The way elemental resistance in FFXI calculated is beyond crap. They really do next to nothing. In a situation where you are worried about a particular elemental damage you will almost always do better by wearing something that will improve your stats in some other way. If you're a DD you will do better wearing rings that will help you bring down the mob faster (Acc, STR, etc.). Mages would also benefit more from wearing rings that generally help them in other ways.


There are only a handful of instances where elemental resistance can be useful. Jailer of Faith uses insanely strong Earth attacks and hammers you with petrification and Stonega V. Even so, it's nailing everyone and once our tank tried a resistance build and half way through the fight said, "F**k it, this isn't working."

One of the better situations it can be used in is for a PLD tanking Jailer of Love. The general strategy is a particular placement that allows the PLD to not take any physical damage and just sit back and eat huge nukes of varying elements. However, a PLD would have to have a full set of resistance gears of every element to really do this and inventory space procludes that. I think our PLD generally would use whatever stacked resistances he could get from gear he already had on him for that.

The other big one is for Bahamut. PLDs will often use a very high Fire Resistance build as well as getting buffed by WHMs (with AFv2 legs) and Bard's with Soul Voice and Crumhorn +1 to attempt to survive Tetra (?) Flare (though you could pull it off without all of that most likely if you play it smart). A good build and fully buffed can get you around 500ish resistance. However considering a WHM's Barfira alone can give you 120-130 (depending on merits) and a BRD with soulvoice can do the same, +10 on a pathetic little ring is gonna do jack crap for you.



The short answer... why do people buy that crap? Because they are stupid. The rings are painfully easy to farm up from NMs that have virtually zero competition and spawn very regularly. It's ridiculous to pay more than 2-5k (dunno exactly where the economy is anymore) on them.

I personally almost never saw them move on the AH on my server when I played, otherwise I'd suggest sell them and take advantage of other people's idiocy.