Sonic Flares w/ UAC

[Maerit]

So, the rules for UAC is that the rate of flares is reduced by half for every item you have equipped that flares.

I.E. Flaring Gloves, Flaring MH (UAC weapon), Flaring OH (UAC weapon)

With bard UAC, it benefits the bard to equip their Sonic Cestus or whatever flavor of UAC weapon they want because 1s RTs + Sonic Flares is very strong. However, I am wondering if the flare rate is reduced with the following conditions:

1. You have a sonic weapon + blessed gloves.
a. Bless via Voln (no holy water flares)
b. Bless via Cleric ( w/ holy water flares)

2. Script flaring Gloves - (parasite, KO, bubble, etc)
3. Script flaring OH - (parasite, KO, sprite, etc)

At what point will any of these effects diminish or reduce the rate of your Sonic flaring MH weapon?

[Maerit]

How come Bards are better UACer’s than Monks?

Makes sense I suppose

I can't say for sure that's fact! Bards are not able to train in UAC masteries like Monks, which can make a significant difference to targets that are vulnerable to criticals. Plus, a monk can 1.5-2x MoC for massive front loaded damage, while my Bard generally just 1x in MoC (and it seems like MoC might slow down kill speed).

But... I can say my bard is better than my UAC warmage at unarmed combat! I'm level 99 on the warmage now, and going to finish capping him with UAC (very fun playstyle, I recommend it for any warmage enthusiasts), but the bard does the same thing as the warmage with better UAC training options. It just takes a bit longer to unlock.

Now I am trying to figure out what equipment to best use for this combat style without sacrificing my Sonic flares!

[Stumplicker]

Bards are very capable UACers, probably on par with monks. Even with 1 second round times though on the bard, I kick more often, with better MM, with higher tier up chances, in less time (*may vary based on race/agidex), at higher DF, because I can kick instead of punch (necessary to make flares happen from the cestus), plus a free jab on the first mstrike, plus a higher starting position most of the time from krynch. It just costs stamina instead of mana like it does with the bard.

Anyway, the script flaring stuff don't worry about. That doesn't affect your normal flares at all. Your only factors are gloves + weapon, which means you're gonna flare 50% of what you would normally with just the cestus flares. If you have the cleric bless with the holy water flares, you'll get 50% cestus flares and 50% holy water flares, giving you a normal flaring chance overall. If for whatever reason you're kicking occasionally, to tier up or what have you, keep in mind also that throws off the numbers a little because your cestus and glove flares can't flare on kicks. Just punches, jabs, and grapples.

Edit to add: I'm about 80% sure on the script flares thing that it's not affected by the flare divisions, but I don't remember for sure. Someone else may be able to confirm or deny. Ask Meureii if you see him in game. He hunts with weapons and script flares.

[Maerit]

Does the act of just equipping enchanted gloves alongside an enchanted MH weapon halve the flare rate? Or if the gloves are enchanted / vanilla (or script flaring) then you get the full flare rate of the MH weapon?

When I parsed my logs for my warmage using KO flaring gloves, the flare rate was absurdly high (like over 40% on all jab/punch and grapple attacks). I was hoping to transfer those to my Bard who would then have sonic flares and KO flares.

[Stumplicker]

Does the act of just equipping enchanted gloves alongside an enchanted MH weapon halve the flare rate? Or if the gloves are enchanted / vanilla (or script flaring) then you get the full flare rate of the MH weapon?

When I parsed my logs for my warmage using KO flaring gloves, the flare rate was absurdly high (like over 40% on all jab/punch and grapple attacks). I was hoping to transfer those to my Bard who would then have sonic flares and KO flares.

Yeah the KO flares I think are a script if I'm not mistaken, and like I said, about 80% sure the rate on that isn't affected. That's why I tried so hard to get snake flares. Aside from making everyone call me snakepuncher. But that's neither here nor there.

Any gloves with any weapon is going to half the rate as far as I know. It just counts up how many pieces you have and divides the chance by that amount. So if you've got a 0x cestus, a sonic cestus, and a 0x gloves, your sonic flares would happen 1/3 of normal, but with just the 0x gloves and sonic cestus, 50% of normal.

[Maerit]

Hrmm, that conflicts with something Estild said on Discord a couple months ago. He indicated that it was the number of flaring items equipped, vs the number of items in general.

Found from Discord:

Estild10/15/2018
It's only reduced if you're also wearing UCS gloves that flare.

In response to: "So, question: I hear that held weapons have their flare rates reduced in UCS - does anyone know which factors cause the flare rate of held UCS weapons to be reduced?"

