Mag and Maxing Stats help/explanation

[Bossic]

Hi. I know this has been asked and discussed and explained hundred of times over the years but... I still can't quite get the whole maxing stats maths behind the game.

Which is to say, I am aware of, say, the Mag formulas (what each Mag stat influences), and the Mag limits, but I can never seem to get all the info, or all reliable info necessary to take a stab at this (it's not so much I desperately need to max my characters, I'm just curious; much as I've played the game over the years, it has always been mostly for fun). For instance, I know there is a 250 cap on attribute and HP/MP materials, however - does the game ever stop me from going over 125 in HP, or do I need to be cautious? When some guides on PSO-World refer to mag and God/Unit balance, are they considering equipment like Red Rings? I remember trying some guides in the past, but also remember at one point I realized the ones I was using were outdated, resulting in "not quite there" characters (though this was for PSO v2).

Sometimes I look at my characters and kind of freeze when I think about Mat and Mag development if it really hinges on very specific equipment I may or may not get :/

[tru]

If you use as many materials as your class allows, you won't be able to use anymore. The use option won't appear when you try to use a material from your inventory. On this server, the max stats for all the classes have been increased by 100, except for ata, luck and evp. Ata gets 10 points higher, luck doesn't gain any and evp gains +30. If you plan on getting your characters to level 200 you should generally be careful about what materials you use on them, but it's always fine to use HP and TP mats. Generally EVP and DEF are bad stats and not worth maxing so those materials should never be used. The mag you raise isn't too big of a deal since you can always make another when you get to higher levels. God/Units are extremely outclassed by Centurion/Units on this server. You should never use God/Units to max your character out. Generally you want to max out your characters stats while leaving as many slots free for helpful units like cure/units and v502, smartlink etc.

The best slot items for maxing out imo are:

Centurion/Arms: It gives +35 ata which is the equivalent of 70 points on a mag
Adept: It gives 20 to ata 10 to all other stats and 6 to all resistences. Which is the equivalent of 55 points on a mag (not including defense or evasion because they aren't useful) The 6 points of resistance do come in handy, it also reduces the TP costs by 1/4.

Centurion/Ability: It gives 3 ata and +30 to all other stats. Which is the equivalent 51 points on a mag.

You generally always want to have a slot opened for units that increase battle speed. Centurion/battle is the best giving a 110% boost. V101 is a much easier to get option, that is still useful.
If your character casts techniques often you'll want v801 which also gives +5 mst, which you should keep in mind for maxing.
Smartlink is great for the accuracy boosts with guns, and V502 is helpful for weapons with hell (among others)

You can find the base stats and max stats of each class at level 200 on a bunch of websites. Your goal is to take the max and subtract the base to see how much of each stat you need to max out, then use materials, your mag, your armor and shield, and units (if needed) to reach those.
Red ring boosts ATA over max and gives 20 to all other stats (not including def or evp again) so keep that in mind when maxing. Certain armors can raise stats over max like Sue's coat, Kroes Sweater, Godric Cloak etc, only certain classes can equip these armors.

Edited March 17, 2015 by tru

[Zero]

This is PSOBB, and Ultima has new items and such, also they changed stats, +100 to ATP, DFP, MST, +30 to EVP, and +10 to ATA, but the growths are still the same, so if you go to PSO world and check the characters base stats at lvl 200 they will be the same as here in Ultima.

Like tru already mentioned, there are characters that can equip certain armours which boost their stats even further, like Godric's Cloak which boosts FOmar's ATA by 30, so if you have a FOmar with max ATA and you equip Godric's and Red Ring, you'll have a grand total of 223 ATA, slightly higher than HUcast's ATP, which is 221 with Red Ring, Female characters have access to Kroe's Sweater no matter if you are a cast, newman, human, hunter, ranger, or force as long as your character is female you can equip it, which boosts ATA by 10

HUnewearl Max ATA:209+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=239

HUcaseal Max ATA:228+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=258

RAmarl Max ATA:251+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=281

RAcaseal Max ATA:241+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=271

FOmarl Max ATA:180+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=210

FOnewearl Max ATA:196+10 from Kroe's and +20 from Red Ring=226

I recommend you focus only on offensive Stats, ATP, ATA, and Luck, ignore DFP and EVP, once you get the hang of PSOBB you'll know that those are useless.

[Bossic]

Many thanks, tru and Zero, really

So, I assume a "base" PSOBB formula for level 200 would be something like this for, say, a HUmar (if PSO-World is indeed correct):

Max ATP: 1397
Base ATP: 943
Difference: 454

So it would then be a matter of spreading points across Materials and Mag stats... A Mag with 140 POW (2 ATP for every Mag POW) and some odd 70+ Power Materials (another 2 ATP per Mat) would bridge the gap, then. A bit altered for Ultima, of course (Centurions sound great).

