Newb Question: Which Debuff Spells?Follow

Hello RDM Forum. I am a new player on Titan and have come to thoroughly enjoy my role as an RDM. But UNLIKE the recent (hilarious) rant from the "Bannable Offenses" blog (Rage of the Red Mages), I have actually not received much advice from party members on how to do my job. So I thought I would seek the advice of people experienced with the job.

Specifically, I am wondering which debuff spells are best to use. Which debuff spells do you typically use in XP party battles? I checked the RDM FAQ sticky and it did not seem to specifically address this question (please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I understand a lot of this is situational and dependent on the element of the debuff spells (yadda yadda monster is strong against yadda yadda element so you shouldn't use yadda yadda spell), but I was hoping just for some general advice on how to go about figuring out which debuff spells work best and/or which work best on certain types of monsters.

Dia seems to be an obvious winner from past discussions on this board, but are there any other debuffs that are MUST USE?

If you need my situational details, I am currently leveling a level 21 RDM/WHM at Valkurm Dunes, and spending time in party battles against Snippers, Damselflies, various Goblins, Brutal Sheep, and Beach Pugils.

Thanks in advance for your advice/input!

I'd say pick paralyze or slow if you do not have mp trouble. Paralyze is only 6 mp iirc, so its not too expensive. If the tank is struggling against the mob you should put up enfeebles, but I can't imagine that will happen often.

One thing to note is silence for worms when/if you go to qufim island.

It will help you cap enfeebling skill as you level if nothing else.

hmmm, shouldnt he just use all of them?

As a nin tank i know i loved every debuff i could get from my mages. Of course i can use mine too, and while leveling i sure did for advantage aspect and also for hate. But if i get resisted at start there is nothing like the help on debuff from a pro debuffer.

Blind for one was the best debuff a nin could get. More so now with Yonin.

So i might add that which debuff you will be using depends on your tank. If it is pld you cant stick with para and slow. If its a nin you might wanna talk with him and check which debuffs he wants to do. But in the case he gets resisted try to back him up cause nin recast is 30/45 secs.

Surely this can be tough if you are main healing around the lvl you are right now. But are you really main healing on those lvls? Most likely you will have a whm partner or a PL. At lvl 41 you should be more than fine anyway.

It generally depends. While Slow might not reduce a ton of damage, it makes the tank's life noticeably easier. That's assuming you have a decent tank that pays attention to the mob's swings, and casts between them.

Paralyze is nice, and even with just 1 proc it saves you mp from having to cure. Personally, it's not worth going out of my way to cast, I generally only do so if I'm already standing and waiting on timers (pre-birds, of course).

Blind can do more harm than good. It is a high-hate spell, and is rarely worth putting yourself higher on the hate list. It might help a little with ninja tanks pre-30, but hopefully they are already casting their ninjutsu version of blind.

When you get there, gravity lowers evasion by 10. While useful, it is rarely worth the mp and time cost. Cast it if you have nothing better to do, but it is rarely used in exp pts.

And, of course, dia is just brilliant. Should be cast on everything you don't intent to sleep. Reminder: bio overwrites dia, and shouldn't be used.

Also, you should be moving to qufim soon, for the lvl 19-24 range. At the earlier levels, you fight worms which need to be silenced right away.

Never ignore Slow and Paralyze in any group under 74. Don't care what the TP burn nuts tell you, it can make your life easier if they actually know what "recast shadows" means. I'd still use Slow in merits just because having people hasted means it's more time the colibri wastes parroting you and not killing the guy who DOESN'T understand what defenses are.

Blind is only really useful if you have a NIN tank, but they should be casting their version to help themselves tank.

Gravity's timer is kind of prohibitive, and if your melees need it to hit, they're eating the wrong food.

Dia is usually a no-brainer, but I wouldn't always call it needed.

I'd say Dia is always useful lv1-75. Slow is our 2nd best enfeeble overall and should be used exclusively in non-TP burn parties. Our 3rd most useful enfeeble is Dispel, however it's not as useful in parties because of the colibri craze. However should you find yourself in a party fighting crabs, crawlers, or beetles, Dispel is very helpful. Silence is useful if you're fighting mage mobs.

