White mage FAQ (by no means conclusive)

[locus]

To eliminate confusion over White mage and prevent multiple posts on the same question, I'm going to write a "short" FAQ on playing this class since the FAQ they have at GameFAQs is frankly unsatisfactory. All views expressed here are by NO means authoritative and complete. Questions which are frequently a source of rabid debate have been skimmed over, the purpose is to provide FACTS only. You have been forewarned.

Please feel free to add reasonable questions that you think are "frequently asked" and should be addressed. Opinions, corrections and criticism are most welcome.

General Questions:
-How do I raise "so and so" skill?
-What is the best sub for WHM?
-How important is +MND?
-Staff or Club?
-What food should I eat?

About Spells:
-Where do I find this spell?
-Raise spells (footnote on Divine Seal)
-Shell and BarElement spells.
-Statusna spells
-Barstatusra spells
-Sneak, Invisible (a.k.a. MGS "Metal Gear Solid" spells)

How do I raise "so and so" skill?
*= This skill must be raised on monsters of the appropriate level for your skill range. Monsters that are too weak will not do.

*Divine magic is raised from using the following spells on monsters: Banish-line spells, Holy, Flash.

Healing magic is raised by casting the following spells: Cure spells, "na" status spells, Raise spells, Reraise spells. Casting Cure spells on undead enemies seems to use the same calculation for skill as Divine or Elemental magic. As a consequence, it will rise quickly on monsters (of the appropriate level).

Enhancing magic is raised by casting the following spells: Protect and Shell-related spells, Bar spells, Regen spells, Metal Gear Solid spells (sneak, invis, deodorize), Teleport spells.

Any RDM or BLM spells which are "enhancing" magic will also raise this skill if they are cast using a support job. These spells include: "En" spells, "Spike" spells, Escape and Warp.

*Enfeebling magic is raised by casting the following spells on a monster and not having them resisted: Dia, Slow, Paralyze, Silence. Subbable spells: Gravity, Blind, Slow, Poison, Bind, Sleep.

*Weapon skill is raised by hitting monsters. Dealing 0 damage will still raise this skill, although missing will not.

*Evasion is raised when monsters attempt to hit you.

*Shield skill is raised when monsters hit you from the front while you have a shield equipped.

It is unfortunately not possible to raise skill that your main job does not inherently possess. Hence, you can not raise Parry, you can not raise Elemental Magic by casting black magic as long as white mage is your main job, but it IS possible to raise your enhancing magic skills by casting black magic enhancing spells (e.g. Warp and Spikes spells).

What is the "best" sub for white mage?
General consensus indicates that the most popular sub jobs for white mage are Black mage and Summoner. Whether they are the "best" or not is beyond the scope of this FAQ.

How important is +MND?
The general rule is that 2 points of a stat = 1 point of the skills it influences. Mind is more important at lower levels as it helps substitute for low healing skill, making your cure spells heal more efficiently. At higher levels, you get diminishing returns from +mind gear. Mind also affects your white magic enfeebling spells (Slow, Paralyze, Dia and Silence), substituting at the rate of 2 mind = 1 point of enfeebling skill.

Staff or Club?
This generally is a matter of preference and is not very significant as white mage does not play a major role in damage dealing. Club is more popular, due to the availability of several strong SP skills. (Staff is also unable to complete level 3 Skillchains until Retribution is learnt) Try both for versatility or equip whichever has the more helpful statistics.

What food should I eat?
The best performance for value food for white mages is generally held to be Roast Mushroom.
(2x sleepshroom, 1 rock salt, fire crystal, Cooking skill 12-16. Mp+10, STR-1, MND+3, RestingMP +2, lasts 30 minutes)

The Various pies give large max MP bonus and +int
Chocolate increases the mp you recover when resting.

If you complete the quest "The opo-opo and I" and equip the item you get as a reward, Pamama is cheaply bought and will give you +1MND, +14CHR and +50 hp and mp.

Juices do not stack with refresh. When using them, it is best to synthesize them as needed as they do not stack in your inventory. The most space-efficient and money efficient juices are Pineapple Juice and Melon Juice.

Where do I find this spell?
Almost all spells can be bought from the Auction House, or from Magic shops in the three kingdoms, Selbina, Rabao or Lower Jeuno (Magic shop or Goblin shop). The following spells may pose a problem:

-Sneak/Invis/Deodorize: Dropped by various white magic using beastmen.
-Erase: Obtained as a random reward from various BCNMs(all BCNM40, a few others)
-Raise 2: Obtained as a drop from Yagudo High Priests, Coral Sahagins and from high level Beastmen-seal BCNMs (Comet orb and Moon orb).
-Reraise 2: Obtained from Hellish Weapons in Fei Yin.
-Teleport spells: From San'Dorian Priests upon the completion of various long and annoying Quests.
-Raise 3: Dropped by Za'Dha Adamantking, Kirin and from the Lachesis orb BCNM at Qu'Bia Arena.
-Banish (3,4,5), Banishga (3,4). Holy 2, Dia (3,4,5): These spells are in the game code (type /ma "Holy II" <t> to see), but there is as of yet no way to obtain them. This does not prevent monsters (and a certain annoying old man) from happily using them on you.

