Death Testing

I recently got Death. I've never done any testing to find formulas. Is there any specific methodology I can do to help with unlocking its secrets? In particular, how would I figure out if it's Elemental or Dark Magic (since I'm obviously capped in skill on both)?

Mithra with INT+15 merits, full Elemental and Dark Magic merits, full Ice and Thunder Magic Potency merits.

The resources say it's Dark Magic, which is more or less what I expected.

You can figure out it is Dark Magic by checking the Windower spells.lua resource file, but I just told you so there's no need.

In terms of testing, preliminarily you should go out and cast it 10 times on Level -1 monsters (starter area) while wearing a weapon and nothing else. This will tell whether there is a cap on the death proc rate (or if it can go up to 100%).

Next, some other tests would be:
1) Cast it on a low level NM, to see if all NMs are immune
2) If possible, figure out its damage formula (would be hard if it constantly one-shots).

Also while you're at it, /SCH and try Manifestation.

This is actually also in the resources and it does not stack.

The "requirements" field is poorly named, but it translates to:

I'm curious because it states it "consumes all MP", but, does that mean you need 100% MP to use the spell? Or, is it like Alexander/Astral Flow in that it consumes however much you have remaining? Does it have a minimum requirement? Does the potency or chance of occurring decrease with the MP spent? Do you still get EXP/items from a monster you kill with it? How often does it actually work?

Questions, questions questions!

What does the animation look like also? Meteor is different for mobs and players for example, as is comet iirc.

Alright. Somebody updated the FFXIclopedia page with most of the same data. Anyway, as far as I know, the animation is the same as monsters use. It consumes all MP even if you have Manafont or Manawell up.

Here is my raw test data for those that want to check the math:

I started in South Gustaberg on Huge Hornets. For reference, my naked Black Mage/Red Mage has 109 INT (+15 Merits), Magic Damage Bonus+31, Magic Attack Bonus+72. Here are all the numbers:

• 1 MP, no gear, Darksday: 60, 60, 60, 60, 65, 60, 60

• 1 MP, Hachirin-no-Obi only, Darksday: 65, 65

• 1 MP, Hachirin-no-Obi only, Firesday: 60

Next set of numbers increase the MP by 1 each, up to 20. All are completely naked.

• 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 86, 91, 96, 101, 106, 111, 116, 122, 127, 132, 137, 142, 147, 153, 158

At 20 MP while wearing INT+92, Magic Damage+20, Dark Magic+9, I did 158 damage (same as without gear). Adding Dark Staff for 1 more INT and Darkness+10%, I did 173.

Next set is in increments of 5 MP up to 20, all with Magic Attack Bonus +38 (Toro Cape, Barkarole Earring, Friomisi Earring) for a total of +100.

• 94 124 154 184

The gear adding +67 INT in the below numbers are Fast Cast pieces.

• 100 MP, Completely naked: 571

• 100 MP, +1 INT, Dark Staff: 627

• 100 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total),+3 INT: 664

• 100 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +70 INT: 664

• 100 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +71 INT, Dark Staff: 730

• 100 MP, Keraunos (+34 INT, +44 Magic Attack Bonus, Magic Damage+217): 717

• 100 MP, +44 Magic Attack Bonus, INT+100: 717

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +70 INT: 3064

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +71 INT, Dark Staff: 3370

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +71 INT, Dark Staff, Manawell (+15% damage): 3370

I then moved to Kamihr Drifts and fought Cicatricose Raaz (level 111):

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +3 INT: 1504, 2406

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +71 INT, Dark Staff: 3370

So if I read this correctly, the formula is:

• (32 + (3*MP)) * Magic Attack Bonus * Dark Affinity

The only time I got an instant kill was with this:

• 500 MP, +38 Magic Attack Bonus (+100 total), +3 INT, Elemental Seal

So odds are really low.

That would imply that the instant kill is based on magic accuracy since you were naked through most of the testing.

Do you have an example of your maximum damage on it? And also possibly a magic burst?

I'm just curious if we're going to be magic bursting 150k with full MP :-) or if we're never going to touch this spell in real life.

Also wonder if we should be using our Myrkr set to nuke Death lol.

Magic Burst caps at 99999. It's very easy to hit if you have Pixie Hairpin +1, Archon Ring, and Voidstorm II, so it's probably not worth buying stuff just for it.

The spell is way more useful than you'd expect. For example, in Sinister Reign, you can defeat Morimar with two bursts of it and most of the others with three to four bursts. You can probably instant-kill a lot of things so long as it's not dark-resistant.

I'm actually pretty interested in getting this spell now. Its damage/MP is probably bad in most situations, but it has the benefit of not being based off dINT. Also, we hadn't had a real need for serious MP restoration in a long time before this spell, so it enables us to take advantage of extra Refresh sources.

You could imagine a magic damage friendly situation where you have enough sources of Refresh to sustain your normal nuking (with Spaekona's) and can mix a Death + Aspir III in when it comes up.

To clarify, this spell is moderately bad Damage/MP (kind of like a Tier 7 nuke) but pretty good Damage/Time. Ultimately we are looking to optimize Damage/Time, but we have to balance the strain on our MP. It could have a place in our arsenal, particularly as a strategic nuke.


To Acadina:
You cast it a lot of times (more than 20) and didn't report any resists. Did you observe any? The spell's damage might be unresistable, with the resist state being wasted on its additional effect.

