Merits for GEO and SMN: suggestions?

[Sechs]

Uhm... I was using my Physical BP gear for Flaming Crush, wow...

[Trumpy]

I did about 5 flaming crushes with physical and then magical and i got bout the same numbers (on mandies outside of town) I dont have that higher level delve ammo satchel yet or the epensive pet mab staff, just uffrat. I am not sure what to do for this one.

[Tachi]

Because of the randomness of the 2 first hits you will hardly notice a difference without a (very) huge amount of MAB.

[Byrthnoth]

Or it could be bullshit? Where is the proof?

The information was added by Rakshaka in 2010 with no description. Use it on something physically immune for low amounts of damage and I'd consider believing it.

[fantasticdan]

Jinpu works the same way, so it wouldn't be surprising if true. Jinpu is also the only thing with a similar description afaik (multihit + elemental.)

[Darkmagi]

Also his numbers shouldn't be possible without that magical element.

[Byrthnoth]

Hmm... well, it would explain the mysterious "Ifrit killed me with Flaming Crush" glitch they had going on for a while with Brulo.

[Tachi]

Burning Strike / Flaming Crush will produce 0 damage on a target immune to physical damage. However on a monster like Melo Melo inside his shell you will see a bizzare "Ifrit recovers xxx HP." message + the NM regaining his life.
I have already given a good exemple of how Burning Strike work and it's not hard to do tests in Abyssea with atmas/mab gear, I can reach above 300 MAB in Abyssea and the difference become pretty significant. I'm a little surprised by your first post Byrthnoth, if it was addressed to me.

[Byrthnoth]

Sorry, I thought we were just pulling it from the wiki link.

[ChronicCettness]

Sorry, I thought we were just pulling it from the wiki link.

Regardless... Hagondes Cuffs Augment Pet MAB +20 ... wooooo only took 24 attempts before i actually landed on a MAB augment... now just need to max its value..

+218 MAB for pet at the moment...

[fantasticdan]

Burning Strike / Flaming Crush will produce 0 damage on a target immune to physical damage. However on a monster like Melo Melo inside his shell you will see a bizzare "Ifrit recovers xxx HP." message + the NM regaining his life.
I have already given a good exemple of how Burning Strike work and it's not hard to do tests in Abyssea with atmas/mab gear, I can reach above 300 MAB in Abyssea and the difference become pretty significant. I'm a little surprised by your first post Byrthnoth, if it was addressed to me.

Iirc jinpu also does 0 damage against a pld during invincible. In these cases physical immunities just seem to block the entire attack (because the physical comes first?).

I remember weird stuff used to happen in the chatlog with jinpu against stuff that absorbed (wind)magic like puks. You would expect the physical hit to do damage, and the wind hit to be absorbed, producing damage somewhere between break even and fairly crappy, which is what happens going by the the mobs hp bar, but in the chatlog you would see some crazy numbers. Like really high damage, higher than if you would have just hit a normal mob that doesn't absorb anything (my guess is it was adding together physical damage + wind damage that would have been done + wind that was absorbed and showing that number for some reason), or you would see a simple 'monster absorbs x damage' message despite the mobs health going down a bit during the ws.

[Fwahm]

FFXIclopedia lists Jinpu's magical damage as being based on the physical damage. If that's true, it's probably skillchain like, where the magic portion's base damage is some percentage of the physical damage, and is then multiplied by MAB or INT or whatever. That would explain them doing 0 damage to physical immune monsters.

[Dotsudoku]

Can't really speak to what this information would be useful for, but RUN/NIN and PLD/NIN should be able to answer most of our questions about the hits on an individual basis. Use a specific number of shadows to determine which, if not all hits are being absorbed by Liement/negated by Sforzo. Do the same to determine which, if not all hits are being negated by Invincible

[Lilsoulreaver]

I've been playing FFXI for a very long time. However, I've been out of the game for awhile due to time limitations. I'm reading this thread and seeing some very interesting comments. 14k Flaming Crush? The highest I've ever been able to get it is 9-10k and that's in Abyssea with 3 MAB/Fire atmas equipped. Apparently I've been missing quite a bit. I have full AF3+2, Full MAB Magian Staff, and pretty much the best gear you could get for SMN up until Abyssea. However, I have not been able to spend much time on any content since. So basically what I'm looking for is updated gear sets post AF3+2. I've seen some of the new weapons from Adoulin with crazy 200+ attack rates, and MAB +120 and the such, so I'm a ways from that. But I use Mag attacks a lot more than physical. More consistant damage, they are ranged which is Ideal for soloing which I primarily do. I'm 5/5 for Shiva because I find her to be one of the best solo'ing avatars due to her Ice Spikes. But now I see a lot of people boasting a combo with Ramuh. Any insight on how that works would be useful as well. I want to get back into the game, but I need a goal to shoot for. Giving me some gear sets to boost my SMN so that I can start breaking this 10k+ damage threshold would be greatly appreciated.

