The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

For Herc gear any of the stones have the chance of giving you TA but Fern is preferred since it has the chance of giving you the highest value. A good starting value for TP Sets on Herc Augments is 20-25 Acc or more and 3% TA or better. If you land a really high Acc and some DEX but only 2% TA that’s also ok.

You’ll only get DA and QA on Herc from Dark Matter Augments so good luck with that. Outside of that it’s all just random. Farm up those stones (or buy them if you find them cheap) and just throw them at Oseem til he gives you want you want. If you want Perfect/Near-Perfect it’s very common to plow through 1000+ stones.

Thank-you for the answers. This was helpful and clear. Much appreciated.

hello


question about expiacion ws set

is fotia belt still BIS? or Sailfi Belt +1 r15 beat it?

ty

Sailfi Belt R15 wins comfortably.

Would that also be true for Savage Blade, then? Since Expiacion is "only" 30% STR and SB is 50% STR. I'm not really sure how WS modifiers work.

Savage Blade essentially uses the same set as Expiacion, R15 Sailfi +1 is just really good for both of those WS.

That makes sense since it's just a huge bunch of STR, but I'm surprised that the Fotia's completely separate bonus to fTP doesn't win out (because instinctively, I expect pumping two separate numbers to beat pumping up one number)

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Weapon_Skill_Damage

It’s not a seesaw. 0.1 ftp does less as your base FTP goes up. Savage and Exp having huge base FTPs hurt fotia items.

It does, though 1% chance to keep TP is a mostly constant benefit.

Ah I miss read the question. Still not using it :p

so what is the updated sets for CDC and expiacion

i mean with Unity armor

Blistering Sallet r15 looks nice for cdc

Cohort Cloak +1 is strong too. Macc piece. and depending on mods of specific blue nukes it'll win.

Ghastly Tathlum +1 already was winning for low tier spells like subduction, better now.

Warder's Charm +1 -- This is more niche for me but I toggle SC dmg stuff for CA blu spells so it's useful for that. It's large enough could make a closing ws macro like people do with sacro mantle

Scale Stuff:
Zoar Subligar +1 CDC & white dmg.
Acuity Belt +1 macc
Gelatinous Ring +1 great pdt piece
Metamorph Ring +1 macc, nukes, maybe expiacion depending on attack

others:
(Bathy choker I guess upgrade for idle piece)
(Cacoethic I guess could be a acc swap for evis, but meh)

Trying to stun a little more reliably in dynamis and looking for some gear tips.

Last I read BiS for sudden lunge included the full malignance set; maybe carmine mask +1. Is this still the case? Would any combination of the reforged set bonuses be better?

When you have a choice between magic accuracy and plain ol' accuracy, is magic accuracy preferred? For example I can get a few more points of magic accuracy from my amalric doublet, but is it worth giving up 50 accuracy over malignance tabard?

Thanks!

No? You gear for both accuracy and magical accuracy : to land the hit and then have a decent chance of the stun effect landing. This is all going to be based on your targets and how much accuracy you have, but for most BLU using thibron offhand, add as much accuracy as you are able to. If the spell doesn't hit the stun effect will never land. It's going to be subject to resists from subsequent uses and no amount of magic accuracy will change that. I would generally prioritize accuracy over magical accuracy unless you gain such a significant bonus to magical accuracy that it just makes more sense to gear that way. Because again, you cannot guarantee a monster will stun based on your magic accuracy but you can guarantee if the spell misses you have zero chance to stun.

There are a handful of pieces that do double duty (malignance being one, etana ring is also an option), and then there's pieces that add acc/macc+blue magic skill or a combination of these all in one lump(stikini/jse neck). The cape I'm sure you could argue one way or the other (I would just use my TP cape). Relic adds a decent amount of accuracy and magic accuracy but not going to be better than malignance for any piece, so use it only if you need to.

Aurist's Cape +1 has both also

I am on the Unity Rewards page right now and you beat me. Very good call, need to update my set. Thanks

Here I was using my Cornflower cape not realizing blu was on Aurist's cape too. Glad I upgraded it for another job already.

Has it ever found out the exact relation between Blu skill and this sort of things?
How does it convert into acc/macc? Does it contribute to both? One? The other? None? Which rate?

Meh...


For Sudden Lunge I use:
5/5 malignance
JSEneck+2
Stikini+1 x2
Lempo Earring
Dignitary Earring
Cornflower Cape (got +10 BLU skill and Dex+5, supposing the acc from DEX converts into acc for the physical part of Sudden Lunge, but I think it does?)
Eschan Stone
Pamphredo Tathlum

Not sure why I have Tathlum there, isn't there any better option that I already own? Hmmm...
Also I have some belts that have more physical acc and at least one that has more macc (Acuity+1 R15), but none that have both acc and macc.

ItemSet 375191

This makes wave2 nm's a joke.

