Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

[Sabaron]

I'm levelling BLU mage and I've been contemplating /NIN @ 20-23, pre-Utsusemi:

• NIN10 has better Throwing Skill than BLU20
• 10% Speed increase from Dual Wield

My question involves the dynamics of the Auto-attack sequence and weapon delays.

1. I am wielding 2 Flame Swords (delay 218) for a total delay of 392.4.
2. I have a Rogetsurin (delay 286).
3. I have Blue Magic Spells with delays < 3.92s.

• Can I throw Rogetsurin between melee attacks and still catch my next attack or does throwing reset my Melee Attack timer?
• Can I cast fast Blue Magic between attacks or does casting reset my Melee Attack Timer?
• If I can do either of the above, what happens if my spell/ranged attack casting time/attack animation overlaps my next melee attack? Do I lose the attack or do I get to do it directly following the spell/ranged attack?

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

-I can't answer about Throwing, as I'm unaware if its different from Marksmanship or Archery. With those, the delay DOES reset. I've experience this. If its similar, then expect that. When your using fast weapons its not that much of an issue.

-Casting resets, however there are times, whether its server lag on my side or whatever, that if I cast my spell on or less than a second before my next auto attack, that an attack goes off while the Cast Time bar is up. So if your going to cast magic, which you should as a BLU, just do it RIGHT after your attack. With /NIN, it'll be easy to see since you have 2 swings.

Either way, your sacrifing auto attack delay to do these other things. It's a penalty for being able to cast magic and attack at the same time. There aren't many other ways around it.

[Lmnop]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

-sub jobs have zero effect on your main job's skills. In this case, /nin does nothing to improve your throwing skill but for what you get out of AGI. Unless BLU doesn't naturally have a throwing skill (I don't know, haven't unlocked it) in which case throwing is an astronomical waste of time.

-throwing seems to pause your melee attack cycle, not reset it. But there are some odd quirks to it. If you spam your ranged attack, you'll still get melee swings in between -- just at a slower-than-normal rate.

-Magic seems to pause as well, not completely reset. This seems to be especially true of Blue magic with their .5 second casting time spells. Armando says that the casting time slows him down so little that he gets 50% more damage from subbing BLU to his PLD (Which means it's even weaker than it would be for a BLU main, and that seems like a fine indicator of how little your casting will interfere with your melee).

[Sabaron]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

-sub jobs have zero effect on your main job's skills. In this case, /nin does nothing to improve your throwing skill but for what you get out of AGI. Unless BLU doesn't naturally have a throwing skill (I don't know, haven't unlocked it) in which case throwing is an astronomical waste of time.

Are you sure about this? When I set BLU/WHM my Throwing skill caps at 26. When I set BLU/NIN the skill is at 27, uncapped (I only have 27 Throwing at the moment). BLU has throwing skill but it's very poor and they can only use Chakram (Ring) type weapons. FFXIClopedia doesn't list a rating for BLU Throwing, but the cap at BLU20 is 26.

[Lmnop]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

I think you misread something. Even E rank (lowest ranking in the game) caps at 51 for level 20. Well, let's start from the top:

Skill ranking only affects one thing: caps. FFXIclopedia doesn't have BLU listed as having a Throwing skill... and that's the culprit. If you look at this nifty site (old though it may be), you see that WHMs have E rank throwing. E rank cap for a level 10 character is 26. Since Blue Mages have no natural throwing skill, it falls to your sub's skill. However, since your sub is level 10, your throwing skill would be capped as if you were a level 10 WHM. In this case, 26. If you had Throwing skill higher, you'd see that /nin caps you at skill 33 because of their A rank throwing.

Ok, now to harsh reality. First and foremost, you have ~5% chance of hitting any mob you'd be exping off of with your throwing skill, even if it were capped at 33. Even if you were soloing EP mobs, you'd be hard-pressed to connect. This is because the some 30 points of Skill between Sub Job level and Main job level represents 30 points of ranged attack with that weapon and *30 points of ranged accuracy*. That's huge.

Also, you cannot skill up Skills you do not naturally possess. This means you have a 0% chance of getting Throwing skill ups as a blu/nin or blu/whm. Use it for pulling when you need to. =)

[Sabaron]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

I'm going to have to assume that Square-Enix gave BLU the ability to throw Chakrams simply because most of their spells are rather short ranged and/or expensive. Since it's strictly for pulling and I can't skill it up, now I don't have to worry about trying to cap it as BLU.

[little ninja]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

1. Wasnt aware blu had an throwing skill. So if it doesnt /nin will only give you 33 ish in skill. When your weapons are 60ish. So why cripple yourself.

2. i think for magic an ranged attack your melee is paused. a few tests i tried shows 3 seconds to attack. at 2 seconds i cast a spell, after animation of spell 1 seconds i did my next attack, After attack i casted a spell, after the spell 3 seconds i attacked again.

3. your more recent animation will over lap your previous. Then again its based on lag. There were times id cast a spell an attack, but i never saw the attack animation, only its damage log. There were times during spells where id parry an attack, i see the animation but at the same time my spell gauge was still climbing. but i wasnt in a spell casting stance,

So no you wont lose the attack or spell, you will just lose the animation most times,

An not to be rude, but i think this is more a blu foreum kind of question.

