Fully meritted Focalization vs. Elemental Seal

[Keyln]

So, a question that I've been wondering about is how does a fully meritted Focalization (+25 M. Acc) fares against Elemental Seal. Is a fully meritted Focalization still weaker against Elemental Seal? Stronger? The same?

Just an FYI, Elemental Seal does overwrite Focalization (but that doesn't mean it's better or stronger), so the two can not be used at the same time.

Has any testing been done in this regard?

[Maxxthepenguin]

25 Macc is far, far weaker than Ele Seal. +100 Macc would be a reasonable estimation for Ele Seal.

[Neosutra]

+100 Macc isnt even compariable to ES, considering my pld/blm can land sleepga on Einherjar mobs with ES up.

[BRP]

+200 Magic Accuracy, at least, I would think

[Ultimagi]

Pretty sure its not Magic Accuracy, but a solid guarantee that your next spell will land. Resist traits seem to bypass Elemental Seal though.

[TacoTaru]

It's just over 9000.

Spoiler: show

I couldn't help myself.

[Keyln]

So, the Elemental Seal is just an ability to bypass resistance? Is there a case where resistance happened even with Elemental Seal up?

[miokomioko]

I think the only thing that bypasses Elemental Seal is when a mob is gaining gradual resistant to something over multiple casts, like Sleep duration.

[BlackMoomba]

If the mob is 100% immune to something, even with ES, it's not landing. The same works for landing the spell. If it's not 100% immune, your landing the spell.

[Darkdoom]

So, the Elemental Seal is just an ability to bypass resistance? Is there a case where resistance happened even with Elemental Seal up?

I've only ever seen ES resisted on things that are already immune to the spell, otherwise it seems to pretty much guarantee the spells success.

[Alathar]

In my experience ES guarantees the spell landing with full accuracy. The only exception to this is usually if a resist trait procs. For example, last week I was doing Einherjar and we got Logi (BLM bombs). I used ES sleepga II and 5/7 resisted. Now I haven't done much sky god debuffing but I've heard that for example Suzaku has a chance of outright resisting ES silence or ES bind or whatever. In this case it's another case of just an inate resistance of the mob to certain magic.

[Sephoroth]

ele seal is NOT 100% accurate on stuff the spell can land on, its more like 95%

[Yugl]

I heard resists on GNMs (Haven't fought those in forever) and on regular mobs in combination with 1k Needles can still occur.

[Virtuous Saint]

Pretty sure its not Magic Accuracy, but a solid guarantee that your next spell will land. Resist traits seem to bypass Elemental Seal though.

That is 100% false, as the person above stated, it is not 100% acc, not even 95%. ES is some weird increase to magic acc we will never know. ES silence suzaku you will land it very rarely with or without ES. Also ES can even fail on normal mobs, I have ES nuked things and gotten resisted a million times, and no I am not talking against something's elemental resistance or -magical damage taken, just straight up half resists due to getting half resists.

[pchan]

Pretty sure its not Magic Accuracy, but a solid guarantee that your next spell will land. Resist traits seem to bypass Elemental Seal though.

No, check the in-game description. "Enhances the accuracy of you next spell". Considering it bypasses the 5% landing rates, it's at least 135 magic accuracy, 90 to go from 5% to 50% and 45 to go from 50 to 95%. Now considering it lets whms land slow on odin, and considering whm gimped skill, it's at least 50 magic acc more, so 200+.

[Jeryhn]

My guess is Elemental Seal gives near-guaranteed accuracy to your next spell (most likely a very high percentage increase based on your current magical accuracy). However, resistance to elements and status are applied after the accuracy of ES is calculated.

Take Suzaku, who seems to have an exceptionally high resistance to Silence. ES certainly makes landing the spell easier, but its resistance is so high (and applied after the increase to accuracy) that using ES to land silence is a pretty bad idea... unless you're trying to use it as a last-ditch method to stop Chainspell mode.

Meanwhile, landing Slow/Elegy on something like Cerb or Khim is largely hit-or-miss... ES is not always needed, but both monsters have a demonstrated resistance to the Slow effect. However, its not comparable to Sukazu's ability resist Silence, therefore ES is very beneficial to use in tandem with Slow/Elegy on these mobs.

Basically, the only thing that will really prove to be problematic to an ES-enhanced spell is extreme resistance or immunity to the effects of the spell you're trying to cast. To better answer the OP's question, no, Focalization is nowhere near the power of Elemental Seal. In fact, fully merited, it doesn't even seem to match the power of an HQ staff, which increases elemental magic accuracy by about 30% for the associated element (I remember this number coming from Elmer's translation of some Ultimania FFXI equipment guide).

The 5% and 95% resist/accuracy barriers are still in play, of course, which explains why a BRD/WHM can land Silence on Suzaku, or why Kirin can be stunned.

[Gergall]

Elemental Seal is weird. When used to sleep a Wyrm such as Tiamat or Ouryu, their normal sleep resistance does not build up.

ES is some special weird thing and not a simple Macc+X

To answer the OP I don't think there can be any debate: ES is much, much stronger than Focalization.

[Jeryhn]

Elemental Seal is weird. When used to sleep a Wyrm such as Tiamat or Ouryu, their normal sleep resistance does not build up.

ES is some special weird thing and not a simple Macc+X

I'm pretty sure it continues to build up, but ES Sleeps used after build-up aren't effected too much by the increase to Resist trait that begins to build. However, regular Sleeps certainly are affected after-the-fact.

Can see this when you use a bunch of ES Sleeps, but follow it up with a regular Sleep.

[Sifer]

I wouldnt say magic accuracy is capped at 95%, maybe partial resists are 5% but certainly not full resists. Also, when nuking a high level elemental with its element you will notice that you dont do full damage with elemental seal. for example, if you were getting 1/16 resist w/o elemental seal you will get 1/8 or 1/4 resist with it. I think it probably doubles your m.acc.

to OP: elemental seal is alot more potent.

[Jeryhn]

I wouldnt say magic accuracy is capped at 95%, maybe partial resists are 5% but certainly not full resists. Also, when nuking a high level elemental with its element you will notice that you dont do full damage with elemental seal. for example, if you were getting 1/16 resist w/o elemental seal you will get 1/8 or 1/4 resist with it. I think it probably doubles your m.acc.

This has more to do with the elemental in question having an automatic trait of receiving damage from their own element by a large percentage, and little to do with the accuracy-enhancing effects of Elemental Seal.