BLM Melee Set

Now go to the brd melee thread and tell them to just sing songs... :P

I tried it just for fun as well while grinding MLs, and I wasn't impressed with Drepanum... I got better, more consistent results with Maxentius/Ternion and doing black halo. My ML targets are drifters, so I doubt I'll try Daybreak much.

The game gets boring. Sometimes it's just fun to do things that aren't ideal or even mediocre for the simple purpose to have fun. I can understand some people will disagree that it's fun, but to some, it is.

someone slap the calculator out of the nerd's hands

Nah I get it. Just for person like me who melee on 10 other jobs, forcing BLM to also melee and with the physical WS with mediocre tp set and no JA to support that gameplay isn't anything "breaking the routine" fun. I guess if someone doesn't play melee jobs a lot (hard in last few years meta) then playing melee physical DD could be something new and fun. I would probably just play real melee job for fun then.

If you really want to force melee/WS on BLM I think magic WS are both more efficient and more fun and if you want to go physical road, then Maxentius and Black Halo also seems like more fun, especially with kraken club (it's how I was JPing :P). Drepanum on BLM just sounds super boring. TP slowly to 2200+, then finally WS and repeat hundred of times without any job abilities support that gameplay, beside Hasso from sub. I just don't see any reason to use Drepanum and Spiral instead of magic WS and other melee weapons. Self SC with Flash Halo and MB of that sounds the most fun.

Spiral Hell at 1K is kinda bad, at 2K it starts getting good.

It's not about playing "melee physical DD", it's about playing BLACK MAGE physical DD. The entire point is that it's meleeing with black mage specifically that is interesting and fun because it's unusual and unique, not that they somehow think melee DDing in general is out of the ordinary. How many melee jobs one uses is irrelevant to the point.

Ofc it's relevant. If you play mostly melee physical DD and want to play BLM suddenly and you play it as physical DD that is basically the most basic physical DD experience ever (pretty much just tp and WS) then it's nothing interesting at all. Interesting is breaking the routine. For me interesting would be to go play BLM traditional way, because it's rare experience for me. If someone main BLM and plays it a lot as nuker, then I can see how playing physical DD might be interesting.

I think what you really mean is that knowing that BLM can physical DD and it's an option at all is interesting and making sets for it might be interesting, but gameplay alone will be super boring for someone who play lots of physical DDs, outside of maybe first 15 min of trying to figure out how good/bad DPS it is.

And what is the "traditional way" to play blm? Magic burst setup like ongo? Free nuke from afar? Or just sleep stun and petrify support? In case you haven't noticed, blm's free nukes are pretty terrible right now so mixing in some melee into the equation really helps. There isn't any content outside of ongo where blm is even a relevent job nowadays, but some people just like playing it. I'm not going to don my scythe and take my black mage segment farming of course, but we still need to farm mastery ranks and it's nice to make use of my agwu's equipment once in a while.


This! Spiral hell has a 1.375 tp mod at 1k, 2.75 at 2k, and 4.75 tp mod at 3k. You really wanna hold TP until you're closer to 2500 because it's scaling is best at that mark. I often see 45k spiral hell's around 2500 tp with sufficient attack buffs. Maxentius and black halo is another option for similar weaponskill numbers.

I haven't said anything about performance. Only about "fun" and "interesting" aspect from my pov and probably other people with similar experience to mine (playing tons of physical DDs).

I completely understand higher viability of doing MLs with TP/WS BLM, because it's also how I did JP on BLM. I used Kraken offhand and Maxentius and Black Halo tho. It wasn't exactly fun or interesting experience, just faster and less engaging than burst method (I have 2 alts, so I had lots of buffs too).

If we talking about performance, magic WS and clubs or staff are imo much more effective for BLM, than Scythe. All scythe WSs (that BLM has access to) are weak below 2000TP and TPing on BLM with scythe is slow and white damage is bad too, so cycles of building 2000+ TP are really inefficient with Scythe on BLM. /nin and Flash Nova with Daybreak/Bunzi seems like much better idea, especially for solo ML or Wave 3 Dynamis, because fomors are weak to light and Apex mobs are weak to skillchains.

Mythic with AM3 is probably the best for Cataclysm AoE in Wave 1 and 2. /nin and daggers is also an options for AOE with aeolian Edge if Dark element is resisted.

Answering your question tho. Standard way of playing BLM is ofc nuking. If I wanted to have fun and break my routine of TPing and WSing on every job, then I would go nuke things on BLM, even if it wouldn't be as efficient as TP/WSing.

For many people, even if the actual gameplay is exactly the same, melee BLM is by its very nature unique and interesting simply by dint of doing it on BLM.

You could have 10 melee jobs and do nothing but melee on them, but still find BLM melee more interesting and fun than BLM nuking simply because few people do it. It's about concept novelty, not gameplay variety.

