rangifer’s diary: pt. xxvi
Dextrous arm, agile punch?
In diary pt. v, I explored the math behind third job pugilists. In particular, the intent was to compare to a third-job STRmit, as a kind of hypothetical “rangifer vs. Boymoder”. Here, I want to use a similar model, with similar assumptions, to compare this hypothetical pugilist to a hypothetical third-job DEX marauder: all skills in question are maxed out, the monster target is the same level as the attacking player character, the monster target has 400 WDEF, attacks are uninterrupted, etc. Oh, and the DEXaneer needs some stats/gear (again, for consistency, based on a roughly level 100 DEXaneer):
- 60 STR (11 of which is from the scrolled Maple Golden Claw, and 45 of which is from other gear).
- 571 DEX (50 of which is from gear).
- 105 WATK (72 from knuckler + 20 from Energy Charge/Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves).
Oh, and what is so great about DEX brawlers, you ask? Well, a number of things:
- Like so many other odd jobs who rely on secondary stats for damage, DEXaneers have much more stable damage than their ordinary STR-based counterparts.
- DEXaneers have the highest WACC of any job in the game, for a few reasons:
- They are pure DEX (duh). And more pure than, say, DEX warriors or DEX mages, because those jobs need other stats (STR and INT respectively) for job advancement.
- Brawlers/marauders/buccaneers gain a whopping 0.9(!) WACC per point of DEX. This is significantly more than any other job; in second place are the warriors/magicians/beginners, who get 0.8 WACC per DEX.
- Like many other jobs, brawlers can benefit from +20 WACC due to mastery from second job onwards, but in addition to that, brawlers also have the +20 WACC from Bullet Time!
- The DEXaneer’s weapon of choice is the Maple Golden Claw, which grants a whopping 30(!) WACC on average, clean.
- In third job, the DEXaneer benefits from Energy Charge, which, at max level, when active, grants a +20 WACC buff. This is more than you would get from consumables (barring rarer, unavailable-from-NPCs ones like Amorian Baskets), and is on par with Bless.
- DEXaneers also have the highest AVOID of any job in the game… well, usually. In MapleLegends, DEXaneers were severely nerfed due to the preponderance of, uh, muling, present in MapleLegends. In more GMS-like servers, DEXaneers will get a whopping 1.5 AVOID per point of DEX!! That, combined with the AVOID from Bullet Time and even Energy Charge, can make DEXaneers into some real slippery bastards!
- DEXaneer swag (duh).
OK then, on to the numbers! I’ll be making use of my damage calculator for crunching these numbers…
Energy Drain
Energy Drain is the marauder’s main single-target DPS skill (at least, for pugilists, DEXaneers, and normal marauders). Entering all of the relevant data for this hypothetical Energy Drain (“Damage multi” should be 360%, since we assume Energy Drain to be maxed), we immediately notice something: the damage is much more stable than the pugilist’s. This is, of course, to be expected; pugilists tend to have perhaps the most unstable damage in the game (yes, even more unstable than that of the STRginner!), and DEXaneers are expected to have even more stable damage than their non-odd-jobbed counterparts. The damage range per-hit is 1 882〜2 527 (compare this to the pugilist’s 1〜4 652), and the CV per-hit is 8.4% (compare this to the pugilist’s whopping 57.7%!).
The actual expected damage per-hit here is roughly 2 204.1 (somewhat worse than the pugilist’s 2 326.5). Fortunately for the DEXaneer, they can use booster to achieve one speed category better than the pugilist; the Maple Golden Claw is speed 5, minus 2 from booster bringing it to speed 3, whereas bare hands have speed 4. This assumes no Speed Infusion, because we are considering third job here (the pugilist is more favourable by fourth job, because SI does work on unarmed combatants), so the DPS ends up being ever-so-slightly more favourable for the DEX marauder, in the end: 4 321.8 DPS (versus the pugilist’s 4 308.3 DPS). Of course, this is basically a tie; the difference here can be easily bridged by minor adjustments in equipment. But, we can at least reasonably conclude that at this level (roughly 100), versus a roughly 400 WDEF monster, the DEXaneer is a bit worse in per-hit damage, but makes up for it with a bit faster attacking speed.
