Stun Locking!!!

If you have it, i would suggest the Homam Head for your Macc test, since blu skill is pretty confirmed iirc, and it have mAcc, Acc, and haste on it,

Stun owned the frogs tonight - we entered on Lightday. I actually had a few instances when my stun lasted well after the recast and I HB'd again before the first stun wore off.

I do have Homam head, and you're right, it would be a good one for haste acc and macc. I usually don't carry it with me because I use the xarc head for most spells and W or denali turban for resting MP or TP.

A little late to the party, but yes, I'm blu for both salvage and nyzul (and assaults a long, long time ago) and never have any problems landing head butt on frogs. Unfortunately charmga IS the hardest one to stun on time, but it's not impossible.

Can't stun chariots, mini or main (in nyzul or salvage). I *think* head butt will proc occasionally, but definitely not reliably. SOME gears can be stunned fine, but all their tp moves are damn fast :(

I use my standard tp build for all of that, but I think if you really want to test out different builds, Einherjar bosses are the way to go. They're something that I know for a fact will only be occasionally susceptible to stun. Again though, unless I know Head Butt is 100% reliable (taking accuracy into account of course) I'd rather just use a different form of stun. ie. BLM

I've never had a problem stunning chariots in nyzul or mini chariots in salvage. Though the mega bosses i've never stunned.

Hmm, maybe it's just that they tp stupidly fast, it's been a while since I've even bothered to try, but I was pretty sure that at least some of the salvage ones were immune or highly resistant? What's your head butt build? Just acc?

Yeah I stun the non NM named ones in nyzle pretty easy. Well I'd say a little harder than normal mobs but they usually stun. Of course stunning the moves takes fairly good timing and with how fast they can get tp means you more or less have to have your trigger finger on whatever stun is up and actually make sure it is always up.

This is my current head butt build.


I still have some gear I need to get my hands on, such as swift/ chuchu / kogglemander, but I find this works well.

I also have 5/5 blu mAcc and 8/8 blu skill. I'll swap in my AF+1 body if this setup gets resists semi often.

Late to the thread.

INT's affect on Head Butt stun was tested by using BLM/BLU 118 INT, THF/BLU 65 INT, and PLD/BLU 47 INT (PLD had 4 more blue magic skill as well. The test was very small, only showing the results of 100 landed headbutts each on crabs then spiders. The results were so obvious though, that the small sample size should mean nothing.

Link:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?fjob=16&mid=1255451428197923912&num=13&page=1


If your goal with Headbutt stunning is to stun lock higher level nms, then going for a heavy MACC/INT/Blue Magic Skill build is the right idea. The thing is you need not capped, but close to capped ACC, and a good amount of haste for recast, so a build should depend heavily on your support.

With Bream sushi, ACC trait, Sword Merits, and the built in accuracy bonus to physical blue magic (~30 acc), and just +30 ACC in gear, you should be able to hit things like sky gods with head butt ~90% of the time and with enough MCC/INT/Blue skill can land the stun a lot more often than usual. You can get a nearly capped stun rate on most higher level mobs by sticking them with a lightning threnody, hitting them with proper enspell 2, and/or proper elemental ninjutsu (tested on gods and Lord Ruthven Tier 3 VNM).

Though all of this would be excessive for a piddle tier 1-2 VNM.

Yeah finally got to try it out. Just open with headbutt then temporal and got straight to blitz and watch it stay stunned a good long time then go back to head butt. That would eat up a good portion of the 2hr. Enough for a competent tank to handle easy.

@Brain: Thank you, finally a believable test. While 100 sample size certainly isn't conclusive, the difference from blm > thf > pld is very high, and definitely lends credence to the INT claim. I'm still not sold on the macc or thunder theory though, it does seem that the rdm had a higher advantage than just the INT difference, but it's very inconclusive from those tests whether it was macc or thunder staff or even something else.

@Zeldageek: Ulthalam's... WHY!?

