Completely New To Bluemage Any Advice?

Dude I'm never sarcastic

That is the least thing I'm known for

My suggestion for learning spells, and I don't know why no one mentions this, is to take an Easy Prey mob down to 20% health, while getting hit. This way the mob will always use a TP move when he reaches 100TP.

If he doesn't use what you want, kill it and go to the next, take it down to 20% health, see what tp move it uses, kill it and so on.

Way faster than turning your body and wait for it to use TP move. At 90 you'll have too much evasion skill for a mob to continuously hit ya (there are exceptions) and relying on dia to feed the mob tp will take you a lot more. You'd prob kill 3 mobs in the same ammount of time it takes by Dia spamming it for 1 TP move.

Just putting it out there.

I always preferred gathering hordes of the mob in question (if it's weak enough) and having them beat on you while reducing them all to low HP in sequence :D

When one gets too low, don't kill it and go and find a new mob to add to your train!

The reason the site says you can learn Battery Charge at 73 without the +skill from gear is because 73 is the earliest you can reach 267 magic skill without gear assistance; however, at 73 you hit 266 skill first...but you still can't learn the spell until 267. I know it seems confusing. To be honest I don't like it when they say you can learn a spell based on your character's level. It operates under the assumption that you have capped blue skill or else it is very high.

The best way to figure if you can learn a spell, is first find out what the blue magic skill is for that particular spell. I use the combat skills page on wiki to check that. Since BLU is A+ in that category, Battery Charge is 296 blue magic skill being a level 79 spell. You need to get your skill to 29 or less below that to learn the spell, hence the 267 number. So however you do it, merits, gear, skill up...get to 267. :)

Diamondhide is a level 67 spell (236 blue skill) so you would need to be 207+ in your skill to learn it. Without gear, you can get to that at level 61.

I got the spell after I hit 267 thanks for explaining it.

I love Blu always have. I got so busy with other jobs, and Ninja was always my main. With the introduction of Abby. Nin really came forefront consuming my time and energy. Then Mnk then War. My poor Blu just fell off my radar for a while.
I finally capped my Blu off in an Abby party like alot of people do now days. Of course missing alot of spells and low magic skill, being that mobs go down so fast its hard to cap skill in Abby parties.
My advice is just have fun with the job because it really is a blast to play.
If you just want to have a good time playing Blu.
1. Cap your magic and sword skill. Just grind it out on Abby mobs outside of parties. Shouldn't take but a couple days. And it's incredibly helpful in learning blu spells. Eww Pink & Teal gear, yeah I hate it to, but should suffice until you can get some decent gear together. Sandspin is a great skill up spell as many have mentioned.
2. Work on learning the spells you want. Fill in the others as you play the job and realize what you are missing and needing. Having the full gambit of Blu spells is always reccomended. Just takes time to fill those gaps. Every good Blu has alot of pride because they know how much damn work it takes to build an effective Blue Mage.

Gear swaps and gear sets, like alot of people have mentioned are very helpful if not a must in maximizing, heals, dammage, effectiveness, etc.. of spells.
Do you have to have gear swaps. Hell no. If you choose to be a "I have the job leveled and some spells, So imma play it" type Blue Mage.
You wanna test your limits against challenging mobs, NM's etc. Have maximum effectiveness in parties with dammage and support. Impress your friends and family. Yes you do need gear swaps.
My view is Blu is a really fun job to play. Not something that you can come right out of the gates and have a ton of fun without putting some real time consuming work in building. Start with Magic and Sword skill. Learn your spells and latent WS's. Then start building some sets.
There is a ton of good threads on gear for specific spells out there do some research when you get to that point. Happy Hunting

I stopped reading there.

Totally right Kaht. I clarified. Shame on me.

