A Scholar's Education (Guide)

Page 81 here has the most updated helix set

Tryin to update my long outdated nuke sets with the new gear I've got over the last 1+ year.
I seem to recall reading posts about club setups beating Akademos/Enki.
I've given a quick glance at it and honestly I'm a bit skeptic about it.
Confronting these combinations with Akademos/Enki

1) Daybreak/Ammurapi
+20mab, +24 mdmg, -29 INT, -2% damage

2) Maxentius/Ammurapi
+1 Mab, +15 Mdmg, -14 INT, -2% damage

Both provide a huge boost to macc though, but let's leave Macc and MBB out for a second and focus on the other stats.
I don't see any of those beating Aka/Enki for Helix.
#1 could maybe beat Aka/Enki for nukes but I'm very skeptic about it. Even if it does the difference is gonna be seriously small.
Am I wrong with this?

I've been thinking about Culminus in place of Ammurapi for Helix, that's a loss of mab (no big deal for Helix) and an increase of Mdmg but at the cost of 13 INT (and macc).



So I dunno, I don't see anything beating Aka/Enki, other than Raetic Staff +1 of course, or Daybreak/Maxentius if you're dualwielding I guess.
Please enlighten me, maybe I'm missing something really important.

So I went and did some really small tests, not sure if they mean anything, hoping for some useful comments about them.
All were performed on lv -1 Hornets outside of Bastok, I checked the level with Battlemod.
All were performed with matching day and weather tier2.


Daybreak/Ammurapi nuke
Akademos/Enki
I'm having a hard time believing these results honestly, but here they are. Can someone explain how the *** +20mab/+24mdmg wins despite a loss of 29INT and 2% dmg multiplier?


Helix Daybreak/Ammurapi
Helix Akademos/Enki
My set, which is clearly outdated and subpar, is the following:
ItemSet 373449
Amalric body: Path A
Amalric hands: Path D
Merlinic legs: Macc+6, Mab+30, MBB+9%
Merlinic feet: Macc+34, Mab+33, Occult Acumen+9
Lugh's Cape: INT+30, Macc/Mdmg+20, Mab+10

To my big surprise, at least for helix, I found out the following:
Mallquis+2 feet > my merlinic
Mallquis+2 legs > my merlinic
Mallquis+2 head > Cath Palug Crown
Crematio Earring > Malignance Earring
Shiva Ring +1 > Metamorph +1 (augmented)
Mallquis Ring > both Shiva and Freke (even without set bonus active)

I still don't explain some of these differences but so be it, make what you will of the small data I gathered guys :x

Would 4/5 Amalric +1 beat out your Merlinic augs?
Legs alone have +60 mab along with other stats. For free nukes that is. Or is it an inventory issue?

Yeah inventory/gil.
Pretty confident Amalric+1 legs and feet would beat my current options!

I'm still puzzled at some of those options beating others.
Like Daybreak/Ammurap over Akademos or Mallquis pieces for Helix.
/shrug

Good afternoon,

I've run the same tests as Sechs and we talked about it on Discord. Since you mentioned 4/5 Amalric+1, here are my results.

I did nuke several times, same numbers. Following you find cropped results I sent to Sechs already.

T5 | Free Nukes
T5 | Free Nukes | Ring Comparison
"Free" Helix*
Afterwards, I found O.Sash to be beating Acuity Belt +1 even at max range by a marginal number:

Same set as in my picture with following alteration:
O.Sash (21') === 4945 (Acuity Belt +1: 4908)
O.Sash+Culminus (21') === 5426


*This started the whole machinery between Sechs and me, as I'm working on optimizing my free helix sets, as I am quite often SCH in Dynamis, where it is quite difficult to land a MB Helix because of all the WS spam.

Might be due to the low level mobs, since as dINT gets higher the multiplier goes down (or for T1s at least, INT just stops adding damage). You're basically setting up a situation where Magic Damage shines.

Yeah Matoja sent me those numbers and I couldn't believe them because some of those didn't make sense.
They still DON'T make sense to me, but whatever lol, they're real :D

The Daybreak vs Akademos on free nukes is a really small victory btw, it's barely better. It has to be said though that was with perfect conditions for Akademos (matching day/weather). If you're gonna nuke on non-matching elements then this difference will become slightly higher because you're gonna lose Akademos' 2% damage bonus.


Oh btw me and Matoja also tested Culminus vs Ammurapi for non-MB helix, and Culminus wins by 500ish damage.



@Isiolia
For Nukes I think you might be right (we used T5 anyway, not T1), but for Helix it should be slightly different and INT usually grants a bigger contribution? But you're right, we're gonna perform a small test on Apex mobs sooner or later.

Is that ring Metamorph +1? The green one.


Why you gotta say that. Now I gotta farm it and have more Inventory -1!!!

Your INT diff on daybreak wouldn’t be 29INT it would be 24. 13 vs 12+15+10. Also, your MAB wouldn’t be +20 Mab it would be +25. So 25MAB 24mdng vs 24INT 2%. That would convince me it would win even with the 2% boost on Akademos especially on a lv1 where intdif won’t be adding much more damage.

But the daybreak has +24mdg which with helixes should weigh more than INT. You showed the weight of mdmg with your cumulus shield tests above.

