Potency of Enfeebling Magic

[Sabaron]

Ok... In Kuftal Tunnel, I a RDM70 and a WHM71 were skilling up on Sand Lizards and we noticed a significantly higher proc. rate of his Paralyze spell over mine. His enfeebling is capped (214) as is mine (251+15 = 266). However, my MND is 64 total his is 102 total. Here are the questions:

1. Is his MND stat affecting the proc rate of Paralyze or was it some weird fluke (we did not do a significant amount of testing)?

2. Is there any site anywhere that lists any formula or information regarding the overall potency of Enfeebling Magic with respect to skill, stats, and other bonuses (e.g. Magic Attack / Magic Accuracy, etc.) specifically the spells Slow (how much is delay increased) and Paralyze (how often does it go off)?

3. I'm already aware that 100+ INT gives bonus damage to the DoT spells Poison, Bio. Is there a similar effect for the non-damaging Enfeebles? (Slow/Blind/Paralyze/Gravity/Sleep/etc?)

3b. Does 100+ MND boost Dia DoT?

4. This determines how I arrange gear swaps on future levels after I get access to Errant (and the lovely replacement to the pants, Jet Serawheels), Wise, and other gear sets. Without regard to Elemental Staves or differential in stats between my stat and the monsters (e.g. MND vs. MND accuracy effects), what bonuses are going to give me the most potency (if any)?

5. I have noted that the Paralyze II Group II Merit spell has bonus +1 Potency for each additional merit... Is the actual effect of this amorphous "+1" known at this time? Is it worthwhile to fully merit Paralyze II at the expense of versatility? (I'm considering Slow II, Paralyze II, and Bio III as my Group II's at this time)

[Icemage]

1. Is his MND stat affecting the proc rate of Paralyze or was it some weird fluke (we did not do a significant amount of testing)?

The limited testing results I've seen in the past support your impression. MND does seem to affect the proc rate of Paralyze. How much? No one knows. It's so random and difficult to test that it's impossible to get an accurate formula, but it's known to affect it.

2. Is there any site anywhere that lists any formula or information regarding the overall potency of Enfeebling Magic with respect to skill, stats, and other bonuses (e.g. Magic Attack / Magic Accuracy, etc.) specifically the spells Slow (how much is delay increased) and Paralyze (how often does it go off)?

There are a number of calculations that have been posted. I think Apple Pie recently visited and provided some numbers on Slow/Slow II. Should be on this RDM forum someplace. I'll see if I can dig it up.

3. I'm already aware that 100+ INT gives bonus damage to the DoT spells Poison, Bio. Is there a similar effect for the non-damaging Enfeebles? (Slow/Blind/Paralyze/Gravity/Sleep/etc?)

INT doesn't affect the potency of any non-DoT enfeeble as far as I am aware (there might be a Blue Magic spell that is affected by it, but I'm not very familiar with Blue Magic).

Slow derives potency from MND. I don't know if anyone has ever been able to test Blind or Blind II, other than noting that Blind I has a mostly negligible decrease to accuracy.

3b. Does 100+ MND boost Dia DoT?

No. Dia is 1 damage/tick. Dia II is 2 damage/tick. Dia III is 3 damage/tick. More MND will affect the damage dealt by the initial casting of the spell, but does not affect the DoT damage or Defense penalty.

4. This determines how I arrange gear swaps on future levels after I get access to Errant (and the lovely replacement to the pants, Jet Serawheels), Wise, and other gear sets. Without regard to Elemental Staves or differential in stats between my stat and the monsters (e.g. MND vs. MND accuracy effects), what bonuses are going to give me the most potency (if any)?

For Slow and Paralyze, +MND will yield more potency. For elemental enfeebles, +INT will yield more potency. Bio I/II DoT damage triggers from Dark Magic skill as I recall.

Silence, Sleep, Gravity are definitely unaffected in potency by stats (MND helps Silence accuracy, INT helps Sleep and Gravity accuracy). I don't know for sure what Blind or Blind II do with respect to INT, since it is so rarely used or tested.

5. I have noted that the Paralyze II Group II Merit spell has bonus +1 Potency for each additional merit... Is the actual effect of this amorphous "+1" known at this time? Is it worthwhile to fully merit Paralyze II at the expense of versatility? (I'm considering Slow II, Paralyze II, and Bio III as my Group II's at this time)

My RDM75 friends who have merited Paralyze II say it is a waste of time at level 1, but becomes noticeably more potent at level 3 (and it seems easier to land against resistant targets than Paralyze I).


