In my opinion, Meteor is one of the coolest concepts they've added to the game in a while. How useful it is in the end is going to depend heavily on how well players are able to utilize it in actual content. Yugl and I, along with Mischief, Prothescar, and Phaffi (with Kurohoshi as well), Maurauc, and a JP taru named Chere, did some testing over a pretty long period of time. It seems to work approximately like this:
* Spell Base Damage = MAB/MDB*floor(Int + Elemental Magic Skill/6)*3.5 :: closer if you use (3+510/1024) instead of 3
This equation can be up to 6 base damage off. We are very much unsure why, and get damage numbers that should literally be impossible for magic damage as we know it. For instance, Laev + BLM trait + Brew (1100 MAB) yields values ending in 2. Shouldn't be possible.
* This Spell Cannot Resist. We cast it a lot. Not a single thing that could be called a Resist.
* This spell really is non-elemental. Pluto's and the Dark Affinity damage+ Magian stave both did nothing for it.
* Multiple casters contribute damage proportional to their position in the casting order (when their spell completes):
First Caster ::
Second Caster ::
Third Caster ::
Fourth Caster ::
Fifth Caster ::
Sixth Caster :: Leader
Leader:
* Leader, the last caster to complete their spell, gets their damage displayed in their log and has the largest impact on the damage of the spell. See below for more information.
* All of the enmity from the spell's damage is assigned to the leader.
* If the leader interrupts their casting before the spell resolves, it will not do any damage and everyone else will lose MP. It's unclear if this is a glitch or something they intend to fix.
* Casting:
* One person starts casting the spell, but the spell will not resolve until all people in the party have stopped casting it. This means there is no rush to cast and it is totally viable to use a Meteor Order to put your heavy-hitting BLMs at the back. You watch the guy in front of you to go in to the casting animation or show up in the log, and then you start casting.
* Only one party of Black Mages in the alliance can cast this spell at any given time. Other parties attempting to cast it (regardless of the number of Black Mages contributing to the one in progress) will be reset.
* AoE damage:
BGwiki and FFXIclopedia have multiple targets damage adjustment going from 1 -> .85 -> .8 -> .75 -> .7 -> .65 -> etc.
Meteor seems to go 1 -> .8 -> .75 -> .7 -> .65 -> .6 -> etc. It is unclear whether this is unique or an error in the lore.
* Damage from multiple casters:
This appears to scale based on the number of people taking part, the order they cast in, and the damage they would do to a single target (including MAB, Laev Bonus, etc.). There are two methods that I thought of to test this:
1) Use a party of N players with variable damage and rotate through them. This gives us an NxN square matrix that we can solve for coefficients.
2) Use a party of N players with equivalent damage to determine a total multiplier, then have one of them use a brew and cast in a different spot each time.
The first option is obviously easier to coordinate, so that's the one we attempted.
For two people, the results were:
First caster - 1.25
Second caster - 15/16
This had two sets of data behind it with fairly tight fits. It is at the bottom if you want it.
For five people, the results were:
First Caster - 0.75
Second Caster - 1
Third Caster - 1.5
Fourth Caster - 3
Fifth Caster - 6.5 (Leader)
Spoiler: show
Both sets of numbers fit pretty well with the result, including the sixth case that wasn't included in the analysis. Obviously the fit model is more accurate to the data that I have, but I don't feel the precision of my data warrants a departure from pretty numbers.
For six people, the results were:
First Caster - 0.5
Second Caster - 1
Third Caster - 1.5
Fourth Caster - 4
Fifth Caster - 6
Sixth Caster - 6.75 (Leader)
Spoiler: show
These results don't look right at all. You can get an impression that some kind of similar decrease is occurring, but every low-weight value is quite suspect in my opinion. Also, it doesn't fit the excluded seventh trial very well.
I don't know how reliable this method is with the sample difference that we used, but I suspect the answer may be "not very." Method 2 may be required, but SE may also adjust this spell 10 times in the next week.
Here are the multiple caster data, if anyone wants to look at them. The rest of the data is in an excel sheet. Feel free to PM me if you want it.
Random Testimonials:
* With a group of good six BLMs, I would be unsurprised if you could nuke for over 50,000 damage on normal monsters outside Abyssea. We hit over 80k against a Marid in Abyssea with 5/6 Laevs but otherwise sub-optimal gear and with some of us lacking Atma.
* I'll just point this out again. It can't resist, there's no dINT, and the damage is non-elemental. The only terms that affect it for monsters (that we know of) are MDB and MDT. If a normal monster would take 50k damage from your group, Botulus would take 40k damage. Every. Time.