A Few Dumb Questions

After years of being a black mage, I'm finally swallowing my pride and leveling white mage. I swore I never would, I've never gotten any gear for it what so ever. So I'm a noob when it comes to gear and macros. I've seen a few interesting gear set ups, but honestly have no idea how a lot of the mechanics work.

First off, for the white mage who doesn't have a lot of gil to play around with, will AF work for a while, or will I look gimped if that's all I have? What AH pieces are absolutely vital? Are there NMs that drop items that are vital?

I'm a little unsure as to what the difference between Cura and Curaga is. Can someone explain that to me?

Is there a macro for healing alliance members who aren't in your party? I usually end up typing out /ma "Cure" <name goes here>, but there's got to be a better way to do it that I'm not catching on to.

Can a Taru be an effective melee whm?

Vital:
Light staff and Noble's (it's very cheap now) or the dominion ops Facio Bliaut (look it up) on the body slot. Those two will get you halfway there in my opinion.

Nice to have, easy route:
The empyrean legs and head are obnoxiously good, but they require some level of work and I don't know how easy it is for you to do +1's (or +2 if you like). Do you have a loq-earring from blm? That's an easy good slot.

Cura is a long discussion, personally I'd ignore the whole thing especially with abyssea if you just plan on being a cure ***.

Anyone, I repeat ANYONE, can do good damage with Hexa + RR.

My credentials: I'm one of those people that dual boxes a Nin + Whm. I started out half-assing my Whm and slowly but surely have made it into something to be admired.

Oh and I'm sorry, no idea about healing outside of party. In my experience with abyssea, if any white mage has to worry about a lot of other people outside of party then you're doing something wrong. Again, limited experience but yeah.

Curas potency changes depending on how much damage you last took (assuming misery is up).

Curaga will always do the same consistent amount of hp cured.

i just use <st> for most macros.

Thanks :) Is scholar a vital subjob or am I good with black mage? I really don't have scholar leveled much, so that's a whole other conversation I'm not getting into right now.

I don't have loquacious earring yet. I should probably work on that. I'm still sporting Moldy and Abyssal on blm. (that has got to be fixed!)

Blessed set can easily replace AF. I still use it while I farm me some empy gear.

All my macros have always been <p1> <p2> and the like. How does <st> work? Can you give me an example macro? I know it sounds like a noob question, I've been playing for 5 or 6 years, and it's just never come up.

i use <stpc> in my macros, mainly due to dynamis.

macro example:

/ma "Cure" <stpc>

Facio augmented 10-14%; That or nobles tunic.

Start with something like that, fill the rest of the slots with MP or MND... and then work on +1 head/pants.

<stpc> puts a small blue arrow in the bottom right hand corner on the party listing allowing you to select people from it. It was SE's fix to blinking.

I use templar mace now alongside a shield I can't remember the name of.

It sounds like you want to halfass the job which is perfectly fine, but please don't get too lazy. Noble's or a refresh/potency Facio you really should have. Very few pieces add so much to a job for so little work.

If she wanted to half-*** the job, she wouldn't be here asking questions.

Oh don't get me wrong! I don't want to halfass. I want to be a good whm. I just don't have a lot of gil to play around with atm, and I wasn't sure if whms do a lot of gear swapping like blms do.

Yeah, someone inferred that using the blessed set would work (and I assume they meant body) and that's just categorically untrue. If you decide to get hardcore you'll be macroing in a lot of fast cast stuff and then macroing that stuff out for potency, I think you can get away without a spellcast for awhile.

I didn't mean blessed body. Of course I use Noble's.

The only gear swaps I do is weapons, and that swap is for dark staff when healing and templar for curing.

You don't have to gear swap.

Alright sorry about that then. Just had to say it, I've seen worse.

Hey, while we're here...

Anyone notice any glaring improvements to my sets? Stuff in green is currently owned, orange stuff things that I'll probably never get my hands on.

I'd suggest /ma "Cure V" <stal> If you ally a lot at least. I used my WHM mule for healing in abyssea parties so I could leech up my subs on my main, and that came in handy for me.

And you don't have to gear swap, no, but if you're trying to do an exceptional job, then yes you do, it's going to make you more effective as a whole.

Especially if you have plans to be a melee whm, you would have to swap in several pieces for cures.

Aleste:

- Cure clogs on feet, that -15% is just amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing.
- Serpentes set (Would that outdo Augur's/marduk?) and Fylgja torque on the cure cast. Augur's mitts are fine - they shouldn't be that hard to get ahold of since so many people do chloris.

I /sch; Light arts + merits + af3 legs + loq + orison neck = ~49% cure cast time reduction.

Augur/marduk beats out serp set on a cure V.

using <stal> will help you cure better if you're alli changes gear often.....

