The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

I mean a meva/DT set would be for being a PLD replacement for Sortie basement bosses using kiting methods. Fantod for self hate and /RUN if you need foil. I think Proth said he was trying(succeeding) at tanking Aminon before he died. Blu can contribute more damage than a PLD and if there isn't a difference to holding hate on the kite bosses then it's all gravy.

Not like changing spells during the 3 minute walks between bosses would be hard.

Most magical damage Blu spells has dINT which also has tiers (multiplier) for example Anvil is 80%dex with ftp 4.0 and dINTx2, so each point of Dex adds 3.2 damage and each point of Int adds 2 damage.

On the topic of BLU tanking - it's my understanding that Sortie bosses, including Aminon, and Bumba, have magical auto attacks. If this is the case, is MEVA beneficial? Is it possible to 'resist' dmg from a magical auto attack?

On the same note, I've seen it mentioned before, but how does INT / MND play into defensive sets? Are both INT and MND equally beneficial in reducing incoming magic damage? Wondering if one is better to gear for than the other. And at what point, if any, would INT or MND ever be more beneficial than MEVA / MDEF, roughly speaking?

Meva for sure works on magical auto attacks. Now if MND works is probably very specific. Attack would need to have dINT modifier and I doubt magical auto attacks have one, but I can't say for sure.

Ah that makes sense. So then whether INT would be beneficial would be the same concept, if the magical auto attack had a dMND modifier? I think I'll look at other options then instead of stacking INT/MND in slots where I don't have MEVA/MDEF options.

Thanks!

MND vs MND is only for offensive white magic, I believe. Every other form of magic damage is dStat vs INT. I assume INT doesn't matter when there is no dStat, but I have no evidence to back up any of the above statements other than things I may have read correctly on BG wiki and here.

I generally will pick nyame over malignance in the feet slot specifically because malignance has no INT stat vs Nyame's 25 INT. The same line of reasoning could carry over into Sakpata's feet but it has 2 more MDB. Nyame still has the most DT in the slot if that is a factor.

I care less about this if the job has MDB traits or got it in their job points gift progression. Blue has an extra 31 MDB floating around which is very respectable since it is their COR roll, much better than say BRDs 12 or most jobs 0. The only jobs that get more are RUN, WHM, and RDM* and you'll beat out RDM as soon as you set 1 tier of the trait with the bonus tiers. For BLU, you really do have the flexibility to affect this both with traits and spells or you don't have the extra points for it because it needs to be all in dps. But at least you start at a good place.

Wouldn't you just wear Empy +3 Feet is survival was your concern? (assuming you are capping DT through other slots, which you probably are)

Doing it manually every day is a pain and azure sets is supposedly for some reason extremly laggy to the point warp spots don't load or with 10++ seconds delay, it's arguably slower than doing it manually once you've memorized the sets.
Not to mention it leaves you pretty much defenseless for quite a while each time you switch a spell and errors are going to happen if you have to focus on both running and changing sets.
I'm not sure if I would want to do it if I was running with a group daily.

Honestly it's depressing having such sticks thrown in our wheels when you see the results: BLU solo dhartok clear time ~20-25 minutes SCH solo dhartok clear time ~10-15 minutes(?), WAR solo dhartok clear time ~5 minutes



Been doing some testing of mid tier Hecate's Earring vs Crematio Earring on adoulin trash mobs, always same type, same camp and waited for repop:locked Belt to eliminate distance randomness from orpheus, not sure what's going on with random subduction results but here is what I guess:
subduction hecate's default damage 7714
crematio default damage 7745

Testing was done in Ceizak Battlegrounds and I can confirm wind weather can occure.

Is crematio earring a oversight in the guide? Also worth to consider how they compare on elemental magic for other jobs since with this close results I'd prefer to only keep one of those two.

It's mid tier gear and a player working on sets at that level is gonna farm Rani for Epona's anyway. Realistically your mid tier nuke ears these days are Friomisi + whatever you get first out of Novio/Hecate's/Crematio, but a BLU at that stage is probably spending merits on more important things than DMII.

For most solo players Regal is out of reach outside of luck from trove. I assume the Ou solo on youtube is with augmented nyame gear.

Just cause your stuck at mid tier doesn't mean you can't try to do your best with what you got.

