The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Mastered BLU has 460 skill naked, 476 with merits. Occultation gives you 1 shadow for every 50 skill.

This set has 620 skill, which gets you 12 shadows. My set is just above 550, because I'm not giving up 3 or more inventory for 1 shadow.

Fill in your remaining slots with recast (use the empy gloves instead of rawhide, imo)

ItemSet 376624

Edit: Mine, for reference. 551 skill
ItemSet 381615

You can also get +30 from and R15 Iris, Path D. Dual wield is +60. And Renaye Ring +1 is +11.

You could get up to 13 shadows. But the cost for other slots makes it not too feasible.

Another thing to consider is that if you're casting Occultation while tanking, you probably don't want to take off all of your DT gear to do it. This is what I use so I don't get gibbed by Quadratic Continuum again while casting Occultation:

ItemSet 381617

* The dark ring has 5% PDT and 6% MDT
* Total Skill: 551 (11 shadows)
* 40% PDT, 30% MDT, 5% Fast Cast

Thanks for the good insights you three, I appreciate it. Obviously not going to be swapping weapons (though interesting for those with inventory to burn for something like pre-fight diffusion occultation) or wasting Adoulin ring slot but some good ideas all around. Thank you.

Is it really worth sacrificing so much Fast Cast for a couple of extra shadows? You rob Peter to pay Paul.

100% with buuki here. i'd much rather aim for just ~550 skill and stock up on FC and conserve MP instead (for example carmine greaves +1), imho even some SIRD is a better choice than going all out skill. most of the time a AoE will drop your shadows befor the mob strips all 11 shadows with auto attacks.

if you believe the 1-2 extra shadows will save your *** in a AoE omen or odyssey pull then make a seperate full skill set you switch to when casting during idle.
while you're at it keep in mind you don't need to worry about TP as much during AoEing so you might aswell save yourself expensive purchases and go for 2 iris path D instead if it's enough to reach that 600/650 mark.

FWIW, a current example in this month's Ramuh Amuscade, I can absolutely see an extra 1-2 shadows being useful pre-fight when you are pairing it with Diffusion. I am not devaluing the extra shadows, just I haven't found a situation where I could afford to lose so much FC in favor of two extra hits, that PDT-% gear or a faster spell recast couldn't save me from. YMMV

If you cleave Omen on BLU the extra shadows are good for mass pulling. You’re right though, more times than not those extra shadows will be wiped from AoE before anything.

Not sure if you have considered it, but for those who wish to use Sakpata's Sword as offhand, it offers 10% FC.

The sword is a clear loss to other options in terms of pure DPS, especially if we consider Thibron.
But if for whatever reason you're ruling out Thibron, then Sakpata's Sword is not really that bad of an option.
Still inferior to other options maybe but it gives you several other things.

For instance:
* 10% FC
* Phalanx +5 (don't think it works on BLU spells, but if you're doing stuff on your own and you're /RDM, then it's a bliss)
* HP +100
* DT -10%
* Lotsa acc/macc
* Decent Mdmg/Mab
* Attack +65
* MND+15 (useful mod for Black Halo and Savage Blade)

So, all in all, it's an interesting option.
What it loses in terms of pure DPS, it might gain in terms of the utility and additional freedom it gives you in the other slots.

Huh, I had essentially dismissed it but it honestly is worth considering pairing with Bunzi Rod over Max for cleaving Omen.

Well, not sure Sakpata gives its best in a content like Omen cleaving.
Then again Omen cleaving is so easy there's so many different efficient approaches!
Last time I tried it I wanted to test an eva build and so I went with a good eva set (not BiS but good), and the result?
Overwhelming. I got almost to half of the last floor with the Occultation I cast on floor 1, haha

Among the different approaches I think there's the matter of how you wanna handle TP. Save it or not?
If you don't care, you can simply swap weapons whenever.
If you do, you might want to lock your MH and OH, and in this scenario you might want to keep Maxentius MH rather than Bunzi.
Maxentius powers up your Black Halo and it could be useful to finish off Trascendent mobs with a few melee hits or a WS.

yea phalanx + dosen't work on barrier tusk sadly... would be kind of broken if it did... imagine it going from 15% dt2 to 50% dt2, or even it being 15%dt as well as -35 dmg per hit as well >.>;

Yeah it does work for Phalanx though.
/RDM is a very nice option for SJ when you're cleaving, and in those situations using Phalanx is cool and allows you to save BLU Spell space to equip something else in place of Barrier Tusk.

I mean I know Barrier Tusk is not the same as Phalanx, we all know that, but they share the same buff slot and ultimately aim for the same goal of reducing incoming damage. They do it in different ways with different pros and cons... you know what I mean.


If you're getting attacked by a plethora of targets doing constant small damage, I find Phalanx to be greatly superior than Barrier Tusk, if you ask me. And that's even if with /RDM you don't get not even close to the 500 enha skill cap.
(can access to all the +Phalanx Taeon gear though, and any Herc DM augs if you have any)

Barrier Tusk is not DT2. It's more like Rampart. Meaning it doesnt stack with DT or DTII, but multiply with them for damage that is reduced by regular DT, but Barrier Tusk DT also works on things that regular DT doesn't work on.


Agree. With my set as /RDM I can still cast -47 damage Phalanx (and its possible to push this to -52). You can also use some RDM trust to cast PhalanxII on you with your Phalanx gear on.

Any alternate takes to the "Zahak Reborn" spellset out there?

The posted Zahak set seems more CDC based with it's skillchain bonus traits. Curious what others think a more optimized set focused on SB spamming would look like.