Poison isn't worth it ever in a party situation. Blind isn't bad if you have a NIN tank, but Slow is more useful. Bio should never be used over Dia in a party. The reason being the mob loses -10%def(Dia II) so that every person whacking on the mob benefits compared to Bio II's -10% ATK down that typically only affects the tank. Slow is much more useful in helping the tank. Gravity is good in a pinch if your melee are whiffing a lot, but otherwise I'd say no. Gravity typically doesn't last long enough to be worth the mp cost plus it's useless on colibri which is what most people fight.

In recapping, use Dia I/II and Slow often. Paralyze isn't useless, but it's not as useful as Dia and Slow. Use Dispel and Silence as needed. Forget the other enfeebles in party situations. If your party is mage heavy, you may include Paralyze and Gravity in your enfeebling rotation. If not, conserve your mp accordingly.

Edited, Dec 6th 2009 1:23am by ShadowedgeFFXI

It depends what kind of party you're in. Dia/Dia II will always be top priority. If the fights aren't going really quickly, slow. If the DDs and/or tank are still having issues, paralyze. Blind is useless unless you have an evasion NIN, and if you do, sorry to hear that.

Any other enfeebles are not worth mention, except dispel, and you should know exactly when you need to use that anyway.



Edited, Dec 6th 2009 2:04pm by bsphil

No it is not. You can get 10k+/hr with tp burn parties as early as 20ish.

No. It relies on fighting t-vt mobs, with a brd/cor, and people actually using gear+food.


You say that as if ffxi is the hardest game ever, and if you do not spend months playing 75 levels at 5k/hr, you will never learn the basic functions of the job. A competent person can easily learn all the basics and get them down in under a week. Anyone who cannot do that, probably would not have been a very good player regardless of how they got 75.

Except turtle plds/eva nins are only good decent acceptable in the worst of pt setups. You are always better off getting a dd (or i suppose dd pld/nin, but that really is not ideal either..) and fighting the right mobs than fighting IT++ mobs with a turtle pld/dd nin.

Technically, sure, there are situations that could be improved by a turtle pld/eva nin, but if you are in that situation to begin with, you obviously do not care about improving anything, because if you did, you would avoid that situation like the plague.

Actually, a pair of Beetle Earring +1s at low levels makes a significantly LARGER difference than later on.

Just because it is the "standard" does not make it the best. There is no reason anyone should ever need a tank for exping.


Meh, some things have changed. Technically level sync did not change anything, but it does make it much, much more likely that you will get an idealish party setup, and also lets you stay at the better camps longer. Other than that, and a few other minor things, you are right, not much has changed. Oh, also the playerbase is not nearly as retarded as we used to be.


See, this is the problem. Crabs? WHY THE @#%^ WOULD YOU FIGHT PLD/PLD MOBS, WITH A DEF+ WS, IN A GAME WHERE KILLING FASTER IS ALL THAT MATTERS? WHY!? And lets not forget skeles with their drainga, and -12.5% slashing, and -50% piercing damage! GENIUS!

This.

We haven't changed as much as people like to think, on the whole. Parties still fight crabs, beetles and other PLD-type, non-DA-ing mobs (because they're "easier" to tank) even though they have high def and eva/def/stoneskin/pro/shell buffs. While this was great in the old SC/MB days, it sucks now for optimal XP. Back then, the tank was there to hold the mob for a few seconds before the SC/MB went off. After that, if the mob wasn't dead, there was trouble. Everyone remembers the stupid Freeze MBs on crabs in Kuftal back in the day. It was fun, and we thought it was great, but one Bubble Curtain from the crab and your Freeze went from 1100 dmg to 550 and the crab ate your BLM for lunch.

Tanking these sort of mobs causes tanks to suck, since they have no experience tanking anything that attacks fast/double attacks and once they hit Lesser Colibri, they bitch and suck because they can't take the heat in their turtle(PLD) and evasion(NIN) builds.

Sorry, kinda went on a tangent.

To the OP: Dia first, always, don't touch the Bio line in XP. After that, I personally went with Slow, since the recast is longer and if it doesn't stick, you can cast Para and cast another Slow when the recast is up again. Blind I never bother(ed) with really - if you have a NIN tank, they'll be casting Kurayami anyway, which is both more potent, and adds to their enmity as well.

Speaking of, if you have a NIN tank, let them Hojo (Slow) and Kurayami (Blind) for hate, since the :Ni line of those spells casts fast and they're more potent than your tier-1 Slow/Blind. Ninjas don't get Jubaku: Ni (Paralyze II), so if they're casting Jubaku: Ichi, it takes forever and is basically as potent as your Paralyze I, which takes you a fraction of a second to cast.

