Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[LD]

.............good God, how did I typo 'more' as 'power'? ~_~;


So it's more an issue of practicality?
So if there were a non-dragon HNM with no thunder weakness and you were, for whatever reason, not subbing WHM, would you still use Mind Blast?

[Vobent]

Would probably depend on the gear, if he had more MND gear the INT? gear Mind Blast would probably do more.

[Sendra]

Why do people tout the power of Mind Blast when Studio Gobli seems to say Fire Spit is power powerful?
Is it simply because there are more things weak to Lightning?

Close.

Its because Mind Blast is a Demon move, meaning Dragons receive the correlation bonus enhanced by your AF head. Being lightning doesnt hurt either, though. Without weather/day bonus' I maxed out at a little over 1000 with etudes on MB in Aery. Its a good spell to use there, especially considering you should already be blu/whm.

Fire Spit is from a beastman, and thereby has no corresponding correlation bonus. And yeah, fire isnt too hot to begin with.

Someone had to point out the epic pun. ;/

[fantasticdan]

You can put up higher firespit numbers on low level mobs than mind blast, but it seems hard to land on high level mobs, maybe partially due to elvaan int. Firespit also costs 40 more mp. Aside from mind blast on wyrm mobs thou, I would rather stick to hp build + breath spells if I need to nuke. It's so much more consistent, and lower maintanance (no need for memento mori, MB, etc.). Plus most of your TP/STR gear that you already carry around has the best HP in that slot; homam, prince's slops, w. turban, alky bracelets, etc.

[Panthera]

75 blu here, and my rdm is approaching 75.

My question is, does blue magic skill "do" enough to be worth meriting over Enfeebling magic for rdm?

[Codernaut]

75 blu here, and my rdm is approaching 75.

My question is, does blue magic skill "do" enough to be worth meriting over Enfeebling magic for rdm?

Generally yes, but it also depends on how serious you are about your RDM.

[Einherjar]

RDM is a terrible fucking job, if you merit enfeebling to where you can reliably enfeeble near everything, say goodbye to your other jobs. On the other hand if you cap Blue magic, are essentially just a refresher and healer as RDM, you win, because when there's a few RDMs yours becomes useless so you get to play a fun job.

PS: I'm a melee with 75 RDM, if you like RDM, maybe forget what you just read above^^.

[Codernaut]

RDM is a terrible fucking job, if you merit enfeebling to where you can reliably enfeeble near everything, say goodbye to your other jobs. On the other hand if you cap Blue magic, are essentially just a refresher and healer as RDM, you win, because when there's a few RDMs yours becomes useless so you get to play a fun job.

PS: I'm a melee with 75 RDM, if you like RDM, maybe forget what you just read above^^.

Unfortunately not having enfeebling merits doesn't make you a useless RDM lol... assuming you have all the right gear anyway. The above is an exaggerated version of the truth I guess.

If you have RDM 75 and don't want to ever play it, the best bet is to get rid of all your AH gear, and/or don't tell your LS you have RDM leveled.

[Einherjar]

Yeah, the point though is that the more you beef up RDM the less you'll see any other jobs.

[Jeryhn]

Meriting Enfeebling is pretty worthless imo. I have a nearly equal chance of landing Slow on Cerberus with my 298 skill + MND gear as an RDM with over 340 skill. The unfortunate thing about Enfeebling magic is you can go meriting it to impressive numbers, but if a mob resists an important debuff, that mobs resists it, and pumping skill isn't necessarily going to help.

But then again, I merited summoning skill, whee~!

[Medivac]

RDM is a terrible fucking job, if you merit enfeebling to where you can reliably enfeeble near everything, say goodbye to your other jobs. On the other hand if you cap Blue magic, are essentially just a refresher and healer as RDM, you win, because when there's a few RDMs yours becomes useless so you get to play a fun job.

PS: I'm a melee with 75 RDM, if you like RDM, maybe forget what you just read above^^.

Unfortunately not having enfeebling merits doesn't make you a useless RDM lol... assuming you have all the right gear anyway. The above is an exaggerated version of the truth I guess.

If you have RDM 75 and don't want to ever play it, the best bet is to get rid of all your AH gear, and/or don't tell your LS you have RDM leveled.

or you could tank as rdm/nin

[Terrance]

My question is, does blue magic skill "do" enough to be worth meriting over Enfeebling magic for rdm?

If you use RDM for dynamis you'll want the enfeebling. If you use BLU more then you'll want blue magic. The nice thing about enfeebling is that it will also help you on WHM and BLM, but blue magic is useless for anything but BLU.

Since BLU can't reliably sleep things and they're not really a support job, all they really are is a glorified meleer anyway, so you can make your BLU better and be interchangeable for any other player with a melee job, or you can make your RDM (and other mage jobs) better and be irreplaceable.

[Vhess]

Since BLU can't reliably sleep things and they're not really a support job, all they really are is a glorified meleer anyway, so you can make your BLU better and be interchangeable for any other player with a melee job, or you can make your RDM (and other mage jobs) better and only be interchangable with the 90% of the server that also has RDM at 75.

fixed

[Damane]

Anyone here has some experience on endgame BLU as Enfeebling master? I did go lately as PLD/BLU to ouryu and was quite surprised how many times Chaotic eye did stick to ouryu, also Sheepsong did stick 4 times. But that might be also only the random tick some HNMs have (like gods), so I wanted to ask if someone experienced BLU Endgame as Enfeebling master (not DD). Do the Spells get resisted much or stick well, and if so for how long. What are the strongest and worthwhile Enfeebs a BLU has to offer on endgame?

