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Odd Jobs Community Thread

Discussion in 'Community' started by deer, Jan 7, 2021.

  1. deer
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    Odd Jobs Community Thread

    This is a community thread for all things odd jobbed, in similar spirit to the Islander Community Thread. In fact, islanders are themselves considered to be odd jobs in their own right; they are among campers and permabeginners when it comes to odd jobs that are typically recognized on rankings, because the game itself labels them differently (“Beginner”). However, while all three of these jobs share the common trait of never taking first job advancement, it is not true in general that odd jobs do not take first job advancement.

    You may have heard of some odd jobs:
    Others are considerably more obscure (you might be surprised with just how many have already been invented… and how many are yet to be invented!):
    The common trait of all odd jobs is that they are all unusual & suboptimal builds that make use of aspects of the game that mainstream (non-odd) jobs do not. Odd-jobbed characters are challenging to play, unusual to find, and cause us to ask questions about MapleStory that we would never have otherwise asked. It is for these reasons that odd jobs have been an important (if perhaps very small) part of MapleStory since even before the release of MapleGlobal (GMS).

    It is still possible to play and explore odd jobs in newer (post-big-bang, post-chaos, etc.) versions of MapleStory, but their place in the game has typically been crippled, or removed entirely (e.g. STR mages became impossible with the release of Big Bang). Add to that the other host of reasons why people still desire to play pre-big-bang versions of MapleStory, and in modern times there seems to be little hope for odd jobs and their subculture — at least, unless they can still survive on pre-big-bang MapleStory private servers.

    Stuff specific to Oddjobs (the guild)

    Some of you may recognize me as “deer” (or by my IGNs like cervid, capreolina, cervine, hydropotina, and rangifer) and know that I’m the leader of the Oddjobs guild. This thread is inevitably — at least for the time being — going to be Oddjobs-centric, but I don’t want to give the impression that just because I started this thread, it must be for Oddjobs-related things only. All odd-job-related stuff is welcome here!

    Resources

    Informational
    Social
     
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    To start things off, I'll be duplicating the diary of my new pugilist here ^^; This is a good place to put it, and I don't want to stink up the forums any more by creating another thread just for this little diary! (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    EDIT: It seems that most emojis (except the sparkles emoji? haha) don't work on this forum...? Might be on my end, but in any case, the entries will look a little different here.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    rangifer’s diary: pt. i

    I’ve never tried doing a MapleStory diary, but since I’ve just started a new character, I figured I’d give it a go ^^. This will be a diary for rangifer, the pugilist! The first entry is very short (barely its own entry), so both the first and second entries will be condensed into this post.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    The character is created… and her name shall be rangifer .

    And so it is.

    [​IMG]

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    rangifer is shaping up nicely~! Been leveling up with fellow Oddjobs member Boymoder (Kelsey) the STRlord, who is also in the guild with her F/P gishlet Tacgnol, and her permabeginner Taima!

    Here I am at level 17 doing Nautilus Harbour quests (and looking kinda moody)…

    [​IMG]

    Once we hit level 21, we headed off to Kerning City!… to do Shumi’s Lost Coin . Let’s just say that Kelsey is a little more experienced with JQs than I am …

    Once that quest was done, it was the greatest time of all: KPQ time! We did quite a number of KPQs, with some very nice people, in some large (5–6 person) parties . Boymoder has been finding her claw to actually be quite useful, so we almost had people fooled that we were just a normal brawler-to-be and assassin-to-be, at least until Boymoder pulled out the ol’ Gold Surfboard . As an aside, readers unfamiliar with STRlords should know that using a claw during first job means basic attacking, not using Lucky Seven, because Lucky Seven has its own special-sauce damage formula that is very, very bad for STRlords !

    At some point, most people decided it was time to take a break, so Boymoder and I took a break too, and chatted with a level 82 white knight ♘ in Kerning City who seemed mildly surprised that seasoned MapleLegends players would go and make some crappy odd-jobbed characters . Also, Boymoder took this opportunity to scroll a sweet 59 WATK Monkey Wrench , which is her main melee weapon for now! The Monkey Wrench is a classic weapon for woodmen, brigands, and of course STRlords, due to it being equippable not just by warriors, but also by archers and by rogues~

    Then our friend NoobIet (Noobiet), the dagger warrior ️️️️, logged on! And he was level 21, so it was time to KPQ!! Thus commenced the first-ever all-Oddjobs PQ :

    [​IMG]

    Pictured: The Oddjobs guild takes down King Slime. Look at those big numbers!!

    You can actually watch the full PQ on the Oddjobs YouTube channel ️️!

    We did a few PQs together as an odd-jobbed trio, and then it was ta-ta for now! rangifer made it from level 2 to level 27 in a single session, wowie!! I aspire to some day make it to third job so I can transform, and do that cool ground pounding thing! We’ll see~~ ✨
     
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  3. Chris
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    I've never loved a thread so much in my life. OnionGirlLove
     
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    Never heard of a Claw-puncher before and it's a cool idea but how can you not call that a ditsin.
     
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    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. ii

    I started off today by picking up some papers , for the purpose of wrapping presents and so on (even if Christmas isn’t for another 11.5 months or so…), and one of the characters who I like to do this with is my I/L ️ magelet, cervine. Now, technically this is a diary for rangifer, not cervine (nor any of my other characters), but… whatever. I’ve been farming up colourful papers at Red Kentauruses for a while now; I like to sit at the bottom of the map and gather them alternately on the left and right side, only to maul them repeatedly — and I do mean very repeatedly — with Ice Strike, until they are subdued. Red Kentauruses are weak to ice ️, and have relatively low (495) MDEF for their level (88), both of which are very good for me as an I/L magelet; MDEF can otherwise chew away a large portion of my damage (lower damage per line means that MDEF values chew up a proportionally larger amount of that damage), and extra damage due to elemental weakness is a multiplier (1.5) that is applied before defense is taken into account, thus making it especially powerful for me as a magelet, for the same reason .

