RDM Magnetic Or Ethereal?

Doing Apocalypse nigh soon and wondering what earring would be best to get? Red mage is my main, and I would like to get together as good of a rdm/nin solo set up as I can.

brutal/suppa is what you want.i use the magnetic to take a knee,and mayb cast something with it if i get up or am walking around.i normally pair the magnetic with the loq.or use the cassandras and helenus to nuke in.

youll need all of them,and use them alot.

Ethereal is good for meleeing/campaign and idle sets, also pretty nifty for lots of other jobs you may level. Magnetic is kinda limited in uses really.

Here are teh pics for referencing :P



I like to RDM/NIN as well, and looking at both I am pretty undecided as well lol

I got magnetic and havent regretted it but it was kind of a confusing choice to make.

but I chose magnetic because I can use it on my other 2 magely jobs so Im constantly wearing it and my rdm rarely engages anything when /nin if Im ever on /nin.

It kinda depends on if you have any other jobs or plan to lvl any other jobs. I know alot of DDs use the Suppanomimi+brutal earring combo, if you dont have access to those do you plan on ever having access to those? and are you willing to redo apoc nigh if you ever want something else?

Ethereal imo. Will give you the MP back should you take a particularly deadly hit! Conserve MP+5 barely saves any MP over time (and is only useful for a few spells anyway).

This. If you're getting hit enough as /nin solo for 3% to actually make a significant difference in your mp pool, you're screwed anyway.

Does ethereal work with stoneskin on? cause even if a mob gets through your shadows you should still have stoneskin. With 3% of the damage you take going to your mp pool if you get hit then I dont think that mp is going to save you much >.o I dont think that'd be the reason you'd want to choose that earring.

or thats when you go into mage mode and start bind/sleep/gravity+kiting which kinda ruins the purpose of the earring still..

Hard to say.

IMO, Magnetic has lost its luster (what luster it ever had) with the introduction of other pieces. When it was first put in, few other earrings had that much MP, Conserve MP outside of a latent wasn't on non-BLM gear, and so on. Now, things are different.

Ethereal is decent, but for RDM you're really hopefully not taking much damage. Even for -ga or ignore shadow stuff, you have Stoneskin.
I wouldn't get it for RDM only, but if you have another job (like PLD, BLU, DRG) that perhaps are better candidates you could still find a use for it.

That said, Hollow is a good option if you don't feel Ethereal is justified. Good for a lot of DDs or RDM melee builds.

IMO, the tossup is between Ethereal and Hollow.

Personally, I had a Magnetic, swapped to Ethereal after leveling PLD.

Depends more what you do as RDM. If you frequent sky NMs like Faust which hits very hard it's nice as an idle/kiting piece for some MP return. Same if you tank HNM on RDM. I'd estimate the mp return is higher than the saved mp from magnetic on average.

Yeah. Even if it did proc with stoneskin on, it wouldn't be worth it. Most rdm/nins try to keep shadows up, I'd imagine. I would say get magnetic and pair it with loquacious for fast cast and spell interruption rate down for casting anything mid-fight.

I'd think they'd both have their uses.

Ethereal Earring would be great for soloing. Think of the times you had to take an -aga III, just add it to your MDT set and gain a little MP. Or toss it into your PDT set for when you know you're about to get smacked.

Magnetic Earring's most beneficial stat appears to be Conserve MP +5, but honestly the only reason I'd get it is for the Spell Interruption. With that extra 8% and various other pieces of gear + Aquaveil you can literally be uninterrupted with Utsusemi: Ichi except from knockback moves.

It's really up to you though. If I were just a cure-bot RDM, it'd be no question for me, and I'd just get Magnetic. But if you have jobs like DRG, PLD, and you like to solo / low man stuff as RDM, the Ethereal Earring is really appealing too.

cant say Ive ever kited Faust much farther than to the portal room to drop it off at my pt and even then its been a long time since Ive done that...and I dont do HNMs and when I did I never tanked one.

So I cant really argue, cause Im sure somebody out there loves it and if you do then all the more power to you.

but like, 3 mp every 100 damage? it's gonna take somewhere over 700 damage to be able to cast stoneskin if you're that low on mp >.o and as somebody mentioned if you're taking enough damage to where an mp return is noticeable..then you're probably a dead a rdm D:

That being said, I could invent a better earring than magnetic for rdms but it obviously doesnt exist (yet). It works for me because I have other mage jobs and plan to lvl other mage jobs and when Im tanking in campaign Im always /whm and that spell interrupt- is noticeable..I dont know about the mp conservation though. And ofcourse the hmp is always nice and the 20 mp is good for my convert macro.

The OP wants to melee though, if he doesnt want to be magey evar then get the ethereal...if he does ever want to be mage then get magnetic and get a brutal/suppa in the future.

Actually, if OP wants to solely melee as RDM/NIN, Hollow Earring should also be an option for him.

