Overview
The concept of Enmity has really been blown wide open from the first 3 parts of our testing. I've started a running
Enmity Table of all actions that do not involve damage or curing in an effort to get a complete list of CE and VE values. I hope that that list can be completed rather quickly - it will only grow after the new jobs come out for WotG in a few weeks. If you're interested in helping, just find something not listed or with missing numbers and try to run the test yourself and post back results.
In the meantime whlie the list is being filled, I'll continue to go over more concepts regarding Enmity. In this part, I want to focus on 2 more major parts of Enmity - the nature of Volatile Enmity (which I have largely been avoiding) and the effect of Enmity Gear. Thanks to some very quick work by groups other than myself and Ashira (we are honestly a bit burnt out by the testing and just feel like playing a bit online this weekend), the nature of both of these were quickly found. Most of this data was not tested by us - but the description and controls are good nonetheless.
To summarize the goals and questions to be answered in this section...
- Is the decay of Volatile Enmity (VE) static? If so, what is the rate of decay?
- What is the Volatile Enmity (VE) of an action? (a test for any spell or ability)
- How does Enmity Gear affect Cumulative Enmity?
Special thanks to 2 groups for setting up and conducting these tests - Elipse and Suwiside (Odin) for the Enmity Gear testing and Ryoii and Nomomii (Lakshmi) for the VE testing. The setup for testing will not be exactly as these 2 groups conducted, but represent methods of reproducing similar results.
Previous:
Enmity Testing (Part III) Next:
Enmity Testing (Part V)
Enmity Table ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Test 12A
What is the Volatile Enmity (VE) of Provoke
Testing Setup:
- 1 puller character with Silence access (BRD/WHM)
- 2 level 75 members with ability in question (RDM/WAR, BLM/RDM)
- 2 characters must have 0 enmity merits (+/-), be stripped of all gear, and have access to "distance plug-in"
- Use a "level 0" monster - we chose Bumblebee in West Sarutabaruta
- All characters must have either Stoneskin or Phalanx buffed prior to starting to ensure 0 damage
- Utsusemi shadows must be off when this experiment takes place
- Puller pulls with Silence while the 2 test characters move to 0.7 distance (same distance)
- Test character 1 casts Sleep x1, Cure 1 for 0 HP x1, and Dispel x5 (CE = 1781)
- Test character 2 uses Provoke (1 CE) - player 1 has a +1780 CE difference
- Document if Player 2 takes hate immediately after Provoke
- Repeat the test but have player 1 gain a +1801 CE difference
- Document if Player 2 takes hate immediately after Provoke
Results
CE DifferenceHate? +1780 CEYes +1801 CENo
Based on these simple results, we can deduce that the VE of Provoke must be between 1780 and 1801. You can actually ramp the CE up to narrow down this range; however, be aware that your results may start to vary as you approach the true value. This is because the mob seems to choose targets only every so often while VE seems to decay constantly. If the VE decays beyond the point of taking hate before the enxt time the mob chooses targets, the player will not get hate off provoke - this causes variations in the results.
Another good question about this test is how would you know what range to look in? It's not like the range of 1780 to 1800 VE is intuitive. There are better ways to tell from a bigger range, but for the purposes of this test, they are irrelevent since our concern is to just nail down the VE of Provoke for the latter two tests. I will go over how to conduct a VE search on an action later on.
I think if you run this, it will be come more and more likely that the VE of Provoke is 1800 - it's the nicest number in the range we applied, everything else we've seen so far has been in an increment of at least 5, and if you try it enough times, you can actually find it in the test itself. While not an "exact" test, I see this one as more of a "reasonable assumption".
Conclusions
The Volatile Enmity (VE) of Provoke is 1800 VE.
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Test 12B
What is the rate of Volatile Enmity Decay for Provoke?
Testing Setup:
- 1 puller character with Silence access (BRD/WHM)
- 2 level 75 members with ability in question (RDM/WAR, BLM/RDM)
- 2 characters must have 0 enmity merits (+/-), be stripped of all gear, and have access to "distance plug-in"
- Use a "level 0" monster - we chose Bumblebee in West Sarutabaruta
- This test requires a stopwatch!
