Bar-Status Testing

I came across some testing done by Lute way back in 2014 regarding Bar-Status spells while searching for some unrelated stuff.

A summary of the findings:
The test was basically to equip -water element resist gear to guarantee poison will land when reflected from colibri and then remove -water element resist until the colibris began to resist.

He concluded that Barpoison was a static +20 magic evasion against poison and that changing enhancing magic skill had no effect on its potency at enhancing skill 500 and below.

Some further testing with barparalyze and Apademak alluded to Barparalyze having no real discernible effect in reducing the amount of paralyze procs that occur when paralyzed.

Further down near the bottom of the comments section there is someone that mentions (what I can only interpret this google translation to be, if anyone that can read Japanese could confirm) that AOE Bar-Status spells give +30 magic evasion and also that Sroda Necklace seems to be bugged for players with Master levels.

Magic evasion never affects the potency of Paralyze as far as I know. It affects the chance for the debuff to apply, but after that potency is based on the caster and the effect.

I think the real takeaway here is that if this test is a valid, we can accurately quantify the effect of the Bar-Status spells. Lute's testing with Barparalyze here was to disprove superstitions about the Bar-Status spells.

I'll be trying it out, but I don't have as much free time these days so will take some time to accumulate some data.

When Lute did his test with bar-status we didn't know one thing that was discovered later iir (around 2021? Martel tested it?)
That is: for debuff-specific stats to take effect (even the "resist all status" which applies to most but not all debuffs) you need at least a +1 elemental resist alligned with the element of the specific debuff.

I'm not sure if this discovery was ever added to BG-wiki. Probably yes in some pages but not all the pages concerning status resist.

Hmmm? I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here but...

Resist all ailments gear(And traits like tenacity or resist silence, etc) have absolutely no interaction with elemental resistance and the 1/8 resist unlock thing. Resist traits/gear/all ailments don't need any elemental resistance to do anything. They are a completely separate check, independent of meva or elemental resistance.

Also, resist all ailments is not even close to actually affecting all negative status effects. EDIT: Ahh, I should read better you said 'most" not all. There's a lot of stuff it just doesn't apply to at all. A basic example would be '-down' debuffs like atk down or str down. Resist all/tenacity don't apply to debuffs like that.

There's some data collected on what works and doesn't here. But based on this sometimes the same debuff will be affected, or not depending on the source...

Wasn't there a test performed by you around 2021 where you showed that Resist status resist rate was tiered, calculated on a completely different part of the formula from Meva, and heavily affected by the amount of elemental resistance (alligned with the element of the specific debuff we're taking into consideration) to get considerable resist rates?

I could be dreaming but I seem to recall you found that out and it was somewhere in the PLD thread.


I can't find consistant stuff concerning this on BG-wiki but I'm pretty confident there was this finding over these boards around 2021 and I felt it was pretty groundbreaking.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/46016/first-and-final-line-of-defense-v20/107/#3570888

In short. No. What I found was that some resist tiers(Examples of resist tiers: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 resists), had a requirement for elemental resistance.

Univarsity has linked the test post above.

Key point, this test had nothing to do with resist traits, or status resist gear. This effect does extend to resisting status effects if the effect in question has enough resist states for it to matter. However, that again, has nothing to do with resist traits/gear/tenacity/resist all ailments, etc. As they are a completely different system.It's not 20%. It's +20 meva for the status effect in question. Which considering the base potency of barstatus spells(+20...) is much better than a % increase.

The BG Resist page has this information here.

Also, if anyone else wants do do their own testing keep in mind that master levels may/may not skew your results if the comments on Lute's blog are accurate. May want to test with a non-Mlvl job to better replicate this testing.

Is it just me or does +20 magic evasion feel kind of underwhelming? I may just not be understanding something here.

Old spell. In 2005 20meva was huge. Now not that much.

that question could be in reference to the VR ring reward too as it has +20 MEVA (gurebu's)

so it looks like bar status
1: Does not need enhancing skill ?
2: Give a Simple 20 meva for the given status ?

or is this still very much just considered speculation?

Honestly I always assumed that bar status and related songs gave a separate "resist" counter, similar to what you get from specific gear and traits.
But this claim of mine is based on... absolutely nothing. Just a biased, personal assumption.

If I recall it's been demonstrated somewhere that gear/traits are a separate check from the Meva one, right?


How would you test if it's simply meva or that separate check? If I recall when they happen they give a slightly different message in the chat packets?

Resist status traits and gear yield a "Resist!" prefix on the message when they proc. I can definitively say that Barstatus spells do Not fall under this type of resist effect.

The testing linked at the begining of this thread is rather hard to read google translated.. but If I'm grasping it correctly, they used negative elemental resistance to force colibri reflected poison to always land, and then moved the negative resistance value around until it started fully resisting with Barpoison up, indicating that the elemental resist value vs the attack had gone neutral, despite having a visible negative water resistance.