Hmmm well seems to have some effect might have to do some testing of mine own. Though to make it more align with what I am actually trying to do try it on blu main only. Who knows it could be more complicated like int and dex or mnd or whatever. And might as well try the others. Even in normal tp gear blitz last long. If I can get meaningful increase on that... I should be able to vary my int that much with just gear

One thing I didn't expect was how fast I'd lose mp using other stuns. It was enough where even a few minutes without refresh would murder my mp on taru. Which is why I pretty much went to just lots of headbutts then when they 2hrd or were casing use something else too

You can easily test the element of the stun using elementals at sky. For every elemental magic/debuff there are 2 elementals that will resist it. The element of the debuff, and the element strong to the element of said debuff.

Head butt's stun will not land on Earth or Thunder Elementals. This proves it is lightning based. If it were say, earth based, the stun would not proc on a wind elemental, but if you test it, it's quite obvious it will proc on them easily, proving it's not earth based.

Also, the fact that reducing thunder resistance with Threnody, Enwater II, and Suiton can let you stun lock gods, points towards it being thunder based.

Given the drastic difference throughout both INT tests, I'm willing to take their results at face value assuming proper procedure was followed (seems like it was). Thanks for posting the data.

As noted, the RDM/BLU had significantly more MACC than the BLM/BLU. Assuming dINT is in play, it would have been above the threshold value and thus 2 INT would contribute 1 MACC. That puts an 18 INT difference at 9 MACC, for a total of 17 MACC set against an HQ staff and 13 miscellaneous MACC gear (total 28). 11 more MACC would correspond to a 5.5% increase in land rate, which agrees with their data (98% vs 93%).

Excellent information, thank you again for posting it.

I know this is irrelevant to the situation but, would equipping a thunder staff and using a magical stun spell give it any longer lasting stuns or lower resistance? I don't know, just a thought that came across my mind is all.

What is this? I don't even...

Me either.. He was drunk. XD

I blame you!

I was innocent! I was just encouraging his behavior is all. =)

My point exactly. No put that leash back on him

@ OP

My own experience is, that acc is very important, so my set is nearly the same as blazza's one. Focus on acc/sword skill/dex etc. and eat sushi if possible + Haste gear.

Just try to fight a mob with very high evasion and you will already notice before casting, that you will have problems with your head butts and chat logs says "...had no effect".

I prefer a good blu over a blm or drk, because a good blu will not only spam his stuns without thinking, he should focus on tp moves which are possible to stun (even TP moves which are instant) and of course blu has more stun possibilities to pull off.

My Stun Spells Set is always Head Butt, Frypan and Temp. Shift. The most time I am semi-spamming head butts and focusing on tank, just to keep the mob stunned, no matter if it lasts 1 or 3 seconds, because every second could help, while tank is casting shadows. If the mob makes a TP move, I will use Temp. shift because for me its the most reliable spell since its magic and not physical.

Frypan will replace T.Shift as long as recast is ready.
I have the experience that Frypan is more reliable than Head Butt, but can also have it fails. I think Tail Slap has the same accuracy as Frypan.

If Frypan and T. Shift are not ready, then you need to rely on Head Butt :)

Sometimes I also go as /drk for two more stun
-> 1) Stun Spell itself 2) Weapon Bash

And there is also Flat Blade... :)

Of course, all said above, only if the mob is not immune to stun.

My BLU Playstyle is anyway mainly on Physical DD while Healing+Support. Dont know how INT effects stun duration.

Leave nashira / homam for head butt, AF body, AFv2 head or homam head (for better recast and magic.acc+4), and for leg AFv2 legs, if you can have Mirage Mantle, very helpfull.
Swift Belt, or another haste belt., locquacious earring.

By getting in order: M.acc > Haste > Acc.

You dont need a long duration of head butt, since your next land will have no effect if stun still up. i can go near 5s~ recast with refueling. (if M.acc is enough, maybe homam legs is better for haste/fast cast).

