with Fighters/Sam). The katana is very good for a non-rema. On Fodder, I was hit between 11k-20k. Used my shun set, and it has occasional spikes, I'm assuming from MAs. Was able to max out at around 38k~40k Ku on Gorger. Was impressed, but it was not very frequently that high. On Gin, probably due to his higher evasion, it was not very good. Didn't feel like sacrificing a set just to see higher numbers, as it was clearly inferior to Heishi Ten.

Nonetheless, the damage was satisfactory when buffed, and was slightly weaker than Shun without buffs (8~10k Ku with zero buffs on fodder, so about the same as Ten. My Shun can easily exceed 10k without buffs). I wonder if a MA build for Ku might be better to see more spike damage. In a non-buff scenario, I'd most definitely drop Heishi for a Gokotai/Kanaria set and spam Blade: Ku, especially since I'd be using the DW anyways.

Biggest bonus is basically as others have stated, starting fights out with a huge Blade: Ten to give you a dps lead, but it ends up losing out over the course of longer fights of course. Still happy with it, I can see it being useful for stuff like Dynamis where you're pulling and waiting frequently, making use of the DW. Blade: Ku isn't nearly as weak as I thought it would be, the 40% damage bonus was pretty good.

Nothing groundbreaking like Shining One or Naegling, but it's another neat tool you can add to the NIN rotation and use when necessary, like Shigi/Shuhan/Ochu/Kanaria

Do you have any evidence to support this? With elemental weaponskills it's been clearly established but hybrid weaponskill behavior has never been clearly nailed down.

I did a test just now with Piercing Arrow and Flaming Arrow. The listed fTP for Flaming Arrow is 0.5 - 0.75 - 1.0 and the listed fTP for Piercing Arrow is 1.0. I got 4615 damage on Wild Rabbits for both weaponskills. I think it's safe to conclude that my speculation for the fTP behavior of hybrid weaponskills is correct, at least for Flaming Arrow. The base multiplier is 1.0 for the physical component and fTP is a multiplier for the magic damage component only.

I'm not sure about Affinities but my anecdotal evidence: Hot Shot damage responds better to MAB then it does WSD and Physical stats. It is noticeably higher when you are using a MAB set. Hybrids are weird though and require a lot of setup to pull off. If you miss the first hit the magic portion does almost nothing and it still seems it can be resisted. So it requires a good amount of Accuracy and Magic accuracy.

The reason i havent suggested mab/ta Herculean is because magic augment on herculean doeant have TA option.

It's been tested by myself and others before, yes. The JP wiki information is correct, though BGwiki should probably be changed to be less confusing.

I did another test just now on some Reserve Dragua. They have 120 MDB and 130% fire affinity although this only comes into play for burst + skillchain damage and a 12.5% magic damage reduction. Kind of a shitty mob to use but w/e. The weaponskill set I used had the following.

118 Magic Damage
73 Magic Attack Bonus
54 Weapon Skill Damage
352 AGI
250 STR
Fotia Belt
Scout's Gorget +2 (25/25)

I did three sets of tests. Two 3000 TP tests and a 1036 TP test.

3000 TP Test 1
2306 Physical Damage
9852 Magic Damage
12158 Total Damage

3000 TP Test 2 (No Fotia Belt)
2102 Physical Damage
8801 Magic Damage
10903 Total Damage

1036 TP Test
2300~ Physical Damage
2850~ Magical Damage
5148 Total Damage

The first two sets consisted of a few weaponskills on Dragua to verify the physical damage component. I did this by using Flaming Arrow on Reserve Dragua that took 924 from my ranged attack at a distance of 1.8 and made sure I had a measurement of finishing off the mob before the magic damage component and one with it included.

A few things I might have *** up but are probably okay -

I forgot to account for Firesday so it may have processed on the second 3000 TP test. I doubt this because I did more than 1 Flaming Arrow and got the same number.

I forgot to account for Dragua jobs and there were two different kinds, but afaik they have the same MDB. It would be good to repeat this kind of test on a better mob.

You can conclude a few things from this -

It's not clear if Fotia applies to the subsequent magic damage as well. I need a cleaner test with less mob unknowns.

The fTP scaling is probably higher than 0.5 - 0.75 - 1.0 and was probably never re-tested. The patch notes actually state this (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/42588-dev1216-Weapon-Skill-Adjustments).

The fTP scaling probably still begins at 0.5 as (2300 * 0.509 + 118) * 1.73/1.2 * .875 * 1.54 * 1.1 = 2753 is fairly close to 2850. There's a lot of nuance to work out still.

