Boost spells + enhancing gear

[Economizer]

It seems all RDM's enhancing buffs cap at 500 for potency so I would surmise that WHM's caps here also. Still +25 to any stat is ridiculously nice, and you guys get to aoe it as well. 150 base on barspells also.

Do the barspells cap out (with Enhancing) as well? If so, at what amount?

Quick story note, the other day we were out in abyssea (OMG yes people still do this) to finish farming one of our LS mates Ukon. As RDM I put up barstone + barpetrify when we were farming TE's and doing Tunga. He chainspelled Break / Breakga and didn't petrify me once the entire time. His petrify / slow / nukes got resisted every time, was pretty awesome considering all the headache he's caused in the past. With WHM's getting more potent barspells due to gear, it's something that all WHM's should be striving for.

I would say that part of that is the Red Mage Resist Petrify trait (WHM/RDM, depite having lower Barspell numbers still resists quite a bit with just Barstonra up, but it is still not a good reason to go /RDM since that doesn't help the group), but I certainly see the impact of Barstonra on doing that fight, I'm still not sure if Barpetra actually helps with anything but duration if it does stick however - although if I can I cast it anyways as part of dealing with all the dispel effects Tunga throws out.

I'll still hold my doubts that barailment spells actually do anything useful (shortening duration only barely counts as useful in select situations) but with the amount of resist you can throw out with a barelement, you can resist ailments quite nicely despite those barailment spells being useless.

Edit: I just noticed a post in the Japanese forums that seems to be about skill being useless after a certain cap, such as 500 Summoning Magic and 500 Enhancing Magic. I cannot really tell what SE's official reply was due to the automated translation but I think it is safe to assume that based on experiences here and in those forums as well that 500 Enhancing Magic may be the current cap for Boost and Barspells.

[Camate]

As Economizer has added to his most recent post, there was in fact a post in regards to magic skill caps on the Japanese forums. The below is the official translation:

There are caps placed on the amount abilities/magic effects are increased due to skill values.

There are two meanings to this:

• In order to achieve balance at level 99, it’s necessary to establish a cap somewhere
• Set up some leeway to be able to have creativity/trial-and-error for enhancing other parameters and having a choice of equipment

Similar to how we raised the caps on traits from level 75 and up, we will be making continuous adjustments and it’s not like we won’t be raising the caps in the future. However, in the meantime, based on the current cap when reaching level 99, we would like to get a wide variety of feedback.

When giving feedback, please have discussions separating them into elements such as the below:

• How to consider the cap itself in the future
• Exploration of other growth methods once the cap is reached
• Ideas and concepts of abilities/equipment with caps

[Ophannus]

Will we be getting new job abilities 96-99 for the jobs that don't cast magic or get useful traits? Mages got new spells and many melee jobs got enhanced traits such as Dual Wield III for NIN and a new tier of Shield Mastery for PLD. But jobs like DRG it's speculated that the only trait we got 96-99 was enhanced tier of Critical Defense Bonus (because a tier of Crit Defense Bonus is hard to test and is akin to nothing for DRG compared to maybe an extra tier of Conserve TP or Attack Bonus it feels like the only thing new we got 86-99 was Stardiver and higher acc/att from polearm skill(which every job got)

We were expecting some new job abilities, maybe a new Jump or Attack Boost job ability but you told us DRG has reached the limit on Job Abilities(Yet DRG only has 11, SAM and THF have 13)

[Seriha]

First off, I suppose it'd be simplest to list all spells affected by Enhancing Magic. From there, we can pick apart their effects and possible updates.

