Red Mage Meritpo Builds

[Ksandra]

I wish search worked so I could find that parse that put Blind II on par with Kurayami. Not only does it have the same potency (when fully meritted, I assume) as Kurayami, but also the same priority so it can't overwrite it.

I thought someone did tests inwhich the teir 2 did overwrite it. Oo; Must have mixed it up with slow or something.

[Khamsin]

I wish search worked so I could find that parse that put Blind II on par with Kurayami. Not only does it have the same potency (when fully meritted, I assume) as Kurayami, but also the same priority so it can't overwrite it.

I thought someone did tests inwhich the teir 2 did overwrite it. Oo; Must have mixed it up with slow or something.

I think I recall hearing someone saying something about Slow II being overwritten by Hojo, but after they meritted it up another level, Slow II overwrote Hojo. But I don't know if that's true or not, its just heresay that's been floating around.

[Sci]

Or maybe blind 2 was created so people actually could dodge on hnms.

Not saying that's true or not but not enough rdms out there are willing to cap blind 2 to test it out to see wether it does help or not, so I think a lot of blind 2 talks is more on guessing than any actually testing.

I've seen plenty of testing of full evasion builds on most HNMs and decent results in the past. My only problem with evasion builds is that you lose a lot of enmity and haste. "Y not gear switch u noob?" That's the part I don't like about evasion builds. If you're swapping all the time to enmity to build hate so you're actually tanking, then you lose all the nice evasion. That's why enmity & defense builds compliment each other. If you get hit by MS Tiamat in an evasion gear, you're gonna feel it in the morning. And even if you have a 50% evasion rate, it's not unreasonable for a double attack to go off when you have one shadow and rock you.

In a perfect world you'd have enough inventory for haste, enmity, defense gear, evasion gear, MDB, and elemental resistance builds at once. But it's not going to happen. And to max any of those builds takes a fair amount of gil and effort. I see Blind II being a lot more effective for smaller NMs, not HNMs so much. Like Charybdis or Bune. But I don't really see any NM like that being a huge reason to dump merits that way.

[Ksandra]

I wish search worked so I could find that parse that put Blind II on par with Kurayami. Not only does it have the same potency (when fully meritted, I assume) as Kurayami, but also the same priority so it can't overwrite it.

I thought someone did tests inwhich the teir 2 did overwrite it. Oo; Must have mixed it up with slow or something.

I think I recall hearing someone saying something about Slow II being overwritten by Hojo, but after they meritted it up another level, Slow II overwrote Hojo. But I don't know if that's true or not, its just heresay that's been floating around.

That must be what I heard. There was a lot of rdms wanting to test stuff when the merits first came out, but then it all seemed to lose steam shortly after. Which is why I'm still curious on blind 2.

As the above poster said, slow 2 > blind 2, but slow 2 + blind 2 > just slow 2. And it seems like everyone and their mother is meritting para + slow.

[divisortheory]

With so many people meriting Slow II and Paralyze II, couldn't we get a definitive answer by now about whether Slow II with 3 merits overwrites Hojo, and whether Paralyze II with 3 merits overwrites Jubaku? If both of those overwrite Ninja: Ni, then it's pretty safe to assume Blind II x3 overwrites Kurayami: Ni.

Also, to my knowledge nobody has even merited Blind II past 1 point, so if anyone says its same potency as Kurayami: Ni, I'm assuming that means with 1 merit.

[Sci]

At least Blind potency is fairly simple to measure. With just a party of people, you can fight a Yovra and just wait for it to charm a guinea pig. Blind II them, and wait for charm to wear. Then have them check how much accuracy they lost by checking an Aern and gear swaps. This is all assuming PvP while charmed spell equations are the same as PvE.

[Xajii]

With so many people meriting Slow II and Paralyze II, couldn't we get a definitive answer by now about whether Slow II with 3 merits overwrites Hojo, and whether Paralyze II with 3 merits overwrites Jubaku? If both of those overwrite Ninja: Ni, then it's pretty safe to assume Blind II x3 overwrites Kurayami: Ni.

Also, to my knowledge nobody has even merited Blind II past 1 point, so if anyone says its same potency as Kurayami: Ni, I'm assuming that means with 1 merit.

1. 3 points in either cat doesnt' change the overwrite status of the spell, simply put.

2. Very very naive to say "no one has merited Blind II past 1 point". I'm willing to bet plenty of money someone across all these servers has a full Blind II.

The reason Blind II is vastly overlooked is probably because we're so used to NINs using Kurayami that we never even think about the uses for Blind itself. I'm not interested in meriting it because I think slow and para are more effective enfeebles on high end monsters.

[divisortheory]

2. Very very naive to say "no one has merited Blind II past 1 point". I'm willing to bet plenty of money someone across all these servers has a full Blind II.

Perhaps I should have siad "Nobody who has merited it past 1 point has made any kind of public statement about how effective it is/isn't."

[FFXIFlux]

With so many people meriting Slow II and Paralyze II, couldn't we get a definitive answer by now about whether Slow II with 3 merits overwrites Hojo, and whether Paralyze II with 3 merits overwrites Jubaku? If both of those overwrite Ninja: Ni, then it's pretty safe to assume Blind II x3 overwrites Kurayami: Ni.

Level 1 Slow II overwrites Hojo 1 and 2. Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2. How is that for a definitive answer?

Perhaps I should have siad "Nobody who has merited it past 1 point has made any kind of public statement about how effective it is/isn't."

OMG I put 1 point into it and suddenly the paladins were missed 10% of the time by Fafnir, holy shit! Next day we tried with a ninja tank on Fafnir and the extra 150 evasion a geared ninja had really worked! The ninjas just stopped casting utsusemi after wings because they weren't being hit anyway, and they didn't even have mambo!

