The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

The mosquitos/beetles in Reisinjima are great for cleaving. You will need Occultation, and Diamondhide is helpful as well. The dual elemental spells are pretty much a requirement for cleaving these mosquitos unless you want to use 3+ subductions to kill them. The combination of Entomb followed by Spectral Floe is easily enough to kill.

So, the general strategy is summon trusts, erratic flutter, occultation, diamondhide, +any additional support spells, then pull mosquitoes/beetles, Entomb, Spectral Floe, Repeat.

Where is that? There's a beetle, boar, and mantis camp near 2, but I cannot stand the mantis mobs as they wipe shadows with their pounce.

^ #5. Note that beetles are nocturnal.

WHat is the key to cleaving? I got only 60 jp on my blu and cannot seem to get over 1100 on subduction..... i only got one peice of alamric atm (head) but all the other best buyable MAB gear.

Can I not cleave yet due to jp? or do you have to have amazing MAB gear first to do it? Can you post the bare minimum set needed to start?

What weapons are you using?

As Kyte said, weapons are the biggest boost. Clubs recommended, but some swords have decent magic damage and mab stats. Another note is consistency - is it consistently 1100 or dips that low?

Buyable MAB gear could mean anything, and Amalric head isn't amazing for MAB as much as it is for MACC. Helios with high augs are a good start, but it may be better to just go to Amalric gear in your other slots to save gil in the long run. For feet, you could upgrade Empyrean. You'll think a few pieces of mab won't make much difference but as you stack and stack it'll become very noticeable.

right now i got the 2 starter 117 sparks/balyd clubs, im going to try working on nibiru soon, but im a return player on new char and its pretty gimp so its hard to find a group for it. I have nibiru sword but its augmented with acc.

sadly the 1100 is avg, 900-1300~ i what I eyeball, i dont parse. simply put its not enough to make them soloable for me.

This is what I am rolling with atm, obviously lots to change. ANy quick suggestions to fix are welcome. I know all HQ abjs etc are better, but unobtainable atm for me.
ItemSet 342283

Even if you auged the sword with magic stats it'd be useless for cleaving. Get some Nibiru Cudgels and aug them, that alone will be a significant boost.

i posted my set above, i had left out the link before. any quick fix advice? today im going for clubs, goning to get 2 with a blu friend that said he can solo it np.

You could reforge AF3 hands/feet to 109.

What you have is on the right track. First thing I would consider is less the gear you have, and more what your target is. Do you get that damage range against stuff out in Ceizak or something, or are you looking at Reisenjima mobs? Might be that you're getting resisted most of the time.

While you'll address that to a large degree by improving your gear over time, you could offset it for the time being by changing up your spell set, using crepes (if you aren't), and that kind of thing.

I would strongly recommend keeping Carcharian Verve aquaveil up at all times cause its just too easy for Reisenjima VT+ mobs to interrupt your casting even with occultation up.

What crepes would you suggest? I never use food when trying to cleave, which may because I never successfully can do it haha!

the 1100 ish avg is normally on stuff im just running around on in each-zitah, so that should give you a good indication of how far I feel I am from reis (my goal).

I am actively working towards full amalric set, I am sure I will get that before af3 (stupid farming KI), so would there be a reason outside a mid grade for now to get the af3?

Pear Crepes aren't particularly expensive from the Curio Moogle, and are 20% MAcc/45 MAcc cap. In some cases it might prove more worthwhile to use defensive food or something, but crepes are a good option to have.

If you're not having MAcc issues, you might also be having macro/script issues, depending on how you have that set up.
It's not the you don't have a lot of room to improve with gear, just, your results seem abnormally low. May want to double check for stuff like that too.

Amalric hands, legs, feet, and eventually body should be something you should work on. In addition to having more MAB, they also give you MAcc via path A augments at the very least.

If you've been doing Delve, you have an option called Eddy Necklace, which gives MAB+11 and Macc+5. However, you also should get some Quetz kills in Reisenjima and eventually you will get a Sanctity Necklace, which gives +10 to melee and magic stats, including mab and macc.

For a while I used Psycloth Vest for body because you can augment added INT, but I wouldn't actively seek it out since the enhancement is +14 INT. You also can, however, augment another path and get MAcc on it instead.

You have Ammo options for magic as well and should definitely put something there. Dosis Tathlum is an AH item that adds magic damage, and Ghastly Tathlum is a Unity drop from CL125 Specter Worm, which has INT and Mdmg on it.

Of course you know about Nibiru Cudgels. They are one of our best options for magic damage and have have really useful stats. They will be a noticeable improvement over your current wands.

For pure damage, Herculean Helm that is augmented for magic is BIS for BLU.

I didn't read anything that's going on in this thread but Spicy asked me to link this page
Bgwiki-Magic Accuracy food

Edit: I guess he says chocolate, don't shoot the messenger

thanks for the info guys, ive already made big strides tonight
check out the new clubs!

