Equipment swappingFollow

Now this isnt a thread about equipment swaping macros.

My question to all of you, is what amount of gear swaping do you think is nessecary, good, excellent, or pointless.

In my opinion it goes something like this in order of importance

1.Swaping out brd instraments for thier coresponding song.

2.elemental staff swaping: Macro in ice staff for blizzard spells, fire staff for fire spells. Also macro in ice staff for paralyze, or other staffs for the appropriate debuffs.

3.Macro in gear while resting such as a dark staff, seers tunic, and baron slacks. (maybe a cookie too).

4.Macro in defence gear for when you get hate. I.E. switch seers gear w/ holy breastplate + crow gear when you get hate.

5.Macroing mnd+ or int+ gear when debuffing the mob. I.E. mnd+ for paralyze+slow and int+ for sleep+blind. Also chr+ gear for a brd.

6.Macro in some gear for your WS/JA. Like exchanging life belt and snipers rings for a swordbelt and str+ rings for WS. Also swaping out your snippers + life belt for dex+ rings and a swordbelt when doing sneak attack.

7.Swaping out gear when you go out pulling. Like some crow gear for the added evasion should help your shadows out.

Do you guys think that there are other times to swap out gear, or do you think that swaping gear is pointless. At what point does all this gear swapping have diminishing returns(I.e. 16 pieces of gear to do 1 more dmg on WS.)

I'd put that as #1 personally. Not equipping at least the dark staff when heeling really hurts your parties downtime more than anything.

Oh, and as a BST I'm swapping gear all the time. First have macros to swap in charm gear, and another for attack gear, and another for Gaudy Harness when I need the refresh, and another for my alternate weapon (when I want to switch back and forth between scythe and axe for skilling up purposes based on the mobs level).

Edited, Wed Oct 19 11:38:51 2005 by jmakovec

As a lv 60+ Samurai/Thief, gear swapping is the name of the game.

SAMS final 3 wepon skills are heavily modified by STR, and i swap in as much STR as possible before I SATA/WS. As far as my scenerio goes, i dont think there is a point when adding more gear stops becoming useful.

Of couse due to macro length, you are kind of limited to 6 gear swaps.

Edit: typo

Edited, Wed Oct 19 11:46:24 2005 by Shuurai

Slightly off-topic:

As a 66 RDM I do so much gear swapping during your normal XP session it's not even funny. What I would LOVE to see added to this game is a way to make all my equip swaps take up a single macro line. I know this will never happen since it is technically a stone's throw away from opening the door to massive macro-scripting and botting...but seriously, I need to swap so much gear depending on the spell being cast (MND-enfeeble, INT-enfeeble, elemental spell, dark spell, healing spell, enhancing spell, etc.) that having 5 lines of swaps PLUS the /ma line is just not enough. Even if I could only combine 4 swaps in one slot, that still leaves 5 lines per macro to do the rest of my swapping and actually cast the damn spell. For that matter let's take it one step further: restrict it to equipment that doesn't cause your character to "blink"...rings, earrings, cape, belt. That would be so money.

And before anyone says that much swapping is not necessary: of course it isn't, strictly speaking. But I am trying to be the most effective red mage I can be, not some slack-*** halfwit with one set of gear for all occasions. There's a reason my enfeebles are unresisted more than 85% of the time, and it isn't luck. If I could get my magic effectiveness to closer to 95%, I would be happy....well, happier, heheh.

since they wont do single line multi-swaps they could actually add in 16 extra lines at the bottom of each macro set that are dedicated to each body part, thus keeping their wacky reasoning for a 6 line macro intact while still alowing a full equipment swap in each macro.

ie : can only put head items in the "head line", chosen from your inventory list so you cant even type it in.

line 1-6 editable macros
line 7 : head
line 8 : body
line 9 : waist
..... etc.

Basically I swap equip on every job I have, it's an easy way to improve your play in pts without improving your skill as a player (if that makes any sense). I've found over time that certain swaps are essential and others non-essential. (IMHO)

RNG: Swaps for acc / dmg / str and mnd. Swaps for acc are relatively self-explanatory: if you miss Sidewinder/slugshot you need more acc, swaps for dmg / str are not the same thing, I swap STR rings to built tp and run towards the mob if I'm in a 'tp burn' pt, and DMG gear to do more dmg per shot if my ranged acc is not a concern. The nice little semi-secret swap I do on RNG is MND gear, which GREATLY increases the effects of all status bolts, yes this means that with a ton of +MND gear you can take that +6 add effect of holy bolts and make it 50. I'm not kidding, it's that high. Being taru with low mind it's night / day if I take on/off my mnd gear when using the Obow, elvaan (maybe even hume) might not see this huge diff, but I did. +25 MND with swap in, and add effect ranged from 30-55 on weapons in sky. And of course macro in the AF for the JA it enhances.