Raise spells
These three spells differ mainly in the amount of experience that is restored. Raise 1 restores 25% of lost experience, 2 restores 75% and Raise 3 restores 90%. Raise 3 also revives a character with half life in his weakened state. Raise 2 and 3 do not restore more than 25% exp for characters who are level 50 and below.

Contrary to a popular rumor, Divine Seal does NOT do a single thing for Raise, nor the time spent in a weakened state. Using Divine Seal and then casting Raise results in you wasting a 10 minute ability.

Shell spells and BarElement spells
Some confusion exists to whether these spells have a significant effect or are merely mp sinks.

Shell works by cutting damage received from ALL elemental sources (by a set percentage?). This percentage is small and hard to observe when taking small amounts of damage from a low level shell spell, however the difference becomes more pronounced when taking larger amounts of damage.

Bar element spells increase your resistance to an elemental attack (this includes many special attacks from monsters). This increases the chance that people will RESIST the attack and take very significantly less damage. There are many levels of resistance. However, some testing I have done seems to indicate that resist chances are still low without the presence of Shellra. This testing is not conclusive.

Common monster attacks which can NOT be barspelled:
Cursed Sphere - this is not an air element attack. It is darkness.
Jet Stream - this is a multihit attack and is physical, not elemental.

Statusna spells
All are necessary. If required to choose between the three expensive ones, Stona>Viruna>Cursna.

Certain attacks of enemies do not show if they give a status ailment in the chat log! Beware of such attacks, which include:

Bad Breath (Molbols: Slow,Gravity,Bind,Poison,Blind,Paralyze,Silence)
Black Cloud (Skeletons: Blind)
Brain Crusher (Lizards: Silence)
Foul Breath (Raptors: Diseased)
Spike Ball, Acid Spray, Leaf Dagger, Poison pick, Poison Breath etcetra... (Antican, Spider, Mandragora, Cockatrice, Crawler, Flies: Poison. CAUTION: Spider poison is 15 times as powerful.)
Light of Penance (Tonberries: Bind, Blind)

Sleep may be cured by casting any Cure spell on the sleeping character. Curaga can wake up groups.

Slow may be countered with Haste or Erase. For Spiders' Spider Web attacks, Haste will not work and Erase is your only option (as you can not use Leviathan's Spring Water as a sub).

Erase will remove only ONE of the following status ailments if more than one is present:
Slow, Bio, Dia, Gravity, Bind, Elemental debuffs(rasp, choke etc), STAT-Down, Parameter(attack, accuracy, defense)-down.

It will NOT work on "you are currently in a weakened state" (after Raise).

Barstatusra spells
These spells are generally held to be as useful as the "Resist" job traits. (Read: not at all)

Sneak, Invisible:
These spells do not overwrite. Invisible is cancelled by performing almost any action but can easily be recast on yourself. Make sure your party is familiar with knowing how to cancel these spells before you recast them. The message "so and so's <spell> expires" will only be displayed to the caster of the spell, and usually too late, so it is important that your party members tell you when this spell starts to expire. The common terminology (among Japanese players) is "@s" for "Sneak is going", "@i" for "Invisible is going".

To cancel a spell effect: Hit the + key twice, highlight the right icon and press enter.

Some general rules:
Invis: Beastmen (except Quadav), Bees, Tigers, Beetles.
Sneak: Quadav, Almost everything else.
Invis + Sneak + Don't cast magic near them!: Ahriman + Bombs
Low life: All undead
Don't cast magic!: All Arcana.
Run away! (sneak, invis don't work): Active HNMs, (Guivre, Bune, Fafnir), NM beastmen in beastmen strongholds.

[Icemage]

I'll post some more observations here:

How do I use Benediction/Divine Seal/Curaga/Other Large Healing Effect without dying?

There are a lot of ways to avoid damage as a white mage. The best way to avoid getting killed when you use this ability is to make use of your defensive magic:

- Paralyze, at level 4, can negate enemy spells and attacks. The effect is very unreliable, however.
- Slow, at level 13, decreases the speed at which monsters attack. This means you will take damage at a slower rate if you pull aggro.
- At level 19, white mages acquire Blink. This spell will (randomly) stop 2 hits/targetted spells and negate them.
- At level 28, white mages acquire Stoneskin. This spell seems to stop a bit over twice your Enhancing Magic skill in damage. Non-Stunning attacks which hit you for 0 cannot interrupt your spellcasting while you are under the effects of Stoneskin (not even critical hits).
- At level 45, quite mages acquire Flash. This spell pulls a LOT of enmity, and should be used with caution, but it greatly decreases an enemy's accuracy for several seconds, which can buy you some extra time to get another defensive spell in place (and give your other party members more time to react).

