I personally used about 4-500 nq stones to get 20 MAB per slot when the event first came out. It's more of a persistence thing than it is about spending gil.

The first sentence is right, but you're misunderstanding how it works.

Lets say, for example, the base damage for stone 1 in the "damage formula" is 150. Atinian staff is magic damage +195 which gets added to this number, in essence more than doubling its potency. This staff, using these example numbers, increases the potency of this spell by 130%. This is why stone 1 went from a 200-300 spell to 600-700 for most people (naked, many blm are well over 1k+ with the rest of their gear).

Now, lets say the base damage for thunder 5 in the damage formula is 1500. The magic damage +195 from atinian staff gets added to this number, the same as with stone 1. Since this spells base damage is already 1500 in the formula, the +195 adds far less potency than it would for the lower tiers. +195 equates to only a 13% increase in potency for thunder 5, as compared to the 130% potency added to stone 1.

This is exactly why atinian works much better for lower tiers than the magian staves. With some individual testing, you'll find the magian staves start to beat out atinian staff somewhere in the high tier-3 / low tier-4 spells. based on your gear, you'll have to test each spell to find out the exact spot.

That being said, the answer to "which staff is best for blm" is both, atinian staff and magian staves.

This was SE's way of making nuking jobs more relevant when grouped with DD, was actually quite brilliant.

PLEASE NOTE: THE NUMBERS GIVEN ABOVE WERE EXAMPLE NUMBERS JUST TO MAKE THE EXPLANATION OF HOW THE STAFF WORKS EASIER TO UNDERSTAND.

Hmmmmmmmm...in practice though, Atinian is superior because magic accuracy.

Only time I use my magian staves is when something needs to die in abyssea.

Only if you need the accuracy though, there are sets you can put together to land high tier nukes on even the toughest mobs while using magian for the affinity bonus. On a tier 5 nuke, magians can add in excess of 600-700 damage more than atinian will. its all a matter of putting the sets together if your serious about blm.

The problem i see these days are cookie-cutter blm in full hagondes damage sets, baqil staff, and nuking tier 1-2 non-stop. they're easy to spot so try to stay clear of them lol.

What are you talking about? I don't think SE's implementation of anything but BRD and WHM could possibly considered quite brilliant.

That's a terrible notion that's not even worth humoring. Put your Magian away unless you're fighting something pre-SOA.

Sorry, think i touched a nerve there lol. Didn't realize I was communicating with one of them.

I'll leave it as it is. Have fun! :)

Damage magians have failed any quantifiable effort-reward analysis for about 9 levels now (29 if you want to count item levels as levels actual), with the lone exception of Botulus Rex, which people eventually just ended up melee burning anyhow.

I realize that optimizing minutiae for our favorite jobs is kind of a thing, but that doesn't mean it's a good investment to do so.

In this particular example though, we're dealing with "optimization for trash." Atinian and magians are both overkill for garbage old content, and magians are not sufficient for post-Adoulin content without significant investment (more gear, more debuffs, more sexy pinups of Ann Coulter, whatever).

If nuking 9k instead of 8.5k on mobs with 6k HP is really important to you, then by all means.

That's a cop out though. If you want to talk about optimizing the potential, then nothing I've said is inaccurate.

If you want to become 1/2 way decent with minimal effort, then you are right.

It's not "halfway decent" it's "indistinguishable in all situations in which one would even care to try to make a distinction."

see thats what I mean, it "is distinguishable in many situations if you care to try and make the distinction".

many don't care, don't bother, or don't try. hence being halfway decent.

I'll agree that using tier 4-5 or higher spells has become rare in SOA content. But, if you can't get the magian damage staves to work for those spells if/when you want to use them in SOA content, you have bigger issues with blm than you think.

Why accept mediocrity as excellence? that baffles me..

Because there's no compelling reason to optimize for trash tier content.

to me, the compelling reason is to 'be able to do so' if/when I feel compelled to. If I have to put my magian staves away because I can't get them to work for me in SOA, I'd have no one to blame but myself.

Were not talking huge amounts of effort here either. If however, you want to talk about a new player wanting to get blm to end-game level using the path of least resistance, then yes, hagondes with baqil will be "decent". But no where near the level of someone who full times the job.

