Meter Gain Mechanics

[infiniteImage]

Hey all,

 

Been doing some research for meter gain properties in P4AU and just wanted to post my results, both to proliferate the information and for others to proof read the work. I'm going to put the TL;DR version first, so you can just get the raw facts, then after I'll go into detail about how I found those things. So here goes!

 

Meter Gain Facts:

• Meter gain is based on the base damage of the move. Each ~267 damage will provide 1 meter (e.g. 800 damage moves provide 3 meter).
• Moves provide a static amount of meter no how much their damage is reduced or increased by a combo. This means no meter proration and no bonus from counter-hits.
• The first hit in a combo will always provide 2 additional meter.
• Shadow characters' moves will generate 1.5x meter (not including the 2 meter first hit bonus).
• Meter gain is halved for blocked attacks.

Example: If Shadow Narukami counter-hits with his 5C, he will do 792 damage ( Base damage * Shadow penalty * CH bonus = 900 * 0.8 * 1.1 ) and gain ~7.06 meter ( [base damage / Meter gain constant * Shadow bonus] + First hit bonus = [900 / 267 * 1.5] + 2 )

 

Implications:

• Because there is no meter gain proration, doing high meter gain moves at the end of combos is insanely efficient (ex. All Out Rush will provide ~12 meter for a normal character and ~18 to a shadow character even as the very last hit!).
• A shadow character will reach full bar after having done almost HALF (8/15ths) of the damage than what it takes a normal character to reach full bar.
• Because meter gain is still 50% on block, you can gain significant amounts of meter if you have high damage, safe blockstring attacks.

 

 

 

Now for the details--

 

Meter based on Damage

After extensive testing with Chie's moveset, I was able to discover that there is a linear assocation with base damage (that is, how much damage a move does as the first hit) and meter gain. I went into training mode and did the same attack on the training dummy and recorded how much total meter I had. Thus, [Total meter / number of hits] gave an approximate number for each move's meter gain. After getting data on about 20 or so moves, I graphed the results and found an extremely linear curve. Tracing it back to its origin, it seemed even the lowest moves would provide at least 2 meter (more on this later). Doing some quick math to get "damage per meter" I found that all moves hovered around 265-270. And as such, providing me with the approximate "Meter gain constant" used above.

 

Meter gain does not prorate

Once I had an estimate amount for how much each move would give, I set about finding how much they deteriorated in combos. I took a sample of three moves (400, 800, and 2000 damage) and performed them all as the second move of a combo. I noticed that all of the moves seemed to be providing 2 less meter than the original, regardless of total meter provided. This lead me to test the theory that all "first hits" provide 2 bonus meter. Sure enough, after placing all of my attacks in various parts of a combo, they all provided the same amount meter. To stress test my theory, I set the training dummy to not tech and repeated the same attack 40+ times in a row. It consistently provided the same amount of meter throughout the entire 'combo'.

 

First hits provide bonus meter

As previously mentioned, while testing the proration of meter, I found that all moves generated 2 less meter than what I had recorded when used after the first hit. This also made sense when considered against my linear graph of meter generation starting at 2.

 

Shadow Characters get 1.5x meter

Once all the other data was in place, this was fairly simple. I took another sample of three moves as a shadow character and tested the generated meter. I found that these numbers also gained the 2 meter bonus and were not affected by the Shadow characters' damage penalty.

 

Meter gain on block

Similar to the Shadow characters tests, once I had the other data this test was fairly straight forward. I took another sample of a few attacks and measured their gains on block. The results were all consistently half of my previously recorded values.

 

 

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[zankoku]

There's also First Hit bonus (which I think is higher for regular than for Shadows), and I believe final autocombo normals have more meter gain than the formula would indicate?

 

Other than that, this is cool to know.

[Splack-Reflux]

Does this apply to 5AAAA combos? I always thought they built meter relatively quick.

[zankoku]

Auto-combo normals beyond the first two seem to follow a different formula in terms of meter gain.

[shtkn]

yeah, i think some attacks just give a preset amount of meter like hte last normal attack in auto combos