- All characters must have either Stoneskin or Phalanx buffed prior to starting to ensure 0 damage
- Utsusemi shadows must be off when this experiment takes place
- Puller pulls with Silence while the 2 test characters move to 0.7 distance (same distance)
- Test character 1 casts Cure 1 for 0 HP twice (2 CE)
- Test character 2 uses Provoke (1 CE) - player 1 has a +1 CE difference
- Immediately start timing as Provoke is used
- Player 1 will retake hate after a certain period of time due to higher CE
- Find the time in seconds needed for player 1 to retake hate.
- Repeat the timing sequence; however, this time have player 1 gain a +301 CE difference
- This is easiest to achieve by have player 1 use Dispel and player 2 use 19 cures (320 CE vs. 18 CE)
- Player 2 uses Provoke (320 CE vs. 19 CE)
- Immediatley start timing as Provoke is used
- Player 1 will retake hate after a certain period of time due to higher CE
- Find the time in seconds needed for player 1 to retake hate.
- Repeat at higher CE differences in increments of 300 CE
Results
CE DifferenceTime Needed (s) +1 CE30 +301 CE25 +601 CE20 +901 CE15 +1201 CE10 +1501 CE5 +1801 CE0 (no hate)
Obviously, the data has some error associated with it since we're manually timing with a stopwatch. The results I've shown are estimates as well - but if you try this, I think you'll find that it's generally accurate. The fact that no hate is taken at +1801 CE is consistant with Test 12A in that Provoke's VE is 1800 CE. Based on the results, it takes roughly 5 seconds to decay 300 VE; in addition, this time needed for decay is static regardless of the amount of VE, meaning the decay is linear! This makes things much easier to deal with in general.
If we take the amount of VE lost and divide it by those 5 second increments, we get an estimate of -60 VE / second rate of decay. Due to the imprecision of the testing methodology here (using a stop watch to determine time), we will further try to back this result up. The biggest key to this test is to show that the rate of VE decay is linear and constant regardless of the current VE.
Conclusions
The rate of VE decay is roughly -60 VE per second for Provoke.
The rate of VE decay is not related to the current total VE of a player.
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Test 12C
Is the VE decay of -60 VE per second unique to Provoke or accurate for all Volatile Enmity?
H0: The Volatile Enmity decay of -60 VE per second is the same for all actions.
H1: The Volatile Enmity decay of -60 VE per second is unique to Provoke and varies with actions
Testing Setup:
- Simply repeat test 12A and 12B for different spells known to have Volatile Enmity.
- Document the estimated VE decay rates for each action
- In this case: used Blind (640 VE), Barstone (300 VE), and Boost (300VE)
H0: The VE decay rates for each spell tested were all close to -60 VE per second
H1: The VE decay rates of at least one of the spells tested was not close to -60 VE per second
This test cannot conclusively prove that the decay rate is constant regardless of the spell or action, but to do that would require specific testing of every single ability - something I don't think anyone is willing to do. Again, this is one of those "reasonable assumptions" that we're just willing to assume is true. The implications of this are great - the VE decay rate is something constant and has nothing to do with the current amount of VE (Test 12B) or the action used (Test 12C). This makes future calculations much easier.
Conclusions
The natural Volatile Enmity Decay Rate is -60 VE per second for all actions with Volatile Enmity.
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Test 13
What is the effect of Enmity Gear on Cumulative Enmity?
Testing Setup:
- 1 puller character with Silence access (BRD/WHM)
- 2 level 75 members with ability in question (RDM/WAR, BLM/RDM)
- 2 characters must have 0 enmity merits (+/-), be stripped of all gear, and have access to "distance plug-in"
- Use a "level 0" monster - we chose Bumblebee in West Sarutabaruta
- All characters must have either Stoneskin or Phalanx buffed prior to starting to ensure 0 damage
- Utsusemi shadows must be off when this experiment takes place
- Puller pulls with Silence while the 2 test characters move to 0.7 distance (same distance)
- Test character 1 casts Dispel (CE = 320)
- Test character 2 casts Dispel using +1 Enmity
- The player without hate casts Cure 1 for 0 HP until hate is taken
- Repeat the test using different amounts of Enmity Equipment
- Include both positive and negative enmity enhancements
Results
Enmity ChangeCE Change -10-32 -5-16 -2 -7 -1-4 00 +1+3 +2+6 +5+16 +10+32
The most obvious thing from the data above is that negative and positive Enmity Gear have nearly exact opposite effects. But what is the deal with the number increases themselves? Many have felt that gear enhancement for enmity is simply a percentage increase... If we look at the data it turns out it fits the results very well. Enmity Enhancement on Gear is an exact percentage increase...
