Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better!: RDM Guide

You fixed it but you're still only mostly right.

Think you can correct it again without being told? (it's not distance)

Unfortunately the only hint(s) give the answer

Resistance Outliers

A little over a year ago I shared some testing showing how player elemental resistances affect resist states against Poison. Testing showed that negative elemental resistance induced a guaranteed partial resist, while neutral and positive elemental resistance had no bearing on resist states. I was curious if this mechanic is applied universally when defending against negative status effects so I decided to conduct this test with several different spells. Some of this information is not new or may seem obvious/rudimentary. However, the results I came across at the end were very surprising.

For most of this testing I cast spells on Colibri and checked the resist states of the reflected spells with negative/neutral elemental resistances equipped while maintaining a large amount of magic evasion. The majority of spells I tested operate as described above. Take Foe Requiem for example:

Foe Requiem	64 Seconds	32 Seconds	Full Resist	Total
0 Light resistance	5 (4.67...%)	7 (6.54...%)	95 (88.78...%)	107 (100%)
-10 Light resistance	2 (3.63...%)	53 (96.36...%)	0 (0%)	55 (100%)

The following list of spells I tested operate in this manner with the element of the casted spell providing the basis for elemental resist state changes as expected:

Requiem (Light)
Elegy (Earth)
Threnody (Fire Threnody=Water based resistance, etc.)
Magic Finale (Light)
Paralyze (Ice)
Slow (Earth)
Gravity (Wind)
Poison (Water)
Break (Earth)
Silence (Wind)
Bind (Ice)
Sleep (Dark)
Dispel (Dark)
Flash (Light)
Blind (Dark)
Stun (Lightning)
Elemental Debuffs (Burn=Fire based resistance, etc.)

Colibri do not reflect Silence, so for this spell I used Mamool Ja Blusterer at Mamool Ja Staging Point for testing.

Next, the following spells also use the casting element for resist state changes and have 4 resist states.

Impact (Dark)
Absorb-STAT spells (Dark)

While the sample size is low, a very clear pattern can be seen in the table below with the differing Dark resistance values when defending against Impact.

Impact	180 Seconds	90 Seconds	45 Seconds	23 Seconds	Total
0 Dark resistance	0 (0%)	7 (25.92...%)	20 (74.07...%)	0 (0%)	27 (100%)
-20 Dark resistance	0 (0%)	25 (100%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	25 (100%)
+15 Dark resistance	1 (3.84...%)	1 (3.84...%)	0 (0%)	24 (92.30...%)	26 (100%)

For Absorb-STAT spells, I did not have the luxury of using Colibri to reflect spells back. Any Absorb-STAT spell that is reflected has no effect due to the active Absorb-STAT buff on the player that cannot be manually cancelled. I had to resort to help from Dark based Aw'ghrah in The Garden of Ru'Hmet. Given that I had no control over which Absorb-STAT spells were cast, I decided to group all of them together under the assumption that they all operate the same. They followed the same distribution of resist state to Dark resistance as Impact. Absorb-STAT spells have the following resist states when defending against them:

No resist-90 seconds
1/2 resist-45 seconds
1/4 resist-23 seconds
1/8 resist-Full resist

Negative Dark resistance guarantees a minimum of a 1/2 resist-45 second duration Absorb-STAT spell. Positive Dark resistance unlocks the ability to 1/8-full resist an Absorb-STAT spell. With 0 Dark resistance a 1/8-full resist is not possible.

Lastly, some outliers.

When testing Foe/Horde Lullaby, Maiden's Virelai and Repose I found there was no forced change in resist states regardless of neutral/negative Light resistance equipped. I then tested again with all elemental resistances in the negative and found no change. I was able to fully resist all of these spells despite having an apparent weakness to all elements which resulted in a distribution that indicates capped magic evasion with no forced resist states. Foe Lullaby distribution shown below:

Foe Lullaby	30 Seconds	15 Seconds	Full Resist	Total
All resistances negative	1 (1.42...%)	5 (7.14...%)	64 (91.42...%)	70 (100%)

This outcome left me with many questions. Are these spells even classified as Light element to begin with when defending against them? Is it possible these spells just use a pure magic accuracy to magic evasion check? More testing is needed regarding these spells to know for sure.

