Trial-by-fire camps for White MagesFollow

I'm not planning on being a career White Mage, but I want to get the most out of the job while leveling it. I want to use it as a learning experience, so I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend the next ten levels syncing in Qufim.

As a level 28 White Mage, where are some places I can take a party that will really put me through the wringer and force me to learn to play the job better?

26-29 : Yuhtunga, Goblin Furriers. There is an excellent camp near the outpost, but it's hard to get replacements here when someone in your party leaves. It's also risky because there's no nearby zone to run to when you get in trouble. However, it's an awesome camp if you have a good party, and the Furriers are where I really learned to start managing my MP because that camp is all about chaining. Also teaches you to keep Barfira up at all times.

32-36+ : Eastern Altepa, the dhalmels here do a move called Stomping that can one-shot most people. They also have a healing move & agility boost that can make for the occasional extremely long battle. If your tank isn't really good here, it can teach you a lot about MP management. This level range is also nice because it's one of the few points where WHM gets a viable nuke: Banish II is awesome in the 30's. If you're really good with MP management, you can toss a few of those out, too.

Honestly, the real opportunities for challenge will come later. For now, you are still just building the reflexes to respond to a given scenario with the correct spell. Once you get into the mid-upper 40's I believe is around the time you can start doing spiders in Boyahda, which are a real challenge. They have an AOE slow that overwrites Haste because it's so potent, and Sickle Slash which can nearly one-shot people.

Later on in the lower 60's there's a camp which not many people do anymore since the introduction of Colibris, but if you're serious about putting yourself through the ropes this was the classic WHM training grounds, where the boys were separated from the men. I'm sure all the old school WHMs already know what I'm talking about: Torama camp in Labyrinth of Onzozo. These have two gaze moves that will constantly be paralyzing/silencing your tank, two ailments which must be removed immediately. As you will discover, curing and MP management set apart a decent WHM from a bad one; but status ailment removal sets apart a good WHM from an excellent one. Learn every move that every type of monster does, and memorize the ailment that goes with it.

Onzozo was my favorite camp on WHM.

I miss camping there; ;

To be honest, Cid, there aren't a lot of 'exciting' camps till the 30s, 40s, and later, and most people nowadays want to avoid them like the plague. If you want true skill development, drag a party out to some of these mobs:

Dhalmel (first camp in Altepa, 32-35; relive the memory in Bibiki in the late 60s): AGI boost and Healing Breeze aren't the problem here. It's the conal Silence effect, and if the mob is getting TP fast enough, Sonic Wave (cone nasty Def. Down) followed by an immediate Stomping. Especially if it has Berserk up. Paladincakes {Do you need it?}

Spiders (Quicksand Caves, mid 40s): Four words: Sickle Slash, Spider Web. Sickle Slash can blow through a Paladin occasionally and will often one-shot a ninja with shadows down. Fortunately, we have Solace now with the attached omgstoneskin, which helps. The AoE Slow overwrites Haste, so even if your mp let you maintain a Haste cycle, you'll be spamming Erase. Oh, and they have a nasty AoE Poison, too, just for kicks.

Antica (QC, late 40s): Pick your status effect, any status effect. We have cone weight, we have poison, we have radial blind, we have radial silence, we even have, as a special offer, radial petra with a hate reset! Two for the price of one! Not to mention these mobs are war, rng, pld or blm, with all the attendant joy of fighting each.

Raptors (Kuftal, late 50s): Nearly forgot these. They love to double or triple attack (not sure which), and have a host of TP moves: conal fire + disease, triple attack + slow, cone stun + lightning, single target slow + damage, single target damage + stun + knockback. Very efficient mobs, always giving you two or three things to do at a time. Helps you stay awake. Plus, the Jurassic Park jokes just write themselves.

And then there's mythical Labyrinth of Onzozo. I miss Oz parties. There are two mobs in here that spring to mind:
Cockatrice (mid 40s): The poison attack and the heavy damage attack are just icing. The gaze petra and the cone silence are the ones that will kill your tanks dead if you're not paying attention to what's going on.

