The Furball

The Elemental Debuffs Guide

On a battlefield against the fiercest of monsters, having a good understanding of the tools you possess can be the key to success. Black Mages are blessed with a wide variety of useful and powerful spells, some that can help a party in numerous ways.

One of the spells that are often overlooked are the Elemental Debuffs, harmful elemental status effects that deal damage over time while reducing a monster’s attributes.

The Elemental Debuffs

There is an Elemental Debuff associated with each element, and each of them carry their own individual strengths. Some of them can be stacked together to form an even powerful detrimental effect to the monster.

The family of Elemental Debuff spells consists of:

Drown

Lowers STR – Target’s melee damage decreasd.

Burn

Lowers INT – Target’s magic deals less damage, while damage taken from black magic increases.

Frost

Lowers AGI – Target’s evasion, shield block rate and ranged accuracy is decreased.

Choke

Lowers VIT – Target’s defense is decreased.

Rasp

Lowers DEX – Target’s accuracy and chance of critical attack is decreased.

Shock

Lowers MND – MND-based debuffs hit more reliably and lasts longer

The monsters will, if unresisted, take damage over time and receive an attribute penalty for the duration of the spell. The severity of the effect depends on the caster’s Intelligence, so packing a healthy amount of INT doesn’t hurt.

Elemental Compatibility

Up to three Elemental Debuffs can be stacked, but some cancel each other out because they are incompatible. Below is a quick reference. If the debuffs are on the same row or column, they are compatible.

This means that stacking spells like Rasp and Choke would not work as the Rasp is negated by Choke as they are incompatible.

There are various combinations that may help your party considerably. Let’s consider the following example:

Rasp and Drown
The spells are in the same row, so they must be compatible according to the above chart.

The Rasp effect causes the monster’s DEX to be impaired and decreases it’s accuracy and chance of dealing a critical attack. The Drown effect causes the monster’s STR to be impaired and decreases it’s overall melee damage.

A combination like this would prove useful to lower the damage taken by the party’s tank.

Why bother?

An adventurous Black Mage has much to gain by casting Burn on it’s prey, but only if the monster does not have to be put to sleep. Because an Elemental Debuff damages the monster over time, the monster would instantly wake up. So the usefulness of an Elemental Debuff is largely dependant on the situation.

If the monster must be kited and slept, the Elemental Debuffs are out of the question. For monsters that are kited for an extended period of time, putting Burn on it would decrease the monster’s magic damage potency, while at the same time making it take more damage from your own black magic nukes.

Food for thought? Superbly useful or just fluff?