The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

This is moreso about good practice and making the most of what's available to you, but if you're gonna bring up the "excess DW doesn't matter" thing without support again I'm more than happy to break it down in a manner that's both useful and accurate. I've never really been a "theoretical perfect world" kind of guy, I'm more about practical theorycraft.

For instance, this is incorrect. If Suppa/Reiki loses TP/hit, Eabani is usually better even when holding TP. 5 attack isn't a lot these days, and WS damage is such a heavy portion of our DPS now that the extra TP generally holds more value. The two might perform comparably if you're holding for Requiescat since that WS scales so poorly and has generally lackluster damage, but Savage Blade and Expiacion both scale well with excess TP and even CDC gains a decent boost to base crit rate. Amnesia/holding past 3k is arguably its own beast if you really want to get into that, since optimally you'd disregard TP gain entirely in favor of optimizing white damage.

Can you provide some examples of exactly how much TP/hit is lost per additional point of excess DW?


If you're assuming capped Acc, sure, I agree with you. That skill on Suppa gives acc too though, which is obviously a much more important consideration than attack. IDK what kind of buffs you're running around with these days, but on anything that matters I'm willing to bet most of us aren't acc capped.

Can you provide some examples on the dps advantage of +5 acc and attack?

I would rather optimize my tp/hit to reduce time btwn weapon skills and then use other gear if possible to make sure acc is capped. Not saying 1% DW is going to be the difference between 4 Stepping and 3 stepping but priority-wise if I can optimize tp/hit then use like sushi or something to cap acc, that's what I would do.

I'm sure if acc is a problem you will need more than just 5. But if I were fighting something as evasive as say Neak then yea, forget everything else and stack on the acc. If you can't connect you gain 0 benefit from your tp/hit gain.

To confirm (again if needed), 2 boxes do drop from Sarama and likely the other Wanted 3 nms.

We used a fairly solid strategy that worked even better when our Tizona III/Almace III BLU joined in on the carnage and we had Sarama down in 2 minutes. We used me on BLU, COR, 2x GEO, and WHM. Melees did /RUN. I used both wards and swordplay and sushi and ended up with about 85% accuracy.

The best part was on our last fight, I popped the 1st coffer and got a Tanmogayi +1. It wasn't long later when I experienced my first 20k+ CDC. This sword is really cool!

My point is that I think it's very unlikely that going over by 1 or 2 DW is going to reduce your time between weapon skills AT ALL. It's just not a big enough TP/hit loss. I'm clearly not saying GO OVERBOARD ON DW ON PURPOSE, GUYZ. But if the piece you're considering causes you to go slightly over cap from DW but gives you other benefits, it's highly likely the benefit outweighs the small cost.

Exact impact will depend on weapon delay and amount of store TP, but in general, you're only losing like 2 TP/hit by going over a point of DW. And there are "tiers" that adding an additional point of DW won't even cause another drop. For instance, super quick test I just did: put on a bunch of gear with minimal multi-hit for ease of tracking and only changed DW pieces that would change DW amount but not affect Store TP. Coladax2, DW3 trait, capped magical haste.

DW+0~11: 136 tp/hit
DW+12~13 (1-2 over cap): 134 tp/hit
DW+14~15 (3-4 over cap): 132 tp/hit

Note that ALL of these amounts of tp/hit results in the same 8-hit to WS build, so you're not WSing any faster. The difference is that maybe you have an extra ~10-20 TP on that WS, which is virtually meaningless for damage (e.g. a 1360tp CdC versus a 1340 CdC, both after 10 hits).

Even being as generous as possible to the other argument, MAYBE that results in a very rare fluke TP=996 a couple times over the course of an hour causing a 1 round delay to WS (assuming you didn't get a multi-hit proc, AND assuming you're actually on the ball enough to WS instantly whenever you have TP anyway). I don't find this to be a terribly realistic concern.

On the contrary, even a relatively small amount of Acc could be more useful. Acc+5 might up your hit rate a couple percent, which isn't earth shattering but also isn't insignificant (and would very likely be worth a sacrifice of, say, 2/3000 tp/hit). Acc is also a much more realistic concern, seeing as how you're likely not capped acc on anything that "matters" these days. If you're not talking about serious content and you're just assuming capped acc, my question is how much it really matters to you to micromanage to that extent for trash mobs.

Or, say, getting some additional multi-attack in exchange for a 2~4 tp/hit loss. May well be worth it and is probably more likely to cause a proc that gets you to WS SOONER, than it is to cause you to miss a round due to tp loss from DW.

Ten kills. 2 Coffers a pop. 1 of each Sword. Tam-is-gay, and the random RUN Great Sword I'll never use for anything but a cool Mannequin piece. o.o

I got my sword, I am VERY happy. o.o

Wow, that BLU sounds really badass!

Any objections to removing some pre-SoA armor from the spreadsheet to cut down on list bloat?

Sounds like a really good idea!

Also, question: what's the highest MAB augment that can occur on Herculean gear? Got this from Dark Matter and I'm obviously quite pleased, but curious as to how close to max it is.

That'd be nice

Acc/att/macc/mab cap at 50 for dark matter/campaign augments, which is substantially higher than what you get from normal augments.

This question was probably asked somewhere in this thread, but is Assimilator's Shalwar worth making anymore? All the other Affinity AF gear is worthwhile, but I'm not sure if Burst Affinity+12 is worth losing out on MAB+50 from Amalric Slops.

The AF1 pants are really only good for spell interruption, if you're into that.

That brings me to ask...and I know I've seen it answered elsewhere prior:

But do you NEED the Chain and Burst Affinity pieces equipped while using Chain/Burst Affinity in order ot get their effect? Same with the Diffusion Bonus from AF2, or can you just equip on activation to obtain the bonus?