Coeurl (early 60s): Nothing says love like a mob with increased move speed to kill your puller, a nasty paralyze effect, and a gaze silence. They attack kinda fast, too.

These are probably, of the mobs I'd ever exp on, the fivesix worst families in terms of freaking your whm out.

eta: Raptors.

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 1:45pm by kasandaro

As a tank, I swear I notice the difference between the old school whm's who pted in LoO and those who did not.

Give me an old shool whm who will get a paralyna off before i even see the AOE animation finish.

I feel like I've blocked them out, but I guess it was ~5 years ago ... yikes!

For those who haven't looked it up, and were curious:

Torama (mob lv.70-73)
Chaotic Eye: Silence (conic gaze)
Blaster: Paralysis (single target)

Back when pretty much any pick-up party had a PLD/WAR, he'd get spammmmmed with the stuff. And of course, both of them are really bad ailments for a PLD tank!

MP conservation was such a different battle back then, and at least when I was there, there usually wasn't a BRD; more commonly a BLM took that slot. >.>

It was great exp, but there were two major issues:

- You hafta react FAST to the crippling ailments!

The twitchy/unblinking WHMs like me, got to make a whack-a-mole reflex challenge out of it, watching for either "The Torama readies Chaotic Eye." or at least the animation/sound combination, rather than waiting for "Bloodtank is silenced."

- Due to the frequency/urgency, it was difficult to rest mid-battle!

You'd get everyone topped off and put up all your haste/regen/etc's, and try to duck into the Restmobile with your trusty sidekick TwentySecondWait, only to have the tank get silenced 4 seconds in! So you stand back up and Silena, plop down and 5 seconds later, PARA!

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But I think as far as the OP's concerns...are concerned... a lot of endgame stuff nowadays (particularly in TAU) mixes in mobs you don't normally EXP on (or can't). Like, in Salvage/Nyzul/Einherjar, you have Gears, Chariots, Soulflayers and more.

As long as you have some practice managing MP from having to stand up unexpectedly (for an ailment), things like that, the mobs you don't get to EXP on will get more familiar over time.

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One last note, is that looking back, I think Toramas@LoO scarred me ... because now if I miss an ailment, and someone has to call it out "erase plz" ... I tend to wanna put my hand in a waffle iron for a few minutes. I am my own overly harsh Ryangelouts N Distaud: "That'll teach you, MAGGOT!"

MUST...GET...ALL...AILMENTS! /twitch

LoO was even more fun when the party decided to bring a Ninja tank. :D

If someone complains about an enfeeble I tell them to suck it. Chances are I left it on them for a reason. >:/

And yeah, sometimes "additional effect" enfeebles will not get shown in even an unfiltered chat log, because their animations can be skipped just like how Enspells or any other AE animation can be.

yeah but most of it is just about being preemptive :P if you see "x is using y" you know its time to load up and wait for that status to land

Lies! Those only happen by accident, and I get laughed at any time I suggest that people do them.


The last time I took a PL was in the dunes. I ended up spamming blind to rip hate off the PL to force the party to tank it, since I wasn't getting a chance to cure anyway.
As a mage PLs make me grumpy.


I think that's where I first learned to spot status ailments that don't show up in the log. Good learning experience but I'm never going back to the Dunes if I can help it.


Thank you for the advice, it was very informative.

I'm amazed no one mentioned one of the original merit camps prior to ToAU...

Bottom of Kuftal tunnel is a bunch of Tigers / Cockatrices / Wryverns. A merit PT would roam from tunnel to tunnel clearing out the mobs in each area while trying to keep a chain. Usually could get to chain 15~16 before a long pull would ruin it, but if your puller was a bad a$$ you could get much higher.

Having to content with aoe paralyze, cone silence, cone petrify, and dispelling wind / radiant breath is the true test of a WHM. If you can keep up with a merit PT down there without going crazy then you got ballz of solid steel.