Is it all really worth it?

[Icemage]

Atropos, you should know better than to do side-by-side comparisons in a group with 3 BLM, much less judge the value of a BLM by the numbers he puts up onscreen. It's NOT like you get into 3 BLM party configurations 9 days out of 10. =P

(1) All of you are casting the same spells. Sure, if you measured up the damage, the difference doesn't mean much of anything. So what? I don't care if the BLM in my party nukes for 300 instead of 320. As long as you're picking the right spells, that's all that matters, as far as nukes go - granted, the Ice Staff you use will improve your damage numbers overall by a nice chunk, but that sort of impact is still very subtle, as you aren't the only one contributing damage. I would be more concerned if the BLM in my party were missing Magic Bursts constantly, or bursting with the wrong element (if I ever see another BLM Magic Bursting Water III on a Robber Crab off of Distortion I think I'll go postal).

(2) Coming back to the Ice Staff, that +elemental skill means your elemental debuffs land more often, and are resisted less. This is much more of a concern, as the difference can be felt if you're paying attention. Successfully landing Shock means your red mage now has an easier time landing Slow and Paralyze. Successfully landing Frost means your melees hit more often. Etc.

(3) Dark staff. I just got this staff myself and boy is it ever useful. Ok, so in your one party you ended up with MP at the end of a successful chain. This is a bad thing? What happens when you get a link have have to burn MP every minute or so to drop a Sleep II on the linked monster? The poorly equipped BLM in your party would be hard pressed to keep that up. More MP in reserve is GOOD, because it isn't the chains where you have extra MP that matter... its the chains where Bad Stuff Happens when you'll kiss your Dark Staff because you had enough MP left to Sleep II and Escape when that extra monster pops on top of you.

You seem to be looking for a tangible difference in the numbers, and I really think that's a mistake. Bigger numbers don't make the difference between good players and bad - it is more about how much easier you make the gaming experience for the other 5 people in your party. Numbers play a role, but it is a very small role.

You want to know what I consider the most important things for a BLM are?

- Aggro control. Good BLM know when to back off to avoid getting attacked.

- Timing. Landing Shock early to give the other mages a better chance to land their spells. Accurate Magic Bursts. Being quick to /heal once you are certain a battle is over, or knowing when tossing a big nuke will end a fight 15 seconds sooner.

- MP management. Knowing that Aspir works on certain enemies and taking full advantage of it. Being conscientious about resting, as well as knowing when to use abilities like Divine Seal and Elemental Seal.

- Awareness. Recognizing when links/spawns occur and reacting quickly and appropriately with Sleep/Sleep II/Escape/whatever.

- Knowing your spells. Knowing not to cast Bio II if you've agreed to let the RDM or WHM cast Dia II. Knowing that Drain is often one of your most potent spells. Knowing that Poison is about as useful as a leaky submarine past level 10. Knowing that Blind gets overwritten by Flash as well as Kurayama : Ni.

You'll notice that none of the above have anything to do with the damage numbers that a BLM puts up. See my point?


Icemage

[riceburner4540]

(if I ever see another BLM Magic Bursting Water III on a Robber Crab off of Distortion I think I'll go postal).

i don't see the problem...? ever since i was level 55, i bursted water III off of distortion chains vs robber crabs. maybe twice between 55 and 58 did i get resisted. it was either water III for 500-520 or blizzard II for 360-380. outside of MBs though, i casted strictly blizzard based spells. thunder spells were a waste of mp since they did like 3 damage more than my blizzard spells with my ice staff equipped.

[Scatman]

Heh I think everyone's going around in circles by now. I'm sure Atrapos knows the benefits of having uber equipment, but once again, the question of "Is it worth the time spent farming" still remains.

[AtraposBLM]

Icemage, I wasn't trying to say "Does better gear make you a better black mage?"

I'm fully aware that the things that differentiate a good black mage from an idiot are fairly simple, and easy to execute, once you know what they are. However, the point of this post was:

Why should I bother with getting good gear if I'm already an intelligent black mage?

My point was that I didn't really notice any significant advantage I had over the other blackmages...the only thing I ever do is make them jealous by consistently doing 10-40 more damage per spell.