I'm partially colourblind so I'm not sure.
In my tests on helix I used Metamorph+1 but Shiva+1 beats it and Mallquis Ring beats Metamorph, Shiva and Freke for free helix non-MB.

Matoja and me run more tests, he's gonna post numbers soon.
Tl;dr to answer to Isiolia's well put issue:

Free Helix results were in line with Lv1 targets, we didn't notice any difference there.

Free nukes results were different. Akademos was winning there by a small margin over Daybreak (with matching weather/day)



Now if you ask me one might wonder the utility of Free Helix set though. I mean, when are you ever gonna use it? Free nukes sure, but Free Helix? Can't think of anything atm outside of super niche stuff.



We should test MBB nukes and Helixes to see if anything works different, we didn't have time. It has to be said though you have less freedome there because of the MBB cap. I know for instance I'm gonna keep Akademos regardless in my MBB set because of that.

Is there any one place that has updated sets or is it just kind of everywhere through out the thread?

For me:

*Dynamis-D when MBing because of WS Spam is just impossible
*Solo-Omen (Bosses)
A: Killing trash against the time: Run around and pop helixes on trash mobs while you just "wait out their death". Or for example that last floor for Kei with worms: pop helixes on worms while you work on the ladybugs
B: Midbosses
> Glassy Craver: Unlucky times with view sync draw in/knockback that keeps failing your Skillchain > Atleast the Helix that is part of your skillchain is ticking now
> Glassy Thinker: Gets very spammy with TP moves at the end, including winds of promyvion.. quickly applying a 5k-6k helix until you are actually ready again for a helix MB or have stratagems again

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/32145/a-scholars-education-guide/74/

has a bunch of sets on one page

Awesome, thank you!

Sechs,

I worked on my T5 MB recently on Outer Rak bats and squeezed about 500 more dmg using Metamorph+1 R15 compared to Shiva+1 (havent farmed Odin's ring yet), which might backup Isiolia's statement by assuming the additional INT put me into another tier to squeeze out more dmg. (YMMV of course)

Did you have macc capped in your tests on high level bats?
When me and Matoja tested we had Idris Languor and Idris Focus on to minimize the influence of uncapped macc.
If you don't make sure about this the tests can be skewed because of Metamorph's macc+15 which clearly give the ring a noticeable edge when you're not macc-capped.


Personally in the end I decided to keep Akademos/Enki for all of my MBB spells but I moved to Daybreak/Ammurapi for both Helix and Spells when I'm not doing MBBB.
Why?
For two silly reasons:

1) in the best possible conditions (same day/weather as spell) Akademos is slighly ahead but the difference is not big. Not negligible either eh. This difference is gonna be even smaller if you don't have alligned weather/day when casting.

2) Day/Ammu have a shitton more macc, which is gonna make a noticeable difference on anything that matters. (when you're doing MBB you receive a small (?) macc bonus buit-in with the Magic burst itself, you don't get this when free nuking.


Also my free Helix set is, alas, almost the same as the free Nuke set I posted above.
Differences being ear2="Crematio Earring", waist="Acuity Belt +1" (augmented) and feet="Mallquis Clogs +2".
Technically mallquis legs, head and ring are better too, but I have inventory issues and, honestly, I don't see me using free-helix often enough to bother with the additional inventory space required.

Thanks for asking, it was something ive been meaning to ask everyone when they are doing their tests, I was not using languor/focus but getting the exact # 9/10 times for each build i was testing (2nd sch creating skill chains). That's something I will do from now on if that builds confidence. Acuity Belt is almost finished so I'll be doing some tests for myself there as well.

Took the mule back up to Outer Rakaznar to test other stuff
Thought it was interesting when I switched from Indi-Focus to Indi-INT..
Exported Gear:

Does anyone know if Helix generate TP on the target?

Like anything that does damage to a target yes. The DoT does not however

That's overstatement. Quick Draw doesnt feed TP. Blood Pacts dont feed TP. There is probably more.

hoho.

So the initial proc will generate TP but not the subsequent tics.

I know you I know you probably know this already, but the community usually refers to Helixes' dot as "tocks", that's because unlike any other dot in the game they proc every ~10 seconds and not every ~3 seconds like all the game's "ticks"

Indeed, I knew they were called tocks, but didn't know why, so thanks :D

Why Slipor Sash under PDT set and Carrier Sash under MDT? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Should augmented Marin Staff +1 be getting a nod over Akademos now? Assuming you have the augments elsewhere to make up for -10 MBD? Seems like a really solid option, especially on something like Kirin/Kouryu.

mdt set has lots of magic evasion giving it a chance to resist, carrier boosts that chance.
pdt set is unlikely to resist even if carrier is in the set. So, add some MDB in the off chance you're hit with magic anyway.
If we discount the MB+10, then yes.

	Akademos	_Marin
INT+	27~32	_32~37
MND+	12	_22
mAcc+	10~25	_55
MAB+	53~58	_68
mDMG+	217	_217
mAcc Skill+	228	_228
Refresh+	1	0
weather/day+	2	0
Magic Burst+	10	0
Fast Cast+	0	3
Wind(MAB)+	0	11