Third atma while leveling/skilling upFollow

Hey guys, I have been leveling my blm recently, and I have now hit level 78. I am having some issues and wanted to run some stuff by you and see what I should do.

First, of course my issue is this is my first mage job past 50, so my skill is woefully low. As of the end of my session last night, I had gotten it to 201, I had 6 merits built up already, so before I logged out last night I dumped 3 merits in elemental magic skill, so I have 207 right now. My issue is with magic accuracy. I started initially using Minkin, Ultimate, Brother wolf because I don't have beyond. However, I was getting nearly 100% resists on blizzard III's only doing about 1 in 20 for 1/2 damage, the rest were 110 damage. I noticed that Aero was getting fully resisted a lot less, so I went back to the atma guy, and swapped brother wolf out for gales. By the end of the party, with ascetic's tonics, my Aero IIIs were landing regularly for 1160ish and my Aeroga III's landed upwards of ~1800. My question is this.

The only magic accuracy atma I have is Kirin, which also gives +40 int. Should I swap out gales for that atma, and then start using blizzard and aero while I am skilling up, or should I stick to aero spells, which greatly benefit from the atma of gales?

I didn't even think about /sch... I'll have to level it from 30 to 50 first if I want to do that path.

so you think the macc and the int on Kirin is better than the +30 macc/matk on wind from gales? Ok, I'll have to try it out.

Just wanted to give a little bit of an update on this.

I went out and did atma of Kirin on iceday no less to see if I could do that. I stayed /rdm, because my sch sub is at 30, and I didn't feel like leveling it. I am now up to 99 and here is what I found. with Kirin, I still get regular resists on ice spells on the worms, something I rarely have now on my wind spells. I took a significant damage drop on my wind spells ~400 damage on V, ~300 on IV. I regularly had to use 3 ice spells to kill a worm. I ended up switching back to atma of gales because it was just much more consistent for me at the time. I am going to try again as soon as I get my ice potency merits and stuff. I can two shot worms with Aero V + Aero IV right now. I am also working on my ice staff magian trial, and in the mean time I am also saving up for a chatoyant staff as opposed to the iridal staff that I have now. I might just go ahead and get an Aquilo's Staff until I can get Chatoyant anyway.

Gist of the story/ tldr version: I am continuing to use gales until I can get some ice potency/better gear/skill to switch over to Blizzard. I will also work on getting atma of the beyond, which will also help significantly.

Edit: Gear if anyone is interested. I would appreciate some feedback on gear if you want to provide it. AF3 +2 is obviously one of my highest priorities

Iridal Staff
Caecus Grip (can't actually find any decent ones on ah, this one was cheap and gives dark skill)
Witchstone
Teal Chapeau
Artemis' Medal (will get the matk +8 macc +2 one as soon as I can afford)
Moldavite Earring
Hecate's Earring
Teal Saio
Teal Cuffs
Spiral Ring
Aquilo's Ring
Searing Cape/Twilight Mantle
Hierarch's Belt (Cognizant as soon as I can find one on AH)
Teal Slops
Teal Feet

Edited, Aug 27th 2012 11:56am by Meldi

Edited, Aug 27th 2012 12:02pm by Meldi

If you're using wind a lot you might want to consider macroing in Kaikias' Cape for your wind nukes - although it has one less MAB than searing cape it has INT +6 and a +4 bonus to MACC for wind spells, so I think it probably evens out. (I'm no magic damage expert though, so others are free to disagree)

It's also dirt cheap (50K on my server)



Edited, Aug 27th 2012 1:30pm by Olorinus

I don't know if you get a partial set bonus or not, but fast cast / recast reduction should be way down your list of priorities (other than for Voidwatch). Focus on accuracy, then damage, and if you get a little fast cast along the way, great.