Elemental Torque / Belt

Ok, I'm coming out of the closet. I have absolutely NO idea how tp modifiers work. I do not understand sea torques or the damage calculations involved.
I do know that the effect a sea torque bestows =/= the same thing as tp bonus. I just do not know what the hell a sea torque does. For the longest time I just used them because I was told I was supposed to (I know but i assure you I parsed any gear changes to make sure I wasn't doing the wrong thing). I just do not understand WHAT they do.
Why is a gorget good for one ws over another?

Forgive me for being so newbish. I hid this secret shame for as long as I could; but in my desire to be the very best (like no one ever was) I hope someone can "sea torques for dummies" for me.

Thanks in advance.

You keep using torque and gorget interchangeably, but they're not. Might wanna fix that for clarity.

Idk either OP, even though I macro in shadow for asuran

on a side note, I recently lvl'd BLM & was wondering if the elemental Obi's were worth my time. thanks for advice in advance

Yes, you're entirely right.

For the record to anyone else reading this I am refering to the "in the name of science" gorgets that affect fTP and accuracy. I do not understand: 1) what fTP is in laymans terms, 2) how it affects ws damage, 3) why it is a huge deal for some ws and not for others.

I am comfortably aware of how the torques with their "+skill" enhancements work and that i do not need any clarification on.

Sorry, I'm at work and trying to type between projects without incuring ire from management, as it were.

yes, get elemental obis.

kk, thanks again

That
I'm going with the guess that he thinks they are the same since he clearly stated he doesn't really know anything about the ws mechanics(aka the equations). Neither do I and have been wondering this myself which to my understanding, except with the way they align with the weapons- ie -you may be able to use shadow gorget but have to use water belt, they gave the same amount of accuracy and modifier boost?

No i do understand the difference. A sea torque would be: Justice torque, love torque etc. They have + to a stat and + to 2 different skill sets. Those I entirely understand. The gorgets are what i meant to ask about (light, shadow, flame) and affect fTP and acc. How the TP modifier itself opperates is what i am sketchy on. I understand that if i ws with 200% tp over 100% tp with drakesbane I have more chance to crit. I just have no idea what fTP, dTP etc are or do.

To my rudimentary understanding, Gorgets affect the initial hit of a WS, and while this hit is the most powerful and will benefit the most from this bonus, the second-eighth hit of a WS are relatively unaffected (Except, perhaps, by the accuracy.), so with this in mind, multi-hits benefit little, and DA/TA's are also unaffected. Considering these elements, powerful 1-hit WSs get the biggest bonus, ala Mandalic Stab/Steel Cyclone, and multi-hits like Evisceration and Asuran Fists get a negligible bonus.

As far as fTP and dTP goes, I've read on it and understood it, but without application, didn't stick. I understand the math when I read it, but I can't articulate it in exactitude.

yeah I blond momented and read torque, as in meaning gorget so just ignore that part of the story.

As I understand it, (I could be wrong) ftp is a multiplier on the first hit of a ws. There's a formula, but basically a larger value for ftp would mean more damage. I think since it affects the first hit only, single hit ws would see a bigger jump in damage than multi hit ones.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Weapon_Skill_Damage

The function to work with is the bottom one and you'll see a part in there that is listed as fTP. What the elemental gorgets and belts do is at .1 to fTP. If you look up a weapon skill like Tachi: Yukikaze you can see the fTP modifier listed under what % you WS at (100%: 1.5625 200%: 1.875 300%: 2.50). So if you were to WS at 100% like most people you'd increase that part of the damage equation from 1.5625 to 1.6625 which is a decent increase. Now the argument concerns the new weapon skills which are typically "Deals triple or deals quadruple damage". Blade Hi for instance is deals quadruple damage and chance of crit hits varies with tp. That means the fTP is always 4.0 at any tp level, and the argument is that the increase to 4.1 would be diluted and not as notable

*edit*
What the others have said about the multiple-hit weapon skills is true as well. So the weapon skills that benefit most from the gorgets are single hit WSs with low fTP multipliers like gekko/yuki/kasha/ground strike. With that in mind every weapon skill does benefit from the gorgets just not as much as others.

Succinct response Galith, thanks.

