Magic Burst respect // Leveling trouble

[navpops]

Recently (2 days ago) I started a Black Mage. I've been in the "newbie" upsurge. Leveling with then newbies is tough, and frustrating at times. I know it was MODERATLY difficult to do a skillchain, and I didn't even have help understanding it. I've had a Ninja/War basically all my time on FFXI, so magic burst is fairly new to me. Now, it's been tough to teach an entire group of 4 melees how to skillchain, and even when taught, there's a struggle to keep them using the Skillchain consistently. I see "TP 300%!" for 10+ minutes and I can't get through their thick skull that they need to keep the other members updated on their TP. How can these people not catch on? Even when they pull of a skillchain it bug's me, because they won't look at my mana. A skillchian ends up happening when I'm at 26 MP resting becuase they just pulled an IT and their all 1 level below me! Can anyone that's past Quifim tell me if the newbies get better? Any suggestions? I put "Magic BurstOK!" in my EXP party search and generally as a rule, i ask the leader "Skillchain, Do you have it?" before I join. Magic Burst is easy, but the newbies don't respect it enough, I think. Better damage for less MP cost is something they should not dismiss. Does anyone have any idea how I should explain to the new players that Magic Burst is a valuable skill? Should I stay seeking a group untill I find a group of "not-new players"? Has anyone leveling a sub experianced this recently and found a way to cope?

[Netrus]

im on bismarck it all depends on how long the person has been playin i wasnt doing MBs on a regular until 30s but thats when i started understanding it more. Partly because i wasnt told much about it before hand. Uhm.. im about to catch up with you cause i had to start all over myself. On account of me and my brother have 2 different games now and can play at the same time. Sooo im at lvl 17 nearly 18. So hopefully Ill pt with ppl that lknow thats they are doing. Cause it sure is a hassle to keep telling the new war. to voke or to try and get them to learn a WS, but you got to learn sometime i just dont see how they dont get it as soon as they should, but thats just me. As for the MB I just do it when its suppose to be done. Hoping that the skill chain is executed right tho ........

[navpops]

Magic Burst was easy for me, but just getting the people to listen was the difficult part... Luckily, I basically skipped the entire area of Valkurm (Got a PT at 15 with someone who had a 70/35 BLM/WHM powereleveler and got 18 in the PT) *phew*

[AtraposBLM]

it's entirely random, to be honest.

Usually though, if you show a party that you're a competant burster, and how fast you kill mobs with a skillchain+mb, they'll start to listen. Just be patient until they *do* pull it off though ;)

You'll have a little difficulty again in some of the upper levels, mainly because melee's will get spiffy new weapon skills (*cough* pentathrust *cough*) that do good damge, but don't skillchain worth a shit. To me, that was the hardest time for me to mb, because melee's were too intent on spamming their sexy new weaponskills ; ;

[Taga]

Yeah that's why I didn't PT with DRG from ~50-60... they think penta makes them gods...

[Macht]

I've raised every job and every adv. job you can currently get in the game. Not one of them is under 10 now and two are in the 30's and 45's, I've had to play with a lot of new players when doing this. The big thing is you just have to see how they respond when you start mentioning a skillchain and mentioning the potential it has. The ones that remained silent or had a sort of resisting want to do it are the ones you'll tend have a harder time to convince and get to do them.

Many times though I had met players that were 100% gun-ho to do them, they just couldn't get enough of it. So much to the point that one group actually went and bought me MP regen foods for my mage because they really wanted the skillchain and MB to fire without waiting. When I played the melee classes it tend to be a lot easier to condition them to report TP often and to get it going, the harder part I tended to have was training the mages on how to MB.

The mages tended to get discouraged at doing the MB because they never get the timing right on it. With the melee's when I played a melee job was easy I made sure that the ones I picked would have them go first and I'd finish it up to get the skillchain. Still working on getting a method setup to help train the mages to get their MB's right.

[evilution]

Still working on getting a method setup to help train the mages to get their MB's right.

At low levels?

Tell em to cast when they see the effect start. It will burst every time unless your going for a mid-chain MB.. but you really wont have to worry about those till later in the game when your group expects you to be able to help them take a IT from 100%-> dead in one 3 man chain.

[Scatman]

Yeah I don't bother teaching people how to skillchain anymore at the low levels. It looks really bad when you spend half an hour trying to drill the order and timing into their heads, then when they FINALLY get it to work, it's a 1 damage chain.