    I wanted to try doing the same at Taipei 101 , as my magelet is level 93, meaning that anything there that is at least level 73 (= 93 − 20) is fair game. Mannequins of some species are the usual suspect here, and the lowest-level species of mannequin are Kid Mannequins, at level 75. Perfect! The wrapping papers drop quite a bit more frequently at Kid Mannequins … these mannequins may not be weak to ice, but they have a bit less MDEF (430 < 495) and, more importantly, a whole lot less HP (8.5k < 37.0k). Plus, they tend to spawn a little more readily and accessibly (due to the simple map layout, and the teleporter from bottom to top). I expected the amount of EXP that I got (per unit time, i.e. EPM or EPH) to be at least a little bit less, considering how favourable Red Kentauruses are for me, but a quick-and-dirty EPM test showed that I was apparently wrong — these creepy dolls give enough EXP (in the ballpark of 2.1M EPM) to push my EPM up to at least what I get at Red Kentauruses… maybe even a bit more!

    It’s rangifer time

    Once my buddy and fellow odd-jobber Boymoder logged on, it was KPQ time! We even did a few KPQs with Mings, a permabeginner of the Flow guild (allied with Oddjobs) who also played NoobIet (Noobiet), the dagger warrior ️️, from the previous diary entry! After a few KPQs, Mings had to leave to finish up some questing, but Boymoder and I carried on until we hit the fabled level 30! Finally, we could advance to second job . Speaking of second job, there are some interesting mechanics at work within both rangifer’s and Boymoder’s second jobs …

    Fucking STRlords, how do they work?

    As mentioned in the previous entry, Boymoder is a STRlord. While it may seem at first that claws are effectively useless for STRlords (unlike for LUK-based assassins), this is not exactly true, and tends to become less true as the STRlord levels up (particularly, culminating in skills like Shadow Meso , Avenger ✴️, and even Venomous Star ). Since we are just advancing to second job, the question presents itself: what skill build makes the most sense for a second job STRlord? To help answer this question, I made use of my damage calculator to get some rough estimates of how useful each second job assassin skill is.

    The baseline

    The model used here is roughly level 43 (give or take). Level 43 is an arbitrary level that was chosen because it is high enough to have a sizable quantity of second job SP, and is just high enough to make use of the Maple Kandayo, and is a good level for LPQ! The weapon being used is assumed to be a maple claw of some kind (Maple Claw, Maple Kandayo, or Maple Skanda). Basic attacking (bound to the Ctrl key by default) is used as the baseline here, and Drain replaces it when Drain is at least level 1.

    The “CV” in the tables below stands for the coefficient of variation.
    • 220 STR
    • 35 DEX (10 from equipment)
    • 35 LUK (31 from equipment)
    • 65 WATK (33 from weapon + 20 from Cider + 2 from cape + 10 from gloves)
    • 10% mastery (the lowest possible mastery)
    • 100% dmg multi (basic attack)
    • 0% crit chance
    • 0% crit multi
    • speed 3 (all maple claws are speed 3)
    • 100 WDEF (the Bloctopus has exactly this much WDEF)



    Per-hitDPS
    Mean154.9234.7
    CV15.76%12.80%
    Only maxed Drain


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean248.1375.9
    CV15.74%12.78%
    Only maxed Claw Mastery


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean173.3262.6
    CV7.94%6.45%
    Only maxed Critical Throw


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean232.6352.4
    CV37.30%30.30%
    Only with Claw Booster


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean154.9258.1
    CV15.76%12.20%
    All maxed


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean364.5607.5
    CV25.20%19.52%
    Only maxed Lucky Seven
    This is not a serious entry, but is included here just in case anyone thought that using Lucky Seven was a good idea for STRlords. Unfortunately, the damage formula is just no good for STRlords (STR and DEX are not taken into account at all).


    Per-hitDPS
    Mean95.6144.9
    CV40.40%32.82%
    Skeletal skill build

    So, it seems from the calculations above that a skill build should probably look something like:
    1. Max Haste
    2. +3 Endure [3]
    3. Max Drain
    4. +3 Claw Mastery [3]
    5. +1 Critical Throw [1]
    6. +2 Claw Mastery [5]
    7. +6 Claw Booster [6]
    8. Max Critical Throw
    9. Max Claw Mastery
    10. ???
    11. Profit
    …or something like that.

    Fucking pugilists, how do they work?

    The core mechanic of pugilists — indeed, their raison d’être — is the fact that pirates (first job and onwards) can attack without any weapons equipped. Naturally, this suggests the question: but how tho? The answer, of course, is punching . And kicking . You know, unarmed martial arts and shit. But how much tho?
    Code:
    maxDmgUnarmed(PSM, STR, DEX, WATK) := (STR * PSM + DEX) * WATK / 100
    
    minDmgUnarmed(PSM, STR, DEX, WATK) := (STR * PSM * 0.1 * 0.9 + DEX) * WATK / 100
    
    Note that there is no “mastery” here; Knuckler Mastery really does only apply when a (proper) knuckler is equipped. Hooray for forever-unstable damage~! “PSM” stands for “primary stat multiplier”, and for unarmed attacks, is 3 for first job pirates, and 4.2 for second (and onwards) job pirates. Yes, that’s right. It, bizarrely, depends on your job .

