Light Staff/Dark Staff vs. AF1 + Shield and MP vs MND.

[Vesper]

Well, this would be my 2nd attempt at posting this topic as it seems server is extremely busy(apperently FFXI Online's maint is having an effect on the number of ppl hitting this site

I was finally able to pick up my Light Staff the previous night, so am now using both that and the Dark Staff. I had heard so many times that this was the best option that it had become ingrained in my mind and I didnt bother trying to think of any other possible combinations.

Now as everyone knows, Light Staff is going to give you a +10% Cure Potency. For me, it increased my Cure III's from 192 to 210, a total of 18pts, not too shabby. It also bumps all attributes by 1 point, and gives you a +15 boost vs. Dark. Definitely not a bad item to use. Now, lets take a look at another option, AF1 + Shield, the one I had in mind is:

Holy Shield- Def: 13 HP: 10 MP: 10 MND: 1

You get the bonuses from your AF1 (MP: 10 MND: 2), and the stats from Holy Shield which would be a grand total of 13 DEF, 10 HP, 20 MP, and 3 MND, as compared to +1 to Attributes, +15 DRK and 10% Cure Potency. Not really too bad a switch IMO.

Now heres the other thing I was faced w/just the other day. A lower lvl WHM asked me which I thought was more important, max mp or MND. Well, I told him at my lvl, max MP was paramount to me. The more mana I can add to my pool the better. This is when someone else pipped in and attempted to contradict me saying that more MND would be better, how he figured this I dont know. MND gives you a higher resistance to spells, a higher max cure by maybe 1-3 pts per point of MND, and lessens your chance of having offensive spells resisted. Well past 40, there is really no need for a WHM to be attempting to debuff, thats the role of the RDM or BLM. Aside throwing out a Dia, you should be concentrating on keeping people alive, and Hastened. What really gave me a chuckle however was the person who insisted that more MND was better, wasnt even a WHM

Oh well, these are 2 things Im looking for some feed back on, espically from 3 of the posters here, who have given me invaluable information since I have been posting here. The things they have done and see, I can hardly wait to accomplish myself. Miriamel, Icemage, and Rones, of course, the rest of you all who post here also provide information thats helped, so I dont mean to leave you out as well. Anyway, thank you in advance for any replies you may have to these 2 paragraphs.

[Rones]

If money is no object that shield is fine to keep in your inventory. Only time I would use it is when trying to max out my +mnd to do some enfeebling. The 20 mp from af1+shield are nice, but at your lvl it's all about mp efficieny (eg: cure v+light staff) along with mp regen (eg: Dark Staff+errant at 72). Total mp is rarely an issue, that's why Icemage gets away with a brd sub so well. You could of course switch to the +mp gear if you are capping your mp, but I find that doing that everytime I rest usually tires me out quicker when exping for hours which actually causes a worse affect on my performance than what I gain from that extra 20 mp (which doesn't play an issue unless you end up running out of mp at some point).

As for mnd improving the power of your cures, it feels like 2 mnd for 1 more hp cured, but the only cure that it even affects for me is cure V which I have enough trouble fitting in as is. Also, Light Staff with cure V lets me do around ~670 verus ~608 without the staff. So even having +20 mnd wouldn't make up for the lack of a light staff.

Hope that covers everthing, and don't give up entirely on enfeebling. Always makes exping with blm, brd, whm back line easier on you. It's a lot harder for us to enfeeble than rdms and a little less mp efficient, but its not out of the question. Also, its good to have the blm enfeeble some with things like frost, burn etc, but you have a much better chance of landing paralyze + slow than him. For lvl 64-67 while exping in Boyada tree my resist rate for enfeebles varied between 1/4-1/2 with +35 mnd while most of the rdms I was with got resisted 1/5-1/3, so either I was with bad rdms, or we just aren't that bad.

[Feenicks]

It's been said before, but the MND vs MP question depends on your race. I use a balance of MND and MP because as a taru, I rarely run out of MP - I only ever use the top 500 MP (or thereabouts) it seems, so extra MP is really not that useful to me, so I have some +MND equipment as well.

