Bishop dilemma

[LegendGospel]

So, I have MW 20 (can't afford 30) and enough Genesis to 2 hit KO all the time (can't afford 30 either, yet). Anyway, I always keep some skill points saved. Maxed Bahamut and good enough Angel Ray to solo Captain Latanica and finish off stray Skeles, I don't feel like I need more.

I got 1 Holy Shield, 1 Infinity, and 3 Mana Reflection (cause I wanted 30 secs to make it even worth casting).

So, my dilemma is... work first on Holy Shield, Infinity, or Mana Reflection?

For Holy Shield, I'm not even sure what status does it protect against, but I do Zakum a lot (don't HT yet), and also do Targar/Scar, DPQ and whatnot.

For Infinity... is it worth maxing it first? It's only usable every 10 min, and I don't care that much about pots, but it does also protect you against damage if you have Magic Guard on, which is sweet I guess...

For Mana Reflection, I've heard that it also actually reduces damage? Making magic attacks like Skeles lasers hit you less, and so on... then maybe it would be worth to get first.

Bishops of Maple, what is your advice? Personal experience? I feel like I have 3 paths ahead and don't know which one to take. :o
And no, not even touching Big Bang yet, lol. D:

[Daddy20]

Mana reflect is 100% garbage even at max lvl. Hell, even if it reflected 10 times as much dmg it would still be crap. And no, it doesn't reduce dmg taken. Don't touch this.
Infinity... I don't like it, pots barely cost anything to begin with. I suppose it has its uses at certain bosses where you can simply keep on healing after a 1/1. The 10 min cooldown pretty much kills it though.
Holy Shield is nice if you zak/ht frequently. It protects you from seal/darkness/weakness/etc. I always appreciate it when a bishop gives me holy shield :)

I would advise either saving sp for gen30/mw30, or maxing holy shield now.

[Locked]

Holy Shield > Infinity > Mana Reflect.
You can switch Infinity and Mana Reflect if you'd like.

[Kevo]

I would get Holy Shield -> Mana Reflection -> Infinity

Unless you're dirt poor you shouldn't get Infinity. Not only is 40 seconds worth a few thousand meso, but the cooldown is ridiculous and you'll forget to recast it anyway. Mana Reflection isn't too great but it's fun to have. It looks cool when it works and makes you look pro. It's awesome to reflect double damage back to Horntail.

Infinity is actually useful if you need to tank something like Horntail's tail, although you need to have like 4800 HP too.

[Eos]

Mana reflection is useful if you have a LOT of people using it, because then a 2k AoE attack by a boss gets reflected back as ~60K.
Of course the situations where you have that many people with MR approach zero on anything short of all mage runs.

It's really not worth wasting points on either MR or or Infinity, infinity least of all. Even if you hit 200 with 60 extra SP laying around it's more practical to save them for something you might be able to get later than to use the points on crap just get your SP down to 0.

[LegendGospel]

Thanks everyone~

I got 30 skill points saved xD so yes I have enough for when I eventually get Gene/MW 30.
I guess I'll start to work on Holy Shield then, I do like casting it a lot, even though it's level 1, from everyone's comments it sounds like the most useful skill of all.

[Asumi]

Infinity is the best of those 3, it helps while you train cause it saves pots (not everyone is rich and dont care about wasting 300 more pots) and also helps you to resist some high dmg from bosses.

Mana reflection its useless.

Holy shield is only good if you boss a lot.

I wish i could max Bing bang instead of mana reflection... =/

[Kevo]

Infinity is the best of those 3, it helps while you train cause it saves pots (not everyone is rich and dont care about wasting 300 more pots) and also helps you to resist some high dmg from bosses.

Mana reflection its useless.

Holy shield is only good if you boss a lot.

I wish i could max Bing bang instead of mana reflection... =/

Um, by the time you should/can even up Infinity, 300 pots is about 2 hours worth of pots at Skelegon not to mention 1hitting Bishops still profit just by looting meso. Infinity is a waste of a skill and is definitely the lowest priority skill. The only time you need to tank damage would be for Horntail's tail and level 1 Infinity should suffice because by the time you can up Infinity, your MP should be high enough. Zak's body damage is a joke for bishops.

I don't know how you train and whatever, but as soon as you 1hit Skele you should never incur any losses while training... unless you hold down a Magic Guard -> Heal -> Genesis macro and afk.

Lastly, it's possible to max all skills in 4th job except for a level 16 infinity for a level 200 Bishop. Level 16 is 26 seconds of free MP, compared to a 40 second period. 14 seconds is not a huge loss. Genesis' cast time is 3 seconds? 16,500 MP lost. That's like 1-2 pots only. I guess 300 pots would then be 1000 minutes (16 hours) of training, assuming you remember to use Infinity the moment it finishes cooling.

If you really can not spare a few pots every 10 mins (or spare 300 pots every 16 hours of training), go for Infinity. If not then don't even think about leveling it until the end and don't put points beyond 16.