12 Barelement spells. (6 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)
16 Barstatus spells. (8 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)
10 Protect spells. (5 types, WHM AoE and WHM/RDM/SCH/PLD single-target)
10 Shell spells. (5 types, WHM AoE and WHM/RDM/SCH/PLD single-target)
5 Regen spells.
2 Refresh spells.
Adloquium. (TP Regen)
8 Storm spells.
4 Spikes Spells.
2 Phalanx Spells.
Stoneskin.
Aquaveil.
Blink.
12 Enspells.
Auspice.
Temper.
Animus Augeo and Minuo.
14 Stat boosting spells. (7 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)

Universally, I would like to see the durations of all Enhancing Magic to be 5 minutes before including things like Perpetuance, Composure + Empyrean+2, and standard equipment boosts. If this includes an adjustment of MP costs, like 60% higher, okay. However, it should be noted the the Bar-lines have a default duration that increases after a certain level of skill. This could also be a consideration, but best if buffs maintain a uniform duration instead of Haste ending in 5 minutes, Refresh in 4 minutes, and so on.

Anyway, onto the spells...

12 Barelement spells. (6 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)
The main issue I've found with these is that the spell alone is rarely enough to be a detriment to a mob's elemental attacks. This lead to things like Fire Resist builds for Tiamat back in the day which, while workable for tank classes, weren't really practical due to performance hits and inventory limitations. It also suggests that the accuracy for various mob spells and abilities are set rather high if even a half-resist is a rarity from a Barspell alone.

While I wouldn't expect the resist rates of Barspells to be grossly improved, instead I would propose a uniform mitigation of any damage or effect from that element. So, if you're capable of hitting 150 resist, that could mean 15% damage knocked off or a status effect's duration cut by that much. Whether it comes before or after the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 check is up to you. It should also stack on top of the -Magic Damage cap.

I would also like to see Barlight(ra) and Bardark(ra) added.

16 Barstatus spells. (8 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)
Many feel these spells are useless, in part due to the earlier issue of high land rates from monsters. While they can lead to shortened durations paired with a Barspell, nullification on challenging prey is rare. Like with elemental resists, I surmise we have hidden status resist stats these spells augment, which then go on to the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 check. As with Barspells, all I can suggest is they also receive a percentage duration reduction based on your skill. So, again with the 150 number, paired with the Barspell, 30% total reduction could happen.

10 Protect spells. (5 types, WHM AoE and WHM/RDM/SCH/PLD single-target)
The Defense stat in this game is problematic as a player. From the WHM perspective, meriting Protectra V isn't very appealing since its boost over IV isn't very high, and now we have single-target Protect V. While it might be possible for a player to stack defense well over a mob's ATK rating, when the mobs themselves are rocking D200+ "weapons" on the standard 240 delay, they can still hit pretty hard.

I'd like to take a page from the Shell line and propose Protect spells get a direct percentage mitigation of physical damage. I'm not talking paltry numbers like 1% per tier, either, but more like Shell's.

As is, Enhancing Magic holds no effect over the Protect line. If the above is considered, skill could affect the -DT% rate. As an alternative, Protect spells could also grant a percentage HP increase that could also scale with skill relative to the tier.

10 Shell spells. (5 types, WHM AoE and WHM/RDM/SCH/PLD single-target)
At present, these are largely fine. Though, like with Protect, Enhancing holds no sway in their potency. As such, I'd propose a small universal barspell effect reflective of the tier, like 1-9 for T1, 10-19 for T2, and up to 50 for T5.

5 Regen spells.
These recently got an overhaul, addressing issues like their cast time and actual amount of HP restored, further favoring use by SCH as a main job. For the most part, I'd say they're in a good place now, save maybe their durations being too short.

2 Refresh spells.
With people getting access to Refresh from /RDM, mainly for self-cast purposes, getting 110 MP over 150s isn't what it used to be for jobs like BLM where your new spells are running for 250 MP or more. Alongside duration boosts, some element of gaining 1 MP per tick relative to your enhancing skill would be welcome, leading to perhaps a possible 6 MP/tick Refresh while Refresh II could hit 10 before gear additions.

Adloquium. (TP Regen)
At 1 TP/tick default, this spell isn't very impressive when compared to COR's equivalent roll. Bumping it to 3 TP would be nice, but like Refresh, could benefit from Enhancing skill improvements.

8 Storm spells.
With the recent Helix adjustments, part of me wants to petition the level requirements for Storm spells be lowered. Having them work toward weather requirements on Magian trials would be another bonus. However, from the Enhancing perspective, at present these spells function like level 1 weather effects. The obvious notion here would be for skill to further nudge them toward double weather or even beyond.