ItemSet 342283

Nice work! How are the subductions now? Next course of action I would recommend are the legs and feet, as neither of those are 119 so getting hit while in them is no beuno. Plus there are several better options for them: Hagondes +1, Helios, Amalric, Dawn trousers for legs and Helios, Amalric, Empyrean for feet.

Is there any point in raising Blue magic skill to absurd amounts (600+)? I was messing around with item sets and came up with this:

ItemSet 342311

Ends up with 635 skill with merits, JP and max augments. I know Occultation and other spells get a bonus for blue skill but barring getting another 15 to get another shadow from occultation, any benefit for having this set?

Being able to tell everyone you have 635 skill on BLU.

There's also an earring I thought and of course Renaye Ring.

and Antica ring

It's applicable for Magic Barrier.

Max skill set: ItemSet 166359

Very little reason to go this far though. Renaye Ring isn't a great choice for your Adoulin reward, and without it you can't hit 650 on Occultation. Likewise you're not often in a position to utilize dual path D Iris, so that's another 60 skill gone and you're below 600 (and even if you did have Renaye, 600 isn't possible without weapons). Most buffs also either don't utilize skill or cap at/below 500, so you're really only looking at Occultation and Magic Barrier for a full skill set. Occultation works in tiers, so most of the time you should just shoot for 550. If you're nuking and don't care about TP then great, you can sub in Iris x2 and break 600. Magic Barrier benefits from every point of skill, so you could potentially make a case for going higher there.

Ammo, neck, body, back, and leg slots all get at least twice as much skill as FC, so those stay. That gets us to 549 skill, so you're only one point short of 550 if you've got a skill+10 augment on Cornflower Cape. If you're stuck at skill+9 like me (have yet to see a skill+10 augment at all, ugh), skill+2 from a ring or earring still gets you to 550. MMM is probably the faster option if you can already make the required maze or know someone who can. Might be faster regardless, certainly less hassle with augment *** (earrings are from Battaru Royale BCNM key).

13 shadows though! /drool

Playing with the BLU spreadsheet a bit today, some quick numbers:

-Tizona/Almace and Almace/Sequence are incredibly close with AM3 up on both. Almace actually comes out slightly ahead on the spreadsheet right now, but Tizona's superior WS frequency and higher average WS damage offers the possibility of more and bigger skillchains.

-AM3 Tizona/Almace vs AM1 Almace/Sequence favors Tizona by about 3%, but if you incorporate the rebuilding phase for AM3 then DPS is roughly comparable before taking skillchains into account.

-Offhand Sequence only beats a very well augmented Colada by about 1%. TP Bonus not working in the offhand is really quite unfortunate, and it's otherwise ill suited to the offhand position.

-Sequence/Colada is about 3% ahead of Colada/Colada for CDC spam, and more than 10% behind Tizona/Almace. Sequence/Almace is ~7% behind Tizona/Almace. This is before considering aftermath and Radiance/Umbra skillchains. While TPB+500 provides a substantial boost to Savage Blade and Expiacion, you're still stuck using Requiescat at least once if you want to utilize the aftermath. If you're solo then you're either looking at using it again (ex Savage->Expi/CDC->Req->Req) to close Umbra or using CA Thrashing Assault en route to Radiance (Req->Savage->Thrashing->CDC), both of which are substantial losses. Even with a very strong Requiescat set (STR/att/TA Herc, HQ Carmine body, etc), I'm struggling to envision this as a net gain under perfect conditions, let alone if anything messes up the skillchain. Thrashing Assault also increases the risk of dropping the skillchain prematurely since it returns no TP and incurs an extra second of forced inaction. The situations in which mainhand Sequence is the best mainhand for a BLU strike me as very few and far between at best, even in party situations. Trying to take full advantage of the aftermath and our better weaponskills at the same time is simply too awkward to realize its full potential.

Thanks for asking :D they went up a HUGE amount. AFter i finished I just warped quick before bed and did some to those turtle at wkr sport, was pulling in 3600-3800 now, thats a big jump and I can say for the time I am happy until I can get almaric :D

What about Almace/Colada(Sequence) AM3 vs Tizona/Almace AM3?
Is the build up for AM3 on Almace worth doing or just spam for AM1?

Almace/Colada AM3 would be ~evenish with Tizona/Almace AM3, slightly behind when factoring in skillchains. I don't recommend trying to rebuild AM3 midfight on Almace; there's not much benefit even under perfect conditions and if you're casting anything more than Nature's Meditation on a regular basis you're probably drifting towards a net loss. That simulation was geared towards shorter fights where you can start with 3k TP and don't have to worry about rebuilding with either weapon.

Bear in mind that's with a really good Colada.

Starting with 3k tp sounds unlikely for most stuff i do, i'm working on sequence/almace and screw tizona AM.

I got a thing!

Tizona is still irreplaceable from a utility perspective. If there's one weapon of the three I'd encourage everyone to make, it's definitely Tizona.