[Macht]

Originally posted by Scatman
Yeah I don't bother teaching people how to skillchain anymore at the low levels. It looks really bad when you spend half an hour trying to drill the order and timing into their heads, then when they FINALLY get it to work, it's a 1 damage chain.

Not entire low levels, it's around lv. 15. At that time skillchains if you do ones that the monster has a weakness too the damage isn't going to be 1. Especially if you're smart about it and have heavier damage dealing weapons in the chain, otherwise if it's only 1h swords, 1h axe, h2h, dagger, staff, club, katana, etc... then the only big purpose of teaching the skillchain is so the mages get down how to MB.

Unfortunatly everyone has their own views on what to do in that manner. I honestly enjoy teaching people. What I meant by finding an easier way to teach them, because no matter how I've said it to the mages of casting their spell, is telling them and creating something to give them a better idea of the time they have to do it and so they get more of an idea when they should start (My intention isn't to just teach them that one situtation but to teach them how to judge when they need to start the spell so that'll it'll finish in the right time) . Actually a macro came to mind to try to help them out.

I never really try to bother teaching them if they are resistant about it, but I will still chain the best skillchain I can find to theirs when doing melee. Sometimes just doing that alone gets them intrested enough that they start to participate in getting the chains down. You can really get them into doing skillchains like crazy if you get a BLM good enough that they can hit a 3 or 4 chain skillchain, then even with small returns from the skillchain seeing a nice boost to the mages damage just makes it worth it.

EDIT:

Besides that it shouldn't matter much, if a player has TP and a weapon skill the weaponskill alone is going to give more damage then they usually do. All you are doing is instead of them mindlessly hack away at something, you're getting them to play a more active role in the party which won't only help them in the future but is helping yourself aswell.

[Scatman]

Well yeah, I usually will try to set up a chain if no one else knows how, and will try to teach them if they don't already know. But if they're not getting it after awhile or simply don't want to, then I just stop for the aforementioned reason.

[navpops]

I havn't missed a single MB yet, but my problem is I end up too focused on the MB and forget to nuke with the MB nuke, afriad that the party will start before it refreshes.

[Ragnarok54321]

I'm a fairly new BLM. I was wondering if anyone could explain how a MB works?

[Quezi]

Its posted elsewhere, but basicly.

Lets take a nice and simple low level 2 man renkei.

Burning blade(sword30) -> Combo(handtohand10)

What happens is, Sword guy uses burning blade, and then three seconds later, hand to hand buy uses combo. This will create a Fusion effect. This is where the mage comes in. For fusion you want to use Fire. So the idea is to make it so the fire spell lands on the mob during the fusion effect. This will make you do more damage.

You have a several second window of oppertunity to land the MB. With low level spells *such as fire* you can just start casting when you see "hand to hand guy prepairs combo" in the text box. It will finish before the fusion effect goes away and you will get a MB. At higher levels, spells take longer to cast and you have to start casting beforehand. But adapting is easy once you get the basics down. You have a good bit of time, so the best advice i can give is dont start casting to early. Iv missed several mb becaus i started casting to soon. But iv yet to miss a MB after the first PT i ever got to MB in was over (i even practice mbing with my /blm subbed while i leveling my whm.. it does 3 damage but.. its somuch fun ^^)

Use chat filters and turn off all the damage number spam. This makes it alot easyer to keep track of whats going on.

I am a newbie, but i knew how to skillchain and mb before i even started =x I have taught other newbies how to do it, aswell as how to make macros and the like. I have yet to get a PT that knew to just go when everyone was reporting 100%tp.. but sofar iv turned 2 melees and another blm into renkei/MB machines who never seem to miss=P They are probibly better at it than i am now :sweat:

[tracert]

i was in a jp party the other morning in qufim and they couldn't hit a skillchain... thank god i was leveling my whm...

[tekrebel]

I'm finally getting good with my MBs to the point that I can do 2 per SC (cast midway between 1st and 2nd SC with a II spell, the cast the I spell and if you time it correctly, one can do a second burst in the 3 sec timeframe). At lvl 38 I was bursting an extra 100-150 in addition to my firaga damage 200-300 on an IT gob in the Sanctuary of ZiTah.

[Tetsura]

I did my first MB in Qufim at lvl 20 using stonega (scission was the only SC we could pull off that clipper wasnt resistant to) did 120 dmg and since then i've been doing MB's every chance i get and spreading the word of SC's to those new to it.

