FFXIV Mythbusters | Can You Block Knockbacks by Standing Right in the Middle of Them?

Can you actually "block" knockbacks by standing right on them? Or is this myth caused by some misunderstanding? We test this and more here on FFXIV Mythbusters!
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Music Used:
FFXIV Endwalker - Cradle of Hope
#ffxiv #endwalker
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:36 (1) "Stand perfectly in the center of knockback to ignore it!" (FALSE)
06:35 (2) "Some Gear Ignores Syncing!" (FALSE)
12:11 (3) Blue Mage Avail + Paladin Cover = ?
13:16 (4) Paladin with Arm's Length using Cover, what Happens?
13:38 (5) Does Paladin Cover also block Knockbacks?
14:32 (6) Do Chocobo Companions have a Role?
15:51 Outro
16:22 Fun Fact

[@SteadyTokai]

The reason the other pld flew back harder is because they took 2 knockbacks. As the covering paladin will still get one if they are to be knocked back. I learned this the hard way during Exdeath prog back during Stormblood. I got curious and covered my warrior and I flew right off the southern side of the arena.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Thank you for the addition! I wasn't sure if knockbacks could "stack", and as right round already smacks really hard, I didn't want to say either way, even if it seemed to line up! Also that's really funny 😂

[@voidhunter2800]

I remember the first time i ever saw it happen, the pld flew off the arena and died.

[@lsandoval5435]

Lol thats a "My bad moment" to remember.

[@minakochan1022]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I want to confirm this as well. In o4s the knockback is almost the entire length of the arena. If you cover someone without arm's length you get yeetted way off the arena. I would cover my bard in that fight but tempered will had such a long cooldown I couldn't only do it once for them. I can't remember why I cared about the ranged getting knocked back though.

[@fluffyfang4213]

Throwing in an additional confirmation from P7S. I am reminded that I need to test if the knockback *direction* is also transferred. I don't think it is, but whenever there's a cover during a knockback, there's usually too much panic going on to pay attention to that. Easy way to test: Cover someone and position yourselves so the knockback is between both of you. If the direction *is* transferred, the PLD should rubber band close to where they started. If it is not transferred, they get pinned to the arena wall for a bit.

[@suaimhneas12]

For the part about whether your chocobo has a role, I found myself thinking "couldn't you test this more easily by just casting Aetheric Mimicry on your chocobo?" I was curious, so I tried it out. The result: the spell misses. I tested it with the chocobo in free stance, attacker stance, healer stance, and defender stance, and the same thing happened for each.

[@LagIncarnate]

Cover does in fact double up knockbacks on a player if both they and their target are hit by a knockback. In fact Cover not only allows you to take the knockback effect, but it can even prevent knockbacks that ignore knockback immunity such as Arms Length! This is because the covered player isn't immune to knockbacks, rather since the attack is being redirected the knockback is still resolved, and thus someone is still being knocked back, it's just not the player being covered. Only attacks that ignore both knockback immunity and Cover will knock you back if you're being covered when it occurs. Hilariously the reverse is also true for BLU mage's avail, which could be used during the beach tower event to knockback party members off the tower using the bombs that would fall near the top. This is definitely not a suggestion on how to grief your friends next Moonfire Faire.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Thank you for the addition! The explanation makes sense and adds up! 😁 That note about the Faire sounds like a great way to get someone to get real mad at you! 😂

[@vincentholden3896]

Your chocobo can have an AST card. As a treat.

[@Keilchi]

12:11 Now a follow up question is which takes priority. Have the BLU avail the WHM and PLD cover the BLU, who takes the damage?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

😂😂😂 I feel like I will never run out of interactions to test with these abilities 😂😂😂 I will write it down!

[@GamerzBrofessional]

well since he said that damage is only ever transferred once even in the case of multiple chained covers, it would depend on which player actually has the aggro/is getting attacked. If its the blu, then the whm would be damaged, if its the whm then the pld. and if its the pld then still the pld.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@GamerzBrofessional an important difference is that avail is reverse cover, so the scenario suggested would actually mean that if the blue mage is being hit, avail redirects the damage to the white mage, but cover redirects the damage to the paladin, so it does get interesting who actually takes the damage! To further clarify, as pld is covering the blue mage, if paladin is hit directly, they themselves take the hit. Blue mage is availing the white mage, so if the white mage gets hit, the white mage takes the hit! 😊

[@GamerzBrofessional]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh yeah thats what i said. i know avail. if the blu is targeted, then the whm gets the damage cause damage is only transferred once. the fact the pld is covering doesnt matter if its the blu thats targeted. it wouldn't go from blu to whm, then whm to pld. it woudl stop at whm. BUT if the whm is the one thats targeted, then the pld WOULD take the damage since its not transfered damage the whm is getting hit with

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@@GamerzBrofessional I think there is a misunderstanding here The White mage only has Avail on them, so if the White Mage is hit, then the damage is not transferred to anyone, because the Cover is placed on the Blue Mage, not the White Mage. Meaning: Paladin White mage And so if the Paladin gets hit, the paladin takes damage. The white mage transfers their damage nowhere, because the cover is on the blue mage. It is specifically important that this suggested test does not touch on the chain cover situation, because it is a different take on the "2 covers on the same person" situation. We learned previously that if 2 covers target the same person, the oldest cover disappears. But we don't know if Avail has that same interaction, and if it doesn't, it becomes interesting who takes the damage!

[@KingM1023]

I can confirm that cover makes you take 2 hits of kb. I covered a healer in the last boss of matoya's Relic for the kb. I got shot way past the safe zone while he got really confused he did move at all.

[@sirhc1528]

To bad that Cover doesnt work on the Shiva or Tsuki transition anymore. It was always fun to cover a random player and see them being confused about being able to move. Also, flying high at Bismark doesnt work anymore for PLD but still does for BLU. So the BLU tether is probably coded like the old SB cover.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is interesting! It is possible avail works like old cover! Which mechanic do you mean by flying high? 🤔😅

[@sirhc1528]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Bismark add phase has these knockup tornados. Usually you get knocked up once, fall down and have have immunity for a short while. When coverd by a PLD, you could stand on them without being effected by anything. The effect went to the PLD without the immunity. So every server tick the PLD got knocked higher and higher until the tornado moved away or the cover stretched to far. Cover didnt work anymore when I testet it the last time during the middle of SHB, but it did avail.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@sirhc1528 that's really funny! I have to test this myself at some point! 😂

[@archmagemc3561]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Avail is a weird ability. You can avail the tank when doing 8 blu bahamut during the ground collapses to funnel them to the tank, and the puddles don't spawn. The torandos do though, so thats why you can't do that in p3.

[@gandhijagasia2182]

You had made a mention to Suzaku's DPS targeted mechanic never choosing particular people: I made the same observation, there's usually some sort of fallback once the normal 4 DPS 2 Tank 2 Healer party isn't there. For Suzaku specifically, once you have more than 4 DPS it looked like either enmity or damage dealt determines who gets targeted. I don't remember if it was the bottom 4 or top 4, but it seemed consistent and we know that this is a potential item to get keyed off of, because The Weapon's Refrain enrage picks up people from lowest damage dealt to highest, so Suzaku could easily have a default fallback seeding what people perceive as RNG.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is an interesting observation, and it is perfectly possible, because that friend of mine usually did good damage (and so should rank high if not highest consistently)!

[@gandhijagasia2182]

In a purely PF scenario, someone who raids will consistently outgear other people catching up on their mounts and know their opener (or have a rough idea on opener for an alt job); so he's likely seeding the data in a way that he wasn't expecting!

[@FanOfMostEverything]

I do have to appreciate the "Meat Shield"/"Meatily Shielded" interplay.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

It's always funny when the buff tooltips get a bit silly!