All in all, it's for you to judge. Always cast Dia/Dia II, but if the mob is only lasting a few seconds, don't bother with Slow/Para/Blind. This mostly happens 55+ from Lesser Colibri and on. Before then, judge the situation and cast what you think is necessary.

Slight derail question for Rog. Do you make your own parties for all levels? If no, would you disband from a party that XP wouldn't be maxed because the group lacked the cookie cutter setup or location?

Solrain made some very good points. The reason why most tanks suck nowadays is because they don't learn how to tank. A PL that co-tanks in Qufim parties doesn't help nor does tanking birds at any level. Back in the old days, I tanked everything on my NIN including the infamous raptor camps. Most of the time, we had no BRD so there wasn't such a thing as double march. I remember one specific party in Kuftal with a BRD. Elegy and Hojo was so potent, I barely broke a sweat tanking. The point of lower levels is to learn how to play your job, not only maximize XP per hour. If that's all you care about, stick to those Astral burns.

Lastly, RDM is a very versatile job. Some of us play it better than others. Some of us can solo crazy stuff while others enjoy the tanking side. The OP wanted to know which enfeebles they should use for XP parties. I chose to give situational answers because I often find myself in situations that call upon them. I don't disband a XP party because it's not optimal. I might not stick around for 3 hours, but I try to perceive XP parties beyond mere XP/Levels gained. Dia/II and Slow are the only 2 enfeebles you should concern yourself with most of the time. The rest have a time and a place to use them. It's up to you as a RDM to learn by trial and error what is required based on the individual situation, not some elitist nonsense that fails to take into effect the party situation.



While I agree with in regard to SMN's party role, your opinion of RDM is inaccurate. RDM for all intensive purposes is the most difficult job in the game to play right. That's mostly because of how versatile the job is and how others have their own unique expectations. No offense to any SMN's reading this, but SMN is a very simple job to play compared to RDM. You get 1 Blood pact for damage and support per minute(I'm not going to figure in all that augmented/situational gear that might lower that number either). Other than that, SMN is a whm-1 like you mentioned that uses their mp to help cure people.

Rog, if you think this game is easy, you might want to place yourself in the gifted category. I'd say 75% of mages can't perform their job properly and that's on a sliding scale. It's hard for most mages to perform the basic functions like a haste cycle. This game isn't rocket science, but people like yourself hold the bar too damn high. You have this notion that the game might be played optimal at all times. That explains your need for astral burns and those chigoe parties you're so fond of on the forums. Some people need more practice than the next guy. That's the calculation you seem to forget in the grand scheme of things.

Edited, Dec 7th 2009 6:05am by ShadowedgeFFXI

I would like to preview this by stating that I will be relating to the OP's questions in the last paragraph. But since Rog is trying to hijack the thread, I would like to respond to those posts first.

Proposal: In exp parties below level 74, a dedicated tank makes fights go smoother and more efficient to the point where it is required in the vast majority of cases.

A Damage Dealer is a class that is designed to deal damage without regard for defense or personal safety. They are equipped with low defense, low vit gear that focuses on damage dealing stats. In addition, they use job abilities that can cause even further lowered defense (i.e. berserk), not to mention eating food that boosts attack or accuracy and not defense.

A Tank is a class designed to build and hold hate, and reduce the damage taken. There are two kinds of tanks, those equipped for pure defense (defense/vit/eva gear, fish food, defender, etc) and those equipped for offense, relying on job traits and spells to reduce the amount of damage taken to manageable levels. Please note the word "manageable", it will be key later on.

As for anecdotal evidence, I have personally played three tank classes through most of the exp levels. When I leveled war in a semi-static, I used two war/nin as tanks fairly often, bouncing hate between them when shadows fell. This was back in 2004/2005, when sky war tp burns were just getting popular. My nin is all but retired at almost 70, and I recently picked up pld, where it is flying through the 50s.

When you go out to gain exp, the entire party comes down to two things: dealing a lot of damage, and surviving the fight. In fact, surviving is only required in order to kill quickly and constantly. In order to survive the fight, you can either reduce the damage taken, or heal it. If you heal the damage, that requires mp. And mp is a limited resource. The key, then, becomes reducing the damage you take by enough so that mp regen can keep up with heals and not demand resting or downtime.

