Skill up areas?Follow

Go into an Abyssea zone with worms. Use a sub that gives you Silence. Just watch out for ephemeral aggro.

Even if you cap it now, you're not going to be able to keep your skill capped as you level. Modern xp is just too fast.

Go into abyssea, nuke the hell out of stuff, open the chests, profit. If you're standing around nuking things that don't drop anything valuable and don't give xp, then you really are wasting a significant opportunity.

The best way to cap elemental magic is to go on NM runs in Aby. Spam your elemental debuffs (frost, rasp, drown, etc) and work on proccing said NM for seals/+2 items. I didn't worry about skills going from 90-95 because the xp was rolling just way too fast. But I was able to cap my skill without even realizing it, because I am always on blm for NM runs. It's really not too bad.

I would suggest doing the worm method for both leveling and skilling because it is quite effective.

Perhaps you're missing something rather obvious here. Higher level doesn't mean higher skill. Lower skill means not doing a thing to the monster you're attacking. Sorry, but firing off those higher level nukes won't make a dent in a high level monster without the skill to back it up. Unlike other mages, I'm not happy with having every single nuke resisted and dealing rubbish damage. It's not only embarassing, it's a complete waste of the teams time.

Currently, I'm resisted on 9/10 nukes in a party. This is using AF gloves for +15 elemental skill AND +16 elemental skill from capped merits. The only spells I can land which deal remote damage to the popular XP mob, Sand Crawlers, are Thunder spells, and even those are resisted to 50% damage. My Blizzard IV usually lands for a measly 200-300 damage. I have capped merits in Ice and Thunder potency. Incidentally, I'm also at a point now where Dark Arts no longer enhances my elemental magic skill.

Yes, I could remain /SCH to 95 and stick with it until my Elemental Magic catches up, but it will still be massively underpar compared to a 'proper' BLM because Dark Arts doesn't cap skills, just enhances them to around a C-B rating (It's only truly B rating when you're capped). The truth is though, I don't want to remain as /SCH. There are far more utility spells from other support jobs which benefit not only myself, but other jobs as well.

Regardless of whether I'm 'gimping' myself or not, I am a proud person by nature. Not being able to do a job to the fullest extent of my abilities just makes me want to push it much farther until I can. It might be a little non conformist, but at least when I hit 95 I won't need to spend eternity making up for lost time.

Edited for clarity

Edited, Oct 20th 2011 1:00am by Glitterhands

I completely understand wanting to have capped skills. I personally pride myself in having all blue numbers under the magic category. It drives me crazy that healing and divine aren't capped on whm.

The problem with your theory is that you aren't taking level difference into account. Once you level you will do more dmg. Even with gimped skill because of the level difference between you and the mob. I'm not going to go into the whole dINT thing because while I get theory I don't always get the maths and don't want to get it wrong.

If you are seeing resists in bliz 4, use you elemental debuffs to lower the mobs INT and MND first. Then shoot off the nuke.

I'm not sure why your numbers are so low at level 80 when your skills aren't that far behind. At 75 I was able to azure kill no problem by timing my nukes and dropping 1.5~2k nukes. And this was before I had any atmas.

If you are only getting 200~300 for bliz 4 then maybe you should let us know what you nuking gear set is, what atmas you are using, and what mobs you are fighting. And iirc you want to pile on the MAB and INT before the elemental skill because they are more beneficial ... again I don't know the exact comparisons off the top of my head.

Wouldn't this essentially mean the same thing? As you level, your base INT goes up, therefore increasing the dINT between you and the mob. I think we are saying the same thing, but with different wording.

Using Burn to reduce the mob's INT will help. Using Shock to decrease the mob's MND will have no effect on BLM nukes.[/quote]
Agreed, MND won't help, but I'm just in the habit of stacking elemental debuffs, so I always do 3. Usually I do the Frost, Rasp, Drown triliogy, but if the mob nukes hard, debuffs, or resists nukes or enfeebles, then I do Burn, Choke, Shock.

