The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Pre-100 gifts, with dual wield 4 spells set and no haste samba/capped haste/haste 2 solo,what is the best earring combination using dual Uson? Have acess to all;)

If you're that far from delay cap, green delve earrings should win by a bit.

It could be a spell set difference.

It's probably a good thing that Taeon leaf augments don't help spell damage. Otherwise we'd have to augment an entire other set for them... But most you could get out of it is some haste to recast faster.

I'd like to see some people's opinions on what is best now. My own sets are very out of date.

I am 100% sure almost every piece of gear in my physical sets is sub-optimal, but every time I go through and build a set for a specific target/spell, I get about 8 combinations of gear all within 25 damage and they generally require me to carry at least 1-2 pieces specific to that spell. Considering how often I cast for damage instead of for the added effects, I just cast in an attack/accuracy/skill/macc hybrid for basically everything that isn't used to close an SC.

I don't see it in the sets on the first page but am I correct in assuming belts/gorgets don't work on physical spells under the effect of Chain Affinity?

Don't believe so, the old ones didn't.

Just got the Job Trait bonus and am trying to figure out current spell sets with that. Assuming you have capped Magic Haste, Gear Haste, and DW4 set you should be close enough to the cap with Taeon Boots to not want to set DW5 correct? So currently I'm looking at removing Mortal Ray and Animating Wail, which leaves me with:
Which leaves me with 58/70 points assuming I'm not interested in taking any support spells. Now I'm looking at what else I could do, Diffusion Ray would bump STP up to STP III for 6 points. What else are other people setting? Paralyzing Triad for SC Bonus? Fren Rip + Vanity Dive for Accuracy?

I always put in Diffusion for STPIII, then either White Wind or Winds of Promy depending on group needs, along with Magic Fruit or Tusk. I don't have the luxury of always being able to trust my healers, so I sometimes set more defensive spells than I would like.

Maybe something is wrong with my spreadsheet, but I keep getting Manibozho A and DEX Uk' better than Taeon pieces each with 7 STR/DEX, 20 acc/atk, and 2 TA. I had no idea the slight amount of DEX would completely outweigh tons of multi-attack and attack. Anybody seeing similar results, or did I mess up?

1 DW I would think would be particularly valuable at this point being so close to delay cap but honestly I haven't done much spreadsheet work since chant got updated and all this new gear came out. So I'm not really sure just how much it counts for compared to other traits or swapping other gear. Be nice if Taeon had just had 5%...

It's an increase, but not enough of one for me to care dropping down 9 more points on it.

I remember Proth mentioned a good few pages back that you'll be missing the cap by a whole 10 delay, which, in the long run, is very very minor. The extra STP from setting Diffusion should more than make up for it.

That was what I was looking at to say DW5 wasn't worth it. I know White Wind, Winds of Promy, Magic Fruit, all that stuff is nice. I just wanted to know about a pure DPS set though.

If you know you'll be getting marches you could take off Erratic Flutter and either Blazing Bound or Quad. Continuum for Animating Wail and set Tail Slap and Sickle Slash for another STP tier and then Paralyzing Traid for Skillchain Bonus II. Just losing 10% Fast Cast from that combination. You'll have 1 or 2 more points left over after that depending on if you went with BB or QC which I guess could be used for either Glutinous Dart for the STR3 DEX3 attributes or Cocoon.

That is very interesting, thanks for sharing.

It's based on HP, maybe you were recieiving Mantra, or were in Skirmish and had Max HP boost, or your old set had higher HP. *shrug*

Subjob, food, wind weather/day, etc. White Wind seems to be highly variable to me, even when all conditions seem the same on the surface.

Overdoing DW is becoming a much more significant problem these days on a lot of jobs thanks to Taeon gear. BLU also now has the job trait bonus to consider.

For quick calculation, some useful info:

DW Tiers (amount of DW per trait level):
I - 10%
II - 15%
III - 25%*
IV - 30%
V - 35%
*DW III provides a notable "bang for your buck" due to being the only trait II-V that increases DW by 10% over the lower tier, as opposed to II/IV/V only boosting 5% over the prior level

Amount of DW needed from TRAIT PLUS GEAR to hit 80% delay reduction cap:
So, to be clear... take your Job Trait tier DW number from the above chart PLUS your visible DW+ from gear (a lot of options these days and so much customization with DW1-5 augments on Taeon stuff). Trait+gear to me is the easiest way to think about it for BLU, due to the added complexity of having variable levels of DW trait that other jobs don't need to consider.

