Tachi: Ageha's Additional Effect

As the WS description states, 25% defense down for 3 minutes at (supposedly) 3000tp. A ls friend says the additional effect barely procs. I wanted to test this feature out on SAM, because its a huge bonus to dot with that defense down. I was thinking full Flamma+1, using same set I do for Leg Sweep/Hobaku. Does anyone know how to confirm if this additional effect actually lands? I am not seeing any current ilvl information on ageha, which includes full macc sets etc.

For instance, when I use the ability, is there any way to see which debuffs a mob currently has on it, so I can test the proc rate and if it is indeed partial or full land? I was wondering how people were stating it doesn't land when there is no real solid way to see the additional effect (unless you want 1.5-3minutes for it to wear off).

I'm guessing the update this month may fix this ws also. Any thoughts on how to properly re-test this ws?

It has been tested before in this thread

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/30082/tachi-ageha-defense-down-tests/

Maybe you can steal some ideas from it


You can find a mob that checks High defense without Ageha and checks normal if it lands. That would be the easier way if you don't want to wait for 3 minutes everytime.

If the proc does become 100%, would it be used? I imagine it would be. With a 3 minute duration at the small cost of 1k TP. It mentions that it overwrites Angon and Gungnir's AE but what else would it overwrite? I'm assuming it will stack with dia.

Additional idea, you could try this on Mastop since Emetic Discharge would be great to 1) know if it landed and 2) remove it from mastop to immediately reaply.

This is good to know. Will try it on Mastop or Taxe't and see what I find.

Just as a point, that thread linked above is 5 years old, and we certainly have far more macc now than back then. I was hoping to see a bit more updated information on this, as I never see people talk about using it. But I will look into it regardless. I think the update this month may finally fix ws like this and shockwave to actually be worth using.

And this weaponskill would absolutely be used by every SAM worth a damn IMO (assuming it lands and people have a set for it). Its Damage + Angon, which requires no merits. 3minutes unresisted is tripled angon's timer when maxed, and is still longer duration when resisted. The base 25% defense down can be spammed and doesn't operate on a timer, so its a pretty clean way to start a fight off, which benefits the whole group.

Get your Charisma on

I don't really think the STR/CHR actually affects the additional effect, just the damage. Can anyone confirm?

I thought it fell into the same category as Leg sweep, where just using as much macc as possible procs the additional effect.

Shockwave already works well, I use it often and call it "Warrior / Dark Knight Sleepga". There are other WS's that also have Defense Down procs and they work just fine up to about CL130~135 and then they hit this brick wall of magic evasion. I've used Armor and Full Break on the higher tier content and the effect never lands, where as on lower tier stuff it lands no problem. So SE needs to add an insane magic accuracy buff to these WS's, like how Leg Sweep works basically.


Just use Flamma +1 with Acc / Magic Acc accessories, it's what I used on my other additional effect WS's.

It's generally assumed magical parts of ws use dstats as part of their macc similar to how spells do. It is however ridiculously hard to test such a thing so who knows

As far as how these ws and similar blu spells work... well they've promised they'd make them work before (and they always did work on the test server) but they always claimed they didn't know what was wrong or something. The issue seemed independent of macc or was something silly like had base macc that increase as you leveled up. So 99 ilvl people were failing on lvl 75s. That's part of why people stopped caring.. that and there were like 6 different bug reports accepted and SE even at one point linked few of them saying we get it stop making more lol

There isn't now nor ever has been any indication that dSTAT effects magic accuracy on weapon skills. especially since many magic weaponskills have no dSTAT term and all Physical WS's use dSTR.

Magic accuracy is based on the player skill value vs the enemy's magic evasion which is why additional effects from WS's tend to perform poorly on high level monsters. They have higher magic evasion then the player has magic accuracy and we don't buff magic acc on melee's.

Just some quick random testing. I didn't do lengthy testing because stopping and starting a stopwatch gets boring after the 15th time. Will do more extensive tests on stuff that matters later when I get off work (t1s, Apex, SR if I can survive that long). Used a stopwatch on my phone to time the duration. Trusts used were Sylvie/Koru/Cherukiki/Joachim. The main monster was Ascended Panopt/Panopt in Reisenjima, as he just happened to pop as I was killing. I don't know the exactly Level of this NM/mob, but I would guess 121 or so.

