Hello, this is a question intended for experienced Shadowers / Chief Bandits who know how to use Meso Explosion. I heard of many tricks and ways of using it, and ways of dropping bags, amounts, how to drop bags faster and so on. But after looking through the forums for Shadower guides, I couldnt find any that explain in details how to drop bags faster, and how to use Meso Explosion better. I mean, there are some good Shadower guides, but none of them really explain well enough to me how to use it. I just dont understand. Since I am going to start a Shadower soon, and I really like this class, its important for me to know these things because this skill helps level up very fast and its very strong. So, can you please explain these things to me, - how to drop bags faster? - what amount to drop per bag? - how to know when to stop dropping and start exploding? - how to know how many bags to drop, and how many bags ive dropped so far? Thank you!
- how to drop bags faster? - what amount to drop per bag? For bossing, the best amount is within 5-10k, more then that is waste of mesos. For mobbing, you can lower the mesos and adjust drop quantity by depending mobs HP. Example: When I was 3rd job, I dropped 10 sack of 800 mesos and able to OHKO Elderwraith. Which is only 8k amount. - how to know when to stop dropping and start exploding? Both mesos and your buff expired after 3 minutes, once you drop for around 2 minutes, start bombing and rebuff so everything stay remain. - how to know how many bags to drop, and how many bags ive dropped so far? You can only count in your mind, or just check the amount of mesos before and after dropped.
The damage for meso explosion scales logarithmically which means you will start to get diminishing returns for higher amounts of mesoes that you drop. iirc the best number you should drop for bossing was 7k per bag for the most efficient damage to meso ratio
- how to know when to stop dropping and start exploding? use meso guard right before dropping, mg last 3 minutes, when mg grey out till the last section that is when your meso are gonna disappear and you should start bombing.
Good to know, thank you all. Its good to use meso explosion, even if you have high attack range it seems like meso explosion is still useful even then, but I'd imagine it might become less useful after about level 150 as a Shadower. Its good to use at bosses, especially if you solo them and need to take it down faster, right? Anyone know if meso explosion is still useful even when you start to have high attack range, with godly equips above level 150 or so? Because, from what I understand the skill's damage doesnt get affected by your attack range. However, it seems like the damage it does it still higher than what damage you'd do with assasinate/Bstep, the 4th job attack skills. But I'm not sure how big the difference is and if the time you spend on dropping bags is worth it?
This is assuming you're dropping 4-6k bags of mesos and you are only hitting 1 target. It'll still out damage assassinate + bstep if you are hitting 2+ targets
Actually, there are some that are harder to kill with normal skills. You know for example, Crimson guardians near the cwkpq entrance? If you explode them its easier, you dont get affected by statuses and such and dont have to mess with it. I always kinda thought Chief bandits are so OP with this skill, but even as Shadower it remains useful. Also because this server has a high Meso rate, so its not as expensive to use this skill as it was back in the day. I remember back in the day, only rich players used this skill to train.
yes, ME is always useful and provide more dps. Even at 8k range which your combo will do about the same dps as ME, you can still drop meso while using skill combos, then bomb the meso every 2min 50secs for max dps. if you do this I don't think any other class can do any better dps even nl / corsair in a solo situation. the challenges of being shadower is only on 1) how fast you can drop meso 2) how to drop your meso on the right spot 3) your meso
Actually, dropping the bags faster is the most important thing. I understand the trick of dragging the meso drop window to the meso icon in the inventory, and I also understand the 00000's trick for the amount entered. These are easy to do. But, something else is, Ive heard of a legal program used to help drop bags faster, or some other way I dont know so well. Anyone know anything about that? Of course, I need to know even if that program exists, if its okay to use it or it could be considered hacking. I need to know that first, before I use that assuming that even exists. I saw in the past some Shadowers dropping much faster than me, even if I use the known tricks mentioned earlier. I dont know how they do that.
I remember reading it somewhere about using an auto clicker to drop meso is against the rule. Not sure how the game client detects it but I think it doesn't worth to risk it if you want to play the game peacefully. I once had my shadower as main and I could drop 3~4 bags of meso in 1 second depending on how tired I am into spam clicking. That is just a rough estimation since I did not actually time and count it, but I think it is impossible to maintain high speed dropping since your finger will get tired. p/s: I once solo krexel with ME that used about 2hours 45 minutes and my hand + finger sore after that
I agree, I wouldnt take the risk unless I know for sure this method is safe to use. But I admit Ive seen Shadowers drop much faster than I know how to, and I still dont know if it was because they click faster or because they use some program I dont know of yet, which is legal. Another question is even though ME is very strong, at what point in the game would you say, the normal attack skills like Assassinate and Boomerang step are stronger than ME? Obviously this depends on attack range, so the question is what attack range would be stronger than using ME, and ME doesnt seem to care about your attack range. Unless I missed something, and ME is affected in some way by attack range. But I dont think so. Also, another question I thought of... how come ME never misses? I remember using it in the past, on very high level mobs and never had any Misses in my damage lines. Does that mean ME has 100% accuracy all the time?
Like what ezgz replied above, assassinate + bs combo is better than ME when you reach 8k+ range. Dropping 5k bags can deal about 50k per line and x5 lines = 250k damage in 0.75 seconds (ME cast time + delay). A 3 hit assassinate + 2 hit bs will probably take about 1.5 seconds. So when your assassinate + bs deals about 500k damage then it is equal to your 1 ME. But ME takes time to drop meso so it is no longer efficient to use it as main dps after 8k range. But you can always drop meso while doing combos and use ME as an extra dps. Check the video above in Rinn reply above to see how to use skill while dropping meso. And to answer your question: No ME do not depend on your attack range nor equips nor stats. ME damage is dealt based on ME level and amount of meso used to explode. Not sure if ME will miss but same here I never see my ME miss any line.
I understand the attack range thing, after 8k+ range its not as strong as the normal attack skills. But there are situations where its better to use it, even then. For example, the Crimson Guardians near CWKPQ. They have a lot of hp and they cast various statuses like seal, darkness, etc. By Using ME there, you can 1hko them without having to deal with that. However, there's a problem I noticed sometimes. When you drop the bags, you gotta bring the targets close to the bags to make it hit them. If you explode too far away from them, it wont deal damage to them. And if they're not provoked, like, you didnt attack them before. Then, they wont follow you towards the bags, but will randomly move around the map. And if you provoke them, they already start using statuses by then. So, its not always so simple. I'd say, ME is most useful from level 80 to about 130. These levels go fast if you use it frequently. At these levels your attack range is quite low unless you're very funded, and you can train at high level maps very early if you use it. You just gotta make sure Meso Guard is always on, because Chief bandit's hp is quite low. Thank you for helping me learn a thing or two about this. I also think you dont always have to drop bags. You can sometimes explode the bags dropped by targets, if you take off pet meso loot. This can sometimes allow you to explode without having to spend time to drop bags. But there's also an annoying part about bags... whe nyou drop them, you can get hit and bumped away from the spot you started dropping bags at. You also gotta watch your HP while dropping, so you dont die. So yes, dropping bags isnt as simple as I thought before. Also, I didnt even care much about this, but maybe using ME could be too expensive sometimes? Although I guess its easy ot make mesos these days, but still.