The fTP scaling might end at 2.0.

You're still not being clear as to how you think hybrid weapon skills are calculated or what kind of testing you've done. If you have any testing please provide it and provide a better explanation.

I mean you could do a little work on your part, as there have been several threads on the matter. The same topic pops up every 6 months, though admittedly not every one of them has had mechanical details.

As for the +mDMG thing, I tested in the manner I said I did:


I used an ASA mob (Blest Bones).

Note: This comment hot shot has been edited to avoid containing erroneous information, if you see dissent in comments after this, it was probably about what this post previously said.


This is completely backward, actually. The physical (edit, turns out it's magical, but kinda irrelevant to this) first hit of Hot Shot will actually still connect even if the WS says it misses completey. Watch the monster HP if you don't believe me. The hybrid hit will ONLY connect if the first hit hits, because as far as I can tell, the first hit can't miss.. The weaponskill has a hard 10% miss rate (meaning the hybrid portion).

The reason MAB performs better is because of diminishing returns. MAB vs MDB is essentially the same thing as WSD in equal numbers on a single hit magical weapon skill, but due to MAB being FAR more abundant, you eventually get to the point where WSD is much more valuable, because if you have +250 MAB, +10 MAB would be less than 3% more damage, whereas +10% WSD (assuming no other WSD sources) is a straight 10%. It seems almost absurd to have to say this, but Hybrid WS prefer HYBRID sets, that have MAB, and WSD.

As for resists, it is not clear that Hybrid WS are resisted in the exact same manner as elemental damage. In many cases when hot shot does very poor damage, it is less a case of general m.eva resist, and more a case of MDB/MDT toward that element, or the mob being strong against piercing, or ranged, or perhaps a combination of these. However, when elemental resistances are not present, the damage seems rather consistent, which does not align well with the idea that it is subject to normal m.eva based resists. (Edit: It turns out that it is, but it is also natively quite accurate on the resist side, and since Magic Accuracy affects the hit rate of the Hybrid hit, with enough M.acc you are unlikely to see resists in most cases that stem from m.acc vs meva)

Interesting. I just recently did some playing around with hot shot on the Escha Zitah Behemoth who has really high Meva and I saw high hits and low hits. I assumed the low hits were just resists or the first hit missing but maybe they were just the second hit missing? Or maybe the behemoth has some weird mechanics.

Behemoth takes extra damage while readying and high DT when not.

I've never heard this although your claim should be easily testable on level 1 mobs. You should never miss and always do the same amount of damage when standing from 20~.

In regards to resists, they can resist as normal according to jp wiki.

Shouldn't take even the JP wiki's information as gospel on WS that went largely unused until recently.

It's testable on level one mobs, you can miss the WS and it will still kill the monster.

A more controlled test.

Groundskeeper. 70% Fire Affinity (not enough to cause any resist), 100 MDB and no magic damage modifier. I disabled neck and waist for this.

Stone Arrow + Shortbow (10 DMG + 16 fSTR2)

MAB - 29
STR - 250
AGI - 334
WSC - 217
WSD - 54


Ranged Attacks are 92 damage, exactly as expected.

Piercing Arrow - 1327

As expected int(int((10 + 16 + 217) * 3.55) * 1.54) = 1327

Flaming Arrow kill shot - 1327
3000 TP Flaming Arrow - 6860

The magic damage portion is 5533. It looks like Flaming Arrow 3000 fTP is actually 2.1 as it's an exact fit.

int(int(int(1327 * 2.1) * 1.29) * 1.54) = 5533.

2.1 was already on JP wiki, it just never made it over to BGwiki because lolArchery.

Adding Fotia Gorget to the same gear, things start to get messy.

1453 Piercing Arrow/Flaming Killshot
7653 3000 TP Flaming Arrow
6200 Magic Damage

int(int(int(1453 * (2.1 + 25.0/256.0)) * 1.29) * 1.54) = 6341 (too much)
int(int(int(1453 * (2.1)) * 1.29) * 1.54) = 6059 (too little)

What does work is if you take the physical component and multiply that by Fotia again... i.e.

int(1453 * 281/256) = 141

Physical - 1453
Fotia Reroll - 141
Magical - 6059
Total - 7653

Seems like it kinda of works, but I've also got some 'resists' for 4551. This would indicate that the actual magic damage component is 6200 and that the resist works like normal magic resists (i.e. a half resist.) Fotia does apply to the magical hit but the additional magic damage is not multiplied by fTP/MAB/WSD/etc. That's what fits the data, anyways.

