Meriting Magic SkillsFollow

Hello all,

I am going to post this in a few other forums to get a wider perspective but I am in a touch predicament. I have 75 Blm, Rdm and Blu among other jobs, and I will have to make a decision on how far to merit Elemental, Enfeebling and Blue Magic skills. I like to deal in absolutes when it comes to meriting, I feel like , if i am going to spend the time to merit an ability i may as well make it 8/8. But in my particular situation That would leave one of those magic abilities with little to no merits on them. My question to you guys is, which combination of magic merits would you choose? Also of the three that I want to merit, which one is the least mandatory? Thanks

8 enfeeble
8 elemental

There is no alternative.

Thanks all for your replies, after consideration i think I'm going to go with the following,

Blue Magic: 7/8
Elemental Magic 5/8
Enfeebling magic 4/8

I chose this combination because I can get to just about the highest reasonable Blue magic damage tier with 7 merits, And because the other two have alot more gear available to me to utilize to cut down on resists.

I do have another question though, In dealing with Magic accuracy, which is more potent, that or the magic skill? 5 points of Elemental magic skill vs 5 magic acc, which is best?

What would suck more:

Trying to solo Zipacna on your rdm and after 30 minutes of wearing him down you get two bind resists in a row and your dead...

Or, doing a few points less dmg on your blu when your fighting cerberus in a huge alliance with your linkshell...

These are the kinds of things I would be thinking about. How do you use each job and what are the realistic effects of each merit category?






Edited, Jul 14th 2009 3:37pm by Mithsavvy

I nearly predicted your response word for word. By now I understand that we all suck. You have made this abundantly clear.

When I post something I do it from my perspective with the assumption that a decent percentage of players share similar experiences. While you may dissagree, I have been camping Zipacna a lot lately and I have yet to see anyone waltz in and solo him in 15 minutes. I have seen several duos and trios wipe and one person solo him in about 50 minutes. I trust that you can solo him in 15 minutes. I trust that other people can aslo solo him in 15 minutes. However, I am convinced that the majority of people reading this forum can not solo him in 15 minutes, if at all.

Just killed it in 10:35. Would have been under 10 mins, but i accidentally left composure up for the first 4 mins, and got hit with ice break, with utsu2 recast down, and it broke ss with it's next attack round (DA), so i couldn't get utsu1 up, which dropped me to 117 hp before i got away.

Seriously though, it has around 11~12k hp, which means ≈20 nukes or so. 6 nukes before first vert, 6 more after just from base mp, 4/tic refresh gives 800 mp in 10 mins, which is more than enough to finish it off. Even if you get unlucky with resists (though it's not really that resistant, so you really shouldn't see more than 1-2), a second vert should give you far more than enough mp to finish it off. And that's not even including resting...

If zip takes more than 20 mins, your doing something very wrong. Hell, 15 mins is still a bit slow, but still reasonable.

Edited, Jul 14th 2009 10:52pm by ThePsychoticOne

REALLY depends on what you like to do and what style you enjoy.

I have
8/8 Blue
6/8 Elemental
2/8 Enhancing


Been debating droping the 6 Ele skill for 6 more in Enh if I can get the Merciful Cape (320 Enh skill).

I can hit 320+ Enfeebling already with current gear. There isn't much past that point that will make any difference. Anything that would require higher Enf skill is most likely immune or nearly immune to whatever your about to cast.

Remember this mantra, "What sucks about 95% hit rate is that you have a 5% miss rate too". You will ~ALWAYS~ get random resists, so expect them and plan for them. But if you also happen to be a BLM or WHM, then you might want to go 8/8 enf.

Elemental skill is a bit difference, as RDM/SCH I can get 320 if I go full +ele skill gear, but honestly we don't need that high. Anything over 300~310 is pretty much as waste unless your nuking HNM's. Although if your also a BLM then I'd suggest going 8/8 ele anyway.

Blu skill is incrediably important for a BLU mage. 16 skill can raise it 2~3 D points depending if you have the AF2 head piece or not. Since this value is the base for ALL your damage across ALL hits on ALL spells it gets multiplied a few times. Its significantly more then "a few points of damage". It also servers are your base "attack" that is then multiplied by each spells "attack multiplier", so again its amplified. And its the base skill used for all magical BLU spells (except healing). The value of capped Blue Skill cannot be understated for a Blue Mage.

