Dear Level 50-ish BLMs

Oh, oh, I almost forgot.

melee's wanting to play with their best ws's sacrificing skillchain and overall damage happens 1 good 1/4 parties...
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I dunno what kinda asshats your pting with, but I dont remember running into melees who want to use their best WS no matter what too often. Also sometimes the 2 dd jobs r so incompatible and the best ws might be so weak it might be best if both soloed their best ws. :P
 
your calculations for the damage ratios are for a higher level... i took those in the 50's... i do 900's with freeze unbursted now and i did 900's then... the damage doesn't improve at the same rate as spells like blizzard which i can do 300 with now as opposed to the max 50 when i got it.. AM is capped like healing magic... my freaking aquilo's staff can't make it do much more than what it did at 50...

every time i get in a party at a new WS level one of the components screws at least 2 skillchains to see their new move. you know it, you've done it, i do it when i play my melee mules... but it's not entirely a generalization here... when i hit 65 and learned waterga 3 did i just go "new spell, lets try and burst that on the gravitation sc!" ?

AM cast times are ridiculous but once again, it equals out... write down the numbers... watch, calculator, paper, pencil.... it just looks different from the melee's perspective i suppose.


btw anyone got one of those "hijacked" images?
 
They are still fun, im willing to spend a few extra mp once in a while for some uber damage, and bragging rights.
 
That magic quickly wears out anyway. I've really only seen them as a Robber crab novelty act myself. At this level, a black mage's firaga will punch for 1200 or so, and I can BARELY keep it on the tank at that--pally or not. If I hit a bad close, they might take a hit any way we slice it.

What I've taken to doing is testing out skillchaining at the start of fights, bursting the mage's highest light or distortion usually. Close onto the tank, tank provokes, yada yada yada. Then it's a mad dash for timers to cooldown and to get back to 100 tp to do it all again. Usually the black mage is perfectly safe unless I hit low and he hits high.

An ancient magic fire would do what...1700? 1900? No point. The meleers need tp, and the skillchain alone already takes 2/5 of its life.
 
Actually, I do my best ws all the time in parties, but that's mainly because I'm normally not part of the skillchain.

Also, I didn't buy any of the single-targets of protect and shell past the first one. Why waste money on something that I will NEVER use? Eventually I'm going to get the single targets of protect 4 (90k) and shell 4 (<10k, I think); but since I am very rarely in a position that I would have to use those and not the -ra's, it's not high up on my to do list. I was expected to have the -ra's, the single-targets are just if I wanted them.
 
Single targets are nice if a ninja accidentally cancels protect instead of Ni.
Or if protect runs mid battle and you really want to give the tank protect for the course of the fight. Not as good as the -ra but they have their uses.
 
yeah, there's been times when I've wanted a single-target just so I wouldn't have to use the -ra, but for the most part those have been few and far between.
 
Honestly, with everyones intense love of Distortion, nobody will notice if you dont have anything but Freeze.

As for Blm not forcing AM bursts, at 55+ on Ranger, I was told I was going to be using Piercing Arrow so we could make a Distortion. Basically, I stated that I would be leaving the party. That is a common thing I have noticed with Blm. They always want to burst their highest spell. Albeit I am not to Light or Dark skillchains yet, but when you have your two melees doing 1k+ damage on the WS portion of a SC alone, your more impressive 600 MB on a weaker skillchain is actually slowing down a party. For example, if a Blm got Blizzard 3, and the only possible Distortion chain we could make was with me using a Piercing Arrow, insisting to use it is a complete waste. You may burst for 500 damage, but if the melee used their more powerful WS and make a less used chain (Fragmentation - Lovely chain that I saw ONCE in CN), they are still going to hit for more as you will still be bursting, just with a weaker spell.

As other said. Rangers gain massive TP along with Mnk and other jobs. If I am waiting for an AM burst, I could have been 2-3 shots into the next chain. So they are a waste of TP. Waste of MP, ill have to trust others. So on and so forth...

Give me a Sidewinder, Raging Fists, Rampage, etc over AM any day.

I will say this though, I just LOVE, I mean LOVE, when a Blm gets resisted with AM. Love to see how pissed off they get... Magic Burst! Freeze causes 400 points of damage...

Fae
 
Here is how i always played with MB's. I didnt always like to do them unless I had the right setup. With the right people we could do chain #5's on the crabs. My favorite pt for this was pld, thf, rng, blm, rdm, smn (or brd). Now granted we would not do freeze MB every fight. In fact maybe only 2 times per chain if that. It would depend on what health the mob was at. If he was lower we would just use blizzard 2. This was pre 55 and we had to change our tactics around becuase when the ranger hit 55 crabs would go down easy at any rate.

If you have a group that knows what they are doing as I usually had (I dont know why this happend, it doesnt happen to me much anymore ; ;). I could hold the hate easilly for freeze as well. That was fast exp and I would usually have the same people invite me to party for that area, heh. Looking back on it I was a little too gungho for freeze at the time becuase I had good people in my pt's. I was mostly "w00t I'm the l337z0r freeze holding pld" ; ;.

I agree that effeciancy is more important but the freeze MB can work if done with the right people. Overall I had an ok experience with it, like 5-6k exp/hour but its not for every party.
 
Faedryth said:
I was told I was going to be using Piercing Arrow so we could make a Distortion.
Click to expand...