[@Kafaldsbylur]

My hypothesis for the knockback direction is similar to #3, but without the concept of "next byte over"; there is some function in the engine to calculate the angle between 2 points, that function will always produce *some* result, so there is no reason to look at a different byte. What I think *might* happen (and this is pure speculation) is that there is some conversion between 32-bit floats and 64-bit floats happening somewhere in the angle calculation code. This change in precision could mean that the vector between two identical points isn't (0.0, 0.0) but something like (0.000000006, -0.00000009) or some very tiny vector like that. That vector has a proper direction that would change depending on the inputs. If my wild hunch is correct, I'd expect the knockback direction to be consistent as long as Right Round caster doesn't move, but that even minute changes to the caster's location would change the knockback angle effectively randomly.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Interesting hypothesis! To your last paragraph, I demonstrated moving a miniscule amount backwards to "micro adjust in case we weren't overlapped perfectly", and it had no impact on the knockback direction. It is still possible that it is as you say! 😊

[@Kafaldsbylur]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I had not noticed the micro adjustment test. Still, even if the exact details (involving float precision errors) of my wild hunch are incorrect, I think the essence of it is still the likeliest scenario; a deterministic calculation based on bad data would both give consistent results given the same bad input (identical positions), and change if the bad input did in a noticeable way. Either way, no matter what determines what the knockback angle should be, the point still remains that standing in the exact center of a knockback still knocks you back, likely for exactly the reason you gave: the game applies the Knockback effect to everything in the AoE. That effect receiving a degenerate angle doesn't change the fact that the knockbakc effect gets applied

[@DeamonHunter]

On a similar thought process, the most likely scenario is that there *is* some special handling when players are *near* 0 to each other. As when taking the difference between 2 players, the next thing to do is likely to normalise it. (Make a vector with the same direction but a length of 1.) Normalising however cannot work with 0, (Or in the case of floating point, near 0 values as well.) So a special case here would have to be applied to avoid the game/server crashing. Then this special case cascades, into what seems to be away from/to origin. (As a small note, when working with floating points. Being on exactly the same spot is likely impossible. As typically you need to be precise on several orders of magnitude than "same pixel', where even the time between frames matters.) However another case can happen and that is the fact that the game is multiplayer. It is highly unlikely that the players position between their client and the server match up 100%, doubly so when considering that the error is likely greater when adding the extra hop to another client. So 2 players could actually be in the *same* position on their side, but the server disagrees by a slight amount. Small errors like these occur pretty frequently, particularly when limiting how many movement packets a player can send. Compounding this, it is likely that the client does not send updates for very tiny movement updates. All of which adds up to small errors which could result in some 90% consistent cases particularly when one player doesn't move.

[@coaster1235]

i would like to volunteer the kb center-adjacent claim that if you stand in the center of the arena, where the three wedges meet, during the slice is right’s cup minigame part, you never get knocked off stage with 100% consistency (awful as it would be to test)

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed, that is an interesting claim! The things I'm considering in relation to this claim is: if you stand perfectly in the center as you suggest, do you then also never win the extra mgp? If so, then it suggests that there could be a pixel perfect spot where you actually are considered to be in none of the three thirds, which would be surprising. Alternatively... If you DO sometimes get the mgp anyway, then it sounds more likely it is a case of randomness and that there is no safe spot perfect in the center. In fact, I'd find it more likely that the knockback cone covers the. Center pixel as well due to the shape of such a cone! It is a very interesting claim though, and as you said, it would suuuuuck to test, both because of how many times you'd need to try, and the time between attempts. And even if you did come to the conclusion that it is false, it is possible people would just go "am pretty sure you were a pixel off!" in the same way! 😅

[@Litepastistime]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I always thought our hitbox was just 1 pixel, and that it was just technically not possible to be exactly in the center of a knockback because of that :o I dunno maybe the knockback hitbox don't really have a perfect center, same for the arena? :o No clue tho, just supposition x)

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@Litepastistime that also sounds possible!

[@sunn7615]

This is probably only vaguely related to the video, but I actually have a reasonable suspicion that the rng in ffxiv is sinusoidal in nature (IE if you map it out on just the right timescale, you find a standard sine wave function). I'm not really sure how to test for this though, tbh. I have a few ideas but IDK how well they'd pan out. The reasons I suspect this are twofold. One, in one of my groups p12s nights, our phase 1 clear had Athena doing consistently ≥ 1.04 on the random damage multiplier (essentially equivalent to her rolling 96 nat20s on 100 dice rolls in a row). Two, I've noticed when practicing on a dummy at certain sks/sps, I get weirdly consistent damage outputs when you take out the crit and dhit multipliers. Technically, this is better for rng as it forces the average to be perfectly middle between the two extremes if done right (most other random number generators that I'm aware of have a bias that skews off the middle by some amount) but can also lead to the weird rng patterns we players sometimes see, which is another reason I think that's how they do their rng. Note: For those who don't know, the game has a random damage multiplier that varies from 0.95 to 1.05 on all damage abilities (IDK if it's on healing as well tbh), including players, pets, and bosses.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is an interesting idea and description, and honestly, this kind of "somewhat consistent" would be very helpful in how the game is very focused on consistency anyway! 😊 In regards to relation to the video, I directly brought up this kind of awkward consistency, so I think it is very relevant!

[@sunn7615]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh If you ever figure out how to test it, I'd be very interested in the results myself. Only thing I can think of is to have a large group of players (say 24) all hitting the same dummy at very slight offsets from each other with a single skill and then graphing out the results over time. I noticed the weirdly consistent damage first on 2.40GCD warrior back when Abyssos was current and I was practicing for p8s.

[@apljack]

People I've helped in P12S and such, or if I was with a group in PF long enough to get a lot of patterns, would have the idea that encounters are somewhat 'seeded' when you enter an instance. It's odd on some mechanics that should, realistically, have a 50/50 chance of happening a certain way to instead almost always do one format or the other. So much so, that sometimes you can go an entire lockout of back to back pulls and not see a mechanic happen a certain way.... which then for anyone newer or whatever, can create problems for them seeing the other way randomly down the time. I've had days where every Lazy Laser was in the N, with about 75% of them being a no-swap. On Para 3, I'm sometimes ALWAYS the '+' and never any other position... I've had times I would forget which healer was my partner, because I never needed to care.

[@grimacetexas9719]

There is definitively this weird rng thing, there are too many mechanics with lots of differents possible outcomes that still roll the same, on dsr in a whole reset we had on the first mechanic of p2 blue being safe 5/6 times, on like 20/25 pulls, on a mech that should be a 1/4 chance. Same getting prey all the time or almost never on some timers

[@iPlayOnSpica]

Healing has a +/-3% variance, and most damage have a +/-5% variance. Limit breaks have recently been updated to have reduced variance, though to what degree, I don't know.

[@limontree476]

Interesting note with the ilvl sync, for BLU raiding you want a cane that matches the level of the duty because while the cane does not have any stats to sync down the materia will still be disabled. Thus in Omega a lvl 80 cane with give 0 stats while a lvl 70 cane will give the materia stats. This is a rather unique case due to BLU weapons being statless baseline. Also, to further enforce the no chocobo role point, you can cast Aetherial Mimicry as BLU on your chocobo (something you cannot do on npcs) but will give no buff.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is a very good point indeed! I hadn't actually thought about that with the canes but it makes sense!

[@chelseahutchens6555]

One thing to consider is that you do keep all the stats on a relic. Like, having crit/det/minimum sps will translate to syncing ilvl. Part of why relics are ideal for legacy content. Those extra substats can add up.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Oh yes, the key here is that only the "maximum" is reduced, but if you spread your relic weapons secondary stats evenly, you can get more stats in, like a weird optimization based kind of limbo! 😁

[@im_cent]

the right round kb is sending me

[@crowdemon_archives]

YEET

[@Maeve_Rose]

for 1. option 4. game works on a pixel-like grid system, and the knockback goes from a corner of one of the pixels so you CANT be in the middle.

[@Cloud7050]

To add on to level syncing, relics can be great for old MINE content. For example, I have a HW relic weapon that beats level 90 synced down weapons, when used in ARR raids. The relic is specced with 50 crit, DH, det & piety. This is in contrast to a regular level 90 weapon which would only have 2 substats, then getting both substats synced down to max for that item level. So the relic instead lets me have 4 maxed substats.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Precisely the way to make a relic stronger in old content! 😁

[@DanTilden03]

5:18 i'm very happy that you mentioned that bc its one of the things that i claim even tho i never checked if it was true

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I'm also happy that a lot of others have agreed to have noticed this! 😅

[@archmagemc3561]

There is a single instance of this I've found. in Emerald Weapon EX, when you are at the Gaius phase and he sends out the machina bombers and ends with a walker that does a huge AoE. Standing directly in the middle of the plus marker the mech walker places will not knock you back. Granted you take more damage from this, so it makes sense it works differently.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is quite interesting yes!

