Enhancing Magic Skill-ups?

[Quetzacoatl]

Anyone agree that skill-ups on Enhancing Magic could use a fix with how often getting a skill-up can be? Nothing like Spamming buffs for over 5+ hours on end just to get a few levels, right?

I could also say the same for Summoning Magic too, honestly.

[Seriha]

If we had an offensive Enhancing spell, it wouldn't be so bad. Closest you can get now is casting buffs on Beseiged generals, but no idea how well that works post-85. Plus it relies on Beseiged happened and, for sake of speed and efficiency, nobody else casting a higher tier your target.

SMNs have it a little better because they offensively target things with BPs, but the old summon/release spam is indeed slow, much like buff spam.

[Raksha]

I finally capped my enhancing about a month ago, and I've been lvl 90 since the day of the last lvl cap raise.

I'm not looking forward to having to cap it again.

[Quetzacoatl]

If we had an offensive Enhancing spell, it wouldn't be so bad. Closest you can get now is casting buffs on Beseiged generals, but no idea how well that works post-85. Plus it relies on Beseiged happened and, for sake of speed and efficiency, nobody else casting a higher tier your target.

SMNs have it a little better because they offensively target things with BPs, but the old summon/release spam is indeed slow, much like buff spam.

Yeah if we had something offensive it would make it less of a pita. And forgive me if it sounds like I'm BSing (in fact, I'm taking a wild stab at this), I doubt buffing besieged generals would do much either. By the time you've reached a certain level of enhancing magic that matches that of the character's level, buffing them won't do much for skilling up.



I finally capped my enhancing about a month ago, and I've been lvl 90 since the day of the last lvl cap raise.

I'm not looking forward to having to cap it again.

I hear you on that one. I've only got Bar-Elemental Spells to fall back on, since you can cast/spam them so fast. Does Martial Master even work for Magic? On top of that, having buffed my LSmates for an AoE Burn during events got me one enhancing magic skill-up. After 3-4 hours, too. Something's got to give.

[cidbahamut]

/SCH, problem solved.
</sarcasm>

Skilling up in general could use some major tweaking, it isn't specific to any one skill. That said, I wouldn't worry about capping Ehancing magic, it'll come naturally soon enough if you're like me and completely neurotic about keeping all your buffs up.

[Quetzacoatl]

That's the thing, though- I keep all my buffs up, but the rate at which skill-ups are obtained are beyond mind-numbing. Is there supposed to be a trick to getting better chances of skill-ups? A 4-hour buffing grind just to get a 0.1 is not very pleasant.

[cidbahamut]

The trick is to not care and just keep playing until they cap naturally. Otherwise you're just going to sit there staring at the not-blue number being miserable.

[Quetzacoatl]

I'm OCD like that though :<

[Seriha]

I once mathed out my Enhancing skill gains and came up with 0.002124 skill points per cast. So, if you figure we gain 30 Enhancing levels this update, expect to have to cast... a lot of spells.

[Quetzacoatl]

...that is f#%king ridiculous. D:

[Seriha]

That said, said numbers were harvested from casting Haste and Refresh as needed with Composure up and otherwise cycling through Barspells for a good number of hours. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if some spells had higher base skill rates than others, but if buffing Generals in the past is any indication, it's almost like there's a bonus applied when acting toward NPC objects, friend or foe, regardless of magic skill family.

[Shadotter]

Would it help if I mentioned that if you cast enhancing spells on your fellow you get skillups as though they were offensive magic cast on a mob of the same level? Same goes for healing magic.

[Duelle]

Would it help if I mentioned that if you cast enhancing spells on your fellow you get skillups as though they were offensive magic cast on a mob of the same level? Same goes for healing magic.Didn't know that. Though, that means leveling the fellow in the interim.

As far as offensive enhancing spells, the only one I can come up with would be something akin kinetic defenders in city of heroes, whose buffs all relied on hitting a mob, which would then kinda bounce back to the group to buff the party. If I recall, they also had a healing ability that worked similarly.

[saevel]

Took me a few days of casting barspell after barspell (make a macro) while watching movies.
Healing magic is the only one I know of to be as difficult as capping enhancing magic.

[Quetzacoatl]

Took me a few days of casting barspell after barspell (make a macro) while watching movies.
Healing magic is the only one I know of to be as difficult as capping enhancing magic.

This is what I'm doing at the moment. They're cheap, they're fast, they're good in general.

I still would like to hear Square's input on the matter, though.

[Ophannus]

Eat the magic skillup foods. They help, a ton.

[Arcon]

A few hours is usually enough to get 20~30 levels. It's not bad at all to cap, I don't know why so many people are complaining. Parrying is what they should focus on, or even summoning magic, but that's about it. If you have OCD like me and need to see blue numbers, you'll do the effort and run the extra mile to have it capped. Otherwise just let it happen naturally.

[Supersun]

A few hours is usually enough to get 20~30 levels.

Are you sure we are talking about the same skill here?

I'd consider myself lucky if I got 20~30 levels in a few days

[Arcon]

Are you sure we are talking about the same skill here?

No. I can't see your angle at all. It sounds to me like you're complaining about guard or parry, not enhancing.


