Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[fantasticdan]

If your focusing ON TPing yet, but if you are doing you job and supporting whilehand you won't. But if all you want to do is care about your 1 spells every 2 min go for it dude!

Are you completely retarded? How well can you support while you're fucking asleep? Which is what you suggested. I wasn't saying blu should just melee and cast spells with sneak attack only, I was responding to this:

Meleeing HNMs/Gods as BLU is pretty lol already, you would get tp more efficiently sleeping

Which is untrue, if your gear isn't terrible. Even while throwing out the occasional stun or cure, you're still at about the same or more TP gain than 50 per minute, which is what sleeping with an opo-opo necklace will get you.

[FinalJustice]

If having TP problems at HNM, then something might be a bit off. Perdu would be way better. Shouldn't the higher dmg rating and extra attk sword help for not hitting for 0's as much?

[BexBLU]

You're forgetting that you don't always want to be charging valiantly into the big, nasty monster's horrible rape radius with swords-a-swingin'. Aside nasty AoEs that make you an MP sponge and a liability, your swords can sometimes be more of a hinderance than a help, even if you are hitting. To certain high-DEF mobs, you might as well be handing them a gift-wrapped parcel full of mama's freshly-baked TP muffins.

In those cases it's best to leave the meleeing to those DDs who hit harder than us. Which is alot of them, actually. You should do what you can for your group without becoming a risk factor. Aside occasionaly running in to Disseverment, there are a variety of useful things BLU can do that don't involve meleeing.

Like Cannonball! Yay!
And speaking of which, any BLUs here have Cannonball experiance against Proto-Omega? Obviously in 4-leg mode it sucked, but in 2-legged tonight I managed 1300k with Cocoon, taco and minne. Is that good or bad?

[EDIT]Oh, and as /THF

[Kaslo]

Yay you didn't catch sarcasm in the more efficient sleeping TP.

And for Gods I have tested TPing and not and the DMG difference isn't that big and I found it more hindersome than helpful. Many times loose a CASA cause of lag and it hitting with your sword, then with hate bouncing between 2 tanks running around hindered TPing cause I would get alot of "Cannot see the mob" messages.

Overall with my testing I noticed it was more efficient to not engague since:

A. on HNM 95+% of our dmg is from SA Spell anyways

B. I could spend free time supporting instead of meleeing (Diamondhide spam in tank pt kills alot of time :/)

but again I say overall from this I felt not meleeing was more efficient, but if you fell the other way that's ok.

[Delekii]

You can support while you melee, turn away from the mob before you start ca/sa. 95% of our damage is from SA, but having TP increases that through CA, as well as adding dot.

That said, the difference between perdu and ifrits/jagdplaute/wing is not that big. There aren't very many HNM's where hitting for zero is a big problem, and blue has a tonne of accuracy gear available anyway.. I can't imagine the increase in sword dot from hangar vs the damage increase from 3str/vit on a cannonball, for eg, is any large difference.

[FinalJustice]

I think for dot purposes DMG: 44 Accuracy +5 and Attack +15 > DMG: 36 Attack + 10 Str + 3.

Though hitting for 0 on all HNM isn't a problem, 8 more dmg rating, 5 more acc, and 5 more attack, 10 less delay is nothing to sneeze at right? There's no super gigantic difference, but there's a difference none the less.

[Delekii]

There's a difference in both ways. Those stats on melee are obviously different, but if the tp is going toward increasing a cannonball, losing 3vit 3str on cannonball is a noticable difference too.

Really, it depends totally on the situation. The only time where Hanger is relevant in HNM is when your sword is an important part of your overall damage, which really means non-kited hnms where you are meleeing most or all of the time. I mean, on Cerb, people are getting 2-3k cannonballs, which means that half the time BLU is going to be logging out or moving in and out of range of AOE, etc.. on Timmy, you TP on other mobs in any event so the sword stats dont matter.. so on so fourth.

Very little difference, and very situational.

[Kaslo]

Like I said I have said I have tried both ways and personally I have just found it more efficient to not melee. We can disagree but it won't change my mind from my own testing.

[BexBLU]

Our leg armour selection sucks.
For casting physical spells: Homam Cosciales, Golliard Trousers or Morrigan's Slops?

[Tomino]

a small question on BLU "behaviour" in exp party to all those who play blu since long : what's the best way to make us of our sword dot+spells?

