The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Congrats!

Have gotten 3 blu +2s and they've all been min roll lol

For Light:
you can do Savage Blade (Fragmentation) -> Expiacion (Distortion) -> chain affinity + Efflux + Thrashing assault (Fusion) -> ... Savage Blade (Light) -> Chant du Cygne (Double Light)

or for Darkness:

Savage Blade (Fragmentation) -> Expiacion (Distortion) -> chain affinity + Efflux + Thrashing assault (Fusion) -> ... Requiescat (Gravitation) -> Expiacion (Darkness)

alternatively if chain affinity is down you can go:

Savage Blade OR Expiacion (Scission) -> Red Lotus Blade (Liquifaction) -> Flat Blade OR Circle Blade (Fusion) ...

at the fusion step you can still decide if you want to go double light or single darkness.


If you still have chain affinity, azure lore and unbridled learning or unbridled wisdom active at the end of a darkness chain you could chain further into double darkness with Bilgstorm or Bloodrake. It's probably a fun thing to see if you can pull it off, not very practical though.

Jesus man... I feel for you that's brutal

I honestly can't complain cause I know plenty haven't even gotten a +2 for their favorite job yet. I do often wonder what the odds of getting 3 of the same +2 earring actually ends up being though. Rolling min on all 3 prolly isn't too uncommon since it feels like these things are heavily weighted toward low/min rolls.

I've gotten WHM and MNK, both of which are mediocre among the earrings to begin with, but both are also jobs I could care less about.

Then I got the blu and jumped out of my chair... but when it was max I was beside myself and my buddies on the mic were like "Yo Shut up"

I totally agree it's insane how bad the rates are on these things... I think it'd be acceptable for a max roll to be rare, but for NQ +2 rolls to be so extremely rare in the ecosystem isnt right. Hopefully after a year or so SE goes back and makes adjustments to gallimaufry and chest drop rate... if not a campaign to supplement them?

BLU is a bit weird in that it doesn't have great SC options wherein the WS in the SC are WS you would want to actually use.

Is there reason for SCing? If not, assuming you have Tizona 15 or Naegling, you are probably better off just spamming Expiacion/Savage Blade. Use the Pointwatch addon to track your EP/hr if you want to verify which is better for you, SCing or spamming.

Also, put a point into Requiescat. Requiescat > Expiacion is a really easy darkness. Sometimes this can be more damage than spamming Expiacion (when the darkness exceeds the damage of Expiacion). Try to avoid going Expi > Req, as Req is never going to be good damage vs Expi.

Personally I avoid using CA because it is generally a break even or a damage loss.

As an aside, while I do not have a stage 4 prime sword, it may be BLUs best option in a ML grind for self skillchaining. That is a lot of effort and time for a weapon that will not likely not have much use for a BLU though...

CDC spam for light should be fairly strong. specially if you can MH or OH Almace

eyeball testing for a few hours on locus colibri, i was best off alternating savage blade > expiacion and just settle with the distortion damage. now if you fight something that doesn't reset your TP occasionally and screw your SC, the above might be better. my damage with requiescat is so bad i didn't find the darkness damage worth the effort.

Requiescat does ***damage at its best, but with limited (or trust) buffs/debuffs it's especially bad because it has a terrible attack penalty unless you're doing it near 3k.

Even with a Almace R15, Chant is just all over the place in damage and for me, it does not beat out just spamming Expiacion, even with lights.

I did some test on the locus bats in KRT and for me, Req > Exp tops the chart, with Chant in last place:


YMMV due to gear, buffs or mobs but I generally find the above to be true unless a mob is weak to light SCs or strong against Dark SCs specifically.

it being 2 step means you got time to fire off expi at near or max TP, the 4 steps alright but the 2 filler WS(burning/flat) may not pay off overall, as you're essentially giving up a 2nd 2 step darkness just to 4 step

Hey all. I recently rejoined the game after break and I am a bit confused about something. Why is tizona off hand in some of the blue mage sets? Like in the expiation sets in the guide it shows Thibron/Tizona? Did I miss something all this time? Thanks in advance for any clarification.

ffxiah itemsets doesn't know which slot to put them in when you add two weapons

Under Utility Sets, is there a reason why the guide recommends Gleti armor (-35% PDT) for PDT when Nyame armor provides -38% DT?

It also says, "While Malignance and Nyame offer the most raw evasion in each respective slot, you could also opt to use Gleti equipment for a very slight drop in evasion in exchange for a significant increase in defense." Nyame provides 30 more defense than Gleti, so I don't understand that either.

Gleti has higher MDB no?

I was thinking about this the other day...
By default most of us use merits:
5/5 Physical Potency
5/5 Magic Accuracy

... is there any point in doing 5/5 phys pot. anymore? For Bumba it's def. worth 5/5ing chain affinity, but for general play I think I'd get more mileage out of 5/5 burst affinity for potent nukes + cleaving.

Thoughts?

I seem to recall the acc also working as macc for add. Effect spells but search isnt providing me a referance so could just be wrong.

With that said, i had swapped off phys a ways back for similat reasons, phys spell dmg on blu is pretty meh especially these days, if BA saves you an additional nuke id say its worthwhile if you aoe often

Potentially more stupid proposal:

Dropping 1 point of Diffusion for 1 point of Convergence.

Losing 1 point in Diffusion drops the % Duration boost from 50% to 40% (assuming your wearing shoes), so if my math is right that drops Mighty Guard from 270 seconds (4minutes 30seconds) to 252 seconds (4mins 12 seconds) which is only an 18 second time loss.

Outside of MG the duration is very negligible.

In exchange you get a JA to control AoE's in cases where you dont want to tag or wake targets, as well as a damage boost steroid OR macc booster when need be.

Would depend on how much you rely on 10% more duration primarily on MG but can apply to other buffs too vs the times you need an aoe to not be, also a minor dmg boost to the conv. Nuke

Just throwing out my thoughts, I've stuck with the conventional merits for so long and was looking over each of my jobs and questioning the necessity of it all.

In at least some slots, Gleti has offensive stats that compare better to Malignance, while Nyame does not unless you're a weirdo that did the STP path.

Its a fair read, im solo alot so i personally value a mostly constant capped magic haste along with the regen/defensive perks. The other thing is that convergences recast is just awful, itd be a lot more appealing option at 5mins

I have question what best use trust set for Blu solo?

Trusts are subjective on preference and what content you're doing. General use I go for full dps: Qultada, Joachim, Sylvie, KoH, Ygnas. for Sortie I prefer 2 healers, swapping Qultada for Monberaux. In duo situation, swap KoH for Koru-Moru.

Depends on what you're doing. But for something like omen cards/swart farms, Having a RDM for refresh (less necessary) and Phalanx II is handy. You can predict when Koru will cast it on you because it's usually after his Dia3/Haste 2 cycle. Sel'teus has some use in that he has AOE wake or HP/MP recovery, I've used him in HTBF or Omen boss solo. I usually am Sylvie UC for the added offensive buffs. Qultada for the same, though I usually dismiss him after getting chaos roll because he's notorious for interrupting my SCs. After these, I usually just toss in something else that can do one or two minor things. I.e. AAEV or Valaneiral as a tank/damage sponge. Monberaux is invaluable for what he provides in some cases, especially if you pay him. He also has Cover, which will allow you to drop Target lock if you don't have super jump. He's a little tanky too so he'll not sure easily, usually one of the last trusts standing. He also can resist sleep and wake individual party members up, along with being able to restore some of their MP on demand. Ygnas if you have him (I don't)

thx for asking

Just kinda getting back after a break. Is there a consensus on if the prime sword is any good for blue?