-AGAing the blm Fell Cleave

[Mojo]

The only PDT gear that is necessary is Movement Speed + for pulling; nothing should be hitting you until you're at camp and have activated Font+Wall. I don't know if size of pulls is different, but 20+ is no problem with my strategy. The key is killing them as fast as possible to limit how much damage you take; between Protect/Stoneskin/Phalanx, a functionally quadrupled HP pool, FastCast/Elemental Celerity/Magian+2 staves, and optimal damage gear/Atmas, it's pretty hard to mess up... and that's before we factor in the ridiculous meds you have access to. But again, the key to this is killing as fast as possible, which means no wasting time on Sleepgas, no wasting time recasting buffs.

And Mojo, Ducal Guard is a waste of an atma for this. If you absolutely need PDT-50% to survive somehow, it's easily achievable through relatively common gear, and the damage gear you forgo to wear it pales in comparison to the damage you add with another nuking atma.

I'm actually quite curious as to how much thought you really put into this. You're giving up Atma of the Beyond, which is 30 MAB 30 Ice Potency (or 50 MAB if you have Hell's Guardian which is better for this anyways.) I'd like to see what gear you plan to cap PDT with that doesn't result in losing more than 30 MAB or 50 MAB (Ice Potency is somewhat irrelevant as ja spells are better than Blizzaga III.)

Your method will work well in situations where you have Manafont, although you won't always have it for every pull depending on what you're doing (I often immediately begin pulling again while people leeching EXP or whatever start opening boxes.) The bulk of the time investment for cleaving is pulling mobs anyways. The time it takes to cast an additional three Sleepga spells is quite small in comparison, it's not really a big issue at all.

[blowfin]

I'm actually quite curious as to how much thought you really put into this. You're giving up Atma of the Beyond, which is 30 MAB 30 Ice Potency (or 50 MAB if you have Hell's Guardian which is better for this anyways.) I'd like to see what gear you plan to cap PDT with that doesn't result in losing more than 30 MAB or 50 MAB (Ice Potency is somewhat irrelevant as ja spells are better than Blizzaga III.)

You dont give up any MAB or INT for PDT gear, I use 36% -PDT in gear and dont sacrifice any nuking power. It should be macrod around your spells. Nuke at full strength, switch into PDT gear between spells.

Hes right, Ducal Guard is a waste.

[Mojo]

I idle in PDT gear like any other good BLM, it's not like I hadn't thought of that, but if you're nuking in non PDT gear and Manafont/Manawall aren't up you will get interrupted.

If you're relying on boxes to restore your 2 hours, then you obviously will not need it, but otherwise it's often essential and that situation occurs more regularly than I think you might admit.

[blowfin]

I idle in PDT gear like any other good BLM, it's not like I hadn't thought of that, but if you're nuking in non PDT gear and Manafont/Manawall aren't up you will get interrupted.

If you're relying on boxes to restore your 2 hours, then you obviously will not need it, but otherwise it's often essential and that situation occurs more regularly than I think you might admit.

I guess so, I've never used Ducal Guard on BLM though (and I have it for BST). If I ever did see a reason to use it I'd be swapping it out as soon as lights were capped. Then again, If you don't have enough Azure to be getting ISL chests you probably should be hunting Ephs to cap anyway, which is usually a 10 minute exercise at the most.

Each to their own though.~

[Vicious]

I'm actually quite curious as to how much thought you really put into this. You're giving up Atma of the Beyond, which is 30 MAB 30 Ice Potency (or 50 MAB if you have Hell's Guardian which is better for this anyways.) I'd like to see what gear you plan to cap PDT with that doesn't result in losing more than 30 MAB or 50 MAB (Ice Potency is somewhat irrelevant as ja spells are better than Blizzaga III.)

See above; you only have to wear your damage gear when the spell fires, not during the entire casting time. Besides, you're the one insisting you need PDT- gear to pull this off; I'm the one telling you that you don't, so asking me to defend your points is kinda silly.

Your method will work well in situations where you have Manafont, although you won't always have it for every pull depending on what you're doing (I often immediately begin pulling again while people leeching EXP or whatever start opening boxes.) The bulk of the time investment for cleaving is pulling mobs anyways. The time it takes to cast an additional three Sleepga spells is quite small in comparison, it's not really a big issue at all.