4 Spikes Spells.
Aside from PLD and Reprisal, the big issue with these spells is the jobs that receive them should rarely be getting hit outside of RDM melee soloing. Reprisal could benefit from a longer duration given its long recast. Overall, I can only suggest stronger potencies tailored to a spell's strength, like Blaze doing more fire damage, Ice having a more potent paralyze, and Shock stunning more often.

2 Phalanx Spells.
These haven't scaled well with leveling at all. Even with Signet's defense bonus on, I've had mobs in Zeruhn hit me on RDM for 70+. Its futility grows on NMs who hit for hundreds, or worse, thousands. And with Phalanx II as a merit spell, I know myself and others are sore over having to choose it and max it just for it to be useful, while a SCH/RDM or RDM/SCH can Accession a comparable Phalanx for basically free. All merit spells should be scroll learned at this point, and abilities progressed or at least quested.

Anyway, either the scaling needs to be better post-300, like 3-5 damage mitigated instead of 1, or like Protect, the Phalanx line could benefit from either a percentage damage reduction or even healing the person the amount of the damage they blocked.

Stoneskin.
Caps at 350 and has done so since the level 75 cap. Basically, I'd like to see this closer to 600 with gear that boosts Stoneskin being more effective. I'm also open to the idea of a Stoneskin II with the stoneskin effect regenerating if it's not completely broken.

Aquaveil.
This spell was changed sometime back. For now, I guess it's okay.

Blink.
More shadows relative to Enhancing skill like Blue Mage's Occulation would be nice.

12 Enspells.
These have been a sore spot for RDMs for a while. Overall, neither tier scales well, much like Phalanx. The T2s are still facing the long time issue of their accuracy and potency being based on-strike as opposed to on-cast. Rather simply, a RDM won't be swinging in Enhancing Magic gear. The actual damage of T2s also needs to outweigh multi-hitting T1s if you're going to insist on the main-strike only for damage. Furthermore, the T2's resist down effect needs to be much more effective and actually corresponding to the element used, as most of the time you're forced to use one a mob is strong to to weaken another pitifully.

Auspice.
Aside from Subtle Blow capping, there's not really anything wrong with this. Maybe if the WHM is in Misery mode, other players could get the Enlight effect.

Temper.
At its initial launch of 5%, it sucked. Fortunately we were heard and the spell improved, floating around 13% last time testing was done on it with a good skill build.

Animus Augeo and Minuo.
Flaws in the enmity system aside, these spells should simply up potency of enmity generated or negated based on skill with the (-)10 being its default value. Breaking enmity gear caps would also be nice.

14 Stat boosting spells. (7 types, WHM AoE and RDM single-target)
I guess the original intent of this thread, and otherwise have been covered. +25 to a stat is pretty nice, and even better for WHMs who can AoE. Perhaps the only tweak I can ponder is them adding stat specific perks over a cap like MATK from INT, ATK from STR, and so on.


Hopefully that'll get the ball rolling a bit. x.x

[Dantedmc]

In additon to the above I'd like to add "barall" and "barallra". It's somewhat annoying to have a barspell build set up only to have the nm cast multiple elments. These spells would be for those NMs. Barall(ra) would not be as strong as single element barspells (maybe 66-75% as potent), but be useful on multi-element casters. Also allow alot of the self cast buffs to be party cast. This includes the protectra/shellra line, the boosts, auspice, barspells, etc.

[Seiowan]

As Economizer has added to his most recent post, there was in fact a post in regards to magic skill caps on the Japanese forums. The below is the official translation:

There are caps placed on the amount abilities/magic effects are increased due to skill values.

There are two meanings to this:

• In order to achieve balance at level 99, it’s necessary to establish a cap somewhere
• Set up some leeway to be able to have creativity/trial-and-error for enhancing other parameters and having a choice of equipment

Similar to how we raised the caps on traits from level 75 and up, we will be making continuous adjustments and it’s not like we won’t be raising the caps in the future. However, in the meantime, based on the current cap when reaching level 99, we would like to get a wide variety of feedback.

