The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

according to http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Mighty_Guard it is 15% haste, 25% def, and 30/tick regen. The best thing about it is that it is it's own unique icon/buff, so the effects stack.

Edit: It isn't a spell you equip. so you're full timing it anyway. I think you should have the buff up whenever you can, diffused as often as possible in a party environment.

Any guesses on our last Job Poibt gift?

+3 trait would be broken and even hurtful with top tier current setups. This would be the lazy way of doing things, but I think they'll give us something different.

I'm trying to think outside the box but can't really think of anything decent. Possibly +x% to Blue Magic spell damage, lame but easy to do for them.

Maybe even more set points, but at this point that's excessive.

I don't think +3 is practical to expect. It's bonkers that they gave us +2, tbh.

May depend on how many more milestone type gifts they do. 1200->2100 or something is quite a gap, so maybe there'll be more than one.

Practically speaking, they could probably justify something merely okay-ish like a repeat of the 550 gift. Knocking Unbridled Learning down to a 3 minute timer or something would be neat though, or having it apply to the next two applicable spells instead of just one.

Increase the chance of learning a blue magic spell by 10%

UL on a 3 min. timer would be nice, but even better:

Diffusion on a 5 min timer instead of 10!

I really miss the [-] button sometimes!!!

With the presumed increase to Blue Magic Points (5, 10, 15 more?!) - we would basically need to have more spell slots to even be able to use them. Pretty sure most of my sets use 18~20 spells as it is.

Lowering the recast on any or all of Chain Affinity, Burst Affinity, Diffusion and Unbridled Learning would be sexy as hell.

Wouldn't be shocked though if it's just a repeat of the 550 gift. Some jobs have really lousy 100/550/1200 gifts compared to others.

Really hard to say what they'll do. In some cases, SE is going bananas with making jobs crazy powerful, while others collect dust and get crap.

Hey, I still need the three Vagary spells, along with Crashing Thunder, Polar Roar, Droning Whirlwind and whatever Tojil's is called...

I'd imagine it'll be similar to our 550 gift, just like 100/1200 were extremely similar or the same for most/all jobs. So possibly distract/frazz IV for rdm for example. I'm not sure if they'll increase the % boost to our 550 gift at 2100 or give us something similar. Something I thought about that I wouldn't mind seeing is more spell slots, not points. We're about to jump up to 80 total set points to spend across 20 slots, it wouldn't hurt to bump that to 25 slots or something. I'm already using 18-20 slots in most of my spellsets with only 75 set points so 5 more set points won't help me as much as I'd like it to without them opening up more slots to put spells in. I doubt it would happen as I have no idea how they could implement that, but just throwing it out there lol.

Edit: Francisco beat me to it on the spell slots lol.

I kind of doubt that they'll give gifts that invalidate previous gifts, so Distract/Frazzle IV seem unlikely.

Yea they have mentioned in the past that adding more spell slots was "problematic." That's why they keep giving us high set point spells that give single tiers of traits on their own, so you can set the traits you want with less spells, provided you have the set points to do it. Hence a lot of set point increases.

I'm betting the last gift will be another 5 or 10% WSC boost to spells like the 550 one. Buff duration would also be cool though. Depends on how big they want to go with the true "Final" gift though.

Yes that's a good point. At first I was thinking our 1200 gift overwrites our 100 gift, but it technically adds to it not overwrites it. Our 1200 gift doesn't give us +2 job trait, we get +1 from both 100/1200. At the same time, we can't go back to DW I or II, so in a sense it does kind of "overwrite" the 100 gift as it limits the traits we can set now to being at least t3+. Not saying we WANT lower than t3 of any specific trait, just saying technically it's not our choice anymore either.

I hope it's not a copy of the 550 gift... really only benefits "mage mode" these days - although I guess that's not a terrible thing...

I could see them replicating the 550 for our 2100 like they replicated the 100 for 1200, but that would cause some balance issues. Only need to imagine a SCH with a 17 second stratagem recast to know that might not be the best idea.

I'd be very happy with a reduced cooldown on diffusion or UL, perhaps some set slots. Honestly, another JTB could be around the corner, but I sincerely do not want that. There are already enough people talking about BLU being OP, I don't want that to become more pronounced. Also, only being able to have DW4 would not be nice.