No. MAB has no effect on resist rates. Elemental skill always gives 1:1 magic accuracy, where INT gives between 1:1 and 2:1. Most of the time in abyssea, you'll be looking at 2:1, so a point of INT is only half as effective as a point of elemental skill or direct m.acc.[/quote]
Thanks for this. I only ever saw large resists under 75 in Aby, once I hit 75~80 I wasn't seeing the resists that the OP is referring to. I wore MAB/INT gear with some elemental skill gear.

If I really must point out the obvious, then I shall. Please do not take offense to this. The elemental debuffs are exactly that, elemental. This means that they actually rely on Elemental Skill to land and work. It stands to reason, therefore, if I'm being resisted by the majority of my spells that I am also highly likely to be resisted casting these elemental debuffs. A resisted Burn is a waste of time I could spend casting a nuke instead.

As an addendum to this, I'm a tarutaru with merited INT using Cruor enhancements and Atma of the Minikin Monstrosity. My INT is very high, and is very noticeable in the damage when I land nukes unresisted. While I don't doubt that Sand Sweepers (thank you for the correction, by the way) have potentially greater INT I do not believe INT is as big a problem as Elemental Skill, which has a far more pronounced impact on casting spells when not up to par.


If I had the answer to that, I could give it to you. I do not. I will say, however, that my Thunder IV spells usually land for around 1k, and Burst II up to 1200 when resisted. Unresisted nukes on those hit for 1700~ for Thunder IV or 2100 Burst II. The 1k mark remains my average damage for Thunder IV though. Elemental Seal guarantees a hit for the full damage, naturally, which I usually use for Freeze II because of Atma of the Beyond for a total of 2700 damage. Resisted damage, with the same nuke, comes to 300-400. That's the 'average' by the way, using Aquilo's Staff.

Another member of my last team claimed they had 330 elemental skill and were still seeing resists consistently. Mine is currently at 324 with all enhancements considered. It should be at 332 (including AF gloves), so I still have another 8 levels of skill to gain.


Okay, here's my gear setup:

Main: HQ Elemental Staff (Aquilo's, Auster's etc)
Sub: Bugard Strap +1
Ammo: Morrion Tathlum
Neck: Artemis' Medal
Head: Teal Chapeau
Body: Teal Saio
Legs: Teal Slops
Feet: Wizard's Sabots (Yeah, they suck but so does most other gear at my level, and I like the 20% interrupt down and enmity)
Hands: Wizard's Gloves (For the elemental skill)
Rings: Aquilo's Ring x2 (Fire res down sucks, but you can't help love that INT)
Earring: Morion Earring + Moldavite Earring (Trying to replace Morion with Aquilo's, but they're rarely on sale)
Back: Prism Cape
Waist: Penitents Rope

I'm welcoming improvements to my gear, so feel free to point out any sticking points I might have with either resist rate or damage. I wasn't really trying to turn this into a debate, just trying to get advice on capping skills. I still fully intend to cap my skills so at least I'll be secure in the knowledge that there's less work to do later.

Edit: Fixed wall of text

Edited, Oct 21st 2011 1:10am by Glitterhands

All in all, it sounds like you are determined to skillup before moving on, regardless of what anyone says. So ... other than my first response of skilling up on NMs, I would suggest joining an Aby La Thiene worm party, put yourself on limit points, and go to town. Once your skills are to your satisfaction, then change to xp. To keep up your skills, don't do the limit breaks (if you haven't already on another job) and just keep skilling up until you are comfortable moving on. The benefits of a party are going to outweigh being solo because you will be building your lights, getting constant temp items, and TE. If you are in the party long enough, you would probably be able to just sleep in the zone and start back up the next day with your lights/xp/cruor already capped.

If you are determined to do it solo, you could also go back to the Zvahl Fortalices, but instead of casting actual nukes, just cycle through your elemental debuffs. The DoT will still kill them eventually, but it should be much slower than nuking them since they take enhanced magic damage.

My 95 rdm in similar gear (except full teal cause I'm lazy) regularly drops blizz iv for 1kish damage, with no macc or ice boosting atma's. Level difference helps alot... just get to 95, then live in abyssea until you cap skills ;p

Yeah, I'm well aware that a lot of players leech from level 30 onwards, just a bit exhausted trying to defend my reasons for wanting to skill up our most important skill. There's only so many times I can repeat the same argument, after all.