When giving feedback, please have discussions separating them into elements such as the below:

• How to consider the cap itself in the future
• Exploration of other growth methods once the cap is reached
• Ideas and concepts of abilities/equipment with caps

If we are to consider the magic caps themselves, we need to consider also what effect magic skill actually has on casting in the first place. People are unlikely to merit skills which are deemed to have little or no effect, and there are quite a large assortment of magic skills which are considered to be 'junk'. I'll review those shortly.

Healing Magic: Aside from being one of the most painful skills to level in the first place short of spamming it on undead for countless hours, healing magic appears to have shockingly little effect on heals beyond a certain point. Even Cure V, which works Healing skill into the calculation, gets little gain after a point easily reached without spending a single merit. The only point of note is that it prevents spell interruptions more often, which is vital if you're trying to heal under fire.

Solution: Grant higher skill a better chance of removing Doom/Zombie with Cursna (something which doesn't happen currently). Fix the healing calculations so that healing skill has a more pronounced effect. The latter would also have the bonus knock-on effect of making Red Mage's and Scholar's more viable healers without having to borrow WHM's spells and abilities.

Divine Magic: Flash has such a high accuracy that few people will merit Divine to increase its accuracy. Beyond that, the Banish line of spells (even taking into consideration Afflatus Misery -- which only works as long as you were dealt a single high-damage blow last time) are still very weak spells and rarely find a purpose beyond weakness targeting. The main reason for meriting Divine Magic is neither attacks nor Flash, but Repose. Arguably however, it is accurate enough not to require further boosting beyond gear.

Solution: Make Banish spells suck less. Or at least give us Banish IV/V. It's been a long time coming, so throw us a bone here! Seriously though, this is one of the few I'd say is "working as intended" even though I maintain it has little use beyond casting Repose.

Enfeebling Magic: Hoo boy, this one is a doozy. Everyone loves it (for some reason) and everyone hates it (for the same reasons). Let's start with the obvious shall we? Enfeebles just aren't useful anymore. There, I said it. Someone had to point this out eventually. Against the targets they would actually be a benefit for, the monsters are now immune to said effect. People would once grab every tiny piece of enfeebling magic gear to hand for a chance to enfeeble 'HNMs' and now enfeebling is largely left by the wayside by all besides devout Red Mages. Accuracy versus the newer high level NMs is incredibly low or outright resisted on principle, and there have been very few unique enfeebles for Red Mage leaving them playing second-fiddle to other jobs.

Solution: While the skill itself does improve accuracy, having so many monsters actually immune to the effects renders the whole idea useless. Put Red Mage back into the leaderboard by giving them unique traits which allow them to bypass this resistance to some degree and inflict lasting enfeebles on monsters which would otherwise shrug them off. Perhaps add the chance to remove an additional positive effect with Dispel when cast by a Red Mage. Give people a reason to use enfeebles, and this skill will be back on top where it belongs.

Elemental: Not really much to say about this one. Higher skill means higher accuracy with nukes. Rarely will there come a time where you've got 'too much accuracy' as the strength of NMs is always increasing. This is one of the few skills I have no real issue with.

Solution: None. If it isn't broken, for the love of Altana don't fix it!

Dark Magic: My issues with Dark Magic may seem minor, but it does highlight some interesting points. Firstly there are so few actual Dark magic spells in the game. Bio, Aspir, Drain, Stun, Absorb and Dread Spikes are the only ones which seem affected by Dark Magic skill, and Stun only in a minor way as it usually lands effectively even when used as in a supporting role due to its high accuracy. It's main use I suppose seems to be increasing the DoT of Bio spells, which is largely outdated in today's gameplay.

Solution: As it would be difficult to balance making this skill have a more pronounced effect on Drain/Aspir (Drain especially, since it has a very high damage/MP ratio AND recovers HP), that should probably be given a wide berth. Instead either bring in new Dark Magic spells to fill the gaps or give it some effect on Bio's 'attack down' debuff strength.