Mid tier sets in guides are generally written as a practical stepping stone to better options, not an arbitrary stepping-off point. If you happen to get or already have Crematio, or are working within personal boundaries that give the comparison any significance, hopefully you have the critical thinking skills to recognize that 6 MAB 6 mdmg does more damage than 6 MAB alone.

hecate's also has magic critical hit rate
If I get the wiki right that equates to +13 MATT 3 times out of 100 nukes which is imho a bit more difficult to put into perspective with the 6 mdmg of crematio.

Btw, afaik divine might II also drops BiS for BLU regarding general mdef and meva, so while I'm already at it...

And for enmity, yes. But neither Trux nor Sanare is terribly important at that stage, and you could easily ignore both altogether unless you're gearing up for Bumba.

3% chance of MAB+10 is basically irrelevant. Waste of a stat, they should've made mcrit work like Sroda Tathlum from the start.

Yup for purely taking magic damage with DT capped otherwise. If you're taking any physical damage or dealing damage, I'd take Nyame for a tough piece.


Trove doesn't drop accessories from Ou, only hands

T_T

Samnuha Coat II +8
Amalric Gages +1 II +6
Mujin Band II +5
Assimilator's Shalwar +3 +10 and +16 Burst affinity but no Matt
Warder's Charm +1 +10
Locus Ring +5

Do any of these have a place in a burst affinity set? Left Jhakri Pigaches +2 out since they aren't competition to empy boots +2 or higher and bunzi's rod is probably also a no brainer, if you have it.


Hashishin Basmak +3 +15
And possibly
Bunzi's Rod +10
+9 from Magic Burst Damage trait (doubt setting higher trait would be worth the spell points)

leaves us at 15-34 magic burst damage, *edit* if maxentius is in your mainhand and bunzi sub it's 19-38.
cap is 40.

mujin band, and maybe warder's charm, would be as far as id go personally

Amalric Gages +1 even by today's standards are pretty decent for bursting. Same INT as Agwu's, just low on macc. For elemental magic the skill somewhat made up for it.

Elemental magic skill afaik doesn't help for BLU magic.

There is a macc bonus for magic bursting but not sure I would want to sacrifice hashishin for something with so little macc, it's also 1% loss of empy set proc. When I'm thinking about sortie bosses as targets btw, dhartok for example.

Magic Burst Damage trait doesn't count against the 40 cap. It's equipment only.

Future you will be interested in the AF legs when they get upgraded next.

If Convergence wasn't 10 minute cooldown I'd say you can bump 5 points in assimilation for it, but I'm not really interested in that trade. It's not like Convergence is a 2nd burst affinity cooldown, so you're not picking up extra burst windows just 25% more damage for 1 spell every 10 minutes. Ability needs a serious upgrade.

I recently got rid of DM aug'd herc legs that were MBB 15% and had some decent MAB, but I didn't see myself using them. If you aren't meleeing, then you could go for the same on a Colada. I wouldn't pick a 2nd one over bunzi rod just like I wouldn't pick a 2nd MMB ring over metamorph ring. You could fish for the same on a herc head because at least the empy head is the weakest piece, nuking wise. But I wouldn't burn Dark Matter on this because...

I suspect that you'll have a solution to this problem once Limbus comes out. 10 bunzi + 15 empy feet + 10~15 AF legs = 35~40 MBB. Mujin band if it's 15, Locus or Maxentius if it's still 10. AF head might look like something as well.

Playing with the thought to drop VR cornelia ring reward for something more magic focused.
Medada's Ring is a obvious choice but Ephramad's Ring also kind of fits the bill, at least for blinding fulgor. The physical damage limit might be usefull vs ghatjot but doubt I'm hitting attack cap vs botulus.

Has anyone tested Entomb or Embalming Earth vs dhartok? Wiki states stone resistance as his weakest.

I don't think you're thinking this, but PDL doesn't work on Physical Blue magic. I got a working as intended bug report last year that I was not happy about.

Are you trying to solo/low man Sortie with BLU or are you trying to modify a melee or nuking strat?

Dhartok does take the most damage from Earth damage. We nuke on gravitation on him regularly.

