Let's talk Bar-status spells

[Raydeus]

So I've been soloing for years now, and in all those years I've yet to see bar-status spells do ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.

The rumor is they reduce the time the status effect is on you, or at the very least increase magic evasion to the status so it's easier to get a partial resists to the status. Yet, again, I've seen nothing of the sort.

A few years ago I tested this with LS mates, we went to a status spammer NM (in this case Lumber Jill) and we tried testing the petrify status against Barpetrify. But no matter how many times we tested it (it was around 10 fights) I never got a different duration than people not using bar-petrify, nor did it affect the spell in any way.

(I just killed Jill a few times again, and it reminded me about it.)

By now you may be wondering "Why bring it up now?" and the reason is simple; if we had bugged GEOs for 3 years without even noticing then it wouldn't be surprising if Barspells had been bugged as well and the devs never even noticed. And considering the lack of information about the spells players could have simply assumed they were working as expected.

So my questions are:
- To the players reading this : Have you personally experienced Bar-status spells doing anything? And if they did in the past, have you noticed them doing anything recently?

- To the devs : Can we get an official explanation of how the spells actually work? And also, are they really working as intended?

[Songen]

thing about bar spells, they raise you magic evasion for that specific element/status, magic however isn't something that you just dodge. for damage spells they resist by cuting its damage in half or 1/4,1/8, as for status ailments, resist lowers its duration per resist stage ,1/2 duration,1/4 duration,1/8 duration, no duration..

In the case of enfeeble magic, spells from the enemy has really high likeliness of landing on you. however what you won't know unless you have the status timer turned on which SE implemented is the duration of the enfeeble, you might get the spell to land on you, but instead of staying on for 100 seconds, it might resist for 50 seconds, or 25 seconds, or 15 seconds , 0 seconds.

higher your magic evasion, higher chance of resisting, for status ailments, its more than likely gonna land, but for a less time unless your magic evasion is alot more higher than mobs magic acc, in which case it'll more than likely resist completely.

A bar spell normally alone isn't enough to make you resist completely against strong mobs, but a petrifed duration having a possibility of being of being halfed or lower makes alot of difference if everyone gets hit

[Raydeus]

Yeah, that's what I said, but when we tested it not even once was my duration lower, in fact thinking about it another guy in my party got a single partial resist without barpetrify and with less magic defense (DD job) than me.

So resisting the status was possible back then, just very unlikely unless you were a RUN with Pflug on. Which is how I'm killing Jill solo right now as RDM/RUN, and resist the status all the time. Again with Barpetrify having no noticeable effect on it. I mean you'd think at least stacking Barpetrify with Pflug would mean more or better resists, but it does nothing I can notice, it's the same with or without the spell for me. Which is ridiculous when you are casting the spell with over 500 skill and get nothing or close to nothing from it.

Another alternative is that my testing was wrong, and that Jill's Breakga isn't really petrify but another type of... petrify, and that was why Barpetrify didn't have any effect at all on it. Or maybe we could parse the whole thing over 1000 fights and it will turn out you have a +5% chance of a partial resist with the Barspell on, and I (and everyone else I've played with over the years) just happen to have a very bad luck with the rolls. But unless that is what the devs intended barstatus spells to be they need to at least look into it because we may have either another many years old bug in our hands or a spell line in serious need of a rework/readjustment.

But we need the Devs to tell us how exactly the spells work, and specially the percentages we can expect from them an their skill limits.

It is also why I'm asking people to post about their personal experiences, to see if there are players out there consistently getting a benefit from using these spells, specially now that we can actually see the duration of the status without resorting to external tools. Before that except for the Resist! message you get on a full resist (due to job traits) there was no real way to consistently check for partial status resists while fighting, so the spells have been little more than placebo taking up space in the magic menu for a very long time.


PS > Fun fact, RDM also has Resist Petrify IV, which is supposed to also help increase the rate of partial resists and gives a chance to have a full resist. Yet in all my years playing I don't think I've seen the full resist effect trigger more than 3 times (and only on lower level mobs of course.) And it most definitely didn't help at all while testing against the Breakga from Jill, only accomplishing making the testing even more aggravating instead. :D

[Aysha]

You tested a specific NM 10 times and think that applies to ALL mobs?

What if that NM has a set timer on their petrify?

Go pull some normal mandragora and get them to dream flower you and see if you notice a trend with the Sleep with Barsleep(ra) up. And do it 100 (or better, 1,000) times instead of just 10.

[Raydeus]

You tested a specific NM 10 times and think that applies to ALL mobs?

What if that NM has a set timer on their petrify?

Go pull some normal mandragora and get them to dream flower you and see if you notice a trend with the Sleep with Barsleep(ra) up. And do it 100 (or better, 1,000) times instead of just 10.