I used to let ppl die because when I would go to cure they'd swap >.>

Got it. Interesting to see someone that's like, actually, a white mage. It's just a chore that someone has to do (or dual box) in my experience.

using <stal> will make it so you don't have to deal with retargeting due to gear swaps, <st> will make it so you can cure outside of ally; i've never had a problem using <st> over <stpc>, and <st> lets me cure the occasional npc. if you want to cure outside of party and not have to deal with gear swapping, might want to look into blinkmenot, or just have a separate macro/macroset with <st>.

regarding fastcast/cureclogs, i think they changed the fastcast cap. also, earlier threads suggested that before this cap change, light arts' bonus was applied differently from other fast cast.

for subs, i like /sch for most things. /blm is for stun and warp, /rdm is for when you want lots of dispels and don't want to cure in dark arts. but going from /rdm to /blm you'll probably get frustrated at how slow you cast :P. that said, you could probably get away with /blm for most things in abyssea, assuming you have decent atmas.

my whm gear is very cheap, i think, but i think i use it decently. you can look at my gear sets if you want. aleste's chart above looks pretty good too, although the typos might make it hard to look some of those items up.

<stal> is great to macro.

If you use windower, using spellcast as well will let you type //cure5 playername into chat without even having to configure anything (just load spellcast from your init.ini). Works with any spell... handy for -na spells as well.

You don't even have to type the whole name. Typing //cure5 lia is the same as //cure5 liandaru; the only caviat(sp) is if someone else's name in the alliance also starts with 'lia', it'll choose whoever is first alphabetically (which can cause some strange reactions when someone is in red hp and you toss a cure to a full hp mage >.>)

Spellcast can do a lot of stuff (auto-gear swapping depending on what spell you're casting, put on idle gear automatically, equip certain gear when casting based on weather, etc), but you can skip those features and just load it for the //spell support. I prefer to control my own gear swapping (except for obi's, twilight cape, uggy pendant).


But yeah, if you don't want to use spellcast or don't use windower, /ma "Cure V" <stal> is the way to go. I don't want to turn this into a debate over whether it should be used or not (morally or whatever), but just pointing out a tool that's available if you use windower already anyway.


(On a side note, if you use spellcast, //command does not work when input into an FFXI macro, but it does work when typed from the chat window. That's a different topic that's already been covered though.)

Don't go templar mace...just dont -.-

Surya's staff +2 is worth every minute u spend doing that trial. No other piece of gear will net you so much cure potency in ONE staff for FREE. (Paying mind to your gil situation). Also the Facio is "free" Just sit in on some boss kills in the abyssea zones (the last 3) and earn some trophies ~ Alot of groups will even let you come JUSt for the trophies sincce you are a whm then have a go at your body piece~ Which will save you eh what are they 600K now for a noble's?

Also You should aim for as high cure potency to 50% as you can- the orison earring would be a better piece if you do not have it over the celestial earring..

Serpentes hands /feet are nice to macro in for cures IF you do not have the augur's hands yet~

Yeah, I love <stal>. As a Spellcast user, I could typecast my Cures (and I do typecast many spells), but I've grown to prefer casting Cure3, Cure4, Haste, and Refresh2 from macros using <stal>.

Apart from <stal> there's another imo easy way to target alliance members via keybord.

F1-6 is a staple for targeting pt members.

Ctrl + F1-6 will target player 1-6 of the top party of the alliance.

Alt + F1-6 will target player 1-6 of the middle pt of the alliance.

However, these methods are subject to blinking, so you have to be quick on the cure or -na spell once you targeted. (unless you use BlinkMeNot)
While i have a macro book with full <stal> targets, i don't use it.
I prefere when i hit my spell and it goes off immediately, but that's just me i guess.

For subjob i like /SCH best, for several reasons. In most situations it has the most utility imo. Stil /RDM and /BLM have their situations as well. Given you're a BLM and have /RDM for it i'd like to suggest /RDM for WHM ^^ Erease is a good example for the value of fastcast as far as recast goes.

@op Cura is cast on yourself so you need to run in to the melee (pun intended) where curaga you can toss out like cures which is alot safer.

If you have a Flashy McGee (They're easy to spot) in or outside your alliance that swaps gear every three seconds you can macro his name into a cure macro, it makes it alot easier. He is probaly a drk that refuses to drain and full times souleater and last resort... The whm in his pt is afk so unless you want to hear a mountain of griping macro him in.

PLing is the easiest way to learn the ropes of curing outside of an alliance. I have a whole macro set dedicated to it full of cures and haste and pro/shell, all this sort of thing. Just run out to Qufim and start helping some party out at random. Stubbornly refuse to answer any of their questions and just practice on them.

more later