How do I get money to pay for spells/equipment/food?

There are no hard and fast answers to this question. However, at early levels (prior to level 30), your best bet is to do some research on quests in each city and complete as many as are reasonable, as well as repeat those which seem profitable. If you ever plan on using the Summoner job, this is doubly important, since all of the Summoner avatar quests require very high Fame, which can only be raised by completing quests. As a side effect, increased Fame will improve the prices for which you can purchase items from vendors, as well as the price the vendors will buy items for.

More notes on Statusna

Poison:
- Crawler and Fly poison effects deal 1 damage/3 seconds. This can be safely ignored until the end of a battle - don't spend time and energy curing this when the monster can re-use the ability. This also applies to the spells Poison and Poisonga.
- Fungaur and Lizard poison deals 3 damage/3 seconds. This is significant enough to be worth removing immediately, unless someone is in immediate danger of dying.
- Spider poison is incredibly powerful. Remove this poison ASAP, as it can indeed deal as much as 15 damage/3 seconds. Poison II and Poisonga II also fall under this category of severity.

- Correction to Locus' note above: Horror Cloud used by Skeletons is a Slow effect. Black Cloud is their area effect damage/blind effect.

- Great Bleat, a Max HP Down ability which is used by Ram-type enemies, is considered a Curse effect, and is removed using the level 29 spell, Cursna.

What is the interaction between Dia and Bio spells?

Dia and Bio are mutually exclusive. The order in which these spells have precedence is:

Bio II > Dia II > Bio > Dia

For instance, if someone has cast Bio on a monster, Dia will have no effect on that monster (other than the 0-2 damage initial effect). Dia II, however, will erase the Bio effect, because it has higher precedence.

More notes regarding Bar- and Shellra spells

Shellra spells seem to increase your chance to resist elemental damage, rather than being a straight damage reduction effect. It is effective against any elemental damage effect (even effects which are not spells, such as Bubble Shower). Bar-Element-ra spells work similarly against elemental effects of their type.

Barstatus effects are mostly useless, as they only seem to reduce the duration of the effect. Since it is usually more desirable to use Erase or a -na spell to remove the effect entirely, it makes almost all of them useless. The exceptions to this rule seem to be:

Barpoisonra: This spell seems to have an effect similar to Shellra/Bar-element-ra versus poison attacks such as Acid Spray (increases your chance to resist damage).

Barsleepra: Has only one use that I have seen, and that's in Yuhtunga Jungle when fighting Mandragora, since their area effect Sleep attack(Dream Flower) can be very annoying.


Icemage

[hageshiku]

Would raising club skill fall under the scope of this faq? I've been skill training in small groups on coffer key monsters, but I don't believe these mobs will take me all the way to 220.

[locus]

Thanks for the correction, Icemage. A few comments:

Stoneskin cuts an amount of damage dependant on two factors - your enhancing magic skill and your maximum HP. Increasing either of them will result in more damage being absorbed.

To avoid dying after a huge hate spell, I recommend the following: Elemental Seal + Bind, Dangerous spell, zone and come back if possible. Zoning removes all hate from you. Another good tactic is to get another person to put the monster to sleep - this causes hate reset of the monster.

Great Bleat causes MAX HP DOWN, this is a parameter down status which can be removed by Erase. I have not tried Cursna personally, but if that works too, all the better.

The effects of Shell are the most evident when fighting IT enemies. Here's an isolated example with Shellra 4:

Maledictor fireballs without Shellra or Barfira = 150ish damage. With Shellra on only = 120ish damage, damage never seems to go to 150. This damage cut is highly reliable. (Hence why it may be a percentage or just a straight resistance increase. The way that resistance works in this game is that it confers a percentage cut reduction in damage.)
With Barfira on only = most people take a straight 150 damage. Some people will resist and take 70ish damage.
With Barfira + Shellra = people take around 110 damage, some people resist and cut damage down to the 50s.

This is easily tested on monsters that do large elemental damage, such as high level Crawlers with Poison breath. Damage can drop dramatically from 200 to a mere 50 with both shell and barwatera, with shell alone, you are looking at 100ish damage, but barwatera alone, people still take a hideous amount of damage.

From this, I speculate that Shell > Barelement. But for best results, apply both.

Area effect sleep is not limited to mandragora. Any black mage type enemy over level 31 can cast Sleepga and Sheep have an area attack sheep song too. When fighting mandragora - do NOT cure poison inflicted by Leaf Dagger, as this keeps front row people awake.

A word about hate reset
Certain monsters have attacks that cause "hate reset". This completely removes hate from any player hit by these attacks. As you will probably be out of range of these attacks and keep your hate, it is important that you be prepared for the monster to start running towards you.

