Saline Coat & Magic Def. Bonus

[fantasticdan]

what is the duration of Saline coat?

One minute, meaning you would need fifteen blus with max diffusion if you wanted to keep the effect on full time, good luck with that one.

Should we also tell WARs to stop using Aggressor and Berserk because they aren't up 100% of the time?

How is that even relevant? Berserk and aggressor always help a war deal more total damage, saline coat does not help your (dead) tanks when you are waiting on diffusion timers. It also isn't going to make you survive anything with a paltry 10MDB towards the end of the duration. Say you had five max diffusion blus in rotation, that would mean you only have +30-50MDB active around 15% of the time. Take into account the blus that will die from running into range just to cast saline coat, it will probably be less.

And has anyone even tried to test if meteor damage is reduced by MDB? Many magic attacks are not.

[Sylvrdragon]

Should we also tell WARs to stop using Aggressor and Berserk because they aren't up 100% of the time?

Well you see, Oranges have a more tangy flavor really, and the texture is typically very squishy and juicy, while the apple has more of a sour/sweetish flavor and seems to be all around much more dense and sometimes even crunchy... hmm, This isn't working.

[divisortheory]

How is that even relevant? Berserk and aggressor always help a war deal more total damage, saline coat does not help your (dead) tanks when you are waiting on diffusion timers. It also isn't going to make you survive anything with a paltry 10MDB towards the end of the duration.

Throw away your Defending Rings folks, it's not going to make you survive anything with a paltry -10% damage reduction.

[fantasticdan]

Except we're specifically talking about surviving AV nukes, which an additional 10MDB will not suddenly allow you to live through.

[divisortheory]

Except we're specifically talking about surviving AV nukes, which an additional 10MDB will not suddenly allow you to live through.

Except we're also talking about a combination of things stacking up, including:

a) Saline Coat
b) Magic Def Bonus from gear
c) Possible Aegis
d) Shell
e) Magus Roll

If his nuke is going to do 2000 and you have +20 from Magus Roll, +5 from gear, +10 from Saline Coat, and Shell V then that's

(2000 * .75) / 1.35 = 1111

OMG survivable, crazy how that works. If you bring an Aegis in then you're down to only 740. That's with no resist, but since you have Bareara and Wind Carol plus various pieces of Wind Resist equip you're probably getting partial resists sometimes as well, bringing it down to the 500ish range.

[fantasticdan]

According to that math, with just those buffs/aegis minus 10MDB saline coat, pld would only be taking 800 damage anyway, which is obviously survivable, and only a difference of 60 dmg... If the key to defeating AV was that simple, AV would already be beatable.

People have tried wind resist builds on av with no success(maybe works better with ninja'd resist update?), and obviously they aren't going to do shit against comet/meteor. And IIRC I've also seen AV posts on this forum where people have tried magus roll and mdb build with aegis, and obviously there was no success there either. I don't think the survivability of the plds per spell is as much an issue as the speed at which it keeps casting, and survivability of the group as a whole, including the support keeping them alive, and the players doing damage to it (and benediction)....

A somewhat interesting idea IMO would be using an army of saline coated, shell v'd MDB geared blus to DD with cannonball from a mid-distance, while outside healers stand further out of meteor range to heal the blus when the get nailed be meteor. Than do the same thing with healing, MDB geared rdm/whm/pld/blu's healing the main pld tanks from a distance, with more healers much farther outside of meteor range supporting them if/when they get hit. Brd and cor that get swapped in could do as much MDB and magic -% as they could as well to increase the chance of survival while trying to get their buffs off.

However surviving means nothing if you can't stop benediction, and if you stop benediction you probably stop manafont/chainspell, which eliminates all this comet/meteor discussion.

[Spekkio]

I don't think the survivability of the plds per spell is as much an issue as the speed at which it keeps casting, and survivability of the group as a whole, including the support keeping them alive, and the players doing damage to it

i think this is really hitting the nail on the head. i don't doubt that stacking vast sums of magic protection and damage reduction would have a dramatic effect on the damage. hell, it works with citadel buster. the problem is that as you reach 79%, he just goes wild, casting back to back massive damage nukes. while you might be able to get your pld through an instacast meteor, preceded by a comet for the same sum will be very hard to survive. even ignoring the benediction problem, he just attacks so fast and so aggressively, i somehow doubt it would be enough. that's not to say it won't work. this is only my intuition. i just fear that if you try it, you're going to be disappointed.

on the other hand, i think that MDB might get a lot of mileage on AV, since it's not at all unreasonable to assume that his blm job gives him a +MAB trait. at blm 70, (i'm assuming it computes his buffs based on his level and assuming that it gives him blm JTs. this may or may not be correct.) a player gets +32 MAB, thus making the magic damage to a mob with no MDB 132/100 or 32% stronger, roughly. adding 1 point of MDB to that target will cause a roughly 1.3% reduction in damage from the same nuke. assuming he does have that much MAB or more, the effect of MDB, at least for the first 20-30 points (maybe further, you can compute it more exactly if you like) will likely produce a fairly stunning effect.

[divisortheory]

I don't think the survivability of the plds per spell is as much an issue as the speed at which it keeps casting, and survivability of the group as a whole, including the support keeping them alive, and the players doing damage to it (and benediction)....

Since a viable theory has already been presented on the first page of this forum about how to reduce the casting speed and/or prevent AV from using certain 2 hours and spells, it's worthwhile to assume that 2 hours are no longer the problem, and instead look at other ways to increase the efficiency of the fight. That way when someone goes to actually fight AV, they can be prepared for whatever happens.

i think this is really hitting the nail on the head. i don't doubt that stacking vast sums of magic protection and damage reduction would have a dramatic effect on the damage. hell, it works with citadel buster. the problem is that as you reach 79%, he just goes wild, casting back to back massive damage nukes. while you might be able to get your pld through an instacast meteor, preceded by a comet for the same sum will be very hard to survive. even ignoring the benediction problem, he just attacks so fast and so aggressively, i somehow doubt it would be enough. that's not to say it won't work. this is only my intuition. i just fear that if you try it, you're going to be disappointed.

Obviously you will need to find a way to stop the comet/meteor spam, but since a way might have already been found to do that, I'm not considering it an issue.