I may have the timing down for the first tier spells, but the problem i'm usually having is that i rely on the 2nd WS for timing and then when i cast it seems the 2nd WS was either late or early so my cast lands but there is no SC so it's not a MB. But sometimes i'm just too tired when i come home to try and explain the SC and MB and so forth to those that know nothing about it yet.

I'm considering making a 4-5 part macro explaining SC's and MB's :(

[FFXITsukasa]

I hate it when I offer to my group "Hey I will throw ina Magic Burst into the Skill Chain" and they just blow on by completly ignoring the fact that if they tell me to throw in a spell so i can conserve some MP for later. Instead they just use the Skill Chain and leave me to wallow in my pool of empty mana. I guess most people really don't understand the power of a Magic Burst, let along the conservative side to it.

[poweryoga]

most people don't see the power of bursting until they actually do it...

i was with a group of newbies (christmas surge) back in dunes and i was lvling my warrior...

nobody knew what a skill chain was, and nobody knew what to do. Mages never heard of "magic burst" and melees never heard of "skill chain" or "renkei".

me and one other person taught them how... "give it a shot, what harm could it do?"

We ended up bursting every time with a consistant skill chain... went from gobs to crabs to sheep.... 4 levels in mere 3 hours.

Point: Teach people and they might actually learn :P

[AtraposBLM]

/nod Poweryoga.

[FFXITsukasa]

Ok so you cast a spell that matches the element of the last weapon skills used or the type of skill chain used? For example a Fusion weapon skill is Fire type so you would use a Fire type spell or Luquification is Water so I would cast Waterga or something. Which one is it?

[Digital]

Fusion is a level 2 mixture of fire and light (i think it's light) but banish is lame so the usual MB is fire. Liquefication is a level 1 SC thats fire based, so you would cast fire for it also.

What I REALLY hate is a PT witha a SAM and NO renkei. I had a PT in CN last night and I, the RDM, was spamming just to get them to make renkei. The sad part is, the blm didn't even help me get them to make one, and I was doing it for him ><.

[AtraposBLM]

some blm's themselves have never been taught to MB and don't know how awesome it could be :P

[evilution]

heh when i level my sub's I'm usually the only one who MB's

yes i usuall MB with a WHM/BLM and always with my RDM .. :P Someone has to.. alot of ignorant BLM out there.

[Roldarin]

I gave up teaching newbies Skillchains. It takes a well balanced party AND a whole group of people who understand skillchains to make it produce exp chains against IT mobs.

Many newbie parties are satisfied taking down IT/VT clippers/snippers with a little downtime. They use their WS when they are up and the BLMs nuke.

/shrug. When I go back to leveling my lower level jobs, when I leave Qufim maybe I'll try another crack at it.

[Karinya]

Skillchains and magic bursts aren't as powerful or important at low levels. SE did this on purpose so that people would have time to learn them before they become *really* important.

Having said that, there are still three kinds of people who let their job down: the sam that doesn't skillchain, the blm that doesn't magic burst and use elemental weaknesses, and the rdm that doesn't enfeeble. The rest of the party might not even notice how much worse they're doing because of those players, but they are dragging the party down nonetheless.

It's especially bad with the sam because it's an advanced job with a fairly hard quest - you have to have played a while to open it, so you *should* know how (and why) to put together a skillchain by the time you first pick up a great katana.

[Ungerpurr]

I didn't have much luck getting melees to magic burst in valkurm on blm, but I was able to get it going well in Qufim. I even made the melees change their skillchains around once I leveled 23 so I could try out aeroga (126 damage I think? Nothing to write home about, but still fun).

Although I've told myself that I'm done with leveling blm, as it serves no further purpose (just got it to level 23 so that I could have enough MP to warp when subbed under monk without changing gear), I've considered going back to it...the thought of getting firaga bursts off a red lotus -> thief's sneak attack + combo in Yuhtunga / Yhoator vs. a mandragora.....mmmmmmm tasty. Aero 2 MB in garlaige vs. bats.....thundaga bursts vs. crawlers in CN...Blizzaga bursts against CN beetles...Blizzard 2 bursts against hornflies in CN, and helm beetles and the like in Quicksand...