[Malithar]

Balsam Staff + 5/5 Hagondes Coat set (Here's a link to the full set and augments, up to +25 avatar MAB per piece) with Avatar: MAB+ augments + ilvl 113 Dashavatara Sachet Ammo.

Thats about all thats new, that comes to mind. Bokwus Circlet is +10 Avatar MAB as well. No idea on what's best to use with old gear, but thats about all thats new for Smn.

[Lilsoulreaver]

It's a good wish list to start with, thank you. Now to start looking for a Linkshell I can get this stuff with.

[Sechs]

Balsam is crafted and you can get it off the AH.
Hagondes is from Skirmish, a 6men event and drop rate of the items is pretty high. The "hard" part is getting good augments, but if you wanna play cheap you can just spam NQ stones and still get decent augments.
Lots of shouts for "Yorcia Skirmish" (it's the one Hagondes stuff drops from), just join one of them.

Don't really need a LS for any of these mentioned items.

[Malithar]

Of note, you'd prolly need a LS, some good friends to back you up, or a lucky shout group to get the Satchet. TBH I don't even know which KI grants access to it, but I think its something in Foret, prolly T4-5.

[Terravcota]

Sachet is Ceizak 4/5. Isn't there a bayld lower one? Might be something to look into to hold you over until you can get the clear and the plasm to buy the other.

Edit: Convocaller - Craggy Bluff @ Peackeeper's Coalition. 30k Bayld.

[Teratron]

I've been hoping to ask about SMN merits. I'm an old WAR who just came back a couple months ago after 5 years away. I'm still trying to figure out this new game that's using the FFXI name.

SMN is the job I had been trying to work on when I had to quit in '08, and it's what I've most been looking forward to doing while I was gone. Since coming back, I've taken it from 40 to 99, and am now desperately trying to catch up. I've barely gotten my feet wet in Adoulin content, so I'm a little out of my depth trying to compare the merit recommendations I've found (which all come from pre-Adoulin days) to what little I know of Adoulin content. So I'd really appreciate a little more info.

For Cat. 1, the recommendation I most often saw was 5 PAcc and 5 MAtt. The reasoning for that was essentially a process of elimination. Casting time can be useful but generally doesn't affect performance. PAtt supposedly had basically no effect. And Avatar magical BPs were accurate enough that MAcc was wasted.

I'm now questioning the reasoning for not meriting PAtt or MAcc. Going by the Monster / Avatar / Pet damage thread, I'm guessing the assumptions about PAtt were based on faulty tests where pDIF was capped due solely to level difference. And I've seen many comments from mages about how MAcc is needed in great quantities against Adoulin mobs, so I'm wondering if the statement that Avatar magical BPs are accurate enough still holds true.

With where I'm at right now (SMN 99, Convocaller, working on Empyrean gear & misc accessories), my lv 70 BPs are still easily outperforming my merit BPs. Based on the gaudy numbers I'm seeing here, I'm assuming that ceases to be true once you collect enough of the new Avatar: MAB gear? If so, I'm guessing that it would make sense to go 5 MAcc and 5 MAtt. Is that correct, or is there something I'm still missing?

For Cat 2, I currently have 1 in each of the 6 BPs, and I intend to keep those. I'm just not sure where to spend my other 4 upgrades. I realize that Ramuh and Garuda are both very useful due to their Wards, so I think I'm leaning toward upgrading one or both of them. Are there any particular elements or other Rage/Ward combos that are particularly useful these days? Or anything else worth considering? Or is it really entirely personal preference here? (Yes, I do realize merits are much easier to come by these days, but I'm also working on getting all my meriting done in general, since I never even finished my WAR-specific merits way back when.)