[@TheDireLynx]

i think knockback transfering with cover happens for the same reason as things like the vulnerability from E9S tankbuster transfer. it's based on damage done from a hit that connects. you might even be able to avoid a damage down from certain mechanics with cover, now that i think about it. in E10S there was as uptime strat that involved putting on so many shields that your base hp wasn't touched and that avoided damage down being applied the same way shields prevent knockbacks

[@Polarthief]

If I had to assume with the Chocobo, I think it actually *does* have a role, but it's a weird 5th role hidden in the game. We also know DoH/DoL has their "white" role, so Chocobos have their "yellow" role. This also means the cards on AST simply check if you're the appropriate role (Blue/Melee or Green/Ranger/Caster) and don't check if you're *not* the wrong role, otherwise the cards would give the 6% version on Profession and Chocobo roles.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed, that sounds right to me! 😊

[@RockR277]

Definitely looks like the covering PLD got hit by both knockbacks in that test. Reminds me of a time back in SB before everyone had arms length, I saved a BRD a couple of times in O5S using cover + tempered will when the ghost walls were mistakenly all destroyed.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Ah yes the good old tempered will! Back when knockback immunity was more rare as I recall! 😁 Nice one!

[@FaultBat]

I expect the direction of knockback is calculated with some basic vector math based on the coordinates of the effect and the coordinates of the target. If the vector is [0,0], the proper result is undefined, but that's an edge case that a video game generally isn't going to handle. Instead, it's going to have a check for the first component of the vector being zero, and to avoid dividing by zero, assume it's either 90 degrees or 270 degrees (up or down along the y axis), see that the second component is positive (or non-negative, technically) and result in a 90 degree direction as the result. So, not an intentional default, just a quirk of how video game vectors are calculated. I then expect the difference on the maps has something to do with the way data is stored in Final Fantasy XIV, but I couldn't begin to speculate on how that sort of thing is handled.

[@SakuraShuuichi]

some secondary effects of attacks like knockback can be blocked withhp shield, but not all of them can. by that i mean it is inconsistent between bosses an attacks with the same effects which will be blocked and which won't. but if you can block a knockback bleed or vuln from a boss using a shield you can do it consistently on that specific attack on tat boss. Usually the difference is ow the attack is resolved in the code, if it is damage with a knockbck/bleed/vuln it is blockabl, but if it is a knockback/bleed/vuln with damage it is unblockable and mostly indistinguishable. I'm not sure about this part exactly but it explains the inconsistency🎉 in a reasonable way. one thing to also note about level sync, is that diminishing returns for stats scale with level, so in some cases the bis stats are different per level.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Correct! I am not sure either. My guess is that sometimes the knockback is a side effect of taking damage from the attack, in a similar way to how sometimes a boss attack can apply a dot, but only if the initial attack does damage. But other times, blocking all the initial hit does nothing! 😅 The important part as you said, is if a mechanic is shown to be stoppable with a shield or invuln, then it is ALWAYS stoppable in this way!

[@kohlicoide2258]

4:55 When i was progging P8S P2 with my static we have a RPR that get the NA Dots so rarely it become a meme :D

[@Grimnoire]

You can block knock backs with gap closers, it overrides the knockback when timed correctly, you can even stand close to the edge of an arena and survive a fatal knock back this way.

[@kevinsano]

One day I'll cancel Lakshmi's knockback with a gap closer... ONE DAY

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed! This also further reduces the potential value behind this claim of ignoring a knockback by standing on it, assuming it was possible! 😂

[@fluffyfang4213]

​@@kevinsano Out of my 15+ attempts, I have actually once managed to Rescue someone on that. So I can confirm the window on that is tiny if it exists.

[@kohlicoide2258]

I miss E4S.. :D

[@titaniumvulpes]

@@fluffyfang4213 I saw a video years ago of someone timing a Rescue _just right_ to cancel the knockback just before the maze phase of the final boss of Orbonne and I've been trying to replicate it ever since. Someday.......

[@kalma2467]

At 6:07 I immediately knew the answer since I play WAR a lot and love the job not to mention I’ve had many times where I get vuln stacks cause of inner release not letting me get knocked back into places I need to be

[@ShifterVampire]

There is one more Cover/Avail combo maybe worth checking. PLD using cover on BLU while BLU use avail on someone else (with BLU receiving hits of course)

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed! The most interesting part of this test is that if it were two paladins, the oldest cover just disappears, but in this case because both buffs are different, this might just work! 😊

[@ShifterVampire]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah, unless the game check it extensively and check every member of the party it's kinda already worked. In PLD examples one target received 2 of the same buff (target of cover) and old one disappeared (with the cover tied to it). In this video it was already show BLU can have "target of cover" and "gave away avail" at the same time. Unless the game checks all member of the party giving it to someone else should work... Testing is still required though xD

[@asl9555]

u can ignore some kb if u receive 0dmg that happens in msq ultima fight

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed! And this is another source of this myth that standing right in the middle blocks it instead! 😅

[@medivh1035]

13:38 There is a corner case. It doesn't work against the tornado's knock back in cloud 9.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That makes sense! Cover does have the "does not work against certain attacks" disclaimer so that does match with expectations! Nice catch with finding it!

[@red5robb1]

at this point, might as well do one of these mythbusters only dealing with Cover mechanics 🤣

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

In retrospect I should, but every time I think I'm done with cover, another thing turns up! 😂

[@Chaoticstorm]

I’ve personal experienced the first myth myself. It’s only ever happened once and to this day I’ve yet to pull it off again. It has to be beyond pixel perfect in my opinion. That or it was some kind of glitch error but whatever the reasoning I doubt it’s something people can do on purpose

[@roanen5285]

in truth, we don't even know what the future of the cards will be with the pending rework XD

[@lockinhinddanger934]

you can move faster if your cmos battery is low (your internal clock is running faster than its supposed to.)

[@Narlaw1199]

It was just something you mentioned, but what you call squeenix RNG was my bane in p8s. Almost never got to practice dog 2, since PF struggled mostly on snake 1/2, so my only real chances to see dog 2 was if the boss started with dog 1 first... which almost never happened to me.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I find it very vindicating that so many can report similar weird rng experiences like I have! 😅 It is very unfortunate the situation you landed in as a result though!

[@Narlaw1199]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh And *I* am vindicated all the same since you mentioned it! I always thought I the only one experiencing such weird RNG. It's a wonder how it works. Are there premade sets of RNG patterns? Do they change only every lockout? Every hour? Region specific?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@Narlaw1199 anything is possible. I had a session in criterion aloalo island where it felt like the pattern on the first boss changed with disturbing accuracy like every 30 minutes or so! But I will admit there may have been some bias in my memory on that one! 😅

[@Narlaw1199]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah, we can only speculate with bias and anecdotal evidence. It would be great if we could test this RNG at a proper statistical scale.

[@xpucm0ca]

On certain fights I have standed in the center of the knock back an it did not knock me back... cant rememeber the fight, but it did work consistently. It was a bug, dont get me wrong - but that sparked that myth. Not sure, but it might be Emerald Weapon Extreme. So I did experienced that myself.