For the record, I have every +DMG magian staff and almost every +MACC magian staff. If anything, I would want Magian staves to come back into fashion.

But at the moment, they're not viable, and encouraging people to use them is the same as encouraging people to be bad BLMs.

And claiming to "touch a nerve" is nothing more than trying to claim victory before dashing for the exit. If you think the bonus damage from magian staves would be worth giving up 25mab, 195magic damage and 200+ magic accuracy, then stick around and let's chat. My set has about 220MAB in gear. Your claim seems to be that 60% magic damage (and whatever MAB in gear you decide to use) would be greater than 25MAB, 200-ish magic damage and 220MAB in gear.

Why don't you provide a theoretical set so we can compare. We already know the damage formula for nukes so it'll be easy to see which set is better.

because there is no reason to. Simply go out and test it yourself with 2 nukes. cast a tier 5 on any SOA you deem worthwhile and just switch out the staves. you'll clearly see magian outperform atinian, by alot actually.

It's simply a matter of being able to get it to work. If you're telling people to dump magians because you wont be able to land a nuke without the macc from atinian, "that's" encouraging people to be bad blm's.

10% ... 20% ... heck probably even 100% damage on something that you agree is "rare" is not going to be the difference between mediocre and excellent, and this is assuming your premise is correct that there are situations where T4-5+magian would be a worthwhile venture in the first place - a premise of which I'm not particularly convinced as even a slight increase in resist rates would nullify the benefit in the long run.

I have. Extensively.

Magian MACC staves are well above Magian MDMG staves.

The Tamaxchi is well above Magian MACC staves.

And the Atinian is well above the Tamaxchi.

Considering that I still get resist with my Atinian+1, you need to stop pulling things out of your behind and do some testing yourself on something other than fodders outside of town.

I wouldn't toss magians because they might get desperate enough for content that they'll have us do 5000 chapuli killshots with blizzard II damage less than 100 for an iLV version of the magian staves, but I couldn't in good faith recommend that someone who doesn't already have them make them so they can do slightly more damage on fodder enemies in Delve every once in a while (once again, assuming that premise is true in the first place).

Also you can use them on BRD.

you're right, and like I said for anyone who is trying to lvl blm from ground zero at this point in the game, magians would probably not be on the priority list of things to do. But, for those of us who have them, there is no reason to not have them scripted into your macro's for the spells that get the most benefit out of them.

for example, if I want to cast a tier 5 nuke on "whatever" in SOA, i can swap out my hagondes gloves (mab +19) for my hagondes gloves (macc+26). I'd gladly give up the mab +19 for the macc +26 while keeping the affinity bonus from magians, resulting in a nuke for more damage than it would of been with atinian. at the same time using int pieces over mab if needed also.

this is simple stuff guys..i mean, really.

Except +26macc isn't going to do much when 200+ macc will still get you resists on things that matter.

this is simple stuff guys..i mean, really.

Come on now, I'm not talking fodder. I assumed you knew that. I'm talking stuff like yumcax, kumhau, and the lesser wkr bosses to some extent. if you're talking about mobs stronger than them, then we're talking apples and oranges.

no nuke is 100% so you're going to resist sometimes no matter what, but if +26 can't help you, try 2 pieces of gear. if you can't land a nuke using magians without swapping 3+ pieces of gear, then yes i would suggest staying with atinian, you need it. i don't know what else to say other than good luck.

and yes, we agree that lower tiers are better most the time. we all know this, but why knock the fact that i've worked very hard to be able to use higher tier nukes with magians to out perform atinian staff on even the toughest of bosses?

sure it may only be 300 sometimes, on occassion as high as 700+. but that was my prerogative as an end-game blm and encouraging others to settle is not right.

"an end-game blm"

ok, if you're going to insinuate an insult, i guess we're done. I was trying to stay civil with everyone but I guess that's a moot point now.

I just noticed we're on the same server, log on for awhile.

Gotta make sure your BLM is top-tier for all that Skirmish II and WKR.

what makes this funny, sylow, is your avatar pic. it looks like the mantis is doing the quote gesture with its claws/pincers