Well, technically it was more like 40-50 times because Jill casts Breakga quite a few times per fight.

And like I just said we could test it 1000 times and come up with some small percentage of resist increase, but my question to YOU as a player is: Have you ever experienced this supposed increase in resistence rate? Has Barsleep (or any other Bar-status spell) ever made a difference when you personally fight against Mandragoras or whatever? Because I've seen little to no effect from it in 13 years playing the game.

Again, I want both feedback from players and clarification from Devs about these spells.

[Domille]

Bar will -never- help you flat out resist.

It only raises the chance of a non-full duration status effect. Which is still good, a 10 second sleep is better than a 60 second sleep... but yeah, it's severely flawed. It -should- let you full resist.

[Raydeus]

Yeah, but like I said the problem is that a partial resist (aka less duration) rarely if ever happens thanks to Barspells. Which is the exact issue I have with them, because in my experience having the Barspell on or not makes no noticeable difference whatsoever. Have you ever personally noticed it though? That having the Barspell on actually helped you resist the status more in a fight against a high enough level mob.

And I agree, they should add a full resist chance to Barspells that increased with your enhancing skill. But they probably don't do it because they want the Job Traits to have that instead, even if you only have 0.00001% of getting a full resist in your travels, and never when it actually matters. #lolRDMresistpetrifyTrait

[Domille]

Of course i've seen less than full duration status effects. You can never technically know if it was because of bar-status though, because chance is chance, and technically bar-status does nothing other than raise the chance.

[Nyarlko]

There are two types of "petrify" effects, just like "stun". There is a petrify that breaks on damage taken and a type that doesn't. Stun has both the regular stun and "terror" which usually lasts significantly longer. Even "sleep" has two tiers of effect ("Sleep" & "Nightmare".) It's entirely possible that the higher tier effect is only checking elemental resist and not checking status resist (like Frazzle was pre-update,) though we'd need to get dev confirmation on this..

I'm wondering if it's possible that you were actually all meva capped for the fights against Jill.. Were any of you in sparks gear for the testing?

Barsleep does work on Dream Flower, though I have no desire to test values myself. ^^;;

[Aysha]

Well, to be fair, I almost never play WHM or RDM these days, but back when I did, I seem to remember bar status spells helping at least some.

Is your Enhancing skill capped? A lot of those kinds of spells heavily depend on your skill. Enhancing is ridiculously difficult to skill without buying skill tomes, so I think a lot of people might not have bothered?

And yes, I do agree that Barspells should allow you to fully resist more often. Not be so utterly OP that you resist 50%+ of the time, but yet have a noticeable effect on full-on resists. Otherwise, you're probably better off casting the relevant Bar-element rather than Bar-status, because chances are, if a mob spams a status affliction, it probably spams the same element too (like something that casts Breakga usually casts Stone, Silencega mobs usually cast Aero, etc).

[Nyarlko]

Well, to be fair, I almost never play WHM or RDM these days, but back when I did, I seem to remember bar status spells helping at least some.

Is your Enhancing skill capped? A lot of those kinds of spells heavily depend on your skill. Enhancing is ridiculously difficult to skill without buying skill tomes, so I think a lot of people might not have bothered?

And yes, I do agree that Barspells should allow you to fully resist more often. Not be so utterly OP that you resist 50%+ of the time, but yet have a noticeable effect on full-on resists. Otherwise, you're probably better off casting the relevant Bar-element rather than Bar-status, because chances are, if a mob spams a status affliction, it probably spams the same element too (like something that casts Breakga usually casts Stone, Silencega mobs usually cast Aero, etc).

Or cast both since they don't share a buff slot with anything else. :D I do think it would be nice if the devs could give us some solid values and explanations for stuff like this though so we at least know how much they are actually helping.

BTW, enhancing isn't really that hard to skillup. A simple spam macro that you hit every once in a while while watching TV works fine. Something I've noticed is that I do tend to get more magic skillups when targeting another player or enemy. Try afking with a buddy/mule and use that spam macro on him instead of self-targeting and watch the skillups roll in. Healing magic skill has always been the more annoying to cap for me, but you can reduce the annoyance by casting Cure on level appropriate undead family mobs.

[Aysha]

Or cast both since they don't share a buff slot with anything else. :D I do think it would be nice if the devs could give us some solid values and explanations for stuff like this though so we at least know how much they are actually helping.

BTW, enhancing isn't really that hard to skillup. A simple spam macro that you hit every once in a while while watching TV works fine. Something I've noticed is that I do tend to get more magic skillups when targeting another player or enemy. Try afking with a buddy/mule and use that spam macro on him instead of self-targeting and watch the skillups roll in. Healing magic skill has always been the more annoying to cap for me, but you can reduce the annoyance by casting Cure on level appropriate undead family mobs.