But having said all that .... you can't "have it all". So based on your jobs and what you primarily do with those jobs, pick the skills you desire most.

*Note*
I didn't mention much about Enhancing magic here. Enh magic is what boosts our combat self buffs. Enspells / Phalanx / Stoneskin (to a point) / Barspell / Spikes. If your seriously into RDM melee builds, then you might want to consider dropping a merit or two (or in my case maybe all soon). Usually you do this to hit the next tier of Enspell damage, but recently we've been seeing that resist rates are HEAVILY dependent on enhancing skill during cast. On the order of almost 1 point = 1%.

So it wears off early... just reapply.

Resistance is just the time the enfeeble lasts. There is no half potency for Silence / Bind / Slow / Sleep / Gravity. And there is debate on half potency for Paralyze due to its random nature.

Anything that would require over 310~320 Enf skill to land something on (assuming HQ staves) would either be immune, or nearly immune. And... we're not exactly enfeebling HNM's anyway (other then possibly a ES + Slow II). But again its totally dependent on that persons priorities and jobs.

Yes, and that duration can be decreased as much as half. I don't know what you like to do, but I don't feel like babysitting debuffs. I have plenty to do in a party, and that's just backline. It gets in the way of melee swings as well. Helps on Bind (random it may be, but who wants a half duration of an already random spell), getting away with a few more Gravities with it's hard coded resistance, and lets you equip even more potency gear for our few debuffs with potency.

Like I said in the blue mage forums as well, of course anyone geared to the hilt will marginalize the effects of merits when eyeballed, which includes BLU.

Whatever job you and the OP find to be your favorite or most use isn't a problem, but there are very real reasons to merit enfeebling, all of which are primary functions of RDM.

If you want to get down to it, every merit except for maybe a few job-specific ones here and there, are exactly like that.

Very little in this game is truly needed. The point I was making, because it's not clear in your first post at all, is that there is a very real and useful purpose for meriting enfeebling beyond just "landing" a spell. Some spells it's potency, some spells you just don't want a partial resist, but all of it makes a definite difference in the realm that merits can and it's not limited to just a handful of spells.

Merits are a part of what separates well-intentioned RDMs from great RDMs, or any job. (There's a whole slew of things that separate bad players from good players.)

My shell still kites things. I like it when all the BLM/RDMs, RDM/BLMs, or RDM/Anys fail, I can still have a good shot at landing Gravity and still freely choose whatever subjob I want.

That's why I added my caveat in my last post, it depends on what you consider your main job. Do you want to be a well-intentioned BLU and a great RDM, or a great BLU and well-intentioned RDM.

Uh...?

Yeah. Most people have said all along it you have to choose your path. Anyone with an ounce of credibility isn't calling you inferior. It was this statement that sparked an argument.

Which is not true at all.

Neither will not having 8 blue magic, or 8 enhancing. Neither does having 8 enfeebling over 8 enhancing mean I'm not a hybrid. Defining RDM is hardly set in stone, by the nature of the job, and I'll gladly theorycraft away with anyone about what does define hybrid. But I'll say this much, with the right gear 8 Enhancing only helps when you're meleeing (you could make a case for barspells, I guess). 8 Enfeeble can help when you're backline, melee, solo, kiting, anything you do.


I'm with with Rog on this one.

That's really not true. Rdm definitely is best at enfeebling. Not only do we have slow2/para2, we also have significantly more enfeebling skill than any other job, allowing us to land spells much easier, as well as with more mnd for slow/para.

Rdm is also arguably the best tank. Rdm takes the least damage, can easily keep hate capped, has plenty of extra mp for cures, and can self buff. Honestly the only thing pld has over rdm, is it's dd abilities (which can sometimes be more than enough of a reason to use pld over rdm (such as lowmanning with no other dds at all), but not usually).

I think you should probably go 8/8 Enfeebling as Enfeebling skill will help both RDM and BLM a lot.

I generally prefer maxing out a merit catergory but if you must insist just split Blue Magic and Elemental to 4/8 each.

Missing a sleep or bind at a crucial moment will be much more important than realising you're getting resisted on your nukes and you need to add some elemental skill gear to your set up. Also, although I'm not very familiar with BLUs, I think that since BLUs do less stuff solo and more stuff in alliances (especially end game) you probably don't need to concentrate on that merit too much.