It’s worth noting here that any WATK or STR that the DEXaneer can get from their gear represents a large advantage for them over the pugilist. The WATK advantage is obvious: the pugilist’s only methods of increasing their WATK are from secondary equipment like capes (particularly when combined with Chaos Scrolls and some good luck), gloves, and even pendants (again, particularly when combined with a Chaos Scroll and some good luck). But DEXaneers have the modest advantage of using a weapon. They are still somewhat similar to the pugilist, in that they are very limited beyond a certain relatively early level; their best bet is the Maple Golden Claw. But the Maple Golden Claw is situated further on in the game, at level 64, rather than the pugilist’s capped WATK from level 31 onwards. And the Golden Claw can at least, in principle, be scrolled arbitrarily well. The pugilist patiently awaits the day that they can scroll their own fists!
The disparity in STR is perhaps more stark: the effective PSM (primary stat multiplier) for the second-/third-/fourth-job pugilist is (4.2 + 4.2 ⋅ 0.1 ⋅ 0.9)∕2 = 2.289. The effective PSM for the second-/third-/fourth-job DEXaneer is (4.8 + 4.8 ⋅ 0.6 ⋅ 0.9)∕2 = 3.696. This means that the DEXaneer benefits roughly 3.696∕2.289 = 1.615 times more from each point of STR. But actually, this advantage is even greater, because the DEXaneer has so much more WATK. In any case, of course the DEXaneer has a hard time getting STR (as they have 4 base STR for life), but the point is that their equipment empowers them more than it does the pugilist (who suffers from lower WATK and a lower effective PSM).
But what about Stun Mastery? You can check for yourself, but because Stun Mastery is only taken into account after WDEF, it doesn’t really change anything about the comparison of DEXaneer vs. pugilist.
Energy Blast (+ Somersault Kick)…?
Again, skill bonuses are after WDEF, so we will skip this corresponding section from the original “STRlord vs. pugilist”.
hydro ruins a helm, and gets a new one…
My level 85 swashbuckler, hydropotina, has been using her zhelm since level 51 or so. As usual, I like to play it safe: I get/buy a helm, and then use 60% and/or 100% scrolls on it. Helmet for DEX 60% scrolls are a bit pricey, but are my only realistic option for squeezing utility out of my head equipment spot. hydro’s helm was looking pretty good at first, but after a bad run of 60%s failing (I am the consummate master of failing truly unfortunate quantities of 60%s in a row), I was stuck with a merely “(+3)” zhelm that had 2(!) slots remaining. Rather than waste even more money, it was time for a new helmet…
I saw someone smegaing to sell AFK zhelms for a mere 10 million mesos, so I hopped on hydro to take advantage of the deal. When I got there, someone recognised me as a member of Oddjobs, and asked what was odd about my character. For those unfamiliar, swashbucklers (a.k.a. swashies, cowgirls/cowboys, STR sairs, or — in third job particularly — STRlaws) are essentially just pure STR (20 base DEX) gunslingers. In melee, they can fight with Somersault Kick, and at range, with Double Shot (and many others, like Burst Fire, Ice Splitter, etc.). Also, at range, they benefit from Recoil Shot, and regardless of whether they are in melee or at range, they can benefit from skills like Wings, Bullet Time, Octopus, etc. I actually have a work-in-progress guide to swashbucklers, if you’re really interested.
I was asked if I wanted to pay a more usual rate (12M mesos) to be a solo buyer and loot any & all zhelms that drop. I hesitantly said yes, considering that I have typically, in the past, paid that much even on runs with 2 or 3 buyers (and thus much more slim chances for relooting). Plus, I’m a little tired of having to deal with kinda-crappy zhelms, anyways. In the end, I maybe could have said “no” and still managed to get the same outcome (for a somewhat lower price), but oh well :P
It seems that now, both of my pirate characters (the other being rangifer, my pugilist) have purchased a zhelm from FatSloth! As it turned out though, only one zhelm dropped >.< …Oh well, at least that meant that I didn’t have to make any decisions, hehe. Fortunately, it was a pretty nice helm! And, I used both of the 60%s that I already had on-hand, and passed both!!:
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Zakum Helmet (+2)
One of a kind Item, Untradeable
- Req lev: 50
- Category: hat
- STR: +16
- DEX: +19
- INT: +14
- LUK: +14
- Weapon def.: 156
- Magic def.: 151
- Accuracy: +22
- Avoidability: +21
- Number of upgrades available: 8
Here’s hoping the good luck continues…
rusa is not strong
rusa is my DEX spearwoman. She is not strong, or at least, not STRong, considering that she is stuck with 35 base STR for life (a pitiful STR, for a warrior). When using Crusher or Fury (I’m not third job yet, but, you know, eventually…), the PSM is a whopping 5.0 (assuming that I’m using the “correct” weapon). That would put my effective PSM at (5.0 + 5.0 ⋅ 0.6 ⋅ 0.9)∕2 = 3.85. This more or less equates to — as always, depending on the exact situation — something like 3.0〜3.8 times more of a benefit to my damage per point of STR, than per point of DEX. This applies to ordinary spear(wo)men as well, but because I’m pure DEX, I really don’t need any more total WACC (“total” in the sense that we include WACC contributions from DEX and LUK, in addition to raw WACC) from my gear. So I’m very free to be greedy and squeeze as much STR as possible out of my gear.