Mob: Ascended Panopt & Normal Panopt
TP: 1000 (used sekkanoki to confirm)
Gear Set:
Attempts: 3
Results: Never landed additional effect of defense down (not even o NQ Panopt)

TP: 2000~2999 (didn't record actual tp, it was above 2k)
Attempts: 3
Results: Landed 1.5minute defense down every time. Never landed 3min duration.

TP: 3000
Attempts: 7
Results: Landed 1.5 minute defense down. Never landed 3min duration.

There's a good possibility that Panopts are just resistant to magical effects from WSs, since they are magical themselves, so I am just taking the 1.5m duration to mean its being resisted due to that.

Here's photo of it wearing off:


For fun, I tried this on Quetz since I was in the area. Since I was the only one fighting it, I know it wasn't affected by any other defense down at the time.
TP: 3000
Attempts: 6 (once with Assasin's)
Results: Never landed once (I waited the full 1.5m/3min to see if it would wear and it did not)

Its clear that Quetz is either very highly resistant to additional effects, or just immune. Not a huge sample size, but with assassin's (which I'm guessing is +50macc), I would have thought it would have landed.

From what I've seen, though, with my crappy macc set, it seems to work fine on fodder crap with 3k tp, but didn't land on 1k tp. Could just mean my set isn't good enough, or the monster has too good of meva for 1k to be potent enough. I'll try later on some Apex mobs and NMs particularly.

Well this topic is going on because they may adjust the effect rate this next patch meaning that skill may get more powerful.

They are highly resistant to magic in general, and vorseals can screw with tests. Testing in Reisen is kind of like testing in Abyssea, far too many environmental variables. My suggestion would be Apex mobs, Crawlers / Efts / Raptors in Moh Gates would be a good spot, that's where I tested all my Break WS and Shattersoul, really big HP pool and their defense stat is known.

Well right, That's why I posted this today. I didn't want us to get to post-patch and then say "the WS has been fixed" when we really had no recent empirical evidence to base it off of. Would rather have a decent sample size/eyeballing before the patch, and then a retest post-update to see how and where the changes to additional effect were. Specifically, Tachi: Ageha.

Right now, I'm not seeing any 3minute durations landed on reisenjima Panopts. Will try other mobs to see if its a resistance thing.

Bleh, I completely forgot about Vorseals. That will surely skew the accuracy in my favor. Thanks for the catch. Will move locations.

Ah ok, Thank you for the hard work then.

Yeah Shattersoul worked amazing on crawlers but failed miserably on crabs. I had this idea while CPing PLD of using Shattersoul for darknness SC and MB's. Figured out that Magic Defense Down must be water element. Defense Down is wind element to gotta make sure your target isn't Wind resistant.

Magic defense is water-based and Magic defense down effects is thunder-based. And water is weakened by thunder
Malaise has a thunder element icon for the geomancy magic defense down effect which is thunder based.

That is exactly what I though (MDef down being thunder) until I tested on crabs and it absolutely wouldn't land on any water based mobs. You have the elementals wrong, thunder defeats water, water defeats fire, fire defeats ice and so forth.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Elements

Thunder -> Water -> Fire -> Ice -> Wind -> Stone -> Thunder
Light <--> Dark

Thus if Shattersouls effect was thunder based it would easily land on crabs.

Try harder.

Should note that it's not always so simple. The element a debuff is isn't necessarily the element used when calculating resistance. This is pretty much always the case in multi element effects

For example Blastbomb has a fire icon.. and the dmg is indeed fire based. The bind is still ice. Also occasionally the element for resistance is different than the element of the debuff (as noted by trial counts)itself. Off hand the main example I can think of is impact where resist is dark but all the various stat downs have different various elements. The addle debuff itself was tested to have no element but the spell was fire. Or enervation which is dark resist but the mdb down is thunder and the def down is wind

To the above def down on panopts thing. Def down is fairly consistently placed as wind for the debuffs element and wind for resist when it is a single debuff and panopts are dark/earth so if anything they should be extra weak to it.