Thank you for the super helpful response. The WS i was most concerned about is Torcleaver. Since the fTP modifiers are already high (4.75 @ 100) I probably would not see much of a benefit from gorget/belt?
I am horrendous at FFXI math for some reason and even trying to follow the link you posted makes my eyes hurt :/

The belts have Conserve TP+7. 7 is the activation rate. The amount, I'm still unclear. With Jin, I've had 19% - 35% after the WS.

In weapon skills where the "Damage varies with TP", the Elemental Belts and Gorgets do function in a similar manner to "TP Bonus" in practice, though not capped like said effect. Torcleaver is a good example, with a linear scale from 100 to 200 TP on a one to one ratio. where 1% TP increases the fTP by .01. so that, if used at 100%TP a Torcleaver with Snow gorget would function as a 110% TP strike with no neck equipment on.


From what I understand, in the best layman's terms I can use, fTP is the damage multiplier of a Weapon Skill attack. Combined with the secondary weapon skill modifiers (Strength, Vitality, Mind, Ect.) the damage produced becomes greater than a standard attack in the same circumstances. In some cases, the first strike is actually a penalty, because of it's fTP multiplier. (Ex.: Guillotine x0.8725, Insurgency x0.5) all others will still be 1.0 and still confer the Secondary weapon skill bonuses.


Specifically, since you asked about Torcleaver, I find personally that the Snow Gorget and Belt are still the best choice, mainly because of a total lack of really amazing VIT in those slots, certainly nothing like the Beir belt, though all the FFXI mathwizards tend to show that the damage is pretty fenced between Warwolf/Forti and Snow/Snowb.

Wow, I hadn't even factored this in :x Thank you for that insight!

Torcleaver is exceptionally high upwards of 6.5 fTP. You get .1 for the belt and .1 for the gorget so you could raise it to 4.95-6.7 depending on tp which is a pretty insignificant change but it's still an increase. I see alot of people advocating for the 15acc/15atk/1%DA belt over the elemental belts, on blade: hi, but I can't really say if that's better. It'd be even harder for me to speculate on Drk gear considering I'm not sure if their STR and ATK would be caped in the equation or not.

I personally believe Torcleaver suffers a tremendous penalty to Attack, even with Dark Knight's innate attack power, "Low Defense" Targets often show signs of a staggering 40% drop in damage with no ascertainable reason beyond a "High defense" scenario.

I know that for Blade: Hi I've heard the STR modifier gets caped in abyssea so overloading on AGI is the best way to go with that. I think most ppl still use the Gorget for Hi considering ninjas options for neckwear. However, Anguinus Belt has been debated a lot because ninjas accuracy & attack aren't caped usually and the DA is a bonus.

In conclusion you kinda have to test it out for yourself the belts/gorgets still increase damage so it's not like they're ***they still do something. It's just more likely there might be something better to use.


I was more referencing that my war can reach 999atk in abyssea and didn't know if Drks ran into that problem as well.

I've been debating whether or not to continue using these myself... Currently I use an Aqua gorget for Raging Rush. It used to be great for the accuracy, but I'm on the fence now as to whether a high STR neck might benefit more, since the fTP bonus from the gorgets only affect the first hit of the WS.

Tl;dr, would it be an upgrade to switch from gorget to something like an Ire torque?

Edit: also, should I even bother to get the belt counterpart?

This is along the lines of exactly what i wanted someone to lay out. However, fTP is not congruent with all effects that straight tp provides (to my understanding).
Here's what i mean:
If i were using a WS that had "acc varies with tp" or "crit varies with tp" the ele gorget would still be a damage increase, albeit small, but a damage increase none-the-less, correct(and not an acc or crit increase unlike tp bonus)?

He was specifically referencing the damage in torcleave which varies with TP. the fTP modifer increases by 1 when you go from 100tp to 200tp so .1 increase to fTP is like 10% tp bonus. However you probably shouldn't think of it like that because from 100%>200% in tachi gekko is only an increase of .5 fTP so that is not the same throughout all "Damage varies with tp" weaponskills.

Anyone care to answer my poorly phrased question? >_>;

Your problem is exactly what lead me to make this thread >< I was hoping to garnish some better understanding of how the gorgets work so that I wouldn't have to ask "is gorget best still?" for each weaponskill. Sadly wiki's explanation is painfully unhelpful (to me).

Call me stupid but this is what my brain reads:

ws damage is calculated like so: y = mx + b

*several lines later*

definition of terms:

x = the x value in the above equation.

