The BlackMages & Ancient Magic Dynamics for Chain 5

[Brothershadow]

Necro here, kept ya waiting huh?
I'm actually a Dark Knight from Garuda and I needed some insite as to BLM's and their Ancient Magic castings during a nice chain 5
setup. Sunday I put together a team of 6with the following:
1 PLD, 2 DRK, 1 BLM, 1 WHM, & 1 RDM. All 55 but the PLD who was
57. Many of the chains were staggered (not always making chain 4) and often only chain 2. Our BLM was doing Freeze for the most
part but only on the very first mob and no others of the chain.
Seeing as I was the leader, & I dont consider myself one, i thought I would suggest for him to maybe use his Freeze on perhaps the second mob, seeing as how fast we kill the first one is irrellavant, to the chain & that the speed would be better on another. BTW, we were obviously doing Distortion Skill Chain,
Vorpal Scythe to Vorpal Scythe. He did it for maybe 3 mobs and then just stopped all together, and simply nuked with everything else in his arsenal. He was a very friendly player, and no bridges were burnt. Like I said I only made the suggestion. Anyways,
I thought I'd discuss it here with the Magi who know this job the
best on when & how a BLM operates and rest in a chain 5 for greater effect. Or maybe im wrong for even inquiring.
Thanks again.

[Thegod]

Ok if the leader is gonna insist we do a freeze burst on the last chain, i will first try to persuade him not to, post lvl 51 the wht and red have drk staffs hopefully, so mp regen is quick, even at chain 5 in 99% of my parties its not like a full rest is needed, just a tad longer then usual.

...with that said i do not like bursting with freeze, its a waste of MP, and the normal burst should be just fine.


Instead of freeze bursting to save time, you should try to set up Two SCs.

But if you wanna insist like some do, i work it like this.

On the last chain, I the BLM will start the Sc when everyone is ready, i have a call in my macro letting each player know when to use their WSs, it works, chain five is done, and tons o MP is wasted.

[Brothershadow]

Thanks for the info. As for the choice of spell "Freeze",
that was his idea not mine. I only told him what Skill Chain we were using and what effect it would produce, so he opted to use
the big gun. I'm not one to tell another how to play his or her job,
especially when I know nothing about it. I guess my next question is "Do BLM's have a preferred resting period during
a chain?" i.e Will they rest on chain 1 & 4?

[Kaita]

imo the PT should never wait for blm's mp. blm isn't *required* to get up at the start of battle or start healing the tank right away. if blm has completely blown all of his mp in the middle of chain, the chain is still savable if your melee are powerful enough. nevertheless, coming up short on mp is the blm's fault, not yours (that is, of course, excepting the case where the blm is the main drive in dmg -_-) .

"Do BLM's have a preferred resting period during a chain?"

blms are like cats. you will see them plop down in the weirdest places at the weirdest times. Actually, blm tends to rest a lot because of two factors:

1) blm's way of MP management is resting. i believe blm's clear mind trait allows them to regain mp through resting faster than any other mage class in the game.

2) blm spells get really obscenely expensive. even if you'd like to, you can't cast too many compared to how it was at lower levels.

so, really, blm will be on their asses whether you declare a resting period or not. What you should do, i believe, is to pattern "resting time" to WHM. why don't you go ask in whm forum about how to properly "distribute" downtime, i'm pretty sure i don't have the experience with whm to be able to help you. sorry ^^;

EDIT: geez, i didn't even answer your question;

I've never been in a successful chain5 quality PT which utilized freeze. they have the numbers for dmg/mp floating around somewhere on this board and the ratio is *horrible* for AM (ancients). it also trips out hate management for the PT, unless you have both pld and blm smart enough to position for cover.

the only successful PT where i've seen AM used was a blm blm blm blm rdm brd PT.

[Tikki]

I only do freeze when bored or the ranger is making me feel bad. Otherwise, it is not a spell to use during chains. That much mp blown in one chunk isn't exactly a good thing.

Also, I rest every single chance I get. Even if it's only one tick between pulls, I'm on my arse. I even have the advantage of being able to sit a tick or two into the start of the fight unless I really need to debuff. Nuking right away can mess with hate, plus it helps me stretch my mp farther.

[Jaggywaggy]

A good party I had in the Tree was this

taru pld,high rank rng/nin,myself the hume thief,mithra blm,hume whm,taru rdm. Everyone was a hume,mithra, or taru.

We of course did Sidewinder---> Viper biteonto the pld only for a solid distortion chain. We were pretty consistant with hitting chain5, and never needed to take rests, unless someone had to go afk a minute.

First fight-Gain tp
chain1-SC with Blizzard II MBs
chain2-Pld voke, I SATA/hide and set the pld with hate, then gain tp
chain3-SC with blizzard II MBs
chain4- Normally hide would be recharging so pld would voke and gain hate the old fashioned way, SATA without vokes thrown in is unstable. However if the pld lost hate to the rng who positioned themselves opposite the pld, I'd SATA hate back.
chain5- SC+Freeze MB to make sure we hit chain 5.