Reduce the annoyance? That's an understatement....

lol.

Healing was easy to cap for me, call Moogle and spam Cure (the first Cure) on the skeletons in Onzozo and you'll get cap in no time flat, and that was BEFORE Rhapsodies were a thing, lol.

Any spell that can be cast on enemies is easily capped skill-wise. It's the stupid junk like Summoning and Enhancing that is ridiculous.

Also, Geomancy and Handbell. Yes, I know, there are technically Geocoloures... but dude... all but one cost 190MP+ for a single cast.

[Nyarlko]

Reduce the annoyance? That's an understatement....

lol.

Healing was easy to cap for me, call Moogle and spam Cure (the first Cure) on the skeletons in Onzozo and you'll get cap in no time flat, and that was BEFORE Rhapsodies were a thing, lol.

Any spell that can be cast on enemies is easily capped skill-wise. It's the stupid junk like Summoning and Enhancing that is ridiculous.

Also, Geomancy and Handbell. Yes, I know, there are technically Geocoloures... but dude... all but one cost 190MP+ for a single cast.

Indi's are cheaper than Geo's, and stuff like Indi-Poison is dirt cheap to spam. But yes, GEO/SMN are amazingly annoying to cap due to the out-of-town requirement for casting.

[Aysha]

Indi's are cheaper than Geo's, and stuff like Indi-Poison is dirt cheap to spam. But yes, GEO/SMN are amazingly annoying to cap due to the out-of-town requirement for casting.

Casting Indicoloures on yourself is about the same as casting Enhancing spells on yourself: it's dirt slow compared to anything you can cast on an enemy, lol.

I'd rather just grab a DPS job and go out sometime Gain Experience is up and buy the skill tomes, kthx. Much faster, and more efficient use of my time.

[Nyarlko]

Enough tangent, back to barspells now. XD

I'm curious about actual values on anti-status effects in general. BRD has a nearly full-spectrum of anti-status songs, but we've NEVER had any clue about how potent they are. I noticed they were excluded from the update this month while Carols were included, but that doesn't mean that we aren't allowed to get actual numbers from the dev team. ^^ This is yet another system that should be explained at this point by official means, especially given how impossible it is to determine these types of values thru only player-based client-side testing.

[Raydeus]

Bump, maybe we can get some answers eventually. :confused:

[Jblauh]

I can't say I've ever really noticed any kind oh resistance from barspells. I'd kind of like a explaination as well.

[Raydeus]

And now I'm wondering if Arciela II has the Resist Petrify trait as well, because last night she was getting petrified by everything in Abyssea while the other Trusts in the party resisted it without problem. And yep, we are talking ilvl118-119 going against the low level Abyssea monsters here.

I just wish I had thought of taking a screenshot or two at the time because it would be hilarious if she actually has the trait. Maybe the devs will be kind enough to let us know about Bar-status spells and trust traits while they are at it.



PS > I only went down to ilvl118 because I was on THF using 109 Empy feet (still have no way of unlocking the +1 reforge) to cap Treasure Hunter.

[Raydeus]

One last bump in hopes this question gets forwarded to the devs.

[Kageshinhiryu]

Having played WHM since 2004, I had read, heard, and seen Bar-spells to act in the following ways:

Bar-element: reduces damage, increases magic evasion to resist an element
Bar-status: reduces the length of a status ailment, depending on the situation, and increases magic evasion to resist the ailment

In any content, I notice that when I buff the party with Barblizzard+Barparalyze, instead of 1 minute paralyze, they tend to be 15-30 seconds. I've had complete resists from it before as well.

Same goes for Baraera-Barsilence, and Barearth-Barpetra.

There is no mystery to barspells. Magic evasion is tied to bar-spells.

Have you researced the easily accessible information located at BG-wiki?

[Nyarlko]

Having played WHM since 2004, I had read, heard, and seen Bar-spells to act in the following ways:

Bar-element: reduces damage, increases magic evasion to resist an element
Bar-status: reduces the length of a status ailment, depending on the situation, and increases magic evasion to resist the ailment

In any content, I notice that when I buff the party with Barblizzard+Barparalyze, instead of 1 minute paralyze, they tend to be 15-30 seconds. I've had complete resists from it before as well.

Same goes for Baraera-Barsilence, and Barearth-Barpetra.

There is no mystery to barspells. Magic evasion is tied to bar-spells.

Have you researced the easily accessible information located at BG-wiki?

Have you followed your own advice? ^^ There are no values listed on BGwiki for barstatus spells because they are such a pain to test. Asking for actual values does not seem like a bad idea to me in any way. I brought up the status resist songs as well, which are very likely to have different values, so again, seems like a good thing to ask.