Magian staves questionFollow

Aquilo's is +15% damage, 30 macc. The magian damage staves are +30% damage, +20 macc.

+1 = 10%, equal to a NQ ele staff
+2 = 15%, equal to a HQ ele staff
+3 = 20%
+4 = 25%
+5 = 30%

It probably comes down to personal preference and what you personally end up doing more often.

Personally I plan on doing a cure potency staff first because it's pretty universally useful and because I'd like to do everything I can to keep up with the turbo-rocket-powered White Mages that are running around dropping tier V and VI cures with infinite mp and no enmity.

That said, an ice or thunder staff is probably going to be just as, if not more useful if you find yourself tossing nukes on a regular basis.

Edited, Mar 10th 2011 1:29pm by cidbahamut

If I were to get one staff, and only one staff. It would be the Ice staff. +60% to Blizzard DMG with Atma of beyond. But that may just be me. In low man I find I am much more useful meleeing and supporting from the frontline. In a larger group Nuking is more successful (imo due to the increased workload on our casting timers etc.). Since I spend more time in low mans, they are kinda useless to me.

The cure staff is one of the easiest to get trial weapons. So even though RDM fails at curing and you asked about getting one staff and one staff alone I'll go ahead and recommend you to get two. Cure + Ice/Thunder.

Ice if you want to go with the current version of the game. Thunder if you feel like planing ahead for possible outside-abyssea content.

You clearly need to CS nuke more instead of.. well, whatever your lowman groups currently do with your ISL boxes.

You can get ISL boxes to appear at a semi-frequent rate by doing nothing other than that thanks to the fact that NMs generally drop lights at an enhanced rate.
And if you include VNMs into your rotation and/or do a healthy mix between building and using popsets and/or bump into the occasional Ephemeral on your way through abyssea you'll have the required amount of light for some CS nuke spaming even sooner.

It seems odd to me that most RDMs would be satisfied not taking advantage of doubling their staves Macc. One of the most critical aspects of soloing on RDM used to be their aibility to stick Bind and Gravity consistently on very high level NMs. Granted, it seems like a lot of things have changed in the past two years, but surely the aility to stick enfeebles is paramount to being a successful RDM.

Perhaps you aren't much of a soloer, but back in the day a RDM without their AF2 hat could not get away with as much as a RDM with their AF2 hat. Now we have a chance to double the potentcy of a HQ elemental staff, but you are saying you would rather have the extra inventory slot freed up?

Perhaps I need clarity. It is likely that I am missing something here.

Gear has also improved in other slots (AF3+2 are beastly for Enfeeble accuracy with +15 skill and 7 MACC), so if immunities aren't a concern, there's a good chance new options are like the jump between NQ and HQ staves, if not better.

Thanks for the replys. I can accept that nuke staves are better for RDM right now. I still think is very lame I will be doubled up on many staves. At some point Abyssea won't be the zone everyone does everything in and you have to think that enfeebling will be a part of big battles again. I mean, even if you never get the MACC versions of the magian staves, you will still keep the HQ Ele staves right? I would hate to think I'm going backwards at all by stepping down from 15% to 10% on every staff.

So while all we ever wanted (ok maybe is was just me) was a single staff to take the place of the ele staves, instead we got our staff collection effectively doubled. They shold have done somethign like this: 1 staff for damage for all light based magic, 1 staff for macc for light based magic, 1 staff for dmg for drk based magic, 1 staff for macc for drk based magic. We would be carrying a total of 4 staves instead of potentially 16.

While I'm somewhat ranting, I have to say that I think its ridiculous that they simply make NMs immune to enfeebles to make them difficult. Thats a cop out. There are many jobs in this game that specialize in enfeebling and thus their primary role is useless on all of these fights.

The same could be said for BST inability to charm would-be charmable mobs in Abyssea. It was a cop-out because they didn't want to spend the effort trying to balance that aspect of the game. So now all BST ablities and gear related to charming mobs is now useless. Don't get me wrong, I love the jug pet updates, but it sucks that it had to be at the expense of charming.

/rant

I still cling to the odd hope that some day we'll get consolidates staves, obis, gorgets, belts, and satchets, but then my cynical side wants to go, "lolno this is SE we're talking about, here..." and are basically inventory boned in some capacity if we seek them all.

Would be funny if the final Emp staff phase required trading in all the current +2s in their later higher forms.

...AFK throwing myself out the second story window for probably giving SE an idea.

Only thing I can say to the above is.....51-75 we never change our default weapons in that time other jobs buy 4-5(*X2 if SH). Even at 90, magian staves are only 7% ahead of Estaves (in abyssea). These weapons are from level 51, and depending on spell/mob/job still more useful in certain situations.

I can't think of any other item genuinely accepted for as many levels. Except maybe PCC (and even it is replaceable pre 75).

Edited, Jun 30th 2011 5:50am by rdmcandie

Edited, Jun 30th 2011 5:51am by rdmcandie

depends on what is taking place. In a small group getting TE's can take a while, hell it takes on average 30-40 minutes for a ally to get consistent TE's. If people can go in at 120 minutes that is more time pent on actually acomplishing tasks that are more relevant.

Now in an exp group I personally tend to go in with 30-40 minutes as I know in that time frame TE's will evntually drop and over cap me.