Discussion/How To: Dual Blade vs Shadower

Very brief overview. "-->" means "into" i.e. plug the thing (usually multiply) before the arrow into the next thing on the right. Watch the [ ] brackets.

Your range --> [critical rate --> average critical damage] --> Skill damage and hits --> [Damage modifiers (e.g. boss damage, %DMG) + Hypers] --> [Monster PDR --> All IgnorePDR sources] --> [Skill Delays --> Skill chaining] --> No. of mobs.

Explanations are below.

 Wall of Text

Your range: obvious, but loads of stuff in it. Won't go into it. Use the average of your min and max.

Critical rate into critical damage: your average critical damage depends on skills that affect mincritdmg and maxcritdmg. Examples of the former usually include most passives and Hayato card; the latter would include SE. The default min and max crit damage are 1.20 and 1.50 respectively. Note that mincritdmg will never exceed maxcritdmg, and that some skills have a guaranteed critical or increased critical rate which you may have to factor in separately. The formula for this part is:

[1 + critrate*avgcritdmgbonus]

where critrate is your critical rate as shown on your stats UI but in decimals, and avgcritdmgbonus is the average bonus damage your criticals deal i.e. it would be (0.2 + 0.5)/2 = 0.35 without any min/maxcritdmg modifiers. See the spoiler to see where this came from.

 Spoiler

let your crit rate be x, and your avgcritdmgbonus be y (default value for y is 0.35)
On average, for x amount of time you will be doing criticals, which will have a damage of 1+y. Therefore this component is simply x*(1+y).
On average, for 1-x amount of time, you will be doing normal hits (100%) and have a damage of 1. This component is thus 1*(1-x) = 1-x

Therefore your total sum of average damage is
1-x + x*(1+y) == 1-x + x + xy
= 1 + xy

Skill damage and hits: see your skill damage % and multiply by no. of hits. Watch out for Shadow partner and stuff.

Damage modifiers: apparently Hypers' skill bonuses to damage stack additively with boss damage and all other %DMG modifiers. So just sum them up, and you then have:

[1 + %DMG + %Boss + %Hyper]

Monster PDR into IgnorePDR: All monsters have a defense rate that takes away a percentage/fraction of your damage. A PDR of 40% means that it ignores 40% of your damage. So your damage will thus be: (1 - PDR).
But, you may have skills and potential lines and stuff that allows you to ignore this PDR (yes, ignoring ignores). These sources of IgnorePDR stack additively. So if you have 40% + 40% + 30% = 100% IgnorePDR, that means that the monster's PDR is effectively 0% and you do full damage. A 20% IgnorePDR will mean that the monster's PDR is reduced by 20%. The monster's effective PDR becomes: [PDR*(1 - IgnorePDR)]

Therefore, the formula for this entire part is

[1 - PDR(1 - IgnorePDR)]

Note this is for GMS only; it does not apply to KMS, where IgnorePDR is multiplicative. Also note that any excess of IgnorePDR does not grant you bonus damage (no point going over 100%).

Skill delays into skill chaining: All skills have a delay - see extractions for the delays for individual skills. Those numbers are effectively the period of an attack [units of milliseconds]- you want the frequency of attack i.e. damage per second [no more milliseconds!], so you divide all the stuff you have by these numbers, or multiply by their reciprocal: blahblah*[1/delay].
But your attack rate is dependent on delays and your weapon speed. You will recall that you have booster, and there is (decent) speed infusion etc. Those lower the delay according to this formula:

[delay * (10 + effwepspd)/16]

Where effwepspd is your effective weapon speed. First check the attack speed of your weapon (see the Southperry database). Then see all sources of attack speed boosters, namely: booster: -2 (usually), SI: -2 (Decent: -1), Azwan inner ability: -1, BaM's Yellow Aura: -1, some skills with passive effect: check extractions.
effwepspd will not go below speed stage 2, and the outcome of this multiplication must be rounded up to the nearest 30 millisecond (i.e if you somehow obtain 820ms, it will be rounded up to 840ms).
Hurricane-type skills (i.e. skills with a rapidattack tag on them) have delays different from those shown, and may differ from skill to skill. They are not affected by boosters etc. (although their charge-up/release speed might be slightly boosted). Also note that you may have to consider summons (Ifrit, Elquines, Baha, Octopus, Kaiser's Wingbeats etc.) that have their own sets of delays/no. of hits and damage.

Some skills can be chained into one another. I'm not a shadower but I recall that you can chain skills from one to another e.g. Boomerang Step into Assaulter, etc. See JoeTang's wonderful thread for more information as to how they reduce a skill's delay: http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php...20Chaining

No. of mobs: No. of mobs hit. 'nuff said.

That's generally about it, as briefly as possible while providing explanation and clarity. There might be some slight bits here and there that are less important which I didn't mention, but this is the general overview. Note these are theoretical, and are affected by damage cap and stuff so sometimes it's better to consider hits/s if you always cap. Nothing here considers practicality of using skills, how nice it is to play a class blah blah blah. We will always tell people this: don't run to play a class just because of the numbers.

Hadriel