why i hate the bar- line (non elemental)

[bonovoxpsu]

OK, i'm referring to the barpoison, barsleep, barpetrify spells. not the bar-elemental - barwater, barfire, etc.

so i'm up in xcarb screwing around, waiting for my xp pt. i'm closing in real fast on lvl 69 (8k tnl as we speak). i see my old buddy Shadow Dragon lumbering around.

now, i dont' have my gimpy lvl 15 thf sub on, i have my full /blm, so i think "omg, this is cake". i buff up hardcore - pro/shell/blink/stoneskin/haste/enaero/shock spikes/phalanx/barpetrify . i'll get to the barpetrify in a minute. funny, i normally don't worry about petrify against him and i don't even bother... anyway, as rdm's go, i'm maxed out buff wise. i engage and do the standard debuffs - grav/slow/para/blind/dia2/poi2. i commence whacking.

things are moving along - just for kicks i ele seal and thunder2 him. he's barely hitting me at all (most of the time he whiffs - i have good evasion and had tons of +agi gear). i figure its the usual grab my gil and move on...

then comes his move - he does his petrify gaze.

now, as rdm's, at lvl 60 we have barpetrify AND resist petrify IV i believe. on top of that, i have capped enhancing and i'm somewhere along the lines of 14-16 lvls higher then him, i believe. all signs point to "petrify shouldn't even think of sticking on me..."

so what happens with all this resist petrify? abso-FUCKING-lutely nothing. i'm petrified. OK, no problem, my buffs are on, he can't really connect to me at all to begin with, i should have no problem, i'm guessing it will wear and i can recover. i figure with all these massive resist petrify bonuses, it can't stick for long

i must have sat there for 3 minutes. THREE FUCKING MINUTES. he could barely hit me, but since i was petrified for so long it was only a matter of time. slowly phalanx dropped, stoneskin dropped and my HP dropped. i kept thinking "it has to wear soon". nada. he would whiff like 5-6 times in a row then get a double attack in for criticals. so i died. on a side note, i was lucky enough to call on a high lvl whm i knew for a raise3.

what a joke. #1, i'm such a higher lvl then shadow its not even funny. #2, rdm's have this HUGE petrify resist. on top of that, we have BARPETRIFY. no way that should have even stuck OR stuck that long.

so what a freakin joke. stupidest line of spells i've ever seen. unless you're 20 lvls higher then the mob it doesn't matter. unreal. seriously, square, just remove those spells. obviously they got nerfed to hell sometime during beta and now they are absolutely worthless. thanks a bunch.

</rant>

[edit] - seriously, can someone explain it to me? where they EVER useful? i've found they're big piles of steamy dog shi.... well, you know. its so frustrating to have these spells that sound so great in theory SUCK ROYAL ASS in the game... sorry for the langauge...

[csBahamut]

Yup. Absolutely useless. Not worth even 1 MP to cast these wastes of time. They're only there to look pretty.

[alpha1471]

I've had similar experiences in Dynamis - Bastok. The scorpions have a move with area effect petrify. >_<;;

I was unpetrified at the same time as everyone else.

The status resistance in the game is just plain broken.

[Lasareth]

The bar- line is there for people to use to tell us that RDM don't need any more class-unique spells

[Altruist]

Try barstone + barpetrify, works great on cockatrice.

[alpha1471]

Barstonra + barpetra was not very effective in Dynamis Bastok. It was better to have BLMs use sleepga on pulled mobs, then have the RDMs cast silence on the sleeping scorpions. Then melees can provoke + kill the scorpions that are silenced (after the Bst is killed of course... don't want to be charmed)

[DrowII]

I fought him 7 times last night and used barstone+barpetrify, but I am paranoid so whenever he used his petra-gaze I turned my back on him, I just don't trust those spells much.

[Apple Pie]

For those who aren't willing to bring Poisons in Ballista, Barsleep is a nice one. BRD's song, Fowl Aubade, is much nicer but there's a big difference between with Barsleep and without it. However, Barsleep seems to do nothing against BRD's Lullaby songs.

Those among RDM/WHM or WHMs who refuse to cast Barblizzara and Barparalyzra against Ovinniks in Kuftal Tunnel may be called "newbies" since they greatly help frontliners to resist AoE paralyze.

I casted both Baraera and Barsilencera when we fought with Kam'lanaut and all mages sometimes resisted his Silencega. However, they did nothing against Greater Cockatrices. Tanks are always silenced. So do Barstonera and Barpetra. I asked WHM to cast the latter since I wasn't able to but it did nothing. Stona was always necessary.

So, it seems to me that Bar- spells aren't always help us. I don't have the firm answer yet but they only work against AoE type effects and spells. When I fought Lumber Jack (I was iventually killed) alone, I recovered in a few seconds after I was petrified by Break spell. After I casted Barpetrify and Barstone, I perfectly resisted it.

Anyway, you must be very unlucky, bono... Drink some Holy Water sometimes

[bonovoxpsu]

heh, i was enraged to say the least. raise3, however, soothes much of the anger...

i was just upset at how inneffective it was. if he hits me with it, fine... it just lasted SOOOO long. argh. i might think that maybe if i casted barstone things might have been different... probably should of. oh well.

anyway... i lvl'd last night so i got over it

[Patchinko]

Turn around when he does his petrify eye move. I mentioned it in another thread, but it's just like the petrify move of lizards and cockatrices.

[Uroboros]

Bar-spells are a joke. I've been in avatar fights with barspell on and like 100 spell resistance and been one-shotted. Thanks, Baraera, you're the best!

They just give you a chance to resist, rather than an absolute percentage of always working (gogo bad sentence). In exp pt I think WHM or BLM/WHM or RDM/WHM should cast them whenever they get a chance, as though they often do nothing, they sometimes do have a noticeable effect (Baraera vs. spiders is my favorite) and hey, lots of times in good pts the WHM is doing nothing for decent stretches of time, so why not do them?

When I'm solo though, I don't bother. I'm a) lazy and b) untrusting of them. I figure if a bar-spell ends up being the difference between soloing something and not soloing it, I probably shouldn't be trying. It's like rolling dice.

[Pounce]

I've never noticed Barsleepra doing anything every time I went through Kazahm.

My enhancing is capped (esp. since this was leveling a subjob).

Barsleepra doesn't seem to affect sleep resistance or sleep length at all.

I have noticed bar-element spells working though. Fighting easy-prey elementals, casting the appropriate bar- spell often reduces say, 50-damage spells to single-digit damage.

[GASGUL]

ive noted our bars have more effect on aoe emitted attacks,
whilst the directs,..........er.......pwnes j00!shift1one.

the turn back trick is all that you can do,

[Ungerpurr]

In my experience, barsleep/ra, at least, has a nice effect in lowering sleep duration and increasing sleep evades. Very, very rarely are the times I would wake up at the same time as everyone else after a Dream Flower, usually I'd be asleep for <10 seconds.

I can't attest to the usefulness of the Barpetrify/Barpetra spells, but I'd imagine there is only one resist check when the spell first is cast on you, and there's no such thing as 100% resistance, so even if it only has a 5% chance to land a full duration petrify on you, it still can happen.

Does anyone know if there is another resist check every xxx seconds for spells that can wear off early, like dia, bio, poison, sleep, petrify, virus, curse, etc.? Or is there only one resist check, at the time the spell/ability is cast/used? At least in regards to sleep, I'm pretty sure the resist check is made only when the spell is cast; after umpteen BC40s, I'd think I'd see a lot more irregularity in when the mandragoras wake up if they were making multiple resist checks during the duration of the lullaby.