Maximizing Physical Damage Guide

There are many different ways for a melee attacker to increase the damage they do in a party. Attack, Accuracy, STR, DEX, Store TP, Haste, Double Attack, Zanshin, Dual Wield all increase a player's total Damage per Second (DPS) in different ways. This is a guide to how to choose between them for an optimal setup.

Note that an optimal setup is not just gear, it also includes any spell buffs; it also depends on what you're fighting. Optimal equipment for Greater Colibri will be different from optimal gear for Kirin. A Warrior's optimal gear may change depending on whether Berserk and Aggressor are up or not.

For most melee jobs, total Weapon Skill damage is about half of total melee damage. So a 1% increase in TP gain is worth about 0.5% increase in damage during TP. A Samurai's total WS damage is usually larger than their total melee damage, but a large portion of their TP comes from Meditate, so the effect of melee TP gain on overall DPS is probably similar.

Thief is more complicated if they stack Weapon Skills with Sneak Attack or Trick Attack; a THF may want to emphasize TP gain more than melee damage in order to have TP ready whenever Sneak Attack or Trick Attack are ready. But this guide doesn't try to take that into account.

Accuracy
The effect of accuracy is pretty straightforward: Every point of accuracy increases Hit Rate by 0.5%, up to the cap of 95%. But even though the effect on Hit Rate is linear, the effect on DPS decreases steadily up to the cap.

Improvement calculated by (0.5%/Hit Rate)*1.5*100. We multiply by 1.5 because Accuracy increases both melee damage over time and TP gain.

Note that High/Low Evasion from Check are based on comparing your Accuracy to the mob's Evasion directly, but the game then gives the mob a bonus of 4 Evasion for each level it is above you. So a level 75 player attacking a level 82 mob will need +28 Accuracy past the point it starts checking Low Evasion to actually get an 80% Hit Rate.

Haste
The effect of Haste is also pretty straightforward: each 1% of Haste decreases the delay between attacks by 1%. Like accuracy, the effect on DPS of adding more Haste depends on how much you already have. But unlike accuracy, the effect on DPS increases as your total Haste rises.

Calculated by (((100-Haste)/(100-Haste-1))-1)*1.5*100. Again, the 1.5 because Haste increases both melee DPS and TP rate.

Many people argue that while this calculation is valid for long fights, the benefits of Haste are significantly reduced in a merit party consisting of many short fights, as switching targets resets weapon delay.

Attack
The effects of Attack are more complicated. Like Accuracy, the effect of Attack decreases at higher values. Unlike Accuracy, the effect of 1 point of Attack decreases as the enemy's Defense rises. Furthermore, the effect doesn't decrease steadily like Accuracy: there are plateaus where either the maximum or minimum damage don't change for a while, so when your attack is close to the mob's defense (adjusted for level gap), adding more is about twice as effective as it is when it's about 25% lower or higher. See the pDIF page for the formulas.

The ratio between your Attack and the monster's Defense is reduced by 0.05 for each level the monster is above you for calculating the cRatio. This level correction is not considered by Check or for scaling the effect of 1 point of Attack.

Calculated by taking the average of min and max pDIF at each point. 0.6 or 1.2 in the numerator depend on whether or not min or max are pinned at 1.00 pDIF. Note that this assumes that all pDIF values between minimum and maximum have the same probability, which is known to be incorrect, and will be corrected in a future revision.

Interestingly, 500-525 attack is a pretty good target for both Colibri and Kirin.

If your Critical Hit rate is high, the benefits of attack fall off a bit more from cRatio = 1.666 because maximum critical damage is capped.

Strength
Unlike Accuracy, Attack and Haste, the effect of STR on melee DPS depends on the weapon used: it is much more effective with low-damage weapons.

Calculated by 1/D/4, as 4 STR ~ +1 D up to the fSTR cap, which is lower for lower-damage weapons.

Since +2 STR gives +1 Attack, also add half of the Attack value when considering the benefit of STR.

Dexterity
It is hard to quantify the effects of DEX at this time, as the formula for Critical Hit rate is not well understood. It seems that it rises slowly until DEX = mob AGI+40, then rises quickly to the cap at mob AGI+50, but this is not clear.

Since +2 DEX gives +1 Accuracy, also add half of the Accuracy value when considering the benefit of DEX.