[Stumplicker]

Hrmm, that conflicts with something Estild said on Discord a couple months ago. He indicated that it was the number of flaring items equipped, vs the number of items in general.

Found from Discord:



In response to: "So, question: I hear that held weapons have their flare rates reduced in UCS - does anyone know which factors cause the flare rate of held UCS weapons to be reduced?"

He'd know for sure then. My number just came from testing, and my sample size was only large enough to determine that I didn't want to hold weapons.

[Donquix]

If you keep reading people tried to get him to clarify that statement and he never did, and it is directly at odds with what Finros (who actually made that system) said. It's pretty trivial to check since the difference is so dramatic.

a hundred or so swings with just flaring gloves or a flaring handheld and the chance is 20+% depending on how you calculate it. I was doing: flares / (jab attempts - killshots not caused by a flare) and depending on when i check it's ~23% (riltus has normal flares as 20%, and i take his word as gospel generally)

use both and it's immediately down to 10-12%, put one away and immediately back up. At first I was checking with non-flaring gloves + a held, realized my gloves were blessed (but i was hunting living) and dispelled the bless just to be sure, didn't make a difference. flare chance is unchanged (made sure to put the weapon away, get it back out just in case it's a weird GET thing, did a remove/stow/get/wear of the gloves after the bless removal also to be sure)

I got lazy at the end was doing pretty brief runs (until i got like 6 or 7 flares), but it's like clockwork to the higher chance and back down as you change the gear out.

a little annoying as the only scripted items i have to check are either already weird on flare chance (i.e. parasite) or have regular + scripted flares, and it should be checked with only the scripted to minimize the variables. Plus who knows if all scripts work the same with determining how often they should, i.e. do some miss the stacked gear hook entirely? then paladin flares and bard flares might be entirely different.

[Maerit]

I definitely saw a difference when I had earth flaring gloves and sonic flares, but as I am hunting a lot of undead and the sonic weapon doesn't flare on the undead, it's been kinda hard to see a flare rate now that I'm using gloves with no flares.

The gloves I plan to use are 7x SWCW w/ KO flares and T5 ensorcelled (which can still be blessed easily). I also had grand designs to use a sprite cestus after enchanting and unlocking it further since those are also script flares, and my hope was that I'd have standard flare rate chance for the Sonic flares while being able to also simultaneously flare with KO and Sprite (and ensorcell also). It gets very confusing when you add in T5 ensorcell on gloves + OH weapon!

My main advantage with this setup was being disarm immune (sonic weapon in MH means you can't be disarmed) while having 1s RTs on all my attacks and flares galore. Though, if the script flares would reduce the Sonic flare rate down to less than 10%, it might not be a good tradeoff.

[Aluvius]

If you keep reading people tried to get him to clarify that statement and he never did, and it is directly at odds with what Finros (who actually made that system) said. It's pretty trivial to check since the difference is so dramatic.

a hundred or so swings with just flaring gloves or a flaring handheld and the chance is 20+% depending on how you calculate it. I was doing: flares / (jab attempts - killshots not caused by a flare) and depending on when i check it's ~23% (riltus has normal flares as 20%, and i take his word as gospel generally)

use both and it's immediately down to 10-12%, put one away and immediately back up. At first I was checking with non-flaring gloves + a held, realized my gloves were blessed (but i was hunting living) and dispelled the bless just to be sure, didn't make a difference. flare chance is unchanged (made sure to put the weapon away, get it back out just in case it's a weird GET thing, did a remove/stow/get/wear of the gloves after the bless removal also to be sure)

I got lazy at the end was doing pretty brief runs (until i got like 6 or 7 flares), but it's like clockwork to the higher chance and back down as you change the gear out.

a little annoying as the only scripted items i have to check are either already weird on flare chance (i.e. parasite) or have regular + scripted flares, and it should be checked with only the scripted to minimize the variables. Plus who knows if all scripts work the same with determining how often they should, i.e. do some miss the stacked gear hook entirely? then paladin flares and bard flares might be entirely different.

The formula is essentially 1/n=modifier for flare rate, where n= # pieces of equipment either worn or held. It doesn't matter if the equipment is plain, its still counted. So gloves and a handheld would be a .5 modifier to the standard flare rate of all pieces of equipment used in that attack.

That's direct from Finros after monks release.

As Donquix said, its possible that some systems interact with it oddly but that's for sure the design when it comes to standard flares including holy water bless flares.

Bottom line, if you use a piece of UAC equipment and want flares then make sure every one of them has flares so you'll get a normalized rate. Adding script flares and other types will also help as its not calculated per number of flares, but per # of equipment. So a piece of equipment with a script flare and paladin flares will still flare a lot ... relatively speaking in the context of the normalized rate.