As far as landing shock/burn/frost...Shock lands on anything that isn't strong to thunder without the staff. Frost lands on anything but a thunder-based creature (tons of those, right?), and burn can land on just about anything. Yes, icestaff cuts down the resists some, but shock/frost are the 2 strongest elemental debuffs...so it's not like "OMG YOU CANT LAND AN ENFEEBLE WITHOUT ICESTAFF".

I guess I just feel disheartened that the 2 major purchases in a blm's career (Ice and Dark Staves) are let downs in my opinion. Will I sell them and go back? Hell no. If for nothing else, I'll keep them to prove that I care about my character. I just don't really see the huge advantage everyone else has been saying.

As far as being able to escape and such...every time I try to save a party with escape, the rdm steps in with chainspell+escape...and it's so infrequent that we can't just sleep the add and deal with it later that escape isn't even really used that much anymore.

[Icemage]

If you were expecting to be able to suddenly do XP chain #6s with your new equipment, then I can definitely see why you might be disappointed.

Where I think the real difference shows is when you start pushing the limits beyond what is "safe". After all, you wouldn't try doing an XP chain 5 if your WHM and BLM are tapped for MP... but if all the mages in the party had a Dark Staff and were able to gain that extra 100-150 MP during the chain, you have a much better chance of being able to pull it off.

Case in point:

I just bought my Dark Staff after saving for 2 months for it, and last night was the first time I've taken my WHM out for a serious XP run. My group went to Valley of Sorrows with:

WHM62/BRD31 (me)
PLD61/WAR30
RDM62/BLM31
BLM60/WHM30
THF61/NIN30
MNK60/WAR30

Not the most optimal group under normal circumstances, but on the bare fact that I was using a Dark Staff, our abilities as a group increased tremendously because our safety margin (my MP pool) was much larger. Chaining Velociraptors and Perytons, we were making chain #5 with ease when we had enough monsters to kill.

As WHM/BRD, I have 749MP. I ended one of the chain #5s with *529* MP remaining. Having the dark staff meant our downtime went way down, and pushed what would otherwise have been a 2.5K XP/hour or less group into the 3K+/hour range. For me, that more than justifies the time I spent collecting money I spent on the staff.


Icemage

[shwiggy]

mp regen is huge. I borrowed my whm's dark staff and if I expended all of my mp I would've been tanking =p

At least that much is worth it.

[Coinspinner]

The last exp group I had (weeks ago ><) was something like this:

Sam/War
Thf/Nin
Nin/War
Blm/Whm (Me)
Whm/Blm
Rdm/Whm

I can't remember what we killed exactly, but it was a 59-62 group hunting in the Vollbow region.

Two skillchains per fight with that setup, right? Long story short: the SAM was a gimp with a little +DEX on him and just as little +ACC who actually lagged behind the NIN and THF in TP building, save for the occasional Meditate. He was also a bad player, slow to react to pulls (letting the mob hit the THF so long the NIN decided to forgo SA/TA that round) and when the NIN lost Blink he zoften didn't notice until after the WHM had dumped hundreds of MP into healing the NIN. The frontline did little damage and was thrown into disarray frequently by this SAM, to even make it past Chain #2 I sometimes had to dump ~500 MP into the mob. The WHM chipped in with some Black Magic (his divine was lower than his Elemental ><) though the RDM was similarly deficient of Elemental Skill (double digits at level 60, how on earth...)

I really, REALLY wanted a Dark Staff then. Morion earrings, Thunder Staves, Zircon Rings and some other stuff might not be worth the money but the Dark Staff certainly is...

[riceburner4540]

is it all really worth it?

the other day, while doing davoi coffer keys (lost all the damn lots... ) i partied with a taru blm 1 level lower. his equipment wasn't bad, i'd say it was about average, however, an hour or so into the trip, he took notice of how much damage i was dealing (and how it was much higher than his) and was quite shocked. was it all really worth it? most definitely.

[sudo]

ya I've debated the whole cost vs effectiveness thing too.

Sorry for the long post but anyways:

It doesn't really matter much.
The much taunted Monster Signa for example. Sells for 400k.
People say you are gimped w/o one if you play brd or bst.

Yet, you go to the bst forums and brd forums and read the player's comments and you find.... *drum rolll*








People have all said that it's really not necessary and they can get along fine.

