Howling Fist VIT Cap?

Okay, I've recently started my HF VIT build and I'm thoroughly enjoying the results in consistent damage on tougher mobs over the much loved but unreliable numbers from Asuran fists (for me.)

My question is; is there a cap for how much VIT I can stack for ws damage on Howling fist?

Also, what are your favorite HF builds/WS pieces?

As an additional thought..

I was messing with sub jobs and looking at the floor VIT for my monk and the highest one I saw was surprisingly /DRK.(I don't have pld leveled idk if it would be higher)

Has anyone done any testing with +VIT gear and Souleater/Last resort/Drain VIT and Howling fist?

There is no cap to weaponskill mod attributes, no~

no... cap.. to... WS mod attributes O.o....

... sorry I think I just...

:)


Would be interesting to see what you can stack to, on VIT..

This may be a dumb question, but I haven't played in 2 years, but is it anything comparable to Asuran Fists? Or is that the point of maxing VIT?

Asuran Fists is nice if ur acc is high enough to land all the hits and u have a lot of attack. Otherwise on mobs with hi evasion and hi def, then Howling Fist or maybe Dragon Kick would do better.

And I agree the idea of maxing VIT is interesting, I personally would rather use STR. I know HF has a higher VIT mod than STR, but still, I feel the difference isnt enough to warrant VIT over STR.

Well so far the advantage is on mobs with high evasion and defense. Asuran still wins on mobs I can cap my accuracy on.

However.. I should state that I'm still not even storing TP past 100% on HF (and I wont unless I have to) and the numbers are comparable. The reason I picked HF over dragon kick is the fact that Dragon kick almost requires footwork to be active and the job ability is pretty broken right now. (Good every five minutes)

I wish that the hits on Asuran Fists could crit.. seems odd that they can't. It's not like it would be game breaking if they could.

STR_20 VIT_50 is roughly equal to STR_50 VIT_50 when fSTR is still being considered... when capped, VIT is better. So basically, VIT is equal to or better than STR for Howling Fist.

Only thing which might give STR the edge is the extra Attack added... but where are you putting large enough STR which would make this a significant factor?

I agree 100%, I've never understood why they haven't made AF Critable?*. I mean monk is known for it's nice DoT but it's starting to be one of the lowest hitting WS jobs.

The difference was that the VIT serves a myriad of purposes for monk (Chakra, healing for /dnc) Also notice the massive amount of VIT+ gear that is available at a low cost for monk. I'm only using a "test" set up that I purchased for minimal gil, and my boost is +32 iirc; already my 100% HF is a near consistent 900-1000 dmg. (and that's on /dnc lol)

ninja edit: my floor vit on /dnc as a 75 elvaan is 73 iirc.

Ah gotcha.

An odd thing that I did notice is that HF seems to occasionally do a "resisted" 200-300 dmg.. maybe this implies that it's more than just 1 hit.. or the ignore defense that is very vague on ffxiclopedia didn't kick in.. anybody know more about this?

Same thing as SAM though... occasionally I would get a 1% tp return and do a 50% dmg WS. HF does seem like a Two hit sometimes.... but it can be DA'd which is nice.

Are you checking TP return? You could have missed the first hit, DA'd, and landed the DA. The DA will be ~40% of the strength of the first hit on Howling Fist.

^Exactly^

I haven't been checking the TP return.. but most of my testing was on /dnc last night so I don't believe double attack activated because I don't have Brutal earring yet.

gonna start checking my tp return ( ._.) i didn't think of that.

Who knows then, perhaps it is a two hit. But it's good to look at the TP return like he said.

If not, you're probably just looking at comparing the high and low end of the pdif spectrum. When you have a large number being multiplied, the range is also quite large between maximum and minimum.

Okay I'm gonna collect some numbers and tp return % and post them later on.

Isn't the pDIF the part that is normally fixed in such weaponskills that have "ignores defense" in them? if so, that wouldn't explain the much smaller numbers he's seeing

Oh, I just got reminded of something I know I read somewhere but can't find it again now that I need it... typical.

The idea of interest is that every Hand to Hand weaponskill has an extra hit from the offhand punch similar to Dual Wielding if you have the Martial Arts trait. This means each weaponskill produces one more hit than the description suggests, except Asuran Fists since it is capped at 8 hits anyway.

If this was true, and I'm not 100% sure if it is or not, this would neatly explain your observations (extra hit power = DA hit power for reference).

EDIT: I don't think any extensive testing has been done for the "Ignores Defence" weaponskills since they're not used as much as the ever-popular Y/G/K etc.

Depending on how the defence is ignored, the range will be roughly the same (minus a constant) or similar to the range experienced with very high pdif - you won't fix the pdif as such to completely remove variance. Only critical hits come close to doing this (on melee hits at least)...

All h2h ws are techinquely "multi-hit". You perform one full attack round, so you swing both ur hands even if ur animation doesnt show it on the ws. But the mods are only applied to the first hit, so its worth it to treat Howling Fist like a single hit ws. I think what happened to you was you missed the first hit and only the second hit landed.

Watch your TP return for a normal attack round and then look at what you get on Howling Fist, they should be the same (unless u have more store TP in one or the other)

Weaponskill mods are applied to all hits! All hits of any weaponskill are equal except from their fTP and potential acc/atk bonuses.

There may be something to that, i remember using a somewhat accurate (albeit outdated) weaponskill damage calculator, and there was a checkbox for "Dual Wield" which somehow added more damage, but not to a great extent, which leads me to believe that the second "invisible" hit (the weaker one) was the only one which landed- wish I could find that page again ><

Would make sense because when I did Hf it would be a maybe 10-15% rate that the dmg would go down to about 50%... on my SAM when I got a 1% tp return because of missed WS and DA proc'ed was around 2%. So it's not a factor of double attack going off... but as you stated probably being an unseen offhand hit. Wonder how Faith Bagh's would work with it. never took the time to try.

Ah yes you are quite right good sir. My mistake, I should have made that clearer.

Yes when you dual wield you perform an extra hit with your off-hand weapon. It adds some damage, but not a super lot.

Who says they're not equal for MNK? Without the info on TP return hard to say which hits of the two missed.

My point exactly

So the WS should be treated as a Two hit WS. But now it makes me wonder if DA can be proc'ed during both hits..... there were times my HF would skyrocket.

If it did really shitty damage, chances are the first hit missed. Luckily the first hit gets a significant accuracy boost, so this doesn't happen too often.


Also, stacking secondary mods in for WS is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE for almost every WS, Howling fist included.