    First job rangifer:

    [​IMG]

    Second job rangifer:

    [​IMG]

    The only difference between these two images is job advancement. There are no changes in equipment, AP allocation, nor SP allocation between them. Besides the obvious and large difference in damage range, some other quirks are present here:
    • Second (and onwards) job brawlers differ from first job pirates in how they calculate their total WACC (DEX * 0.6 + LUK * 0.3 for pirates, DEX * 0.9 + LUK * 0.3 for brawlers). So my total WACC gets a considerable boost.
    • Second (and onwards) job brawlers also differ from first job pirates in how they calculate their total AVOID, but MapleLegends has made some changes to how this works, and so I honestly have no idea what’s going on here.
    Second job; prospects
    [​IMG]

    Now that rangifer is a brawler, and level 31, KPQ time has (sadly ) come to an end. But she has some great things to look forward to:
    • The nifty DPS boost from hitting second job .
    • Being my first character with somewhat high MAXHP (I do not wash any of my characters), thanks to Improve MaxHP.
    • Other sweet-ass second job skills, like Oak Barrel, Corkscrew Blow, and Backspin Blow (brawlers are heaps of fun to play in combat!).
    • LPQ!
    I prefer to quest rather than grind (unless I can party quest, of course, in which case I do that), so the journey from level 31 to level 35 will take place mostly in Nautilus Harbour and Ariant. I probably won’t end up finishing the entire first saga of the Ariant questline, because I prefer to start LPQing more-or-less as soon as I hit level 35. So the next entry will probably just be questing, and sometime very soon, you can expect a whole lot of LPQing from rangifer!
     
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    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. iii

    Today I logged on with rangifer, at level 31, and saw that Boymoder (Kelsey) had already gotten level 35! And she even did what she called “the slow way”: Ludibrium quests & grinding. So it was my duty to catch up those four levels so that we could LPQ together!!

    Questing in the KPQ-LPQ interim

    I decided to finish up just a few (really just a few; I left many behind) of the Victoria Island-based quests… basically, the middling-level Nautilus Harbour quests. This includes some nice quests like Bartol’s Request, Strange Dish 1, Lazy Little Calico, and For Kyrin (the dress is not exactly my style, but I’m sure Kyrin rocks it!). Then, it was off to Ariant ️ to do the first saga of the Ariant questline!

    The Ariant quests proved to be a breeze, with the help of Nise’s “Quick/Precise Levelling for New Chars!” guide. By the time that I hit level 34 or so, Boymoder logged on and was raring for some LPQs! She was having some difficulty getting a full party together, so the pressure was really on for me to hit level 35 ASAP . Speedrunning ‍♀️ the last few quests in the questline (at least, within the first saga, which is all that I planned on doing anyways) was just enough to get me to level 35, so I was soon VIP Teleport Rocking to Boymoder so that we could get an LPQ gang assembled.

    rangifer LPQs for the first time

    During our first LPQ, Outside (known on the MapleLegends forums as braidgame) logged on and saw that Boymoder and I were both in LPQ level range. Outside is in the Flow guild, but also has characters in Oddjobs, including a level 35 F/P gishlet by the name of TestChars! Unfortunately, they had to log off before a spot opened up — it wasn’t until we finished that LPQ and the one after it that our party size dropped below six. But we were able to get in quite a few LPQs (enough to get me from roughly the bottom of level 35 to the bottom of level 38), and we did so with a number of very nice people , including one who was live-streaming their LPQ escapades on Twitch !

    [​IMG]

    Pictured: rangifer gleefully does the LPQ thief portal.

    [​IMG]

    Pictured: The gang battles LPQ rombots.

    [​IMG]

    Pictured: The gang battles Alishar as Kelsey makes gleeful weeb noises.

    As we were preparing for another run, the MapleLegends servers took a collective nosedive ☠️, so that marked the conclusion of our first string of LPQ runs.

    Pugilist math pt. ii: electric boogaloo

    If you'll recall from the previous diary entry, the formulae for unarmed melee damage look like:
    The “WATK” in the formulae above is calculated as you would expect: the sum of the WATK from your equipment items, plus any extra WATK from skills (not applicable here), plus any extra WATK from buffs. Usually, the bulk of the WATK from equipment is to be found on the weapon… but we’re not using a weapon! Does that mean that we get 0 WATK from weaponry? Well, you would think so, but you would also be wrong:
    Code:
    bareHandsWatk(LEVEL) := min{(2 * LEVEL + 31) / 3, 31}
    
    LEVEL” here is the player character’s level, “/” here signifies integer division, and “min” stands for “minimum [value of a set]”. As you can see, bare hands grant 31 WATK for all pirates that are above level 30. Once you hit level 31, your “weapon” of choice never gets upgraded ever again. 31 WATK is, by the way, equivalent to a Leather Arms (the level 15 knuckler) with average WATK that has then been scrolled with seven 60% WATK scrolls, and had an average scrolling outcome (roughly 4 or 5 successes).

