Elemental Staves & Wands Known Issue

Have you ever actually played a 4th job mage? Before or after BB?

'cause if you did, you'd know those "million other moves" we've got are all completely useless. Ice Demon is slow as hell and since dps is most important in EVERY SITUATION EVER in maplestory, one is better off sticking with CL. Ifrit/Elquines are both completely useless. I guess against bosses they're sort of okay but any other time they just get in the way, occasionally keeping monsters around long after they're dead because of weird delays. Big Bang is pineappleing bullpomegranate. There is no other way to put that. GET HIT WHILE RELEASING BB? CANCELED! JUMP WHILE CASTING BB? CANCELED! SOMEONE WALKS THROUGH THE ROOM AND LOOKS AT YOU FUNNY? CANCELED! THE MOON AND SUN ARE PERFECTLY ALLIGNED? Well, that's enough to make it work. But almost only that. And Blizzard is not a viable training skill. This is just my opinion, though. If I launch it I can only kill half the mobs I've pissed off before they unfreeze and start pounding on me. What good is that? It's not a 1hko unless you've got it maxed and you probably won't have it maxed until VERY LATE given how useless it is.

So yeah, we don't have a BAJILLION OTHER MOVES. We have one good attacking skill in 4th job and a bunch of really useless ones. And that one skill is severely underpowered.

And no, it's not that I'm just inflexible and only want to stick with one attack. I'm playing a BaM right now and am constantly comboing between QuinBlow, Chains and Dark. I have no problem with using multiple skills when ANY OF THEM ARE GOOD AT ALL.

The only time Big Bang gets cancelled is if you get bumped right before you release it. There's no other reason for it to happen. Why are you trying to use it in midair?

Meteor is super-effective against the mobs in R5 so I can 1hko mobs at R5 with 20 Meteor; I find it pretty useful but of course you won't if you can't 1hko with Blizzard. I do 200k+ on neutral regardless and when I'm hunting lower level monsters it's still great for immediately clearing out a spawn.

I do find that 90% of my damage comes from Paralyze + Teleport, though. I wish Fire Demon wasn't so fucking useless. It was my main training attack (when not spamming Meteor) pre-BB and I had it maxed, but now I reset it to 1. Kind of miffed about that, since F/P books are impossible to find and the only 4th job skill I have maxed at level 156 is Infinity.