Effectiveness of Shell(ra)

[VB-Shiva]

Do you find the Shell(ra) spell to have any significant effect on your party? Right now, it's in my useless spells section, along with the Bar(status) lines.

What is Shell supposed to do? "It Increases Magic Defense." What exactly is Magic Defense?! From the description, it appears to be only useful when fighting Beastmen Casters, if they cast Slow, Paralyze, etc. How often do I fight those? Pretty rare. How often do they cast these spells? Rarer Still. Even then, it still has minimal effect(if any) on Beastmen's spells.

Which leads to my conclusion:
Shell(ra) = Useless.

[Lily]

I have a hunch that because it's kinda of a sister version of Protectra, it behaves in the same way. Protect raises your (physical) defense by so much, then perhaps Shell raises a sort of magical defense value. So if you get hit by an elemental attack or special, you'll get a small reduction in dmg done to you. Stuff I'm talking about is direct dmg things like Fire, Aero, and possibly the specials like Bomb Toss or the thunder breath that Skinks do.

(I realise that Barfira will help massively against Bomb Toss, but Shell might also increase this protection more, even though it doesn't show it anywhere.)

I might be wrong, but it was just a thought.

[Calianeri]

For leveling thus far, I've used Shellra (and Shellra II) when fighting casters. Which is really not that frequent. My assumption has always been that Shellra adds protection against both direct damage spells and enfeebling spells (i.e., as if you had more MND and INT), so it reduces damage and lowers duration/increases resist chance of statuses. But I've never actually questioned or tested that. I'd love to hear a definitive answer too.

It shouldn't help against special elemental attacks, since they are not magic. For that you need Protectra and Bar-element (which help a great deal).

[murmur]

But the specials don't really seem like physical damage either... so I've been slapping shellra on just in case. But does shellra not help for the specials?

My other question is, which barspell corresponds to some of these specials? For example, I know barfira greatly helps decrease the damage from bombtoss, while barstonra helps against bunny and worm specials, so I'd love to know if there's anything else i can do. ><

Also when flies and soldier crawlers sprays the frontal attack that also poisons, I know barpoisona would decrease poison duration, but would it also lessen the amount of damage the actual attack does? Or is it an element too? And pleaseplease, if there's any way to decrease the exoray attacks... I beg you, please let me know. ^^

Goblins: Bombtoss -> fire
Pugils: Screwdriver -> water?
Bats: Jetstream -> ??? (air?)
Flies: Cursed Sphere -> ??? (air?)
Flies/Crawlers: the poison spray damage (disregarding poison status effect) -> nothing? or barpoisonra?
Fungars: their horrible spore attacks. and i wish there was a list of which one does what. ^^
Lizards?
Undead?
Any others?

Can't think of any more AOE or specials at the moment. Haven't fought enough ><.

[Lily]

Maybe Barthundra for the electrical attacks that Giants sometimes do.

[Calianeri]

That is an interesting question you raised: how much do Protectra and physical defense in general help against specials? Again, I don't think Shellra is a factor because they are simply not magic attacks. For magic attacks, a combination of Shellra and Bar-element seems best, at least when you can predict what sort of elemental spell the mob will cast.

When in doubt, personally I use the bar- that corresponds to the element of the special attack's status effect, so while I can't say that flies' Venom is a water attack, or crawlers' Poison Breath, I use Barwater for both. I think I get good results, but I've never stopped to check damage with/without. I do see fewer party members get poisoned though. (I don't use Barpoisonra... but that's a discussion for another thread.) For Jetstream I'd use Baraera, but I've stayed away from triple bats so far. I haven't fought Exorays yet, and I'm not looking forward to it.

[murmur]

Thanks so much for the reply! WoohoO! Barwatera! I will definately start using that from now. ><

As for specials being based on physical, I'm not entirely convinced. I thought it was a mix, based upon monsters. Take mandragoras for example, they have headbutt, which is physical, i'm sure, but the have their sleep special and scream (MND down) and self regeneration. These aren't casted magic of course, so you can't silence them, but they're definately not physical. Even so, for fighting these, shellra isn't needed. But what about stuff like bombtoss in Kazham? Or... exorays >.>. XD These specials can make people's HP go from full to holyshit! It'd make anyone want to be on the "better safe than sorry" side. :p (I'm sure it just keeps getting worse and scarier. *dread*)

And sorry to ask again, but shellra adds protection against enfeebles? Is it like MND up? Sort of like how defense is related to vit? (And does MND decrease magical attacks? I know it protects against enfeebles...) Heh, yah, more questions. :sweat:

[PetriW]

Bomb Toss is fire, you'll notice quite an improvement using that too.

And sorry to ask again, but shellra adds protection against enfeebles?

Will probably be hard to prove before PvP...

[Falconi]

I can certainly see the difference if I or the tanks have Protect up or not.
With Shell...well it only seems to lower the dmg you take from direct damage spells. Ressist rate seems to be the same.

As for the Bar...series, it NEVER worked for me :p

[PetriW]

BARstatus ailment basically only lowers the duration of status effects, BARelement works like a dream... granted you have good enhance skill of course.

[Issaac]

The Bar<element> is working quit well, not everytime but if it works you see it. At one of the "raids" we did for mission 6 (tower qufim) we had 2 groups. Whenever we fought goblins on our way up i throw a BarFirera on my group and due to the fact they all where nearly same lvl you saw the difference quit well in the lost of hitpoints from group 1 to group 2 whenever the gob throw a bomb.

Im using shell as a starting buff, if needed or not, its a feelgood thing, when we fight casters im normaly silent them anyway. But i would never fight Notorious Caster Monster withouot Shellra 2. They mostly cant be silented (Darkknight AF1 is a caster for example)

[Tobold]

Whenever I cast Protectra on my group, I also cast Shellra. It doesn't cost much MP, and it keeps as long as Protectra, which is quite some time. I have no problem keeping my group under Shell protection all day long. Even if it just helps a little bit, every little bit is good.

Bar-something might be more effective, but I am NOT keeping my group under Bar- protection all day long. Because the duration of a Bar- spell is only one or two fights, and the drain on MP to keep it always up is just too much.

[PetriW]

Bar-something might be more effective, but I am NOT keeping my group under Bar- protection all day long. Because the duration of a Bar- spell is only one or two fights, and the drain on MP to keep it always up is just too much.

You only cast bar spells when needed of course and unless you have different mp prices than I do the cost in mp is marginal. You can't even cast cure twice for that mp and if you're having mp problems as a taru you're doing something wrong.
Oh and yeah, since you're 22 barwatera can be the difference between a tank being oneshotted by a screwdriver and just taking a slightly larger amount of damage. Consider it, maybe even try it a little.

[cavill]

When those Orc Mesmerizers cast elemental spells on u i think that shell would decrease the damage that they deal, i guess.. lol

[VB-Shiva]

At this point, everything is just speculations. There's no concrete evidence that Shell gives any benefits at all. The " cheap to maintain anyway" is not a compelling reason to keep Shellra up all the time. Unfortunately, its effect seem so minimal that I cant perform any tests on it. It'd would be easier if I had access to Shell IV or something, then maybe I can see some direct results of the Shell line of spell.


The other discussion is the Barxxx line:

We know Bar<element> works... somewhat, we can see its effectiveness right away.

Bar<status> falls into same category as Shell. It's "suppose" to work, but we dont see any direct results because of it. No, it does NOT lower duration of status effect, not from my personal observations anyway.