Attacks that reset hate are:
Throat Stab (Tonberries)
One of the attacks of Crystal Giants (can't remember the name). Causes Slow.
Sand trap (Area attack+ petrify, Anticans)
Hydro Shot (Area knockback + Stun, Sahagin)

Raising (Weapon) Skill
Coffer key monsters in Castle Oztroja, Beadeaux and Davoi are popular for skill up parties, but they generally will not take you further than 210 or so skill. To max skill, the most popular haunts are in Ve'Lugannon palace or in the Ru'Aun Gardens (pots and elementals). Getting there is a chore, however, and it is impractical to write a list of skill ranges for monsters here, so it is just suggested you attempt to skill up on monsters that check out as "Even match" and above to you.

[Synbios]

Originally posted by locus
Thanks for the correction, Icemage. A few comments:

Stoneskin cuts an amount of damage dependant on two factors - your enhancing magic skill and your maximum HP. Increasing either of them will result in more damage being absorbed.

To avoid dying after a huge hate spell, I recommend the following: Elemental Seal + Bind, Dangerous spell, zone and come back if possible. Zoning removes all hate from you. Another good tactic is to get another person to put the monster to sleep - this causes hate reset of the monster.

Great Bleat causes MAX HP DOWN, this is a parameter down status which can be removed by Erase. I have not tried Cursna personally, but if that works too, all the better.

The effects of Shell are the most evident when fighting IT enemies. Here's an isolated example with Shellra 4:

Maledictor fireballs without Shellra or Barfira = 150ish damage. With Shellra on only = 120ish damage, damage never seems to go to 150. This damage cut is highly reliable. (Hence why it may be a percentage or just a straight resistance increase. The way that resistance works in this game is that it confers a percentage cut reduction in damage.)
With Barfira on only = most people take a straight 150 damage. Some people will resist and take 70ish damage.
With Barfira + Shellra = people take around 110 damage, some people resist and cut damage down to the 50s.

This is easily tested on monsters that do large elemental damage, such as high level Crawlers with Poison breath. Damage can drop dramatically from 200 to a mere 50 with both shell and barwatera, with shell alone, you are looking at 100ish damage, but barwatera alone, people still take a hideous amount of damage.

From this, I speculate that Shell > Barelement. But for best results, apply both.

Area effect sleep is not limited to mandragora. Any black mage type enemy over level 31 can cast Sleepga and Sheep have an area attack sheep song too. When fighting mandragora - do NOT cure poison inflicted by Leaf Dagger, as this keeps front row people awake.

A word about hate reset
Certain monsters have attacks that cause "hate reset". This completely removes hate from any player hit by these attacks. As you will probably be out of range of these attacks and keep your hate, it is important that you be prepared for the monster to start running towards you.

Attacks that reset hate are:
Throat Stab (Tonberries)
One of the attacks of Crystal Giants (can't remember the name). Causes Slow.
Sand trap (Area attack+ petrify, Anticans)
Hydro Shot (Area knockback + Stun, Sahagin)

Raising (Weapon) Skill
Coffer key monsters in Castle Oztroja, Beadeaux and Davoi are popular for skill up parties, but they generally will not take you further than 210 or so skill. To max skill, the most popular haunts are in Ve'Lugannon palace or in the Ru'Aun Gardens (pots and elementals). Getting there is a chore, however, and it is impractical to write a list of skill ranges for monsters here, so it is just suggested you attempt to skill up on monsters that check out as "Even match" and above to you. Side note for weapon skill, you don't get much skill ups from coffer key droppers, around 200 or so, BUT those in NM/G3 area can bring you high enough to Hexa.

[hageshiku]

thanks for the advice synbios, guess id better get that orb quest done in davoi ^^a

[locus]

Synbios, you didn't need to quote the ENTIRE post >_<;

Going to update this FAQ about macro tags so I can refer to it.

Macro Tags

Example with a /ma Cure <tag>

<tag> = select one of the following below

<t> = target (Tip = you can target party members with F1-F6)
<st> = select target (will let you cure players or monsters)
<stpc> = select player character (will let you cure party members only)
<stnpc> = select non-player character (monsters/npcs only)
<lastst> = last selected target
<bt> = will act as a <t> macro if no hostile monsters are present, otherwise it will auto-target the NEAREST monster with it's name in red. (Best used when targetting is hard due to other targets in the way)

Later on, it is advisable to do /ma Cure <t> over /ma Cure <stpc>. Why?

One tactic in huge alliances+ (e.g. Dynamis) is to do a support Cure. Macro the main healers in other parties. This involves the use of the much unused /assist command.

Let's say I'm in an alliance and the other party has a white mage named "Sue". Sue needs help with healing a galka monk in her party which has HUGE hp and is the current tank.

