Bushido - The Way Of The Samurai (A Guide) V. 2.0

Sorry this is a few days late. I've bolded the statement that really proves my point above. If you hit attack cap without soul voice on floors 1,2,3, then why would you use soul voice on those floors and not save it for the 1 floor that you need it to stay attack capped. If you don't have soul voice on floor 4, then don't use PDL at all, which was my whole thing.

How many situations have you mapped out in the game where you know that you can use 10% PDL but not 20% PDL. Do you know any? I don't.

I literally said I haven't tested where any break points are, and asked if you knew where any were.

Thanks for being condescending I guess.

So what is the difference over a run between using just ephramad's vs. normal ring without soul voice? 10k average? 20k?

And what is your non-cornelia/ephramad's ring? Epam? Niqmaddu? Regal? Sroda?

Mathmatically, the difference between Epaminonda's Ring and Regal Ring on paper is very very slim. Favoring Regal Ring if not attack capped, so theoretically, if you have Ephramad's Ring and you aren't attack capped, then it should still be slightly better than Epam.

Is that not obviously condescending?

I've not asked you to provide math (I said mapped). I asked you to provide proof (which you implied you had).

You need some form of defense down in addition to dia 3 and light shot

To use additional PDL, beyond let's say am3/aria

With minuet and chaos roll.
SV or not.

Armor break, tachi ageha, tenebral, tourbillion
I think box step is separate

That being said I don't see the value in the pdl ring if you are looking to do something like maximize oddessy c
You aren't applying defense down to every mob.

The argument has never been about which vr ring to choose.

From the start I've been trying to answer this question.

If I'm in a position where I think PDL gear is affecting the damage of a WS, how much PDL gear should I use:

My argument is that you should use all of it. If you have 30% that is relevant you should use 30%. If you only have 20% that is relevant, then just use 20%. You're never going to know if you're only actually using 10% (Unless you've done extensive testing to know for sure that).

Cornelia's, Ephramad's, Lehko's, makes no difference to me. Each has very valid use cases.

The one caveat is that you do have access to PDL gear that isn't relevant, specifically R30 Mpaca's hose, I don't think there is any real scenario where the PDL from that item provides more benefit over Nyame path B.

There is no magic one-size-fits-all answer as that depends on your attack vs mob def, so if you're in a position where you think PDL matters, use enough PDL until you think it no longer matters.

And that's fine, for me, I always feel like it all matters if it matters at all. I've not come across any situation in the game where I've felt like only this much matters but no more. So I have one set with 0% PDL and I have a set with all the PDL.

They're all excellent rings, altough I don't think Lehko, while useful, shines particularly for SAM over the other 2, but there's still situations where it's super nice for sure.

To me Ephramad has higher potential. In situations where you CAN make full use of it, it's gonna beat Cornelia's quite easily, with a large margin.
The thing is just that, its performance is gonna change a lot wether or not you can make use of its PDL.
Cornelia's, instead, is going to perform worse than Ephramad's best situation, but it's gonna perform more or less always the same (except for situations where your WS would hit for 99k even before Cornelia).
Double the relevance for Cornelia in situations where you can exploit Hybrids.

For the rest, Nynja already perfectly replied to you. Love it or hate it but there is no one-fits-all answer to the PDL answer. It's the main reason why some people don't love PDL after all, no?

Stage 5 Prime is gonna give you ~10PDL.
Non SV Aria of Passion is gonna give you ~26%, so we're already at ~32%.

If on a specific target you cap att at, say, 4000 Attack, you're gonna need at least ~1280 (~2160 with SV) more att to "cap" that PDL we mentioned.
Make it ~1680 (~2560 SV) if you want to add Ephramad.

Now this is an extremely silly example, but it's just to give you a rough idea of how much more att it would take you to "fill" the higher roof granted by PDL.

I find myself enjoying the 27-28 acc on Ephramad's as much as the STR/PDL. WS sets typically find themselves at much lower acc values than TP sets, and Ephramad's helps alleviate that a bit. Ephramad's is also useful for both single and multi-hit WSs while Cornelia's is moreso limited to single-hit WSs.