- Casting a spell after each melee swing (/NIN) ? after 2 swings, or maybe 2 spells x swing? I sometimes worry I cast too much (taru) or too little.

- Stick to a valuable spell combo and spam it like Mandibular+Sickle? or start with dots/enfeeb?
i can think of 2 dots (any poison+cold wave) and Def Down, VIT down, Slow (usually done by NIN or RDM) and even all the Acc/DEX/AGI down from many spells.
I still cant decide if is it worth something to spend mp/casting time in debuffs and not straight on dmg spells?

[Tonko]

Stick to your basic spells, DoT & enfeebles largely aren't worth it. The enfeebles worth messing with are:
Filamented Hold - Stronger than Slow 1
Frightful Roar - Stronger than Acid Bolts
Sandspin - Accuracy down that will last all battle and can't be resisted apparently.

Anything else really isn't worth casting in XP parties. Stick to your basic damage spells for the level, and toss in Bludgeon & Headbutt.

Bludgeon remains our best Damage / MP spell for the entire game. Jester's cape +1 on yer back + STR gear behind it can get it up into the 300 damage range for 16 MP, which is pretty sexy.

Melee, toss out spells as MP allows keeping an even flow so as to prevent downtime & have a MP reserve for emergencies. Parties with more MP refresh will allow for BLU to spam spells more to do better damage. Our spells are our damage, melee is just DoT, and getting TP for things like Vorpal -> Death Scissors, or other self SCs. You should always use your TP to do a WS -> spell for a self SC, instead of doing just CA + spell, the damage total for the MP used will almost always be higher doing the self SC. Only way it won't is if you're /THF, then SA+TA+CA+ Death Scissors will far out amage normal WS + CA Spell. Use Burst Affinity on MP Drainkiss when you can use it to increase MP drained and accuracy, if not fighting an aspirable mob just BA your debuff that has trouble landing for greater accuracy.

Our leg armour selection sucks.
For casting physical spells: Homam Cosciales, Golliard Trousers or Morrigan's Slops?

Homam would be my prefference, giving the most accuracy, as well as haste for recast down, and fast cast for infinitesimally shorter recast & lowered recast. Golliard are hardly worth getting due to the hassle involved. Prince's Slops are a good 2nd place to Homam, offering a nice accuracy boost. If you can get Morrigan's Slops, by all means, go for it, and use it on your big damage spells like CA+Disseverment, since it already gets a boost in accuracy from having CA active.

[Nirokun!]

when i was leveling up, i cast frightful roar on everything, and did dmg spells (outside of [self]SC+MB where appropriate) to keep myself in sanction latent, while maintaining mp (at least 25%, should something go wrong and i need to spam)

outside of roar i dont think i really debuffed

[solsovly]

when i was leveling up, i cast frightful roar on everything, and did dmg spells (outside of [self]SC+MB where appropriate) to keep myself in sanction latent, while maintaining mp (at least 25%, should something go wrong and i need to spam)

outside of roar i dont think i really debuffed

How is the accuracy on Filamented Hold on VT+ ish stuff? I was BST/NIN tanking the NM Imp for frenetic imp with my friends 60(I think) BLU. Filamented Hold seemed pretty potent and accurate. Does the slow% get adjusted by any modifiers or is it constant like elegy/hojo?

[Tonko]

Static duration @ % slow. 25% for 120 seconds.

Basically it's a Battlefield Elegy, that stacks with Elegy.

Stronger than Hojo: Ni (which is 18%.)

A nice graph showing Slow effectiveness.
http://ffxi.high-velocity.net/slow.jpg

[Kaslo]

Our leg armour selection sucks.
For casting physical spells: Homam Cosciales, Golliard Trousers or Morrigan's Slops?

Galliard Trousers I would say since it has 2 STR in addition to 5acc.

[Tonko]

If you can get 'em......

[Nirokun!]

-2dex would mean it only gives 4acc

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

If you can get 'em......

Kurrea is pretty easy...

[Tonko]

Not when it glitches all over the place, healing to full every time it gets back to the soup.

Or even better, killing it, finally, and having it drink, AFTER getting it to 0 HP, and watching it go back up to 25%.

Maybe they've fixed it now. I dunno, I'd certainly like a pair.

[Rocl]

-2dex would mean it only gives 4acc

OH BURN