Fanatics are a nice backup in those rare cases you don't see an ISL; if you find yourself without either (which in my experience is maybe once an hour?), it's pretty easy to fall back on the Sleepga method until another ISL/Fanatics drops. As for the second part... I'm not sure I can respect your logic there. If you're comfortable with using halfassed tactics to just do "good enough", which is evident by your Atma choice, our goals, and therefore our strategies, aren't really comparable.

[Mojo]

See above; you only have to wear your damage gear when the spell fires, not during the entire casting time. Besides, you're the one insisting you need PDT- gear to pull this off; I'm the one telling you that you don't, so asking me to defend your points is kinda silly.

Except that this isn't right. Unless you're using spellcast and went through fine tuning a midcast delay for every single ja spell that you have (which I doubt anybody ever has,) you're going to have to manually change gear in the middle of your cast if you want to keep your PDT gear on as long as possible. Server latency and human error will result in either you casting in your PDT gear or getting hit a few times without it, and really that's all that it takes to interrupt your casting. Even with spellcast swapping and finely tuned midcast delays, your gear, server latency would still kick in a good portion of the time (a fraction of a second is all it takes with 20 mobs hitting you.) Also, in case what you posted wasn't just an attempt to skirt around an obvious fallacy you posted, I'll make it a bit more clear for you.

If you absolutely need PDT-50% to survive somehow, it's easily achievable through relatively common gear, and the damage gear you forgo to wear it pales in comparison to the damage you add with another nuking atma.

This is you claiming that you can easily cap PDT through gear while giving up less nuking power than a single atma.

I'm actually quite curious as to how much thought you really put into this. You're giving up Atma of the Beyond, which is 30 MAB 30 Ice Potency (or 50 MAB if you have Hell's Guardian which is better for this anyways.) I'd like to see what gear you plan to cap PDT with that doesn't result in losing more than 30 MAB or 50 MAB (Ice Potency is somewhat irrelevant as ja spells are better than Blizzaga III.)

This is me asking you to substantiate that claim.

Fanatics are a nice backup in those rare cases you don't see an ISL; if you find yourself without either (which in my experience is maybe once an hour?), it's pretty easy to fall back on the Sleepga method until another ISL/Fanatics drops. As for the second part... I'm not sure I can respect your logic there. If you're comfortable with using halfassed tactics to just do "good enough", which is evident by your Atma choice, our goals, and therefore our strategies, aren't really comparable.

You do realize that even with Ducal Guard over Beyond, you can still pop Manafont/Manawall and ja everything in one additional nuke than you would have otherwise? If you've cleaved on any job even once you should know that this amount of time investment is completely negligible. It's also somewhat ideal to think that every pull is going to be so simple. Many times it turns into a battle with other groups over mobs in which Ducal Guard becomes even more handy. It's not half assed by any means. Simply relying on luck, i.e. ISL/Fanatics/clear pulling weather all the time, is perhaps a better definition of that. It's pragmatic. Giving up a 12.3% marginal gain (or less depending on your merits) in lieu of something that can be extremely useful is not a bad trade off.

[Vicious]

Except that this isn't right. Unless you're using spellcast and went through fine tuning a midcast delay for every single ja spell that you have (which I doubt anybody ever has,) you're going to have to manually change gear in the middle of your cast if you want to keep your PDT gear on as long as possible.

Adjusting the midcast times on 4 -JA spells and Blizzaga III would take ~5 minutes of testing/editing.

This is me asking you to substantiate that claim.

Sorcerer's Earring? I figured it was rather obvious..

Simply relying on luck, i.e. ISL/Fanatics/clear pulling weather all the time, is perhaps a better definition of that. It's pragmatic. Giving up a 12.3% marginal gain (or less depending on your merits) in lieu of something that can be extremely useful is not a bad trade off.

As I said, in the off chance you don't get an ISL/fanatic's from a pull, you can just roll Sleepgas on the next until one of them drops. All that PDT- nonsense tends to be completely unnecessary if you utilize proper strategy, which means nuking Sleepga'd mobs from max distance, starting your run early, running until able to cast again. It IS a bad tradeoff, because if you're doing it right in the first place, regardless of whether you're using JA/meds or not, you are simply not getting hit nearly enough to ever be in enough danger to warrant wasting an Atma on defense.

[Dhragon]

So, just for the sake of asking. I should choose the 3 highest MAB atmas that I have? I recently had to lvl my Blm (due to lack of access to a Blm most of the time) and I'm still working on many gear options. But, I wanted to make sure that I'm maximizing my atma options also.