I guess this was the formula I was missing all this time :/

Edited March 17, 2015 by Bossic

[Fyrewolf5]

Max stats are actually +100 atp mst dfp, +10 ata, +30 evp on this server.

Red Ring's ata and atp are over max, but the luck is to your base so rr is often factored into plans for luck, though if the plan has extra mats available one might use 10 extra luck mats to have max luck with any shield. A select few pieces of equipment like rr and kroes sweater add stats over max and do not need to be factored in to plans. I often leave v101 stats out of plans because centurion/battle exists on this server which is much faster (110% vs 40%) but doesn't have stats.

When you reach a stat maximum the number turns gold and nothing that doesn't add over max will increase it any more, nor will a material of that type be usable even if you have not reached the material limit. Any extra stats would be ignored, so if you are 1 ata off max and you equip a centurion/arms (35 ata), it will only give 1 ata and the other 34 will be wasted. The limit on hp and tp materials is 125 each, so you can not go over 125 hp materials. The limit for pow/mind/def/evade/luck materials is 250 combined for humans, and 150 combined (e.g. 115 pow+35 luck=150 total) for newmans and cast.

PSO-world is a good resources for looking up some kinds of info like numbers, but most opinion things from there are trash; either it's outdated(especially ep 4), doesn't apply to this server, or just plain bad, so it's not very good for plans. Instead I recommend checking out the quick questions thread, where I have posted numerous plans. In this post I listed which page has the plan for various classes: http://www.phantasystaronline.net/forum/index.php/topic/9827-ask-a-quick-question-get-a-quick-answer/?p=114720. I also posted hucaseal plans later here: http://www.phantasystaronline.net/forum/index.php/topic/9827-ask-a-quick-question-get-a-quick-answer/?p=118190 . There was an older thread by Zynetic about new material plans, but its was before cent/battle and cent/arms, and he uses several plans with 2 units for stats, and there are issues with his methodology I don't agree with, so I made a bunch of my own and put them in the quick questions thread.

In all the plans I try to use only 1 unit for stats and not include v101 stats, so as to have at least 2 free units and room for cent/battle. Cent/arms does give the most raw stats of any unit, but if possible I try to go with adepts because i value those 6 all resists that it gives, only a few plans actually require cent/arms. If I can't make a plan max completely, it's the atp that I take off of, because luck(critical hit rate) is a damage multiplier and ata is by far the most important, so <15 atp off max in a plan will be the least impactful (in force plans for maxing mst I will leave off mst instead, and max mst setup with cent/mind for the newmans who need seperate atp/ata/lck and mst setups, since mst is an even weaker stat and they already will probably use battle unit+smartlink+v801 in atp setup, while mst setup can be more lenient with units). Some classes have a hidden .5 ata at lvl 200 and will gain ata on odd numbers of mag dex instead of even numbers, I've factored this in where I know of it, but there are a few classes I have not been able to test.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Fyrewolf5

[Fyrewolf5]

Many thanks, tru and Zero, really

So, I assume a "base" PSOBB formula for level 200 would be something like this for, say, a HUmar (if PSO-World is indeed correct):

Max ATP: 1397

Base ATP: 943

Difference: 454

So it would then be a matter of spreading points across Materials and Mag stats... A Mag with 140 POW (2 ATP for every Mag POW) and some odd 70+ Power Materials (another 2 ATP per Mat) would bridge the gap, then. A bit altered for Ultima, of course (Centurions sound great).

I guess this was the formula I was missing all this time :/

Technically his max is +100 so it's 1497 atp. He is also 35.5 ata off of max at 200. So to work out a plan, you start with the mag and put 71 dex on the mag (since only mags give ata, dex materials don't exist anymore), the rest of the mag levels on pow (124 pow for a mag of 5 / 124 / 71 / 0), then you see how many more pow mats he needs to max his atp (153 pow mats) along with 35 luck mats (enough to max luck with rr), and then see how many extra mats he has (62). If it didn't max, you try again using and adept unit, cent/arms, and cent/ability and make a plan in the same fashion.

Of those 62 extra humar has I recommend putting 43 into mind so he has enough mst to use Holy Ray, leaving him with 19 extra mats then. Could use the rest on mind for more resta power, or 10 on luck for max luck with any shield, or whatever the player wants.

Humar is actually one of the easier classes to max and can do so with no units needed (that human 250 material limit helps a lot), but most classes need at least 1 unit for stats, and rarely have any room for not very useful Defense or Evade mats even if they wanted to use them.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Fyrewolf5

[Bossic]

A million thanks Fyrewolf5, that is a great plan/explanation! And I'll be sure to read those threads you linked to as well