Look, people are saying blind II is as effective as ninja blind. You're argueing that theres no point taking merits that will overlap with someone else. Well why would you then argue that there is benefit to takeing blind II when ninjas can already do it, and it's no better than something thats completely ineffective?

[Ksandra]

With so many people meriting Slow II and Paralyze II, couldn't we get a definitive answer by now about whether Slow II with 3 merits overwrites Hojo, and whether Paralyze II with 3 merits overwrites Jubaku? If both of those overwrite Ninja: Ni, then it's pretty safe to assume Blind II x3 overwrites Kurayami: Ni.

Level 1 Slow II overwrites Hojo 1 and 2. Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2. How is that for a definitive answer?

Perhaps I should have siad "Nobody who has merited it past 1 point has made any kind of public statement about how effective it is/isn't."

OMG I put 1 point into it and suddenly the paladins were missed 10% of the time by Fafnir, holy shit! Next day we tried with a ninja tank on Fafnir and the extra 150 evasion a geared ninja had really worked! The ninjas just stopped casting utsusemi after wings because they weren't being hit anyway, and they didn't even have mambo!

Look, people are saying blind II is as effective as ninja blind. You're argueing that theres no point taking merits that will overlap with someone else. Well why would you then argue that there is benefit to takeing blind II when ninjas can already do it, and it's no better than something thats completely ineffective?

But if Blind 2 is stronger than ninja tools then it might not be ineffective...

Again, I'm not saying it'd be the end all be all enfeeble, but it would be nice with someone with maxed out blind 2 to tell us whether or not they see a difference versus nin blind on hnm. I don't do hnm anymore so that's not an option for me to test it. ._.;

[Khamsin]

Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2.

orly

[TsingTao]

Damn, beaten to the punch.

I'd be interested in knoiwing how that testing was performed....

[divisortheory]

You're argueing that theres no point taking merits that will overlap with someone else. Well why would you then argue that there is benefit to takeing blind II when ninjas can already do it, and it's no better than something thats completely ineffective?

When I see testing from someone who has Blind II merited thrice, and when that testing suggests to me that it's on par with Kurayami, I won't argue it anymore. But just hearing you assert it doesn't do much to convince me.

Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2.

orly

ffxiclopedia.org agrees with that statement, although obviously it coudl be wrong.

[Septimus]

Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2.

orly

ffxiclopedia.org agrees with that statement, although obviously it coudl be wrong.

I thought Jubaku: Ni wasn't in the game for players.

[Khamsin]

Level 1 Paralyze II overwrites Jubaku 1 and 2.

orly

ffxiclopedia.org agrees with that statement, although obviously it coudl be wrong.

I thought Jubaku: Ni wasn't in the game for players.

Unless there's some place that has both NIN mobs that use Jubaku: Ni, and mobs capable of charming you (or Colibri that can be loaded with a Virelei and charmed/released), there shouldn't be a definitive answer to that question.

[divisortheory]

oops, got the names confused lol. Thought it was talking about Hojo for a second. Anyway, ffxiclopedia says Slow II overwrites Hojo: Ni, although not sure if it means for level 1, 2, and 3, or just for 2+, or 3 only.

[Damen]

Did some tests with Blind II (LV1) outside on Colibris.

5 Easy Prey Colibris:
Evasion skill 233
No enfeebles used
+40 evasion+ equips
Avoid% 55.26% 2 Parries included

5 Easy Prey Colibris:
Evasion Skill 233
Blind II used Enfeebling Skill 284
+0 evasion+ equips used
Avoid% 36.84% 5 parries included

5 Easy Prey Colibris (had a NIN friend help me <3 MoS)
Evasion Skill 233
Kurayami: Ni used
+0 evasion+ equips used
Avoid% 55.74% 3 parries included

5 Easy Prey Colibris:
Evasion Skill 233
Blind I used Enfeeble Skill 284
+0 evasion equips used
Avoid% 40.01% 2 Parries included

Finding that blind one seemed to be stronger than Blind II being odd, I reran the Blind II Test

5 Easy Prey Colibris:
Evasion Skill 233
Blind II used Enfeebling Skill 284
+0 evasion+ equips used
Avoid% 46.84% 4 parries included


/shrug

[inafume]

Lesser Colibris have a level range. They aren't all created equal. Besides, you didn't run the same tests with no enfeebles and no evasion gear.

Go hang out with Hobgoblin Anglers and run the same tests. They are the only EP+ non-NM I can think of that doesn't have a level range (all the pops are always the same level). They will be T or VT, so probably want to bring your NIN friend along and have him tank them.

[cassiraa]

Or do all the tests on a single colibri without engaging.

That'll eliminate the possibility of Parrying and differing mob levels.

Just wait for xxx to wear off and test it with the next set.

[Damen]

Or do all the tests on a single colibri without engaging.

That'll eliminate the possibility of Parrying and differing mob levels.

Just wait for xxx to wear off and test it with the next set.

I originally tried that, but my parser doesn't update unless the mob is killed. Colibri's don't have a huge level gap, only 63-65. Nevertheless its possible that could have skewed results, but again this was just a preliminary test. Take it for what its worth lol.

My conclusion: The new enfeebles in my opinion were designed by SE to address the issue that so many RDMs have bitched about over the years: Mostly, having Melee/WHM being able to land enfeebles better or equal than Red main on HNMs. I don't really think they were designed to be super enfeebles, but to just give RDMs a place in the HNM scene other than Refresh, Cure spam, + make a sad attempt to enfeeble.

Whatever, slow II rocks.