BLM Enfeebling Question

So I'm a new black mage, still in the mid 20's. I have all my basic elemental spells and stictly used those so far in a party setting. My question is what are the situation where I would use the (Choke, Burn, Shock etc.) type spells? I used a few, but didn't really see the point in doing so, and I wanted to conserve my MP for my nukes. Is there anything else I'm missing in a party as a blm besides just nuking?

While we are at it, I'm Elvaan and I just hit 24. Do I /nin at this point for the dual wielding +INT wands and shadows, or do I stick with /whm. (rdm isn't leveled atm)

Burn lowers the mobs INT. So this is useful for increasing your nuke damage. To be honest, I never use these spells 99.99999999% of the time.

I have seen the elemental dots used on the Lebros Cavern wall, or on a NM such as Jailer of Temperance who resists all direct damage nukes. Its usually pretty specific conditions you use those spells and only on things that require DoT. (I'm sure Antipika will chime in and tell me I'm a horrible BLM =P )

If you are soloing sub nin. If you are in a party usually sub whm as you'll most likely be backup cure.

They're not too useful until 75 really. If you can stack 150+ INT, they do 5 damage per tic, but more importantly, reduce stats by 13 each.

Of course, endgame, BLM can solo a lot by stacking a lot of DoT, for instance 5/tic from each of three Elemental DoT spells + Bio II + Poison II = (5x3)+8+10 = 33 every 3 seconds.

You will always do better damage with /NIN than with any other sub, until at least 51, when you can use Staves instead of 2x Club. You wouldn't think so by the look of it but NIN has some of the highest base INT, which supplements your BLM INT.

NEVER /whm ever!!! I will not be expected to back cure as blm... um depends on the situation. If your manaburning stuff and mps low burn rocks. If your in a party with melees... which doesnt happen much chokes pretty decent. Things that resist or are immune to direct magic dmg obviously. While the dmg/mp is nice on them alot of the time the mob dies before itd wear off. Oh kinda nice when your zombie soloing stuff. Sped up my soloing of voyager sallet by alot lol. Just remember resist rate on them is based on elemental skill not enfeebling and that the Dot and -stats are dependent on int.

1 - 39 INT = 1hp/tic (-5 stat)
40 - 69 INT = 2hp/tic (-7 stat)
70 - 99 INT = 3hp/tic (-9 stat)
100 - 149 INT = 4hp/tic (-11 stat)
150 - ??? INT = 5hp/tic (-13 stat)

I go /WHM anytime I'm not doing NMs or puddings... such a small sacrifice in damage for a fair increase in utility. Plus free Reraise ^^; /NIN is good solo, don't recommend it in parties but it will give maximum damage until you get the elemental staves.

Lol, serious? Guess you've never seen blms getting poisoned by crawlers and having to beg for a poisona so they can rest.

Pretty much every major subjob has a time and a place.

/sch gives you free RR. Even then RR1 fails so hard when you can RR2. /rdm or /sch give you most the same utility while letting you keep your sorc ring active easier and giving huge benefits in terms of fastcast/gravity and dark arts/strats/na spells.

blm/sch I can rock over 300 enfeebling skill easy which is awesome... if only I still had gravity and/or stoneskin/blink /sigh

appreciate the responses, so basically dot are not used in most situations but if I did want to start a fight out with them, I could do a burn and choke since they stack, and the -INT will help my nukes from burn, and the -VIT will help melees with damage.

I do this strange thing called not be behind the tank... or stay out of range... its an old concept that isnt used much nowadays but its pretty awesome... oh yeah and theres always stoneskin or /sch poisona. Hell at that rate everyone who needs mp should /whm for poisona. Pld/whm ftw!!!

If a BLM is crying for poisona to rest... They need to learn that they can rest with stoneskin up?

I /rdm exclusively. 24-25k for 10 reraises isn't bad. Exp isn't hard as blm, I mean, you can solo it.

And for "added utility", I never understood that, seeing as... You're on blm? You should be stunning/sleeping/nuking/Dots/enfeebs? A cure 3 in most situations isn't going to save a life. (I said most, not all)

Just my 2 cents.

Correct. I'm sure you know this, but never ever dot mobs that you'll possibly need to sleep. There are a few times when I was soloing pets I had to sleep and rest a few ticks to finish it off.

Ok, so let's so, rdm get SS at lvl 34, that means you have to be... 68 before you can SS yourself. The OP is currently 24, and the first crawlers you're likely to fight are at around lvl 32 so yeah, time and place, lol.
Because that will save you at all when you're resting and some DD just decides to point it at you because HE doesn't care about it.

/sch is doable, but yeah, stoneskin isn't viable for rdm for a VERY long time. And seriously, there's a difference between a mage subbing whm and the tank subbing whm, don't be stupid.

Lilman, this is where I get lost. I understand the nuking, dot aspects now. What sort of enfeebs do you use? Also does sleep really work when you are fighting IT mobs? I've only tried to use sleep I and I landed them, but only for a few secs. And when would you stun? Doesn't that just last a second or two?

Sleep gets pretty strongly resisted at low lvls, you're pretty much better off using ES to get it to land until you get staves at 51.

Stun has a lot more utility at end game when you have to stun certain spells or TP moves, but even when you first get it, you can use it to help the DD or tank recast utsusemi or something like that, or stunning bomb toss, etc...

Not sure which enfeebles he's talking about, based on the /rdm, probably bind and grav?

Hence the stay out of range thing... not really that hard. Ok then you wanna be that way blm is a DD... how about blus going /whm just for poisona just as stupid. Ive never had a problem on blm where I felt the need to /whm. Hell I didnt have /whm until a good year after my blm was 75. And thats with rdm being my first 75.