One thing that did irk me about your post though - why use the AF1 weapon + Holy Shield when Ebony Wand (or other derivative) + Holy Shield is a lot better? INT+6 and MND+6 is surely much better than MP+10 MND+2? The only reason I can think of for using the AF1 weapon is if you're fighting something and you're less than Lv54.

[Ahinjel]

One thing that did irk me about your post though - why use the AF1 weapon + Holy Shield when Ebony Wand (or other derivative) + Holy Shield is a lot better?

Prolly cause I wasnt thinking about using a Wand/Rod, was more focused on the Shield. But sure, switch that out as well.:p

[Mpowers]

Remember both Light and Dark staves have hidden atributes aswell. +15% to light and dark spells. If you have your divine capped or close (which is a very useful thing to get) you can throw in some helpfull nukes in undead parties, if your up to double mbing and if your mp pool can handle it. Also with dark staff, I believe it improves aspir. I usually ES+Aspir everytime ES is up on mobs that I can aspir on. There are also a bunch of hidden effects for summons too, I believe. They are very good weapons.

[manuel]

Nice dilema, but of course urs are talking about exp parties.
when u reach the HNM, mainly ours jobs is only cure/raise (;. For that the MP is the best way. even a Taru with a lot of MP cannot use raise 2/3 more than 5 or 6 times. (Thinking in bad pull in Dynamis).

u cannot land any spell (even the rdm 75 capped cannot land all the spell in the HNM Arena).

and when the figth taking 1 hours or more, well MP regen isnt matter also w.

my point is conserve all urs MP equipments u can use that for the rest of urs life (Dynamis/HNM/ETC).　

[AtraposBLM]

Originally posted by manuel
Nice dilema, but of course urs are talking about exp parties.
when u reach the HNM, mainly ours jobs is only cure/raise (;. For that the MP is the best way. even a Taru with a lot of MP cannot use raise 2/3 more than 5 or 6 times. (Thinking in bad pull in Dynamis).

u cannot land any spell (even the rdm 75 capped cannot land all the spell in the HNM Arena).

and when the figth taking 1 hours or more, well MP regen isnt matter also w.

my point is conserve all urs MP equipments u can use that for the rest of urs life (Dynamis/HNM/ETC).　

I find most of this post to be completely wrong.

You want to talk about HNM? Ok, let's do it.

How much difference would Max MP make? Say you get enough for a single Cure IV off extra over what you would've had with no +mp. First off, if you're talk JUST light/dark staves vs AF1/Wand/Shield, that's being EXTREMELY favorable to the MP setup (mainly, having that extra MP might mean that when you do have to sit, it is later than someone with less mp, so your refresh/ballads had more time to give you more MP, so you have to sit slightly later). So, say that you get an extra Cure IV. Fantastic. Now, common practice on HNM's is to have multiple WHM's and to rotate WHM's whenever one runs out of MP with someone who is full. Now, if everything was always ideal, you would always have a WHM standing by with full MP waiting to step in for any of the WHM's that might need a break (keep in mind that the harder the HNM, the more active WHM's you'll need to keep up and healing). In this instance, it really wouldn't matter at all how long you could keep curing, as you would always have a back up, so the fact that you got an extra cure in would literally make no difference - whereas the person using a light staff would've had to use less cures to cure more HP.

Ok, now assume a more realistic situation. Say the HNM you're currently hunting requires 2 whm to be standing and healing at all times. Your LS has brought 3. Now what matters? Well, again, a light-staff weilding WHM is *much* more desirable than one without. Why? Well, even though they might be able to cast less *total* cures, each cure they use cures 10% more than yours. So if you both cast identical spells in identical patterns, by the time you've cast 10 spells, it'll be as if the light staff weilding WHM got a full extra spell in. If you're in a fight that your ls is struggling in, and you have to more or less non-stop cure for an hour...think about how many free cures you're getting in (that adds to hundreds if not thousands of FREE hp that you got without spending extra MP).

