Shamefull nuke questions

[Ratatapa]

I havn't touched a BLM or RDM in 4 years so i forgot all about this and i am currently leveling Scholar.

What i wanna know is the difference between Elemental Magic, INT and MaB for XP and end game situations

for enfeebling and Nuking

Thanks for the answer and sorry again for this noobie question that you all probably answred 10000000000000000000000 times

[Genosync]

because I don't feel like getting too complicated:

Elemental Skill affects accuracy

INT affects damage added to base, and if you get the spell's tier bonus or not (look at calculating magic damage on either wiki for more info), and some think it slightly affects accuracy although this is marginally difficult to prove

Magic Attack bonus is calculated near the end of the equation and is a % bonus

[drwaffles]

I was going to type out a detailed response, until I realised that these very questions have been answered multiple times. Search for it, I guarantee you'll find exactly what you're looking for.

[Seditedi]

Learn2search.

Geno hit things pretty well, but you can find more detail in other threads.
I'm sure he kept things short and sweet due to the wealth of information you can find just by using search.

[Kimiko]

One thing you'll want to keep in mind if your going to be using BLM in an endgame situation, you'll want to focus primarily on elemental magic skill. For most fights, you'll want to shoot for at least a 320 elemental skill and 120 total INT. Alternativly, a 330 elemental skill can make up for the lack of a 120 INT.

[pchan]

292 elemental skill ~ is enough for pudding Xp/Dynamis/limbus + other events where mob are rather low level (VT max)

INT and MAB both affect damage, a rough formula is 2 MAB= 1 INT, +/- 1 damage on a tier IV, most of the time, but if you check the damage formula you'll see that the effect of INT depends on your MAB and vice-versa.

[Suiram]

INT and MAB both affect damage, a rough formula is 2 MAB= 1 INT, +/- 1 damage on a tier IV, most of the time, but if you check the damage formula you'll see that the effect of INT depends on your MAB and vice-versa.

The relative benefits of adding MAB depends on how much MAB you already have, and nothing else. For adding INT it depends on the spell, how much INT you have, and how much INT your target has and nothing else. The more MAB you have lessens the benefit from adding more. The more INT you have, the lower the INT your target has, the lower tier the spell you are using and the higher level a spell is within the tier you are using, all lessen the benefit from from adding more INT.

[pchan]

INT and MAB both affect damage, a rough formula is 2 MAB= 1 INT, +/- 1 damage on a tier IV, most of the time, but if you check the damage formula you'll see that the effect of INT depends on your MAB and vice-versa.

The relative benefits of adding MAB depends on how much MAB you already have, and nothing else. For adding INT it depends on the spell, how much INT you have, and how much INT your target has and nothing else. The more MAB you have lessens the benefit from adding more. The more INT you have, the lower the INT your target has, the lower tier the spell you are using and the higher level a spell is within the tier you are using, all lessen the benefit from from adding more INT.

In the formula, you multiply int by mab. So mab does depends on INT. If you only count INT and mab the formula is something like

(base dmg + 2x dINT)x(1+mab/100)

+1 mab doesn't have the same effect if you have 10 dint or 11 dint, same for int.

[Seditedi]

One thing you'll want to keep in mind if your going to be using BLM in an endgame situation, you'll want to focus primarily on elemental magic skill. For most fights, you'll want to shoot for at least a 320 elemental skill and 120 total INT. Alternativly, a 330 elemental skill can make up for the lack of a 120 INT.

No it doesn't.
Loading up on elemental skill is 2005.
If you don't have enough INT you'll get resisted pretty often on HNM regardless of your Elemental Skill.

[Koyangi]

One thing you'll want to keep in mind if your going to be using BLM in an endgame situation, you'll want to focus primarily on elemental magic skill. For most fights, you'll want to shoot for at least a 320 elemental skill and 120 total INT. Alternativly, a 330 elemental skill can make up for the lack of a 120 INT.

No it doesn't.
Loading up on elemental skill is 2005.
If you don't have enough INT you'll get resisted pretty often on HNM regardless of your Elemental Skill.

This ^

Also, to add to the topic, overcoming/surpassing the mob's INT with your own plays a big role in resists(though it might scale slightly based on mob lvl), and it's when you can look at current gear and tone up MAB/INT into a previous +skill slot. With even 4/8 ele skill merits, most stuff you're gonna nuke and go as a BLM for you'll do good with a good INT/MAB setup.

Slight tangent; I've noticed same thing on RDM and enfeebling, I work on MND THEN I apply enfeebling skill until I reach consistency on stuff like para and slow, you'll see the curve of miss/hit much easier this way and the MND helps you overcome not only the skill needed in it's place, it also allows your para and slow to actually mean something instead of para not proccing/wearing early and slow only putting a very low % onto mob.

[Nirokun!]

im calling BS on this widely-accepted, never proven, 320skill/120int to rule the world.

