Doing it wrong: Stoneskin

I've seen alot of people who stack MND everywhere they can for stoneskin, which probably is the right thing to do for jobs that have a hard time capping it due to no innate enhancing skill(BRD, SMN)it is by no means necessary for a job like RDM.

MOAR MND = MOAR HP???

While casting it in your impresive +10000 MND set may seem like a good idea as at least you're guaranteed to cap it that way, it's actually hurting you when you can swap out some of the redundant MND pieces for fast cast, damage reduction and +MP. If you are lucky enough to have stuff like stone gorget/mufflers then you won't need telling how to use them.

The reason I feel MP is an issue on stoneskin is because you often cast it before a fight, so if your stoneskin set has less MP than your typical idle/casting sets then you're losing MP before you've even started fighting.





Gearing sensibly

You should aim to cap stoneskin with the least amount of MND to hit the cap (you need 95MND total on RDM with capped enhancing), and add MND in areas where you lose the least MP, and use full fast cast gear to finish the spell earlier (it's a pretty long cast). Personally I find a wand/shield to be the best option for +MND, some people use an earth staff, either because they have the odd belief that it does something to enhance stoneskin (tip: it doesn't) or because they're using the -20% damage taken to avoid stoneskin breaking during the cast and getting interrupted when soloing. I don't see why people do this unless they are capable of cancelling the old stoneskin before the new one casts (either through zomg reactions or whatever windower plugin that cancels buffs).

This is what I use on rdm/whm:

The only gear I macro on is AF hat+legs/Relic Body, Wand/Shield, Tamas ring and Loq. Earring. This gives me 67+24= 91MND plus 15 enhancing skill, which equates to 5 MND puts me at 96 (1 over cap). For other subs like /nin and /blm I use a Prism cape and Communion earring to make up for the lower base MND.
This set maintains max fast cast effect, along with capping stoneskin and not dropping below 1000MP (assuming I was in convert gear before cast), so I can cast a bunch of other buffs for free before changing to casting sets. Also leaving slots available for stoneskin gorget and stone mufflers if I will ever get them :\

Enhancing vs. MND

Typically, enhancing skill loses as 3 skill = 1 MND so stuff like Torque, Relic hands loose out to MND options in those slots, however, having higher skill makes it harder to interrupt you.
AF legs (15 enh. skill, 3 MND) offer the same boost towards stoneskin cap as Mahatma slops (8MND), but also offer a little extra MP and reduce interrupts, making them arguably better (mahatma do have -4 enmity though). Morrgian's slops beat both for potency, but offer less -enmity and no reduced interrupt.

I need to tweak my melee sets so stoneskin casts in AF2 hands, which should help reduce interrupts further and are only 1 less MND than alternatives (devotee's+1).

So basically, gear for Fast Cast > "Enhances Stoneskin Effect" gear > MND/Enhancing (95 cap) > MP/conserve MP/etc
And remember, for purposes of comparing MND to enhancing skill pieces at 75 w/256 base skill, 3 enh. skill = 1 MND


Since I'm not sure of the numbers for BLM, SCH and WHM etc, check out this site - it also calculates enspells and phalanx. Also as SCH, once you're at the cap, -enmity should be a concern if you're using AoE stoneskin, because it does generate a fair chunk of hate if you're spamming it on 6 people.