Is skillchain bonus trait still preferred anyway for the random skillchains that might accidently occur? My brain small, please help. Thank you :)

ON the topic of practical Occultation sets, here's my take.

Stats / Notes:
TOTAL HP / MP: 2680 / 1281
TOTAL SKILL: 553 (11 Shadows)
PDT / MDT: 37 / 34 (+10/10 if you use Sakpata Sword)
SIRD: 48% with 10% from merits
Fast Cast: 11% (21% with Sakpata, 15% more from Erratic Flutter trait)
Haste: 23%

The goal of this set is to hit 11 shadows (utilizing the 4 strongest skill pieces) while netting as much possible DT / SIRD while maintaining total hp / mp to avoid dips when swapping gear.

If you want a less defensive set, you can easily swap pieces around focusing on the missing 2/3% haste and incorporating more fast cast, but I don't really find needing to cast Occult. so often that the CD timer is killing me.

ItemSet 381776

Hey i'm coming up on finishing tizona and was just wondering if its worth using r0 over nageling and also if my tp set should change when aftermath is up or not thanks for any advice.

Depends on what you are doing. Overall, naegling will almost certainly outdamage R0 tizona, but that extra MP might make it worthwhile anyway. It took about 3 stacks of swarts to R12 the tizona, at which point I swapped to it full time over naegling if for no other reason than I made it.

When AM3 is up, I go full malignance and greatly prefer STP over multi-hit. When AM3 is down, or I'm using naegling, I still often use full malignance, but swap in more multi-attack elsewhere. If content is easy enough, i'll use a full multi-attack set with AM3 down, but I mostly err on the side of a more defensive build.

Skillchain Bonus isn't going to be as useful for Savage or Expiacion situations, but it's still likely going to contribute more to your damage than other options. A case could certainly be made for moving up a DW tier, but I don't have the tools necessary to give exact calculations. Just eyeballing, though, it's rather hard to give up 16% skillchain damage boost for the occasional chain with other DDs.

Critical Damage Bonus would be easier to drop, especially if using Thibron. You could move up a DW tier, or set a Killer trait for whatever monster type you're fighting. If you'll be drawing aggro or just flat-out tanking, setting Asuran Claws and Orcish Counterstance and using a counter set actually puts out some excellent damage.

The Expert DD spec is really just a catch-all for the generally most powerful spell set we can use. I will add a couple notes about possible tweaks, though.


Tizona would need a few extra ranks to start pulling ahead of Naegling, but the MP restore is always going to be good if you need it.

For your TP set, placing a higher emphasis on Store TP is good, but you don't want to completely neglect multi-attack. For instance, I'd recommend a Store TP cape over a Double Attack one, but I wouldn't drop multi-attack altogether. Using full Malignance is a DPS loss, but the defensive bonuses the set provides can often outweigh that.

So from some earlier posts in the thread it looks like the best sets for Expiacion are the following:

For attack uncapped:
ItemSet 382008

For attack capped (ammo is Crepuscular Pebble)
ItemSet 382009

Do these look right?
*edit reversed labels

Why do you have the PDL ammo on the set that isn't attack capped?

Edit: nevermind, you seem to have the set labels reversed.

What is the benefit of using Nyame Legs over Relic +3 legs in the uncapped? set? Is it because the Tizona WSD carries to all hits and nyame has the marginal DA rate?

The differences between Nyame legs and Relic +3 is 2STR, 4INT, 3% DA and 55 attack vs 1 WSD and 5 acc. I suspect the attack is what pushed it over the top with the STR/INT/DA being gravy.

Just to make sure it's also clear; Tizona or not, Expiacion doesn't transfer fTP, so WSD is only affecting the first hit regardless.

Good to note that Beithir Ring from Odyssey is a solid ring option for non Karieyh ring players

That is a given, Tizona's WSD bonus does transfer to all hits though. With how front loaded WS like Expiacion and Savage blade are, most people do favor WSD even though in blu's case it is a 3 hit weaponskill. Was just looking at his reasoning.

For simplicity, the extra hits on expiacion are 1.495 ftp when you have a R15 tizona. Any other weapon they'd just be a 1.0

It changes NOTHING.
If you look at it that way and apply R15 Tizona bonuses to fTP, then sub hits are indeed 1.495 instead o 1.0, but then main hit is ~5.66 to ~18.22, instead of ~3.79 to ~12.19

In other words main hit is boosted by as much as sub hits, so WSD or DA in gear have the exact same relative effect with or without Tizona.

I was not making any determmination of the efficacy of anything at all. Just pointing out that extra hits on tizona have a higher effective http://ftp.

No need to b so hostile.

What you said didn't really refute anything I said though, and all it really did was potentially confuse the guy who already seemed to misunderstand how WSD and Tizona/Mythic AM work.

Why are people taking all discussions or corrections of their ideas as hostility. It's being ridiculous at this point. In 10 year, I won't be able to say good morning to anyone, because some people will be offended if they maybe have bad morning. FFS.

Anyway you said you was looking for reasoning of Nyame over relic and you was thinking maybe it's because of DA, because Tizona bonus damage carries to all hits. Then you further suggested sub hits having 1.495 ftp (which isn't exactly true, they are still 1.0, but will do 49.5% more damage. I understand this logical shortcut here, but some people might be confused) might have any meaning on gearing for Expiacion. I only corrected you that Tizona bonus damage has no impact at all on how you gear for Expiacion. Sub hands hits will be 49.5% stronger, but main hit will be too, so sub hands hit doesn't get any more meaningful with Tizona bonus.
What makes difference with Tizona on the other hand is AM3, which lowers gains from DA by a lot, so with Tizona AM3 you want WSD over DA even more, than without Tizona.