Using this they confirmed a value of 20. And then tested with varying levels of enhancing skill on the barstatus spell showing no change regardless of skill.

The most interesting take away here is that the test actually indicates that barstatus spells are not status specific meva+, but status specific elemental resistance. Meaning they can enable a full 1/8 resist vs the status effect. Depending on the resist states this could allow a full resist when you might not have otherwise been able to get one. Of course, you can just wear Carrier's etc, for all resistance. But this is an interesting distinction.

Then I assume the same likely applies to barstatus songs then.

Makes me wonder why they had to implement these things in such a different ways.
We have regular Meva checks.
This barstatus thing which is almost the same but with a distinctive difference that you just underlined.
And then we have the "Resist!" thing granted by traits and some gear.

I mean... why?
Then again there's so many things in the math of this game that could fall under the same question so... no space to be surprised, no space to wonder lol

Actually, no. The status resist bard songs will proc Resist! messages. <,<

Oh oh! This turns out to be an interesting twist!

Well since the campagisn are over and my work might not be too crazy after this weekend. and modnay probably half the company is off.

I might go out and do some testing myself.

just need to figure out a good way to test it

Well that would make some kind of sense i think bar status spells came out way before we got meva stats. so maybe back then it was easier to just code it as elemental resistance for a specific status rather than what later came to be raw Meva

Finally got around to testing this...a year and a half later (x.x)

First, player resistance testing done >>here<<, >>here<< and >>here<< has shown that different resistance tiers are achieved depending on whether a player has negative, neutral or positive elemental resistance. This testing, however, has only covered how elemental damage capable of resist states 0-3 interact with player resistances. In this post I wanted to explore further how 2-state negative status effects interact with player elemental resistances and how Bar-status spells play their role and expand upon previous testing.

I began by gathering data sets as an Mlvl 0 WAR/RDM in Bhaflau Thickets and cast Poison on the Colibri (Lvl 71-73) around (F-8) and (G-8), and recorded the results of the reflected Poison spells with 0, +1 and -1 water elemental resistance. I avoided testing on Watersday/Thundersday and used equipment with high magic evasion (Nyame) to ensure capped magic evasion. Note: while player cast Poison had its duration increased during the Mar 26, 2015 (JST) Version Update, monsters still use the old spell durations which will be reflected here.

0 Water Resistance
30 Sec. Duration: 29 (5.8%)
15 Sec. Duration: 34 (6.8%)
Full Resist: 437 (87.4%)

+1 Water Resistance
30 Sec. Duration: 26 (5.2%)
15 Sec. Duration: 32 (6.4%)
Full Resist: 442 (88.4%)

-1 Water Resistance
30 Sec. Duration: 19 (4.75%)
15 Sec. Duration: 381 (95.25%)
Full Resist: 0 (0%)

There are many conclusions we can infer from the data above:
-At 0 resistance, it is still possible to fully resist a negative status effect given enough magic evasion, unlike with elemental magic damage.
-There doesn't seem to be any real change between having 0 and +1 elemental resistance with capped magic evasion as far as granting an additional resistance tier as is done with elemental magic damage. Any positive resistance likely only adds magic evasion against relevant negative status effects.
-Negative resistance appears to induce a guaranteed 1/2 duration for 2-state negative status effects cast upon the player regardless of magic evasion.

Now, to replicate Lute's testing I cast Barpoison as WAR/RDM (Enhancing Magic skill: 160) and added -water elemental resistance via different pieces of gear while having Poison reflected back until I was no longer able to fully resist the spell. I took 10 samples at each increment tested which should be enough to find the value at which a guaranteed half duration is induced. I'll only post the relevant values where I saw obvious changes occur.

*Important Note* For some additional context before reading this data, in the comments section of Lute's post there are multiple reports of the values of various Bar-status spells changing over the course of several months as they tried to fix the bug with Sroda Necklace granting the incorrect amount of resistance to characters with master levels. Any values posted below that differ from Lute's results are likely a result of these fixes/adjustments since the time those reports were made.

-30 Water Resistance + Barpoison
30 Sec. Duration: 1
15 Sec. Duration: 1
Full Resist: 8

-31 Water Resistance + Barpoison
30 Sec. Duration: 1
15 Sec. Duration: 9
Full Resist: 0

Barpoison seems to grant +30 resistance/magic evasion to Poison which contradicts previous testing.



Next, I changed to Mlvl 35 RDM/WHM and rechecked Barpoison's effect when cast with 559 Enhancing Magic skill. This is just the amount of Enhancing Magic skill in my Bar-status spell set.