[LegendGospel]

I really have not the slightest worry about wasting pots, specially having Mana Bulls. I can't 1hit KO Skeles yet, but I 100% 2hit KO with level 13 Genesis. So the amount of MP I waste at training is laughable, more so if I bring my HB mule. I won't be raising Genesis more until I get Genesis 30 book, or level up to 17x when I can probably 1hit KO with level 20... tl;dr I don't feel Infinity is essential at all.

I raised Holy Shield to level 10 and went into a Zakum run. Simply loved it. I'm planning to get books and raise it next, I still have around 20 unused skill points.

Lastly, a note about Mana Reflection... I heard from people that it does reduce damage from Skeles lasers, I tried it with my level 3 Mana Reflection... and indeed I think it reduces damage D: am I imagining things? Maybe it's just from certain kind of magic attacks?... anyway, it's not that much of a bad skill, at least I think it's better to max than Infinity, which is just autopot on steroids and temporal invincibility at Horntail. :P

[Kevo]

Mana Reflection doesn't reduce the damage. But, it's so cool to have Mana Reflection work right :D?

You're on the right path when it comes to skills. I actually did Holy Shield before Bahamut.

[thinbear]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ODRPyOKS0
this vid make up my mind (at least for me)

[LegendGospel]

You mean for NOT getting MR, right? @.@ I mean, it's a fun skill and yadda yadda... but that Rog could have died in 1 Angel Ray.

And yeah I just double checked and it doesn't reduce damage XD so meh, it's another Big Bang for me.

[Beg]

Funny how the fastest levelling class in the game has the most useless skillset. I don't think any other class has this many relatively worthless skills in 4th job.

@Topic: Save up for MW30/Gen30, in the meantime max Holy Shield. Not sure why you're so reluctant to grab Big Bang though, it's a fairly capable attacking skill for soloing even if it still sucks in most scenarios; it's by far more useful than Mana Reflection/Infinity but probably shouldn't be prioritised over a skill that bolsters your support abilities even marginally like Holy Shield. After that, skillwise your function as a bishop is pretty much complete outside of 100% 1hkoing Skeles so you can basically do whatever you want.

After reading this thread, if I ever feel like levelling my Archmage again I will probably ignore Infinity completely and only get Mana Reflection for the shiny factor. Mages are good like that: full of shiny and not much else lol

[MorbidMagus]

As already said, Infinity is an utter crap skill, you can make more profit by looting the mesos skele drop then using maxed Infinity. Not to mention 40 seconds per 10 minutes is an UTTER WASTE of valuable 4th job SP, and can be used else much better else where.

Mana reflection is also a waste, as Eos pointed out, it has low potential for damage output even when you would be on an all Magician run(which isn't exactly happening every week),
and as you already figured out for yourself, doesn't reduce damage.

Seriously, before you even consider putting SP on these two skills, you should max Big-bang in-case your faced with smaller mobs or Holy Resistant/Immune monsters.

Anyways, Holy Shield is for sure the best option here, even more so if you are a frequent bosser or approaching the level to start doing so.

Although I need to know something, when you listed your maxed/current skills you didn't list Resurrect, did you get/max the skill? If not you definitely should be doing so, afterwards I would save up for Genesis 30, and then go for Holy Shield, Genesis 30 is much more obtainable then Maple Warrior 30, and will help you one hit Skeles since you have MW20 around the regular level for Bishops.

[DeanNim]

Well, i find holy shield utter bullshit waste of human resource. I added infinity to 20 already and it saves quite an amount of pot

[LegendGospel]

Here's my lolskillbuild @ 158:

20 MW (after 3 tries...)
0 Big Bang (haven't bothered, will get 1 when I get bored and want something new)
3 Mana Reflection (for lulz, I could have kept it at 1, but 1 is just 10 seconds... oh well, it helps a little soloing Latanica)
16 Angel Ray (getting it to 20/30 later, don't really feel the need for more power, I already do 20k's, which is what I wanted just for looks)
1 Resurrection (95% of the time I play with my girlfriend, a Bucc, so it's never been a problem thanks to Time Leap)
30 Bahamut (FTW)
13 Genesis (2hit KO Skeles since I can remember, for only 3300 MP)
10 Holy Shield (I was just testing it for Zakum, pretty neat! working on this now)
1 Infinity (it's okay, feels good not wasting pots when you wanna spam for the heck of it)

23 unused Skill Points (out of 27 I must save for max Gene/MW).

I've been REALLY casual with my skill point distribution because I'm training on 2x card, 2x rep, Ring Mule, and HS... so I get levels as fast as Japan produces weird shit. I've found myself with 35~ unused Skill Points at time just because I couldn't think on anything good to get. Indeed, the ONLY thing that Bishops really need is MW and Genesis... which are the two hardest skills to get. Oh, and Bahamut, which is also a pain in the ass to get.