    If you thought that (in combination with the observation in the previous diary entry that mastery does not apply to unarmed attacks, i.e. their mastery is always effectively 10%) was bad enough… it gets worse. Knuckler Booster requires a (proper) knuckler to be equipped, so pugilists are left boosterless until fourth job (at which point they can access Speed Infusion). It turns out that unarmed strikes have an effective speed of 4 (“fast”, although speed 5 is confusingly also listed as “fast”), which is not bad, but worse than using a speed 5 knuckler with booster; booster adds −2 to your weapon’s speed value, so the result is 5 − 2 = 3. And most knuckles (with the exception of the level 15, level 25, level 35, and level 40 knucklers, which are all speed 6) are speed 5, so knuckle-users tend to have an attack speed advantage in the absence of Speed Infusion. Actually, I don’t even know if Speed Infusion works on unarmed pirates …

    And it should also be noted that in addition to the mastery given by Knuckler Mastery not applying to unarmed attacks, the WACC granted by Knuckler Mastery also does not apply. So pugilists are, furthermore, at a 20 WACC disadvantage when compared to knuckle-using brawlers/marauders/buccaneers.

    All of this may seem a bit depressing, but these are the sacrifices that we make as pugilists in exchange for the valuable asset that is stellar self-defense (and even lethality) in any situation — even in the total absence of tools and weaponry. Pugilists don’t bring knives to gunfights … because all they need is their bare hands .
     
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    Wow, this is valuable knowledge hahah. Further reinforce my thinking of beginner knuckles (lvl 10) being completely useless xD
     
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    Well, not so fast. If you're a level 10 pirate with basic equipment (no STR, DEX, or WATK equipment), it might seem appealing to take off that clean level 10 knuckler (18 WATK, speed 5) in favour of going it bare-handed (17 WATK, speed 4), but your PSM takes a nosedive if you do that. The PSM of knucklers (in any circumstance, as long as it is a proper knuckler and not your bare fists) is 4.8. The PSM for weaponless first job pirates is 3... that's a lot worse. Again, assuming basic equipment at level 10, you are doing nearly 1.6 times as much damage per-hit just by using the clean level 10 knuckler, and roughly 1.5 times as much DPS (the discrepancy between 1.6 and 1.5 is due to the speed difference).
     
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    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. iv

    When rangifer first logged on today, Boymoder was already LPQing ! Her party was full, so I was grinding out wrapping papers on my I/L ️ magelet, cervine, while I waited. Then our ally (and otherwise guildmate) Mings, the level 35 beginner, logged on and expressed interest in LPQing as well. Then, our F/P gishlet guildmate TestChars (otherwise known as Outside or braidgame) also expressed interest! Unfortunately, Mings had to leave before we could get the party going, but the other three of us were able to cobble together a nifty LPQ party ✨!

    With our original LPQ party, we had a somewhat challenging (although still reasonably swift) fight with Alishar at the end… and we did very well! I’m still getting the hang of controlling my character now that I have so many attacking skills (as brawlers/marauders/buccaneers do), and I just hope that no one notices how much I’m stuggling to press the keyboard in the right ways ! That being said, playing a brawler is heaps of fun, and who needs weapons when you’ve got ten thousand ways to beat your enemies up …? Here we are posing for the camera :

    [​IMG]

    Strong throw, deadly star

    In other news, Boymoder has gotten herself a very nice Shinobi Bracer for when she hits level 55~! Unfortunately, this is only after having extremely poor luck scrolling a Maple Skandafailing six out of the seven 60% scrolls on a weapon that is already very pricey to begin with is absolutely brutal ☹️… this new Shinobi Bracer replaces the Skanda, being better than the Skanda in every way .

    Since I went over some of the math behind second job STRlords in part ii of this diary, I’ll take the time here to go over some similar aspects, but of third job rather than second. STRlords get two new notable attacking skills in third job: Shadow Meso and Avenger ✴️. They are also aided by getting access to Shadow Partner as well! Let’s consider what the DPS of these skills looks like for STRlords, assuming that they are maxed.

    Shadow Meso

    Our model monster is the same level as the player character, and has 400 WDEF. Shadow Meso says in its description: “Nullifies the monsters’ ‘weapon def. up’ and ‘magic guard up.’”; Hidden Street’s version instead says “Ignores the enemies’ ‘weapon def. up’ and ‘magic guard up.’” (the discrepancy may just be a difference in GMS version). While this is a bit of an odd thing for this skill to be doing (it would seem to be stepping on the toes of Armor Crash and Magic Crash…), there’s no reason to really suspect that Shadow Meso ignores WDEF entirely, so we will assume that it interacts normally with WDEF. Shadow Meso isn’t a very popular skill, but if anyone wants to actually do some damage tests, that would be awesome.

    Shadow Meso’s damage is pretty straightforward: it deals damage equal to ten times the number of mesos thrown. The minimum and maximum number of mesos thrown is shown in the skill description, and we assume that the number of mesos thrown by a given use of Shadow Meso is uniformly distributed. Also, it has its own notion of critical hits: it does not interact with Critical Throw at all, instead listing its own critical probability in the description, and listing its own critical hit damage (“Damage + 50%”, i.e. 1.5 times the damage of a non-crit).

    At max level, the minimum number of mesos thrown is 340, and the maximum is 800. So the minimum and maximum damages of a non-crit, before WDEF, are 340 ⋅ 10 = 3400, and 800 ⋅ 10 = 8000, respectively. To then take WDEF into account, we see that the minimum and maximum damages after WDEF reduction are, respectively:
    Code:
    minDmgAfterWdef(minDmgPreWdef, WDEF, monsterLevel, playerLevel) := minDmgPreWdef * (1 - 0.01 * max{monsterLevel - playerLevel, 0}) - WDEF * 0.6
    
    maxDmgAfterWdef(maxDmgPreWdef, WDEF, monsterLevel, playerLevel) := maxDmgPreWdef * (1 - 0.01 * max{monsterLevel - playerLevel, 0}) - WDEF * 0.5
    