[Vhess]

Anyone here has some experience on endgame BLU as Enfeebling master? I did go lately as PLD/BLU to ouryu and was quite surprised how many times Chaotic eye did stick to ouryu, also Sheepsong did stick 4 times. But that might be also only the random tick some HNMs have (like gods), so I wanted to ask if someone experienced BLU Endgame as Enfeebling master (not DD). Do the Spells get resisted much or stick well, and if so for how long. What are the strongest and worthwhile Enfeebs a BLU has to offer on endgame?

I'm not sure I'm as qualified to answer this as some, but I suppose I should try to provide some useful information rather than just sniping at snipers.

My ls is a social ls, but we do some endgame activities such as sky, sea and limbus. We also recently fought Hydra (yeah, I know) to test some of our strategies and get some experience. At present I am 8/8 on Blue Magic Skill and 5/5 on Magic Accuracy and I am slowly putting together a Macc build for enfeebles. With merits and equipment, then, my BLU skill is 307 and I have +18 Macc.

So far in my limited opportunities to test my enfeebles I haven't had a whole lot of success. I could be mistaken, but many endgame mobs seem to be completely immune to some of our spells, specficially and most annoyingly Enervation which otherwise would be our best spell. I have cast this on sky gods, Hydra and Proto-Ultima among others and received a message saying it "has no effect"; not a resist and not the no effect message we get from missing with a physical spell, but a different message that seems to indicate that the spell was successfully landed on the mob but that it had no effect anyway. Besides Enervation I have received this message on multilpe mobs with spells like Feather Tickle and Light of Pennance.

Other spells seem to simply be resisted constantly. Lowing, for example, is a spell that I've only managed to land once on any mob at all (Chlevnik in ks99 Horns of War, who also is not immune to Enervation) and in that instance it wore off in under 10 seconds. Actinic Burst also seems to be resisted a lot, even by mobs that do not resist Flash; I have cast it back to back with a PLD using Flash and had AB resisted consistantly while the Flash has landed.

The only spells that thus far have both been of any use and also seem to land regularly for me are Temporal Shift and Frightful Roar. I managed to land Temporal Shift once on Hydra despite its high resistance to stun and have successfully landed it on most of the endgame mobs we have fought without many resists. I think this has more to do with the nature of Stun than Temporal Shift itself. For Frightful Roar, last time we fought Kirin I was able to consistantly land it and it had a long duration when it landed as well. This, I think, is a result of the merits as I do not recall having nearly as high a success rate with Frightful Roar prior to meriting.

Other than Frightful Roar on Kirin, though, I can't say that I have yet found our skill merits particularly helpful in landing debuffs, nor have I found our debuffs particularly useful. Again, though, I am still working on my equipment build for enfeebles and I also have not fought many of the HNMs that perhaps you are more concerned with. One area that I have not tested at all is trying to use one of our "additional effect" debuffs -- for example the paralysis on Mind Blast -- to gain an effect that the mob normally resists. Nor have I spent much time trying out things like Stinking Gas or Sandspin on endgame mobs.

Overall, thus far, I have to say that I think BLU has a lot of potential for enfeebling if used in conjunction with regular RDM enfeebles, as many BLU spells have unique effects; but thus far I have not been able to successfully utilize that potential.

If other BLU with more endgame experience than I can give feedback, this Enfeebling BLU role is one that I have a great deal of interest in.

[fantasticdan]

I think some enfeebles may not be based on blue magic skill, maybe based on stat vs. stat only? I landed sheep song most of the time from rdm/blu at 75 on t-vt mobs last time I tried.

Most blu debuffs are outclassed by other jobs thou, so not much reason to use them most of the time, unless your rdm and nins are having trouble landing things, or you have nobody shooting acid bolts.

One thing I am interested in however, is how the paralyze on mindblast compares to regular para and para 2.

[Popsiclestick]

frightful roar and a handful of other spells were buffed in an update a while back

[Ambir]

Meriting Enfeebling is pretty worthless imo. I have a nearly equal chance of landing Slow on Cerberus with my 298 skill + MND gear as an RDM with over 340 skill. The unfortunate thing about Enfeebling magic is you can go meriting it to impressive numbers, but if a mob resists an important debuff, that mobs resists it, and pumping skill isn't necessarily going to help.

You won't have an equal chance of enfeebling Bahamut II though...

Enfeebling Skill only matters when you're neither at the floor nor the cap, but then it really matters...

[BRP]

Is there a formula for BLU spell-base damage? (Both Physical and Magical). I mean like... do magical spells even have base damage(as a Thunder IV would)? I know the Physical ones are effected by weapon.

[fantasticdan]

Is there a formula for BLU spell-base damage? (Both Physical and Magical). I mean like... do magical spells even have base damage(as a Thunder IV would)? I know the Physical ones are effected by weapon.

Yes, check out this translated crap from studio gobli: http://www.neko-sentai.com/images/BlumageNFO.htm

Thou some of the base damage caps from the higher damage spells are still not determined there.