-30 Water Resistance + Barpoison RDM
30 Sec. Duration: 0
15 Sec. Duration: 0
Full Resist: 10

-31 Water Resistance + Barpoison RDM
30 Sec. Duration: 1
15 Sec. Duration: 9
Full Resist: 0

There was no change in the amount of resistance granted with much a higher Enhancing Magic skill nor was there any change regarding a job with master levels. Barpoison's new value seems to be set at +30 regardless of skill level. Next, I checked Barpoison's effect when combined with Sroda Necklace.

-50 Water Resistance + Barpoison + Sroda Necklace
30 Sec. Duration: 0
15 Sec. Duration: 0
Full Resist: 10

-51 Water Resistance + Barpoison + Sroda Necklace
30 Sec. Duration: 2
15 Sec. Duration: 8
Full Resist: 0

Sroda Necklace seems to be fixed now and grants its stated value of +20 for a total of +50 resistance. Now, how does a spell with an innate magic accuracy bonus interact with this resistance value? Next, I had Poison II (innate +30 magic accuracy bonus) reflected back and rechecked the resistance values.

-30 Water Resistance + Barpoison, Poison II
120 Sec. Duration: 1
60 Sec. Duration: 2
Full Resist: 7

-31 Water Resistance + Barpoison, Poison II
120 Sec. Duration: 1
60 Sec. Duration: 9
Full Resist: 0

Poison II's innate magic accuracy bonus had no effect on the values at which Barpoison stopped taking effect. With this data we can infer that a spell's native magic accuracy bonus/penalty is not a factor when determining elemental resistance tiers, only the player's elemental resistance value and any Bar-status spell applied.

Afterwards, I checked Barparalyze, Barblind and Barsleep. The values for these spells matched Barpoison's values with (+50) and without (+30) Sroda Necklace.




Next, I performed the same testing with Poison and Barpoisonra.

-20 Water Resistance + Barpoisonra
30 Sec. Duration: 0
15 Sec. Duration: 0
Full Resist: 10

-21 Water Resistance + Barpoisonra
30 Sec. Duration: 0
15 Sec. Duration: 10
Full Resist: 0

This value of +20 resistance surprised me as I would have thought the area of effect version would have been the same/stronger than the self-target version. I rechecked the values with Sroda Necklace equipped.

-40 Water Resistance + Barpoisonra + Sroda Necklace
30 Sec. Duration: 1
15 Sec. Duration: 0
Full Resist: 9

-41 Water Resistance + Barpoisonra + Sroda Necklace
30 Sec. Duration: 0
15 Sec. Duration: 10
Full Resist: 0

Sroda Necklace's bonus seems to be applying correctly for a total of +40 resistance. I did some more testing with Barparalyzra, Barblindra and Barsleepra and found the values for these spells matched those of Barpoisonra with (+40) and without (+20) Sroda Necklace. I'm not sure if these are supposed the be the expected resistances granted for the AoE versions of the Bar-status spells, but these are the current values as of this posting.

Amazing job, Argisto! Thank you for all of your hard work. I'm a little surprised that the self-target and AoE have different values. I wonderful if that's by design or if it's a bug.

Fantastic testing. And.. yeah, I'm very surprised to see a potency difference between ra and regular bar-status spells.
This is actually something I worried about. I'd heard reports that it worked differently and a spell's native macc bonus could counter your ele resist, in terms of possible resist tiers. So, finding out with certainty that this was not the case, was quite relieving.

Also, time for the price on Sroda neck to spike. Now that it's not messed up, it's bit more appealing.

I'm inclined to say it's by design, in the same way that single-target Gain- spells are a lot stronger than aoe Boost- spells.

Gain and Boost are identical, it's gear bonuses that make them different.

Single and party resist should be identical too, if they actually aren't it's likely the oldest bug in the game.

Hmm, you're right, I was misremembering. I still am pretty sure that there's a precedent, but I fail to remember what...

So... right on time! Awesome stuff. Keep up the good work


I have always felt like I faired better against status ailments and elemental damage when I cast my own bar spells as a RDM vs a random WHM I don't know. And definitely better than the rest of the party. I know part of that is because I didn't worry about if they would wear off in long content. So it's cool that there is something there for statuses. On the other hand that feeling is pure placebo if the WHM has any bar element sets that include basically any empy gear.

Ty for testing these, use your Sroda Necklaces!
Whm barspells are pretty good between it, MDB fron ele barspells etc

Thank you Argisto,

I used your testing method to test stun with ML48 BRD/DRK.
-Without resistance, just nyame gear on the recasted stuns landed on me 4 of 10 times.

-I put on -30 thunder (Neptune's Ring), recasted Stun landed on me 10/10 times. (all were only a second or two)

-I cast a carol2 with the -30 ring still on. It put me at +70 resist. I resisted 10/10 times.

I do not know how the duration is calculated but as far as landing, elemental resistance does apply.