Final CE = [Base CE] x { 1 + [Enmity Enhancement] / 100 }
The key to understanding this is the rounding error. If we look at the case of Enmity -1, -1% of 320 is -3.2, but you cannot have a decimal value of enmity in this system. The decimal truncation occurs after the addition or subtraction occurs - no rounding occurs, the decimal is simply "cut off". This math would work like this...
[320 CE] - [3.2 CE] = [316.8 CE] >> Truncation of Decimal >> 316 CE or -4 CE loss
If you run this same math sequence for the +1 Enmity case, you will get +3 CE. This "decimal cut-off" sequence is the reasoning as to why the + and - enmity cases do not exactly match always. Generally speaking though, this would only cause a 1 unit difference at most, which is pretty minor.
Conclusions
Enmity Gear grants a direct percentage increase on Cumulative Enmity of actions.
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Determining Volatile Enmity
The process for determining Volatile Enmity is unfortunately much more complicated than Cumulative Enmity. I feel that this 3 step process is the simpliest way to accurately determine Volatile Enmity of an action not involving Curing HP or Damage. For those interested in helping the community find these values, I encourage you to use this method for determining VE of an action. Please post any findings on comments of in the BG forum thread right now. I will add it to the running Enmity List on this blog.
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Step 1
- Determine the Cumulative Enmity of the Action in question. Follow examples shown in
Part III
Step 2
- This requires a stopwatch
- Have a 3rd player pull a mob using a low enmity spell - we always use Silence
- Have both testers reach the same CE using any method - 1 Dispel each works fine
- Player 1 must gain a CE amount equal to 1 CE greater than the CE of the Action requiring testing
- For many spells and abilities, the CE is 1, so the amount of CE needed to be gained is 2 CE
- Another example of this is Dispel is 320 CE, so the amount of CE needed is 321 CE
- Have player 2 use the ability or spell to be tested. Player 2's CE will remain 1 below Player 1's CE.
- Start timing exactly when the action in question is used
- Document the time needed for Player 1 to regain hate in seconds
- Note that if Player 2 fails to even take hate, the VE of the action is 0
- Multiply the time taken for player 1 to regain hate by 60 VE.
- Example - if it takes 5.5 seconds to regain hate, Volatile Enmity is roughly 330 VE
- Use this test to get an approximation of the true VE value of the action
- If player 2 failed to take hate, then the VE is 0 and you are done!
- If the VE value was above 1 (aka hate was shifted), move to step 3
- This test alone is not good enough to determine the exact VE of an action - it only estimates
Step 3
- Conduct a test similar to Test 12A - the test used to determine the exact VE of Provoke
- It is safe to assume that the final VE value will be a multiple of 5
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I think that you can really cut a couple of corners when testing abilities. There seem to be a lot of repetitive values out there even with just our limited information at this point. This is how I would formally conduct a study of an action's Volatile Enmity though.
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Conclusions
I want to thank Elipse/Suwiside and Ryoii/Nomomii again for their help in conducting these tests. I think we're really making great strides in testing now ever since the first numbers were matched. We now know how both the Cumulative and Volatile Enmity systems work and how Enmity Gear works for at least Cumulative Enmity. The second finding alone leads to a great deal of strategy discussion as mages almost always stress negative enmity enhancement and tanks certainly stress positive enmity enhancement from gear.
Here is the summary of our findings this post...
- The natural decay rate of Volatile Enmity is a static -60 VE per second
- Enmity Gear provides a direct percentage modification of Cumulative Enmity
Final CE = [Base CE] x { 1 + [Enmity Enhancement] / 100 }
- A method of testing Volatile Enmity values of actions is given
I encourage anyone interested in these tests to help contribute! There are a total of 360 spells or abilities in the game currently that do not involve Curing HP or Damage - we need to complete this table for CE and VE. Even contributing 1-2 actions would help a great deal!
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