OK. The question is this. Will you only play RDM on FFXI? Weigh it out. Ethereal seemed to have the most jobs that could benifit from it in my opinion. If your just going to only play RDM Ethereal wont be your correct choice. Almost every DD job will benifit from attack and evasion. Even RDM in some cases.

I couldn't make up my mind on this one either. Since I already have Brutal/Suppa for my melee jobs I ended up choosing Magnetic for my RDM to use when it hits 75.

I didn't see the point of me getting Ethereal since I probably won't melee much in big activities and I don't think I'm going to level PLD anytime soon.

The spell interruption on the earring itself will be negligible until you stack lots of other spell interruption.

It's like using your weaponskill set for a melee, then adding in Blitz Ring(Haste +1%) and saying how much faster you notice your attack speed. The difference only shines through when you find yourself at 50%+ spell interruption rate. And near 100% it's ridiculously powerful.

And with all this said, I still consider the Spell Interruption stat on the earring, the best stat.

it's highly dependent on your other jobs since any of those could benefit rdm. if your other job(s) an endgame tank etherial is nice, if your other job(s) something like whm magnetic's good, if your other job(s) is DD, nothing will really beat hollow ('cept DM earrings, but we know their limitations, lol).

personally I'd never get one specifically for rdm since other earrings will benefit you more in almost all situations, and the times you will benefit from one of these earring it'll be a very minimal benefit compared to what they can do for some other jobs.

Well no it's not meant to be an extremely noticeable bonus. RDM doesn't kill fast though when meleeing, so over the course of the fight you'll get a lot of return, and in some cases stoneskin isn't worth casting and Phalanx will be the main source of damage reduction. So over the course of the whole fight where you'll take a lot of dmg the MP return would be more notciable. Still, they're all a small bonus, nothing make or break.

Yeah no he never said anything about meleeing....

Either way I say magnectic. The gains for casting in it are rather noticable. It's amazing how much slower your mp will run out with just saving a little bit here and there

On the other hand ethereal... well if you are getting hit even semi-regularly your doing rdm/nin wrong

For rdm/nin brutal/suppa is best.. Ethereal doesn't work unless you take damage, and as rdm/nin a good solo rdm/nin takes no damage.. your better off getting magnetic for non rdm/nin soloing events. ethereal really wont help you at all for soloing.. with refresh/duelist chapeau/composure and for emergency convert, you never run out of mp regardless.

Since no one's said it (and wiki may be slightly confusing), Ethereal Earring's MP conversion thing rounds down, so you need to take 34 damage or more from a single hit to actually get any MP back with Ethereal. I originally got Eathereal for my NIN/DRK back in the day, but the MP return I was getting back wasn't worth it, so I junked it for a Hollow Earring.

If you're choosing strictly between the two earrings you mentioned, I would go with Magnetic. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Conserve MP+5 saved you more MP than you would gain by using Ethereal (and lets face it, you're not picking it for the atk/eva).

Like others, I would also advocate toward Hollow, but that depends on your other jobs (if any, I didn't bother to check). I chose Hollow because of my many melee jobs.

Practically speaking it's impossible to completely avoid taking damage, generally because you're soloing/tanking a monster with very strong AoE TP moves/spells. There's also solos where you're not /NIN to consider, though you may not take enough damage per hit in those situations for Ethereal to work.

That said, I'd recommend Hollow over both without knowing your other jobs. Suppa/Hollow > Suppa/Brutal for Joyeuse with uncapped accuracy, and the enspell damage + accuracy is wonderful for Ceremonial Dagger solos. The fact that it's a great earring for melee jobs is icing on the cake. The Conserve MP on Magnetic Earring doesn't really justify the use of an inventory slot imo - if you have a spell interruption down set that depends on that 8% on the earring then it's another matter.

If you have DRG and solo with it then Ethereal is the only way to go, otherwise the above should be sufficient.

Ethereal earring's mp restoral is really bad, you have to take waaaay too much dmg to get anything out of it.

You really need to use magnetic if you don't think it's worth the invent slot.

By itself it will save about 1.4% mp on average. Sure that doesn't sound like alot but it adds up fast. And the difference of not using it and using it on rdm when your trying to get mp as fast or faster then you lose it makes it rather noticable

And apparently according to wiki you only need to have it on during precast for it too count...

On minor stuff, sure. On harder stuff? You are gonna take damage!

If ***happens, it's nice having that bit of extra MP when you need it. Not gonna deny that it's a very minor bonus though.

I'd like to see testing on this, because it could make/break this discussion if hollow is out of the question (just because complementing the end of casting with another relevant earring, aside from interuption build, would boost it's usefulness over etherial pretty decently).

i use ethereal over brutal in campaign battles,even with mitigation setups crits can add up,I also use ethereal in combination with loq while kiting the harder yag generals if no one is around,so the conversion adds up fast.

I much rather have hollow since it's so seldom i even do that.When promy's uncap soloing climb will be even less bothersome than gearing a lv30 job for climbing to get slivers.