The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

For tp adhemar bonnet is better than max aug dampening tam?

no, I don't think any other head gear, alone, beats maxed damp.
Adhemar +1 head, along with hands and body > damp.
But Adhemar+1 head alone I think is inferior.

Even just NQ Adhemar Bonnet provides superior DPS to a maxed Dampening. If you're looking solely for TP gain, Dampening will win slightly. However, due to the high crit damage bonus on the bonnet, coupled with our very high natural crit rate, you have superior melee phase damage.

Hi.

Whats a good weapon for a Blu cleaving dragons in Escha?

Thanks in advance.

Nibiru Cudgel x2

Yes people drastically exaggerate the difference between a very well geared DRK or WAR and a very well geared BLU. It's not as huge of a gap as people are saying. I'm not saying those 2h don't need an update, because they do. I'm just saying the difference shouldn't warrant people shouting for BLU only.

H2H is the one really desperate for an update tbh

One of best updates they could give 2handers right now isn't even a direct buff, it's broadening the number of support jobs with access to Haste II. Maybe some changes to soften hitrate barriers, but there are a variety of ways to accomplish that and they're already investigating several possibilities.

I'm leery of giving 2handers as a whole any sort of serious damage buffs just yet when most of the assertions thrown around regarding job balance are a product of eyeballing and months-old inertia rather than up to date, accurate information.

#RDMLivesMatter

RDM's kind of in a similar boat, actually. The job itself is basically fine and has access to a lot of interesting tools. They just get screwed over by overly aggressive HP scaling, and on higher level fights that's compounded by the ever-decreasing variety of viable/practical strategies we employ. If SE ever managed to address those issues I think there'd be a lot more interest in RDMs, even if WHM and SCH also had access to Haste II.

People shout for blu only for other reasons. Say if reso drk parsed 3% more than blu, the party dps on paper would still come out lower due to using haste bubbles, and lower lv SC.

Not to mention blu is the bandwagon job, with more resource available, so the community plays it better as a whole and it's easier to get people. Also DD that makes healers job easier = best choice. Same reason why it was MNK onry in delve era, even though MNK weren't the strongest at that time.

Those are the reason behind blu bandwagon. The parse of one single DD dps without considering SC, buff and support doesn't matter as much.

I'd kill for a human RDM to bring everywhere, even with inevitably obsessing over melee RDM. Think it'd take something cheesy like Temper II on party members for other people to care though.

I'm aware of why people shout for it without an explanation but a simple entrusted indi-haste would do or you could just use one BLU. Most GEO's don't even use entrust that I've seen when they zerg these fights lol. Also if that was the case people would have always used BLU since after Abyssea since they always had those support spells over other DD, and they didn't use BLU. Instead during Delve people bandwagoned other jobs outside of BLU even tho they still had those utility spells.

Of course, that assumes you have sufficient accuracy. Max Dampening has Acc+20/DEX+3 over NQ Adhemar A (in addition to QA+3% versus TA+3%), which is a pretty major difference. If you're sitting at 85% or less accuracy, Dampening's gonna win for TP gain by a lot more than "slightly", resulting in significantly more WS which should easily outweigh the atk and crit dmg from Adhemar during TP phase.

Personally, I tend to default to Adhemar B, and bump it up to Adhemar A > Dampening based on acc needs.

I blame Draylo for the Blu Bandwagon anyway incase you have not seen his videos

Yeah but that's just because CdC wasn't as much of a monster then as it is now (not to mention the addition of insanely good 100/1200 gifts and their impact on DPS). Now, BLU has those utility spells AND the crazy DPS.

During the Delve times, bringing a BLU meant sacrificing damage of a "pure DD" in order to get the utility, and that wasn't a trade-off a lot of people were willing to make. Now you have a handful of jobs that can all put out strong damage, but BLU can do that PLUS all of the added bells and whistles of AoE damage, utility spells, MG's offense+defense party buff, etc. Look at this month's Antlion Ambuscade for a practical example, a BLU can be your top melee DD and is vital to AoE/1-shot the adds, something other DD are incapable of.

There are also considerations like ease of SCing. A few BLUs? no problem if CdC-CdC Light SC spam is acceptable. Add a job that doesn't SC as well with CdC, and watch the alliance DPS drop thanks to melees stepping on each other's toes.

AOE dmg is rarely a concern.. You listed one fight and a recent one which even the GEO can handle w/o the BLU needing to do it lol. The rest you barely cast spells outside of buffs and just WS mobs down. BLU was actually a fantastic DD in Delve, and had a lot of utility and most groups always brought one. My point was that it wasn't a bandwagon then and it still had the same function it does now. A boost in CDC dmg isn't going to make a world difference, people are just over exaggerating. The SC thing was always the case after the SC adjustment.

It didn't.

Blu couldn't self cap haste back then. SC has been one of the deciding factors when we pick DDs(that's why SAM and THF were bandwagoned at one point of time), but if we are already inviting at least 1 blu for haste, may as well invite 2nd one so they can SC.

