The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Physical to make the spell actually land AND magical to make the stun actually land

I don't think there have been any good, modern tests on any possible dStat relationship with effects landing. For the most part, however, it doesn't matter for actual gear considerations since there aren't too many slots where extra INT would be a breaking point when deciding gear.

That's true, my INT mid-cast is pretty bad anyways to the point where I'd probably be at max penalty considering the INT these Level 149 mobs must be packing. I was mostly curious to see what kind of overall Magic Evasion they would have or how much of a Magic Evasion boost the circles actually gave since I was at the teetering point.

How would non-AG Tizona / AG Almace fare versus AG Almace / Colada?

Obviously the latter has higher base damage, even without augments, but Tizona yields more TP due to aftermath.

I suspect Almace/Colada wins in pure DPS, but how wide is the gap? If it’s close, there’s the benefit of MP recovery, etc...

I never bothered to clock it but from experience the gap is quite large DPS wise. I want to say 15% or more? Non-AG Tiz is just balls for Damage unfortunately. I’d macro it in when MP Runs low for a fairly quick MP Cap then swap back to Almace/Colada.

You gotta remember the gap between AG-Tiz/Almace and AG-Almace was pretty small and if you decided to hold AM-3, Almace won in DPS but Tiz gives Infinite MP so it depended on the fight/duration/buffs/etc. So to dropping down to 117 Damage is gonna hurt a lot.

Would herc gloves with STR+12 ACC+9 ATT+9 Quad attack+3 beat out adhemar gloves+1 for TP in a situation where acc isn't needed?

wearing adhemar +1 body/head too so would have set bonus.

I don’t have my laptop with me (along with my BLU spreadsheet) and only my iPhone but it looks like adhemar inches ahead for muliattack/tp gain alone. Without spreadsheet for white dmg and knowing your other gear we can’t say definitively. Rounded it’s about a 2% increase so not quite 2%. If you have more store tp or more multiattack it might tip it the other way.

You are 100% correct right there but I do want to point out that with the augments now Tizona is without question the better weapon. There was a post about the spreadsheet on here that had almace/sequence somewhere around 100 dps higher, we changed nothing on the almace side and just 1 piece of gear and made it ws for Tizona only at 1400 tp instead of 1k( which is dumb for expiacion anyway) and the gap was 26 dps in favor of Almace/sequence.

26 dps vs infinite mp...... no question which one I take. Also if you have a war in the pt Tizona was like 500 dps ahead because of warcry.

Who has mp woes on blu? Unless your the i'll white wind main heal/backup heal kinda guy i dont see it.

with tiz: use expiacion instead of cdc unless there's a light sc element.

Occultation and MG take huge chunks of mp up.

That's what idle sets and radial arcana are for

I'm quite aware of MGs mp cost. Still never been a problem. Set zepher mantle for the 5-6 shadows and 1/4 mp cost and better recast if Occultation getting wiped that much and its straining you that bad.

As far as fast cast sets go, and this is based mostly on my own gear, this is a more updated set than listed in the OP...

Impatiens (QM: 2)
Carmine Mask +1 (FC: 14)
Orunmila's Torque (FC: 5)
Pinga Tunic (FC: 13)
Leyline Gloves (FC: 7)
Lebeche Ring: (QM: 2)
Perimede Cape: (QM: 4)
Witful Belt: (FC: 3, QM: 3)
Pinga Pants: (FC: 11)
Carmine Greaves +1: (FC: 8)

- Quick Magic +11% (10% is capped)
- Fast Cast + 61% (Capped at +81% with 1200+ JP and Erratic Flutter set)
- Don't need Weatherspoon Ring, can get Karieyh Ring +1 (or whatever else you may want) instead.
- Saves inventory space and gil on items like Loqac. Earring, Etiolation Earring, Prolix Ring, Enchanter's Earring

My main worry with this, is I've been told Quick Magic can be "too quick" and prevent Cures from firing off at the correct potency, and such. Has anyone had this experience?

Personally I dont trust Quick magic for anything that essentially depends on midcast gear, like nukes, skill based buffs, debuffs etc. so I generally dont use quick magic at all. I also always thought that FC trait with just Erratic Flutter is 15% with gifts, so my FC set is this:

head=gear.Herc_FC_head, --12
body="Pinga Tunic", --13
hands="Leyline Gloves", --8
legs={ name="Psycloth Lappas", augments={'MP+80','Mag. Acc.+15','"Fast Cast"+7',}}, --7
feet="Carmine Greaves", --7
neck="Voltsurge Torque", --4
right_ring="Kishar ring", --4
back=gear.BLU_FC_Cape --10

Total 65% + trait.

The perfect would be to use Pinga pants tho and just use DT torque. Even better use HQ Pinga, HQ Carmine head and Loq earring and free up feet or hands slot.

Erratic only is 15%,
the initial pre-JP fc it gives is only 5% (not 10% like RDM's initial trait)

5% + 5% (100jp) + 5% (1200jp)

So you need 65% to cap.

