New items worth looking intoFollow

Shrewd Pumps - 4 Elemental Skill, 3 MAB, 2 Conserve MP. Drops off Buarainech in Garlaige Citadel [S] on Map3 (H-7).

Cassandra's/Hellenus's Earrings - Set: 5 MAB, 5 Macc. Drops from Blighting Brand in Sauromugue Champaign (G-7), Eldritch Edge in Rolanberry Fields (K-9). Placeholders are the RDM Weapons in Saur, WAR weapon in Rolan. Eldritch always pops on the south spine, but the PH can pop at the north or south.

Stimulus Sabots - 3 Enhancing Skill. Drops from Deliceuse Delphine in Rolanberry Fields [S] at (F-11).

Ebon/Furia/Ebur Coat - 5INT, 4MAB, Increases Magic Crit DMG. Synthed.

Wit Pendant - 4INT. Drops from Gloom Eye in Ranguemont Pass at (F-9). Lottery of Seeker Bats in the room apparently, but it is an Ahriman. Rotates Eyes On Me and BlindEye, EoM does about 300 to a RDM with full SS/Phalanx.

Headlong Belt - 3% Haste (for people without swift/velocious/speed/Fettled). Drops from Chonchon in Meriphataud Mountains at (F-9). Decent drop rate, fast respawn of 30-90mins.

Thats about all I see, but great potential from the new gear. It seems like SE is going more into the Hybrid nuking type sets with all the gear combining MAB and Macc. Shrewd Pumps offer Elemental skill while maintaining MAB, probably topping Goliard for resisted nuking. Cassandra/Hellenus Earrings offer MAB while adding the highest amount of Macc from the earring slots replacing Elemental Earring and Phantom Earring for restisted nuking. Stimulus boots just have a few more enhancing for Phalanx. The Ebon/Furia/Ebur set is basically a mirror image of Royal Red, but hopefully it will eventually add slots for augmenting via synergy. Wit pendant is good for helix, as well as for those who dont have caract choker or prudence for nuking.

Anyone see anything else worth going after?

Edited, Nov 18th 2009 11:29am by haleoale

Edited, Nov 18th 2009 11:40am by haleoale

Cassandra/Hellenus is what I'm going after. Even with a Novio, they still offer 10 M.accu for everything else (Sleeps, Gravities etc).

And 2 Mab -> 10 M.accu might not be a bad trade on a resist setup.

Just killed cassandra earring nm, no drop

Settle down ladies, and don't blow these out of proportion.

For high-INT targets, 2 INT+2 earrings will outdo this new combo, as will a single Elemental Earring. Consider that you are already carrying these earrings for Helices.

Also consider the tradeoff inherent to Novio owners. You're essentially trading MAB+7 for MACC+5; more of the best damage stat for less of the worst accuracy stat. In most other slots, you're trading lower amounts of damage for higher amounts of accuracy; this is the rare instance where it's reversed. Is this really the slot you want to be sacrificing damage in?

If you're a well-geared SCH, you're already carrying INT+2 earrings and hopefully an Elemental Earring for your resist set; you're looking at an at-best incredibly marginal increase to your accuracy (and on a high-INT target, you're losing accuracy) at the cost of 2 inventory slots. If this were BLM, I'd get the earrings for the hell of it, but after going through the possible gear combinations, I can't find a decent resist build that includes these earrings and enough INT to make that MACC worthwhile for SCH. (Remember, all that MACC is halved and therefore useless if you don't have enough INT to break dINT=10, whereas skill is unaffected.)

That being said, if you're one of those that just loves wasting inventory on those adorable hybrid nuking builds, then these are the earrings for you.

Edited, Nov 13th 2009 2:27pm by LyltiaofLakshmi

I'm with you on just using Novio (if I had one, anyway), but how exactly is mACC the worst accuracy stat? It's exactly the same thing as Elemental Skill, except that it also works for Enfeebling and Dark Magic.

Doh... I was thinking each would give 5 MAB. Thought SE finally decided to give non-Novio owners some options.
What was I thinking; SE is not the kind to make 6 year old gear obsolete.

/bitter

So... pretty good drop rate by SE standards ~_~

Hopefully people will keep thinking these are trash combo so I can snag em sometime when I'm really bored as Novio is a few years away if not further. Though Moldy and Loq earrings are hard to pass up on SCH cuz I'm too lazy to macro in/out FC gear.

