Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

Can I humbly ask to explain?
Sorry to ask, I guess.

Since TA is better than DA, the game checking for DA before TA would be bad, wouldn't it?

He's not saying that at all. He's just saying it doesn't matter that rdm has access to a lot of TA when you're factoring the value of DA to STP.

He says this because the metric to compare (for him) is average attacks per round (AAPR) in his example on the last page.

Order doesn't matter (except for some edge cases) because mathematically they all end up multiplied by each other and thus all have value. Those edge cases would be when a higher order value hits 100%, I do not know of any 100% TA builds in existing much less 100% QA builds.

There is a reason I included both the forum post and the resulting spreadsheet. The forum posts go deep into the math but its probably more then most want to read. The spreadsheet should be downloaded and you can just plug your values into to generate the average hits per attack for any given combination of gear. The math shows most of the old myths around multi-attack are just plain wrong. It's important to realize the thing we really want is the average attacks per round / swing. Compare the before and after, then compare that to the change in TP multiplier before and after, the larger percentage increase of the two is generally the better option.

I'm a bit lost somewhere here though.

It all started with me saying "DA has less impact than it would have without no multiattack at all, and RDM has >40% TA thanks to Temper 2. But thankfully TA gets calculated before DA so adding DA is not that bad! Things would be different if the order was the other way around"

To which Saevel quoted saying "order is irrelevant"

Now I wanted to understand how it's irrelevant.
I mean from my point of view, but clearly I must be missing something, adding DA to RDM is not too bad in the end THANKS to the fact that TA gets processed before, so TA would get in no way "damaged" by DA.
But if the order was the other way around, DA would actually be a small damage to your TA rate, no?
How is this "irrelevant"? What am I missing?

You're missing that he's not talking about the order of multi-attack. Adding DA increases your AAPR (Average attacks per round). It's not relevant that TA proc's first if you're looking at AAPR, you're still getting some marginal increase in AAPR, which can be translated directly into average TP per round. Then you can make your comparison to STP.

Alright! Then he simply misquoted or misunderstood my msg then, all clear! :D

Not unless you were at edge cases (or extreme values). This has been demonstrated with Mythic AM3 and KClub builds. You rarely get negative DPS and instead just get marginal if not non-existent increases. It goes back to that Single Attack Rate I was mentioning. SAR effectively represents the size of the pool that additional MA can act upon.

Basically as long as you have some remaining pool of SAR, then additional MA will never be negative.

I mean we can figure this out, right? Red mage would certainly be a good candidate with Temper2. Last I checked I'm getting 37 but I'm also not swapping weapons so let's assume best case 40. That's a good starting point.

Gleti's Knife/Ternion +1 - 6/4 (10)
Paeapua - 1
DM Aug Merlinic (5/5) - 4 cap? (20)
Balder earring - 1
Hetaroi ring - 2
Bleating Mantle - 2
Windbuffet belt +1 - 2

So 38 from gear, total 78? Dual-wielding that makes 5.12 swings per attack round on average, but with severe loss of accuracy and storetp compared to what you'd normally wear in those slots.

Mpu Gandring/Gleti would be better.

Also: THF may be better at getting close to the TA cap than RDM is, mostly because of gear

ItemSet 401249

83% Triple attack

Mpu Gandrig would bring it to 80%.

I also remembered I could add the Hoxne Torque to the temper set to make that 42, which would be 82%, so RDM still wins the total TA crown, however an 80% THF would absolutely destroy an 82% RDM in dps.

Edit: Atmas. In abyssea, you can get Lion (7), Alpha and Omega (10), and Apocalypse (15) for a total of 32 TA. Both RDM and THF easily hit 100% TA with this.

So what about QA? RDM has an overage of 14, so Swap Balder's to +1, Gleti's for Crep, and use Bunzi's Hat. 100 TA, 11 QA.

THF could also get 6% on hands/feet with Herc+4 TA, which it seems like you can get even without DM augs, so..83%.

edit: Okay starting from scratch and just adding.

Base JP/Merit/Trait: 19
Gandrig - 6 (25)
Gleti knife - 5 (30)
Empy hat - 6 (36)
Neck - 4 (40)
+2 ear - 5 (45)
Raiders - 1 (46)
Pil. Vest - 7 (53)
Herc gloves - 6 (59)
Gere - 5 (64)
Epona's - 3 (67)
Ambu cape - 2 (nice)
+1 Chiner's - 2 (71)
Gleti pants - 5 (76)
Herc boots - 6 (82)

We have a tie.

It's not an ambu cape, it's a reive cape.
Gleti's Knife is 6, not 5.

It's 83.

Ah, yeah damn I missed that. We're so close, red mages, we can almost out-ta a thief.

In an absolute sense for sure, but in some specific cases the resulting enspell pain might be worth it.

Ongo three-KIs strat comes to mind, even with the lower Enspell damage from lack of enspell gear, 70ish% triple attack might come up ahead on total pain.

I want to try now (:

Needs to be considered on a piece by piece basis, not entirely black or white. The floor is 42%, so putting all the trash gear on for for TA costs you a lot of enspell damage (that gets multiplied by crocea and composure) and gains you a tiny amount of TA on a per-piece basis.

Also you'd probably die to a spell or TP move.

What is life in the face of eternal magical sword glory


Definitely. However some pieces do not have that enspell damage, and some have very little, so there's probably be a breakpoint somewhere where it could be worth it.

Making Merlinic with Triple Attack DM augs is a gross concept tho

RDM:

42% - Capped Enhancing Temper II

12% - Gleti's/Genesis Shield with THF sub at ML30+

20% - 5/5 DM Chironic

1% - Clotharius Torque

1% - NQ Baldr Earring

2% - Windbuffet Belt +1 or Sailfi Belt +1

2% - Hetaroi Ring

2% - Bleating Mantle

1% - Paeapua

2% - Behemoth Steak +1

85% Triple Attack on RDM. 100% in Abyssea with just Atma of the Apocalypse.