Grand Master vs AA Mastery

[splunge]

I wonder if it's the description of the AAs that's flawed.

/beats head on table vigorously

[Verdandi]

/beats head on table vigorously

What's so wrong with that suggestion?

[Ngreth Thergn]

I think he is trying ti indicate "It is what I have been saying"

[Aloura]

I'm actually concerned with the functionality of the aa's at all atm.

I dug out my logs after being moderatly concerned about my success rate.

86 combines on augs I've done so far.

I'm 250 base skill, 252 w/ grandmasters, and JCM 3.

I'm noticing the same trend that I noticed when they first borked JCM, I succeeded on 37 of those augs.

Its possible I'm just having really terrible luck with them.... but even if JCM was working and I had 0 skill, I should have succeeded on 43 of these.

Please don't flame me saying "the RNG can be cruel", I got plenty of that when I pointed out when they borked JCM the first time too.

The test of 1000 combines on mino brew's with brew mastery 1 and only 41 success, seems to imply the same trend. Thats why I brought this up.

I spoke directly with the lead CSR rep for sony online about the issue back in the day, and one of the gave himself JCM 3 in order to test my objections. When he failed all but 2 combines out of 100, he told me the issue would be looked into. 2 weeks later we got a patch message saying they fixed JCM. I contacted the GM, and asked what had been done. He told me he had spoken to the Dev team who told him it was suposed to be working as the text said. I asked him to repeat the test and he did so happily (just when you lost all faith in GM's! one goes and totally redemes himself!), and he succeeded on somewhere around 51/100 combines with a grand total of something like 20 skill. He was doing the chains for solstice robes as his test bed.

The skill masteries I can say without a doubt, are indeed intended to reduce failures by 50%. If they are not doing that ATM its very probable they are not doing anything at all, and it would be good if we can get the dev's to look into them. (It wouldn't be the first time it was borked)


Lastly a bit of a history lesson:
Before they borked JCM 3, it used to add 50% to the chance of success, reducing failures to 1/20 on any combine you could dream up if you had skill. This was not what the text said, and they "fixed" it. None of us really complained because we realized it never should have been as good as it was.... that is untill it was realized that it was not working at all. A couple weeks later it was fixed, and we for the most part went back about our business.

I'm very suspicious that the masteries are broken again.

I'll repeat it again for the skimmers:

The masteries are SUPPOSED to reduce FAILURES by 50%, just the way the descriptions read. If they are not doing that, they are likely not doing anything at all.

If we don't want the masteries to do this, thats a separate issue. Either way I'd sure like to see them doing *something*. For the record, I'm in the camp of having them require set skills (I liked the 100/150/225 idea)

(for the name of the GM, you can find it in the jewl craft forum)

[Eleena Transient]

Doing the math (showing just results)

expected results
86 combine, 0 JCM : 34 success
86 combine, 1 JCM : 40 success
86 combine, 2 JCM : 47 success
86 combine, 3 JCM : 60 success

That *is* worrisome. Granted 86 combines is, in the grand scheme of things, a small set of data, you do seem much closer to the '0 JCM' result then the '3 JCM' result. Might be worth having a dev look into it just to make sure.

Unless someone with jcm3 wants to do about 200 gem studded chains? Should get 152 with jcm3 working or 104 if its fubar.

[Aloura]

I also have salvage 3, Figured I'd mention it in the sake of complete data. Never know what addition might be fubar'ing the calculations.

[Kronepsis]

I have JCM3 and Salvage 1 and 250 JC. I just did 46 Gem Studded Chains for someone about 2 days ago...I failed 6.

/shrug

[Aloura]

good to hear kron.

the 46 / 1000 still concerns me though.

[Sehra]

I concur with the formulas stated above, and believe wholeheartedly that 46/1000 is just fine and dandy for Mastery 1 + 0 skill.

[Humlaor]

frankly, 46/1000 with mastery3 and 0 skill will be ok with me. I hope (and I believe, from the outcome of the test) that the masteries add 50% to your success chance rather than subtracting 50% from your fail chance. If people want to spend 18 AAs to get a 7.5% chance of success rather than a 5% chance, fine by me.

Boomlaor

[Dunthor Warsmith]

frankly, 46/1000 with mastery3 and 0 skill will be ok with me. I hope (and I believe, from the outcome of the test) that the masteries add 50% to your success chance rather than subtracting 50% from your fail chance. If people want to spend 18 AAs to get a 7.5% chance of success rather than a 5% chance, fine by me.

But what about the other end of the spectrum - the 250 doing combines? Adding success, if it adheres to the 95% cap, would make the AAs worthless for 95%+ native combines - and an extra 1 in 40 adds up, especially with costly ingredients on subcombines. If it doesn't obey the 95% cap, it would make large swaths of combines nofail. Neither of those sounds good to me.

(I'm in the "go-go variable formula (with appropriately altered description), or min skill level to buy, but keep it reducing fails" camp - though that does make the future introduction of ultra-low-success-rate recipes difficult without revisiting the AA again)

[Aloura]

I'm 100% certain its not adding 50% to the success, or I would rarely fail a high level combine. thats what it USED to do, before they borked JCM a long time ago, and then reset it to how the text read.

I have no problem with the 46/1000 if it still is doing *something* moderatly usefull for those of us attempting 50% ish combines.

[Kronepsis]

You're misunderstanding what he means Aloura. He doesn't mean adding as in 40% + 50% = 90%, he means adding as in 50% of 40% = 20%, 40% + 20% = 60%.

[Eleena Transient]

But once you hit 67% then a 50% success increase (67 + 67/2 = 67 + 33 = 100) means no failures. With max 252 skill, a 315 skill combine has a 67% success rate. If the aa truly was +50% success, then Everything under 315 would be no fail.

[Humlaor]

But (as I understand it), with the exception of combines which are trivial either below 15 or 200 points below your skill, there is no such thing as "no fail." There is always a (small) chance of failure even on trivial 53+ items, and I don't think these AAs would change that, they would just raise the trivials you can attempt with an expected 95% success rate.

According to the calculator, with 252 modified skill combines with trivials up to 278 are at 95% success rate. I see nothing wrong with spending 18 AAs to make it so that trivials up to 315 are at the same 95% success rate.

Boomlaor