Relic ArmorFollow

Seems to me you already have a good look on what to get.

Head, Body, Hands are the ones you want to focus on.

Legs offer the possibility of making Dark Magic gear set. Up to you if ya want to take things that far.

Feet... Well. I already cast at 50% casting speed without using Gems. Feet are hardly worth the macro space. But fun if your into completing the Set.

"They aren't all that useful."

True, for general use there are not very useful.

But in sutiations when they actually are useful, they can let you do things you would not be able to do without.

Like getting a much needed Bind in / squeezing in a Blizzard IV. Thanks to ice weather, Alacrity and relic boots you can get insane low recast/cast timers on both. See for instance longer solo/low man fights where you need to kite and rely mostly on DoT + the occasional nuke.

All in all, they are not my daily choice of footwear, but there are certainly situations in my SCH life (full of solo adventuring) where i put them to good use.

My advise: Get them and use when appropriate.

Edited, May 19th 2009 7:30pm by Mosel

Head: Best piece for an elemental skill build.
Body: Best idle piece during sublimation.
Hands: Best enfeebling piece hands down.
Legs: Wonderful aspir/drain macro piece.
Feet: VERY useful when used properly. Not applicable for all settings.

Feet can let you kill ix'mnk before even getting to the kite area. Any situation where you need to get a big nuke off fast, argute feet will turn that situation into gravy. My question: WHY THE *&$# DID THEY PUT HEALING MAGIC SKILL ON THEM!?!?!

Each piece is quite useful. Each piece is completely situational.

*edit* Not accounting for HQs of each piece. Benefits from each HQ are very marginal. Hands and Legs are really the only 2 pieces I would ever consider upgrading, but that would be a time when I literally have nothing else on which to spend currency.

Edited, May 20th 2009 2:03pm by Banggugyangu

I dont doubt that they help. But they aren't as useful as you make em sound. On all spells my normal casting speed and recast for spells is 50%, when using alacrity and celerity its 25%.

Things such as SS have 10sec recast and things like Bliz4 have 5 sec recast. The most those shoes are going to shave off is 1sec(cant prove it cuz i dont have the feet..)

How have you broken the 50% hard cap? All my tests have left me hitting the hard 50% cap be it with Fast Cast, Haste, or even normal gear. Alacrity and Celerity force a spell to 50% and nothing gear wise or spell wise has been able to break that cap in my tests besides relic boots with weather.

Edit: This is on non AoE spells those I can hit the 25% cap you're talking about because that's the natural 50% if the spell was single cast.

Edited, May 22nd 2009 12:01pm by Zagen

Flawed logic because lag (from connection speed/quality, to rendering strain on the game, think dynamis) also affects the casting bar.

The only way I've found to consistently test gear is based on recast because Casting Time always seems to jump around too much to figure anything consistently even when in an empty zone and minimal animation.

I wont claim to not have lag. Cuz i get my fair share. But i can tell you, that when im not getting lag, the gear i mentioned still gets me at 50% and 25% with celerity/alacrity. Again this is solely based on the casting bar without lag. I should prob grab a stop watch... and test it further before posting this. But i'll do it later to either disprove or prove what im saying. Maybe... when it sayd im casting at 50% without those gems im really not... but i fail to see why it would if i wasnt and how you would be able to know if it was otherwise. Again like i said in my last post, if im failing to see something in this all, plz, point it out.

not worth arguing against someone claiming to have achieved under 50% cast/recast w/out relic boots

it's just not possible.

Using the casting bar as your 'observation' has many shortfalls. This is because it is easily affected by lag and other client side effects. 2 players can have the exact same gear and stats, and have 2 completely different "it fired at X% casting bar" results. Because it is client-side specific, it is not a useful tool for judging small differences in fast cast such as your AF shoes.

It's not about lying. A person can either lie or tell the truth as far as when the spell fired on their casting bar - the fact is what it fired at on your computer is not all that relevant to another person's computer.

I personally believe AF1 feet and AF2 head are between 2 and 3% fast cast. This information was derived based on Kuuhalee's Cure Casting Speed testing and using known tiers of cure client side casting times to determine fast cast. I had a pretty long forum debate with someone on FFXIWIKI forums about this. He maintains it is 5% fast cast based on his casting bar and using Reraise. I told him the exact same thing I posted here that client-side based casting bar observations are not accurate, but apparently he opted to go with his 5% fast cast when editing the wiki page.

I've seen 2/3%, 5%, 9%, and 10% thrown around as far as the fast cast amount on AF1 feet / AF2 head. The 5%, 9%, and 10% values were all based on the casting bar observations - just goes to show you how different it can be computer to computer. I really didn't care to personally continue the debate since I don't really use Wiki for game mechanics information and am rather sure of the 2/3%, but to anyone that cares, that's why the Wiki says its 5%. It went from 2.5% to 10% to 9% to 10% to 2.5% to now 5% over the last year. Check the edits.

As far as AF2 boots, I never had the pleasure of testing them. Those saying it is another -10% fast cast are either confusing it with recast timer %, extrapolating that since the recast is -10% that the fast cast must be too, are fooling themselves with the casting bar, or did some other test method I don't know about. Whatever it is, the -10% recast timer makes them worth macroing, especially if you use Spellcast.

Kaeko


Edited, Jun 1st 2009 1:26am by Kaeko

Just for clarification, Kaeko, are you saying "2% or 3%" or are you saying "two-thirds of a percent" when you type "2/3%"?

2/3% means it is at worst, 2%, at best 3%. Sorry for the confusion. I got those values by using known tiers of client side firing rates on Cure 3/4/5 (basically Kuuhalee's testing). I could not pinpoint the exact value, only limit it. Basically, even though fast cast matters when you are casting a cure, the animation on how long it takes to fire is 'tiered' - so if you have say 0% fast cast and 15% fast cast, your cures will appear to take the same amount of time to fire (note, NOT the casting bar, but by counting frames).

The thread I was referring to is here:

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=19703&sid=29f81061b59b36de13e7f544950e6745&start=15

Honestly this is a very tough one to pin down so if you're really interested, I suggest reading the thread and both sides and reaching your own conclusions.

The +7 magic skill pieces are essentially a free magic skill torque level upgrade on a different slot and generally you can have your 'Enhance Dark Arts' Body AF piece or 'Enhance Light Arts' Leg AF piece and equip the relic to further boost the particular magic skill you need.