Enhancing Magic: The caps for the majority of skills are reached long before your skill is, but this one does have a significant impact irrespective of how high your skill increases on spells like Boost-AGI. That said, there are a lot of spells which could benefit from putting this skill to use which don't presently, or appear to have no effect.

Solution: Give Bar-Status spells (Barpoison, Barparalyzra etc) a significant boost to reducing the duration of it's relative spell based on Enhancing Magic. At present they're almost never used as the effect is so small as to not be noticed by the majority of players. Better yet, give them a chance at nullifying any attempts to inflict that status ailment in the first place! Make Protect/Shell spells improve with Enhancing skill! Raise the caps on Enfire et al!

Seriously, there are a LOT of spells which either don't benefit at all, or don't benefit enough. This one needs serious review!

I'd post more, believe me I could, but I have a kid to get into school this morning. I'll probably update this post later to include the bits I've omitted.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

It seems all RDM's enhancing buffs cap at 500 for potency so I would surmise that WHM's caps here also. Still +25 to any stat is ridiculously nice, and you guys get to aoe it as well. 150 base on barspells also.


Quick story note, the other day we were out in abyssea (OMG yes people still do this) to finish farming one of our LS mates Ukon. As RDM I put up barstone + barpetrify when we were farming TE's and doing Tunga. He chainspelled Break / Breakga and didn't petrify me once the entire time. His petrify / slow / nukes got resisted every time, was pretty awesome considering all the headache he's caused in the past. With WHM's getting more potent barspells due to gear, it's something that all WHM's should be striving for.

So does this mean Temper caps at 20% then?

PS. How annoying it's capped and WHM can match RDM.

[raps1355]

As Economizer has added to his most recent post, there was in fact a post in regards to magic skill caps on the Japanese forums. The below is the official translation:

There are caps placed on the amount abilities/magic effects are increased due to skill values.

There are two meanings to this:

• In order to achieve balance at level 99, it’s necessary to establish a cap somewhere
• Set up some leeway to be able to have creativity/trial-and-error for enhancing other parameters and having a choice of equipment

Similar to how we raised the caps on traits from level 75 and up, we will be making continuous adjustments and it’s not like we won’t be raising the caps in the future. However, in the meantime, based on the current cap when reaching level 99, we would like to get a wide variety of feedback.

When giving feedback, please have discussions separating them into elements such as the below:

• How to consider the cap itself in the future
• Exploration of other growth methods once the cap is reached
• Ideas and concepts of abilities/equipment with caps

I think that in the past enhancing magic as a whole was not very useful due to caps being placed far too low than they should have been. What i have seen with the lvl 80 cap increase and onward is where skill caps have risen and new enhancing gear has become available, players have started to notice good resists on old content that was designed for lvl 75 suggesting if the caps were higher they could have potential. In maps such as abyssea players have access to the 100+ elemental atmas which when combined with a good whm barspell you can block things such as Gamayun's aerial blast (2 hour move) for 0 damage etc so that right there is what whms want to be able to do on occasion. Now we are not saying that we want to consistantly block all top end NM's strongest magical attacks but should more a case of;

Assuming the best possible gear setup available.

10% for 0 damage
15% for 1/8 damage
25% for 1/4 damage
50% for half damage

On the matter of the actual cap itself that should be set by gear available and not and actual cut off point on the skill lvl, players will always go after the best possible setup with exceptions being in this case the aptus earring due to only getting one try per day at getting one or the +8 on the zenith crown. Perhaps the DEVs could consider making the magic skills turn red instead of blue to show that it is capped and no longer providing any extra benefits as had i not have come to this forum i would still be collecting enhancing gear and i am sure there are many others who still dont know about said caps.

The other problem alot of players notice and some have mentioned here already is the enhancing magic skill does nothing for alot of spells such as protect, shell, regen, refresh etc. There should be a collosal difference in a whm main player and a whm mule when it comes to buffs but right now its marginal.