Also to go along with testing if you don't want to fight something strong that can absorb you can always do the old method of debuff transfer via limules

Can you elaborate on the debuff transfer method? I am not familiar.

you put a debuff onto something that can transfer debuffs (like a light based limule) and have it spit back onto you so that you can see the change in your own stats. makes it easier to calculate changes this way.

It also potentially saves time on figuring out duration left as you get the remaining duration it would have. Limules are nice because they only have 2 moves though the fire based ones don't have it so you just kill them

Got a chance to do some additional tests, this time on Apex Raptors. They are between lvl 125-127. Below are my findings with Ageha landing so far.

I figured I'd include any notes of which weapon/skill/buffs I may have received that would in some way improve my macc. Deacon Blade is a standard 119 weapon (which is +188 macc skill), so this is not factoring in someone using a AG REMA, which has 242 Magic Accuracy Skill. Obviously that would give the player better macc.

My Macc is 7 less for raptor, because i forgot my Etana ring for those sets of tests.

I included my previous tests with Ascended, and I removed the tests I did on NQ Panopt.

* next to an x means the tp was not exactly at 1k/2k. I only did a handful of 2k tp tests, because its harder to get it to exactly 2k, and I wanted to be as precise as possible. 1000/3000 is easier to land on SAM with Sekkanoki/Capping TP.

I have 2 additional tests which are highlighted, but they were messed up due to me killing the monster/it using a buff. I just left it in the spreadsheet.(Eruca are a bad mob to use since the use defense bonus, which overwrite's Ageha's defense down effect)

Gear used:

Data




From my tests, you can see that with 3000TP, Panopts partially resisted every Ageha additional effect, and fully resisted the ones used at 1000TP. I'm sure Vorseals could play into the equation somehow, but Panopts are magical based also, which could be the reason why a full duration never landed. I can't confirm the level of Ascended Panopt, but I'd imagine they are close to 125. In any case, with 3000 TP, it landed every single time, for a 1.5minute duration. with 1000TP, it never landed. The two I did with 2000~ tp also landed (for partial). This gives some evidence that higher TP = higher modifier for magic accuracy.

Raptors, on the other hand, never partially resisted my Ageha AE for a half duration, but they did fully resist it a few of them (done at 1k tp). The tests show they never resisted once at 3k tp, and the ones done at 2k TP weren't resisted either.

BG wiki shows no macc values for the respective TP amounts, so I have no base modifier to work with. For what its worth, the description for Tachi:Ageha specifically says "Chance of lowering target's defense varies with TP."

I know this is only 25 tests so far, so I'll get back to doing more with a variety of other monsters. Keep it mind it's quite cumbersome using Ageha and then waiting 1.5 minutes/3minutes to see it wear off (I wish there was a plugin that could see mob debuffs). I guess I could do the Limule method, but I wanted to at least fight a monster with reasonable stats we know.

Anyways, from what I'm seeing from these tests, Tachi: Ageha is quite accurate when used with a good macc set. I think the SAM community should reconsider using it, or at the very least, test it yourself. Obviously its best used at 3000TP. Even if the additional effect is partial for 1.5 minutes, that's still a great 25% defense down that can be utilized at the start of fights to greatly improve SAM DOT, which is spammable and lasts longer than Angon. A full land would be 3 minutes of 25% defense down. That is substantial.

I would encourage any REMA SAM's, if possible, to please try using Ageha on your next Omen/T3/T4/Ambuscade run at the start for 3000 TP, and report back if it is wearing off after 1.5/3minutes. Since those weapons have much higher macc skill, would make for a better end-game test case to confirm if this WS is more useful than we thought it originally was in 2012.

edit: I should note that I was using Moonshade Earring, so the 1k tp tests were actually 1250, which may or may not have affected the land rate (most missed anyways).

So Ageha has no accuracy issues on mid 120's level monsters, it's procing and isn't broken. The problem might be getting it to stick on 130+ (Omen MB's are 139) NM's, I know I have issues with Break WS's on higher level stuff.

