Some thoughts. Assume every sentence is prefixed by "I think".
If someone uses Imperil on high difficulty (which they pretty much have to unless they're super super rich):
Elemental vs Holy/Dark.
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hvlist.niblseed.com]
http://hvlist.niblseed.com/https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Monster_Lab#Colored_ChartsElemental, with Imperil, probably best with Willow; elec or wind. Toughest monster in a given random battle will likely have base mitigation ~64 up to 68, most of the time. Most monsters will have base mitigation in the 60s. After Imperil, 68 mitigation goes down to 28 mitigation, so we want sufficient proficiency to negate the remaining 28 mitigation. This requires one prof piece (I think cap or pants) and full prof forging on that piece and staff.
Holy/Dark: Toughest monster in a given random battle will likely have base mitigation ~64 up to 68, most of the time, but occasionally only 39-43. Most monsters will have base mitigation around 40. After Imperil, 68 mitigation goes down to 43 mitigation, and base 43 mitigation goes down to 18 mitigation.
Holy/Dark definitely wants to negate that remaining 18 mitigation that
most monsters will have (or more). But then, how much farther to go? In GF, at least (8.3 monsters per round), it's
pretty likely that at least one monster type of the up to 4 types spawned will be resistant to Holy/Dark (have 25 base mitigation, or usually 64-68 after crystals). We can either go all the way (case 1) and try to completely negate their mitigation (requiring 43 mitigation reduction from proficiency), or we can be more moderate (case 2) and leave them with 5-10 points of mitigation, or do something else (case 3) and leave them with more.
I think case 1 (full mitigation reduction from 68) is bad for holy/dark. They require 68 - 25 = 43 points of mitigation reduction from prof to accomplish that, or 0.90 prof_factor. That requires 2 prof pieces, which means a lot of EDB loss (wild guess: 40 EDB at 500, after forging), which Holy's proc doesn't make up for; elemental, which can have a very similar result while only using one prof piece (plus the depreciating bonus and counter-resist bonus of Willow), would very likely be better. In other words, if full mitigation reduction is best for a holy/dark mage who uses Imperil on high difficulty, in every case they'd have better results with elec/wind instead.
Case 3, when the monsters resistant to holy/dark only have their mitigation reduced to ~15 points or more, probably isn't good either. A mage's clear speed is generally determined by the toughest monster spawned in a round; if the toughest monster spawned generally has something around 15 mitigation, with damage taken multiplier of 0.85, that's like giving up on all of Æsahættr, Golden Compasses, Grace and Knowledge, and half of Free-Flowing Dust. Even though you'd save using a big slot on a prof piece, your EDB gain wouldn't be worth the overall damage loss against the monster that it's most important to kill quickly. Case 1 > Case 3, and standard elec/wind > Case 1.
So if Imperil holy/dark is to match Imperil elec/wind (willow) on high difficulty, it has to be with Case 2, or with holy/dark prof
usually but not
always negating the mitigation of the tougher holy/dark resistant monsters. But these are going to be the bottleneck, the ones most often left with a bit of HP after a T3 and T2; any mitigation above 0 is troublesome, especially since the ones that appear most often will have high PL and have ~64 or more mitigation. On rounds where there are no holy/dark resistant monsters, or when the one or two that spawn both have ~61 or less mitigation, additional mitigation reduction would be wasted, and you'd prefer to have EDB instead in that situation. I'm thinking you definitely want at least 61 mitigation reduction, because dark/holy resistant monsters above PL ~1230 (which appear a decent chunk of the time) have at least 61 mitigation. There are only 20-ish monsters with mitigation
69 or above for holy, but those that do appear
pretty often, probably more than once every 3 rounds.
{Tsukiko Tsutsukakushi, Noel The Celestial, Cracker Jim, Loliloli-love, King Saralegui, 14x Darksage monsters, I Fear Fire, Akroma, Arya Stark, Alicia Florence}.
The distribution is similar for dark mitigation. I'm not completely sure, but I'm inclined to think it wouldn't be a good idea to have total mitigation reduction below ~
67. In the population of monsters we fight, most only have 60-64 or so, but due to the PL spawn distribution, I think
we encounter at least one with mitigation 66-67 or above in 40%-60% of rounds. So we need at least around that much mitigation reduction, or in the
majority of rounds, we'd prefer having prof in a better slot such that we have more prof = more mitigation reduction in exchange for having less EDB. But this is nearly the same as Case 1, isn't it?
There are a few confounding variables I'm not factoring in. Across elements, monster resist rates of the monsters with highest mitigation to that element is not the same. Eg. as holy, high mitigation Celestials with high Wis can 50% Resist more often. HP differences across monster classes (and trainers' chaos investments) is another issue; just looking at the mitigation number is somewhat misleading. Ideally, to figure this out, we could look at
average monster HP as well as resist rates. Also, on the player side, I'm glossing over the difference in base spell damage across elements, the effect of different cast speeds, and the differences among staves for each element (mdb, edb, prof).
But I don't think these are enough to overturn the main conclusion: if you're using Imperil on high difficulty, wouldn't it always be better to use elemental instead of holy/dark?
Of course, non-imperil is different, in which case holy/dark is of course is so much better than elemental.
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Sep 13 2016, 17:02