I'd consider myself lucky if I got 20~30 levels in a few days

I wanted to cap my melee skills the other day (this Wednesday), so I thought it would be nice to have a Phalanx II mule. So I leeched my mule's RDM from 30 to 89 in two days and was casting barspells while I was leeching. It was at 170 when I started (from her WHM), now it's capped at 335. About 5 hours each day (was all day long, but with frequent breaks, I assume it amounted to about 5 hours of actual skillup time).

[saevel]

I wanted to cap my melee skills the other day (this Wednesday), so I thought it would be nice to have a Phalanx II mule. So I leeched my mule's RDM from 30 to 89 in two days and was casting barspells while I was leeching. It was at 170 when I started (from her WHM), now it's capped at 335. About 5 hours each day (was all day long, but with frequent breaks, I assume it amounted to about 5 hours of actual skillup time).

Pushing the BS button right now on this. Enhancing magic goes up glacially when cast on yourself or other party members. The only times you can get it to go faster is if your casting on a high level NPC, then it use's the "target other" formula which is what weapon skills and all offensive magic use. Healing and Enhancing both cast upon self go up at one skill level for a few hundred casts, this has been gone over time and time again for the last 8+ years.

[Arcon]

Pushing the BS button right now on this. Enhancing magic goes up glacially when cast on yourself or other party members. The only times you can get it to go faster is if your casting on a high level NPC, then it use's the "target other" formula which is what weapon skills and all offensive magic use. Healing and Enhancing both cast upon self go up at one skill level for a few hundred casts, this has been gone over time and time again for the last 8+ years.

I know that eyeballing isn't the most efficient statistical analysis tool, but I can say with almost absolute certainty that this is wrong. I get plenty of skillups even for completely random warps and teleports or self-buffs without regard for skillups. Push whatever button you want to, I can not comprehend what was going on there. I can't prove what skill I had back then but I can show you screenshots of capped skills right now and I was 30 RDM just this Wednesday. Whether you believe it or not is up to you, I find your story equally unbelievable. Either you can't judge the flow of time correctly or you just did something very wrong.

I also capped enhancing magic easily on my main character btw, that's two characters with capped skill. Summoning, on the other hand, took me weeks, and I actually gave up at one point because it kept me from playing other things. In the end I resumed it and finally managed to cap it. So again, are you talking about something else?

[Supersun]

What did you sacrifice to the RNG gods?

I'll be needing some of it in about a month.

[Seriha]

Perhaps semi-recent skill up rate adjustments and food can be a factor, but I'm not at all inclined to believe gaining 150+ levels in 5 hours would be the norm. Hell, recently capping off H2H and GKT with 30+ levels on each took about that long per weapon with double march, haste, haste samba, capped gear haste, and hasso on SAM while wielding Soboro against birds in Mis with Martial Master up. Pretty much constant fighting.

Either way, we'll all be reminded in a few weeks. x.x

[saevel]

Perhaps semi-recent skill up rate adjustments and food can be a factor, but I'm not at all inclined to believe gaining 150+ levels in 5 hours would be the norm. Hell, recently capping off H2H and GKT with 30+ levels on each took about that long per weapon with double march, haste, haste samba, capped gear haste, and hasso on SAM while wielding Soboro against birds in Mis with Martial Master up. Pretty much constant fighting.

Either way, we'll all be reminded in a few weeks. x.x

He's BSing. He capped a different skill that way and figured enhancing worked the same way, then posted. I've seen people make this mistake before and they say the exact same things, basically going off the typical skill up rates for melee / enf / ele skills and applying them to enh / healing / summoning (pre update). Now he's committed and this being an internet forum the "Nobody's ever wrong" gets used.

I've skilled Enhancing on RDM ever since I started playing RDM in Spring 2003. It takes hours upon hours to cap. Going from capped skill @85 to capped skill @90 was three days of about 8~10 hours per day running the exact same barspell macro's that we all use while watching movies. This isn't an exaggeration, I've got this method down to a science because I used it from 50~60, 60~70, 70~75 (leveled faster then skill could keep up), 75~80, 80~85, 85~90, and I'll most likely use it again at 90~95. Parsed out it was a few hundred casts per skill level on average. There is no way someone is doing 100+ skill levels in 5hrs. Not unless there is some hidden lv 90NPC that doesn't move and is up 24/7 that we can cast spells on.

[Shadotter]

Well... if you have an 85 fellow you can cast on there's that.

[Quetzacoatl]

Eat the magic skillup foods. They help, a ton.

I totally Forgot about those :X

[Arcon]

He's BSing. He capped a different skill that way and figured enhancing worked the same way, then posted. I've seen people make this mistake before and they say the exact same things, basically going off the typical skill up rates for melee / enf / ele skills and applying them to enh / healing / summoning (pre update). Now he's committed and this being an internet forum the "Nobody's ever wrong" gets used.

Your face is BSing. And unlike you, I have proof:
http://95.156.209.71/pub/ffxi/pics/img_20110828_223820.png
http://95.156.209.71/pub/ffxi/pics/img_20110828_223846.png

Also, I said it was several days of roughly 5 hours each. More proof:

[..] About 5 hours each day (was all day long, but with frequent breaks, I assume it amounted to about 5 hours of actual skillup time).

Either you can't read or you're twisting my words, you choose which is worse.