The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Then tank the adds. Throw out a searing tempest before bursts to lower INT. I actually didn't know you could sleep them, so BLU is absurdly good for that. Even if they wake up, congratulations, you're one of the 3 strongest tanks in the game.

If my group had any damn SCHs other than me I'd want to try this.

The adds don't go on the main PLD because 1) he's already being smacked by the NM and 2) the situation you described earlier with charm. Charmed PLD = army of adds smacking your mages.

I'm 99% positive that if a tank has both the NM and the adds in this fight and gets charmed, the adds are out for blood with the rest of the party.

I haven't done it, but I'd assume primarily magical spells with a combination of survivability and enmity.

Never killed the adds before, so I wouldn't know.

Depends, in the case of Tenebral Crush, you'd want it on the target anyway.

So you'd be faced with two options:
1. Cast Tenebral Crush by itself for low damage. Then spam CDCs as usual with the defense down now affecting the mob.

2. CDC > Requiscat for Darkness. Close with Tenebral for the extra damage and reapplication of defense down debuff.

Depending on the target, one may weigh over the other. Like the screenshot of Morimar, he takes like double damage from magic, so in his case, you'd probably want to go with option 2. But the idea is that you've killed two birds with one stone, you had to cast Tenebral Crush anyway, but now you're getting the spell to dish out some significant damage at the cost of your two higher damages CDCs and resulting Light.

In the case of Tizona users, you're forced to use Expiacion to activate AM3 anyways. You have the option of just saying screw it and resuming the Light chains immediately or opting for Darkness (and therefore a good time to throw in a Tenebral MB).

Do Tenebral Crush and Gouge stack?

I don't generally set it, the guide also doesn't have it on the pre JT2 spell set. It has 4% more defense down but more MP/longer cast time/more set points.

With option 2, you wouldn't go in that order anyway, as you would go Req -> CDC to have the more powerful WS close the SC. By using BA and casting Crush then, you lose a decent chunk of damage on your first CDC and some white damage on the preceding swings, then probably ~600-700 TP from casting the spell mid-fight. I would guess, in a world with fury/frailty on the mob, you probably would lose ~10k in the initial SC (between using Req instead of CDC and the damage loss by not having Def Down on the CDC), probably another 1k in the swings leading up to it, but would most likely make most of that up with an MB Crush, depending on your gear. In the end, it's about a wash, and I wouldn't consider if worth it, imo.

And, this is all saying that you're the only DPS source. If you're not solo front-line DPS, then you're hurting your other DPS by not laying Def Down early in the fight.

In the setup I posted we used a trust tank so he can't have the adds on him. The adds being on the tank they will be near the NM and she eats them.

Depends, it seems when she eats the blue ones it causes a white proc and they all depop. If she eats the other ones she can level up. Not entirely sure on that since we kept them away from her but sometimes when they woke up they run to her and we saw her get a white proc from eating the blue one and they all depop.

There is also Tenebral Crush which is more likely to be in your DD setup as long as you can spare 2 more points and doesn't require acc on top of macc and inflict 4% more defense down and it also give macc trait which helps it even further.

That said, do we know whether our unique magic accuracy trait from tenebral crush gets higher tiers from gift bonuses?

Yes; it mirrors regular accuracy bonus. Magic evasion bonus mirrors regular evasion bonus.

Barrier Tusk is nice to have when the defense is needed but Tenebral Crush can be very handy too when overwhelming force is needed in a small amount of time.

An example I can think of for myself is the Tonberry Unity NM. For that fight, we like to play it risky and not use PLDs, RUNs, GEOs BRDs or anything else to shield us from the Astral Flow. That usually gives us about 25 seconds or less for the 3 of us to take it out before we get wiped. The trusts we use only keep us alive long enough until we can do what we need and they only last about 12-15 of those 25 seconds. In that situation, Barrier Tusk won't save me but something Tenebral Crush shortens the kill time and has helped.

Point is, we're BLUs and are one of the most versatile jobs in the game. No real reason to glue ourselves to certain spells all the time. I find myself experimenting all the time and I am lucky to have a group that lets me do that at the risk of failure.

Can I get the location? Please ? :)

The place I learned that also wasn't Skirmish was the beam me up in Marjami then take a left at soonest possible chance. There should be a a large room to the left that has two dual elementals. If you don't see them, the weather will need to come first.

It's south of bivouac 2.

Thanks to both of u ^^

With Amchuchu being offered again, I've got to ask... how well does she hold up against something like Fenrir (Normal). I've soloed a bunch of these high tier battlefields on "easy", and have found them to be just that, a cake walk. But most attempts on "normal" I've either noticed an immediate huge spike in damage, or the fight will be "easy" until lower HP, when stuff gets spammed a lot more.

Went /NIN on Fenrir (N), got it down to 9% once - other times below 50% but not close to dead. Usually something like Impact followed immediately by Howling Moon (I think), is what does me in.

Would bringing Amchuchu allow me to drop /NIN and maybe go /RUN for Lux and focus more on Saline Coat and Barrier Tusk than constantly recasting Utsusemi (because Trion is a piece of ***who dies in 15 seconds on anything useful)?

Spammed that fight about 40-50 times on Normal.

Amchuchu is OK, but she can't tank the whole fight herself. She's also prone to getting insta-killed at the start before she can get Shell from other trusts due to double attack and additional effects.

I always went /run and used Occultation as my defensive measure while hate was on me. Impact is annoying and I'd usually save Unbridled Learning to Uproot after that. Lux bring the damage down a lot for Impact, also make sure you're in meva or mdt/mdb gear when Moon goes off. It'll strip your Shadows too so don't use Occultation if you expect him to use it soon or else you'll have MP death. Zephyr Mantle helps a lot too with a good fast cast set.

I never bothered with Barrier Tusk and Saline Coat in that fight though. The full dispel already makes it where you need to turn and rebuff. And it's just feel like a waste unless you're getting 1-shot by a magic move.

Also, if you're on Shiva, I'd be happy to duo it with you.

She often does well as long as buffs are/stay up, but can (and will) get one-shot by strong physical attacks from time to time. Fenrir, in particular, tended to highlight that for me as it seemed like a 50/50 thing on whether she'd survive the fight or not. She's also somewhat susceptible to getting wiped out right off the bat before getting buffs up.

I usually wind up tanking the latter half (or more) of fights when I use her anyway. The really nice thing about using her though, is that even if she winds up not holding hate, she keeps Valiance up religiously, providing substantial Fast Cast and reduced element damage taken to help you tank.

I've done Fenrir N on BLU/RUN a bunch, but I dual box a GEO as well usually, so my experience with it wouldn't be quite the same as solo.

A'men! Just the other day was fighting Tenodera in Escha Sky and mob leveled up to the point no one could hit it. I went from attack set to acc set to superacc set and acc was still horrible. So I changed all my blu spells with Azuresets and went to my superacc blu spell set and ate acc food to get 1280 acc and killed it. No other job can do that. Gotta love blu!

Yesterday night was a good day to be a BLU, picked up 2x Nibiru Cudgels and Rawhide hands :P Also restarted to work on Tizona, will finish tokens on monday :P Only gonna have assaults and the alex grind to work with...