I used trig everyday at work to calculate sling angles and other situations for construction/carpentry/architecture. I am not completely math HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE but the way wiki explains it seems redundant and far from explanitory.

Lol late to a thread started about me.

But it's not all about the number of hits not directly anyways. It's basically how much one will do over the other. So kinda gotta figure out how much each will do.

For gorget/belt you find out the effective ftp of your ws. So whatever the first hit is + 1.0 for each additional hit you expect including offhand (depending on rate and how hardcore you areyou might want to factor in an average amount of double/triple attack.)

So for raging rush that would be 1.0 +2*1.0 for a total of 3.0.

Gorget or belt adds .1 ftp so .1/3.0= 3.333% increase in dmg if you just used one. 6.666% for both. Or you could look at it is if you were wearing 1 the 2nd would increase your dmg 3.2% dmg

Obviously higher effective ftps will lower the % dmg the gorget/belt add. Hence why higher multihits are kinda meh for it but really any high ftp ones are. Which are alot of ws nowadays

As far as base stats go you need to figure out your base dmg without that peice and with it. I'll need to know your str without that peice and what weapon you using to figure that out.

If you really want I could do attack but frankly that is much harder variable and much more mob stat dependent

Should be evenly distributed between the possible values (1-20), making it 0.735 TP saved on average. Further, not all procs may be of value (especially for 2hander jobs). Not worth much but it's there.

Pretty sure gorget and belt are best-in-slot for RR, but I might be forgetting something as far as WAR gear options. Ire +1 definitely doesn't beat the gorget.

Correct.

The improvement in damage is entirely dependent on your "total" fTP value. Any hits beyond the first (offhand hits, additional rounds, DAs, TAs, QAs) can be treated as having a fTP of 1.0 that is not affected by the gorgets/belts. To *** a belt/gorget's impact on your total damage, you determine your average fTP with all those hits included and work from there.

ex: SAM/WAR using Tachi: Gekko at 100 TP (1.5625 fTP), Brutal Earring, /WAR, and VV for DA (total 20%) assuming capped accuracy on all hits (95%):

(1.5625+1*0.2)*0.95=1.674375 average fTP. Add the gorget and you get (1.6625+1*0.2)*0.95=1.769375, add the belt and you get (1.7625+1*0.2)*0.95=1.864375 for a 5.7% and 11.3% increase over base value.

Assuming the first hit of Gekko is capped hitrate is a fair assumption, but what if the DAs don't have capped hitrate? Let's assume 80% hitrate on these.

1.5625*0.95+1*0.2*0.8=1.644375
1.6625*0.95+1*0.2*0.8=1.739375
1.7625*0.95+1*0.2*0.8=1.834375

As you can see, the fTP bonus is worth more in this situation because your effective fTP has decreased.

If we added a TP bonus weapon (base fTP 1.875) or over-TP'd, the gorget/belt would be worth less because this is a damage varies with TP WS. If it's crit varies or acc varies, neither would have an effect on the value of fTP bonus (though Conserve TP's value changes, often for the worse, if you over-TP).

Let's add in additional attacks (extra chance for multihits to proc, though it can only proc on the first two hits of a WS) and triple attack. Chant du Cygne has 2.25 fTP and two additional attacks, three if you're DWing (let's assume we are). Using BLU/NIN with DA trait, Epona's Ring, Brutal Earring, Atheling Mantle, and Atma of Apocalypse (18% TA 20% DA):

((2.25+2*0.18+1*0.82*0.2)+(1+2*0.18+1*0.82*0.2)+1+1)*0.95=5.9831

To explain 2*0.18+1*0.82*0.2, the first is your chance of TA and effective fTP increase, the latter is your chance of DA with rounds where TA proc'd removed (1-0.18=0.82) since TA takes priority over DA. The second set with TA/DA is your second hit, and the two +1s after that are the last two hits. Adding gorget yields 6.0781 fTP, adding belt (which generally isn't optimal for CDC but for the sake of demonstrating) yields 6.1731 fTP.

Thanks for the replies ^^
I -can- crunch the numbers myself but I'm lazy and I really just wondered if there was a new general consensus... But now I suppose I should still aim to obtain either a snow/aqua belt.... Ugh Isgebind :<

Anyways thank you :D

Randomly asking ppl working on empy weapons seems to work quite well. I gave away kamomes to anyone who asked when i was doing Sobeks.