I'm not at my pc I think I use:
ammo: sapience
head: carmine+1 - 14fc
neck: orunmila - 5fc
ears: loquacious & enchanter+1 - 4fc
body: pinga - 13fc
hands: Leyline - 8max fc
rings: kishar & lebeche - 4fc
back: - Ogapepo Cape +1 or Perimede
waist: witful - 3fc
legs: pinga - 11fc
feet: carmine+1 - 8fc

14+5+4+13+8+4+3+11+8= 70
if you +1 the body/legs it makes this 74 total
depending o leyline aug and +1 body/legs u can do 67~74 fc so 2-7 extra fc you can drop.

Instead of dt for precast I would suggest working on HP stuff. Most BLUs drop too much hp every cast dropping to like 75%ish. The Pinga stuff is great cause it's both high hp/mp.
Carmine feet hp/mp path is great if you don't need the DD path (which is mostly only for rdm now)

I'm sure this is a really obvious question for a lot of you, but I would REALLY appreciate it if someone could give me a priority/which order to upgrade in for the AF1/2/3. Having a difficult time figuring out which to do first, whether one piece needs +1/2ing before I even 109 another piece etc.

Thank you so much in advance.

You can upgrade them as far as you want, in any order you want.

As long as you have mission clears, getting pieces to i119 shouldn’t be too hard. Upgrading to +2 and +3 is a bit tougher, as you need to be able to farm Omen cards solo, or find s group to do Omen with (preferable, since you’re going to need boss clears eventually).

The +2/+3 body is by far the best choice. Head and pants are great for the M.Acc. Feet are for physical spells, specifically closing skillchains. Hands have a lot of acc, and are really solid for DT builds.

Ty for the reply! By AF1/2/3 I meant AF, Relic, Empy just to clarify. I'm not sure which pieces from each set should be priorities.

Spicyryan does have a breakdown per piece on his BLU guide.

Generally speaking, our JSE tends to have very narrow use and decent alternatives. Almost none of it will make or break things. The big exception to this is Relic feet, as the boost to Diffusion via the augment (and appropriate merits/JPs of course) allows Diffusion'ed Mighty Guard to last until the Unbridled Learning timer is back up again.
With as core an advantage as that tends to be for BLU, those are quite a key piece. For that use, even the Relic+2 will do, but you might as well at least do the 109.

Most of the rest is really kind of as-desired, particularly at the 109/+1 level. At that, I would focus first on +skill (AF body, Relic head, Empyrean pants), then JA boosts for things you utilize.
Otherwise, IMO, be set oriented. There are great JSE options for certain sets, like MACC (AF+2/3 Head/Legs for instance), but you may be nearly as well served by multi-job items or something too. Do what makes sense for you.

In addition to the relic feet for diffusion, AF body and Relic legs are high priorities for Savage Blade sets.

Thank you! this was what I was looking for. Really appreciate it!

So how does the BLU dynamis sword stack up (I'm assuming the stp one is the best version)? Just curious about pure DPS.

a Burst Affinity macro piece.

Since the augments only work in the mainhand and we already have extremely attractive mainhand options, our Dynamis weapon is garbage.

The BA augment will only bring you down to what, 1 min - 1 min 10 seconds? Maybe worth it if it brought it down to 30 seconds or so. Not worth it anywhere, unfortunately.

Ah, I was looking for a main to see if it was worth subbing almace (currently almace/sequence). Guess not though!
Thanks yall.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't match up to our current options. New Almace is a CDC god for raw DPS and OTD. New Tizona is unmatched when looking for a more utility focus, incorporating MP management at the loss of minimal DPS and is absurdly powerful when receiving any kind of TP Bonus buff (Warcry, Crystal Blessing). Sequence got the short end of the stick from the upgrades, but is still a solid option for Savage Blade spam, although quite behind the other two.

All Zomo supplies is a ton of accuracy. If you're absolutely starved for acc, it's a nice option, but the situations where that might be applicable are too few and far between to justify the price tag.

Time for some testing! Anyone able to accurately tell how strong dmg limit + trait is? With warrior sub we will get 1 trait, if we sub drk we can get 2. With the amount of double and triple attack on gear the main thing we are getting from war is berserk/warcry/aggressor. Sub drk will give us soul eater and last resort. The question is how strong is dmg limit + 1 vs dmg limit +2.

Someone is calculating in the December thread. 2%~ and 5%~

Before the augmentable ultimate weapon update it seem like it was a situational difference Tizona vs Almace which was better but now it seems like Almace is moved up as the top sword even though the boost to Tizona seems superior. What is the reason for this? The 20 dex seems like a sizable boost but Almace only got 5 dmg vs Tizona's 18. Is it the combo of +5dmg & 20 dex vs only +18dmg?

I am not trying to sell or dispute any claims but in Dyn D with attack capped seeing some pretty nice numbers with Expiacion. 40k~45ks with Mirage stole +2 and other pieces of gear from the best set on this guide.

Also it always seemed like CDC shined best in underbuffed conditions performing well but never getting into high numbers like thf rudra's/mandalic or drk torcleaver buff capped doing normally 40K+ dmg even before this augment update.