Pining Nocturne testing also proved to be very surprising.

Pining Nocturne	120 Seconds	60 Seconds	Full Resist	Total
-30 Fire resistance	3 (5.66...%)	7 (13.20...%)	43 (81.13...%)	53 (100%)
-1 Water resistance	2 (3.84...%)	50 (96.15...%)	0 (0%)	52 (100%)

When defending against Pining Nocturne the relevant elemental resistance is Water despite the spell being Fire based. I had to do a sanity check afterwards and cast Nocturne on Dahak in Mount Zhayolm (C-/50% Fire resistance rank, all other elements E/70% or F/85% rank) and verified all casts were forced to a to a 1/2 duration at a maximum verifying that, when cast on monster, Pining Nocturne is Fire based. Taking a look at JPwiki's Pining Nocturne page there is mention of this spell incorrectly being classified as Water-based when used offensively during magic bursts and was fixed in the December 14, 2011 update. This leads me to believe that this is and has been a bug since Pining Nocturne's introduction in September 20, 2011 and was never fixed on the player side.

Addle also shares this mismatch between offensive/defensive elements.

Addle	180 Seconds	90 Seconds	Full Resist	Total
-30 Fire resistance	2 (3.92...%)	6 (11.76...%)	43 (84.31...%)	51 (100%)
-30 Earth resistance	2 (3.57...%)	54 (96.42...%)	0 (0%)	56 (100%)

When defending against Addle the relevant elemental resistance is Earth. Again, I went out and cast Addle on Dahak and verified that Fire is indeed the resistance rank used when cast offensively. I was unable to test Addle II defensively as Colibri do not reflect it and I am unaware of any monsters that are able to cast it. Given that Pining Nocturne has a documented and corrected elemental affinity mismatch, this leads me to believe that Addle's player affinity is a bug. Is it possible that since this spell is affected by Resist Slow traits that some dev saw this gave this spell the wrong elemental resistance to players? Or, is there some other hidden explanation?

I'll submit a couple of bug reports this weekend and see what happens.

"After aquiring some Master Levels and better gear you can leave the Contemplator +1 behind and still maintain a very high if not maxed potency Frazzle/Distract and use a different weapon combo."

What do people upgrade to after Contemplator +1 (tough to get) and what are some other options beyond Maxenti for main hand Frazzle and Distract?

BIS is murgleis, so.... effort vs reward

Wouldnt you want mnd potentially? So daybreaks a strong option in that respect

Wouldn't you just offhand the Daybreak, since it's both more MND and more M.Acc than Ammurapi Shield?

murgleis > stage 5 caliburnus > crocea > contemplator

The real answer is now you don't have to swap out of whatever mainhand/sub option you've got and you still get max potency.

For the record, Murgleis is only BIS over stage 5 prime now if you maintain AM1

What does Prime Aftermath give in AM1/2/3 (1000/2000/3000TP)? This page is all I could find and it's not very clear (or at least seems to indicate that different Prime Weapons have different AM1, AM2 properties?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Prime_Aftermath

He meant the mythics AM1

Yeah, prime aftermath for all but staff/club is PDL+.

Caliburnus has less real macc, 35 vs. 70 on murgleis, but it's got 22 additional magic accuracy skill and the 35 mnd. It should have more natural macc than murgleis unless you have AM1 up on murgleis.

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't factor in the Magic Acc skill, but that sounds like a reason to make Caliburnus :D

(I remember how 5 years ago, some nay-sayers said Murgleis is better than Crocea but Crocea is just easier to obtain. You can always talk yourself out of not-doing-someting in FFXI. I prefer to do, than do-not).

Only for mnd based spells though and also consider your wake up options if you play rdm a lot you may want to leave either dagger or sword unupgraded.

Absolutely right, I was just talking about the distract/frazzle spells that were part of the discussion.

personal opinion, sleep is not a reason to stop yourself from getting a potentially bis weapon in this game.

Besides Odin high-level what are the other practical uses for a DW 1 damage weapons enspell build? Where else in game do you use it?

Master trials. Some ambus.

You can use it for cloud of darkness high level fights too. You use a normal set up until its guaranteed TP move (while making sure not to use buffs you don't want it to steal) then swap to the enspell tp denial set after the move.