A pure DD has very few ways of reducing incoming damage. They could sub nin, keeping utsusemi up to absorb hits. A samurai main (after lvl 35) can use seigan + third eye to great effect, but is less reliable than utsusemi. Unfortunately, both options require reduced damage in order to gain the defense. The few exceptions are jobs like thief and ranger, and to a lesser extent warrior, where using /nin can increase damage with dual weild.

The other issue with requiring your DD to have their own defenses, is hate control. I'm not sure how often anyone else has tried to tp burn before level 74, but just a single slow casting utsusemi makes life rough. Not knowing when you are going to be targeted makes timer and shadow management difficult at best. This is further compounded on mobs with double attack or multiple-hit weapon skills, since you have no quick utsusemi: ni to fall back on. As per my own experience, having two war/nin DDs trade hate worked exceptionally well ONLY because they both knew that it was their job to have the mob focus on them, and when to let the other war take it. It was about managing where the damage was going next, so we could be ready for it. Not going full out DD and expecting the shadows to take it.

Why does shadows or seigan make a big difference? A properly geared DD can take as much as double the damage as a "turtle" paladin. (A turtle paladin is one geared for pure defense, and I am not advocating it in this specific example.) Even if the paladin has hybrid DD gear, the DD can still take 50% more damage easily. This leads to spending large amounts of mp on cures, and can lead to downtime or even death if the healer isn't fast enough or doesn't have enough reserve mp.

Without the proper damage reduction, a healer can't keep up with damage taken. The vast majority of DDs under level 74 do not have the damage reduction required to sustain a party without frequent rests. Having a dedicated tank reduces damage taken to a level that allows the healer to maintain mp indefinitely, assuming proper mp regen and camp location. It also allows the DD to focus on dealing damage, often more than making up for the amount of damage lost switching to a tank.

Having mp regen roughly equal mp expenditure is the ideal. After all, there's no point in gaining more mp than you use. If that is the case, the tank can take a little more damage in order to deal a little more damage. Some turtle pieces can be swapped for damage pieces. Note: nin turtles with evasion, pld turtles with defense and vit, so I'm not only assuming one or the other.

That leads to the point everyone always says: it depends. Sometimes, you want to go full-out attack on paladin, since you have high base defense and vit, not to mention a shield that blocks a ton of damage. But sometimes, you might want to swap out a few pieces for some extra damage reduction. It's a juggling act, trying to deal the most damage possible (for extra hate, and to kill it faster) while making sure you aren't taking too much damage.

Doing pugils at lvl 22? Fish kabob all the way. Reducing damage by 15-20% made it easier to hold hate, and made it so book refresh meant we never had to rest. Mandies? Meat for sure. They already hit like unarmed black mages, might as well kill them as fast as possible.

The whole point is that turtling is rarely the answer. But neither is going full attack. The best tanks find the sweet spot.


Enfeebling from a tank point of view is pretty simple. If you have a ninja tank, wait a couple of battles to see if they use Hojo or Jubaku, their version of Slow and Paralyze, respectively. Most low level ninjas don't, since the early versions suck, but they get hate from it so let them cast if they are going to. If they aren't casting Hojo, slow is a priority. Slow makes it easier to cast between mob swings so they don't get interrupted. It is actually the same with paladins and cures, slow makes things easier. Paralyze does the same kind of thing, but it is random so you can't actually count on it. Blind doesn't matter too much, but ninjas might make good use out of it before lvl 37. Even still, the hate from casting blind can make it dangerous for the rdm.

Rog hasn't leveled a job to 75 in years, and in all likely hood hasn't merited in months. I doubt he still plays the game honestly. I've mentioned this before in other places but its like fishing stories told by old men while their sitting around. The first old man mentions this big 16 pound fish, that he fought for an hour to reel in. The second old man then talks about this one time that he caught a 25 pounded that took a couple hours and herculean strength to reel in. The third old man stands up and proudly recounts his take about a 50 pound fish that broke two fishing poles and he had to jump in the water to catch with his bare bands and a pocket knife.

Or like the guys at a country club bragging about who's got the better / more expensive / faster sports car and trying to feel superior to everyone not so blessed.

This has become a recurring theme in the last year or so with the older forum members. Everything that needs to be discussed has been discussed and all that is left is people who assume some sort of higher social status by pretending to be more exclusive.