[@THEREALBLU13]

I have a fcmate that insists dance partnering the sage will increase its healing done with kardia and I am convinced it doesn’t, would be interesting to see if it’s true or not

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Standard finish boosts damage done. Only damage. Kardia causes your attacks to separately also heal a target. Meaning the healing is unrelated to the damage done. As such, damage boosting effects will not boost the healing of kardia! 😊 You can also easily test this just the two of you. Find a striking dummy, one of you go sage, the other dancer. Stay in party from the very beginning. Set up kardia on one of you, and then spam dosis until you have a good idea of the average healing of kardia. Then, have the dancer maintain the damage buff from standard finish, while the sage spams dosis some more to see if the healing is changed (I am confident it will not change 😉)

[@azraeldraco9979]

A thing I'd like to point out and know more about is when it comes to gear syncing is that when you look at Ultimates the gear ilvl cap is 125 over the Ultimate ilvl in terms of max amount of stats you can get from a gear, so what is the scaling below 125 and how much more stats it gives compared to something like 50 ilvl higher.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Hmmm I am not 100% sure what it is you are asking but I will try my best. Ultimates, like all other content, sync you to a certain item level. Because Ultimates cannot be queued for however, they don't have a minimum item level at all, meaning, if you so desire, you can enter in just your small clothes. But I don't think the rest of your group will appreciate that! With that said, let's take Unending Coils of Bahamut as an example. In this duty, you get synced to item level 345, meaning gear below i345 will simply stay as is, gear exactly at item level 345 will exist as is (and will even get to keep their materia!). Gear at item level 346 or above will get synced, meaning their limits are adjusted to item level 345 like demonstrated in the video, and materia turns off. How much stats would an i345 piece of equipment normally be capped on though? Well, the O4S weapons (Genji weapons), and the armor and accessories from Swallow's Compass are all i345, so let's take a helmet from there as an example: Bonewicca Protector's Helm has 78 Strength, 79 Vitality, 77 Skill Speed and 54 Tenacity, and 2 Materia Slots. That means that any tank helmet synced down to i345 would have 78 Strength, 79 Vitality, and at most 77 in whatever secondary stats it might have. For example, if you were to use the Augmented Credendum Circlet of Fending (item level 660 weekly tomestone helmet), which normally has 248 Strength, 277 Vitality, 129 Crit and 184 Tenacity, it would be reduced to 78 Strength, 79 Vitality, 77 Crit and 77 Tenacity, and any materia in it would stop working. To give a more "middle ground" example item as well, if you used a helmet from O12S, the final raid tier of Stormblood, let's say the Omega Circlet of Fending, which has 90 Strength, 97 Vitality, 87 Crit and 61 Determination, it would also get reduced to i345 and instead be capped off to give 78 Strength, 79 Vitality, 77 Crit, but notably only 61 Determination, as the item didn't exceed the limit on Determination in the first place! I hope these examples give some more insight! ^^'

[@raventhorX]

With the chobo one you only tested while it was in a neutral stance. Chocobos also have stances of a sort when you have them learn one of the three skill lines, though these days they could technically learn all the lines completely after a while of grinding.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I actually tested it while it was in the attacker stance. And my chocobo has all of the skills unlocked 😊

[@raventhorX]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh hmm. My bad then, thought that was the neutral stance.

[@asteroidxarmageddon2354]

What's funny is that standing in the middle of a knockback is usually more detrimental than helpful in some cases....looking at you any knockback with a blue AoE at its center and Emerald Weapon's Black Wolf phase with the Reaper.

[@CytheGaeta]

Im not sure if you have covered it but I swear I heard that if you fight a enemy that can drop materials on gatherer gear you have a higher chance of getting the drops

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Gatherer stats have no effect when you are not a gatherer job, similar to how tenacity and piety requires you to be a specific role. This kind of claim is also very easy to make and very hard to prove, because you could just be having a lucky streak, and it would require many many many tests to know with some certainty! 😅

[@Pmak]

For the knockback...did you check where was blowing from? Maybe that is how it determines which direction it will knock you back from :3

[@BmoBeemo]

One piece of advice I hear for eureka is to use the ilvl 290 imperial jade accessories instead of higher synced down accesories to ilvl 300. I'm wondering if that's true or if it was a relic of back when you could meld main stats onto equipment?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I am reasonably confident this is a relic from things like melding main stats, but there could be some detail I am missing! If you can overmeld the i290 accessories, you might be able to gain some extra value, but I think it is extremely minimal if anything!

[@SaraAliciaCaster]

In some cases for casters Higher gear with spell speed will ignore the sync, but only with spell speed I was talking to a friend who was doing ucob as summoner, and he was being told he needs to get eternal darkness ring of casting, because the spell speed on it does not get synced down

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Whoever told him this is wrong 😊 it may look like it doesn't sync down because your gcd becomes "faster" when you go inside rather than "slower" as you'd expect because your gear is weaker. But as you enter ucob, your level is reduced to 70, massively reducing the amount of stats you need to reduce your gcd in the first place. This causes that effect where it looks like the ring isnt syncing down. In reality, any ring with at least 61 spell speed on it would have just a much spell speed as the eternal dark ring of casting. As I said, a lot of people have no idea how syncing, or stat breakpoints for that matter, actually work, even if they sound confident! 😅😊

[@SaraAliciaCaster]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh ok good to know

[@chronoschord]

I don't know if it works elsewhere, but I think the knockback claim can be tested with The Ultima Weapon quest (The Porta Decumana) where you fight first phase Gaius. If you move into Ifrit's space when he does Vulcan Burst, there is no knockback and also skips his arena's edge Radiant Plumes. It happened for me both on Duty Support and Duty Finder dailies.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This could also be due to a different interaction: That knockback can be blocked if it does zero damage due to barriers from, say, a Scholar or a sage! 🤔

[@chronoschord]

@@CaetsuChaijiChThat makes sense, I did learn some interactions are voided if no damage was done from this very channel o/

[@femthingevelyn]

Im actually curious, how do Vulnerability stacks interact with Cover? like if im a paladin and cover someone who has a vuln do i take more damage? what about if i have a vuln? what if we both have a vuln?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

To my memory, you take the vuln stack. And, the damage is calculated as if it hit you originally anyway (this was demonstrated in previous mythbuster videos! 😊), so if you already have a vuln stack, you would take more damage. Whether the covered player has a vuln stack is irrelevant 😊

[@italian504]

Speaking of Knockbacks, and this is from me casually playing the game at times while doing encounters: It seems as if there's three kinds of knockbacks bosses do but you can negate some of those knockbacks just through big enough absorbs shields. Let me try to explain and hopefully get proper testing in the future on my end as well: The three knockbacks 1: True Knockback (Meaning it does the knockback period. No absorb damage will stop it) 2: Damage Knockback (It does damage then knocks back) 3: Knockback Damage (It knocks back then damages) I've only seen Ravana have the third version but i might be wrong on that third one existing. Anyways onto the real thing. It seems as if the knockback type that deals damage has the same quirk as White Hole from Exdeath where if you take no damage, the following effect does not apply. They may of used the same code for Knockbacks that follow this kind of program If Target takes Direct Damage > Push % yalms away But if you take no damage and the shield absorbs it all, it should completely negate the knockback in the process. However many bosses do this i cannot say as i've seen this happen to me on a few random occasions where an absorb shield was high enough that i took no knockback while the others did. DRK might be best to test since it's one of the more powerful self shields at over 25% hp as a shield on demand and in higher echo content can trivialize boss AOE that deals damage. This theory only works with Damage Knockback, not Knockback damage. I would love to hear more about this concept and if it works in the next video because if Square continues to design just as many Damage Knockback mechanics there is some cheesy potential somewhere in the future.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This sounds about right yes. There are unstoppable knockbacks in general, knockbacks that are stoppable (like with arms length), and knockbacks that only go through if you actually take damage. A key example of the third type here, is ifrit hard, as his regular sudden aoes can be reliably blocked by a Scholar or sage regularly using their aoe shield. The problem with the three types of knockback is that, unless it's one of those blue or purple circles, there typically is no clear indicator of what kind of knockback it is! 😅 Blue circles are typically the type that can be stopped, but not with a barrier, and purple circles can never be stopped! 😊

[@vespi57]

I'm not sure, if it has been mentioned before, but could Dragoon's jumps, mainly Spineshatter Dive avoid a knockback if timed correctly? Testing it may not be possible though, because it is very unlikely one can use it on the exact frame, when the knockback is resolved.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This is what we call knockback canceling. Assuming the knockback didn't stun you, you can actually use things like spineshatter dive, that actually move you to your target, to intercept and stop the knockback! This is done by using the gap closer AFTER being knocked back. Being in the air itself doesn't mean anything because the game doesn't check your actual vertical location, and these jumps don't change them either 😅

[@YolStrun]

My question for #5 Paladin Cover knockbacks, If the Paladin is north and other player south will the paladin go flying north as if they got hit by the knockback or go south as if the covered target got hit

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

All other mechanics in regards to cover suggests that the attack redirected to the paladin hits the paladin as if the paladin was the original target, so I would imagine this would be the answer. This also comes from the fact that if it was based on the covered player, it could be possible to nullify a knockback by making sure the paladin gets hit as well (equal south and north push back!) which I find extremely unlikely to work! 🤔😊 Interesting question!