Ok, so now that having a light staff is proven to be more effective, what about a dark staff? Well, in the above situation where you only have 3 whm's available, so only 1 can rest at a time, wouldn't you want to *minimize* the time where the whm on the sidelines is ineffective (i.e. at too low of a mp number to be of any prolonged use)? Dark staff does just that - over short periods of time, dark staff equates to a 50% (almost exactly, especially if you're using a food that adds +2 mp recovery) reduction in resting time required to get the same amount of MP as someone without. Try telling me that 10, 20, 50, or even 100 mp matters when 2 whm's are empty, and both are resting, one with dark staff, and one without. It doesn't, and believe me, ALL mages find themselves working from 0 mp more often than they would like to, so having a dark staff means smaller resting periods mean more - 50% more.

**EDIT**
I forgot about the things you said about dynamis. Once again, the *only* bonus to having +mp over +mp recovery is that you might get *one* extra r2/r3 in over someone not wearing the +mp gear. That's being generous again, as R3 costs 350 mp, which I highly doubt you could match on the weapon slots. And once everyone is at 0 mp...it's a race of +mp recovery. The way this game works, it doesn't matter if you have 1,200 mp or 600 mp, the only thing that determines the rate at which you gain mp back is gear (dark staff and errant/mahatma houppelande and a few other minor peices) and food (too many to list, but for whm the main one is either roast mushrooms or witch kabobs, as I understand it).

So once again, there's really NO reason to use ANYTHING over a light staff / dark staff combo for anything but enfeebling (in which case you would switch over to mythic wand and whatever the best +mnd shield is). It doesn't really matter *what* you're doing (unless you're soloing, or helping lower friends), light/dark staves will ALWAYS improve your game.

[Rawls]

I agree with Atrapos on this, its nice to have a nice fat mp max but efficiency is better than that extra cure you can get from replacing the weapon/shield slots with +mp items (which I think some people forgot :sweat: ). The best shield/club combo in terms of +mp will increase your mp by a grand 35 points (Astral Aspis and AF1) which isn't even enough for Regen II. Also, using a Light Staff for the +10% will more than outweigh that meager increase in MP in just 2 casts of Cure V.

[Radiance]

Atrapos never fails to amaze me with his posts. Doesn't matter what forum he is posting on all of it is accurate.

I kinda feel lacking not having anything to contribute after atrapos's post. :spin:

[Onte]

Awesome post Atrapos, that answered a few questions for me!

[Irinicus]

ok now I am confused, Is it MND ot INT that determines the spell resistance of mobs? I was told that the lower the INT the less chance of my spells getting resisted. But Vesper in this post said that MND does that. Can someone please clear this up for me?




Thanx

[Yuanlung]

INT powers and resists black magic.

MND powers and resists white magic.


If you have trouble tell them apart, the ones where you cast with arms open horrizontally while surrounded by a greenish column of light are black magic spells; the ones where you cast with one hand raised above your head, while srrounded by a white column of light are white magic spells.

[Feenicks]

What about Asklepios + Astral Shield? I would love to have these items (and my LS is going after Asklepios next week) and I was thinking if you start a battle with Asklepios + Astral Shield, and when you've used the 60MP, switch it out for Light Staff, it would turn out ok. What say you?

[sylvanas]

the only reason for a whm to ever use a shield over light/dark is to melee.

[lionx]

Originally posted by Yuanlung
INT powers and resists black magic.

MND powers and resists white magic.


If you have trouble tell them apart, the ones where you cast with arms open horrizontally while surrounded by a greenish column of light are black magic spells; the ones where you cast with one hand raised above your head, while srrounded by a white column of light are white magic spells.

Wha? I dont get it, then why does when i dont (or if it wears off) cast Shock on some monsters as a BLM, i get resisted much more on Black Magic spells, but when i do cast Shock, i have a less chance of being resisted casting Black Magic spells? O.o

ie:

StoneII(NoShock): Mandie takes 13 dmg (orz)
StoneII(W/Shock): Mandie takes 120 dmg