The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

I would use Tan+1 in the Main hand and the Colada with +12 dam, 2 or 3 DA (can't remember) and 17 Acc and a 5 Att in the Off hand. The Crit Hit Rate, Crit hit damage and High Damage on Tan+1 is really useful for CDC.

Ok quick Colada questions! I recently got 2 swords and I've already started augmenting them. When I used the DM campaign the augs were kinda meh but I did get +12 dam, 2 or 3 DA (can't remember) and 17 Acc and a 5 Att on one of them. The other Colada I got +12 Dam, 18 Acc and Att and +9 Str. I already had Nibiru and Tan +1 so my question is what are the minimum augs for Colada required to retire my Tan +1/Nibiru or instead of Colada/Colada should I use one of my current Colada's with the Tan +1. I figured the Nibiru is retire regardless. Also if I'm looking to get "dream" augs on COlada's is that going to require a Taupe spam? Thank you!

I wouldn't waste dark matter augs on a weapon unless you're like a non-melee mage hoping for phalanx+

Playing with the BLU spreadsheet a bit today, some quick numbers:

-Tizona/Almace and Almace/Sequence are incredibly close with AM3 up on both. Almace actually comes out slightly ahead on the spreadsheet right now, but Tizona's superior WS frequency and higher average WS damage offers the possibility of more and bigger skillchains.

-AM3 Tizona/Almace vs AM1 Almace/Sequence favors Tizona by about 3%, but if you incorporate the rebuilding phase for AM3 then DPS is roughly comparable before taking skillchains into account.

-Offhand Sequence only beats a very well augmented Colada by about 1%. TP Bonus not working in the offhand is really quite unfortunate, and it's otherwise ill suited to the offhand position.

-Sequence/Colada is about 3% ahead of Colada/Colada for CDC spam, and more than 10% behind Tizona/Almace. Sequence/Almace is ~7% behind Tizona/Almace. This is before considering aftermath and Radiance/Umbra skillchains. While TPB+500 provides a substantial boost to Savage Blade and Expiacion, you're still stuck using Requiescat at least once if you want to utilize the aftermath. If you're solo then you're either looking at using it again (ex Savage->Expi/CDC->Req->Req) to close Umbra or using CA Thrashing Assault en route to Radiance (Req->Savage->Thrashing->CDC), both of which are substantial losses. Even with a very strong Requiescat set (STR/att/TA Herc, HQ Carmine body, etc), I'm struggling to envision this as a net gain under perfect conditions, let alone if anything messes up the skillchain. Thrashing Assault also increases the risk of dropping the skillchain prematurely since it returns no TP and incurs an extra second of forced inaction. The situations in which mainhand Sequence is the best mainhand for a BLU strike me as very few and far between at best, even in party situations. Trying to take full advantage of the aftermath and our better weaponskills at the same time is simply too awkward to realize its full potential.

Oh ok, so dark matter shouldn't be used on weapons, ok. I was hoping that the dark matter could get me to the dream augments. Also would Taupe stones be the ones to use to get the "dream" augs, considering that you would want 15 Dex and you can't get it without Taupe (the way I'm reading the guide that's my assumption).

With this week's unity campaign, I think I should focus on getting a Tanmogayi. I read on the BG wiki that BLU/RUN x2 (imagining using fire resist runes and 2x wards), GEO, COR, and WHM makes for a fast and efficient kill. Any input or verification on this?

I'm also hoping to replace my Vamp's with these Colada's (Since my Vamps are far from max auged) but I see that Colada doesn't have the Int that Vamps can have. Not sure if the extra Mag Dam on Colada's negate the Int on Vamp's for magic cleave.

Probably an odd question. Since I have afterglow almace and afterglow tizona if ever maintaining Tizona AM3 wasn't viable would Almace/Nibru be better than Almace/tizona?

I think for most things the INT will do more. Far as I know, the basic way to look at +Magic Damage is like a 1.0 INT multiplier, and I think even Subduction has a 2.0 there. Not sure if BLU has any spells we regularly use that'd favor +Magic Damage over INT/etc on a per-point basis.

'course, if you're cleaving with Vampirisms, then you're already making a damage tradeoff relative to Nibiru Cudgels or whatnot. Personally, I like them for stuff like NNI or Salvage. Depending on what you're relying on them for, perhaps there's some other combination of augments that'd make it worth it (TH+ or something).

Pretty much. Vex/Attunement, barfire and Unda makes the damage trivial, but paralyze from Ululation might land. He'll howl, start with Ululation and then spam GoH several times, and then finish the cycle with a hoplon. We proc'd him a couple times while spamming CDC but couldn't really figure out what caused it. Add another Geo for Frailty and wtfever and it dies faster. 1150~ acc before buffs should cap (I don't really remember this. I think I had 1020acc before food cause my gear was bad, but with sublime my acc was alright)

INT is far, far more important to Sanguine Blade than STR, and no base MAB makes +20 pretty mediocre when things like Amalric exist. As far as actually gearing SB, can more or less treat it like Tenebral Crush. Identical dINT terms, dark elemental (Pixie Hairpin +1 and Archon Ring are your friends), only real difference is WSC/fTP (50% MND 30% STR 2.75 fTP vs 30% INT 30% MND 30% VIT 4.0 fTP). Our nuking options are pretty straightforward these days (can't wear Merlinic so 4/5 Amalric + Herc head is a given, other slots generally have certain items that are clearly BIS), so nothing actually changes gearwise.

As far as the DM campaign, it's really a case of targeting single augments that are useful on their own (refresh, TH, etc) and maybe getting lucky along the way. I've picked up a few other useful augments along the way between myself and my alt, but they're just lucky bonuses. At least right now it's free, I can't imagine spamming dark matter for augments outside the campaign. Such a ridiculous system.

iirc They mentioned Wanted 3 does not get the bonus coffers for those particular UNMs.

JP and US sites differ on that point (JP says Wanted 3 is included) but last time we had this campaign, 3 worked since I actually did Sarama and got 2 boxes per.