Surface Slap

Glimmerscale

  • All data was collected in Clear Skies or Fair Skies with Casts starting at xx:01 and ending at xx:59.

The Impaler

  • All data collected was confirmed to have been done with Snagging on.

Giant Taimen

About & Procedure:

This data was manually collected. The veracity of this data was maintained via the standard processes followed when doing Cast quantity tests:

  • All fishing sessions were recorded, saved to my HDD, sections re-watched for verification as necessary.
  • Notable timestamps were kept in a private linkshell and referred to when the session ended for verification.
  • All abilities that had the potential to interfere with accurate data collection if used accidentally were removed from the hotbar while testing.
  • Fishing was done via macros and with the use of foot pedals to allow efficient data entry while fishing.
  • Data collection for a location was complete in 3 days at maximum.

No Slap Tests:

  • The entirety of the No Slap test was completed before starting the With Slap test for a location.
  • All fish that bit were Hooked.
  • All fish caught were kept in Inventory until testing was complete.
  • Escapes were documented as they happened in both the spreadsheet and linkshell and verified via video.

With Slap Tests:

  • The Slap target chosen was the fish found to have the highest bite rate during the No Slap tests. The target was consistent across the entirety of the tests.
  • The Slap target was fished for and caught using Versatile Lure at every location but Dragonspit. At all locations, the fish caught while fishing for and the Slap itself are not counted in any of the data provided.
  • Once a Slap was obtained, bait was swapped to the bait specified for the test if necessary, and all bites were ignored until “amiss” was reached. Upon reaching “amiss” data collection was halted until the Slap was re-established.
  • Data entry for With Slap tests was done after each bite and tracked simultaneously in the spreadsheet and linkshell. Timestamps were noted for each big fish bite to ensure accuracy.

“Conclusion”

Based upon the data herein, it appears that the use of Surface Slap affects big fish bite rates.

Using the formula established by Kiku Ichimonji in “Analyzing the effect of Surface Slap on big fish bite rates” the z-scores of the tests are as follows:

Dragonspit (The Impaler): -8.3572
Nophica’s Wells (Glimmerscale): -2.9193
Upper Watts River (Giant Taimen): -3.4653

For clarification, per the above reference,

Using the numbers from the dataset, we can calculate something called a z-score; if the value of the z-score is between a certain range, then we cannot reject the null hypothesis. We will set a 95% confidence level for our test, so the range will be from -1.96 to 1.96.

The z-score calculated from the tests are not within the range determined by the specified confidence level, supporting the claim that big fish bite rates are impacted by Surface Slap provided I did the calculations correctly.

Why these locations?

  1. The big fish bites on a bait for easier verification of Cast counts.
  2. The big fish is the only ferocious (!!!) bite at all locations selected.
  3. All fish that bite on the bait used are available when testing.
  4. The big fish is always available or very high uptime.
  5. Locations where when using Slap there would only be one fish of at least two of the three different bite strengths. In these locations there is only one strong (!!) and ferocious (!!!) bite fish inherently and the fish Slapped is a weak (!) bite with multiple others available after using the ability.
  6. Locations with differing bite rates for the fish that would be Slapped.

When was this data collected?

Dragonspit - patch 5.1
Nophica’s Wells - patch 5.2
Upper Watts River - patch 5.3

At the beginning of Shadowbringers I was curious if Surface Slap actually impacted the bite rates for big fish. Though it clearly impacts The Unconditional, Moggle Mogpom, Hermit’s End and The Archbishop, these are guaranteed to bite after using Surface Slap (The Archbishop requires specific weather). I wished to test on fish that cannot be gimmick-ed with the ability in this way.

Dragonspit was chosen first for its known bite distribution. The results could be considered “conclusive” but I wanted multiple datasets and to test fish with conditions and from other expansions.
I wanted to do a Shadowbringers big fish first but didn’t want to do one with the uptime of the 5.1 or 5.2 ones, and 5.3 is when the first always available big fish for the expansion was added.

Why not post this 4 years ago?

A multitude of reasons. First, there are multiple people who collect fishing data that do not share it at all or do so in places where it has little to no reach. This has always happened, continues to, and for most of my time fishing in this game this has been my situation and still largely is.
If someone has an inquiry and I have data I collected relevant to it available that I am confident in, I share it. This is common practice by now.

I did not encounter the English-speaking fishing community until 5.1, rarely participated until 5.3, and was not comfortable sharing my work with a community I did not frequently engage.
It was not mentioned until now because I didn’t feel a need to. I would not be willing to establish a conclusion (not theory) on how an ability functions based on conjecture and frankly don’t know why anyone was willing to accept the dominant narrative about Surface Slap if they thought there was no testing done on it other than noticing how it obviously affects four specific big fish.
By the time of my more active participation with the community, Surface Slap’s functionalities were spoken about confidently. I do not consider the amount of work brought forward here to be substantial and assumed that, based on how it was discussed, someone or a group of someones had produced something much more robust so considered this work irrelevant to the public.
I have not presented this data in the time since despite not seeing any evidence of such testing because I determined it was not “needed” based on discourse and because I maintain a significant amount of discomfort about sharing data generally from the possibility of one individual’s non-peer reviewed work being elevated beyond its station.

Also, at the time the this work was done in Shadowbringers I was largely displeased with the existence of Surface Slap and didn’t feel like discussing it.