Having a BRD in the PT used to be "great" but most of us mortals just got by with what we could do. BRD's not a commonly leveled job and most people who do level it only do so to whore it for merits, then never touch it again. Nowadays its not even "good", its substandard if a BRD doesn't exist in the party. And heavens forbid if there isn't at least 2 /SAM full time hasso DD's who have maxed merits for their weapon prior to 75. Must also be a second BRD or COR, and you absolutely can not have any DD other then WAR/SAM/DRG, unless its the job the person in question is leveling.

5k/hr is pretty weak. That's like, no one paying attention and your party is seriously overcamping.

I think I can get ~4k/hr soloing FoV pages.. (could be more, never really bothered to keep track)


Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Dia/Slow/Paralyze, but I would not be enjoying that 3-5k/hr party. I probably wouldn't stick around more than 1 hour in that scenario.

Edited, Dec 7th 2009 8:38am by Kirby

Mostly just dia in meripo. But if you're fighting a rough mob like a skoffin, for example, a slow/para doesn't hurt if you have spare mp/time.

If you're just after MND, a better food is Goblin Mushpots. 3hr food netting +10 MND, -5 CHR, Resist Blind n' Poison, available from the NPC way in the back of the Goblin shop in Lower Jeuno for ~1140 gil. Sounds expensive, but again, it's a 3hr food - it really works out to be cheap for the duration (even moreso if you get Sanction and get the "extended food duration" bonus, it'll double it to 6hrs).

For HMP, you can get better with cookies. Ginger/Wizard are very good. HMP is far more important than max MP most of the time. Usually you only need max MP for a short while - as cookies are a 3 or 5 minute food, you can use Bretzels (also a 3 or 5 minute food) to get a temporary boost in max MP when you need to Convert or something. The NQ versions of both of those are also available from NPC for cheap.

Roast Mushrooms/Witch Kabobs are a decent mix of the two, but depending on what you're doing you may want to skew things more towards an extreme.

So to the OP

I see your rdm/whm which means you'll more than likely be main heal or definatly back up heal if they actuall get a whm

When you're main healing, you have a lot to do and MP conservation is important so like they said before Dia is a good enfeeble to land but then look at the fight and how its going

Are you cure bombing b/c the tank is taking a lot of damage? Are you curing status aliments a lot b/c the mob is throwing out enfeebles?

Personally I would say cure + curing status aliments > landing a bunch of enfeebles

As /whm you almost have to act as a normal whm w/o the benifit of that specialty so as always situation dependant but you don't wanna end up with {No more MP!}

Wow there's a lot of crumby advice in this thread.
You all need to take your merit party discussion and GTFO. The OP isn't even level 30 yet.

To the OP: When I see a Red Mage in my party that isn't casting debuffs it really gets under my skin. The beauty of enfeebling magic is that it's significant damage mitigation for a fraction of the cost it would take to heal folks. An ounce of prevention and all that.

The only ones you should be hesitant to cast are Gravity and Blind most of the time. Blind tends to generate a lot of hate, so if casting it draws the mob to the back line you might want to hold up on it. I tend to not throw Gravity on a mob unless I see the party missing a bunch.

Don't slack on enfeebles. If you can stick Blind, Paralyze and Slow you will see a significant drop in the ammount of damage your party is taking. That's been my experience in exp parties and I don't understand why folks here want their tank to be squishier. I guess they like party wipes?

Speaking of crumby advice... You should always cast your offensive debuffs whenever you can in regular EXP. That's Dia every mob, Gravity every mob. If the mobs are lasting long enough to warrant casting Paralyze and Slow, do so. As a rule of thumb, I'd say an average kill speed over 30 seconds gets defensive debuffs.

If you are using an evasion tank that is not a NIN, cast blind. There's no point in casting blind if the mob has capped accuracy against your PLD.

If you are with a NIN that is evasion tanking (You will end up with them) cast Blind for sure. They can still use Kurayami: Ni because it's a tier2 debuff and it will overwrite Blind. I rarely ever seen Kurayami stick regularly after level 60.

I'm not arguing that Evasion nin's are okay, or that DD NIN's are better, i'm just saying when you end up in a party with an evasion ninja, use blind.

I must admit that 5k/hr is a little pointless, since any competent duo can achieve that(all the while having more fun). If a party of 6 can't beat that, then the whole point of FFXI's "party dynamics" fall apart.