The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

How is the blm keeping his mp up for nuking I didnt see ballads or anything listed? I could see maybe using a club shield and the quanpur neck if manafont is active, but if not the loss of mrykr is too crippling, I think I'd run out after a few nukes.

They have a refresh GEO bubble going at the start, embrava later on, and it looks like the RUN is keeping refresh on the BLM. He has 59/tick refresh at one point. Also pops elixirs.

Ah cool. I didnt see that in the translated buffs and can't read Japanese, thank you.

They were using Ea body and hat +1, with agwu hands, legs, and feet. The argument is that because the stone line of spells has lower base damage than other elements it benefits the most from agwu's increase to base spell damage. What's more, agwu's at rank 20 has 55 MaB, which is fairly higher than ea's slops +1. At rank 25 agwu's gets 60 MaB per piece, so I can see what they're trying to do. Just like stacking full WSD eventually has diminishing returns on the melee formula, stacking full magic burst damage eventually has diminishing returns too. They want to balance as many aspects of the formula as possible for maximum gains. That's why they kept 2 of the ea's +1... to maintain some magic burst II while also adding other important stats as well.

don't forget you can aspir for MP too. a MB aspir on geo brought my MP back to full so should be just as good for any blm.

How does "Converts % of damage taken to MP" gear interact with Mana Wall? Is it the base damage converted to MP, or the damage after all reductions (50% from Mana Wall, then gear).

I see BLM can use 3 pieces of this kind of gear (Su5, Ethereal Earring, and Ambuscade v2 +2 feet), wondering if Mallquis Clogs +2 has a place in Mana Wall set over Wicce Sabots +1.

sorry if this is a bump, but what staff would be best for a drain/aspir set? right now I believe I'm using a Lathi path D for the magic acc and the dark skill, but I also have my dark affinity staff from the old days with magic acc. I'm wondering if it's worth building a magic damage affinity staff for the +35% dark mab, considering pixie hairpin is supposed to be BIS for aspir. or would an Ilevel staff with high mag acc just be all around better to prevent resists. outside of the staff, I have around +105 drain/aspir potency on my gear.

maybe rubicundity with ammurapi shield?

imho i wouldn't go too potency heavy on aspir, resists and barely getting any MP returned is way worse than missing out on extra MP aspired.

however, if you're a hardcore BLM you could build a MB aspir set that's loaded with potency gear i guess.

The intent of increasing the power of Aspir is to be equipped for moments where you use MP faster than it can be recovered, whatever the reason.

With that being said- why would you ever give up maintaining a staff so that you're steadily building TP for Myrkr use?

I love drain/aspir and all the great gear we get for the latter- but I really don't see the need to swap weapons to help its numbers when doing so also hurts your MP generation more than the benefit swapping.

All valid points, but they are under the assumption that you are only nuking on BLM, which isn't always the case. Using Aspir vs other MP restoral methods on BLM really depend on what you're doing at the time. I have been doing Omen Card farms on BLM, and sometimes I heal, or enfeeble with breakga/sleepga etc. I switch weapons for different tasks, so sometimes I won't always have TP for Myrkr. So I may throw out an Aspir at a beetle or something. During Ongo, I re-apply ES/MW Impact or Burn if I can land it, and for both, I use macc options to make the enfeebles easier to stick. So I may lose TP there and not always be able to Myrkr. Aspir is handy when you can't make use of Sublimination, Myrkr, a Vile Elixir, or BLM AF+2/3 body for bursts. I suppose you can just lock your weapon for every task so that you always retain TP for Myrkr, but the idea with BLM is you have options to do either.

Something else to consider is that you can MB Aspir III for chunk of MP recovery, even on Ongo, and the time it takes to use Myrkr is close to the same as casting a bursted Aspir every once in a while at the end of a 4 step, and the MP recovery and similar. So Aspir doesn't completely hurt your MP generation if it is used at the appropriate times.

With that being said, you're only really missing out on Rubicundity with +20 potency, so it may not be that much of a difference to just stick with staves and retain access to Myrkr.

I was looking at the rubicundity last night, and it does seem like the best option to raise the minimum aspir amount.

as was said already, blm doesn't often stay locked in one staff. I don't yet have laevateinn, so I'm not even locking my weapon for AM. while Myrkr is a great tool, there is a reason black mages were given aspir to begin with. Clearly it's not always an option since not all mobs have mp. In those cases, myrkr is the clear winner. I wasn't so much interested in a debate about what is the better mp regeneration method, just which the better weapon/sub setup was for overall returns.

Not to hang on this as you said this wasnt your main discussion point but far as I can tell there's really not too many times you'd want to swap staves honestly, marin+1 at R15 is basically your all around best in terms of both dmg and macc, you could swap over to something for enhancing but it wouldnt really be worth tosing away the built TP doing so.

What about Bunzi+Ammurapi tho? It's way better setup than anything beside maybe AM2 Laeviateinn for nuking. It's not a stave setup tho, so you would need to get mp back some way.

for wind spells yes, it's arguably the best staff, but mythic R15 is substantially better for all other elements, including wind when AM running. so when I do get the mythic, I will likely lock that staff and never look back, but until then. . .

besides all of this, the current BIS for mab is bunzi/ammurapi, which is slightly sad for a job that prioritizes staves over clubs.

bunzi = 60 mab, 50 magacc 15 int
shield being 38,38 13 int

so totaling 98 mab, 88 mag acc and 28 int
vs marin /niobid strap
70 mab(81 wind)/60 mag acc 32-37 int

Agreed, but id keep the mp restoral in the event you have any mp concerns that cant be compensated through refresh, aspirs nice but can be unreliable compared to just popping a WS that has a set garunteed return


Generally yes, but laevs lack of INT can put it behind other stave, even with AM2 up, was something that was coming up even when lathi was the alternative staff, the 32~37 INT on marin isnt to be discounted

Haven’t been using a staff(sadly) for a while now, the r25 bunzi/ammurapi is my goto on nukes. Always as mentioned for other occasions like healing you maybe want daybreak. To many situations where staff is not BiS. Just my play style.

