eg's > hg's? (in General)

am i missing something here?

my hg's do give me a bit more strength (400k) on my junctioned jiggy but due to the way the shield penalty works, instead of getting 21 added to my uc effect, i only get 16.

with eg's, i get quite a bit more dex, a full plus 20 to my uc effect and more evasion. i think the upgrade curve is a little more lenient on these as well.

my question then is why would anyone use the hg's over eg's? even without the shield penalty i still think it would help more with evasion to go eg's?

Without junction you have to go through the shield penalty regardless.

I thought 100% junction eliminates penalties from items to the familiar.

that is true. here are some post battle stats using my named plus 13 hg's versus unnamed plus 13 eg's:

hg's
strength ~ 2,654,594
dexterity ~ 5,309,190
ac ~ 86
u c ~ 4580
melee bth ~ 274
evasion ~ 123

eg's
strength ~ 2,242,696
dexterity ~ 6,133,091
ac ~ 84
u c ~ 4920
melee bth ~ 295
evasion ~ 123

i was wrong about it boosting my evasion, i could've sworn it did earlier. i still think it would help me more to go eg though.

ranger, that was what was causing my weirdness in the hg thread, check out there for the info.

So basically the shield penalty is there for the HG junction and not the EG junction?

Perhaps a CM to NS to clarify this is in order.

Yes, EG have actually always been slightly better in terms of increasing UC on a JKF. But with the recent changes and also if you are using a shield they are quite significantly better for increasing UC.

EG always boosted slightly more than HG at around 4 mil tat level.

If those stats you posted end up being true, certainly the EGs are better.

I guess HGs are best at lower levels, when the UC benefit is not based on the xp into UC.

At higher levels, with the EGs boost to dex and skills, it overcomes the HG benefit.

The strength bonus from the HG is nice, however, the bonus to BTH and dexterity vs other tanks is better.

Perhaps a BoM instead of the SoC may help in the longer run.

the bom does have a more lenient cost curve and could buy me back some of the str lost from the eg's instead of hg's. i do like the big chunk of damage the soc does if i make it through physical ranged damage and the fact that there is no penalty to the enchantments that i do have on my junction minion.

that is definitely something to think about though!

This seems rather counter-intuitive to me. I was thinking, back when the BoE was bugged, about how the BoE was currently better than the Gi for UC, and whether that would ever be the case after the bug was fixed. I thought (admittedly without any actual numbers backing it up) that 5% of trained level would never give more than 10 points of effect due to the parabolic nature the exponential function relating XP to effect.

if items that boosted dex were actually divorced from having a skill boosting effect, then skill boosting items would be more useful. i guess it is only common sense that with the dual effect it is hard to beat. i however did not realize it until today.

even with the shield penalty not coming off (it would only add 100 to my uc effect) i think the eg's are better still with the dex, uc and bonus to hit boost gained.

The reason that EG becomes better with the JKF is because first it gets the 150% as opposed to a straight junction of the effect and also because that % increase is not actually working off of the levels but the effect of the UC.

Is this for all UC characters or only jigs?

junction mainly, i would test it on others though to see if and when it might be better to use eg's. it is the 150% junction boost that causes it to happen faster with junction, but it might still happen later without.

I suspected something like that Nem, though I didn't know that it works off of effect rather than level.

For a regular UC minion, HG + Gi is still the best combination available, isn't it?

The recent discussion about linearity of damage ("Doom and Gloom!" I believe it was called) has gotten me thinking that boosting ST on a UC minion is better than boosting UC in most possible cases. The duality of boosting DX and skills is helpful, but only to a limited extent, as DX maxes out by granting a maximum of 1 extra hit per round, no matter how much higher your DX is. The HG's boost to ST, in my view, seems more beneficial, as I currently think that optimizing UC requires maxing ST as much as possible.

Does anyone have any input on that, or am I hijacking a thread meant to address the Jiggy only?

remember though that increase uc gets you more evasion as well as bonus pth, so it is a bit better than just a duality.

Yes, for a regular UC char HG and Gi are still the best to use, both because they will grant more UC and also more str which is important.

About the UC being a non linear damage I do think that will need to be addressed. UC right now allows a char to get slightly ahead in the pth side, but they fall way behind in the damage side of things. It is even more pronounced since they also fall behind in str.

Personally I think one of the best ways to fix/buff UC slightly is to separate everything working off of the UC effect. Make the x modifier a linear amount based on the UC level, and the UC effect only gives the Pth. This would make UC a linear increasing damage more or less, though it would still be less than a regular tanks. Also HG and everything else would still work exactly the same as always.

One thing to point out for you Dude is that on the JKF any increase in UC will not result in a change to his evasion. The only way to increase evasion on a JKF is to either train UC on your minion, train evasion on it or else equip DB.

so you are saying that the uc increase i get from elven gear will not increase my evasion, but the normal training of uc does?

Right, take off all your UC boosting gear and look at your evasion on the JKF. It will still be exactly the same. The only reason training UC on your minion effects it is because it junctions over the evasion effect the minion has.

that makes sense.

so dex boosting gear will boost dex, skills and bonus to hit only. still pretty darn effective and will likely out pace gear that only boosts skill. does skill boosting gear add to the bonus to hit though?

I wish the Gi would grant a ST boost. That would be tizzight.

Just a quick observation:
According to wiki numbers, wearing EGs(+10) with a trained UC effect of (9) will not even boost you to an effect of (10), while HGs(+10) will give you an effect of (24).
At a trained UC effect of (251), a pair of EGs(+10) will grant you a final effect of around (262), whereas HGs(+10) will again increase this effect by 15 points to (266).

It looks like the second derivative of the function is on a slightly gradual curve, implying that it is possible that, somewhere above (300) trained effect, a 13 or 15% boost from EGs would be better than the boost given by near-equivalent-NW HGs.
The wiki also indicates that the difference in upgrade costs between the EG and HG aren't significant enough to make a difference. In other words, +17 EGs are cheaper than +17 HGs, but +18 EGs are significantly more expensive than +17 HGs. And really, expecting to upgrade them past that point is unreasonable.

dude: if it increases your effective UC level, then yes, it will boost your Bonus to Hit.