    Here, “minDmgPreWdef” is the minimum damage dealt before WDEF is taken into account, likewise for “maxDmgPreWdef”, and “max” stands for “maximum [value of a set]”. Because we already made the assumption that the monster and the player character are the same level, (1 - 0.01 * max{monsterLevel - playerLevel, 0}) is just 1, so this simplifies to:
    Code:
    minDmgAfterWdef′(minDmgPreWdef, WDEF) := minDmgPreWdef - WDEF * 0.6
    
    maxDmgAfterWdef′(maxDmgPreWdef, WDEF) := maxDmgPreWdef - WDEF * 0.5
    
    Since we assume that the monster has 400 WDEF, we can calculate that minDmgAfterWdef′(3400, 400) = 3400 - 400 * 0.6 = 3160, and that maxDmgAfterWdef′(8000, 400) = 8000 - 400 * 0.5 = 7800. So our minimum and maximum damages for a non-crit are 3160 and 7800, respectively, once we take WDEF into account. Critical damage is calculated after (W/M)DEF, so to get the minimum and maximum damages of a critical hit, we simply multiply these two numbers by 1.5, and get 3160 ⋅ 1.5 = 4740, and 7800 ⋅ 1.5 = 11700, respectively.

    Again, we take the damage — given that the damage is either a critical, or given that it is not a critical — to be uniformly distributed, so we can easily get the expected damage of a given hit (again, knowing whether or not it’s a critical hit) by taking the arithmetic mean of the minimum and maximum. For a non-crit, this is (3160 + 7800) ÷ 2 = 5480 damage. For a crit, this is (4740 + 11700) ÷ 2 = 8220 damage. We know from Shadow Meso’s skill description that at max level, it has a 10% = 0.1 probability of critting, and thus a 1 − 0.1 = 0.9 probability of not critting. Because expectation is linear, we can get the expected damage of a given Shadow Meso — but this time, without knowing whether it will be a crit or not — by simply calculating the weighted sum of the two expectations:
    • Damage given that it is a non-crit (5480).
    • Damage given that it is a crit (8220).
    (5480 ⋅ 0.9) + (8220 ⋅ 0.1) = 5754 damage.

    Because we are assuming that the STRlord in question has their skills maxed, their Shadow Partner throws a secondary Shadow Meso every time that the STRlord throws their own Shadow Meso, and the secondary (shadow) one deals 50% of the damage of the normal one. I somewhat suspect (but cannot prove; anyone who knows more about Shadow Partner than I do, please do chime in) that Shadow Partner’s damage multiplier is applied before WDEF is taken into account, so we have minDmgAfterWdef′(3400 * 0.5, 400) = 3400 * 0.5 - 400 * 0.6 = 1460, and maxDmgAfterWdef′(8000 * 0.5, 400) = 8000 * 0.5 - 400 * 0.5 = 3800. Min and max crit damages are then 1460 ⋅ 1.5 = 2190, and 3800 ⋅ 1.5 = 5700, respectively. For the expectation of non-crits, we have (1460 + 3800) ÷ 2 = 2630 damage; for crits, (2190 + 5700) ÷ 2 = 3945 damage. (2630 ⋅ 0.9) + (3945 ⋅ 0.1) = 2761.5 damage per secondary (Shadow-Partner-induced) Shadow Meso. Note that 2761.5 ⋅ 2 = 5523 ≠ 5754, so simply multiplying the Shadow-Meso-sans-Shadow-Partner expectation by 1.5 would have given us a subtly incorrect result! Working with some WDEF makes the calculations here a good deal more arduous, but I’ve chosen 400 WDEF for realism, and because working through the WDEF calculations is… maybe illustrative(‽)

    So our expected damage for a single use of Shadow Meso with Shadow Partner is 5754 + 2761.5 = 8515.5 damage. Then our expected DPS (damage per second) is (again, due to the linearity of expectation) just that value times the attack frequency. According to LazyBui’s “Attack Speed Reference”, the attack period for a claw with speed 2 (almost all claws, and certainly any that are both level ≥35 and equippable by a STRlord, have speed ≤4; speed ≤4 means a speed of exactly 2 whenever Claw Booster is active) throwing Shadow Mesos is 600 ms = 0.6 s. The attack frequency is then 1 ÷ 0.6 s = 1.666… Hz. 8515.5 damage ⋅ 1.666… Hz = 14192.5 DPS.

    14192.5 DPS in a realistic scenario is nothing to sneeze at ! Ordinary (LUK-based) hermits/nightlords tend to neglect Shadow Meso entirely, since its damage only really scales with skill level, and does not scale at all with any of the character’s stats (WATK, LUK, DEX, STR, etc.). However, in the hands of a STRlord, who only uses claws in one of their two modes of combat (their other being melee ⚔️), Shadow Meso can be an extremely potent addition to their arsenal that puts their single-target DPS above that of almost any other odd job !