/assist Sue (gets the target of Sue)
/ma "Cure III" <t>

If closer attention (na spells) is needed:

/assist Sue
/lockon (remember to hit the asterisk key to lock off)

As it's inconvenient to type "Sue" all the time, it actually makes sense for the white mage/main healer to be the leader of alliance parties all the time. That way I can use the tags <a10> and <a20> instead.

As you can see, if Sue was using <stpc> she could be targetting and locked on to a monster while curing the galka monk. After you use your assist macro, you would NOT cure the galka monk, you would be curing the monster. <stpc> is a fine tag, but it's really so much easier to hit F1-F6 instead (use <bt> for debuffs).

[Arturo-B]

I saw a post on alakazham that Raise 2 was available from Quicksand coffers. This sure sounds a ton easier than hunting High Priests. Can anyone confirm this? Thanks!

Best Regards,
Alex

[Icemage]

Where can I buy/acquire some of my most important spells?

* note: This is work in progress, I'm still unsure as to a few of these locations, and will note those I have not personally checked, so please feel free to add to this or correct me if I've made a mistake

Base spell vendors in each starting city are:
Kususu's Hoodoos in Port Windurst
Sororo the Scribe in Bastok Markets
Regine's Magicmart in Port San d'Oria

Other major white magic spell vendors:
The Federal Magic Reserve is located in the south part of Windurst Waters.
Weeg-Deeg's Magic Shop is located in Lower Jeuno.
Quelpia, an NPC in Selbina, sells white magic.

Cure I: Any base vendor
Cure II: Base vendor in your home city when your city is #1 or higher in conquest, or Selbina
Cure III: Federal Magic Reserve, or Selbina
Cure IV: Weeg-Deeg's
Cure V: From Goblin Alchemists in either Gustav Tunnel or Cape Terrigan

Curaga: Base vendor
Curaga II: Weeg-Deeg's
Curaga III: Weeg-Deeg's

Protect: Any base vendor
Protect II: Federal Magic Reserve when Windurst is #1 or #2, or Selbina
Protect III: Weeg-Deeg's
Protect IV: Rabao, Mog House quest

Protectra I: Low level WHM beastmen (i.e. Yagudo Acolyte)
Protectra II: Muckvix' Junk Shop in Lower Jeuno
Protectra III: Weeg-Deeg's Magic Shop
Protectra IV: Rabao, Mog House quest

Blink, Stoneskin: Purchased from your home city base vendor when your city is ranked #1 in conquest.

Bar-spells: Weeg-Deeg's

Poisona, Paralyna, Blindna: Any base vendor
Silena, Cursna, Viruna, Stona: Weeg-Deeg's
Erase: BCNM40

Shell: Base vendor
Shell II: Federal Magic Reserve when Windurst is #1 or #2, Selbina
Shell III: Weeg-Deeg's
Shell IV: Unknown

Shellra: From Muckvix' Junk Shop in Lower Jeuno
Shellra II: Weeg-Deeg's
Shellra III: Weeg-Deeg's
Shellra IV: Goblin Alchemist drop

Regen I: Drop from Boggarts in Inner Horutoto, or item vendor in Mhaura
Regen II: Item vendor in Mhaura
Regen III: Goblin Alchemist drop

Raise: Federal Magic Reserve when Windurst is #1 or #2, Selbina
Raise II: Yagudo High Priest drop, Coral Sahagin drop, Quicksand Caves Treasure Coffer (VERY rare!), BCNM50
Raise III: Unknown

Reraise: Garnet Quadavs drop in Beadeaux
Reraise II: Unknown
Reraise III: Goblin Alchemist drop

Slow: Purchased from your home city base vendor when your city is ranked #1 in conquest.
Paralyze: Low level WHM beastmen (i.e. Yagudo Acolyte)
Dia: Base vendor
Dia II: Weeg-Deeg's
Silence: Drop from Garnet Quadav (Rolanberry Fields, Beadeaux), or Goblin Leecher
Flash: Higher level PLD enemies (Antican Princeps, Antican Faber, Darksteel Quadav)


Icemage

[cccpthrillhouse]

One tip I would like to add that many beginners aren't aware of:
In the config it is possible to bind keys to Menu Up or Menu Down only. This is useful for selecting alliance members. Press F1-F6 to select a member in your party, then use your newly-bound buttons to scroll onto Alliance members. It's quite fast when you get used to it. Well, it's fast enough for support cures and it's very easy to do.

With the amount of buttons unused on the keyboard, I suggest all characters do this. I also bound buttons to Camera Movement Only, so that after you die you can watch the rest of your party die as well. Also convenient for Taru melee's when fighting mobs like Dhamels if you prefer to see more than just the tip of your club when you swing.

[sylvanas]

i believe reraise ii drops from the weapons in fei yin. ...overweapons are they called? i forget.