[@ClassicPopble]

Regarding paladin cover knockback, when playing paladin, I always cover some random person during that one part in Thordan, always makes for a funny amount of confusion when they're the only one not getting any knockback

[@Astral_Mooncake]

if you try the emerald weapon extreme fight and go into second phase, gaius does a knockback attack and if you manage to stand in the middle. You wont be knocked back!

[@lemonbread8019]

The chocobo can have a couple cards, as a treat.

[@WikiED]

It's possible the testing for #1 was flawed, it's also possible that the middle of knockback can't be reached by players (as maybe player can move at min 1 unit at a time and is snapped into the grid and center of knockback is actually in the middle of 4 points so player could never reach the actual 0,0 of the knockback) but in reality none of it matters as even if there was a miracle and you could technically stand in the middle and it did prevent the knockback it would be in no way a reliable to do. An actual pixel perfect you'd have to do in seconds would never be a better way than just doing the mechanic.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed! And most of the time if you really HAVE to block the knockback, you have your arms length and such! 😊

[@ThymeSplitter]

Oh, well, that's good to know. I've been feeding melee cards to my Chocobo, assuming it had a melee role, as I'm currently leveling AST :p

[@TheOtherRoxas1114]

I always assumed the knockback thing was caused by client side vs server side inconsistencies. Like maybe the server assumes I kept moving in the direction I’m moving in, so when it checks for the knockback, it thinks I’m already on the other side, but my game disagrees, and the inconsistency of my position makes the game just ignore the knockback. I reached this conclusion based entirely on anecdotal evidence I got when progging Sophia (Extreme) in Heavensward. As for when you’re right on top of the knockback, it made me think about how a lot of games have origin points on their maps, and maybe that determines the direction you get pushed. Or alternatively, maybe it has to do with which direction your character is facing relative to both the other player, and the cardinal directions.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Based on the consistency of the direction, and what others have tested, it does sound like origin points could be the explanation!

[@Zavyyn]

I have dodged knockback in Porta Decumana on the Ifrit summon by standing in the center accidentally. I was trying to figure what happened since I had missed hitting Surecast.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Typically the reason this happens is that you had a barrier from someone else, as that knockback can be blocked by taking 0 damage from it with barrier!

[@Derekloffin]

I have one that I personally have been questioning: Can you waste a cooldown on a player who dies. So in other words, take Bene, full heal. Can I hit a player with Bene just as they die from a hit that is less than the heal, and the player both die and the CD be used? I thought I'd seen it in FFXIV, but I think it may have been just me wasting the CD on myself as it autotargets yourself when your current target is invalid. Instead I think I'm confusing it with times I've seen this happen in WoW where it was damned rare but could happen.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This can happen yes! Sometimes it happens more frequently with higher latency. I believe the best way I can explain it is that the killing blow from the attacker has already been registered by the server even if you pressed benediction in time on your screen. The result is a wasted cooldown and a dead player! 😅

[@iPlayOnSpica]

Can a well-timed Rescue save a teammate from a lethal knockback? Lakshmi's fight comes into mind (failing to Vril on Divine Denial), and also Chaos in O9 (the Damning Edict wide line aoe).

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Hmm good question. I imagine the answer is no, mainly because of the insanely slow pace of rescue. If you use rescue before the knockback, then the knockback probably overwrites since it came second. If you rescue after the knockback, then by the time rescue starts pulling, the person is already gone off the cliff 😅

[@Kloe]

Actually yes! Its very wonky and unreliable, but there are instances of healers doing it for Harrowing Hell in P10S - when they haven't successfully made the wall to stop everyone flying off, they'll rescue their cohealer and if they time it juust right, their cohealer stays in place and lives to use LB3!

[@fluffyfang4213]

I have once managed it against Lakshmi (out of like 15+ tries) and have done it first (and only) try against P10S after seeing a video of it. Note that Harrowing Hell's knockback is actually slower and thus way easier to use Rescue for, but it also applies a stun which is why you can't gap close it making it feel very lethal. Rescue is unique in that you can activate it before everyone is stunned, but the movement snapshot happens just a bit later.

[@kilikx1x]

It doesn't work in all instances but I know that Cover can occasionally allow you to protect a target from knockbacks against something that normally can't be protected against. However this is definitely a case of "with great power comes great responsibility" because its very easy to troll people by covering them when they are meant to take a knockback.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Not only that, but I have heard others mention that sometimes you taking the extra knockback can get you knocked entirely off arenas in some situations!

[@thebrave9971]

Do you think if even if the pushback does apply when you are directly centered with Right Round, that maybe the direction you are knocked back from the center is based on maybe the position you are from what the game considers the 0,0 coordinates of the map you are on?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

The idea is good, although the coordinates might be different. I base this on the fact that we flew northwest in the housing area, and east in the shroud, and the 0,0 coordinates are in the top left, so if that was the "center", then this kind of situation would always result in a southward or eastward push direction. The idea of a "default center" sounds very possible though! 😊

[@frogvie3624]

I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to avoid a knockback by standing in the perfect middle once, though it was by complete accident and I wasn’t able to recreate it. This happened in the last couple months, so post 6.55. I have no proof, and the only specifics I remember are that I was dark knight and had not used arm’s length.

[@PhoenicisEstuans]

almost certainly tbn or a shield from your healer(s). As other comments have mentioned [although related to PLD cover] some knockbacks are tied to taking damage while others are a knockback and also might do damage too. You probably got hit by one that when you take damage you get knocked back and didn't realize you had some sort of shield on

[@frogvie3624]

@@PhoenicisEstuans that makes a lot of sense! weird how it works like that

[@edgecutterman]

I have a SAM build precisely to abuse gear syncing. I can not play low level content without a 1.95 GCD anymore. Now if only I could get more reliable stat rolls on my Eureka/Resistance weapons...

[@Strider_Shinryu]

One quick question about the first claim/test: Out of curiousity, did you test Arms Length or Sure Cast against Right Round? Not that I have any doubts about the veracity of the results, it would just be a way to test if the way Right Round worked was functionally identical to a knockback used by an enemy.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I have previously tested this yes 😊 and things like arms length also block other friendly effects like rescue as well! 😊

[@powerofk]

The whole standing in the center for knockbacks…. Regardless of whether you can stand perfectly in the center or not, it’s still the best place to stand to avoid getting knocked back into the dead/auto-DoT zone.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

You're not wrong, although personally I would recommend standing not perfectly smack dap in the center, because then you can't really be sure which direction you get thrown! 😅

[@15ironreaver]

Does paladin prevent KBs that can’t be invulned like rescue can (Harrowing Hell for example)

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Hard to say, as cover has the specific detail that it doesn't work on certain attacks, the only way to know for sure would be to test on the individual effect! 😅

[@sarajohnsson4979]

re: Cover and knockbacks, does the result differ depending on whether the knockback comes from a damaging attack or not? Shields only affect knockbacks from damaging attacks iirc, so I'm curious if cover is the same in that regard. re: Chocobo roles, this is mostly unrelated and entirely useless, but I assume crafters and gatherers also get the 3% damage buff from astro cards but never the 6% one? Their autoattacks may be useless, but they *do* exist

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

There are damaging knockbacks that aren't blocked by barriers to my knowledge, but Indeed, a pure knockback should still be redirected by cover, assuming that knockback isn't on the exception list, as cover itself mentions it simply doesn't work against certain attacks! 😅 I never tested the crafter gatherer thing but it sounds likely!

[@nuclearsynapse5319]

My hypothesis for the direction of knockbacks from the center pixel is this: You will be knocked back towards/away from the origin point of the map respective to your current position. This could be tested by attempting to triangulate this point (it's not always intuitive where the origin point is) This shouldn't be too hard to test, as all you'd need to do is aggro a non-threatening mob (or even put a threatening one to sleep with acorn bomb!) and attempt the loom/right round strategy from various points on the map. If the lines of knockback converge/diverge from a specific point, you've found the origin!. Now what would happen if we got knocked back from the origin point I wonder...

