How does Potency factor into the damage formula?
By Daniel Johnston
I've been playing Final Fantasy 14 for a couple weeks now, and I'm running into something I can't seem to figure out. All my spells have a "Potency" attached to them, ranging anywhere from 20, right up to 100.
Checking a couple wikis, the best I get out of them is, "The mathematical base damage of an ability.", which doesn't really tell you much about how it actually works.
Is potency a percentage-based value? Or how does it work to apply damage to whatever it is I'm targetting?
12 Answers
The rough formula does something like this for a DRG (other classes might have slightly different variances, depending on the attack used):
Damage = (Potency/100) x [(0.0032 x Attribute + 0.4162) x (Weapon Damage) + (0.1 x Attribute – 0.3529)]
For more detailed information, take a look at this Google Doc for more detailed testing, math, and statistics behind the game's battle system.
Potency is the expression of "how much damage you're going to do with this skill in comparison to other skills".
It's just there so you can look at for example Fire 1 (180 potency) and Fire 3 (240 potency) on Black Mage, and deduce that fitting in 5 Fire 1's (900 potency) is better than doing 3 Fire 3's (720 potency).
1
