Why does an RDM cap Ice Magic merits?Follow

What semantics? Either Slow II is easily capped out or it isn't. You can't play both sides to whatever makes you "right".



If you don't need to. The claim is that Slow II is sooooo easy to cap. So, if I can cap or at get very close to capping it without switching gear, WTF would I switch gear?



You overlooked my explanation. The difference is, I admit to being lazy and you're not. You're trying to pretend that x,y,z spells are necessary and blah blah, when in reality you're just too lazy to create a macro.

In our situation we're literally talking about the same effects, the effect of slow. In the other thread, we're comparing various spells, abilities, etc. The concept is still the same, but the two aren't the same. Try to keep up

I don't care what it is you're casting, you don't cast in your melee gear. Ever. There is no excuse.

Slow II is fine with 2+ merits, for the right application.

5/5 Slow II
5/5 Bio III
Composure + Ice spikes

That's some freaky good damage mitigation; It's often the different between casting Stoneskin relgiously or not casting it once.

If you're not the tank, 6MP Paralyze is still hot. But like I said, it's all in the application.

I'd recommend 5/5 Paralyze II to most RDMs... too bad it's simply not an option for what I've committed to.

LOL proper haste build up what a joke. No wonder you need to use laughable defense atma's solo. Go buy yourself a -PDT/-DT/-MDT set, get the good stuff don't cheap out. Use it then use real Atma's. If you are a proponent of tickling a mob to death this would include subbing BLU and using MM/Beyond/Cosmos to boost Sang blade as it will be your primary source of damage and healing. If /NIN dump MM atma and use a straight up melee atma set and use Evisceration or CDC.

You are piss terrible if you think offense isn't a good defense, the faster something dies, the less chance you have of @#%^ing up.



No sh*t, but at least I am right.



What you waste a BRD for ACC and ATK yet refuse to use Melee DD atmas. You are an idiot. You use the BRD to give you double march, then you use melee atmas, and use your gear to cap out damage taken. That is the dumbest sh*t I have ever heard. What a waste of a BRD.




Ya because capped ACC, 80% + crit rate (2K Evis or 3K CDC) or near 2K Sang Blades is a terrible idea. You keep pumping your defense atmas though and having your brd sing lolmadrigal/minuet.



But i don't agree with you, you are an idiot, Convert is a tool, and you are to much of @#%^ to know how to use it, especially in solo combat, thn gain having to wait 10 minutes is probably why you have no idea how to use it effectively in solo melee (ill give you a hint, using it when it puts you in one shot territory is stupid.) I also disagree with your opinion on SCH, SCH is a fluff sub, it has a bunch of neat tricks that are outshone by RDM WHM and BLM subs. Its called researching your environment and utilizing the best options available, and SCH fits none of those it is a versatile sub, and therefore can never ever be the best.

That and your merits are a @#%^ing joke, "I don't need MACC gear, but im going to dump 5 merits into 2 useless MACC categories for spells that land nearly all the time or are outright resisted." Then I am going to lecture everyone on why my setup for Atmas i awesome, I waste 3 atma slots and a BRD to balance out my pathetic approach to soloing.

Tell us the truth Alma, you haven't played since ToAU have you.

This got defaulted? Actually im not surprised, given the viewership. Snipe aside, this is 100% accurate, fast cast/recast gear, interrupt gear, and cure potency gear, and nuking gear, and macc gear. Every spell a RDM casts is benefited better through gear swaps.

Yeah my bad, totally misread the formula there, you're absolutely right. 5/5 definitely worth considering if you or your tanks are tanking without shadows a majority of the time.

Also, congrats on 1k ^^

Orrrrrr... less macroed mnd gear and more merits. Not sure why you prefer the former.



Didn't you say in the last thread that you don't do anything RDM in Abyssea because it's useless and you play other jobs? Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about. I do use -PDT/-DT/-MDT gear that I "borrowed" from my brother's account who doesn't play anymore. Except, I only use it when I feel it's necessary.

You can't say one minute that haste/acc/attk is lol, go defense go... then turn around and say that killing faster is the issue not defense!!!

It all depends on the mob that I'm fighting, depends on what I equip and what food I use. I carry that additional defense gear and use it when I feel that I need more defense, I can do that because I'm not wasting slot on M.acc when I can merit it.

It's the argument people used against Wise Gear.

Everything is situational and for you to act like there's just one gear,support buff for every scenario is evident of your ignorance.



You attacked me when we agreed, it wasn't till later before we disagreed on something. You literally said exactly my point twice in a row. You just kept talking until we disagreed.

You're just a horrible troll

Edited, Sep 1st 2011 10:56am by Almalieque

No, you equip MND gear and cure potency in other slots and precast in Fast Cast gear.

God you are stupid.

You can't know that. No one's mapped out the MND values or slow potency for everything outside of Abyssea, let alone inside, and this isn't over trash fodder either.