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is an interesting suggestion! It would be a shame if when we find the origin point it turns out there's no mobs in the area though! 😂 But that does present a way to test this!

[@nuclearsynapse5319]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I did test it in the central shroud and all locations just knocked you eastward, so it does appear that different maps just have different "default" knockback directions

[@Zanador]

Obviously you will benefit from the cards way more than your chocobo, but sometimes when I'm bursting (like against a FATE boss or a B-rank or something) I can pull way more cards that I could use by myself, and I'd rather play them than let them sit. Partly just because it feels better, partly because I want the Astrodyne sigils. If I have 3 cards, I'd rather give one to myself and one to the chocobo, then give myself the 3rd one when my first one wears off, rather than waiting for each card to run its full duration on me. Edit: also if I'm in a party with only one other player, then as long as there's at least one chocobo out I can do my full normal burst window where I give 3 cards to 3 different people.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That makes sense! Personally in such a context in open world alone, I would probably had played a different job myself, so I didn't consider the card burst perspective!

[@user-ss9me7se5q]

Does that mean Enhanced Crit hit skill of the chocobo stack if it has all the roles at the same time?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

All of the skills the chocobo can learn stack, to my knowledge 😊

[@steveh1474]

this might be a bit sillier to test, but concerning Cover and Knockbacks, how does Harrowing Hell in P10 work with it? will the paladin get double-launched off the platform, while the white mage stands center stage totally unharmed? im assuming because its a raidwide "enrage" mechanic, it wont care and cover wont even redirect the damage. the knockback itself sends you into a tumbling animation, different from other knockbacks in that you cant gap-close cancel it either. if i find myself in P10 in my roulettes ill definitely test it myself, but i think the results are predictable based on all the other tests youve shown.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I agree that it probably is the type of knockback that does not care, but it would be so funny if the paladin just zipped off into space! 😂

[@alek4ever646]

TBF, in the chocobo cards scenario, if you are working sith your chocobo, you are undergeared, you know you will kill the enemy in 20 sec or less, and you know you won't be fighting anything for a while. Then why not give both yourself and the chocobo a card? It more DPS after all. xD

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is a fair point! 😂

[@SubduedRadical]

"Do Chocobos have a role?" Well, get on BLU and cast Aetheric Mimicry with your Chco in different stances and see which Mimicry you get? (I may have to try this...) In fact, if that WORKS, it could make it slightly easier for a BLU to get the Mimicry they want without having to cycle through players around a Capital Aetherite to find the right role and then having that awkward moment where you thank/bow to them for the inconvenience...?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Mimicry cast successfully on chocobos, but you receive no role. Even if you did get dps role hypothetically, that would still not have answered the card follow up question though, since that could mean melee or ranged! 😁 It would've been super convenient for blue mages though!

[@SubduedRadical]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Fair. I was more thinking you'd test THAT by having them Tank or Healer (then you'd at least know which of those were). And I was...not really thinking about AST cards since, like you said...using them on Chocos is kind of pointless. :) Nice to know you did test that too, though. That was just my first thought. I love your videos because of how thorough you are and how you manage to come up with ways to test that verify things in different ways. The closest I've done to that is determining that damage types (piercing etc) are still in the game using...I think it's the Third Turn of First Coils (of course, also BLU - fun fact, RDM's Fleche and Contre Sixte are piercing damage. I have no idea why since they look more nonelemental magical [or possibly ice], but...they are!), and I really do love testing things like that. But coming up with really good ways to do it can be challenging, and also getting someone to help test with. So I love your videos since you do that. :D

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@SubduedRadical here's a bonus fun fact for RDM for you 😉 all RDM ogcd attacks are physical. Possibly to detach them from embolden, since it only boosts magic damage for the RDM. You can tell because physical attacks read as "delivers an attack of X potency", while magic usually reads "deals [element] damage with a potency of X", where element can be Unaspected if nothing in particular! I did not know those attacks did piercing damage though!

[@SubduedRadical]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Ooooh, I didn't know THAT. I think I did know (but forgot) the attack potency vs potency of X (or didn't think of it in those terms). I have noticed before how Weaponskills use just attack with few exceptions (NIN's Phantom Kamatachi "your shadow deals wind damage" is a Weaponskill...but now I'm wondering if it's MAGIC.) Here's one for you: Read the tooltip of Sacred Soil: "Creates a designated area in which party members will only suffer 90% of all damage inflicted." And then Fey Illumination: "while reducing magic damage taken by all nearby party members by 5%" ...so why are THOSE different? Does Soil reduce damage TAKEN by 10% (stacking with other damage reduction), or does it NOT stack? Or are there two "classes" of mitigation, the "takes no more damage than X%" vs "reduces damage taken by X%" (if you don't like Illumination's magic only, Temperance does both: reducing damage taken by self and all party members within a radius of 50 yalms by 10%.") Note PLD Passage of Arms ALSO has the Sacred Soil wording: "and creates a designated area in a cone behind you in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted." ...I think only Soil and Passage use that wording. The other damage reduction abilities in the game use the "reducing damage by X%" Soil and Passage, specifically, use the "takes no more than X%". Even Kerochole, SGE's "Sacred Soil clone", does not use the Soil version: "Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%." I've found that very interesting, but I'm not sure how to thoroughly test it. My working theories are: 1) There's no difference and the tooltips are just different because...reasons...? This could work if it was JUST Soil (maybe the tooltip was written in ARR and just never changed), but Passage was added in SB, two expansions LATER, yet had that same wording. And nothing else since has. 2) There are two CLASSES of damage mitigation where only the greater matters. 2b) There are two CLASSES of damage mitigation, where ONE takes only the greater, but is then multiplicative with the other. ...I suspect it is 2b. If you have Soil, you have a flat 10% reduction, which then is multiplicative with other reductions. But if you have Passage, it's 15%, again, with other mitigation multiplied in the standard 1*[0.90 (or 0.85) * Xother mits]. But where this would be important is if you have BOTH Passage AND Soil, Soil would be ignored. In this sense, it's the game doing a check for the greater of "Passage > Soil > none" where those are mutually exclusive (the calculation would use a "better of..."), changing the calculation to 1*[ (smaller of 1.00 {none} or 0.90 {Soil} or 0.85 {Passage OR Soil and Passage}) * X other mitigations] Which also makes me think the "reduces damage dealt" (on the bosses) could be a THIRD type of "best of" mitigations. But there are few enough of those, I'm not sure how to test them. Like if you use Reprisal and Feint, will the boss do 19% less Physical damage (and ~14% less magical) or JUST 10% less from Reprisal overwriting Feint? Is it an either/or... ...anyway, there's enough material for you to make an entire video in there, probably. XD ...or...maybe you already have made that one and I just haven't seen it yet. :D

[@SubduedRadical]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Oh, sorry for the long reply! But yeah, you can test the RDM one in that one Coils fight. Take the...I think left path, then contrast with the right path and you can tell that piercing does more damage one way than the other based on the boss damage resistance buffs. I remember in SB someone mentioning it was piercing in a KZbin video, and I happened to remember and try testing it myself in in EW to find out if it was still true (when damage types have been "removed") to see it's still there. They aren't actively USED in modern encounter design (aside from Blue Carnivale and maybe some Deep Dungeons), but damage types are still very much in the game and flagged on abilities and bosses/enemies. If they ever wanted to, they could use them in future content. And they are used in BLU content and some random other things (like solo running PotD on RDM with that one boss on floor 80 or 90 having the minions weak to Aero/Wind damage...)