Argument could be that 1 nuke in af3+3 coat to recharge mp negates any increase in bunzi/shield. But that would be hard to math out for sure

Laevataenn isn't better than Marin on wind spells. Marin gives wind affinity, not just some extra MAB on wind spells.

regarding the aspir gear question i posted earlier
with having
306 mag acc +215 skill
125 drain/aspir potency
361 int
534 dark magic skill

trying on void worms in doh gates
only was able to do a handful of casts before gathering for an event

aspir 1- 263, 90, 327
aspir 2- 344, 265, 402, 438
aspir 3- 969, 791, 1038, 595, 786, 605, 882, 1019, 940

will do more testing to get a larger sample size

most of us on the staff side of things aren't saying "Myrkr instead of Aspir"...its that at times Aspir is an amazing tool that gives great results, but more often than not (either due to elemental alignment of the enemy or the MP is not a mage type with MP, or sometimes just its meva and lack of buffing for that) you can't rely on it.

Maybe there are times when you're with enough buffers to where your MP concerns aren't present that club/shield pulls ahead of staff/grip. But its often just really hard to do. Even r20 Bunzi/Ammurapi, which is freaking amazing in raw numbers, isn't very efficient on a BLM where that extra +10 magic burst damage I is hard to take advantage of compared to RDM or GEO, for example. So while the magic damage+INT+MAB numbers on that pairing are great, are we really getting the most out of it when paired with what we give up?

And typically, the staves we are considering have higher "Magic Accuracy Skill" than clubs and more natural Macc (on average). Let's say that swapping from a nuking setup of staff/grip to an aspir setup of club/shield nets 10% larger aspirs. Most ppl's Myrkr sets at 1k TP are going to return ~600MP. You'd have to average 100MP aspirs 60 times in the time it takes to save up TP for one Myrkr. I don't think that's possible with recast timers, even with 3 aspirs to rotate. And if you could, no way you're nuking as much as your MP allows. I dont' even think that 20 casts of aspirs that average 300mp is feasible in the time you'd gain 1k TP with a staff and a non-Occult build, regular nuking/bursting pieces.

how is Mpaca's Staff R25 compare to marin'staff+1.does it have potential in future upgrade?

Bunzi Rod(25)+Ammurapi shield
Int+28
Macc+88
Mab+98
Macc Skill +255
mDMG+248
MBB 10


Marin Staff+1/Enki Strap
Int+42~47
Macc+65
mab 68
Macc skill +228
mDMG+217

Mpaca Staff(25)/Enki Strap
Int+25
Macc+60
mab+60
Macc Skill +255
mDMG+263
MBB(II) 2

Mpaca to me is a all-around good staff you could use on BLM/SCH that maybe a more-casual SCH or BLM could use. It has the nice refresh+2/fast cast. I think it could be potentially a great helix staff with the high mDMG, but with Agwu and other available accessories its not really that tough to hit a 10k helix.

IIRC it only counts HP lost due to getting whacked/nuked. While Mana Wall is up, "convert % of damage taken to MP" doesn't do squat.

so for content like Ongo, I would imagine you would opt for Marin then, since int is gonna be important there?

That’s kind of a shame and an odd inclusion in the Su5 staff, which has both manna wall trait and convert dmg <-> mp trait. I was hoping convert dmg/mp gear was somehow included in Mana Wall calculation, further decreasing damage taken.

Its a tough call in my book, and may depend on how geared your BRD is for those Etudes. If you can spare the extra INT Marin+1 provides over R20+ Mpaca's Staff because your BRD is sporting +9 songs vs +6 (hq mousai head+hq neck and ghorn instead of just ghorn+nq neck), then Mpaca's may end up being a better choice.

Finding MBB2 isn't always easy, MP usage/regeneration does matter in that fight a great deal, and most of us started with default precast sets assuming either /RDM or Dark Arts up from /SCH. The Mpaca's Staff fills a lot of holes, so to speak. Not to mention that extra macc skill isn't nothing to sneeze at- it may free you up to try other gearing options such as a Quanpur Necklace instead of a JSE+1/+2 neck. And lastly, Stone spells (as has been mentioned by many others prior to me) are more dependent on the mDmg stat than our typical high end nukes- the MAB difference between Marin+1 and Mpaca's matters less for stone nuking due to that than other elements.

Its a fight where trying things out in the long run will be of greatest benefit to see what works for your setup and personnel.

New BCNM Drops

Is this real? What BCNM?

How do people keep falling for this guy's (admittedly hilarious) baits

It's funny because he actually made the stats fall within reasonable limits rather than something way over the top. I doubt the scythe he designed would even be good enough for the intended purpose though. The whole reason we discussed Drepanum in the other thread is because blm has a really poor selection of physical weaponskills and without the spiral hell + 100% mod scythe skills kinda suck. You have to give him props for the effort though.