Sir. I concur.

Edited, Sep 1st 2011 9:46am by jlejeune

The dMND cap always remains 75 for each, merits just adjust a multiplier that raises cap. But that's merely an aside and not what was put forth.

You can't know you've always capped dMND, that's entirely dependant on the target, dMND being, you know, the difference in MND. And last I checked, you don't know the MND value of every target. Abyssea certainly blew the lid off that, even I rearranged my merits after Abyssea (and a lesser extent Saboteur). But that's only under the assumption that a player has all relevant abyssites and-slash-or atmas, Voidwatch included. It's a poorly thought out argument to say a decent set always capped it.

As for your cap comparison, which isn't all that news-breaking, 2 seconds has as much potential to change a fight as a single maybe-might-proc paralyze merit, a couple points of phalanx mitigation, a couple extra recasts of Dia III or Bio III. What makes it so salivating is that it's always there. You can actually rely on Slow II.

Edited, Sep 1st 2011 1:01pm by jlejeune

It's .2 secs. Personally never cared about the 39% cap, I used the merits to reach 35% easier, which is around the edge Ichi can be freely cast without FC on most fights.

Shield and Parry proc rate on anything above EM was floored last I bothered to check (for Rdm, Pld evades like a brick in the first place...). Possibly not for anyone with capped skill/merits/etc. but I'm fairly certain hardly anyone bothers.



Edited, Sep 2nd 2011 12:09am by Neisan

Except I never implied that. I even said that I do gear swaps, I just don't do a full change. For example, Esto hands+1 + sabo + slow II. My point was to counter that stupid notion that you should never cast in melee gear ever. You do and you fail if you don't.



Sooooooo. you DO cast in melee gear. Just checking because I could have sworn you said that RDMs should never cast in melee gear. Last time I checked, most swords are for melee and do not out beneift clubs/staves in the magery realm.

Actually you are incorrect again. A sword is one of RDM's best options for MACC related use. Yes you won't get added MND or INT of a Club/Shield, or the MATK of a Staff, but using a sword allows you to use death blossom if MACC is a huge issue, allowing you to equip more stat gears in other places over MACC.

Not that it really matters, at the very least you should be using Fast Cast/Recast gear. The only time you need to swap a sword is when you are nuking to MB, which is acceptable considering you will be opening or closing a SC and thus have dumped your TP in the process.

I don't know why you read so much into small sh*t, you obviously know what was meant, and are arguing semantics, poorly as usual.

Since you felt the necessity to single me out as if I said or done anything wrong, I will respond. You're no different. RDD is a troll and he has admitted as such so you have no argument against me. So, either be an admin and address everyone equally or leave me out of it. I have not called a single person stupid, idiotic, etc. while others have said similar terms, yet you still feel the need to call me out. Because of that, your words have absolutely no value to me.



False. Just because it gives hp doesn't make it a "mage" ability. Chakra isn't magery. Sanguine Blade is melee attack that is designed to give you hp. It's not magery but melee.

Edited, Sep 3rd 2011 6:27pm by Almalieque

Group 1

5/5 Ice
5/5 Convert


Convert Merits, No brain-er. In situations in which you're pushing MP the timer difference is noticeable and appreciated.

Ice Merits just make the most sense to me. Ice is a really powerful element given weakness correlation, and it works across the board for my offensive and debuff spells. Enblizzard, Blizzard, Bind and Paralyze all work on the Ice Element, and all benefit from having as much native accuracy bonus as possible.


Group II

3/5 Dia III
5/5 Paralyze II
1/5 Slow II
1/5 Blind II

Dia beats Bio in the majority of situations for me. 5% attack reduction is irrelevant when the monster is suffering from heavy debuffing and if I'm having difficulties maintaining buffs, I can always swap to blink tanking or stack on some extra %damage taken gear. However, in situations in which I'm not alone, the Defense down is highly worthwhile, especially in the company of lighter DDs, pet classes, and Blue Mage, which I frequently kept company of. 1:30 duration seems like a fairly comfortable duration for me.

Paralyze to Paralyze II can be the difference of night and day, and Saboteaur accentuates this more. A Saboteaured Para II can lock down a Dynamis Monk 2hr. (and with a DNC tank, that's important.) Solo, it's a good spell to have around when blink tanking as Ice Spikes do nothing for you at that point. That said, looking at my merits as a whole, you can tell I go full potency on Paralyze, relying on merits to help with accuracy troubles. If you land it, you want it to go as hard as you can because if you get lucky with it, it WILL out preform Slow II, but if you botch the rato, it's not even worth the merits. It's a high risk, high reward spell, so I stack the deck on it.