As far as other enfeebles... well thats not really a blms job in a pt... but Ive certainly saved pt from wipes with quick bind and zonings or sleeping adds... but really Id expect the rdm or maybe brd to do that. Unless you gear yourself up good your resist rate will be higher enough that it wont be too reliable until later on when you can get good gear to compensate

*shrug*, that's just you being gimp then, especially with rdm. But some people actually have other things on their mind than just selecting the highest nuke off the top of the list and spamming it.

And serious, how far away are you resting, poison breath goes quite far if I recall, lol. And even then, there's also the chance that the healer can pull hate and spray you both with poison. It just doesn't seem worth the extra hassle for what little you'd gain from rdm (especially at low lvls)

I pretty much use all 4 of the major subs, including /rdm, in some case or the other, I just don't understand the people who /rdm to absolutely EVERYTHING.

Nope I /sch sometimes... I dont base my job selection on people sucking. And I tend to like to rest far away from pts... too many bad experiences with pullers doing stupid stuff like pulling mobs on top of me while Im resting.
And /whm is only sometimes good with rdm too. But it is the only reason why I lvl whm. Though now with sch... im /sch 90% of the time... sometimes blm for sleepga and ES if I have to.
As far as nuking hard... thats what blms do. Thats like calling a melee gimp for not making it so he could back up tank if need be and being dumb for doing dmg...

In my opinion, no BLM should ever sub WHM for anything. Sure you get -na spells but that's what WHM, RDM, SMN, SCH, and BRD are for.

Subbing WHM on BLM is like going PLD/BRD to keep your MP up. Sure, it makes sense for that one purpose but you won't be very good at what you're actually SUPPOSED to be doing.

DoT in a exp party is something I've always done once I got the element enfeebs. Any extra dmg you can do, you want to do even if it's 1HP/tick. If you're worried about sleeping the mob then I'd suggest you disband and find a new one. Only time you don't want to DoT is when you solo.

/nin is the main sub from the start of soloing BLM. It's not the only subjob that you can use to solo pre50 either.

/sch is pretty good and fulfills most of what /whm can do. I do tend to forget about it sometimes because it's a relatively new SJ. I only personally use it for einherjar and tiamat. But most people don't really associate it with blm much, and the OP doesn't even have it unlocked. At high lvls, erase is a decent reason for having /whm as that's one thing /sch doesn't cover. Occasionally getting slowed in xarc by the demons is really annoying since it tends to screw up your sleep recasts. And yes I know you like to rest FAR away but serious, you still get nicked by the slow every now and again, lol.

Melees are still stupid DD's if all they care about is dmg and nothing else. (Not including merit situations for this) Doing stuff like WSing right off the bat before the tank can generate any hate and being an mp sponge generally doesn't benefit the party overall even if they're doing more dmg. And even DD's can do stuff other than dmg, voke links off, cast spells, accomplice mages, shoot acid bolts to benefit the whole party. Just casting one dmg spell and nothing else is similar to just sitting there auto attacking and just wsing everytime TP comes up, yes it does the job, but you could be doing a better job. Granted there are situations where all you do is nuke, but like I said, there's a time and place for everything and blm is pretty good about being flexible with it.

Something I forgot to ask is if the DoT enfeebs override or are overriden by other enfeebs from other jobs. In other words, can I start out fights with those two without worrying about stepping on other's toes?

The only thing about the elemental DOT's at low lvl is they're not very mp efficient, 25mp for 1 dmg a tick is like... yeah. There's the stat down too which is probably slightly more helpful, but the OP's an elvaan to, so mp's a bit of a premium.

Yeah, they're pretty much classed seperately from all other types of dot. The only person you could mess with would be if someone else were casting a different set of elemental dots, lol.

To put it simply, no.

A more complex answer: If you had another BLM or a /BLM in your party and they were casting the DoTs from the other end of the spectrum, I.e. Drown/Rasp/Frost, it would overwrite if you were to cast Burn/Choke/Shock. Even then, that rarely happens and when it does, it rarely even matters.

Well the dots arent actually enfeebling magic...and
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Elemental_Debuff_Guide

Yeah they arent enfeebling magic, at 75 best to reach 100+ int and proceed to stack elemental skill gear.

I have 2 burn macros one that equips sorc petasos weskit merciful cape vulcan staff af hands omega/balrahns morion+1 mahatma slops af2 belt, ele torque, etc. As well and a 2nd burn macro kirin pole demon helm+1 ixion cape acp body yigit hands etc etc to reach 151int with nq melon pie.

At level 75 150int build is best for pudding, wamoura, marid, lamia, wivre etc.
Comparison for dmg...been about 6 months since i went pudding camp but i know with 150int build burn followed by freeze2 solo cream puff im at 2412dmg. With just 110-149 int burn its 237?ish, not a huge difference but if youre sure eleskill wont be needed to see minimal resists imo its worth it.

As for lower levels and elemental dots, when a few friends leveled blm to 37 or w/e i always told em to make sure burn is on the mob before nuking in pty, lowers resists and increases dmg. As 55 rdm/blm i was landing burn choke shock on lesser colibri followed by aspir which had the pattern of being stronger when burn had landed.

imo BLm/whm is like Cor/whm....gimp. On topic, the main enfeebles/debuffs that i use (when i can) Are Sleep2, sleepga2, bio2, burn and if i have time, choke and shock and if im soloing, Gravity and bind. (Typically im /rdm now that i have it instead of /whm..and the loss of rr isnt so bad if you know what you're doing)

blm/whm is what cor/whm is, useful in the right situations, lol.

Using one subjob for everything is gimp.