Dont know if it still applies but skill used to be the base dmg on spells, used to be its atk too but thats now based on your main hands atk, acc has always been based on your weapons acc. Otherwise it follows the usual rules for macc afaik+potency tiers on some spells like occulation/magic barrier

Why Regal EarRing?
Does INT convert into Macc for Sudden Lunge?

find it hard to justify a second stikin +1 now that we have metamorph +1 r15.

in most macc cases metamorph is simply better than stikini +1 and in some cases where you just want the extra skill you either have better options (SMN evokers ring) or you can easily reach cap without one (GEO handbell/geomancy skill)

i assume that one of INT/MND/CHR effect macc for BLU spells although i can't find info about it but even if they don't metamorph still gets pretty close in that scenario.

so it boils down to a hefty price tag for +1 refresh in idle set and its not the only option for that purpose (adoulin quest ring).

its just +crit chance, which is nice, but iirc the more desired stats for CDC is +crit damage and multi attack.
adehmar bonnet +1 brings 4 triple attack, 6 crit hit damage and 2-4 cirt hit chance from set bonus to the table
so from eyeballing i'd say it doesn't beat adhemar bonnet path A or B.

If skill converts at a decent enough rate to both macc AND acc, then 2x Stikini+1 it's uncontestably the winner over R15 Metamorph+1, which offers +15 Macc and that's it, since I think (I could be wrong) that INT doesn't convert into macc for Sudden Lunge, and even if it did it would be just macc and not both like skill (supposedly?) does.

Mods for BLU spells can affect the damage, most spells have at least 1 mod that does that, but accuracy? I dunno.
DEX could be the exception, but that's because DEX converts to accuracy in general for all jobs, and having more physical accuracy will convert into more acc for the physical part of Sudden Lunge.

The MND/INT/CHR > Macc conversion is not as straight and obvious as the DEX>Acc one though. Different spells for different jobs get Macc from different mods. Some spells don't get macc from mods at all and I'm afraid Most blu spells fall into the latter category?


About the price, getting R15 Metamorph+1 is 20m, plus the price from buying the mats to upgrade NQ to HQ if you don't have one already.
Stikini+1 is like what, 30m these days? (got mine for less than 25 but I suppose I was lucky)
It's not really a huge difference in terms of money.
I could understand if you were making a point of inventory issues though.

if you play any other job that requires a macc set chances are you already have metamorph cause its uncontested in the macc department.
i wasn't aware that + blue magic skill also affects accuracy, the wiki reads:

I've put an "if".
I've read different things over the years about how BLU skill interacts with physical accuracy, magical accuracy and even damage of BLU spells.
Never found a convincing and conclusive answer.
If you notice I asked about it a couple of posts ago.

-If it's a physical spell, then it contributes to base damage and the accuracy of additional effects.

-If it's an offensive magical spell, then it contributes to magic accuracy.

-It also factors into damage for some of the pseudo dark magic spells.

-It factors into your probability of being interrupted

-It factors into the potency of select enhancing-type spells

-Select enfeebling-type spells have a skill component to their potencies (though I think they're all autocapped with just your base skill now)


It used to determine the attack power of physical spells, but that was changed near the beginning of SoA.

Good catch, this was paired with af3 pre malignance.

I'm giving Blistering Sallet +1 R15 a try in my hybrid set. I should probably get maligance for that slot, but I don't wanna lilith anymore.


ItemSet 375017

And this set has been really good:


ItemSet 375002


Wondering if I should add Ghastly Tathlum +1.

Then for Sudden Lunge it means Blue Magic Skill would be more or less like Magic Accuracy.
Granted we don't know the exact conversion ratio, but we can approximate that BLU skill would amount to some Macc for Sudden Lunge.


According to the fact whether or not INT/MND/CHR convert to Macc for Sudden Lunge, then Stikini Ring+1 can potentially give more macc to Sudden Lunge than R15 Metamorph+1 would.

I remember asking about why Jhakri set was used in place of the Ayanmo set (it having more haste and fast cast) in the guide for Sudden Lunge a long time ago. Back then, the consensus seemed to be that INT impacts the magic accuracy for sudden lunge. I never bothered to verify that and testing both sets out against each other I couldn't really tell so I flitted back and forth between the two sets until I got my hand on better options. I actually don't use the full Malignance set for that precise reason and instead use the below set:

ItemSet 375194

Magic accuracy is about even considering the blue magic skill and you lose about 30 acc, but you gain 71 INT and some Fast Cast. I was considering Metamorph Ring and I'm still not sure whether or not I want to use it but I have stuck with Stikini x2 for now as I was never sure if Blue Skill ever added anything other than just magic accuracy. Maybe someday someone will go through the effort of testing out Sudden Lunge to see what impact Blue Magic Skill and INT(or possibly other attributes) have on Additional Effects but for now this set has seemed pretty reliable. I do still have those weird times where a monster I have popped like 20 times before decides that this time it doesn't want to stay stunned but I really can't figure out what the cause of that is when the set and buffs haven't changed.



R15 Ghastly Tathlum +1 is better for all of our nukes, even the hybrid nukes that don't have an additional INT modifier.