If entrust haste could be full timed I'm pretty sure there will be more room for other DD. Otherwise inviting blu to pt is often more beneficial unless your friend is complaining that he can't play his AG drk war mnk nin thf drg whatever.

It did have the same function, back then you always had a BRD doing March anyways so why would you need to self cap haste?

I'm aware its the best currently, apparently you aren't understanding what I'm saying. I'm saying the difference isn't as big as people make it out to be. You aren't going to be finishing runs 3 minutes faster or something crazy. The entrust thing depends on the content, most people use two GEO and you can alternate entrusts. If it's just one GEO you usually have it up again by the time you redo the content such as HTB or Ambuscade.

If blu could self cap haste back then then you can probably skip BRD in the pt and invite another DD for more dps.

I don't think people are claiming blu is 300% ahead of other DD or something crazy, it's just that pug shout for blu because it makes everyone life easier and that's how it's bandwagoned.

Both the blue and the geo can reset JA's by changing job/subjob at the nomad moogle so even if you are spamming run cycles in less than 10 minutes, you should still be able to keep diffusion and entrust available for every fight. For the HTB it's slightly more annoying since there isn't a nomad moogle right next to the merit KI guy so it either requires going in to your MH or leaving your HP in mhaura and getting to zone an extra time. As you get to that level of speed on either one though warp ring recast starts getting in the way as well.

even if you ignore the haste issue, cocoon is gigantic on anything that can potentially kill you

never mind that you can always use something like barrier or wilt instead of entrust haste, providing even more defensive benefit

In most of the things people use melee on now, those aren't must haves. I've done all content thus far that is melee friendly, without having to rely on Cocoon or Barrier Tusk at all times. I agree they are very beneficial but they aren't a necessity for any fight that warrants people excluding other jobs of equal gear level. This was always the case though, its not like BLU just suddenly got these spells.

There are other advantages too. Like Def down that helps everyone else's damage too. Stuns on things that works on. And it's true that the majority of this isn't new for blu. We've had utility for a long time, but people picked superior DPS over good DPS with utility. And I suppose a lot of it is that it took a while for enough people to realize the potential before shouts started asking for it. Now they can have both but for every utility spell you set, blu loses a bit of DPS and every time you cast it, you lose more. But it is pretty damn nice to have those options when ***hits the fan. Extra cures, cocoon, defender, barrier tusk, pdt set and occultation grants you a very quick shift to tank mode. Your DPS goes to hell but you also may be able to keep hate and stay alive for the party to regain control of the fight and turn it in to a win.

Yeah but other jobs have tool available to them that do similar features. Other jobs have DEF down, some even stronger or more accurate than ours (Angon specifically) and some jobs have defensive tools they can utilize like Defender, Seigan or Dread spikes. I'm not saying they are the best options but they are there. BLU has always had these spells though, so basically whats being disputed here is the fact we have a strong self haste and a stronger WS. This can be remedied with a 2h adjustment but it could potentially shift things back to "SAM/DRK Onry" because BLU always had these utility spells and not many gave a ***about them because they weren't 100% necessary for the most part.

are we really going to pretend defender or dread spikes compare to cocoon/barrier tusk? dread spikes doesn't effect anything that could actually kill you and blu generally has defender anyway

i leveled and geared it, i'm benefiting from it now, but it's downright stupid to say it's anything less than overpowered right now

It isn't overpowered, other DD are currently underpowered. If anything SCH/BLM/GEO meta is overpowered not BLU. Other jobs perform similarly to BLU such as DNC and BST(with specific conditions) yet nobody complains about them or bandwagons (BST got lucky it went under the radar.) If you're seriously saying BLU is overpowered simply because it has Barrier Tusk and Cocoon then that's downright stupid because its ALWAYS had those spells for years. They don't make or break fights. The issue is mainly the underpowered WS of other jobs, not their haste levels. ACC isn't even that hard to come by for most content levels people use DD on regardless of DD job.

it's overpowered because it has comparable to superior damage under capped accuracy, a significant amount more available accuracy than other jobs, and on top of that it gets the best defensive capability of any DD and the ability to use less outside haste buffs

it wins on numerous fronts, hence severely overpowered

you can say acc and haste don't matter, but there's always another buff you can swap in.. extra minuets, barrier, wilt, they all make a measurable difference in the speed and ease of an event

One less outside haste buff which is generally there anyways and entrust isn't that strong to rely on for most buffs. Again you are just listing weakness of current 2h DD, of which almost everyone agrees some kind of adjustment is necessary. BLU isn't needed to be nerfed and it would serve no purpose to make people wanna use the other DD. BLU has always had those benefits, each and every one that you listed.

My main point was that while BLU is in a better position than other DD currently, using other DD is not going to drop your clear time to an additional 3 minutes or something crazy. There isn't a reason to ban other DD from content as if they are a PUP from 2005 or something.

blu has never had comparable damage nor significantly more accuracy prior to the 1200 JP gift or escha gear, it had utility and defensive capabilities that relatively few people chose over pure damage

throw in high/highest pure damage capability alongside those and it's pretty obvious the other jobs can't compare