Blm is a very fun job, but I just don't have enough time to level them all as much as I'd like. ^^

[FFXITsukasa]

I did a Magic Burst once by accident and have been obsessed with them since. I cast Aero after Burning Blade and BOOM! Magic burst I just thought it look cool but I could never seem to hit one again. I heard several different things about Magic Bursts but they dont seem to be right. One said to follow a Weapon Skill with the with an elemental spell of the same element. But that doesn't explain why Burning Blade went into Aero and made a Magic Burst. I think it was Luquification. I dunno, could someone learn me something about Magic Bursts.

[Tetsura]

here's an amazing website for planning SC's and thus MB's, i use it whenever i join a new party and i suggest you do too :biggrin:

http://ffxi.liquid-x.net/renkei/

The level 2 SC's are just a mix of 2 elements, these consist of:
Fusion (Fire and Light) : Magic Burst with Fire or Light spells
Distortion (Ice and Water) : Magic Burst with Ice or Water spells
Fragmentation (Thunder and Wind) : Magic burst with Thunder or Wind spells
Gravitation (Dark and Earth) : Magic burst with Dark or Earth spells


There's also lvl 3 Skill chains at the higher lvls which are 4 elements each they are:
Light (Fire, Light, Thunder, Wind) : Can MB with any of the 4 listed elements
Dark (Dark, Earth, Ice, Water) : Can MB with any of the 4 listed elements


The higher the SC's lvl the more "SC Damage" is included (before factoring elemental weaknesses of the monster your facing).

Hope this helps :sweat:

[Anakijeri]

at 27BLM/13 RDM, Aeroga bursts for 184 DMG VS IT Yhotar Mandragora's.


my party kinda went...... "whoa"

[FFXITsukasa]

YAY I know how to Magic Burst properlly. Before I just cast to see if it would Magic Burst now I know how it works. Im gonna go try tomorrow with my friend. This will haul. He has Slice what should I use after that, is it a Dark element? If so I use Stone, Stonega, or Bio right?

[AtraposBLM]

you do realize that in order for you to magic burst, there must first be a skillchain (renkei)? Just having one weaponskill (slice) won't create a skillchain, so there will be nothing for you to burst on...

Also - even IF slice somehow created a dark-element renkei (is that transfixion? I forget), how in god's name would STONE burst on it? Dark means dark - it's completely separate from all other elements (save light). So, you could only burst Bio, Bio II, Drain, Aspir, and I imagine Stun (this could be wrong).

[Altruist]

slice is scision so you probably want someone with a light element to do a distortion. Unfortunately trying to get a dkn to use slice at level 40 (my blm level) is next to impossible, even though it will give us distortion instead of just soloing weapon skills or doing impaction against beetles ; ;. I'm pretty sure my 340 dmg blizzaga > your 150 dmg weapon skill.

Unfortunately a lot of melee just want to use there best weapon skills at lower levels regardless if they can mb, or if the mb is useful ; ;.

[navpops]

why do people say Magic Burst looks cool? the Renkei end looks cool , the magic burst looks like the same , old, normal spell.

[AtraposBLM]

seeing a 787 damage spell (thundaga II burst on a torama) looks cool though, no? ^^

and yeah, melee tend to want to use their spiffy new weapon skills as soon as they get them...not realizing that all they're doing is slowing down the party by negating the usefulness of another member.


What would you rather have?
Melee does 1-2 300-500 damage attacks in additiona to their normal 40-80 damage hits (no crits)
BLM does normal 300-560 damage spells, sucks up MP, forces extra resting

OR
Melee does 1 300-500 damage attack and 1 150-250 damage attack (the difference in weapon skills FOR THE MOST PART is very insignificant (aside from ws's gained at lv65, and other exceptions like Dancing Edge, Sidewinder, etc., where they are clearly better than the other alternatives). A dragoon friend of mine FINALLY used something other than skewer/penta thrust, and his damage actually stayed about the same (150-300), but my burst damage jumped from ~515 to just about 800)
and you get weaponskill effect for 100-200 more damage, and a burst dealing 600-900 damage (of course all the damage figures will vary with your level).

Some melee's tell themselves black mages suck for so long they start to believe it. Who cares if you get an extra 100 damage if it's at the cost of 800-1,000 damage overall. Blegh. Maybe now with the new patch melee will start to realize their function - create skillchains so that various members in the party can MB to create more damage. Before it was just weapon skill spam, and the vast majority of my damage was just overkill.

[riceburner4540]

/cheer

[FFXITsukasa]

You can Burst after a weapon skill is used. It doesnt need to be a Renkei. Fast Blade and Aero would make Detonation wouldn't it? Cause I bursted Aero after Fast Blade and I am almost certian it was Detonation. Fast Blade was the only Weapon Skill used.

