The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Oh, believe me, I'd love more, but most BLU spells cast so fast anyway, and just having 50% fastcast is a huge improvement over what most people use.

Vaporize gil? No gil is being destroyed here. This event probably leads to a pretty equal loss+gain (think when people NPC stones or other drops vs. AH fees - probably comes out about even). Buying a stone from AH for 500k doesn't mean 500k is vaporized, only the AH fees are lost for that transaction, everything else is moved to another player.

The only way to "vaporize gil" is to spend it at an NPC, in AH fees, or deleting/never playing a character with gil.

Weren't Thaumas hands tested to be 5% FC? Or are you trying to account for recast in this set too?

Edit: Ah wait, they're 4%, lame.

I actually thought they were only 3, I guess it doesn't matter much, you could substitute NQ versions of basically everything and still be in better shape than most.

Saw this on the BG thread.

Not to brag but.....

Fixed, stupid links and whatnot.

Where does Claidheamh Soluis stand amongst swords currently? I've seen damage augments go up to +15 so far, would this make it our best main hand? I don't know if the massive delay on it would be a major deciding factor.

I've seen the sword get as high as DMG+17, among other sickening augments.

But considering the amount of DW possible from the new Taeon set, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet, that they are probably the best swords you will ever use (for now)

DW makes high delay stuff relatively worse, not better.

That said, they are worth looking at- particularly if some more STP can be integrated in. Thankfully we basically always have STP2 now and could probably fit in STP3 in a situation where we can forgo some utility and are getting enough haste to stick to a lower DW tier.

Before this update, CS was potentially worth it if you were getting Haste Samba and dropped down to DW2.

Leafslit nq =

Dualwield 4 Taeon hands
Triple att + 1 Taeon feet

Going to preface this by saying I don't do much with the maths and stuff for delay/tp per hit as it's a bit over my head and I'm not terribly concerned about doing that extra 3% of damage. I would have thought that higher delay would have been better for that, making the tp loss from dual wield less impactful?

Is the MAB V trait still unavailable even with the JA gift?

As far as I can see, we only get Mab 1, so it should be Mab 2 with gift.

Parameters

Buffs and debuffs equal across each scenario. BRD is assumed +4 songs with 3 songs, no SV.

Target Name: Simulated Tojil
DEF: 1900
EVA: 870
VIT: 200
AGI: 200


Buffs: Ionis, Haste II, March, Minuet V, Madrigal II, Samurai Roll (XI+5), Fighter Roll (XI+5), Berserk, Nature's Meditation, Charred Salisbury Steak

Debuffs: Dia II, 25% DEF Down




Gearsets

2x Uson Bs for Uson set, 2x Claid Soluis w/ DMG+18 ATK+20 ACC+20 DA+6

TP:
Sword/Sword/NA/Ginsen
Iuitl+1(w/DA2)/Asperity/Trux/Brutal
Qaaxo A/Taeon w/15ACC 15ATK 2TA/Rajas/Epona
Bleating/Windbuffet+1/Taeon w/ 15ACC 15ATK 2TA/Taeon w/ 15ACC 15ATK 2TA

CDC:
Sword/Sword/NA/Jukukik
Ukuxkaj w/DEX+8/Gorget/Brutal/Moonshade
Dread Jupon/Nilas Gloves/Ramuh+1/Epona
Rancorous/Ele Belt/Manibozho/Vanir

Possibly some minor upgrades to the CDC set, doesn't matter for this.



Spellset
Quad. Continuum
Delta Thrust
Barbed Crescent
Empty Thrash
Heavy Strike
Thrashing Assault
Sudden Lunge
Glutinous Dart
Sinker Drill
Sweeping Gouge
Nat. Meditation
Erratic Flutter
Cocoon
Molting Plumage
Animating Wail
Blazing Bound
Mortal Ray
Fantod


Dual Wield V
Triple Attack
Accuracy Bonus II
Critical Attack Bonus II
Store TP II



Results

DPS for Uson/Uson: 1657
DPS for Claid/Claid: 1790


Dropping DW5 to DW4 and Adding Store TP III (Molting Plumage -> Diffusion Ray)
Additionally, Tripudio began outperforming Trux considerably for Uson/Uson and Suppa began outperforming Trux for Claid/Claid
No Dual Wield Taeon pieces outperformed TA ones for either set of swords
DPS for Uson/Uson: 1700
DPS for Claid/Claid: 1795

