The Ultimate Black Mage Resources with Damage Calculator

[Ellsian]

Net Change from 180 to 190:

Vitality +37, Intelligence +52, Determination -9, Spell Speed -44, Accuracy +33, Critical Hit Rate +115

SOURCE

Just what we wanted... more crit /sarcasm

[Sleigh]

Yeah maybe I just gotta do A3 again to give a better assessment, I think I did mess up pretty bad on the mechanics which was my Enochian drop

Been farming 1 and 2 for now. 1, IDK I gotta give it to SMN if either one but BLM really does do nice.

[Lavitz_]

Anyone have any idea what the accuracy caps are? I did A4 twice and didn't miss with 547 accuracy.

I got the boots from A1/A2, and upgraded my i160 Ring with the free accessory, didn't get a drop from A3/A4 yet but I'm thinking of going with Legs for this week.

Next week I could pick Waist from A1, Bracelet from A2 and Legs from A3/A4 and end up with 550 Accuracy which should be more than enough.

Week 3 I'm thinking of getting the last two Accessories from A1/A2, and Hands from A3/A4

This will give +29 Int, +7 Acc, +81 Crit, +7 Det, -44 Sp.Speed and +18 Vit over my current gear for Savage: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/QWKY

[Sleigh]

Unfortunately I didn't mess around with ACC caps cause tonight was basically i180 for everyone All I can say is 547 is ACC capped, like you.

I also got shoes/ring, those seem the most logical choices for immediate upgrades (and if Alexander Savage has an oil/sand system for Alexander gear). I'm aiming for pants as well, not necessarily because I want them so terribly much, but if my speculation that i190 crafted is coming out in 3.05 then it will be one of the cheapest, best options to have i190 pants already, cost wise.

[Waliel]

Unfortunately I didn't mess around with ACC caps cause tonight was basically i180 for everyone All I can say is 547 is ACC capped, like you.

I also got shoes/ring, those seem the most logical choices for immediate upgrades (and if Alexander Savage has an oil/sand system for Alexander gear). I'm aiming for pants as well, not necessarily because I want them so terribly much, but if my speculation that i190 crafted is coming out in 3.05 then it will be one of the cheapest, best options to have i190 pants already, cost wise.

If I understood Yoshi's intentions right, crafted gear wont do you much good. He said it was too good in ARR, and was originally only intented as catch up gear.

[HaroldSaxon]

If I understood Yoshi's intentions right, crafted gear wont do you much good. He said it was too good in ARR, and was originally only intented as catch up gear.

If he wanted crafted gear to be catch up, he should have brought it out afterwards - like they started doing with the Jewelry pieces.

The true issue however is that there's very little gear differentiation at end game - now that they are aiming at "balancing" out the secondaries, they should give us options to customize our end game gear to how we want to play - either by more gearsets available, or some way of "augmenting" stats on our gear (and please, no materia with RNG).

[Sleigh]

If I understood Yoshi's intentions right, crafted gear wont do you much good. He said it was too good in ARR, and was originally only intented as catch up gear.

Hey this very well could be, but from what I've gathered, they've said they've toned down crafted gear, probably in the amount of substats you can meld, but it will still be better than Alexander gear - there was a flow chart long ago, before 3.0 came out which as of now has been completely accurate:

Law > Upgraded Law > Alexander > ??? (probably primals) > Crafted > Esoterics > Alexander Savage

[hallena]

Hey this very well could be, but from what I've gathered, they've said they've toned down crafted gear, probably in the amount of substats you can meld, but it will still be better than Alexander gear - there was a flow chart long ago, before 3.0 came out which as of now has been completely accurate:

Law > Upgraded Law > Alexander > ??? (probably primals) > Crafted > Esoterics > Alexander Savage

Unless they make crafted gear i185. i fail to see how they could compare to alexander. Materia are currently incredibly weak compare to ARR. You need 3x more stats to gain as much benefit as you used to yet materia V only gives 25% more stats than materia IV

[Xisin]

so just got my 60 smn up and going, everything is going okay: few questions though in particular for my fellow duel casters, well one specifically:

How do you deal with low hp add phases as a smn? I can clear them but my damage takes a severe nose dive. I'm used to being a blm on these phases and just deleting those adds... what do you do in those phases? examples - Ravana flies, Floor 3 Alexander oil, Floor 4 Alexander robots.

[Sleigh]

so just got my 60 smn up and going, everything is going okay: few questions though in particular for my fellow duel casters, well one specifically:

How do you deal with low hp add phases as a smn? I can clear them but my damage takes a severe nose dive. I'm used to being a blm on these phases and just deleting those adds... what do you do in those phases? examples - Ravana flies, Floor 3 Alexander oil, Floor 4 Alexander robots.

I very much recommend hitting up the SMN topic, they have some really good advice givers who frequent it.

That said, SMN's just kinda bad in these 3.0 add situations they're giving us unfortunately, but my personal tips:

Ravana butterflies: SMN can be zero or hero here. If the group gathers the butterflies, Bane + Deathflare and you're gonna near 1k DPS that run. Otherwise Bio > Ruin ones the blues, 3D or a devolving set of B2 > M > B (cutting them out in that order depending on how long they're live), or just ignore them in favor of upkeep on Ravana and Moons as I bet you could do.

A3: No advice to say here, SMN is garbage. That said it's basically a timed ordeal, being garbage at it is like being garbage at T13's add phase; it sucks but it doesn't affect the meat of the fight.

A4: Basically just DoT + Obey the adds, they have a little bit of health at least.

Dealing with low health adds on SMN is pretty tricky IMO. At best you AoE them or ignore them if your group won't suffer for it, at worst you have to peck at them with Ruins and make Aetherflow sacrifices to kill them quick. Hopefully Alexander will follow a model where adds don't have 5k HP and SMN won't just be a nuisance at them.