Weather Spells...what now?Follow

I've read several topics on here and I see descriptions and different opinions on the Weather Effect spells starting at 41. It might be somewhere on the forum, but I couldn't find it.

My main question, what exactly do these spells do? Ive heard things about slight potency of spells, less risks of being resisted, activating latent effects, casting it on tank, casting it on self, summoners, etc. But its all said in an air of uncertainty. Is there any "official" description of what these spells are suppose to do. All the sites I see say "Adds weather effect to target". Ok... is that really it?

I agree with everything Belkira said. Here is some more info:

Spell Accuracy and Damage
The character under the effect of a weather spell will have a 33-50% chance of receiving a 10% bonus to elemental spell accuracy and potency for spells of the same element. You can see this in damage numbers for elemental spells and HP for curing spells directly, but the accuracy of elemental and enfeebling magic is also believed to be increased.

For example, if I cast Firestorm on a BLM, his Flare spell will have a 33-50% chance of a 10% bonus to accuracy and damage.

SCH weather seems to overwrite zone weather if the zone weather is different. I don't think anyone has proved this conclusively except on equipment (see below).

Equipment Activation
Weather spells do activate equipment that is based on weather. For example, they activate the elemental sea Obis and Dessert Boots. Despite some ambiguous descriptions on these items, only the single weather effect is needed to cause the latent to occur, and SCH spells offer this single weather effect.

A nice list of equipment and spells can be found here:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/jobs.html?fjob=20;mid=1194122629278032256;num=45;page=1

Weather spells do NOT activate equipment that is based on DAY. This seems obvious but many people get excited about it working on avatar rings, but it does not.

You cannot receive the latent effect from two different pieces that are activated by different weather. For example, if one is activated by rain and another by sand, and the zone is rainy and you have sandstorm cast on you, only the sand equipment's latent will activate.

Helix Spells
If the SCH casts a helix that matches their current weather, the 10% damage increase occurs 100% of the time, not 33-50%.

Miscellaneous
Weather spells do NOT fill the Carbuncle Ruby for the SMN flag quest.

Speculation
Does SCH weather completely overwrite zone weather?
It's been shown that this is true for equipment activation only, when zone weather differs from the weather spell. What is not known is if spell casting is only affected by the SCH weather, or if SCH weather stacks to create double or triple weather when it matches the zone weather. Some people have reported that this stacking of same weather does happen.

Does casting a weather spell on the mob's current target affect accuracy of spells cast on the mob from other players?

Does weather have any effect on crafting?

Do weather spells have any barspell-type effect giving you resistence to, say, bomb-toss, when Rainstorm is up?

Evaluation (mine)
For waiting 41 levels and not being able to sub these, their confirmed effects seem underwhelming. Good in certain situations (e.g. sandstorm on a kiter wearing Dessert Boots), but for 60 levels they're the only unique spells SCH gets and their single weather potency seems like too little, in addition to their long recast time and rather short duration. They look cool and are a very cool concept but in practice are underpowered. People on this and other forums have had fantastic ideas on how to enhance them.

Edited, Jan 28th 2008 1:12pm by MordruMidgard

I assume we'll see some kind of change to them, but is it just me or does it feel like the Weather Spells and the Helices should have been reversed in terms of when we received them?

Really? You mean there was earth weather in the zone and you had thunderstorm active on you? Your 1400 would indicate both opposing weathers were taking effect then, right, or somehow the Obi effect was not 100%? I assume you weren't noticing this on earth day... How often did you get the reduced damage with thunderstorm and earth weather in zone?

I've noticed matching weathers stacking, but never different zone weather affecting a spell when I had weather matching the spell active.

I spent one night casting around 200 times Fire 2 and Water 2 in Yuhtunga jungle on gob smithys. I would regularly see the bonuses stack when zone weather matched my weather spell. With single rain weather in the zone and rainstorm on I would toggle between normal damage, +10% damage and +20% damage using Water 3 on Windsday. With double rain weather in the zone, I would get anywhere from normal damage, to +10%, +20% and rarely a +25% (the bonus cap I believe).