Icemage

[Sabaron]

Bio I/II DoT damage triggers from Dark Magic skill as I recall.

Does this mean that +INT will not affect the DoT of Bio, but capping Dark Skill may if my cap is sufficiently high? If so do you happen to recall any breakpoint or formula?

[Shinhiryu_Kage]

Does this mean that +INT will not affect the DoT of Bio, but capping Dark Skill may if my cap is sufficiently high? If so do you happen to recall any breakpoint or formula?

I think that's an excellent question.

I bet taking equipment swaps into Brenner and testing on a friend with 0 DRK resistance would be an excellent way to find out too.

[Ka1'E1]

Int will effect the intial damage of Bio. and Dark magic will affect the tick amount. I do have a para chart somewhere, I will see if I can dig it up

aka Just let the BLM cast it

I am sure my use of e/a ffect is wrong too, but it is the weekend, and the grammar police took the day off I am told

[Ka1'E1]

Choke/Burn/Rasp... (elemental enfeebles) DoT is based on the caster's INT. 40, 70, 100, and 150 corresponds to 2, 3, 4, and 5 damage/tic respectively.

Bio II's damage is affected by dark magic skill, 300 is the skill level that corresponds to 8 damage/tic. Meaning RDM's shouldn't be casting Bio II, and should leave that to BLM's or even possibly DRK's (idk if DRK can make it to 300 with gear enhancements) A RDM with maxed Bio III merits can equal a BLM's Bio II dmg/tic.

Slow/Paralyze's potency is effected by mob/player MND difference. Meaning that maxing out on enf. skill is not the proper way to enfeeble a mob! Seriously, if a RDM is wearing relic hat, AF body, nashira pants, and a sea cape and casting slow II and overwriting a RDM wearing MND gear and just enough enf. skill to slow I they are actually doing a worse job of enfeebling a mob.

Sorry I lied to, my chart is a slow II chart ><

This link is somewhat helpful as well. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Calculating_Magic_Damage

[Kirsteena]

My RDM75 friends who have merited Paralyze II say it is a waste of time at level 1, but becomes noticeably more potent at level 3 (and it seems easier to land against resistant targets than Paralyze I).

I only have it at level 2 atm, but it is significant increase on level 1. This is what happened when I fought an anemone while goofing off on the way to the Uggy Temple. I got that level of proc from other stuff when we were getting pop items in sky, just never screenied it.

[Icemage]

Followup:

Found some hard numbers for Bio II, Bio III, Slow, and Slow II.

From this thread at BG forums:

Slow effects:

hojo II is constant 18.52%

slow I caps at 30% (based off jpn site)

slow II lvl 1 caps at 33.33%

slow II lvl 2 caps at 35.56 %

slow II lvl 3 (haven't gotten, not sure I will)

carnage elegy is constant 48.89%

More specifically, Apple Pie talks about the known Slow formula in this thread:

The maximum effect of Slow I is +30% while the minimum is 15%

Slow I Effect = (100 + 0.2 * fMND + 13.68) / 100
fMND = Caster's MND - Target's MND (cap = 75)

More supporting data for Slow I/II/Hojo:Ni from Masag0

---

Also from that thread, there's data on Bio II/III:

Bio II:
200-210 dark skill > 5dmg/tic
211-268 dark skill > 6dmg/tic
269-290 dark skill > 7dmg/tic
291+ dark skill > 8dmg/tic

The tier for Bio III is somewhere between 217 Dark skill and 225 Dark skill.

7/tick at 217
8/tick at 225

Icemage

[Shinhiryu_Kage]

Awesome. Thank you for the above information.

Me and a 75RDM friend of mine did the AF3 Hat a week ago and he didn't want to melee the robot.

So instead, he did Grav/Bind and used Poison2 /Bio 2 and lured it around that area in a circle until it crashed. Took roughly 20 minutes I think. It was pretty cool to watch. He hasn't spent any merits on any new enfeebles, but he did get Phalanx II. I kept thinking, though, that Bio 3 would have been a helpful choice to speed things up, but, I think it only stays on for 90 secs? ... something like that. Oh well, when I get 75RDM I'm going to have to choose between what enfeebles I think are best and for what I want to do myself.

[Raydeus]

So the only real advantage from Slow II is that it's resisted less often? Maybe it would be good for lvl 80+ monsters that resist spells but for practical aplications (such as soloing) it doesn't seem to be worth it at all.

