A small advice request regarding elements.

[Coinspinner]

Alright, yesterday I was in my first Qufim PT, we hunted worms by the tunnel (night) and the icy pond nearby (day). Worms are weak to Aero, if I'm not mistaken, and I noticed my damage with Aero was much more consistant than with Blizzard, Fire, Thunder, or Waterga when I tried mixing those in. Aero is so very weak though, and I felt a bit uncomfortable casting just Aero on the worms. We had two RDM enfeebling, and the worms dealt so little damage to us our WHM was more than capable of keeping everyone healed, my little Cure was unnecessary.

We'll continue killing worms tonight, so I'd like to know from more experienced BLMs, what should I be casting on these worms?

[Icemage]

Almost all enemies with few exceptions are weak to at least one element. Some enemies are strongly aligned to a specific element and resist it. In this case, Worm-type enemies are weak to Wind and strong against Earth.

What this means is that, yes, your Aero spell will deal much more consistent damage overall, because it is least often resisted. However, keep in mind that weather conditions can affect damage as well as day of week.

In Qufim, for instance, it is often thunderstorm weather (lightning weather symbol). During these periods, Thunder becomes stronger. Also, note the day of the week (look at the color of the bubble next to the game clock in the lower left corner of the screen right above the chat window). Spells of the current day's element are stronger and more effective, while spells of the element that is weak against the element of the current day grow weaker.

So Aero, cast on a Worm, on Windsday will be even more consistent than on any other day. Thunder cast during a thunderstorm will see better results, while Fire cast on Watersday is generally going to produce poor results.

Also, if your front line attackers have picked a skillchain/renkei, make sure you ask what element it uses so you can Magic Burst on it. In general, if they know what they are doing, they will try to pick one that takes advantage of the enemy's elemental weakness.


Icemage

[Coinspinner]

Unfortunately, my tanks couldn't manage a skillchain with the weapons they had on them, or so they claimed (a mix of spears, swords, and greatswords.) Usually, WARs I PT with are only skilled with one weapon, and RDM rarely sub WAR for Red Lotus.

I tried following the day and the weather (is one effect stronger than the other?) and got ok results, but casting Thunder and seeing 10 damage is... :dead:

Anyway, we moved on to clippers, which are ice/thunder weakness, which are both my highest two spells and the two types of weather effects I've seen there, so we got very nice exp.