* Capped gear haste (256/1024) AND capped magical haste (448/1024):
- need DW+36

* Capped gear haste and only Erratic Flutter (300/1024):
- need DW+57
- note this is actually slightly over cap at 80.35%, and DW+56 is just barely below at 79.89%

* Capped gear haste, Erratic Flutter, non-merited Haste Samba (including from /DNC or trust DNC):
- need DW+51

NOTES:
- Just slightly overshooting DW (say, by 1 or 2 points) is barely relevant. You don't want to overshoot by a lot though, as excess DW above 80% reduction will lower your TP/hit. Practically speaking though, you're fine if you need 11% DW to cap and you hit 12% based on the gear you have available.
- Likewise, barely undershooting and getting like 79.5+% delay reduction is such a minimal impact that it's likely not worth going overboard to hit exact cap if you have to give up non-DW stats in another slot.
- Note that it does NOT matter if you "over-cap" on magical haste (e.g. Haste II/Flutter + Marches), since magical haste has zero effect on TP/hit.
- Flutter + any 2x Marches, including Trusts with March+0, caps magical haste. See full March chart here.

My personal thoughts:
I never want to give up setting Flutter. If I'm solo I always want it, and if I'm in a party it's just so useful to AoE with Diffusion.

I also find DW V (and even DW IV to an extent when getting good buffs) not very useful for BLU, and think most people would be much better served freeing up points to set other spells. DW III is my preferred sweet spot, and isn't hard to cap delay with that (only needs DW+11 from gear with full magical haste buffs, which is easy to do in party or with trusts).

Unless you have a RDM, SMN or extra BLU, it's quite annoying when people do Diffusion Erratic Flutter because it'll wear off everyone at the same time due to Haste I not overwriting, thus leaving some people without Haste for a bit until you get Haste I from someone. In a Delve or Incursion scenario, it creates a potential missed Stun due to recast if your stunner doesn't get re-hasted before their next stun (obviously this is remedied by simply not hitting the back line with your Diffusion, but it's still a possibility if using GEO stunner since they'll be in with the front line). I'd consider it beneficial, however, if your group gets hit with a Slowga and you apply it right after an Erasega. And of course you want it if you're solo.

I wish my trusts ever used Marchx2, I get Balladx2 more than anything else.

if the DW5 thing is still going on, i posted this a while ago




with a smaller post later to show the impact of what a small amount of +/- delay has on TP gain



buffs, gear, and what you'd gain from setting different spells all factor in to how valuable DW4 or DW5 is or isn't. you need to consider if dropping 2% TA for the DW on a piece of taeon is worth whatever spell you're able to set by dropping a tier of DW, or if another applicable gearswap is worth the loss too. 9 times out of 10, it isn't.

If you're that annoyed about the few moments without haste, shout for haste early then click it off just as your mage goes to cast it on you, can develop a rotation for that if you insist, but c'mon, the haste2 over haste1 if you don't have a Rdm for several minutes (depending on spells) is a huge overall gain even if you didn't go to the trouble of remedying this, a single missed stun in this day and age usually isn't the end of the world, and geo can coordinate with the haster to click his off early even if nobody else does.

Not really when you're capping magic haste with Haste1 and marches anyway. Literally a 0% increase. You can argue being able to switch out a march for another Minuet, but *** having to resing over your 9 min Troub/Night songs when Flutter wears off in a little over 5 mins.

A diffusioned flutter should last 7:20, I believe, but I'm just nitpicking. I still agree with your point.

As far as the DW discussion is concerned, I only ever set V when completely solo, such as salvage or Dynamis. In group situations, dropping to IV and getting STPIII is a far better choice, as it also allows you to use Taeon feet without a detriment to TP/hit.

For job points, what's the second category I should focus on? I'm leaning toward the physical spell macc category for landing added effects, but skillchain damage on CA is pretty tempting. Or am I missing something special with the Unbridled categories or Azure Lore? Is the AL category a straight +10% boost to damage or +10 spell damage?

I did Blue magic point bonus first of course, then Phys. Blue Magic Effect Acc. then Chain Affinity Effect.

Honestly the rest of them are so limited that I'm kinda eh about. I'll probably do Unbridled Learning Effect I next.