It would depend on how much +MND above that of the mob's will you need to reach cap though, if it's much less than with Slow I then it would be good.

But the way things look I'm starting to think Phalanx II is actually the best spell to merit.

[Mhurron]

So the only real advantage from Slow II is that it's resisted less often? Maybe it would be good for lvl 80+ monsters that resist spells but for practical aplications (such as soloing) it doesn't seem to be worth it at all

Aren't all the Tier 2 enfeebles like that though?

[Sabaron]

Well if you're talking about solo Phalanx II is crap compared to all the G2 RDM merits as it's significantly weaker than Phalanx I. Slow II is better than Slow, Paralyze II is better than Paralyze, Bio III allows a RDM to get the same DoT as a BLM (for an inflated MP cost of course).

Slow II full merit looks like it might be getting pretty nice too--if you continue the progression Slow II-3 = 37.79%, which is obviously not necessarily the case. You get an increased base potency of 10% for one merit on Slow II and for each additional merit you get +MAcc and cap increase. It's definitely worthy of single nod, I think, but how much +MND are you going to get on upper-level monsters? Of course, it is unlikely that anyone actually knows such statistics, so one would have to make inferrence based on player classes which probably doesn't hold up because monsters don't get gear and probably have higher on-average stats than players to compensate.

I think I'm probably going to go with:

Slow II-1
Bio III-3
Paralyze II-2 or Paralyze II-1 + Phalanx II-1

I'm going to have to pass on Blind II because I'd wager dollars to donuts that Flash still overwrites and destroys it as does Kurayami: Ni unless I merit it all the way up.

I don't think I like Dia III 5% for 15mp for 30-90sec, so it gets the boot from my spells as well.

[Raydeus]

Aren't all the Tier 2 enfeebles like that though?

Sadly that seems to be the case, yep.




Edit> In my case I think Phalanx II fully merited would be better for me overall than all the others.

Edit +1 >

I'm going to have to pass on Blind II because I'd wager dollars to donuts that Flash still overwrites and destroys it as does Kurayami: Ni unless I merit it all the way up.

SE changed that a long time ago so now Flash and Blind stack, and according to wiki Blind II will overwrite Kurayami at lvl 3.

[Gobo]

So the only real advantage from Slow II is that it's resisted less often? Maybe it would be good for lvl 80+ monsters that resist spells but for practical aplications (such as soloing) it doesn't seem to be worth it at all.
It would depend on how much +MND above that of the mob's will you need to reach cap though, if it's much less than with Slow I then it would be good.
But the way things look I'm starting to think Phalanx II is actually the best spell to merit.

Slow II lvl 3 caps at ~37%. It also takes less MND than Slow I to get a Slow effect that is stronger than Slow I and Hojo: Ni in real situations.

Took me forever digging in people's LJs to find this stuff

http://miruka.livejournal.com/139964.html (post explains the MND difference for Slow %)
and
http://releenaseraph.livejournal.com/99901.html, http://releenaseraph.livejournal.com/98121.html,
http://releenaseraph.livejournal.com/97427.html#cutid1 (lots of Slow II testing)

[Icemage]

Slow II gets more potent as you add merit levels. Gobo's link is excellent because it shows the effect of caster vs. target MND scores. Slow II is much more forgiving in this instance, since it's nearly impossible to get the +75 advantage over a target for Slow I to cap out. Realistically if you have fantastic gear, 1 level in this is enough - but you need fantastic gear.

Paralyze II at level 1 is a complete waste. Either put 3 levels or don't put any at all is the way I'd view it. At only level 1 it doesn't do any better than Paralyze I, except for being ever so slightly stickier against HNMs. At level 3, Paralyze II is noticeably stronger than Paralyze I, both in stickiness and proc rate.

Flash no longer overwrites any Blind effect. It is considered a Flash effect - the only other player-usable ability that collides with it is the blue magic spell Actinic Burst. It does not interact with Blind II negatively, and the reduced accuracy from both effects will stack on a target. I still consider Blind II to be a waste of points, though.

Bio III does not reportedly gain anything except base duration from additional levels. If investing in this, I don't recommend getting it at more than level 1.

Phalanx II needs extra levels to be effective. It only stops about 15 damage per hit at level 1, and goes up about 3 points per additional level invested.

P.S. Slow II will overpower most/all Haste effects, which makes it extremely powerful against enemies like Nitro Clusters and Qutrub which use Haste effects on themselves, since it automatically nullifies such effects, saving you a Dispel.


Icemage