[Rones]

Spells for all jobs and all methods they are acquired. Pretty accurate for the most part. (http://twpa.net/ffxi/spells/index.php) Click the job you want to look under, then click the individual spell to see what quest gives it, under what conditions it appears at the npc vendors, and with npc vendor prices. Details for the quests themselves can be found at allakhazam.com (http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/quests.html?mode=byarea). Hope this helps some. :)

[Synbios]

Originally posted by locus
Synbios, you didn't need to quote the ENTIRE post >_<;

Going to update this FAQ about macro tags so I can refer to it.

Macro Tags

Example with a /ma Cure <tag>

<tag> = select one of the following below

<t> = target (Tip = you can target party members with F1-F6)
<st> = select target (will let you cure players or monsters)
<stpc> = select player character (will let you cure party members only)
<stnpc> = select non-player character (monsters/npcs only)
<lastst> = last selected target
<bt> = will act as a <t> macro if no hostile monsters are present, otherwise it will auto-target the NEAREST monster with it's name in red. (Best used when targetting is hard due to other targets in the way)

Later on, it is advisable to do /ma Cure <t> over /ma Cure <stpc>. Why?

One tactic in huge alliances+ (e.g. Dynamis) is to do a support Cure. Macro the main healers in other parties. This involves the use of the much unused /assist command.

Let's say I'm in an alliance and the other party has a white mage named "Sue". Sue needs help with healing a galka monk in her party which has HUGE hp and is the current tank.

/assist Sue (gets the target of Sue)
/ma "Cure III" <t>

If closer attention (na spells) is needed:

/assist Sue
/lockon (remember to hit the asterisk key to lock off)

As it's inconvenient to type "Sue" all the time, it actually makes sense for the white mage/main healer to be the leader of alliance parties all the time. That way I can use the tags <a10> and <a20> instead.

As you can see, if Sue was using <stpc> she could be targetting and locked on to a monster while curing the galka monk. After you use your assist macro, you would NOT cure the galka monk, you would be curing the monster. <stpc> is a fine tag, but it's really so much easier to hit F1-F6 instead (use <bt> for debuffs). I si lazy.

[InterSlayer]

Anyone know how the quest for Protectra4 works? :)

[SonikU4ia]

I have a few questions I would like to pose, if I may.

Questions

1.) Enhance Skill - Trying to use the Barspells, Protect, Shell, Regen, and Sneak/Invis are taking a considerable amount of time to raise skill it seems as you gain levels in whm. Is a whm forced to spending monotonous hours casting all these spells in a cycle to raise Enhance or is there a better way to raise it more quickly? (Like casting on a higher level character for example?) Gains seem to come very limited. (whm is 50 w/118 in enhance and getting more +gains when casting warp than the whm spells.)

2.) MND - this attribute effects potency of cure spells and debuffs as was previously mentioned in this thread. However, MND also assists in resistances. Could this be expounded upon?

3.) INT - I have been told by several people that INT increases spell damage in FF11. This includes Divine spells like the Banish line. Can this be confirmed? Also, would this demolish the idea that MND increases divine spell damage?

4.) Barelementra spells - If a white mage cast Barpoisonra on her party while fighting a crawler that used poison breath, then also cast barwatera on her party, would barwatera help reduce poison damage? I was of the understanding that poison is a water type elemental and thus, I would think barwatera would help reduce damage from poison. Is this idea confirmed?

There are just a few of my most pressing questions!

Thx in ADV

[Issaac]

Originally posted by cccpthrillhouse
One tip I would like to add that many beginners aren't aware of:
In the config it is possible to bind keys to Menu Up or Menu Down only. This is useful for selecting alliance members. Press F1-F6 to select a member in your party, then use your newly-bound buttons to scroll onto Alliance members. It's quite fast when you get used to it. Well, it's fast enough for support cures and it's very easy to do


Could you describe that more indepth? In allianzes i normaly just make a extra macro for the tank if hes not in my group and then i TAB over with <stpc>. Yours sound way more comfortable.


About Club Skill:
You can train it on any mob with high defence. Due to the fact that wight mages are often far behind their max skill its quit easy to find "not worthwhile - high defence" mobs to train it. The gain is rather slow but you gain. A other method i found nice is to go to low used zones and fight easy mobs at zone line. For example there are a lot entrances to Necorpolis in Batallia that nobody use at all. Nobody care if you "train" a mob to zone line to fight him. If you get in trouble zone out. The gain in skill is much higher at easy mobs. They only has to have high defence! But for white mages all easy prey will have high defence anyway.

[locus]

SonikU41A:
1)Unfortunately, there is no "quick and dirty" way to raise enhancing - I suggest you do it after every level so that you don't fall far behind in this skill. One tip is to do "teleport shops" until your skill maxes, another is that Sneak and Invis seem to raise this skill pretty well. The Black magic Spikes series overwrite each other and you can do Shock>>Blaze>>Ice>>Shock over and over again. In battle, make a point of casting Regen all the time and Haste people when you have too much MP.

