The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Speaking of Herc feet, I've seen tons of players on Sylph turn them into nuking feet for BLU. Please do not do this. They're fine for MAB feet for COR or THF or other light-armor jobs, but not BLU. As Nightfyre said, the complete absence of any INT at all outweighs any additional bonus you may be getting from the extra MAB. AF3 feet or Amalric/+1 should still be the go-to. Still bitter we weren't on Merlinic, but I guess we can't have everything.



In other news, things have finally calmed down a good bit for me, so I should be able to actually do my job and get things updated within the next few days. Big thanks to Nightfyre for assistance with keeping the written portions of the guide up to date.

Could have a blu who hadn't gotten their JA bonuses do one. Like blu/rdm and set FC.5

I only have my first JA bonus atm due to complete lack of play time so if you can think of a test to do with that which doesn't involve needing to figure out TH on a mob afterward... I could test it.

BLU/RDM casting Stoneskin naked should be sufficient to differentiate between FC1 and FC2 using recast values. Could opt for Raise (60s base recast) for slightly better resolution if you've got an extra body around to sac.

TH actually shows up in your traits, at least up until level 2. As /THF sub, I have both TH and THII in my trait list. However, as I do not have Everyone's Grudge because I like my Rancorous Mantle, I can't actually set my TH trait. So if anybody can do so, please share.

That doesn't seem like a good test that implies it actually two different JTs instead of one trait just going higher.

Anyway I just did this test and TH II is still in my JTs list with BLU spells set.

Anyway I got a good test. I only have the 100 JP bonus atm and BLM sub gets T3 on Clear Mind JT so going to go test now.
Subjobs Clear Mind JT Tier they get:
BLM - T3, WAR - No tier, RDM - T1.
hMP CM Tiers-> T0: 12, T1: 15, T2: 18, T3: 21

BLU/blm (No Blu trait set): 21mp recovered first tock. That is T3 JT.
BLU/blm (1 Tier of CM set + 100 JP bonus): 21 still. Implies /blm higher tier working.
BLU/war (1 Tier of CM set + 100 JP bonus): 18 that is T2 CM. Shows 100 JP bonus works with CM.
BLU/war (No CM Trait at all): 12 correct for no CM JT.
BLU/rdm (1 Tier of CM set + 100 JP bonus): 18 T2. Shows BLU spells overwrite lower tier subjob tier.
BLU/rdm (No Blu trait set) : 15 that is T1.

Test showed that whatever JT Tier is higher via /subjob or BLU spells set is what you receive.

I really don't understand how this is being questioned in 2016.

Poor documentation, fuzzy memories, lack of incentive to retain information given that BLU can match or beat any subjob-accessible trait by setting just one tier now, etc. It happens; this is hardly the first time I've seen such a thing recently.

Where is the job trait list? Is this a windower addon?

Give them a break. It's not like the game's been out for 14 years :D

I knew I was being dumb for asking. I even looked before I asked. I don't think I've ever used it before because I'd always just use the wiki to look things up. I just came back to the game and leveled BLU. Was hoping this list would give tier values.

The BLUGUIDE addon for windower is amazing if you want to see what values your getting and for just swapping around spells on the fly for new JTs/Spells you need up.

Is there any kind of threshold for this? As I probably won't be sitting on Amalric +1 ... at all. I can see I'm missing out on about 19 INT or 11 INT depending on which you mentioned I use. I'm currently just using the Herc boots I have from COR and NIN-Nuking:


Is there a convenient calculator anyone can link me to for looking at things like Spectral Floe or Subduction with AF3 boots vs this? More than happy to help myself.

Didn't you fix one of the spread sheets Langly?

I too had a pair with comparable stats similar to yours. I think I may have had 8 INT but very similar. I tested subduction on mandies outside of adoulin verses AF3+1 boots and the dmg difference was very large. Just go out into the field and test it.

Yeah. I did fix some problems with the sheets, but it was only to the melee portion. I didn't touch a single aspect of any magic damage calculations.

And currently I'm stuck at work without access to FFXI. So I was just going to build an arbitrary mob and run the calcs. I've found the blue magic damage calculations, so over lunch here I'll check it out. :)

Had my hopes up for a quick answer cuz I'm lazy.

XD gotcha. To be honest I don't get how ppl use these spreadsheets. I get you plug in all the stuff you know about ur character but what about the enemy? How do you know their base stats and ele resists and all that jazz. Do you just assume? And if so how do you validate?

Through knowledge of the damage formula and the constants you're using (player STR, WDMG, Attack) you can get the expected enemy values. Remember, enemies are like players, they have jobs and subjobs. And their stats can be found.

Knowing Defense, VIT, AGI and plugging things in like environment variables (dia, hastes, etc) You can get a pretty good understanding of an 'ideal model.'

No one plays their DD'ing perfectly 100% of the time, but it's a great way to understand what setup COULD output more than others.

Well, 11 days ago I had absolutely 0% progress done getting Almace past 90. 10 days of campaign left to go, and here's where I currently stand:

100 Hvy. Metal Pouch (~900 plates)
170 Heavy Metal Plate
23 Riftcinder


I will be glad when this is over...

Thanks! Yea I must have psyched myself out on an older version cause this is really easy to use. I though I would need to input mob stats of what I was fighting but none of that. I guess we all assume we fighting toejam and base our gear of him. XD

@Kaht Nice go go! That just farming or farming and buying?

All the pouches have been farmed, but the plates and cinder are a combination of farming/buying. You get a fair amount of gil in sellables while farming for pouches, so I've just been turning that gil back in to more plates/cinders.

Wow, that's impressive. What have you been doing mostly? I haven't done VW in years way before ilevel was introduced.

How tough is it now? Can it be solo'd with trusts? I was put off doing Almace simply due to all the plates and cinders, well that and I'm poor currently because I spend most of my time working on gearing up and wrapping up spell completion (both are pretty close to being done, minus better swords than dual vamps I'm currently using)

Mostly Aello, but splashing in Qilin, Uptala, Morta, and Kaggen to change the scenery and keep me sane. It can be very disheartening going 80+ kills w/o seeing a pouch, but twice I've gotten 3 pouches in 4 kills - so it just all kinda averages out.

I made it a goal to farm 10 pouches a day. If you figure 9 plates per pouch, it'll take 166.6 pouches to finish the 95 trial (a little over 2 weeks). There were musings a couple pages back that Kaggen was the faster route, but the math doesn't add up for that claim.

Difficulty of the mobs is not an issue. It's all 99 content that can easily be solo'd, and I typically pop 2 displacers per NM just to speed things along. They drop like rocks if you use 5 displacers, but they die fast enough with 2 and you can save that extra money to buy plates/cinders.

Quick noob blu question. Is blank gaze effected by macc or blu skill or possibly both? I'm having trouble removing memento more from the t1 corse in Reis. Any help would be appreciated.

Remember to be standing in front of mob to have blank gaze work. For me a good 3.0 away works for me infront of mob.

Yeah, you need to be in front of the mob. Also magic skill/magic acc can help for resists on mobs that may be resistant or something.

and as a note of clarity, you don't need to physically face the mob for blank gaze to work, you just need to be positioned in the frontal cone

Thanks for the responses. I changed my gs a bit and macc made it work like a charm.

What augs would be needed to make Colada better offhand than NQ Tanmogayi?