Everyone that quotes MACC tests uses Kaeko's SCH guide. These were the most definitive tests that most everyone had seen. As such, please link to where th have been refuted because I believe they are the gold standard at the moment.

From Kanican:


Obligatory links to LJ: http://kanican.livejournal.com/34049.html

Again, if this has been refuted please link to it because I very well might have missed it.

First time since the stat came out that I've seen 1MACC can equal .5MACC. On a positive note, keep pushing this so I'll have less competition camping these two NMs.

Also, yes the combo of Elemental Earring/Phantom Earring or X2 Phantom Earrings will give nearly the same MACC in situations...however, neither of those combos also adds 5MAB.

Edited, Nov 14th 2009 6:55pm by haleoale

The one that needs to do some reading here is you. I can't believe the amount of misinformation on that post.

1 M.Accuracy is 1% Magic hit rate when your Hit rate is above 50% (Should always be).
It becomes .5 hit rate only when your accuracy is so piss poor like to go under 50% hit rate.

Elemental Magic is in essence M.Accuracy that is only applied to Elemental spells. One is not superior to the other in any way. Altho you could probably say M.Accu is superior since it applies to all magics.

1 INT will equal 1% Hit rate only when your int is below the Enemy's INT+10. After your dINT is above 10, 1 INT will equal .5% magic hit rate.
But the only mobs where you could find yourself with less than 10 dINT are Kirin and CoP wyrms (And maybe imps...); so it is usually a good idea to relay INT as Magic hit rate +.5%


So summing it up:
3Skill, 2INT combo will be at best 5 M.Accu, and at worst 4 M.Accu.
This earring combo will always be 5 M.Accu (Situations where LandRate<50% are irrelevant).

Finally having decent luck with some NMs in this game... both earrings within 2hrs of each other. Time to sell my elemental earring! (and start camping the foot fomor)

Wit Pendant is off Gloom Eye...However it does not fit the area its in whatsoever, and I have no idea how it pops. Wiki says Lottery from Seeker bats. Ahriman mob from seekers, who knows. I'll try when I get back home this weekend.

Stimulus Sabots I believe are off the morboro in Rolan[S], Delicieuse Delphine. Seems fairly easy with movement speed.

On another note, I went out to mess around with Cass/Helenus Earrings. My first 4 nukes with them were 1345, 1345, 1345. I swapped back to Moldy/Morion+1 and got 1262, 1262, 1262...and just about freaked out thinking they actually stacked. Unfortunately, I did about 20 more casts and the 3 1262s were all very badly timed 10% resists in a row. Ah well, I knew they didn't stack but seeing that sequence gave me hope that SE made a mistake for about 5mins.

We also tried to knock of some of the new fomor NMs, unfortunately it seems I am going to need much better planning and strategy for those guys before I expect to see drops. Elatha, which I think is generally one of the easiest, is about as chaotic as this game gets. Buarenech, which is Shrewd Pumps NM, is just utterly painful. If anyone does find out some strats that work on the Elvaan (Buarenech or whatever) please post it as the most impressive thing for my SCH in this update would be Shrewd Pumps.

Good call, didn't even think to mention those. While mentioning Fettle Belt, theres also the Mage version belt from the coffer that can give 5INT 5MND Macc and MAB among other useful stats. Can't remember the name.

Edited, Nov 17th 2009 8:40pm by haleoale

For soloing Delphine, theres tons of cliffs, structure to use. It says it has 12% movement, so I'd assume with any form of movement speed at all you could pull away and use bio/poison. I'll probably try it on RDM since its generally safer for things I dont know much about.

Wit is a very nice piece for helix, but for nuking you could look into Caract Choker. That's currently what I use for pre-Ugg latent nuking.

Delphine was up last time I was there, so I'm not sure which the PH is. That's actually my target after Wit Pendant (and Baurainech when I have the people for it). Currently 0/2 as RDM on Gloom Eye, and I definately underestimated EoM and how annoying this NM is.

Finally found someone who knew how to beat Buarainech fairly reliably. Apparently you take 10BLM/NIN and a tank party, and spam stone spells. Unfortunately, he still oneshots PLDs with Spirit Surge Penta Thrusts. We tried the method on Elatha last week, and wiped mainly just due to the lack of strategy... As soon as I get a new graphics card and or a new PC at my house I'll be going after this guy as much as possible.