I use it like comet and impact with max ocult occumen + store to to raise to for Myrkr
Death proc not so often but 1mp spell are pretty cool

Has this changed since the days of Abyssea and Wildfire with Primeval Brew? I distinctly remember that being a text display cap, but the actual damage cap being more/unreachable. I'm sure Byrth knows.

Your text to link here...

^ Might be because Barrage is multiple hits summed together.

All that indicates is that they forgot to cap Barrage damage to 99,999, which means their server code is even worse than we thought previously. There should have been a common pathway in the assembly of a damage number for the action packet, which is where they could have put the cap, but that's not what they did.


Regardless, yeah. Actual damage is unlikely to be capped at 99,999. It simply doesn't overflow anymore. The incoming action packet is bitpacked and has a 17 bit parameter that is commonly the damage number. The maximum value it can represent is 2^17-1 = 131071. SE chose to cap this at 99,999 to avoid the awkward overflow we saw with brews in Abyssea.


Trivia:
Additional Effects are also 17 bits, but spike/counter effects are 14 bits (16383 max). IIRC you can see spike values wrap around sometimes with Dread Spikes.




Edit:
Still interested in finding out whether or not Death damage ever resists.
Also, would be nice to know if it gives TP via Occult Acumen. Being able to do Death -> 2k MP spent -> >2000TP return -> Myrkr would make the spell essentially free.

Death damage can be resisted. I got resists when naked testing in Kamihr.

The way to test if you're doing more than 99,999 damage is to first calculate Morimar's HP over the battle without using damage over time (I don't think he has Regen, either), then next time you fight him, do a full damage burst and check his HP percentage before and after. I was already hitting 99,999 bursts on him before I got Pixie Hairpin +1, so you can theoretically do way more (rough guess of ~150-160k).

Death does trigger Occult Acumen. Before I added more Occult Acumen to my set, I was getting about 800 TP per ~1500 MP cast. Someone I know says he gets ~1800 TP, but I don't know what specific gear he wears (although I do know he uses Perdition Slops) or how much MP he uses per cast.

Also, if you have good Aspir gear and Refresh on at cast, you can follow up with Aspir III burst for over 1000. My record is Gulltop with a little over 1500. My Aspir gear is far from optimal, too, so it might even be possible to get all your MP back under the right circumstances (or at least get most of it back, then Myrkr the rest).

Couple more tests if you would be so kind:

1. Cast naked going /whm (or any other non fast cast subjob). Please determine cast time and recast time.

2. Since it is dark magic, please check to see if adding dark magic skill will raise the damage dealt.

Slightly off topic but if I'm understanding you correctly. Does parser take the capped 99,999 dmg or does it calculate the real dmg into your parse?

I had like 30 minutes to play around with death during lunch time. Got the spell yesterday night.

Always with full mp (around 1600). Set equiped : Keraunos +22 INT mab/macc +20 +20 - Full Helios with 9~10 INT - MAB/MACC +20 +20 - Occult accumen 9~10 - Mab earrings - Shiva ring+1 / archon ring. Bane cape with +10dark skill. (i'll try tonight with pixie hairpin +1)

Target : Matamata type mobs @ wkr HP

Death proced 5 times out of 6.
I did 33K+ damage when it didn't proc.
I got 1500 TP return, so it's around 840Mp returned. On aspirable mobs, you can get to full mp easely.

Target WKR Shark
With full mp, spell alone was doing 15K+ (Thunder 6 11.5k)
On magic bursts, Death was consistently doing 30k when Thunder IV-V can easily do the same numbers.
Following the magic burst with aspir III was only possible if i'm not closing the skillchain. The time it takes for refresh to proc is a bit too long.

So the spell is good for certain type of mobs. But consuming all mp is not a problem whatsoever.

More tests tonight.

Stolen from the resource files:

3 seconds casting time
52 seconds recast time
180 seconds recast time
Dark elemental Dark Magic

I think 52 seconds is incorrect.

I saw near 2 minutes when I was casting without Haste and down to 1 minute with capped haste/fastcast

My bad (I shouldn't post at work). "recast=52" is the equivalent of "180 seconds recast".

Here is some testing in video we did tonight on Mephitas.

You won't see capped damage on him (still pretty good), but it demonstrates the mechanics with death > aspir III and tp return.

The skillchain is at the start of the fight.

Gearset used for Death and Aspir in this video :
ItemSet 337521 ItemSet 337523

So macc/darkskill is useless if looking to max dmg on burst?

It seems Dark magic skill is useless.

Unlike Meteor, Death can be resisted so Magic accuracy is still necessary, even if it's not taken into account in the damage formula.

While I'm a big fan of the 1700 MB Aspir 3s after Death, I'm a much bigger fan of Manawell+tier6 > Death.



I wish I took screenshots of August or Escha tier3 instead, but this illustrates the idea just as well. August, for example, always takes 99K from MB Death and usually 40-60K from tier6 depending on buffs/bolster.

If the mob is somehow still alive after the first volley, I get plenty of MP back from Myrkr/Sub/Aspir3+2 for tier6/5 for the second volley.

-

By the way, I only have eyeball examples, but I'm fairly sure Death is being damage capped. I've landed 75K Deaths on NMs in Escha without MB, but when I MB Death the same NM, which does 99K, the HP dropped doesn't seem as drastically different as you'd think it'd be.

Anyone have lua function for death? tried sets.midcast.Death = sets.midcast['Elemental Magic'] and i get error.

Nvm, solved.