[@silasisawesome]

A friend of mine recently claimed the following: "Assuming optimal play, a Dancer in theory actually wants to dance partner Dark Knight for opening burst because they have the highest opening burst. The problem is that after burst ends, Dark Knight's damage falls off rappedly, and even though you can then switch dance partner, standard step's recast means the time your new partner has to go without a buff offsets the gains from partnering Dark Knight." Thinking over that claim a bit, I tried looking up if other people had talked about it, and I found a reddit thread dating back to "to years ago" discussing it. General consensus was that indeed, Dark Knight had the strongest opening burst in the game, but that it was not worth it bfor afformentioend reasons, but that giving melee cards to Dark Knight was an excelent idea, as it didn't have the same drawbacks. To me this smelled of "this used to be the case", so I went to FF-logs among the leaderboards for savage raids for various patches, to see if I could find instances a Dark Knight dealing the most damage over the rough span of time that they would be subject to standard step and develment if applied to them. I did find instances of Dark Knights placing second or third, even in some cases coming surprisingly close to Ninja back in 6.2 (I think?), but never any instances of one surpassing the highest damage melee DPS, especially not Samurai. Thinking it over further I went back to the #6 installment if this series, where you from testing dragonsight on summoner, conclude that no, pets don't benifit from targeted buffs, making me question this whole claim further. Even if it was at some point true that Dark Knight did have the strongest opening burst, surely Living Shadow would be a segnificant contributing factor. If it didn't benifit from things like cards or Dancer's buffs, then it would make the whole thing even more dubious. This however was something I could test myself, and so with the help of a friend I did. After partying up with them, finding a striking dummy, and taking off all my clothes, I used Living Shadow twice and wrote down the results. Then two more times while having the standard finish and devilment buff. This is where my nudity came into play, as without melds, at base 400 my direct hit rate would be 0, so any direct hits would have to come from devilment, and indeed one such direct hit did occur. Lastly I had them switch to Astro, and apply card buffs for another two rounds. Not the largest sample size, but after adjusting for the higher potency of shadowbringer, critical hits, and the one direct hit, the damage with standard finish was about 4.5% higher, with the card buffs resulting in 6.4% more damage. Both of those cards were melee cards. Those numbers are a bit off what they should be, which is probably just noise thanks to low sample size, but it does indeed strongly suggest that Living Shadow does 1) benifit from Standard Step, 2) benifit from Devilment, 3) benifit from cards, and 4) count as a melee, unlike your chocobo example. Don't know if Astro cards or the Dancer's partner buffs fall under what you specifically meant by "tergeted buff", but that was the impression I originally came away with, so whether this is a correction or a clarification, it's probably worth putting out there.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

A very nice process of analysis! Indeed, I was made aware, in connection with episode 6 of this series, that dragon sight *uniquely* doesn't affect pets, and any other "targeted buffs", meaning things like Astro cards, standard finish and devilment, DO affect pets like living shadow! Very nice to test it with devilment as well with the 0 direct hit approach! 😊 Indeed, it is relatively commonly accepted that astrologians want to play their first card on drk in the opener IF it is a melee card AND you don't have a ninja, I believe 😅 weirdly specific! The part about dancers not bothering due to being "stuck with the drk" after the opener also makes sense!

[@Noah-gn2gu]

As a DRK main I can confirm DRKs do just do that much damage at the start. The span is quite short for the biggest burst (around 7.5s in until 17.5s in.) However, another important thing to consider is that tanks naturally have lower DHR due to it not being available on their gear. Therefore, they also gain more from devilment. I’m not sure why dancers don’t swap partners specifically for the opener though. I’ve heard people *can* but I’m not a dancer main. It would be reliant on getting you 15s pre-pull so you can swap and immediately dance at the 16s mark when DRK’s damage falls off. If you don’t get that 15s pre-pull the average damage of the first 30s would definitely result in a DPS DP being better.

[@silasisawesome]

@@Noah-gn2gu We tested that actually, and what happens is once you end your dance partnership on someone, they imidiatly loose the standard step buff. Since standerd step is on a 30s cooldown, and since you want to use it for the damage itself during burst you won't be able to apply the buff to your preffered choice of partner until then, you're stuck with your current partner.

[@lucalopez9604]

I can confirm that KBs in this game are silly little things. The other day in a doomed TOP pull I rescued my cohealer at the same time they did the same to me and we both got slingshoted to the wall 😂

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Weird! 😂 You didn't swap places?!

[@brandondragon]

Arm's length. Thats all that works for not being hit by the knockback. Depending on the attack you may or may not take damage but you wont move if you have arms length. If there are other moves that negate it lmk please, but ive only seen that one move on multiple classes.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

All casters have sure cast which does the exact same thing. Some knockbacks actually don't push you if you take zero damage from them, but you can't know for sure until you test each one. An example is the frequent out bursts from ifrit, which can be blocked with barriers! Some knockbacks are unstoppable, and even arms length and sure cast won't save you there! 😊

[@brandondragon]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh surecast! You're right I didn't even think of that. Very seldom a caster these days. After I 90d black mage the ptsd blocked it out. Lol. Been a physical dps and ranged dps since.

[@RagnarokiaNG]

If you teach your chocobo how to play with cards they can collect MGP for you when not summoned.

[@Poolio_10]

If I had to take a guess as to the knockback's weirdly consistent yet inconsistent direction, it might be sending the target towards the map origin. Just an educated guess but maybe?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Yeah, it is possible, it is also possible it is aiming away from it! 🤔

[@Vasyafa]

But does cover redirect unavoidable knockback though? That can't be blocked by Arm's length naturally

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

If the knockback is attached to the damage itself, then the paladin takes it. There are knockbacks that are entirely unstoppable. Whether these can be redirected I am not sure at all, but I have heard stories from people being able to intercept a hard enrage style raid wide attack with cover, which similarly shouldn't be possible. As a result, I am actually not sure what cover cannot redirect. A very good question!

[@post-mastersodium3136]

I've heard a weird one. Oddly specific, so I don't know I believe it. Goes as such In O4S, a pld with "beyond death" can screw with another "beyond death" party mate by applying cover and not letting them kill themselves to cleanse the debuff Was just one of those stories someone was telling about funny things they did with friends

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is incredibly specific yes! It sounds possible, cover will usually successfully redirect damage as long as the paladin is alive, which means that they could block one lethal attack on someone else like this. I am not sure why you would do this beyond for the memes though! 😂

[@post-mastersodium3136]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh yeah, it was about the memes. Came up in the healer rescue fight conversation I think the hardest, would be pld needs beyond death too, and the damage from cover and their own lethal hit would have to apply same time for the pld beyond death to cover the not dying part (or maybe invuln their own damage). If applied separately, I think you'd just kill yourself too, which isn't nearly as fun in meme duties 🤣

[@spikedwallman]

for the right round test, wouldn't it have been more reliable to line the players up by having them both pushed into a corner so that there was no possibility for weird position inaccuracies?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I mean, if we were pushed up against a wall we wouldn't be able to tell if the knockback happened to shove them into that direction? We used macros that specifically target the coordinates of the other player to try and alleviate this, although there might have been ways to make it more precise than that, I do feel I significantly demonstrated that it was close enough 😅

[@spikedwallman]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Your other tests shows a bias for the direction the target ended up moving, so wouldn't you be able to account for that by just testing in all four corners of a square pen?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@spikedwallman i suppose you could do that if we assume us changing where we are doesn't affect the direction of the knockback 🤔

[@spikedwallman]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh either way it doesn't change the fact that even if it is possible, the precision required wouldn't be possible in a practical setting

[@SayukiSuzukiMizuno]

Hi, can you tell all new players (and some old players too) that tank stance does not lower or raise your dps anymore? For few years now all tank stance does is raise your enmity generation but now suddenly every offtank on the internet pops on their tank stance for their dps. And they don't listen to anybody. Even if there are no additional effects listed on skill's description

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I have not heard of this being an issue, but I do talk about the necessity (or lack thereof) of putting on tank stances in my appropriate 6 tips for tanks guide that also mentions how to off tank (including the fact your tank stance doesn't need to stay on!) 😊 Unfortunately I believe the players you are trying to reach aren't reachable, because they don't listen when approached, and they would know themselves if they read the tooltip or watched a guide 😅

[@SayukiSuzukiMizuno]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh unfortunately I believe they managed to find guides from when shield stance and sword stance were a thing as currently all tank stance do is generate enmity. (Also I have some suspicions they came from a *different* mmo as regularly I see 'generating hate' when talking to them :v). It's just tiring when they don't want to listen to others, playing longer than then. I just thought that they would listen to you

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@SayukiSuzukiMizuno i understand 😊 Yeah if they call it hate that's a strong sign they are coming from elsewhere. I could perhaps mention it in a Mythbusters episode 😅 I'll write it down

[@lolthesystem]