You're still trying to make this a comparison between Ephramad and Cornelia. I don't care about that comparison, that's easy. Do you want an all the time bonus, pick Cornelia. Do you want a decent WS ring, that is BIS when the right conditions are met, pick Ephramad. When ephramad is decent it will never be better than Cornelia, everyone understands that, but when it is better than Cornelia, it's better. Make you're choice. If you don't like it, wait for a weekly reset and make you're choice again.


There is not a one-size-fits-all answer only if you want to make it needlessly complicated.

Anecdotal/theoretical example aside, unless you've actually gone into sheol c and figured out the def value of all 27* mob types in the content, you'll never know from mob to mob what you need.

Then again, I've never been one of those people that has 20 different acc sets for melee. That was always just needlessly convoluted to me.

There are alway's tradeoffs. Cornelia's is useful for magic WS (not that sam has pure magic ws that are worth using, but I have done hilarious Thunder/Raiden thrusts on occasion). Ephramad's is completely useless for those.

HOW MUCH DEFENSE DOWN CAN YOU APPLY

Can you read? That's why I have a 0% PDL set.

Edit: You guys are acting like I'm over here running around in a max pdl set fighting sheol gaol bosses with trust... and have the ironic gall to ask if I'm dense.

Sure.

Edit2:
For the record I have

• One 0% PDL set for when I don't think I'm at attack cap, or I think I'm not making use of aria PDL fully.

• One MAX PDL set for when I think I'm at attack cap and beyond.

What I don't have is

• 5% PDL set for when I think I'm only using 5% PDL

• 10% PDL set for when I think I'm only using 10% PDL

• 15% PDL set for when I think I'm only using 15% PDL

• 20% PDL set for when I think I'm only using 20% PDL

• 25% PDL set for when I think I'm only using 25% PDL

• etc. before you guys think it might not be complete overkill to just stop at 25%

Because use case 2 is stupid and unknowable unless you literally go on a quest to track every single mob in the game's defense value to know which set you should be using.

Depends on setup, and content as sortie/gaol level nms resist def down if its not ooze/angon. If you just want a blanket amount, no ws;

Dia 3 + LS: 23%
steps: 5~23%
Ooze: 33%
Frailty: varies on content and how nerfed bubbles are but idris base is about 20% before boosted JA at 50% nerf iirc

Now the other end of that is how much can you skyrocket your atk and not need def down, this is primarily for trash and the answer is quite a lot +7 crooked chaos on just a lucky is already +56% atk bonus, no 11, no drk bonus so thats 15%~ lost atk boost. Multiplying off a already sky high base atk from hm/minuets you can get to stupid levels

Your answer is based on how much defense down you can apply
more defense down : more pdl can be used.

Assuming you are running around with brd and cor buffs.
You are at the starting gate.

The more defense down the more you can make swaps
its really easy to explain/gear with dnc because its got great swaps
like the pdl ammo and the pdl earring that allow you to keep some of the more intensive wsd pieces while adding more pdl.
and you are boxsteping everything

I have, I have no problem dealing damage with my setup. My experience with PDL apparently has been vastly different from yours for some reason.

With all due respect, this entire conversation is missing Shadowmeld's point entirely.

He's said, repeatedly, that he doesn't believe in having multiple tiers of PDL sets and he doesn't personally use them. He's also said it's difficult to know on a mob-by-mob basis exactly how much PDL he needs to use. He's asked others if they know exactly how much PDL to use in each situation and then swap into that exact amount of PDL.

In return, everyone is mansplaining how PDL works.

Test it. And. Find out.

OK, just to clarify so we're all on the same page here though...

Dodik has tested extensively so he knows exactly which PDL value (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25) to use on every single pack of the 46 mobs in Sheol: C, for each of the 4 different floors (184 unique mobs) and knows this whether songs are SV or not, whether Aria is on, and whether Aria is stage 4 or 5, and adjusts this based on the result of the Chaos roll he has active...

But he doesn't want to share that information, because it's too complicated. So he's asking you to test it for yourself.

That's just Sheol C, of course...how about Ou, Gin, Kin, Dhartok, Aita, Perfidien, every Apex and Locus mob, and all 17 Gaol bosses at all 25 vengeance levels?

Of course it's easy to always toggle back and forth between his 7 PDL sets to make optimal use of every WS, since he did all the testing. Now you should do it too.