    Avenger

    Doing similar calculations for Avenger is somewhat simplified by the fact that Avenger ignores WDEF whenever the player character’s level is greater than or equal to the level of their target. Because we already assumed that these two levels are the same, we can totally ignore WDEF for the purpose of Avenger damage calculations (phewf! ). Avenger is a much more ordinary skill in comparison to Shadow Meso, so it uses the usual physical damage formulae:
    Code:
    minDmgClaw(LUK, STR, DEX, WATK, MASTERY) := (LUK * 3.6 * 0.9 * MASTERY + STR + DEX) * WATK / 100
    
    maxDmgClaw(LUK, STR, DEX, WATK) := (LUK * 3.6 + STR + DEX) * WATK / 100
    
    Of course, now that we’re dealing with actual stats (LUK, STR, DEX, WATK), we have to decide what level this hypothetical STRlord is and what their gear is like. Here’s the model I chose (based on a roughly level 102 hermit, because that’s roughly the minimum level to have Shadow Partner, Shadow Meso, and Avenger maxed):
    • 525 STR (25 of which is from gear)
    • 55 DEX (30 of which is from gear)
    • 60 LUK (56 of which is from gear)
    • 102 WATK (42 from claw + 20 from Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves + 27 from Ilbis)
    So we have minDmgClaw(60, 525, 55, 102, 60%) = (60 * 3.6 * 0.9 * 60% + 525 + 55) * 102 / 100 = 710.5728, and maxDmgClaw(60, 525, 55, 102) = (60 * 3.6 + 525 + 55) * 102 / 100 = 811.92. Of course, Avenger does more than 100% damage: at max level, 180%. Because we also have maxed Critical Throw, crits will deal 180% + 100% = 280% damage. The skill description for Critical Throw reads “critical damage 200%” at max level, but should read “critical damage +100%”; the “200%” figure assumes a basic attack (100% + 100% = 200%), but we are not basic attacking… we are using Avenger. Also, the Avenger star thrown by Shadow Partner will do only 50% damage. Because Avenger is ignoring WDEF entirely in this case, the calculations are much simpler:
    • Expected raw damage: (710.5728 + 811.92) ÷ 2 = 761.2464 damage.
    • Non-Shadow-Partner star, non-crit: 761.2464 ⋅ 180% = 1370.24352 damage.
    • Non-Shadow-Partner star, crit: 761.2464 ⋅ 280% = 2131.48992 damage.
    • Non-Shadow-Partner star: 1370.24352 ⋅ 0.5 + 2131.48992 ⋅ 0.5 = 1750.86672 damage.
    • Non-Shadow-Partner star + Shadow Partner star: 1750.86672 ⋅ 1.5 = 2626.3 damage.
    Then we obtain the DPS in the same way as before. Unfortunately, Avenger is ever-so-slightly slower than Shadow Meso, with an attack period of 630 ms = 0.63 s (rather than 600 ms). So the attack frequency is then 1 ÷ 0.63 s = 1.5873 Hz. 2626.3 damage ⋅ 1.5873 Hz ≈ 4169 DPS. This is a factor of 14192.5 ÷ 4169 ≈ 3.4 less than Shadow Meso, but of course, this is only single-target DPS, and Avenger targets up to 6 monsters at once! So both skills are quite useful when training ✨.

    Strong arm , deadly punch ?

    So how does a third-job pugilist compare?? Well, that may be for a future diary entry…

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Daydreamer
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    Daydreamer Headless Horseman

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    Is my pure LUK bandit an oddjob?? :D
     
  15. OP
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    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. v

    I logged on with rangifer today and was almost immediately able to LPQ~! Boymoder and I put together a party including our friend Mings, the permabeginner who I mentioned in the course of our LPQ escapades of the previous diary entry, except that this time he was able to LPQ with us !! We managed to make it through a modest number of LPQs; along the way Mings had to leave for dinner ️, and at some point the party naturally dissolved… We had an LPQ that took very long , after one of our six members disconnected somewhat near the PQ’s beginning. Bless their heart ❤️, they waited outside for us throughout that whole PQ (rightfully asking if we really were still PQing, by the time that we were doing the penultimate stage). Unfortunately for our party member who had disconnected, we had three entire party members who were either new to, or rusty on, LPQ, as well as some particularly poor luck on that penultimate stage. So that one took quite a while . Unrewarded for their patience , the party almost immediately dissolved as soon as we finally did complete that lengthy LPQ!

    Boymoder was really itching to try some Poison Mist ️ training on her F/P gishlet Tacgnol, and I was eager to check it out as well, by helping her last-hit on my STR priest , cervid! I logged onto cervid and put my WACC/DEX gear on nice and tight so that I would have better chances of hitting Skelegons ⭐ (level 110) and Skelosauruses (level 113):



    TypeNameStats
    HeadZakum Helmet13 STR, 19 DEX, 16 INT, 16 LUK, 148 WDEF, 160 MDEF, 20 WACC, 20 AVOID; 7 slots
    FaceSad Mask2 DEX, 11 WACC, 2 AVOID
    EyeBroken Glasses1 STR, 1 DEX, 1 INT, 1 LUK, 20 HP, 20 MP, 2 WACC
    EarSingle Earring6 DEX
    CapePink Gaia Cape2 WATK, 7 DEX
    BodyBathrobe for Women18 INT, 9 WACC
    NeckHorus’ Eye3 STR, 3 DEX, 3 INT, 3 LUK, 210 HP, 210 MP, 14 AVOID
    Neck (NX)Frozen Snowflake Pendant6 STR, 6 DEX, 8 INT, 6 LUK, 200 HP, 200 MP, 7 SPEED, 7 JUMP
    WeaponGreen Ski85 WATK, 1 STR, 15 DEX, 21 WACC
    HandsBlue Work Gloves8 DEX, 12 WACC, 2 AVOID
    FeetGreen Christmas Sock5 STR, 6 DEX, 4 INT, 5 LUK
    FingerEllin Savior’s Ring1 STR, 1 DEX, 1 INT, 1 LUK, 100 HP, 100 MP
    This brought me up to a standing WACC (no special buffs) of roughly 191 , enough to have a roughly 83% probability of hitting Skelegons, and a roughly 70% probability of hitting Skelosauruses! Not bad for a DEXless, INTless, LUKless, level 97 priest !!