Average Rounds to 1000TP
Uson/Uson: 3
Claid/Claid: 3

Average Time to 1000TP
Uson/Uson: 6.8 Seconds
Claid/Claid: 7.2 Seconds

Average Autoattack Damage Per WS Round
Uson/Uson: 783
Claid/Claid: 971

Average CDC Damage
Uson/Uson: 9183
Claid/Claid: 10185




Conclusion

Claid/Claid comes out +/-5% ahead of Uson/Uson assuming presumably (as of now) perfect augments on both swords.
+20DMG augment to both swords raises this lead to +/-6%.
+15DMG augment to both swords decreases this lead to +/-4%.
+12DMG augment to both swords decreases this lead to +/-3%.

Varying levels of Store TP also affect the results.
A +20DMG Claid/Claid setup vs Uson/Uson with no SAM roll comes out to a +/-7% lead to Claid/Claid.

Varying levels of Haste have an effect too.
Removing March and keeping SAM roll puts Claid/Claid +/-8% ahead of Uson/Uson.
Removing both March AND SAM roll puts Claid/Claid +/-9% ahead of Uson/Uson.

Removing multiattack has little effect on the results, it helps both setups nearly equally.

BG wiki claims tier 4 but 40 attainable trait points for it. I would think that if they haven't removed the cap, tier 4 would be 5, etc. And if they have removed it we would have gotten tier 5, which would become 6? SE just needs to admit they just really like BLU and give us everything. Literally, everything.

gearsets, spellsets, etc. updated to reflect the maths

Don't really see the problem with it honestly. We have to spend an excessive amount of points and spell slots to do this.

Not saying any problems, just like a secret update for it or something. A guy can dream can't he?

This new Skirmish has me setting a lot more magic than I normally would. You can pretty much drop DD traits since a couple BLU spells can kill faster than you can engage and TP on the butterflies. Then you need a variety of nukes, and making sure they can 2-shot.

I go in /rdm for convert and Stoneskin, though Magic Hammer pretty much makes it so you don't need convert.
Here's my spell set:

Erratic Flutter - FC+Recast for Spells
Magic Fruit - Better healing than /rdm provides
Occultation - Tons of shadows
Sudden Lunge - Stun for annoying AoEs
Whirl of Rage - Emergency Stun for multiple elementals
Sinker Drill - Can 1 or nearly 1 shot Butterflies
Delta Thrust - DW for clubs + Can finish up Butterflies if not killed with Sinker
Winds of Promyvion - Bind removal
Dream Flower - MAB trait + Emergency Sleep
Memento Mori - MAB Trait + MAB
Subduction - MAB trait + Best AoE nuke
Thermal Pulse - Primary AoE nuke for Ice+Wind elementals
Retinal Glare - Conserve MP + insanely good frontal nuke with low MP and recast. This is what I use after Thermal Pulse
Magic Hammer - Full MP Restore and combined with Retinal Glare can handle the Wind/Ice elementals that won't be wrecked by Subduction

Which leaves maxing out MAB Trait with:
Cursed Sphere - MAB Trait + Probably a pretty decent nuke too
Sound Blast - MAB Trait
Eyes on Me - MAB Trait
Heat Breath - MAB Trait
(Can remove Whirl of Rage and set Reactor Cool for last MAB if we get access to it)

The 100 point gift doesn't increase the hard cap on job trait levels, it only lets us achieve tiers we didn't have enough points to reach (and lesser ones with fewer spells/points). MAB was capped at tier 3 prior to this update, and 4 after, regardless if you have the gift or not.

Where are you getting that MAB capped at tier 3 for BLU? BG has listed 4 as the cap for ages.

Because I tested it. It was also in the patch notes for the last update:


No it hasn't. I'm the one who updated the page in both cases.

Ah, alright. Must have misread BG in the past, then.

On that note, the only traits we don't have the (achievable) caps for are skill chain bonus and magic burst bonus if anyone wants to try to figure those out.

We potentially have counter 3 as well, but afaik the trait doesn't exist for mnk and I'm not about to go parsing it.

Just tested MAB, it goes up to tier 5 with new gift