2.) MND decreases the chances that monsters will resist your white magic debuff spells. These spells are Slow, Paralyze and Silence. The returns aren't fantastic though, so you should balance between +MND and +MP. For some data, visit the fantastic shiromahp at http://whitem.hp.infoseek.co.jp/basic/data/check.htm

3.) Int does not do a thing for white magic. It increases spell damage for black magic yes, but I don't see you casting much of that for damage as a white mage. When determining damage of Banish-type spells and Holy, boosting MND leads to a damage increase. For this reason - the black mage spell "Shock" decreases resistance to WHITE magic and the spell "Burn" decreases resistance to BLACK magic.

4.) The Bar element spell will not make the poison do less damage, it will make the breath attack itself do less damage. This is significant because Poison Breath can do up to 300 damage without BarWatera and it falls to about 32 damage once you have done it (since chance to resist is dramatically improved). BarStatus spells are a waste of money because what they actually do is to decrease the duration of the status effect, which is pretty retarded considering that "na" spells are much faster...

[Feenicks]

I agree with point four of that last post.

The only use I have ever found for a bar-status-ra spell was for when fighting enemies which use multiple AOE status effects WS. And the only one of these I've fought have been Anticans. If they use AOE Blind and AOE Silence in quick succession then casting Barsilencera (or Barblindra) beforehand will hopefully kill the Silence (or Blind) effect while you're busy curing everyone of Blindness (or Silence :p)

Now for my question - is there a use for Divine Magic skill past Holy? I was quite happy to be able to use Holy when I got it but after several weeks of playing around with it I've decided that it's either completely useless or barely adequate considering the huge MP cost. The last party I was in was using a Fusion renkei and thanks to RDM and BRD MP regen I was able to burst Holy on Robber Crabs without losing too much MP. It was doing anything between 10 and 210 points. So if Holy's useless it pretty much scuppers my Divine Magic skill since it's not going to be used for much else (to my knowledge) and therefore not be levelled.

[InterSlayer]

Enhancing generally goes up on its own if you consistently cast Regens on your melees. I will usually cast Regen at least 3-4 times per fight. Casting Haste also helps as well.

The Bar-element spells become very important later on (If you can plan for it), and high-enhancing becomes absolutely mandatory if you ever aspire to fight any Avatars.

Enhancing affects:
-How much elemental resistance your bar spells add.
-Can affect the duration of Sneak/invisiblity

For things like Barsleep, barpoison...I usually end up having to cure the status anyway, and it ends up not being worth the time/mana to put them up at all.

[cccpthrillhouse]

Issaac:
In the Keyboard controls mapping section (config/misc2) there are a few commands that are not bound. You have to use Compact settings to get the extra mappablility for these commands. I don't think "mappability" is a word.

Bind "Menu/Target Cursor Up" and "Menu/Target Cursor Down" to whatever key you prefer, I used W and S. Left and Right are not necessary, but will have same effect.

When a menu is up, these buttons will scroll through them. When there is no menu on the screen, they will scroll through party members, including alliance members. So to heal alliance members, I press F1 to select myself, then W a few times to move up to an alliance member who is in need of a Viruna.

[tomfin10]

I have a suggestion/something you might've forgot to add, a WHM AF walkthrough/guide. ^^

[locus]

Interslayer:

Correction: Enhancing Magic does not affect the duration of Sneak, Invisible or Deodorize. You can have 200 Enhancing and 0 Enhancing and still get the random effect of 30 seconds to 2 minutes. MGS spells are completely random in duration although there is a rumor floating around that they actually work WORSE on Windsday.

Enhancing magic affects the following spells:

Spikes spells (Blaze, Ice, Shock)
En spells (Enfire, Enice, Enetcetera)
Bar spells
Stoneskin
Phalanx

It does not have any appreciable/testable effect on any other spells.

tomfin10:
I'd normally assume that most people would know where to look to get data on AF quests. It's not like it's exactly hard to find.

Quick notes:
AF1: Valkurm, ??? by the flowers (not the one by the beach) next to Gustav.

AF2: Holy water is dropped by Yagudo Abbots in Castle Oztroja (Drop rate is fair) past the 4 code door (which can be opened by looking at the combination in the secret room in the southeast of the map). Moccasins can be bought from the AH, but they are also dropped by Quadav in Beadeaux. The drop rate is not good.