    [​IMG]

    Now, these bony boys are level 110 and 113, so this ain’t exactly surprising, but they hit hard!! Tacgnol and cervid died quite a few times in the course of our mist training experiments… but after a bit, we mostly got the hang of it, and were able to conjure up some pretty sweet EXP ✨! I think Tacgnol leveled from 86 (just graduated MPQ~) to 90 over the course of this trial, and cervid made it from 97 to 98~! I was a little afraid that my melee hitting probabilities would not be high enough, and that they would be too unreliable/annoying to work with , but I never really felt the pressure to use my Candies or anything like that . We did both chew through quite the number of potions ⚗️ (mostly Mana Bulls and Unagi), making this somewhat of an expensive process (not to mention the NX used on Safety Charms…). This cost is… only somewhat offset by the occasional equipment item drop here and there (we probably found a combined total of 5 or 6 between the two of us), but it’s worth the cost to get this kind of EXP, especially when you’re an odd job!

    You can watch a five-minute clip of this process on the Oddjobs YouTube channel !

    After a while, we decided that it was time to hop back onto rangifer and Boymoder and do some more LPQs~! rangifer leveled up ✨, and I finally put a skill point into Double Uppercut, for a more straightforward stun (rather than having to Backspin Blow as my only way of stunning ). Yet another attacking skill that will make me even more confused about my keybindings ⌨️ while I’m in the midst of combat! I love it!! Unfortunately the stun duration is not great; Double Uppercutting and then immediately spamming Flash Fist is only able to squeeze in one Flash Fist before the monster is unstunned ‍♀️.

    Strong arm , deadly punch !

    In the previous diary entry, I explored the math behind third job, claw-wielding, STRlords (Boymoder is a STRlord). The results are pretty impressive, and here I want to do something similar with the third job pugilist. We will make similar assumptions: all skills in question are maxed out, the monster target is the same level as the attacking player character, the monster target has 400 WDEF, attacks are uninterrupted, etc. Oh, and the pugilist needs some stats/gear (again, for consistency, based on a level 102 pugilist):
    • 535 STR (30 of which is from gear)
    • 85 DEX (65 of which is from gear)
    • 64 WATK (31 from bare hands (see diary pt. iii) + 20 from Energy Charge ⚡/Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves )
    We won’t need to go into so many gory details this time, since a lot of the relevant formulae and arithmetic can be found in diary pts. ii, iii, & iv.

    Energy Drain

    The analogue of Shadow Meso for pugilists is Energy Drain, insofar as Energy Drain is the pugilist marauder’s main single-target DPS skill. However, Energy Drain is considerably more straightforward; it works like a basic attack, except that it has a smaller attack period, and has a damage multiplier that isn’t just 100%. To make things less arduous this time, I’ll be using my damage calculator instead of typing out the calculations all by hand.

    NOTE: The damage calculator asks for your WATK, which must be a “nominal” WATK — that is: no weapon equipped means 0 WATK from your weapon. The calculator will add the WATK from your bare hands on its own, based on your class and your level. In this case, that means entering 64 − 31 = 33 as your “Total WATK”.

    Entering all of the relevant data for this hypothetical Energy Drain (“Damage multi” should be 360%, since we assume Energy Drain to be maxed), we immediately notice something: the damage is wildly unstable!! The damage range per-hit is 1~4652, and the CV per-hit is 57.7%!! Holy moly ! Some fiddling with the WDEF value reveals that the minimum damage goes above 1 (namely, to 2…) for the first time as soon as you decrease the WDEF from 306 to 305. With 0 WDEF, the minimum damage is 661, but the instability is still very high (although considerably improved): a CV of 45.1%.

    The reason for hitting all of these “1”s, and for some of the instability here, is just the fact that the damage multiplier of Energy Drain matters so much here. Obviously, being stuck at a mastery of 10% is the cause of much of the dispersion here, but another big factor is that the pugilist’s raw damage range (basic attacking, no critical hits, attacking a level 1 monster with 0 WDEF; this is the damage range that you see when you look at your “Character Stats” panel in-game) is just quite small. In comparison to a conventional marauder, the lower PSM (4.2 < 4.8; see diary pt. ii), and particularly, the lack of WATK (due to the inability to equip weapons), makes even the pugilist’s raw maximum damage quite puny. As a result, WDEF immediately eats up a large portion of this raw damage, before that damage can actually get multiplied by the skill being used (the skill’s damage multi, 360% for maxed Energy Drain) in combination with any potential critical hits. It is for this reason that many odd jobs want to capitalize on damage multipliers that occur before defense reduction is applied, e.g. bonus damage due to elemental weakness.

    The actual expected damage per-hit here is roughly 2326.5. Fortunately, Energy Drain has a quite small attack period ⏩ (540 ms = 0.54 s, assuming no weapon and no Speed Infusion), so the DPS ends up being somewhat decent in the end: 4308.3 DPS. Of course, this is puny in comparison to the figure calculated for Shadow Meso DPS in the previous diary entry: Shadow Meso deals 14192.5 ÷ 4308.3 ≈ 3.3 times more single-target DPS at this level, all things being roughly equal. The disparity is probably more in practice, simply due to the difficulty of maintaining sustained Energy Drains; Energy Drain is extremely short-reach, unlike the more leisurely ranged attacks of Shadow Meso.

    But what about Stun Mastery?? If the monster is stunned (unfortunately not possible with bosses, but whatever), we then have a 60% critical probability, and a 60% critical multiplier. This actually slightly bumps up the instability to a CV of a whopping 58.4%(!), but does increase the expected damage per-hit from 2326.5 to 2559.1. The DPS, accordingly, is bumped up from 4308.3 to 4739.1; this puts it at just a factor of 3.0 or so (instead of 3.3 or so) worse than Shadow Meso.