Adding 44 MAB and 118 magic damage and removing Fotia

9062 for the full damage
5193 for the resist

Should be 1327 physical damage, 7735 magic damage. A half resist would be 5194 damage, which is close enough. I would say it's clear that the resist mechanics are in line with normal magic mechanics.

In regards to the magic damage stat.

int(int(int(1327 * 2.1 + 118) * 1.73) * 1.54) comes out to be exactly 7735. So it's added in there and multiplied with everything but fTP just like a magical WS.

I wonder if Fotia has the same weird mechanics with other magical weaponskills.

A test on brittle rocks - I never did more than 20 damage on flaming arrow. So the hit for flaming arrow may be considered a single hit even though the physical portion can miss.

Flaming Arrow
* Physical component multiplier is 1.0, is unaffected by fTP, and can be affected by Fotia as you would normally expect
* Physical component can miss but will not cause magical component to miss
* Magical component never misses but can resist like normal magic
* Magical component is modeled by (P * fTP + MDMG) * other magic WS damage multipliers (MAB/MDB, magic damage reduction, affinity, WSD, etc.) where P is the physical damage from the first step (although it is not clear if this is strictly true, it may have a different pDIF multiplier)
* fTP scaling is probably 0.5 - 1.55 - 2.1 but I didn't test 2000 TP
* Can be affected by Fotia. The additional damage is magical but but does not appear to be affected by MAB or WSD

I'll try to verify more of the unknowns later as this is much easier to test than Blade : Chi and provides a lot of insight.

So the first can miss now and it does cause the second hit to deal significantly less damage? Resists also apply? This is all too much.

Note: This comment hot shot has been edited to avoid containing erroneous information, if you see dissent in comments after this, it was probably about what this post previously said.

The first hit is actually the magical hit on Hot Shot, I misspoke. If you hit a monster that doesn't have enough HP, then if the first (mdmg) shot kills it, it will show the damage for it. But occasionally it will say it misses, and still kill it anyway. So it seems to track whether it would have missed separately, and only shows the damage if the hybrid portion would have connected, even if it didn't have enough HP for the damage to go through.

So example:

Low level mob:
Could oneshot with about 6~10k damage assuming BIS set, this is an indication that the hybrid portion would have gone off, but didn't trigger due to low HP. (low damage could also be an indication that your Hot Shot set doesn't work properly if you're using gearswap)


Could oneshot the mob and show no damage (miss), in which case the mob takes the mdmg hit, but the Hybrid portion would not have gone off.


High level mobs:

Hot shot can "miss", but still deal the mdmg portion of damage, in which case the magical damage will not apply, and the damage dealt will usually be below 10k.

Hot shot land the second hit, and does significantly more damage (as in well in excess of 50k assuming buffs/bubbles.

The other thing I noted is: The second hit being "magical" is a bit of a misnomer. This does not work the same way that Flaming Crush does, despite benefiting from the same kind of hybrid debuff setup. Rather instead of having physical hits, and magical hits, the second hit of Hot Shot is truly hybrid and is equally affected by MDB and Pdiff both, while the first hit (mdmg) isn't only affected by some parts of a magical damage calculation (doesn't consider malaise for instance)

Conversely though it is also affected by piercing/ranged resist as well as fire resistances, which often proves to be it's achilles heel.

Now for the most interesting bit. I tried over a year ago to put this on the COR guide thread but people honestly didn't seem interested as they were only paying attention to the fact that the WS could break the damage cap, and it's other peculiarities didn't seem to have sunk in. This weaponskill has very strange hate mechanics when compared to virtually any other WS. For example, only the first (mdmg) hit seems to be used in enmity calculation, unless a skillchain is performed (in which case you get the enmity from the physical hit, but also the full damage of the skillchain, counted as though a physical damage source had generated it) This is important mainly for 2 reasons. For ranger, Hot Shot can be chained back to back with Trueflight for constant skillchain... However, the other bit is, RNG likes using Coronach for it's lowered hate, and COR usually does Wildfire when enmity is a concern. Assuming you avoid skillchaining, the enmity generated by Hot Shot is negligible, even when you hit for over 60k.

We had one case where a RUN used Flash, and Malaise/Frailty were present, I used Hot shot and when the SCH used Libra, I was only at 1% hate despite hitting it for 80k. But when I skillchained, I would instantly take hate off of a single flash.

Personally I'm not really sure how Blade: Chi compares. I'm starting to think that even Hybrid WS have fundamental differences from each other as well.

Magical WS don't consider extra multipliers (MAB, etc) for their enmity calculations. This is also true for the second, magical portion of a hybrid WS.