Sortie solo Ghatjot, Esurient Botulus and Dhartok. Currently rotating Searring Tempest, Retinal Glare and Blinding Fulgor on Dhartok with Blinding Fulgor also used for burst affinity.

Are you beating Dhartok currently and do you have time to do C or other objectives?

Are you doing physical WSs or magical WSs for Dhartok or a mix? He definitely has a WS Wall.

For club you can realm razer > Black Halo for bursting light. Flash nova twice for frag. True Strike > Black Halo for Gravitation to burst Earth. Judgment is just good for doing damage and breaking up the wall. You'd want to alternate these some to keep your damage from getting reduced.

For Sword you can RLB > Expacion for earth or if you can 3 step: SB > RLB > Expacion or burning blade > expacion > RLB if you want to avoid WS walling. Req > SB for quick Fragmentation isn't bad either. Getting 3k tp with Tizona and swapping the first 3 step around is how I would generally start the fight, Exp > RLB > SB > burst earth. After AM3 is up I would assume you'd want to close with Expacion instead.

Burning > Shining > RLB > Seraph is what I would use as RDM to avoid walling but that's more of an SU5 trick than something a BLU would find useful.

The best advice for more galli is just to group up. I ground out my first stage 3 with 3 people and our high days were like 23k because we didn't know what we were doing. Now I can have the 8th boss mess up on a casual run and get 40k for significantly less effort than I used to do with 3 people. 50k for a casual mage runs is pretty standard.

He probably solo for a reason and also probably killing Dhartok with only magic, rotating 3 spells back to back, but I could be wrong.

I just wanna say I am glad SimonSes is back...

I've first tried melee and WSing and I think I also had 1 success but it took like 45+ minutes. ACC requirement was pretty steep even without off handing thibron to the point where simple 2 step SCs became infrequent and I'm pretty sure ATT was uncapped, too. Damage was bad, maybe 5-8k with odd spikes to ~12k, constant moving due to miasmas made DPS even more pitiful. Gave up on melee although I had some gear upgrades and gained some mlvls since my last melee attempt.

Got inspired by some youtube video and currently I'm doing magic only, rotating the 3 spells I mentioned, only engaged for trusts.
First ran into MP problems but since I figured that out I'm now at clear times around 18-25 minutes with personal best at 15-16 minutes, got super lucky with empy procs probably went in during lights day but not sure.
Avoiding miasmas is still annoying but takes way less of a hit to DPS with magic approach than it does for melee. On the downside I have to do more spellset switching which loses quite some time.

Once I'm done with my routine (Esurient Botulus KI -> Dhartok -> Ghatjot KIs -> Ghatjot) I have enough time for teleporter chests (Casting at A, /hurray at B and throw away item at D). On the way from Ghatjot to entrance teleporter I often come across Abject Obdella in the square hallways. On a really good run I have enough time for basement E empy lockstyle chest and on a really really good one enough to finish Biune Porxie right after in the large room with fire elementals - although just the NM, not the chest condition.


Befor that I did ABCD leech, pig, bhoot and fomor for gold chest (but also skipped Biune Porxie red chest condition) and did the easy blue basement chests of FGH if enough time was left. After a while I had way too many Ra'kaznar sapphires while needing Ra'kaznar Starstones which forced me to try Dhartok, he seems to have a better drop rate on starstones than FGH blue chests do.

Wonder how BLU would do on a Triboulex route since BLU has some decent light based spells to rotate and I read light spells reduce setting the stage damage.

How much fast cast is required to hit cap feather tickle/reaving wind recast? Assuming capped magic haste, 23% gear haste, 34% FC in gear/traits, and emp hand reduction.

Just curious on if you can cap with caster's roll and if so how much from it do you need.

should be over capped i think

23 + 43 + 17 + 15 or 16 depending on +2/3 hands so 98 total if im adding it all correctly

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Spell_Recast

Hands are additive to fast cast term after division, plug and solve.

90*(1-haste)*(1-floor(FC/2)-hands%), floor is 18s. If gear is 230/1024 (might be slightly more, but likely not significantly so) then with capped magic haste and +3 hands you need 50% total FC.

That said I swear I remember something about recasts working in whole second increments? If true you could go as low as 44% with no practical difference, maybe 42% depending on exact gear haste fraction.