As covered in pt. xxii of this diary, I scrolled myself a very average 12 STR robe after sinking in way too many goddamn mesos. The next part of gearing for STR, I’ve decided, is getting myself a pair of Glittering Altaire Earrings. These earrings are the only possible source of STR on earrings (+2 STR), other than the crappier Altaire Earrings that you upgrade into the glittering ones (+1 STR), and Element Pierce, which is level 110, only gives +1 STR (on average; +0〜2 STR in general), and is very expensive.
The requirement for Glittering Altaire Earrings is still rather steep, however: a whopping 50 EPQs. Now, I’m a PQ junkie myself, but EPQ isn’t really my favourite. I’d probably put it second-to-last on my PQ ranking, as I do at least prefer it to PPQ. So, because the first half of EPQ’s level range (EPQ is level 45〜55) is a subinterval of LPQ’s level range (35〜50), and the latter half is a subinterval of OPQ’s level range (51〜70), I generally just skip EPQ altogether, and go straight from LPQ to OPQ. In this case, however, I want those damn earrings, even if they are regrettably untradeable!! D:
However, even if rusa is not strong, she would certainly have her EPQ party members believing otherwise (I partly blame the abundance of, ahem, INT-based non-mages, for this):
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Kiyomasa: we’ll be out soon
ABGSaranghae: kk
xFungus: yeah luckil[y] we have rusa
rusa
so strong
rusa: :p
xFungus: also
rusa: im actually not strong, i have 35 base str
xFungus: kind of cool looking
oooo
rusa: ty!!
xFungus: what do you do
rusa: dex only
xFungus: oooo
what is [sic] pros of that
rusa: lots of wacc and avoid :p
xFungus: like do you scroll str?
rusa: my robe is 12 str
xFungus: are there clothes you have to avoid?
rusa: yea i cant wear normal warrior stuff
same with a lot of weapons
rn im using surfboard
Taking a break from EPQ, for my own sanity
After having done quite a few EPQs, I decided that it was time to take a break for my own mental health, so I went and transfered a bunch of shit between my characters. I have too much garbage, and too many characters — not to mention the fact that I have poopy-brain — so this took me a while >.<
Once I was more-or-less settled, I decided to take a leisurely stroll over to þͤ olde Forgotten Path (FP) to check for any HHs. I did manage to find one:
Any time I can find a HH here, I kill it, as my woodswoman, capreolina. The EXP is somewhat modest (5.5%-ish at my level, 101), but it “only” (“only” being relative to odd-jobbers of my level…) takes me 10 minutes or so to kill the guy, and there’s always some chance that he will drop a head, which is worth a bit of EXP & mesos. Plus, at FP, it costs me nearly zero mesos to kill the guy, because he rarely hits me at all (HH is incapable of jumping over that fat stair you can see pictured above). I, for some reason, enjoy the little mini-boss fights and little chunks of EXP more than grinding away at some random training map for however long I can withstand it…
Unfortunately, this HH didn’t drop a head for me. I did, however, make more mesos than usual, as HH did decide to gift me a crisp 325k mesos.
OK… more EPQing, I guess
Aaaand it was back to EPQ for rusa! Chop chop!! This time, I got to PQ with my friend Yukko (Taima, Boymoder, Tacgnol, Gambolpuddy, Yotsubachan), the brawler!:
After doing a number of EPQs during this renewed EPQ spree, I had done a grand total of 23 EPQs that day alone. Whew. Just 13 more for the earrings… heh…
Oh, and as I went to leave the EPQ lobby to go back to the Altaire Camp, I accidentally stumbled on a Mossy Snail card:
:]