Then we'd go right back into a new chain. Maybe it's different for parties without thief though, hate could be bouncing off the walls. Considering plds have lost hate to 1200 MBs after 550WS+200-300SC, I think it would be extermely unsafe without that extra 700-800 hate. Although you could work around that, but it requires the blm to position behind the pld, and cover must always be handy.

Anyway, bottom line is while it's conservative, sometimes you need that kill speed instead for chain 5 and chain 6. Blm can rest chain 0 anyway, there is no rush. Unless you're with awfully gimp melees and you need to step it up to kill it some time that day. If your party absolutely requires your damage on chain 0 for the whole battle, there is something wrong with that party to begin with.

[Thegod]

heh thats a nice tree party, the best party i've ever been in i cant even explain the dynamics it was so amazing.

it was pld, me-blm, thf, mnk, red, smn/wht

on the first pull we'd gain tp, but sc was possible since we were fighting IT+++s (robber crabs at level 54, crawlers on chain 5)

they were able to do TWO SC'S EVERY BATTLE!!!

..so two different MBs every battle, it was distortion and fragmentation, it was amaing..

...of course it was a JP party, and the red mage was amaing, moldavite earring i guess let him burst for like 20-30 under what i burst for and my gear is amazing save a moldavite earring.

ditto on the when the rng is making me feel bad, lol

I also sit every last chance i get, i set up a rest macro so i have every last piece of +mp regen while healing gear i can possible have (due to my being a mithra and my gear is extremely INT focused)

I like to be able to get up at the start of battle, because the elemental enfeebles are DOT spells and i wanna get em off as soon as possible, but if i dotn have full mp, then i wait till i do.

if the BLM is the driving dmg force in your party, then you need to kick the drg and get a better member...lol

[Brothershadow]

Thanks, and rate up to all of you. Kaita, you actually did answer my question as well as Thegod, but confirmed my fears on the BLM we had then. He was always out of MP and really didnt rest
all that much. Being lvl 55 I've seen quite a few parties, and with our setup I was confident we could hit chain 4 minimum.
Well thanks again, a DRK walks away with greater respect
for you folk.
:thumbsup:

[Thegod]

HEH, THNX

but really BLM style can vary.

...but if you do take anything away from this thread, try to get the BLM to get off the freeze MBs, it really is a huge waste of MP, even for a taru.

the only exception i can thinbk of is when you have multiple BLMs

[Coinspinner]

50-52 all parties demanded that I burst Freeze... every single fight. That was annoying. And I was fighting Robber Crabs 2 levels too early, with no Ice Staff (1.2 million, cough) and with bards who couldn't always get rid of Shell before the MB. Or somtimes the crab just puts it up as the SC fires.

Double digit damage Freezes make baby Altana cry.

Dual double digit damage Freezes with two BLM and you'd better get earplugs, that kid ain't gonna shut up all night.

Ancient Bursts are much better now than they used to be, thanks to the affordability of elemental staves and the abundance of RDM. I went 40-52 only getting Refresh in three parties*. Far fewer resists, better damage, faster recovery; mmmmm....


*Not sure what the deal was, but back then many RDM I met would opt to simply to not buy Refresh, despite the low price tag compared to Dispel, explaining that they didn't want to get stuck being "refresh-bots" and enjoyed playing RDM in a more rounded manner. Which usually meant enfeebling, En-spelling, fanning the mob with their swords, Dispeling a minute or more after the mob buffs, interupting the SC via Shining Blade, and dropping Regen on people who aren't hurt. Convert is there so I don't have to rest and lose TP!~!!shiftone! They mostly quit and went DRK (lol) because they were tired of being told to buy Refresh. Now there's an overabundance of RDM, most of whom suck, that started as DRKs and such and decided Refresh-botting is better than waiting for parties.

[Nodoka]

>i believe blm's clear mind trait allows them to regain mp through resting faster than any other mage class in the game.

Actually I believe summoners get more clear mind.


As for my experiences with Freeze.. as soon as I hit 50 I gotta admit I bursted with it a bit just to see the purdy damage. ^^; However nobody really demanded it from me. Theres no reason you should need a AM to finish chain5 unless youre puller is across the world or something. Plus if your mob doesn't die, peeling hate from AM is pretty tough. ^^;

[Gavin]

Bursting freeze was fun for a couple levels :D

[Elaron]

The only time ive used Freeze successfully was When I was in a pt in Bohyada Tree at lvl 53-55 (or somewhere arround there). We were killing crabs with PLD, WHM, RDM, BLM, WAR and THF. after an hour of slow exp (note that the crabs were giving 200+ exp each fight.(some of them were giving 240 exp without chain) .but we were killing so damn slow it wasnt worth it) I noticed how much I got resisted... and therefor had to waste extra MP each fight to no good, So i suggested we tried a Freeze MB just for the heck of it.

Since the WAR (named nintendor) and the THF (sorry..forgot your name u.u) was such good players they were able to gain TP fast enough to have 100% arround the time the mobs had 70% hp left. with a Rampage > SATA Viperbite MB Freeze chain we did nearly 2100 DMG each SC and pretty much instant killed the mobs.. leaving us with FAR less downtime than when i was wasting all my MP on resisted spells. noted that we didnt get many chain 5s ...but that doesnt matter when chain 3 and 4 give you 350 exp a kill.

Best party I ever had :3