[navpops]

either

a) you did NOT get a magic burst

or


b) there was a WS you missed before fast blade..


oh, and P.S.. fast blade cannot make any renkei with wind element. it's earth.

[FFXITsukasa]

It was only me and him in a party. How the hell do you guys know the elements of the weapon skills when it doesn't say it?

[AtraposBLM]

Originally posted by FFXITsukasa
It was only me and him in a party. How the hell do you guys know the elements of the weapon skills when it doesn't say it?

No offense...but I can't see how you're that ignorant.

For someone that posts as much as you, I've never seen ANYONE have less of a clue.


Skillchaining and Magic Bursting are linked together, but are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS. Knowing the elements of weaponskills involves looking them up. For example: http://ffo.warcry.com/index.php/content/skills/wschains
I highly suggest you read that site.

Unless you used a weapon skill before he did, there is no way that you magic bursted. All you did was cast a regular spell after his weapon skill.

Seriously sukasa, your posts get painful to read at times...

[Arturo-B]

Originally posted by AtraposBLM


Also - even IF slice somehow created a dark-element renkei (is that transfixion? I forget), how in god's name would STONE burst on it? Dark means dark - it's completely separate from all other elements (save light). So, you could only burst Bio, Bio II, Drain, Aspir, and I imagine Stun (this could be wrong).


A dark renkei is a level 3 renkei, comprising 4 elements. The below document from SE details l3 renkeis and their elements.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/vt/extra/03-3.html

[riceburner4540]

i believe he is referring to the level 1 dark elemental skillchain compression. transfixion is the level 1 light elemental skillchain.

You can Burst after a weapon skill is used. It doesnt need to be a Renkei. Fast Blade and Aero would make Detonation wouldn't it? Cause I bursted Aero after Fast Blade and I am almost certian it was Detonation. Fast Blade was the only Weapon Skill used.

you are obviously mistaken here. when you magic burst, you will know you magic bursted...it actually says "magic burst!" did you see this? if not, then you did not burst....simple as that. and there is no way in hell you can burst simply with 2 people and only 1 doing weapon skill. before this recent update, it was possible if the person was a samurai self-chaining with his 2hr or meditate but thats no longer possible because of the multi-hit WS tp gain "fix". lastly, a weapon skill + spell does not equal any skillchain effect. 2 weapon skills = skillchain effect (for example, detonation) which you then magic burst off of.

[AtraposBLM]

Originally posted by riceburner4540
i believe he is referring to the level 1 dark elemental skillchain compression. transfixion is the level 1 light elemental skillchain.



yeah, that's the one :P

The lv3 renkei is called "dark", but it has 3 other elements associated with it other than dark, so when I said a dark-element renkei, I meant just the crappy level 1 version, not the ridiculous lv3 one :P

[FFXITsukasa]

I am not trying to nessicarily figure out how to use Renkei I just wanna know whats up with them. There are so many different things that tell about Renkei yet I don't understand it. Magic Burst is easy you burst with a spell of the same element. I read the arctile "Art of War" which just confused me even more because it seems to place every weapon skill into an elemental category. Meriandle was screaming at me "No, Weapon skills just go together they have no element until put together with another weapon skill" which is confusing me even more. You guys here said something about weapon skills having an elemental value(which that makes more sense than what the hell Meri said). I just don't get WHY certain ones go together. I certainly don't care how to preform Renkei, im a Black Mage why should I know anything but the element of the Renkei itself?Ok now here is what I have gathered from Art of War and other random things. I have an enemy weak to Ice I would want to make a Distortion effect, right? Water and Ice. You have to start with Transfixion, say Power Slash. What I don't get is how do you know that perticular weapon skill will be that specific type. How do you know Flat Blade is Impaction or that Seraph Blade is Scission? Thats the part I am stumped on. And I want to refer to nothing but the information from the game and PlayOnline. No guides. Would you just have to experiment? So its not a fact that I am ignorant just confused. I know about Renkei just not why it works. Thats all I really wanna know.

[Tetsura]

well here you go sakusa, this shows the elements of the diferent weapon skills, and which ones skill chain with the other weapon skills.

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26106

all credit goes to starving artist, she did a great job with this.

[FFXITsukasa]

Yes! Thank you I understand how and why it works now.