Certainly not broken by any means. 130+ content is the real challenge, but even if it wasn't landing, it would make it no less useful than attempting Tachi:Hobaku on Zerde. I believe all weaponskill additional effects suffer a harsh macc penalty the higher the content scales up. Or NMs could be flat-out immune to those added ws debuffs (I stated above Quetz resisted every Ageha, even with Assasin's drink). Even so, Ageha isn't seeing any significant penalty that other WS of the same type are likely seeing.

You may be able to land the additional effect on Omen Bosses, if it is timed during its casting (and using a 269 weapon). I have noticed significantly reduced meva (or dark magic resistance) on bosses where I timed my aspirs during its casting. Was landing them unresisted. It may be that the perfect test case would be to try Ageha during a boss run when he is casting, and then wait for him to use Sphygian Sphere to remove the debuff.

As stated above, we're going to see an update next week to weapon skill additional effects, which makes me curious as to what they may be adjusting. Are they making the effect landing more accurate on higher content? If so, then debuffing weaponskill additional effects may be quite useful in endgame, where appropriate. We have shyed away from using them because they are notorious for not sticking. At least we have a bsseline to compare next week's update and see if there is a significant landing improvement.

I don't think it's as much of a penalty as it is monsters get huge amounts of magic evasion for every level added to them. We saw this with the evasion situation, monsters gaining 35 base evasion along with whatever AGI provided them. Ended up with T4 HELM's have over 2000 evasion and being essentially unhitable until SE scaled it down. Magic Evasion was the same, except for a long time GEO's Focus / Langour was broken and provided a far bigger bonus then it was supposed to so we never noticed. Magic Accuracy for WS's is based on your Weapon Skill + iLevel Weapon Skill + Magic Accuracy gear and then some bonus added to compensate for not using magic acc buffs and food on melee's.

I'm hoping SE is raising that bonus number so that additional effect's will land consistently on higher level stuff, I like using FB in a five step SC. Does Ageha have a good SC property to integrate it with a multi-step?

Fair point with the NM Meva scaling. Of course, we spend our time buffing DD with melee buffs and not macc ones, so we would never get to see the full effects of the additional effects, which probably wouldn't be worth it anyways.

There's now a Marine Stewpot, which increases your macc by a whopping 90. Its pricy, and party food, but it still gives comparable acc to sublime, so its an option for those who like eating gormet and losing it 5 minutes later.

I went back and read some of the 2011 comments on Ageha, and Proth had noted that it was landing back then, though, it doesn't say to what extent of effectiveness. SE improving this just means they notice it is lower than it should be, and we just ignore it. Kind of makes me wonder, are there any other weaponskills with additional effects that would be good if we could land them consistently? It would certainly add a new element to battles.

I used Ageha with Kottenzai, and it produced Compression. I was also able to close a darkness (probably from August's No Quarter?) on Apex last night. I'll have to check on a potential 4-5 step.

I should have mentioned that SAM natively gets 36 MACC through Gifts. I've only earned 5 so far.

Mostly the Great Axe WS's

Armor Break: -25% Defense Down
Weapon Break: -25% Attack Down
Shield Break: -40 Evasion
Full Break: -20 Evasion -12.5% Defense Down -12.5% Attack Down -20 Accuracy
Metatron Torment: -18.75% Defense Down

Shattersoul: -10 MDB
Death Blossom: -10 MEVD (estimated)
Infernal Scythe: -25% Attack Down

Some others are -10 accuracy or evasion which is kinda weak.

I've actually incorporated Full Break into a SC because it's Distortion property works well.
King's Justice -> Full Break -> Upheaval -> King's Justice -> Upheaval for double light.

Ageha is Compression/Scission, the Compression property lets it create Gravitation off a Detonation but because Compression is primary it can't create Distortion off Transfixion. So it would have to look like this.

Tachi: Yukikaze / Tachi: Jinpu -> Tachi: Ageha -> Tachi: Shoha -> Tachi: Kasha -> Tachi: Fudo for double light.

Or

Tachi: Yukikaze / Tachi: Jinpu -> Tachi: Ageha -> Tachi: Fudo for Darkness.

Someone might be able to come up with another linkage that works.