I can see how maybe if your pld also had a dark staff and can get that extra MP for a chain 6 but as long as one person can't do his job correctly or have the super uber eq or whatnot to keep up with others, then the pt has to fall down to the lowest common denominator and the weakest link issue. All your uberness would be wasted on a pt where not every single member had the super duper eq.

But, just to refute my own argument. I play bst. I am a party of one. So I am the weakest link. And comparing my abilities before spending 80,000 gil on new eq from 23-24, I've noticed almost no difference.

At lv 26 change to 27 the 20k axe I bought does maybe 5 points more damage than my 6k axe per hit. The 40k shield I bought that has 5 more defence and +8 HP over the old 300 gil shield I used to use, maybe decreases damage by 1 or 2 points on the same mobs I've been fighting. I totally feel like I wasted a lot of money. I probably won't even be able to sell this stuff back for the rip off prices people jack up with mule buyers.

Levels matter so much more in this game than any stats or race.
Resists get a huge level consideration and all int, mnd, chr, skill play a lot less of a role.



Synopsis:
spent 80k on new gear. Output increased by 1%
gained a new level, output increased by 20%

pride about feeling I'm uber increased 10% with HQ eq
feeling ripped off from wasting so much money increased 300%

(no one even says "nice eq" to me >_< cause I'm not in any pt's, but one person did check me and told me I was dumb for not wearing chr eq as a bst. I shut him up when I poped my change eq macro after fighting though ) Oh ya, 60k of chr eq so far and I don't notice much difference either.... it's all about levels.

[AtraposBLM]

yeah, that was more along the lines of what I was getting at. Everyone always says that it gets better when you level, but from what I've gathered, it just gets more time consuming and expensive (read: more time consuming), and you still see *marginal* results at best. I'll continue to do it because not doing means I'll spend those hours LFP even more bored than when I spend it farming.

[Narru]

Couple points:

1) Could it be that your comparison is done in an EXP PT where none of the blm's were getting resists? If you're fighting things where you have say 2 resists the entire night, I don't think the +Int or +Elemental Skill uber gear would make that huge a difference in terms of numbers for your comparison. Did you notice that poorly equipped blm getting resisted often? Or did you notice the damage numbers only when the poorly equipped blm was matching you for damage? A parse of the evening would give you a more accurate picture of just how much more damage you might have done over the poorly equipped blm.

2) Further pressing the first point, end game you'll be going after some serious HNM's. Some of these have a lot of resists. It is here that you'll probably see your uber gear paying off for the time and effort you took to attain them.

3) Reputation. Sure that blm with poor gear will be able to get to 75 (only cause he's a mage). But more than likely he'll be doing it exclusively through pick-up groups. As we all know, some are good, some are not. I think you'll have a better, easier, and more fun time getting to 75 with uber gear, as other people with uber gear will see that, and notice you. I think you can start to push the boundries of what you can/cannot do in this game only if you have uber gear, and the people that fight with you have uber gear too.

[sudo]

seeing as how few people there are at lv 70+

Do you even get pick up groups anymore? I figured that the population of people would be so small by then that you would basically know who was uber and who was meh.

And I would LOVE a set pt. I got most of the l33t gear already but so far 3 attempts at doing a LS set pt, friends set pt, and what not have all failed. (getting rather discouraged it'll ever happen now espically since I'm on bst) (but in a dumb way, a bst can be his own set pt hehehe)

The closest thing I got was pting with the same brd and tank for 5 days in a row in kazham. Great fun but nothing much else came out of it cause someone couldn't play and so a level difference poped up then we never saw eachother again.

[nfinity.fX]

Q: Is it all really worth it?
A: take pride in ur character, and it'll be worth it.. the satisfaction comes from knowing that ur char is the best u can make it.. the feeling is the same as a newbie buying his first eremite ring using his hard earned gil and an experienced player equipping his final piece of uncurse.. u'll feel the sense of satisfaction.. i tink that makes it worth it (:

[AtraposBLM]

I still love having blm's look at my ice staff and be like...whoa atra, you got an ice staff? Then later during the pt, I start resting, and they're like whoa, you have a dark staff too!?

That's a good feeling of satisfaction. I would like to know that my efforts worth worth a damn though

[FFXITsukasa]

After ready this and with my own experience I think you can get by with less effective equipment as a Black Mage, unlike the other jobs. I ,however, pride myself on having decent equipment, equipment that helps me be the best I can be as a Hume.