Some BLM questions

[Jifan]

I understand +int and elemental skill and magic attack are the main things I should focus on equipment wise. As for elemental staves... I am lost. Some people have some staves, mainly Dark and Ice.

What about the other ones? If you do have them, are the macro'd to what spell you are using?

I have my monk to farm with, and my equipment for monk is good as is.

I want to know, are those other elemental staves good? Or is Dark/Ice pretty much all I need. My taru blm is for when Invites or PT's are slow and got nothing else to do. I like to keep my blm pimp, its how I like to play. Right now at lvl 27 I have all spells blm up to lvl 30, All my whm spells up to 20. +15 INT also.

[navpops]

i have all but Earth and Water, and i have them macroed on a seperate page , and a macro line for the elemental ancients of each element (saves me time, and the 10% really helps)
they help, but not neccesary, even though i love them all. sometimes the ice elemen. magic skill helps more then the 10% dmg, though. sorry about not using much puntuation:/

[Jifan]

Leveling up thru 2 50+ Chars, I mainly see Fusion and Distortion, I am guessing that Ice, Fire, and Thunder are the main spells used.

I am nowhere near 51 on my blm, but it seems safe to say that Ice, Fire, and Lightning/Thunder Staves are the only ones really needed?

Dark is good since BLM spells take alot of mp... more so then whm spells.

[navpops]

wind is nice at higher level for -ga light skillchains but yes, the most used are thunder,ice,and dark (and wind later for nice light mb on bones with dragon kick finisher, etc)

[AtraposBLM]

In order of importance:
1) Ice Staff - makes all spells land better, except the aero line
2) Dark Staff - lets you cast more spells and rest less...also lets you drain/aspir for a lot more
3) Fire Staff - Firaga III is an awesome spell to burst with, and it's also the best staff to skill up with
4) Thunder Staff - always good to get extra damage with your highest level elemental spells
5) Aero Staff - good to equip instead of your ice staff when casting aero line spells
6) Water Staff - weak line of spells...almost never used
7) Earth Staff - same as above...only one mob I've ever leveled on was weak to earth
8) Light Staff - you shouldn't need to cure more than spot cures, so spending the gil for this is fairly pointless unless you plan on playing smn

[riceburner4540]

a few additional comments

thunder or earth staff is probably better to skill up with, since thunder has +dex, you'll have a very slight accuracy boost. earth staff is better for solo skill-ups...which i do very often.

i don't notice any significant decrease in resist rates with aero based spells while using ice staff, but it makes my aero spell hit about as hard as the water equivalent (i.e. aero III hits as hard as water III).

i plan on collecting them all eventually, including the wind, earth, and water staves. i'll eventually make a smn so these would be great, but i'll have them mainly to be able to hit 10% harder with every spell. right now, i have blizzard spells macroed with ice staff and aspir/drain macroed with dark staff. when i get more staves, i'll macro them in with their respective spells.

[Rico]

Most Paladins use Earth Staff becuase of the Physical damage % down.

[AtraposBLM]

when I said " land better, but the aero line"

I meant that using an ice staff decreases the damage of your aero line of spells by about 10%. That's why I usually switch to my mythic wand...although if I had a wind staff, I'd switch to that.

The firestaff is the best to skill up on (non-solo) because of the +attack. Hitting for 0 doesn't let you skill up, so getting a little bonus attack is always nice. If you skill up solo, earth staff would be real sweet

[riceburner4540]

Hitting for 0 doesn't let you skill up

it sure does. you can hit for 0 and still get skill ups, i've done it plenty of times before.

[Coinspinner]

I hit Lost Souls in Eldieme with my onion dagger for 0 to 0 damage and got from 30 skill to 100 skill easily. 11 damage viper bite 4tehwin.

[AtraposBLM]

blegh...maybe I'm just unlucky then ; ;