Barspells and when to use them?Follow

I don't want to be a sh*tty WHM, but I'm still relatively new with the job and I'd rather ask a dumb question than mess up in a party.

So barspells. How do I know which ones to use and when? Is it based purely on mob families or something else? I know they can provide protection against attacks and TP moves that correlate with an element, but short of looking up every mob on the wiki, how am I suppose to know?

I want to get better at using barspells, but pretty much all I know offhand is Gob = barfira and Mandy = barsleepra. No one really mentions them or asks for them in PTs.

Thanks!

While the elements of each attack aren't always obvious (you'll learn over time the ones that aren't), the main thing you'll wanna keep in mind is that status ailments are tied into certain elements. For instance, silence is associated with wind. Having Baraero up lowers the chance of being afflicted with silence from most sources.

Other common examples:

poison = water
paralyze = ice
slow = earth

What this means is that if you're being hit by an attack that does damage and inflicts poison, there is a good chance (not total certainty) that it's doing water-based damage.

If you can cast both a corresponding Barelement and a Barstatus spell against a status ailment attack, you can actually provide a pretty solid defense against it.



If you do this, I would click the barspell off of yourself afterward. Why?

You want the slow to at least land on you, for Esuna purposes. Regardless of whether you Barspell this, Spider Web is something I'd usually try to get hit by on WHM (at least at the levels where Esuna is available)




For triple bats you'd actually want to use Barwatera for Sonic Boom. (This is one of those "not obvious" scenarios I mentioned above)

STR (and by relation, ATK) is associated with the fire element. Sonic Boom reduces ATK, which actually makes it associated with water. (Water > fire)

As with spiders though, note that simply throwing up the Barspell probably isn't going to help your entire party resist the effect consistently. If Esuna is available, make sure you click off the Barspell from yourself if you use it, and just abuse Esuna to take care of things.

Just realized that triple bats in areas outside of the original/Zilart areas can use Turbulence, which does inflict AoE wind damage. However, the times you'll be fighting triple bats in CoP/ToAU/WotG areas are likely slim to none. I try to avoid fighting these anywhere, myself.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2010 9:36am by Fynlar

Barpoisonra (and similarly barsleepra, etc) will not make you resist poison. It will simply give you a chance at a reduced duration of poison. In other words, unless you don't have the MP for poisona or can't cast it or something, barpoisonra is a waste of MP.

For the OP, you would be better off not using barsleepra, in my opinion, when fighting mandies. It would make more sense to stand out of range and wake people up with cures after a sleepga.

Barslowra (which doesn't exist) would only affect slow and again, only a chance at reducing duration, not at resisting.

If you ever use your whm in Dynamis, please don't run in to cast Barfira on nin mobs that doesn't do anything.

Thanks for the question, OP and thanks a lot, responders for the answers. I'm going to bookmark this thread.

Janaka.