Anyone have a guide for Mage Meta?
From my general understanding you basically want.
1 Supporter for breakdowns
2-3 Black Magic users
1-2 Summoners
2 White Magic users.
1 misc.
So something like a
Tyro (All skilled plus its my SG user)
Vanille (White and Black Magic, have her wyrm weapon)
Yuna/Eiko/Aeris (Summons and White Magic)
Rinoa (Black Magic, White Magic, have her cardinal)
Vivi (Black Magic, have his elder staff)
party work?
Also what skills should I have and hone?
This applies through roughly lv130 dungeons. Numbers get stricter past that, but the general gist doesn't change. You need 3 black sticks and 1 white stick, although they're substitutable with red sticks. Mage meta relies on having 105-120MAG/MND weapons, and hence is very largely RS-agnostic, but if your sticks are of a particular RS, it's much easier to pull the required numbers in that RS. Also remember that many realms have 3++ black/white sticks given out as event rewards that typically go up to 130MAG/MND with RS.
1) Bosses have ~250k HP or less. This is your target
2) There's a rule that I call the 8.5 x 3.5 x 8 rule. That is, if 3.5 (leeway down from 4) of your guys do 8.5k damage per hit on average (leeway down from 9999), you'll kill the boss in 8 turns. (The actual value of 8.5 x 3.5 x 8 = 238k, close enough to 250 not counting those leeways)
To explain those numbers:
3)
The 3.5: You have 5 guys. We're assuming that Support Guy (Mental Breakdown, and one other defensive Breakdown, substitute with Full Break if you have it) won't do significant damage at all. He's there to debuff. If he hits for 3k+, cool, that's a bonus. Instead of 4, we're going down to 3.5 with the assumption that one of your guys will either be getting stuff like Boon/LH up via RW or simply healing from time to time.
4)
The 8.5: It's actually really, really easy with 4* abilities to hit 9999 with Mental Breakdown. Between juggling Devotion/Impetuous Youth/Rinoa RM3/etc around on your weaker nukers, and 4* abilities in general. Remember that it's OK if one person lags behind and does less than 8k. You just want to hit that 8.5k average as a base guideline. More is better.
5)
The 8: Following the above two points plugged into the formula, if you have 3.5 guys doing 8.5k damage each on average per turn, you only need to make sure they have 8 abilities to take care of the boss' entire HP bar. This works out because:
- For Support Guy, it's possible to get by on r2 breakdowns. If you alternate two r2 breakdowns, you'll last 8 turns
- Assuming you're lugging along Valefor, Meteor or Ruinga for clearing trash, putting something in the other slot that adds up to 8 casts total when you reach the boss isn't all that high of a bar. e.g. r1 Meteor + r3 Waterja, or r2 Valefor + r3 Thundaja, etc. Or simply Curaga + r3 Diaga which is 8 casts.
- Boon/LH/SG/etc. RWs will comfortably last through 4 turns so you can fire off the first at the start and second at 50% and you'll get full coverage.
Again, this is all baseline, and you'll find you kill stuff faster/last longer when your hones and gear get better. Pulling past the 130 difficulty dungeons, you'll find that it's actually the trash that starts getting problematic, with a lot of single mobs that have over 10k hp, reducing the efficiency of bulldozing through it with multiple recharging AOEs. You can overcome this with more hones and blowing a couple on trash, etc, but at that point of current endgame physical builds do tend to come back into favor anyway.
In terms of what you want to make: Anything that feeds into the 8 turn rule and helps you painlessly clear trash. Meteor r1 alone is already a Godsend, as are non-elemental 4* summons. Ruinga is cool although you end up having to give that person your best gear to get Ruinga's damage up to hit the 8.5k average. (Unless you're going Devotion with Ruinga, but then you won't have it recharging for trash)
Of all the elemental spells, Waterja is the best 4* you can get for your orbs. Vulnerabilities are nice, but at the 4* level with good gear and Mental Breakdown you'll be hitting 9999 anyway even without Vulnerability, so it boils down to which spells get resisted/absorbed the least, rather than which you can capitalize on for vulnerabilities. Bioga is the second least resisted 4* and hits harder single-target than Ruinga.
(Speaking of vulnerabilities, the -ga ranks will already hit close to 9999 anyway)