With Firestorm + Fire 2 and rain weather I would only get my normal damage or the 10% bonus damage, with both single and double rain weather in the zone. I never got a -10% once. I did this over Earthday, Windsday and Iceday, around 100 casts per spell (skipped Watersday).

Dammit, I had a lot more respect for you until you mentioned that you wanted Geomancer. =P

Forgive me, I'm going wild speculation for a moment...

I think we got the Helix spells too late. I would have rather seen Helices from 40-65 with a Job Trait/AF effect/Merit to increase potency and/or duration late. Actually, I'm still holding out for something to increase their potency and/or duration, but I suspect that'll be merits.

As for weather, ignoring the fact that it's not very useful right now and should have their duration and/or recast modified, I still believe we'll see something that will modify a single to double weather effect, but that in-and-of itself won't be much either.

What concerns me is that SE will slap Blink and Stoneskin (or variations thereof) on the job class pre-37 and wash their hands of it for 6 months. I understand they wanted potent subjobs from these two, but SCH doesn't offer anything unique or essential at late levels or endgame, and that really needs to be changed earlier rather than later.

I've been following some very good ideas on the BG discussion as of late, and if SE takes a third of them, I'll be very content with this job class, but for now... it just feels unfinished to me.

Agreed. We get "our defining spells" level 41-55 or 61-75. Come on SE. The weather spells, in all honesty, are not that good. They are nearly completely useless, have a long recast, and take a decent amount of time to cast. If the recast and usefulness were lowered and increased, I would have no problem with the casting time. Hell, the duration sucks too, as you said.

61-75. The end of the game for "the spells" that are Scholar. Not only that, but we don't get spells from 1-60 that really make up for that. I made a post somewhere around here about the number of spells (subless) that BLM, WHM, RDM, and SCH have. Scholar was the lowest (but hey, we beat out Dark Knight by a few!) of the mages. The worst part is the lack of any defensive spells (for use as a real sub on certain jobs) and the lack of enfeebles (which means we're really tied to /RDM if we want White and Black enfeebles along with defensive ability). I picked up the job because I thought SE might do some cool things with it. If we don't see a fix in this next update, I suspect we'll be waiting a long (years) time for a fix.

Honestly, most jobs get their "class defining" abilities starting at level 40. If we are really expected to have weather effects as class defining, then I see no reason to have not pushed the first 6 Helices out prior to 37. In a perfect world, SCH main would get a 90-120 second duration on a Helix, and SCH sub would get a 30-60 second duration with reduced potency. In following with other elemental increases, save Light and Dark Helices for levels 38 and 40.

Obviously this is not a perfect world, and I'm still betting on a fix to both the helix line and the storm line, but I'm with ModruMidgard, playing SCH pre-41 is like playing a waiting game for rewards that you've seen before. Hell, even at 41 there's nothing fantastic except the Strategem you got a level ago.

Can someone clear something up for me? Apologies if I've missed it. My SCH is 36 so I can't yet test it. My original aim was to get it to 37 and forget about it but I'm a lot more interested in it now...

1)When you cast a weather spell - how is that shown on the person that has the new weather on them?

2)Does the weather effect completely replace any weather in the zone?

3) Can you overwrite double-weather with a SCH single weather spell?

It might be that I've gotten the wrong idea about how it works but essentially I want to know for example if as SCH I could give a WHM light weather in Apollyon which overwrites the double dark weather.

Icon at the top of the screen.



If the weather is dusty and you cast Firestorm, you get the bonus of Firestorm until Firestorm wears off.



Haven't tried. If it doesn't, it should, because those spells are already too weak to bother with 99% of the time. If they did take precedence over double weather, it could be useful in, as you said, Apollyon.

I haven't tested it, but it wouldn't be very hard. Go to a zone that gets a weather often, cast something else on yourself. Helix matching your weather buff then helix matching the current zone weather (make sure there's no day bonus, of course). I don't think it would work like that, though, because then you have the chance for your bonus to process then the natural zone weather has the chance to counter that.

I doubt enhancing magic effects that rate at which the weather spells kick in. No test, but I feel that SE would just take the weather effect, focus it to a single target, then let it do exactly the same thing. That's the easy way out.