[Umm..]

Sidewinder occupies all the same slots on tthe SC chart as Pierceing arrow. You can make the same SC regardless of what WS you start with.

said person was either a moron, or was looking at a chart that only shows up to lvl 50 WS
 
i'll tell you EXACTLY what Ancient Magic is for....











Its for me to use in Ballista!

Moch starts casting Freeze.
Oldsmobeast starts panicing...
Player X binds Oldsmobeast.
Moch cheers!
Moch waves farewell to Oldsmobeast.
Moch casts Freeze.
Oldsmobeast takes 890 points of damage.
Oldsmobeast has been defeated by Moch.

Moch does the Taru dance all over Oldsmobeast's dead body before running away!

:lol:
 
As soon as I got freeze way back when, I MB'ed it for the next 3-4 levels and it worked fantastically. It isnt that its too powerful a spell or that it eats mp but, like everything else, team coordination. Its a very delicate sc but a good blm will coordinate the party on how to use it (thats right folks listen to your blm please, they may actually know a thing or two about spells O.o). If the blm doesnt know how to use freeze yet then have some patience and let the person practice, you may enjoy helping them learn a valuable skill. Ever thought of not bursting it every fight?And yes, it is slightly harder than your regular layed back sc but it works very very well. If you dont even wanna try it....well thats your loss.
 
Being A 75BLM myself...

Let me tell you a little about AM.
1.Only used for HNMs, if you read the AM text ie.Flood Deals water dmg to the enemy and lower resistance agaisnt LIGHTNING.
nukers use AM to start HNM fights like Fafnir, in which ThunderIV can deal 1k++

2. AM is a waste of MP if youyr nuking free-hand especially in EXP PTs



3. I will cut nooobs. (understood)?
 
I've never even been asked to AM burst until I saw this thread. Then two days ago, they're like... "Do you want to AM burst?" I said no... there were other people from the party that were like, oh, you should, you should... so whatever, fine, we do it. At the end of the battle, and we didn't have a thief.

It worked and I was still able to regain most of my mp back by the beginning of next fight.
Melon Pie +1
Dark Staff might help but I don't know...

However, I noticed it's a little harder to complete as sometimes lag screws up the timing and all but ya... it's not something I want to do often.

The point is.... I'm sure there's lots of parties out there that want the AM burst... my party was basically demanding it..
 
Admittedly, I'm not going to read this entire thread. I got to page 2 and decided to post and be done with it, lol. Sorry to anyone with great ideas who didn't get here before page 3. Mainly I'm posting because I noticed a rather low percentage of the comments were from BLM's. So here's my take on AM.

1. Not really needed except for the Maat fight, and even then there are other ways to beat him.

2. But not retarded either. Blizzard II will MB for just over 300 damage at lv 50 (the level for Freeze). Freeze costs about 4x's the MP, but should do about 1200-1300 damage, if it isn't then you need to check your blm's equipment. So the damage:mp ratio isn't as good as 4 blizzard II MB's, but you won't get off 4 blizzard II's in a normal party. That being said, there ARE other SC's than distortion. The element you use should be the weakness of the mob. So if it's not weak to ice, don't USE ice.

3. Hate shouldn't be a big issue... not in a good pt (big disclaimer). In my static pt, I could start the Freeze macro when the mob was still at about 60% life. The WSs and SC usually brought the mob to the point where Freeze would kill it off. If the mob didn't die, I'd get attacked about one in 5 times with a PLD tank. Blink and stoneskin would take a good brunt of the potential damage, and cover/flash/voke/sentinal would get hate back. I've never once died from casting AM.

4. MP usage can be a big issue, but doesn't have to be... With a RDM, dark staff at lv 51, and some of the food that adds to MP recovery with resting, you can MB every single mob with AM up to a chain #5. I've done it and I'm Elvaan for God's sake. You won't be casting much else in the fight, but when each battle only lasts long enough for the melee to get 100 TP, who cares.

5. And finally, you will outgrow AM really fast. All AM does about the same damage (roughly) regardless of the spell's level. When a single AM burst no longer finishes off the mob at lv 54 or 55, you should be done with it for good.
 
Dammit Moch that freeze was Bullshit and you know it!! haha if only I had not been an idiot and used a poison potion before I went after you and fired up a spiritual incense as I saw you taking 3 years to cast that AM.. I'll get you another day Taru :p
 
Corrosion said:
Of course, this was a rare exception, as the BLM had Mage's Ballad, Refresh, Conserve Mp, 2 Astrals, and was drinking juice like a banshee (The whole Tarutaru part probably helped too :)).
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I'm suprised no one caught this. Last time I checked juice does NOT stack with refresh. Or am I wrong again?
 
xKronox said:
Corrosion said:
Of course, this was a rare exception, as the BLM had Mage's Ballad, Refresh, Conserve Mp, 2 Astrals, and was drinking juice like a banshee (The whole Tarutaru part probably helped too :)).
Click to expand...

I'm suprised no one caught this. Last time I checked juice does NOT stack with refresh. Or am I wrong again?
Click to expand...

He didn't have refresh. He had ballad. Ballad occupies a song slot.
 
Oo i coulda sworn juice and refresh actually stacked... i had thought it made a second separate refresh effect.... not sure, why would i ever use juice when i have refresh anyways lol.
 
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