Slow II stays at one mainly because if I won't go 5/5, difference is negligible otherwise. But it's default potency is superior to that of Slow II and it overwrites haste. Given Saboteur, it can help cripple a monster quickly. Kinda foolish not to have this spell at least 1/5. However, given so many go 5/5 on it and my merits lean to ice, I opted for stacking Paralyze to full.

That leaves my most controversial merit, the 1/5 into Blind II.

Put simply, the floor potency of this spell is 3 times more powerful than the floor of Blind I, and just 5 accuracy short of Blind I's cap. At is cap, it matches the Ni version Ninja debuff.

In any situation in which I'm soloing something that's not an NM, my evasion isn't floored OR capped, so this provides an extra layer of defense for me that makes up for the absence of Bio III. Additionally, when I'm with allies, I often have a Dancer Tank, in which case evasion still isn't floored, and it can be used as a substitute to the Ninja version if not available (or the /nin can't land theirs.) This is to insure that we have some sort of evasion enhancement in the party at all times, and that the baseline of it is far higher than Blind 1.

One might note about the MP intensity of trying to maintain all of these debuffs, but I've managed my MP without any form of autorefresh for years. And now between Refresh II and the fact that I'm getting a fair amount of Auto Refresh gear for idling in backline I really haven't noticed the drain much at all. Comparatively, the higher potency is more important to me.

I agree Sanguine Blade is Mage-like, but this is a bad justification for it.


Better to say Sanguine Blade is an ability that deals Magical Damage and benefits from Magical Attack bonus.

Healing as a Utility is not solely a mage Trait, any more than Waltzes make Dancer a mage.

Does it save MP? Yes. But it is a weapon skill, not a spell. What makes it Mage-like is the modifiers, not the HP restoration. It is a great utility, however.

So, following your logic...

Dancer in it's entirety is 'magelike'.

As is a PLD's JA set. Weapon bash, and every other JA or WS that has some sort of utility?

That's a really brash generalization, man.

Edited, Sep 3rd 2011 2:08pm by Hyrist

Ok, that was off-handed. I was pointing out how your argument had no real basis.

You're making an argument that because a spell CAN assist someone's MP pool, that it's mage like. That it is mage-like.

There's no 'taking it literally' it is what you are saying.

I mean, aruging your logic back against you. Just because Aspir Samba dosen't return the DNC back Mana, doesn't stop it from being "Mage Like"

Remember Aspir Samba is a subbable ability. Obviously it is mage-like because it restores MP.

Same thing with the Waltzes I can use to save myself some MP when I sub it.

It's probably the same thing people got upset at me for when I said "gimick" instead of "crutch" with stun. Which is why I'm more sensitive to it right now.

Sanguine Blade functions more like a support ability looking at the raw mechanics.

It's "Mage-Like" in that it prefers magical stats to Physical Stats, much in the way all Magical Weapon Skills do. Curing is just a perk of it.

If it was a "Cure" that relied on Say, Dexterity and your Defense, and used TP, it would be a lot less "mage like" and more just a utility that's useful to saving our MP.

Lol- "laughable"... this is sad. As I stated, I never said anything along those lines.You obviousuly fail to differentiate stating an objective fact vs an opinionated insult. How you compare stating one's ignorance with calling someone "stupid" is laughable. With the things being said on this forum, the stuff I said falls short of "insult". So, for me to be singled out is unprofessional and BS.

-stating your ignorance isn't an insult. It's the polite way of stating that you don't understand something.

-Calling a troll a troll is not an insult. Rather you are trolling intentionally or not, when you consisently use various view points just to oppose me, instead of agreeing with a single concept, then you are trolling.

You notice when everyone disagreed with RDD's thought about /sch for nuking? He admittedly said "I'll take your word for it". Yet he spent post after post arguing with me when we were initially in agreemenet just to find something to be against.

-being behind the curve is a fact. I've been arguing the same stuff for years that people have just now decided to go along with. That is, unless you're denying the anti-RDM melee era. I've been doing RDM melee in/out pt since 2003. All of the stuff that you all bringing up as issues, I debunked years ago.

-Fynlar is being lazy, he said himself that it was too "cumbersome" to use a /ja for a spell that he admits isn't used for any "worthwhile" mob. That is laziness. Again, not subjective, but a fact.

- I could give you the "full of trash" comment, but that also is a fact as Fylnar even admitted himself that he wasn't needing sleep while fighting worth while mobs. Which means you don't need sleep readily available. Also, that comment of people dying due to referesh was indeed garbage if you are casting sleep. I already pointed out that mobs don't differentiate between the spells you cast.

The bottom line was that Fylnar painted this scenario when in reality it was multiple scenarios. Just like when he said was duo-box, but then said he would check to see what the other people were subbing and tried to use that horrible save of "well technically 2 people is a group". That would have saved him if he didn't already state that the other character was a monk. So, instead of just admitting to being wrong, he kept making stuff up until he finally gave up.