..Nobody was arguing against skill up Elemental Magic, man. You just kept insisting on subpar ways to go about it, and got corrected.

Zeruhn Mines is a terrible idea.

The worms in abyssea are higher level and you get refresh atmas.

You can still get a consistent resist rate even 175 skill below level 95 cap because of atmas and all the INT gear you can get.

If you don't have the atma's I'd consider those to be your top priority and not elemental skill.

Thank you for this guys. I didn't write this but I've been wondering myself, since I'm pretty behind in dark and enfeeb, and still haven't capped those yet.

I'll check the worms in Ule later and hope the gilsellers aren't there.. (that's one of their fav haunts lately; pains in the rear they are.)

Yeah it is. But let me put up a few more suggestions for help..

See, I don't do aby/voidwatch every day really. So normally my skills can be quite a bit behind (including elemental) for some time if I don't hop to it. Which annoys me to all end.

So to echo the cure skill thread in the WHM forum..(Your Healing Magic Skill Is In The Shnitter)

*****Your Elemental Magic/Dark Magic/Enfeebling Magic Skill is In The Worm****

...get your head out of the porn mag, lol.

You might not think these are important. Well, dark isn't so, but the other two..well, let me tell you *waves cane* in the rough old days when BLMs had to solo for their xp, if you didn't keep those capped, it would mean DEATH. Yours, that is. Higher levels may give you more int, but if the skill is not there, you'll get more resists than you may realize. And with enfeebs, that can equal a big old splat if a sleep gets resisted if your aby shell is like mine (Betrayed) and you're asked to solo emphs sometimes.


Abyssea does allow those of us who don't like to skill in our eg groups the opportunity to skill these alone if we wish. Go to Aby-Ule Range, Conflux 4. Also for atma (I know a lot of blms are going to whine, "But Eli, that'll gimp my damage"..Be quiet. In the end, once you get the normal atma on once you finish skilling, you prolly will notice ya get less resists, which will up your damage a little bit. Besides, it's better to skill alone.) I recommend Atma of the Earth Wyrm, Atma of the Mounted Champion, and Minikin Monstrosity. (Use a macc atma in place of earth wyrm if it's REALLY low)

Gear; I understand there is a new earring that helps with magic skillups. If you're really behind you may want to seek it, but I'm not that anal. Other than that bring your normal gear.

Food: Ever heard of pitaru? Pitaru is the magic skillup food. It isn't a really really huge difference but it makes a large enough difference to be noticeable. (Mind this is the known theories atm) The one with the highest skillcap is seafood pitaru, midrange is poultry pitaru, and the low end is stuffed pitaru. (I recommend if you want the seafood, log the butterpears AKA. avocados yourself and find a friend to make you some; it's expensive because the butterpears are kinda rare.) I understand if you skip it tho, since it's added expense! (I'm a 100 cook)

Anyway, go the opposite direction from the buffalo; you should see a lot of worms. Try to stay in the path leading to them as much as you can; they do aggro but don't seem to link. Also there's a Byrgen that comes by once in a while; since it's half dark based, it's almost unsleepable. If you get too close it'll agg to your spells, if that happens, bind + RUN for the conflux.

If you're skilling elemental magic, kill worms with T1 nukes, but be quick to stun if they do a ga3 or quake (that hurts, and it's good practice anyway); If it's dark, spam Bio, Bio 2, Aspir, Aspir 2, Stun, and Drain. If it's enfeeb, use Dia and Dia 2, and throw a stun in now and then just to keep it from doing something rotten.

Take your time and let'em have it. And that's the end of that worm, friends. ^^


Edited, Nov 13th 2011 10:03am by maryadavies

Oops, I thought it was EARTH resist. Wiki was wrong then.

Thought it was the regular old wiki but i'm dumb, looks like I misread it. *goes to fix*

Shows what happens when you've had a case of insomnia the night before.

Edited, Nov 13th 2011 10:03am by maryadavies