AF3: Fei Yin, involves a fight with a blahblahblah Altedour whatever Taznavia. Hardest part is getting Dark Stalkers in Eldieme to drop the stupid bell (this will take forever unless you are very lucky - best camp spot is by the hume bones for the Lich C Magnus quest). After that, do a few shouts in Jeuno. It is advised that you do not tabtype "HELP ME OUT" as not only is this retardedly RUDE and selfish, this also translates to "tasukarimasu = save me!" and the Japanese have a really good laugh over this (like all the people shouting for help with breaking their level 50 hat). "Looking for members" is better and it is easier to get members if you ask Red Mages to go (their AF3 first part is there too)

Important: You do not have to use WHM main for this battle. Ask other white mages that join if they have level 70+ jobs because you really don't want to go there with 18 white mages. 12 people can easily do it if you have at least 2 level 75. 18 is complete overkill.

AF4, 5: Garlaige and Crawler's nest. You should get keys easily if you have done any levelling in these places. Problem is that these places are overcamped by other AF hunters. Don't complain - you don't have a coffer in Castly Oztroja.

AF6: Healing hands of some dead guy - get a coffer key in Beadeax (dropped by Sapphire, Darksteel, Ancient, Platinum) and use it to get the key item there. If you have a high level thief main job, you can use it to obtain this key item instead of camping for coffer keys (as this takes forever). The Dark Spark is easy - 1 party of level 60s can do it, but I've done it with PLD 62, RDM 68 and WHM 72 before.

[Emrys]

What does Viruna cure, exactly? It says it removes disease and plague, but I've never seen either in game. ^^;

[Feenicks]

Disease is a nasty status affliction which won't give you back any MP or HP when you sit down - Viruna will get rid of it. I've only encountered one mob that can afflict this so far, namely the undead dogs which inhabit The Eldieme Necropolis. Particularly nasty since they use it in an AoE skill.

[Miriamel]

Originally posted by Feenicks
Disease is a nasty status affliction which won't give you back any MP or HP when you sit down - Viruna will get rid of it. I've only encountered one mob that can afflict this so far, namely the undead dogs which inhabit The Eldieme Necropolis. Particularly nasty since they use it in an AoE skill.

Various undead as well as Raptors in Cape Terrigan/Kuftal/etc like to disease.

Oh, and an addition to Icemage's spell list:

Shell IV is dropped by Magic Jugs in Garlaige Citadel.

I have to question the statement about concealment magic, though - since mine on average lasts about 3 times as long as when I first got it. It might be dependant on regular level and not enhancement level, but I do notice a big difference.

[Magickparrp]

Originally posted by Icemage
Where can I buy/acquire some of my most important spells?



I just wanted to say that I find your post extremely helpful and refer back to it again and again! Knowing what NPC to go to for certain spells has saved me so much money vs. the AH! Thank you :D

[locus]

Did tests with Deodorize, Bst32/Whm16 and Whm 72 (maxed enhancing)

Result: Absolutely no observable difference. Deodorize stuck for 3 minutes on my beastmaster once, and on the next casting faded off in about 10 seconds.

As main WHM, I still and do frequently get people my level telling me sneak/invis is starting to wear off 10 seconds after I cast it on them.

As far as I know, Sneak and Invis work identically to the items "Sneak Oil" and "Prism Powder" and do not have duration bonuses like Tonko:Ni for higher enhancing. One speculation is that perhaps higher enhancing skews stick times towards the high end of the spell but I have not experienced this. If for some reason all your sneaks and invises are lasting for 3 times as long as they do (which means 30 seconds-9 minutes), then I say congratulations to you. I've never had a 9 minute sneak myself.

[Miriamel]

3 times as long was an estimation. I have never experienced a 9 minute sneak, either. I'll start timing this, though, might lead to interesting results.

[InterSlayer]

Yeah its hard to really know for sure if Enhancing affects Invis/Sneak.

I also always thought it gave a random bonus to duration, and have had my fair share of 30-second sneak/invis.

Come to think of it, I have lower enhancing than my static party's RDM, yet my invis/sneaks tend to last longer than his :P

/boggle

[SonikU4ia]

Thank you so much for a reply to my questions! It was a considerable help.

I recently read through several posts and came across an interesting tidbit of information on one I had posted several weeks ago.

Apparently in the last patch, Square implemented a rule concerning the Banish Line Spells. Whenever any Banish spell is used against and undead, it effectively knocks out the undeads physical resistance to damage (Ghosts) and the physical resistance to piercing weapons (Skeletons) for 2 rounds after casting.

Its very useful to use Banish spells on undead if, say, you're Dragoon is about to use Pentathrust.

Anyway, I don't know any #'s or figures, but this is what I have found. Apparently Banish isn't completely worthless afterall xD.

Anyone know more about this?

[Feenicks]

Apparantly it goes like this:

Banish I kills the undead resistance to piercing weapons for two hits.

Banish II kills the undead resistance to piercing weapons for three hits.

And there's light elemental damage on top of that. It's probably safe to assume that Banish III would cut the resistance for four hits if it was available to PCs. I don't think Holy does anything like this, it only does light elemental damage.