[raps1355]

In additon to the above I'd like to add "barall" and "barallra". It's somewhat annoying to have a barspell build set up only to have the nm cast multiple elments. These spells would be for those NMs. Barall(ra) would not be as strong as single element barspells (maybe 66-75% as potent), but be useful on multi-element casters. Also allow alot of the self cast buffs to be party cast. This includes the protectra/shellra line, the boosts, auspice, barspells, etc.

Would be interesting to have a new JT to allow more barspells to be cast, maybe 2-3 or even as this poster suggests the more we have the weaker the overall effect. But definately two elements at 100% power.

[Economizer]

PS. How annoying it's capped and WHM can match RDM.

RDM has an easier time gearing for Enhancing and doesn't have to sub SCH, and can do it without compromising certain setups.

Red Mage's problems mostly come from a variety of sources, but White Mage being good at certain things isn't one of them - complaining about it by saying White Mage should be in a worse position is almost as bad as bringing up Dragoon in a thread about magic skill caps. Also 20% Double Attack is amazing so long as it comes from the amount you have on cast.

The other problem alot of players notice and some have mentioned here already is the enhancing magic skill does nothing for alot of spells such as protect, shell, regen, refresh etc. There should be a collosal difference in a whm main player and a whm mule when it comes to buffs but right now its marginal.

While I'm fine with Shellra V 5/5 (which by the way, only gives a 3% buff over Shell V, for people suggesting that Protectra should be boosted in the same way) there are a lot of spells that would be nice to see affected by Enhancing that aren't, among other adjustments. Protect for example could use a defense boost that doesn't require having merits or gear, or perhaps some other trait that makes the spell line more useful in general, like spell interrupt down. That said, there are things that require more attention currently.

Erase is an Enhancing Magic spell currently, it should be changed to Healing Magic before any adjustments should be made to it. Regen just got an adjustment and should be given some time to be well tested before we change it (although RDM should get another tier at least). Refresh II, like I'd suggested in the past, should scale with Enhancing Magic - I'm not sure of the exact numbers I've suggested in the past, but I think I suggested something in the neighborhood of skill above 300 should boost it much like boost spells, but with a less favorable formula of something like 20 skill per point added - which would lead to a cap of 17 including the AF3+2 pants - considering what Bard can pull off this only seems fair to me.

Spells like Stoneskin, Blink, Aquaveil could use skill adjustments and higher caps.

Certain spells could use longer durations with more skill. Auspice comes most to mind due to its horrifically bad duration (which was only ever okay when Auspice provided massive accuracy boosts if you never let it disappear), but other spells could use it too.

The Enspells need a revamp almost as badly as Barstatus spells. Tier 2 enspells can start by working on every hit like T1, making the skill entirely on cast and should have the magic evasion effect based on Enhancing Magic rather then the flat rate it has now.

For barelement spells we need Barlight/ra and Bardark/ra. This is the only adjustment that is needed.

For certain Scholar spells like the storm spells adjustments are a bit more complex, but for example, I think the storm spells could have longer durations and increase the chances of procing weather effects on people without an obi equipped, and for those with one equipped the occasional chance at double weather. For Scholar main perhaps we'll see an increased chance at weather procs, a chance at double weather procing for non-obi users and for obi users a chance of double weather and day procs. Or something somewhat like this.

Would be interesting to have a new JT to allow more barspells to be cast

Considering how powerful Barspells are I don't expect to be able to cast a second element short of some rare gear piece that allows it (same with a supposed Barall spell). Perhaps if SE ever updates the Evoker's Ring and the Black Belt we'll see job specific super gear much like those two pieces (Such as SCH getting something that gives Stratagems Stored +1 and Conserve Stratagem, or Puppetmaster getting a special attachment/frame that aside from other functions, has the Automaton cast Raise on the master if they die). Basically, I think it is a possibility if we see more super powerful gear someday, but I don't think it will ever be a class feature.

-

All in all, I don't see a 500 Enhancing Magic cap as an issue at all, but certain spells should be brought up to the level of spells that cap at that number, be it with allowing them to scale, increasing durations, or just raising the level they cap at.

For other spells I think they would be more appropriate to discuss in other topics.