I was going to start a new thread but this one seems to be a the perfect place for my questions. So I Recently leveled blu and gotten it to an appropriate skill lvl with spells, My next step was to make gear sets so Far I've gotten a tp set, a vorpal blade set, a savage blade set, a few different physical magic sets, a CW set, and a cure set. None of them are super omgwtfbbq sets but are a good base. The thing is I was wondering what set would be the best to work on next Eva, resting, -pdt, -mdt, or maybe something completely different?

Also I've been playing with a lot of subs I don't really see a point in /nin other than some situations since we can make dw3 and we have occu so I've been going /rdm but I've been thinking about /sch has anyone tried this recently? I know it used to be good for campaign. Obviously /rdm would be better for Cleaving or general nuking but for soloing would /sch win?

Lastly What spells do you find your self setting most of the time?

Sorry about all the questions I just really want to do this right and have read most of the topics in the forum but they left me with a few questions.

-pdt and -mdt are essential for all jobs, and should be your priority.

I havn't used an evasion set on blu before but I believe it's for soloing mostly.

Ok cool I've got both for my other jobs and some pieces work with blu so that won't be too bad ty.

A few examples are:

Augmented dark rings from Konschtat
Twilight Torque / Wiglen Gorget
Cheviot (or umbra) cape / Resentment cape (perk of being bastokan)
Coral legs/body +1 / Darksteel legs +1
Melaco mittens
Merman's earrings / Some pdt earring from an abyssea quest
Lieutenants sash (gained with Imperial standing)

There's probably some I've missed out, but that's the most of it for now, I'd post some sets but I don't have any built at the moment.

Yea that shouldn't be a problem I've got most of that might even have a full mdt set that blu can use if I didn't npc my citadel buster set when pld became meh need to check my mule.

What about sub jobs and your normal spell set?

General subs for blu too my understanding are, rdm, dnc and nin
/Rdm and /dnc are probably the better subs in most situations now.

So /sch other than main healing is meh?

/war is nice as well.

When would be a good situation to /war? Also this may seem stupid. I assume it doesn't but I figure better to be safe than sorry can double attack proc on our physical spells.

Any time you're DDing and shadows are either unnecessary or useless.

DA does not proc on spells.

It's also useful for lowman settings, a pretty good oh-***moment set to macro in that can save a lot of trouble when ***happened.




And /WAR when you just need pure dmg output.

I also /WHM a lot if pt needs haste/-na etc.

If I were to re-design BLU, I would make DA/TA proc on spells and instead of having a separate Blue Magic Attack stat, I'd make it use the attack AND accuracy of your main weapon :|

Whenever you're melee DDing and not tanking or nuking, /WAR is superior.

/SCH is ok for healing, but I prefer /WHM if I'm main healing for haste.

Oh cool thought so ty Night I'll start using /war for dding.

Another thing I love occu most of the time I can get away with just it but some times fast/accurate mobs or after an aoe move I'm left shadow less so I've been thinking about setting Zeph mantle. Would this be a bad idea or is it still a use full spell?

That may actually make the job overpowered XD, so if you have chaos roll+2 BRD for zerging, you'd do crazy spell dmg and spam it over and over again.

Takes too long to cast, either get a better healer or just /NIN.

Gotcha ty.

Lastly I would like to improve my cure set i've read that blus can break 900 plen embrace I'm not there yet but hope to be one day. :)

This is my current set.:

Any quick things I could add to it that I've missed?

Serpentes gloves/feet are a good place to start. Cure potency and 1/2 refresh and 1 regen if you idle in em.

Oh can't believe I forgot about them used to want the set so bad when they first came out for my whm. I've soloed the la-theine nm before but not the corse. Is it possible?

BLU can solo the Corse no problem. Especially at 99. Just /nin, keep Filamented Hold on it, use Actinic Burst liberally, and wait for it to start casting, then when it does cast some serious physical DD spells. I remember Goblin Rush doing exceptionally well. I'm guessing it's weakest to blunt-type damage, so use those first, then if you have time, use your strong spells of other types.