Casting Quickly

[Icemage]

Case 1:

BLM casts Ancient Magic and gets aggro.

Do you:

Flash, and make the monster miss 90% of the time for 25MP, thereby saving the BLM from 100-300 damage...

OR

Wait and cast your Cure after the BLM has gotten pounded 2 or 3 times? How much MP will you have to spend to undo that damage?

Case 2:

Monster has a big damage attack (Ripper Fang, Sickle Scythe, Big Scissors, Death Scissors, whatever) and hasn't used a WS in a while.

Do you cast Flash and make that next attack miss instead of hitting for 300-600 damage?

Even when you guess wrong in this case, monsters at level 54+ (probably Robber Crabs in Kuftal Tunnel?) regularly hit for 70+ damage per hit (these days at level 62 monsters are hitting for 100+ on tanks, and closer to 150-200 on non-tanks). Unless your tank is a Ninja, Flash is still a worthwhile MP investment, especially if you cast it with situations like the above in mind.

Correct usage of Flash saves you MP if you know what the situations are when casting.


Icemage

[LockeCole]

=\ yes i was making reference to the beginning of the fight although it does seem irrelevant when you put it in that context. Well I'll agree that in pure mp wise cure III and IV are more efficient than the cure that preceeds it~. However at this time i find cure II to be more party efficient. I usually go with pick up parties, so we aren't very clear with each others playstyles sometimes even throughout the whole levelling period. When the tanks life goes to yellow, usually I will up my cure level, the redmage/bard will cure and if you have a paladin he too will heal himself. Eventually we all over cast. Now this is gonna sound funny but there was a time where that happened, so I decided to cancel my cure with /heal because 570hp was overkill when only 200~250hp was needed, and the bard did the exact same thing heh. No harm done but still funny . hmm~ I am swayed by your cure III argument. I use cure IIs because 1. Most japanese parties I was in play this way 2. It hasn't been horribly or even remotely inefficient from my observation, so i just adopted it. Maybe I'll try it when I feel like levelling my white mage again

I do agree with your post about flash , very nicely worded. Just wanted to point out that Flash is more useful if your tank is a ninja. Sometimes he fails to dodge all of the attacks, thus flash is good to give him time to cast utsusemi: ichi as a replacement for ni that hasn't charged up. You won't draw hate because you've probably only been hasting everyone in the party at this point, which doesn't draw a whole lot of hate. And 100+ damage on tanks at 62 is probably critical hits from Toramas =\. Assuming your tank is a paladin, 100+ damage shows lack of desirable equips or you picked up a high IT, which either way is bad for effective levelling imo.

[riceburner4540]

Flash, and make the monster miss 90% of the time for 25MP, thereby saving the BLM from 100-300 damage...

is flash really that powerful? my paladin uses it often and i see "----- casts flash, the ------- is blinded". i always assumed it was just the blind spell with a whole lot more enmity, since it seems to be like a second provoke. if i ever got aggroed, the paladin would either use cover and i'd run right behind him, or use flash and regain the hate instantly. i've never kept aggro after his flash, so i don't know just how well it works. also, how long does the effect last?

[Icemage]

Yes, Flash really is that powerful. I'm not sure how much it decreases accuracy by, but it is significantly stronger than Blind is. The duration is random, but seems to be based off of the monster's resistance to Light magic and your Divine Magic skill. As a white mage, your Flash is MORE powerful than a Paladin's. I've had Flash last for almost 15 seconds - even against IT++ enemies, it produces remarkable amounts of missed attacks.

With my Divine Magic well over 200 now, my average Flash duration is somewhere between 5-10 seconds.

Granted, when you first get the spell at level 45, it's risky to use because it draws a lot of enmity, but even then it has its uses (trust me, you're not going to pull enmity off the BLM who just Magic Bursted Freeze for 1100 damage with Flash).

I don't even think twice about using Flash anymore - its part of my normal casting routine. I just make sure I stagger my casts with the tank if he's a PLD so that we aren't both Flashing at the same time. Since the cooldown timer is 45 seconds, that's generally not hard to do - just wait for the PLD to cast Flash, wait 10-15 seconds, then cast. Rinse, repeat.


Icemage

[Cooncon]

Personally I have all my Cure and Buffing Macros set like "/ma "Cure" <t>" And use the f1-6 keys to select my target. It just seems easier than selecting the spell first and then your target.

[riceburner4540]

to reduce the time even further, i use /ma Cure <me>, /ma Cure <p1>, etc to <p5> for the party....so i have a whole lot of cure macros.

[AtraposBLM]

to save space, use
/ma "Cure III" <stnpc>
and use the f keys to select your player in need of heals. Or, if you don't feel comfortable with that, set up 2 cure sets. One is the above, and you use that for healing random people in your party, and one you make
/ma "Cure III" Tanksname
This way when you want to heal the tank, it's instant, and the others are slightly delayed.

After reading about people using <stnpc>, even being a proponent of having a separate cure macro for each person, I gave it a try. It's ackward at first if you're used to using 6 macros for 6 people...but it saves a ton of space. Think about it this way: the second you spend switching pages is much more likely to get somebody killed than the millisecond it takes to hit enter.