Critical MagicFollow

In general, this is not a good approach to gearing any job in this game. Just like melees need a balance of attack, accuracy, DEX and STR, BLMs need a mix of INT and Magic Attack Bonus, with some +skill, Magic Acc and +magic crit stuff. For each slot, you should consider the marginal benefits of the options available to you. It isn't always a case of "pick MAB first" or "pick INT first", because how much MAB/INT/magic crit gets added is important when comparing the benefits of that option.

Maleficus: There may be some unusual situation outside of Abyssea where this outperforms lvl 51 NQ elemental staves. But if you're inside Abyssea with decent Atma support and/or get better gear, Maleficus starts to fall behind even lvl 51 HQ elemental staves. It definitely pales in comparison to a Trial of the Magians +2 damage staff.

Here's a thread where I did some quick and dirty calculations for Maleficus:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?fjob=3&mid=130480726673128958&h=50

Sorcerer's Earring: keep it for your idle/damage taken set, but go camp a Moldavite Earring to use for damage.

Elemental Obis: I would get Hyorin (ice), Rairin (Thunder) and Anrin (dark) before the ones you listed.


That's a bad idea. Nothing makes up for not using elemental staves because you can have elemental staves AND sub SCH to give yourself weather.

Not to mention that the level cap isn't 99 yet, so you can't cast Hailstorm on yourself. Thunder V is a BLM's best single target nuke right now and Blizzard V is its 2nd best (arguably still better than Thunder V in Abyssea). Optimizing yourself for Fire V is doing yourself a disservice.

You are making this way more complicated that it needs to be. Magic crits are crap. Gear that increases m.crit rate or augments m.crit damage is generally useless, unless it it good for some other reason (such as Goetia +2).

An un-augmented magic crit proc is said to increase damage by 10 MAB, which is substantially less than a 10% increase. Although the exact amounts by which some items increase m.crit damage are not well documented, in the cases which they are known they are all small. Let's suppose that you somehow manage to push an m.crit poc up to +25 MAB (I think that's probably generous). Then, even if you manage to raise your m.crit rate to 100%, you will be doing less than 20% additional damage, and far less inside abyssea.

So, while technically you are correct that since the m.crit rate and (m.crit bonus plus other MAB) are multiplied, you have to consider all of the gear in a nuking set to know the exact amount of bonus, a very quick back-of-the-envelope calculation will show clearly that the entire exercise is pointless.

If you want to figure out the actual damage bonus from a maximized m.crit gear, strictly as an academic exercise, then be my guest. In fact, I wish more people actually made the effort to learn how to calculate magic damage correctly. But don't expect to surprise anyone with your results. There has been a lot of math done here over the years (both correctly and no so much so), and we have a pretty damn good idea what works, both from practical experience and from verified calculations.

Meanwhile, if you want a target gearset for your BLM, then aim for something like this for nuking:

Weapons: HQ or Magian staves for every element.
Strap: Wizzan Grip
Ammo: Ombre Tathlum or Witchstone
(no, you can't use throwing ammo and ranged weap at the same time)
Head, body, hands, legs, feet: Goetia +2 set
Neck: Goetia, Saevus
Earrings: Hecate's, Novio, Moldavite
Rings: Galdr, Icesoul, Strendu, Sorcerer's, etc.
Back: Goetia, Searing, Kaikias'
Waist: Oneiros sash, cognition, sorcerer's, Obis.

There are, of course, other options, lots of situational/macro gear, and new stuff all the time. But if you start with the above, you'll be on the right track.


Edited, Oct 11th 2011 6:25pm by VxSote

The first MMO character I ever played was an Erudite Wizard in Everquest back in the late 1990's. In that game there was a specific message indicative of magic crits "IE: Melphina scores a critical blast!! The Vengeful Gnoll takes XXX amount of damage". Magic crits were a lot more powerful than standard spells and made a noticeable difference.

However FFXI is not everquest, and magic crits didn't even EXIST in FFXI until the end of 2008. For five years after the NA release mages could not score a magic critical because s-e never thought ahead enough to code for it. There was some testing on magic critical hit numbers shortly after the system was implemented which are chronicled on the wiki here. The exact amount of damage increase a magic crit gives is not clear but it was estimated to be approximately 10 MaB worth, or in the ballpark of 10% worth. A melee critical raises pDIF by 1.0 which results in a significant amount of extra damage dealt over a normal attack (even more when you multiply it by crit enhancing traits/gear such as loki's khaftan or razed/sanguine atmas). A magic crit is much more limited and even though the exact amount of damage added is unknown, the magic damage formula IS known and the only good magic crit rate gear is that which already has good nuking stats anyway (Hecate's earring, goetia gloves +2). There are multiple reasons to not build for magic crit, but the biggest is that since magic crits don't increase damage by a significant amount it's more effective to gear for int/mab which affects every spell by a noticeable amount than to wear armor that doesn't do anything AT ALL when you don't score a magic crit (most of your nukes) in an effort to increase the way too low to begin with magic crit rate. Your original build was an all out magic crit rate build which still capped at around 60% magic crit, but came at the sacrifice of your elemental staff as well as an easy 27 int and 5-8 MaB on some pieces I can think off off the top of my head. VxSote is right that it's a far cry to expect a magic crit to increase nuke damage by anywhere near 25% even when geared for, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the ~~~27 int and 5-8 *ish* MaB plus your elemental staves will do that and much much more (especially if they're ToTM + 3 staves).

The gist of it is that S-E implemented magic crits very poorly. They could have been so much more but the sad reality is that while magic crits are awesome in other games s-e dropped the ball and they really do suck in FFXI. They're nice when they happen, but going out of your way to gear for them is always going to cost you in the long run. Hence the consensus that it's only good on gear that you would already be nuking in to start with.

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 8:22pm by Melphina

Can't tell if troll...

Somwhat OOT, but you may wanna look at something I've been playing with.

This came about after achieving several +2 sets of Empyrean Armour and seeing just how strong the "Set" bonus is.

In Abyssea only the idea is use "atma of the Fetching Footpad" which gives MAB, Crit+ & Superior Conserve MP...... due to set bonus & "Augments Conserve MP" on +2, so far I have been happy with it.

Forcing Crit's is interesting but the % increase on each proc is not static, thus, forcing Conserve MP (which returns static based on amt of conserve) while still being geared for all around consistent best MAB & MATK seems like the direction to go.

Unfortunately, am unable to test this very well due to the fact that I'm still primarily using BLM for proc'ing & therfore not always shooting for max damage (to avoid killing mob too fast &/or pulling hate too much).

It is really effective on BLM burn mobs though, Cirein Croin for instance & also, so far seems to make AMII much more attractive (or at least MP>Damage effective)

implying that it ever meant anything

I've been away from the game for a while. Was it ever settled if the Magic Critical effect had any impact on factors other than raw damage (such as enfeeblements or resist rates)?

Not just likely; AF3 set IS what's causing the spikes.