As blue mage, full merit sword/blue skill, and 3/5 M.acc (Acc job trait), i can say the duration look to last longer on normal mob than higher. i can stun lock easily in solo, and get recast Utsu.Ni UP without have to cast Ichi, Actinic Bust is a must too ~

well, I've been playing on blu for quite some time and have read/tested many theories for headbutt stun rate, the only thing that I can clearly say effects it is skill level. other than that, my tests show little to no difference with int or macc gear (can't really remember how large the sample sizes were since it's be over a year since doing so and all it is is marks on over several sheets of paper that I'd have to dig up, lol, but each test size is adequate enough to be able to note differences for specific gearings, tests were noted in city dynamis runs). my tests were in no way 100% conclusive, but did show the largest gains (possibly only gains, considering the margin of error for the sample size) for +skill.

as for duration, it's hard for me to say what determines it since I've never specificaly tested it, never felt a real need to since I've been able to recast it before it's worn off in most cases.

I'd like to note that any data I have is for fully merited blu (my ffxiah page should have up-to-date merits if you need to know what I use) with more than decent gear.

For preping for a lvl 40 diablos fight i read that drk could sub blu. And just to use acc food so that head butt would land as a sub.

But i'm not a blu main.

Might be very unreliable though due to the skill level of subbed blue magic (it will land and cause damage, just the "Stun" has a low probability of happening).

Maybe at lower levels the probability is higher (difference of skill level won't be that wide I guess at 40). Which could be an ideal sub for DRKs when Stun is down.

blu makes a pretty fun sub on drk, mostly for SE spell spam, lol.

I think everyone is underestimating the power of blitzstrahl.

Sure it takes like 4 sec to cast but if you cast immediately after another stun it should land very shortly after the other one wears off.

About as fast as if you had said waited to see the stun wears off message and then casted yours. And well it's duration is long which means you don't lose all that time between stuns and such.

It's making a huge difference. Oh and the range it has the farthest range which is helping alot

Say what you want about the m.acc or INT debate, but this order is backwards. You want acc > haste > whatever else you think may improve it. If you can't land it reliably, you can't rely on it.

Haste and whatever else I guess is a matter of personal opinion, but acc should be your #1 priority for head butt, end of story.

Ok this is getting to be all weird...

Both Acc AND Mag Acc affect the Head Butt stun, but in DIFFERENT ways. Some people still seem to be not getting it;

Magic Accuracy helps extend the DURATION of the Stun that Head Butt would cause when it lands. Obviously this was stated before, but Head Butt is a PHYSICAL spell...but it's *Additional Effect: Stun* is affected by Magic Accuracy. If you want longer stun durations, then Magic Accuracy is nice for that.

However, I wouldn't necessarily just pile on the Mag Acc gear. You obviously need some Accuracy as well, as from what people have stated before, Accuracy is what will in the end determine if Head Butt will actually land on the mob or not. So obviously, if you were wanting to use Head Butt for teh Stuns, All 3 (Mag. Acc, Haste, Accuracy) are equally important. A good Haste build + Mag. Acc can lead to really quick Head Butt casting/recasting while having it last as long as it can, and Accuracy actually helps it either hit or miss. Always use Acc Food if you are playing the role of the usual "Head Butt spamming BLU", but do NOT disregard the Haste (Duh) or Magic Accuracy (Yes, i've even tested this myself, this is also a known fact to me, my whole ls, and most BLU's I know).

...And lol@the peeps who were *trying* to put Sindri on blast saying he was stupid and dumb. Even though i don't Fuuuulllllyyyy agree with his Mag Acc build (Since he somewhat disregards the Acc as well, which i'm sure he could use Food as rebuttle to this), He knew what he was talking about. Shame on ya'll for doubting him otherwise. Thanks to Brain for his proof on the testing.

As far as INT goes btw, I guess according to Wiki it effects the Stun duration of Head Butt as well...But I personally didn't bother with stacking INT for Head Butt testing, since i would assume Magic Accuracy > INT as far as duration goes.

With this logic, Blazza has it pretty much right.