[Icemage]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

The reason your Throwing is capped at 26 as BLU/WHM is because WHM has inherent Throwing Skill at rank E. At /WHM10 your skill caps at 26. BLU has no native Throwing skill at all.


Icemage

[Sabaron]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

An not to be rude, but i think this is more a blu foreum kind of question.

Well, the question is about NIN sub in general. Replace BLU with RDM, RNG, BRD, or some other class which would also find this information applicable. I'm not asking whether it's an appropriate sub for BLU but rather how the auto-attacking functions. Since this deals with Dual Wield "opening up" a bigger spell/RA window, I figured it might be another useful perk to get out of NIN sub in general. I figured NIN was the most appropriate forum, but I really don't care where it goes.

[little ninja]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

The reason your Throwing is capped at 26 as BLU/WHM is because WHM has inherent Throwing Skill at rank E. At /WHM10 your skill caps at 26. BLU has no native Throwing skill at all.
Icemage

WoW no skill at all, So whats the point for the RA, just for ghetto pulls? I dont see the +1 Agi being of any use that low.

Well, the question is about NIN sub in general. Replace BLU with RDM, RNG, BRD, or some other class which would also find this information applicable. I'm not asking whether it's an appropriate sub for BLU but rather how the auto-attacking functions. Since this deals with Dual Wield "opening up" a bigger spell/RA window, I figured it might be another useful perk to get out of NIN sub in general. I figured NIN was the most appropriate forum, but I really don't care where it goes.

I still dont know why youd want to consider even using RA, considering your looking at around 26 in skill. it fails bigtime compared to 63 sword skill, an a 63 blu magic skill. Only way id see it being of any use would be to pull. Then again i dont see many blu pulls.

When i took Blu to 37 i never even bothered using /nin. For the job there was no real point to it. I basically took it to 37 as a blu/war. finding myself using cacoon, metallic body, an defensive food to tank. Then throwing in the ocassional head butt, an blugreon <== (sp?) with voke, kept the main focus on me, an really negating damage an downtime.

[Sabaron]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

Well, I'm not any more if you read above--I was thinking I could cap throwing as BLU, but as Lmnop pointed out, you can't raise non-native skills so there's no point. I would essentially be using it only for Ghetto Pulls as you call them and the nifty little +1AGI I get from Rogetsurin.

The reason I was asking about Dual-Wield is that I was wondering if subbing NIN would increase my DD efficacy by great measure (by interweaving spells/ranged/melee attacks) which it apparently does, but not quite to the degree I had hypothesized. WAR was my other biggest option for Provoke and the DEF bonus of course. I also flirted with RNG (for the Accuracy) and DRK (for the Attack). WHM can be useful as well since I have a mana pool and would be able to back-up cure to help out the main healer. Since I'm doing Qufim currently, it's easy for me to choose a sub based on my party composition before I go out, so I can switch up before I head out and make the best contribution for the particular party rather than choosing something with more general acceptance that I won't be using. For instance, in Valkurm I went BLU/COR b/c the party felt that Corsair's Roll would be the most beneficial and BLU/WHM when I was in a PT with 2 other BLU's (BLU/WHM x 3, COR/WHM, SMN/WHM, DRK/WAR) and we bounced hate between us and didn't have a WHM for Protectra though it was remarked once we headed out that it would've probably been better to just all have gone /WAR so we could cross-provoke instead. This last party was awesome b/c of the very good PL we had, we actually got to bust out the Area of Effect Nukes which is insanely fun especially whey you've been grinding one-at-a-time forever; watching a horde of flies, goblins, leeches, sheep, and crabs go down all at once is terribly amusing. We only had one death, and it was on a pull--one of the BLU's got a bit greedy and pulled 3 pugs at once from too short of range and got creamed before she could make it back to the camp--we still killed the pugs though.

ADD: Don't try this at home (necessarily): We had a 75th level WHM PL for this--he's amazingly skilled btw and all BLU's and the COR were "juicing" for MP--AoE nukes are very expensive but much more efficient that single-target when you have the right number of mobs. The COR was also throwing down Lucky's and 11's like a Las Vegas scam artist.

[Lmnop]

Re: Dual-wield, Ranged Attacks, and Spells

Wow, I never thought before about how nice blu/drk must be levels 20-30. Many melee jobs can sub DRG in that level range for attack boost and Jump, but you'd likely get more benefit from the slight increase of MP /drk affords you while getting the same attack bonus trait as /drg. In general, Blue mages still end up dealing more damage through melee than they do spells. By pacing yourself, you end up with higher damage and higher exp. Case and point, my BLU friend sent me a parse of his where he was top DD (even above a MNK), yet his average melee damage (per fight) was almost exactly twice his spell damage. And this is a taru whose been playing mage jobs for 3 years. I'm betting you're doing a good job with BLU, and I didn't mean that to sound so much of how you "should be" playing. My real point was...

Don't ignore your melee. In fact, seek to boost it wherever possible. 10% delay reduction or +10 attack boost (plus higher STR than any other sub bar /war) will help. Keeping the party running smoothly (/war and all it entails, /whm and helping out, or just augmenting your DD to the max as with the above examples) is obviously priority #1, and you're moving in the right direction for that. Good luck with BLU. =)