They need to be on when you cast.

Casting: As in Aftercast? During the Casting/Cast of the Spell/Weaponskill? Is the bonus you obtain from using them with those pieces worth the use of them, or better to cast in standard aftercast gear. Thank you.

Also, I have 2 Vulcan Pearls for my Earrings, since getting the other earrings is out of the question currently.

GS is not equipping both Pearls during Physical Spells. I had this same problem with equipping two Skullrenders on BST.

Is there a way to put one pearl in lets say inventory, then another in Wardrobe, and have GS diviate which area they are pulling each Pearl from, to equip them properly/at the same time during activation of Aftercast? Otherwise, it gets confused and doesn't equip but a single pearl. Sometimes in the left, sometimes in the right ear. But never both.

Since I am sure others have had this issue before, and there is some sort of work around to it.

They need to be in your midcast (the gear you have equipped when the effect actually happens.) Take your AF2 feet example. When you actually complete your cast of the spell, that's when they need to be equipped. After the spell has COMPLETED, gear does not matter.

As for the bonuses being worthwhile, it depends on the gear. Assimilator's legs? Hell no. Hashishin feet? Hell yes. Weigh the lost stats against the bonus provided by the item.

The Chain Affinity/Burst Affinity pieces need to be in midcast for the spell you're casting. Accomplishing that would be to check if CA or BA is active, then equipping the right gear (I don't use the artifact legs for burst affinity, they have no other MAB stats that are useful for magical nukes). You can look at a blu mote lua and see how it's implemented.

Updated spreadsheet

Changelog:

-Added a ton of Herc armor variants, along with a few other pieces. Sequence now has an offhand variant named "Sequence (offhand)" to reflect the lack of offhand TPBonus functionality. Final versions of Tizona/Almace are currently tagged as "AG" (afterglow).
-Removed most pre-ilevel armor.
-Updated i119 abjuration stats.
-Implemented new ratio/pDIF caps.
-Updated and sorted food list (acc/att, acc, att; roughly ordered by stat bonus); shoutouts to Spicy for keeping BGwiki organized and up to date on food stats. Implemented TA from food for Behemoth Steak/+1.
-Added support for gifts. Enter your # of JPs on the setup page and it'll automatically handle acc, attack, and JTB 1/2 gifts.
-Added Escha/Reisenjima functionality. Can enter your vorseal values (adjust for blessings as needed) on the setup page. Stalwart's Tonic toggle works with Escha.
-Updated Expiacion WSC/fTP and implemented mythic damage bonus.
-Repurposed mythic AM2 toggle (which doesn't really apply to Tizona since it gets macc, not attack) as an AM1 accuracy toggle.
-Trimmed out excess cells on a few pages to reduce file size and improve performance.

Think that's everything?

Stuff for the future:
-Implement Fotia Gorget/Belt
-Implement TA damage for Hetairoi Ring
-Support for additional temporary items? (Champion's/Braver's/Soldier's?)
-Implement functionality for physical spells, nukes and magic WS, and cures.
-Skillchains? Party skillchains are (partially) outside the scope of the spreadsheet, but a basic option to calculate and incorporate skillchain damage would be a nice feature.
-New mob stats would be nice, though it likely won't happen for a long while if I end up being the one to collect that data.

Regarding Herc gear:

The sheer quantity is kind of appalling, but it's my best shot at representing a decent range of augments in such a miserably random system. There are three tiers for each augment variation:

-Top has max base stats, max trait/special stats, and +35 acc/attack. This mirrors the "perfect" augments from the previous version of the spreadsheet.
-Hi cuts base stats and acc/attack to 80% of top. Trait/special stats are still maxed, with the current exception of DW (max-1).
-Mid cuts base stats and acc/attack to ~50% of their maximum values. Trait/special stats are reduced by one.

Special stat vs base stat first in the name denotes fern vs taupe augments, with values adjusted accordingly. STP is currently not included, as top level STP augments tend to perform comparably to much weaker TA augments even under mythic AM3. May remove a few other variations in the future after further evaluation. There are also a few "Herculean Mine" entries for the user to modify with their own augments. Rename, duplicate, etc as desired.

Let me know if there are any items missing you'd like added or if something isn't working properly. Link in the guide is also updated to this new version.

Appreciate the work you done here.

Now do it for every other job! Nightfyre for new Mote.

Got +8 fast cast on Herc hands so I assume it can go on head too. That would be 15% fast cast to beat even Carmine +1 with path D, though Carmine would probably still be the winner for Sudden Lunge due to huge acc and macc.

Was that with Dark Matter or a Fern stone? Highest I've ever seen with Fern was 6.

Dark Matter augments

My luck on DM augs has sucked so far. Best aug I got so far was on Herc hands with 2QA and 3DA but no Acc or Att so I'll probably just use them for fodder. I'm hopeful I will get something decent.

The likelihood of getting the fabled 5 DA, 4 TA, 3 QA augments is so infinitesimal, that you're better off just using DM augments in the hopes of getting Refresh or TH pieces. We can finally get rid of Serpentes now, so hallelujah.

Thanks for the effort Nightfyre, appraciated! I think I found a small oversight though. Sequence skill difference doesn't seem to be reflected in the final acc and att calculations in the sets (keywords: "I think", might be wrong :p).

I actually had some Herc boots that got TH2 but I couldn't keep them at the time because they were my only pair and I had 20Acc/20Att 19MAB/MAC, 2% Crit Damage and -10% Spell interruption rate. Not sure if I did the "right" thing...

Wrong thing.

Yeah, it's not a good idea to aug your already decent melee herc pieces with dark matter. Get another pair of herc to do augments with.

All this Herc gear is destroying my inventory... I need April to hurry up so we can get Wardrobe 2.