Resist

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Resists lower magic damage and/or duration of offensive magical spells, abilities, and weapon skills, and occur more frequently the lower the caster's Magic Hit Rate is. Any spell that does damage can be resisted in these increments:

Resist Level 0: 1/1 (No resist)
Resist Level 1: 1/2
Resist Level 2: 1/4
Resist Level 3: 1/8 (Full resist)

Additionally and unrelatedly, Magic Damage can be reduced by other factors, like target-specific magic damage reduction, Magic Defense Bonus, and target-specific elemental resistances.



Current Theory

Magical effects have a certain number of "Resist" states (as shown above for damaging magic). For some spells (like Sleep) a resist will affect duration. For others (like Elemental Magic) it affects damage.

Magical effects do not always have a full range of resist states. Some (again, like Sleep) only have Resist Level 0 (60 second duration) and Resist Level 1 (30 second duration). Thus, the odds that you will successfully land Sleep on a monster follows the Two-State relationship on the left below. This means that you have a 99.75% chance of initially landing Sleep on a monster with capped Magic Hit Rate, but still only a 95% chance of landing it for the full duration, as shown on the graph to the right. All Enfeebling effects with fixed duration follow this Two-State relationship. Other magical effects such as enfeebling effects without set duration (like Paralyze) or spells that have neither damage nor enfeeble effect (like Dispel) there is insufficient testing/information to prove if there are multiple resist states or the exact determination of durations. Spells with a damage and enfeeble component calculate resistance and states independently for damage and enfeeble duration.

M resists States.jpeg
Resist state distribution.JPG
Relationship between Magic Hit Rate (X)
and Effect Land Rate (Y)
Relationship between Magic Hit Rate (X)
and Resist State Probability (Y)

These relationships were discovered through testing, which indicated that Magical Resist state is determined by an iterative process. So when you cast a spell, you have a certain Magic Hit Rate against the monster. The game generates a random number between 0 and 100% and compares it to your Magic Hit Rate. If the game's random number is higher than your Magic Hit Rate, you move up one Resist State and the game generates another random number to compare. So if it is higher than you once, you gets a 1/2 resist. If it gets higher than you twice, you get a 1/4 resist. If it gets higher than you three times, you get a 1/8 resist. If the spell you cast only has two resist states and the game beats your magic accuracy twice, then you just get a "___ resists the effects of ____."

This results in the following distribution of Resist states for magical damage:

This results in the following distribution of Resist states for 2 state enfeebles:


Roll Analogy: It's somewhat classic in FFXI probability to liken everything to a /random battle, so here goes!
Imagine that every time you cast a spell you're having a /random battle with the monster. Your "/random" is always equal to your magic hit rate × 1000, so a 95% magic hit rate would be a 950 roll. If the monster loses his first roll, your spell lands unresisted. If he wins his first roll, he gets to roll again. The number of times he wins determines the Resist Level as listed above. So two wins would be Resist Level 2, a 1/4 resist. Two wins against Sleep or Sleep II would be a full effect resist, because those spells only have a Resist Level 0 and 1.

Elemental resistance

What is it/what does it do?

  • It's been long known that monsters have varying resistances to different elements but due to the nature of magic hit rate testing not much headway has been made in trying to nail them down. After the Jun 17th 2014 version update, resists on skillchain damage were removed and a damage bonus/reduction was added to skillchain damage based upon the target's elemental resistance. Because of this we are able to easily define elemental resistances of mobs in 15 specific tiers (exact quantitative values in terms of macc/meva have yet to be determined). And allowed us to discover what effects said resistances have.
  • Firstly is these resistances are a multiplier to skillchain damage and are what this testing is based off of. The tiers for skillchain damage are:
High resistance | 5% | 10% | 15% | 20% | 25% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 70% | 85% | 100% | 115% | 130% | 150% | Low resistance
  • These percentages are multiplied to skillchain damage. For example performing Liquefaction on a fire elemental that has 5% to fire will result in a skillchain damage that would be reduced to 5% of what it would otherwise do without this multiplier.
  • With skillchains with multiple elements the elemental with the lowest resistance will be the element of which damage was taken. In case of a tie it follows order found on equipment screen.
  • These ranks also effect Magic Burst damage. Percentages by rank are as follows:
High resistance | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 5% | 15% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 85% | 115% | 150% | Low resistance
  • These percentages are added into the damage bonus from number of steps then multiplied like normal. For example normally a 2 step magic burst gives a 35% increase in damage. But on a monster with the lowest resistance to that element it would instead give a 185% increase in damage
    • Note these bonuses do not apply to spells that normally wouldn't get a bonus from magic bursting (ie breath spells) and does not apply to helix spells or Kaustra.
    • Note due to the effects of the skillchain itself the lowest tier isn't possible as the skillchain itself increases rank by 1.
  • For elements that are at 50% or lower the monster will have what has traditionally been call SDT or specific damage taken to that element. More on that below.
  • For elements that are at 10% the monster will have a high resist rate to that element independent of Magic accuracy or Magic evasion. Even Job abilities such as elemental seal or subtle sorcery will have no effect on this. Magic hit rate appears to be set to 3-5%. Distribution of resist states follows as normal otherwise.
  • For elements that are at 5% the monster will have a 100% full resist rate to that element independent of Magic accuracy or Magic evasion. Even Job abilities such as elemental seal or subtle sorcery will have no effect on this.

What effects it

  • Rayke. For each rune expended will make the monster less resistant to that element by 1 rank.
  • Skillchains. During the magic burst window following a skillchain the monster will become less resistant to those elements by 1 rank.
    • This applies to all elemental damage including things that cannot magic burst such as elemental weaponskills, quick draw, or breath spells without Burst affinity.
    • For multiple step skillchains this resistance lowering will apply to the next skillchain but will not stack together. For example say you perform Liquefaction skillchain into Fusion skillchain. When determining which element to use for the Fusion skillchain and the damage multiplier for it the resist lowering effect on fire from the Liquefaction skillchain will be used. But during the Magic burst window after the Fusion skillchain it will only be using the resist lowering effect on fire and light from the Fusion skillchain. So at most skillchains can only make monsters less resistant to any one element by 1 rank each.
    • This stat is fundamentally different than the elemental resistance we see on the equipment screen. As such things like barspell, threnodies, or carols have no effect elemental resistance rank though they do effect the resistance to that element.

Elemental Specific Damage Taken (SDT)

  • Gives 1/2 reduction in damage to that element (includes breath and magical) and 1/2 duration to enfeebling effects of that element similar to a resist that apply to almost all sources
  • Exceptions are skillchain damage since it's already being reduced directly and enfeebling effects part of the immunobreak update/with resist traits. Likely due to the different system being used.
  • Appears separate from resist in some fashion as it allows for 1/4 duration enfeebling effects and effectively 1/16 reduction in elemental damage and resist distributions do not change otherwise.

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