Which is exactly what I said.
Discussing it might be interesting. Creating sets might be interesting. First impression might be interesting, because it's kinda unknown. Gameplay in a long run is boring tho. Unless you count people reacting to you and talking with them as part of the fun, but then fun comes from social aspect, not directly from build.

Unless you want to say to me that you will enjoy it solely because you feel unique doing it, even if you find it boring. Then I suppose I haven't thought about it that way. Not my idea of fun, but I can understand someone could feel like that.

Yes, exactly (except that if you find it fun because of this, it's not boring).

It's also freakin cool. Arc angel Tarutaru is a complete badass. How neat is it to take out a scythe on your blm and start hacking away at stuff like him? You can still throw out free nuke too of course. It's not like you lose out on the flavor of blm. This is one of those things that you do just because you can. Not everything in this game has to be min-maxxed to perfection. Sometimes you can do stuff just because it's fun.

You're not allowed to do that. Continue arguing.

Simon knows this already, he has posted several other ideas and builds that are not optimized, but for fun and just messing around. If someone finds fun doing that, have at it. His opinion of what’s fun for him is not universal or standard.

When I was farming something in VW, I actually enjoyed seeing my BLM use different weapons, even though it was incredibly sub par damage. Just having access to three weapon types along with nukes was interesting, and I would be open to playing around with them more in a high buff setting, just because. Nuking on BLM gets kind of lame if you don’t have consistent SCs, so trying something else it is pretty nifty. I was playing blm for the TVR missions and they got to a point where nuking was too weak to take down, but meleeing was kind of fun. Could steam roll it on another job easily, but I had time to mess around

BLM also has access to a number of ilvl dagger options. If you wanted to go the "fun" route. Kraken club might just be the best option if you're using club

ternion dagger +1 is actually blm equippable. As far as quality weapons go, it doesn't bet much better than that.

For AE I would rather go for Malevolence/Levante or 2x Malevolence. Ternion can be good offhand for Maxentius and Black Halo if acc requirement for KC is too high or you simply doesn't have KC.

There's also Raetic Kris +1, but I haven't figured out how to replenish the MP supply (unless you're using MOnberaux) once it chews through that.

levante isn't great since it doesn't have any mdmg, malevolence is good though.
Honestly just go w/ Cataclysm or Earth Crusher though since you can wear aeonic staff to get TP fast via nuking.

Like I said AE would be to cover different element.


Mdmg does a lot to nukes and spells, especially those with low base damage like helixed/ninjutsu/lowTierNukes, but it's not really that great for WS, because of how Magic WS damage is calculated. Mdmg is not multiplied by fTP .

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Someone edited bg wiki and put mdmg in the bracket that is multiplied by fTP, but that must be wrong. Anyone know this guy: Darvamos?

Chiaia is Darvamos

I do know that's my go-to offhand on GEO meleeing.

Also, I want to yet again point out that the Mage jobs with RMEA clubs get Cataclysm naturally (WHM, GEO), yet the Mage jobs with RMEA staves (SCH, BLM)...don't. Pair this with the club insult that PLD faces, and us complaining about not effectively being able to use a Scythe like AATT seems kinda silly.

Darvamos is me on the Wiki one place my name is different.

I'll check it tonight I might of made a mistake when converting from my excel formula to human readable.

Just did a quick and dirty test. If the fTP term was at the end, that would mean that damage would exactly correlate with fTP when all other factors are held constant. In the case of Red Lotus Blade, that would result in 3000 TP doing 3.75 times as much damage as 1000 TP.

1000 TP Red Lotus Blade: 2414
3000 TP Red Lotus Blade: 7770

fTP is not calculated at the end.

Is there a particular reason you felt that the previous formula needed changing?

I was asked to update the formula to make it easier for the average user or person trying to get into XI math.

You'll notice it links and list more steps then was previously there.

Also when I was doing testing years ago to see at the time how the new Dynamis Augments worked (additive vs multiplicative), I noticed flooring happening that had not been listed at the time. So mentioned that. With all the buffs/gear we have now the old formula listed and used by most spreadsheets can let you get thousands of DMG off when super buffed. My new formula, it's the old one just with flooring in more spots, I never noticed a difference of more then 4 DMG but almost always was 0 difference between it and observed DMG. I mentioned this at the time.

About to recheck spreadsheet and update as needed.

Oh yea and to add in math "x" symbol instead of "*".

I also made quick dirt test on Leaden (crab lvl 46 target in Mis. Coast)

306AGI 0Mdmg 14MAB(from gifts) 0%WSD: 5841
306AGI 573Mdmg 14MAB(from gifts) 0%WSD: 7053 damage

So looks like Mdmg is multiplied by something (x1.85?), but definitely not by fTP, because then my damage would go up by at least 6533, not just 1212.

Do we have an updated gear set for melee with all the new stuff thats been added?

When will SE give us A+ staff skill....