While I don't doubt that the claim is wild and very likely untrue, one thing to consider is that dashes of any kind will never put you at the exact center of the pixel. This is why you can use things like Icarus and DRG jumps on a boss doing a point blank AOE that covers their entire model and you still won't get hit, you're always 1 pixel away from the target. This is consistent throughout all dashes. Now, there IS a third party tool that shows you the exact center of your character (as in, the exact pixel) and could theoretically be used to test this claim with 100% accuracy, but if you need a TPT to achieve this, we can definitely say it's far from "consistent" like those players claimed. Also fun fact about RNG: Some games like Doom actually have an extra layer of RNG, the game tic layer. Depending on the tic the game was booted in, the RNG table will be different, therefore some monsters will react differently depending on the game tic they woke up in. For example, the Revenant spits either guided missiles or regular missiles more often depending on if the game tic was odd or even when it woke up. A funny story relating to this: When I was progging E8S back in ShB with my static, Shiva will always start with a raidwide into either Biting or Driving Frost. We managed to get Driving Frost every single time through the course of an entire lockout. Roughly 50-60 pulls with a 50% chance on what the boss chooses to do and we managed to land on the same result every single time. Shiva RNG has become a meme between us ever since. Bonus: If you want to have some silly fun, queu into Neverreap as a PLD, cover someone and have that someone walk into and follow one of the tornadoes. Welcome to Eorzea's space program!

[@fluffyfang4213]

Don't think the third party tool would help here. As shown in the video, even making an intentional tiny step back had no effect on the direction. This demonstrates that the game ignores a certain level of inaccuracy from the center. Being more precise shouldn't change that.

[@lolthesystem]

@@fluffyfang4213 I'm aware, it was merely to showcase definitive proof of it not mattering even if it was 100% on the spot with no room for error. As far as I can tell, all knockbacks are coded the same regardless of size in terms of how they push the player. There MIGHT be some merit to the claim since they've added death zones if you get too close to the epicenter in Savage in recent years, but at this point I'm on the side of thinking that if it ever happens, it's probably an unintended bugged interaction.

[@fluffyfang4213]

@@lolthesystem Ahhh~ Fair enough. I think the plugin would also need to show the center of other players and allow you to change the color of one participant so you know you're perfectly overlapped when you can't see one of them (because trying to tell if two dots of the exact same color are overlapping is an eye sore)

[@syaojyn]

What if a paladin covered someone during a purple knockback? Like in Thaleia or p10

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

As far as I know, if the covered playing stands in the purple, then the paladin will die. And if the paladin is dead, then nothing more can be redirected. It is possible the knockback is applied after the lethal damage, which then causes the covered player to get pushed anyway. If neither player is standing IN the purple, I am reasonably certain the covered player will stand. However, I am actually not entirely sure on this, simply because it is possible the knockback itself is not redirectable. Might be interesting to test in future 🤔😊

[@syaojyn]

@CaetsuChaijiCh I could try testing this myself too, but the knockback during the Nymeia fight is what I'm curious about. Funny way to give someone additional uptime with that boss

[@OnyxShard1]

@@syaojyn I do believe the knockback goes through the cover as purple kbs tend to go through all forms of knockback mitigation

[@bobseesall]

If the chocobo had a role assigned, wouldn't a blue mage in theory be able to use mimicry on it? Would've been handy if true.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

MAYBE, since chocobo could have had an arbitrary "melee" role, without it being distinctly tank or dps, or an arbitrary "ranged" role, without it being healer or dps. But it would've been super handy if you could just bring out your buddy and order it to be tank for a sec so you could mimic it!

[@chernobyl169]

Wondering if BLM's Aethereal Manipulation or SGE's Icarus would produce more accurate results than Loom.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I know that icarus places you more like... Next to your target, and I believe similarly, aetherial manipulation puts you super close to them in a similar way. That's the reason why we use a macro to attempt to land the person pixel perfect on top! 😅 But it is an interesting thought if there was something more "accurate"

[@StickmanCorp]

From a programmer's perspective: Trying to manually adjust yourself to be perfectly at the center of anything is a lost cause. One saying that they are "pixel-perfect" in the center is misleading, because it suggests that a) the game uses integers (pixel) to measure positions and b) that the smallest possible difference of position is still large enough to be visible to the naked eye. I believe the required level of precision would be better described as "sub-atomic". I'm a bit skeptical about whether Loom and other movement tech would cause two player to perfectly overlap. Those skill _move_ you toward the target, they probably lack code that would actually "snap" you to the destination, and so the result could be subject to minuscule rounding errors. I'd have considered alternative methods more akin to teleportation, like resurecting the other player, or going together through a door/portal that leads to a different area. That being said even assuming that the test are flawed and that the claim is "technically" true, it would be humanly impossible to achieve in practice, since even a single game tick of movement would cause you to overshoot the center in inperceptible ways. So for all means and purposes, it's better off considered false.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed. I will say though, that the fact that you can do those micro adjustments and it doesn't change the direction at all might suggest that the knockback itself doesn't consider an unlimited number of decimals and simply defaults to something else when within a certain distance. Besides, just like a macro can be used to teleport exactly to someone's location with an action like loom, just like you could suggest that it might be decimals off, equally a raise could place someone at the same coordinates, but only to the first or second decimal. That is to say, I don't actually think using raise would be even more accurate, however that is an angle I never considered either 🤔 I do think we ultimately agree though, because as I demonstrated and mentioned, if I can't do it in the boss fight demonstration, then it may require extremely precise positioning, and if so, then it is unlikely that someone could do it reliably anyway!

[@StickmanCorp]

I'd be really surprised if Raise turned out to shave off some decimal. There is literally no math involved; anything other than a perfect copy would be waste of code and cpu. To be fair, I still think it's more likely for Loom to be perfectly accurate, than it is for Raise to be slightly off.

[@StickmanCorp]

Now that I think about it, an even more reliable way to use Raise would be to resurrect _two_ players. Even if they land on a truncated copy of your position, they should still both land on the exact same position. I wonder if there might be other alternatives to that test where both participants are moved by a third party...

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@StickmanCorp i agree 😊

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@StickmanCorp oh the double raise strategy is a good one, that would presumably land them exactly on the same position!

[@justwatching6118]

KB block works on certain bosses, not all I think

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is correct. Some knockbacks ignore immunities 😊

[@bellringer53]

.... who thinks pixel perfect knockback center negates it??? There is way too many players if this was true it wouldnt be a 'rumor' or myth. It would be the cheese strat for Hades EX final phase!

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is also a very very good point! If this kind of trick actually worked, we'd see it used more. But these kinds of claims sometimes originate from players who think that uniquely they have figured it out, and that's the reason no one else talks about it! 😅

[@shinjimikej]

can you parry magic damage?

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Nope. You can block magic, but not parry magic. This is an important distinction especially for Gunbreakers, because the +50% parry (making you go from 10% chance, to 60% chance) on Camouflage, does not work for magic damage!

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

On further inspection after the clip you shared, it turns out there exist magic attacks that can be parried, however, which ones can and cannot be parried doesn't seem to be obvious at a glance!

[@Pmak]

Here's a myth/claim: After learning and clearing an Ultimate for the first time, players will be noticeably worse at playing the rest of the game from raids and trials. Never trust Legends :3

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I have a separate video tackling this particular subject, which you might find interesting 😁 Here is a link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jF7LnGSBrqhnd68si=ZlZkNhv5sQrVh4wg

[@Pmak]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Awesome! :3

[@escahfaidhe755]

First

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Ding ding!

[@escahfaidhe755]

@CaetsuChaijiCh now that I am first, i...do not have a weird interaction to test lmfao. Man, now I'm sad.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@escahfaidhe755 maybe next time! 😉

[@GayLPer]

I did similar tests with AST and the Chocobo back in Shadowbringers, and I could've sworn that melee cards did more for the chocobo than the ranged cards.

[@lionsharpener2422]

Not exactly a Myth to be busted, but it might be interesting to cover what happens if multiple black mages use Aetherial Manipulation on each other at the same time. My FC did this once, first we did it in a long line and then in a big circle in the Azime Steppe, and it created some real weird results

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

That is an interesting suggestion! You'd assume you'd all just move one step around in a circle... But because of latency it is possible something weird happens!