    Energy Blast (+ Somersault Kick )

    Now, Energy Blast is not always available to the pugilist: only when their Energy Charge is up, can they make use of it. But to simplify things here and be a little generous, we will just treat Energy Blast as a normal skill. Also, Energy Blast is one of those skills that has both a period and a delay: after the delay has elapsed, other skills can be used, but only once the period has elapsed can the same skill (Energy Blast) be used again. For the purpose of simplification, we will assume that the pugilist is simply alternating between Energy Blast and Somersault Kick ; this is not totally accurate (brawler/marauder/buccaneer combat is quite complex in execution), but good enough for a back-of-the-envelope ✉️ calculation.

    Using the same calculator settings but with Energy Blast (so now, a “Damage multi” of 420% instead of 360%) gets an expected damage per-hit of 2714.2. The stability is the same as Energy Drain’s, since nothing’s really changed there. For Somersault Kick (“Damage multi” of 190%), an expected damage per-hit of 1227.9. These two skills have delays of 0.66 s and 0.78 s, respectively (see LazyBui’s “Attack Speed Reference”), so the attack frequency is 1 ÷ (0.66 s + 0.78 s) = 0.69444… Hz. (2714.2 damage + 1227.9 damage) ⋅ 0.69444… Hz = 2737.6 DPS. If fighting four monsters at once, the aggregate DPS is then 2737.6 ⋅ 4 = 10950.3 DPS.

    With Stun Mastery, the expected damages per-hit of Energy Blast and Somersault Kick go up to 2946.9 and 1460.5, respectively. So we have (2946.9 damage + 1460.5 damage) ⋅ 0.69444… Hz = 3060.7 DPS. If fighting four monsters at once, the aggregate DPS is then 3060.7 ⋅ 4 = 12242.8 DPS. Even with this Stun Mastery (which assumes that all the monsters being attacked are stunned), the projected per-monster DPS for Avenger (see the previous diary entry) is 4169 ÷ 3060.7 ≈ 1.36 times better than that of Energy Blast + Somersault Kick, and worse is the fact that Avenger can hit up to 6 monsters at once, better than the 4 monsters of Energy Blast!

    Pugilist vs. STRlord: who would win??

    I think one of the takeaways here is that analyzing jobs/classes like this can get a little weird . I realize now that this looks a little like some kind of showdown between these two odd jobs (in their third jobs), but the reality is that there is no one-to-one comparison . The STRlord has the ability to switch between totally unrelated weapons and styles of combat: the claw ✴️, versus an assortment of melee weaponry ⚔️. The pugilist, on the other hand, has only one mode of fighting: using no weapons at all . But their skillset is considerably more varied and intricate, and this makes them consummate masters of every trick known to melee-kind ‍♀️. The pugilist can take more hits in a fight ‍♀️, but the STRlord’s skillset deeply specialises them in the use of claws, allowing them to deal devastating damage at a distance with only one or two distinct attacking skills ✴️. Ultimately, everyone wins if we’re all having fun playing our characters . Unless someone is playing a STRlord with maxed Shadow Partner and maxed Shadow Meso. Then they win.

    [​IMG]
     
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  16. FatSloth
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    FatSloth Windraider Retired Staff

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    I actually unequip my knuckle yesterday to see how your damage numbers would look and I was honestly pretty surprised. Im positive that pugilist is one of the better/is the best oddjob.
     
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  17. OP
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    deer Pac Pinky

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    This was my suspicion when I first thought of the idea of a pugilist (not that I was the first one to come up with an odd job based around the idea of not using weapons...), but I think you may be underestimating other odd jobs here a little bit. Also, I'm assuming 3rd-job-only here in my analysis, so using 4th job skills probably changes things considerably. If you can test whether or not SI works w/o a weapon, I'd love to know!

    I did a similar comparison with a level 102 version of my woodman (who is currently level 98), assuming that I'm using my current archer weapon (a 93 WATK Kandiva). The mobbing DPS is actually almost identical to the projected DPS for the 3rd-job pugilist that I calculated in the most recent diary entry! And in single-target combat, the woodman ends up out-DPSing the pugilist by a factor of roughly 1.76... in reality, the disparity is probably worse just because of how hard it is to sustain consistent Energy Drains (vs. sustaining consistent Strafes). I'm comparing with my woodman here, because I already know very well how my woodman plays and feels like.

    EDIT: I forgot to factor in the +5 WATK from Diamond Arrows, but it doesn't really change what I'm saying here :p, just makes woodman a bit better.
     
  18. Dance
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    Dance Stone Golem

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    It'd be great if you guys did like CWKPQ runs with Oddjobs, I'd say it would be a very interesting experience. Bosses like Papulatus would be cool too. (he can dispel, but I think you'll be fine)
     
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  19. OP
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    deer Pac Pinky

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    Yeah, that would be cool! At the moment, it's hard to get enough people together to play odd jobs and do coordinated runs of stuff like that (bosses, PQs, etc.). Personally, I don't have any experience with Papulatus or CWKPQ, but I know they are very powerful/deadly! It would be cool to do stuff like that one day (there are plenty of odd jobs that are quite powerful, so it's not inconceivable), but at the moment I think our focus is on doing interesting stuff together, even if that stuff isn't super flashy and impressive like CWKPQ.
     
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    Motto Skelegon

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    lmao whoever does the grim reaper is a chad
     
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