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/3...alskilldz1.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/322/noresistmt2.jpg

i dont have problems with resists, 338/348 skill, 12 macc, 97-102 int (and if i got merc. cape, i would wear that too )

[drwaffles]

im calling BS on this widely-accepted, never proven, 320skill/120int to rule the world.

It's not an exact statement, far from it. It's an extremely rough guideline for the kinds of numbers at which people begin seeing a good rate of unresisted nukes. I personally use 334 Skill and around 150 INT in order to see a definite improvement in resist rates over those who stick religiously to Skill. They're just intended as ballpark figures for BLMs that want to know how to see nukes landing for full damage more than once every five casts.

[Not Kuno]

My "standard nuking" setup has 77+52 int (129), with 5 M.Acc and 12MAB (not counting staves). My HNM setup isn't much different but I usually replace some of the lower int pieces with skill (ie. af2 hat, torque etc).

[Seditedi]

Not enough INT on Nirokun's set imo.
Ouryu is a good testing ground.
I actually prefer Mahatma Hpl. over Genie Weskit for nuking CoP Wyrms.

I used to use a similar set as Niro's for HNM in 2005.. but since I switched to a High INT/slightly lower Elemental Skill set I've seen much much better results.

[drwaffles]

Niro's setup will give good results, the only changes I'd strongly recommend making would be Tamas/Snow Ring in place of the Balrahn's and Morrigan's/Mahatma Slops in place of the Seraweels. It's a real leap of faith to go from using, say, Genie Weskit to using Houppelande, and a lot of people aren't comfortable trying it since their results are already fine.

[Nirokun!]

i nuke ouryu fine lol

[Suiram]

INT and MAB both affect damage, a rough formula is 2 MAB= 1 INT, +/- 1 damage on a tier IV, most of the time, but if you check the damage formula you'll see that the effect of INT depends on your MAB and vice-versa.

The relative benefits of adding MAB depends on how much MAB you already have, and nothing else. For adding INT it depends on the spell, how much INT you have, and how much INT your target has and nothing else. The more MAB you have lessens the benefit from adding more. The more INT you have, the lower the INT your target has, the lower tier the spell you are using and the higher level a spell is within the tier you are using, all lessen the benefit from from adding more INT.

In the formula, you multiply int by mab. So mab does depends on INT. If you only count INT and mab the formula is something like

(base dmg + 2x dINT)x(1+mab/100)

+1 mab doesn't have the same effect if you have 10 dint or 11 dint, same for int.

Of course if the base damage of your spell is higher and you add MAB you'll do more overall damage than adding the same MAB to a lower lvl spell or against a stronger opponent. But that's not a measurement of the bonus you got from MAB, it's a measurement of the bonus from whatever you did to increase your base damage in the two different instances (different spell, different target, more INT). As I said above, the only thing that affects the relative benefit is the amount of MAB you already had. If you have no MAB and you add MAB+5, that's a 5% increase in damage. Whether the previous damage of your spell was 500 and you're now doing 525, or whether it was 2000 and you're now doing 2100, it's still a 5% increase in damage. If you have 50 MAB then adding the same amount becomes a 3.33% increase in damage, and previous 500s become 516s, previous 2000s become 2066s, etc.

Likewise for INT, if you are fighting something with the same INT as you, and then add 20 more INT, you're going to be doing 7.9% more damage on Blizzard 4, 7.4% on Thunder 4, 5.6% on AM2, and 4.3% more on Thundaga 3, as examples, regardless of how much MAB you had. Of course as in the other case, the actual numeric value of your damage will be greater if your other bonuses like MAB or having a HQ staff are greater, but that's not relevant to comparing the increases in INT.

As for 320skill/120INT or any other hard rules like that, I've never followed them personally nor espoused them, although I do imagine BLMs often land somewhere in that neighborhood when they are fighting the same things, provided they mess around with their gear until they are most satisfied with their output, as I do. I definitely think people should not be so dogmatic about something as unverified as that, though.

[Kerberoz]

http://66.221.121.71/kerberoz/resistgear.png

I use that on "resistant" mobs and hardly ever resist, without "stacking" anything, really. 128 INT, 329/339 ele skill. Used to use nashira feet, but I can't tell any difference in resist rate between those and goliard, so I stick with goliard now. I don't see the point in making huge sacrifices like elemental earring or druid/nashira pants, or taking sorc ring off... or ridiculous "superINT" theorists nuking tiamat in prudence torques...

I really doubt 320ele/120int is some "special" tier; it's just where people end up when they balance their gear out.

[_chuchu]

^ winner. I have a similar resist setup. I hate seeing blms at hnms nuking in Elite Beret, Druid slops, etc.

[Kaeko]

Setup I use for "skill gear" is very close to Kerb's and comes out the same Elemental Skill and INT.

If you don't have all the rare gear, I would suggest hitting 330ish skill then stacking INT. I'm not a believer is 320/120 but I don't have any evidence other than my personal experience to suggest 330 elemental skill (and probably around only 100-105 INT) is better than 320/120.