BA recast lowered to 30 sec would be cool too

I was thinking that too - it'd certainly be interesting. I was duoing Garbage Gel with a SCH the other day, and it was fun bursting Spectral Floe on his skillchains. I didn't care much about Burst Affinity until recently, because with my previous gear levels it wasn't really practical or worthwhile. Also didn't realize it effected spells even if you're not magic bursting. Can't get enough of it now.

They didn't replicate ALL of the 100 gifts at 1200. Bst for example didn't drop to 5s charge time on Ready moves at 1200, they got tp bonus instead. If they choose to replicate the 550 gifts again like they did to 100, I'd imagine sch would get something entirely different, not an additional reduction in gem recharge time (though I'd have so much fun with that since sch is my #2 job lol). So just because some jobs wouldn't make sense for a duplicate, it doesn't mean it won't happen. That said, I really hope the 2100 gifts will be unique across all jobs since it's likely going to be the last.

I can't wait until Oraen releases his spreadsheet, I've also wondered how Adhemar can beat Tam. I want to see what the DPS difference is to make my choice (I don't have Tam yet anyways) but if its super small I'll be happy using Tam just for the ability to SC a small bit more often.

Do you guys build these sheets yourselves or is there a template floating around?

Spreadsheet : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9dF3NWykG3MR3ZlNWdWaFNhV2M/view?usp=sharing

Understand that this is not perfect. The base file I used to build off of had some issues. Namely, no way to add gifts/JPs and some cells are messed up. The Set 1 category under the gear tab has a few cells, namely TA%, that do not automatically update. You will need to double check that any gear changes are accurately changing the total values. I use Set 2, as all cells are working properly there. Spells and traits associated with the spells will also need to be manually adjusted, as the sheet does not comprehend JTB/JTB2. I am also unaware of how to add set bonuses automatically, so the Adhemar, Amalric, and Carmine set bonuses will need to be adjusted in the total value cell manually.

Other than that, basically all gear is added in and all spells are updated. As I said, this thing is far from perfect, but it came with issues I'm not able to fix due to limited knowledge about building spreadsheets on my part. My next project will be to build an entirely new spreadsheet from the ground up, and I'll be getting in contact with others among the forums that are doing such for their jobs. I'll work on this as I can, but until then, this spreadsheet will accomplish the task of accurately simulating gear choices and DPS potential. You'll just need to pay extra attention to hold its hand throughout the process.

Also, as there was talk about GS files somewhat recently, I'll be adding my current GS as well. This uses Prothescar's original file, just with some expanded gearsets and newer spells defined in proper sets. There are also weather/storm functions active for elemental WS/spells. I'll be adding small things to this as time goes on, but it's worked quite well for me through the years.

http://pastebin.com/ktLfeCg8

But what spells do I need to learn?

When using Gearswap to have different levels of accuracy, how much do you guys usually add for each level?

At current, my default TP set is:

ItemSet 335715

...and I have the following Acc Swaps:

ItemSet 338739

Taeon Boots have a +25 Acc augment, and Head has +17 Acc/Atk...

Top out at 1098 Acc with all this equipment on, two Acc Bonus traits (Nat. Med & Anvil Lightning), and Ionis on... Reforged Relic +1 body only comes out to a 3 Acc gain after the DEX is accounted for, so meh...

Default TP set with Ionis in "I'm gonna go melee Soundsplitter Bats" mode has 996 Acc.

What should be my ultimate goal for a max-Acc build, and what are some good Acc Levels to have preset for specific content? For example, Floppy's guide said 1100 for Sinister, before Sushi.

So assuming trust situations with Erratic Flutter, 2 marches DW3 (from spells and 100 JP +1) and DW gear +13, if you add MG would you be at cap?

Magical haste cap is 43.75, Erratic Flutter (30%) + Mighty Guard (15%) overcaps you at 45% - Marches from trusts do nothing for you in that scenario. Other than the 45s every 10 mins that it's down.

I tend to aim for 1250 Acc while fully buffed in Sinister, this will overcap T1s but probably put you right at the cap for T3s. If you have someone that can actually land distract maybe even 1200. If you can get Nibiru it makes acc a joke really, my double Nibiru fodder TP no buffs acc is something silly like 1050.

I don't really know for other things, Escha T1s don't seem evasive enough to warrant swapping out of normal gear in my experience. Never done T2 or T3s with melee. If I really need acc I will switch in things like Grounded Mantle, Zennaroi Earring, Ramuh+1

Wait so what is the max duration time for MG, 3 minutes right? And since I think UL is 5 min recast isn't that 2 minutes of down time?