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.

Doing it wrong: Askar Korazin

Looks nice, doesn't it? Well, it is nice, and is a great situational piece for SAM. I'm focusing on SAM because I recently had to watch two of them gimp it up in this body piece while I dumped cures on them for hours and that put me in a bad mood, but I've seen other jobs use it needlessly, like WAR and DRK. DD PLD and BST can get away with it, because nobody parties with them so they can do what the hell they want.

DRK (scythe) is the biggest waste of this piece, because with 528 delay, they can get a 6-hit as /sam naked with a Brutal Earring.


Now, as a body piece this replaces the Haubergeon, so a loss of 10 acc + 5 DEX for 2% double attack and 5 store TP. In most conventional 6-hit builds, this allows for the exchange of Hachiman Kote for Dusk gloves/Askar hands and they can still retain a 6-hit as long as their WS build has a little extra Store TP somewhere. This is a good tradeoff when you're still hitting 95% accuracy with the korazin on, but most people have the mad idea that you can just ditch the hauby forever and rock askar fulltime. No.







Either that, or people have a strange idea of when they're sitting at capped accuracy. When it comes to meriting you need something over 400 accuracy to cap on the highest level birds (even more for mamools, especially NIN/THF), so around 400 will average to a 90~95% hitrate.










Both SAMs were under 80% accuracy, the DRG (also using Askar) was just under 90% thanks to accuracy bonus traits.









And for comparison, the DRG who outparsed them;



Askar SAM is fine for non evasive stuff, like Salvage/Nyzul fodder mobs, Dynamis city mobs(?) maybe even some limbus stuff, but for when accuracy isn't easily capped, it's not worth swinging 3%~ faster if you're missing 8%~ more often. And 2% double attack DOES NOT JUSTIFY FULLTIMING ASKAR. FUCK.