BRD: Oh the equip nightmare job. "To use all +1 instruments or not to use all +1 instruments, that is teh question." Well for 69 levels I was a 'purist' using the +1 instrument (Or rare equivalent) for every song. Then one day I needed to 'hot swap' in a pt from RNG to BRD and didn't have time to grab all my gear. What I found made me /cry after all the lost things I had from having full inv. space. Basically the only swaps you 'need' on BRD are elemental staves for songs you cast on a mob, and the +1 for those songs. The reason I say this, is that the +time added even with +2 song is so low, it makes no difference to a good brd anyway. (If you're the kind of brd that lets your songs go off of pt maybe this helps you) but for me I have a sequence I do when I pull sing melee songs, sing mage songs, rinse repeat. So the +song was doing nothing for me. Elemental staves with threnody are great if you are a threnody addict (which i am) and earth staff for elegy makes it near 100% stick if you have even decent +CHR.

THF: Pretty straight forward, acc gear for TP build, balance of AGI STR and DEX for WS. Invauable, as anything other than mithra I'd guess. As hume this kind of swapping make me 'mithra-like' at lower lvls. Being able to build tp as quick as any other job (Besides a good SAM or RNG) and doing very high dmg WS and SATAs.

DRK: Same kinda thing with acc and dmg for tp build and STR for WS, but it also depends on what food you use. My only little secret for DRK was using INT up items for dark magic spells, this helps a ton if you don't happen to be taru, and if you are basically makes it a sure thing.

BST: The swapmaster. Lvling bst from 1-57 I had a set for acc, def, charm, +MP, and ws. And even a pallate of blend macros if none of those went well. This job is where I saw the beauty of swapping become utter magic, with acc gear and STR WS I could raise my xp per hour dramatically, and with +charm / CHR stuff I nearly never failed charm, and the charm lasted a very very long time. (I happen to be one of those unlucky critcal fail bsts, no equip can fix that. lol) Being alone most of the time, or in small bst pts the wealth of equip you have can easily mean the difference between life / death on a minute to minute basis. If I had to pick just 2 swaps it would be tp and charm, if I were limited on space.

RDM/WHM: Yes the staves / MND / INT gear for debuffs. If you play these jobs hopefully you understand the massive importance if keeping a mob debuffed. What I did notice is if I debuffed with a very high MND with WHM debuffs as RDM or WHM, not only did it stick more often, but the effect of paralyze seemed to happen much more often. I'm not sure if this is confirmed but it sure helped me in some not so hot pts where paralyze going off alot and slow sticking meant the difference between chain #3 or no chain at all.

WAR: DEF STR TP and Emnity for warcry / provoke if you are having trouble pulling hate off a very good tank during a switch-hate SC. AF for the emnity if you don't wanna buy rings / earrings.

PLD: VIT CHR/emnity and +MP. CHR / Emnity to voke / flash, VIT to tank and MP to macro in for start of fight and macro out with the excess mp is used. The +CHR / emnity is a very helpful thing if you have dumb BLM or trigger happy melee in your pt. The +MP may only give you an extra flash and Cure II but, as PLD you know that might mean life or death. Also obviously the AF gear that enhances the JAs you have.

BLM: INT +elemental skill and +magic attk bonus. I'm not an expert BLM, but as taru what I've noticed lvling to 61 is that a good blend of these helps, not really maxxing out one unless you fight IT250 base mobs, which are rarely good xp per hour except in those nearly-non-existant super-pts. Personally I only macro'd in the staves for the element of the spell I was casting as BLM, left the other gear static. Dmg increase for each staff and the reduction in spell resistance is A-MAZ-ING. Get 'em.

NIN: My personal fav. macro-fest. INT for Ninjutsu, acc for tp, def for when shadows go down, str / attk for WS, evasion for hard / higher mobs, attk for lower / easier stuff, emnity in heavy dd pts, the list goes on. The biggest advantages in all these combos I've seen is the +dmg on elemental Ni's when using full +INT, 120-130 vs. 80. You do the math, lol. +emnity helps alot, and I think that it's the best swap a NIN can have. +evasion seems to help alot vs. VT and barely IT. IT++ seems to make no difference whatsoever. Attk / STR for WS is invaluable b/c without it, NIN WS can be weak as hell, but with it we can do decent WSs. VIT and DEF is a personal preference thing, we have such awful VIT / DEF to start with it's not a huge jump but everything helps. If nothing else make a macro for taking out those snipers when you're getting pounded. Maybe you'll live to see another mob.^^

Other jobs upon request, these are just my fav. swap-jobs.

Personally, I dislike the current equip-switch system. It discourages building a balanced gear set, and encourages having to carry two or three of everything in order to optimize your performance. Overall, I'd have preferred that the game not allow it. That said, it's there, and it would be silly not to use it at least a little.

A little word of warning for anyone who uses equipment swaps...

When you do this your HEALER will lose the lock, not every whm uses the macro to bring up the selector curser on the party list... I personally found it to be slower to toss out cures using it.

IF you are the tank fighing something big and nasty... (something that can kill you very fast) I wouldn't suggest using them.

I bring this up because My LS does GOD battles, HNM's & ENM's all the time, and many a tank has died because of it, swap for provoke, swap back after macro...

macroing in mind and int gear and elemental staffs is about the same priority,and for mages is very very important. Its can mean 10-20 int or mind as well as the staff bonuses.

In balista it does. I swap all the time too,but I think they need to fix this.

On the 'reality' issue:

SE recently changed RNG using a gun to do less dmg if it's point blank.

Can't really see how they are moving towards reality.

Edited, Fri Oct 21 17:51:03 2005 by Sephir

thf ftw