Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[Delekii]

I doubt it.. does any other tier 1 merit give nonlinear bonuses to whatever it boosts?

It is very small, but its not insignificant. The thing that marginalizes it so much is that correlation is often not available or relevant.

[Geostigma]

I feel like i'm back in high school trying to absorb the insane amount of information stateed in these 100+ pages... when push comes to shove, will all this time and effort into studying BLU's really make them more desirable in ways they may not be right now?

[Sho]

I feel like i'm back in high school trying to absorb the insane amount of information stateed in these 100+ pages... when push comes to shove, will all this time and effort into studying BLU's really make them more desirable in ways they may not be right now?

Simply because no one has taken out the time to actually "study" the mechanics of BLU up to the point publicy. I mean, Delekii's recent posts is quite possibly the first posts anyone has ever seen of Monster Correlation testing and results on a public [english] forum. Everyone knows about other jobs, and thier mechanics over the course of 3-4 years, but not many know about how BLU actually works. COR and PUP aside, BLU is one of the more complex jobs in the game, if not the most.

[Delekii]

I feel like i'm back in high school trying to absorb the insane amount of information stateed in these 100+ pages... when push comes to shove, will all this time and effort into studying BLU's really make them more desirable in ways they may not be right now?

Information such as this allows people to maximise the potential of their jobs, and it is no different from any other job. As Sho said, the only reason threads like this don't exist called "Physical Weaponskills: Findings" and "Black Magic: Findings" is because the information has been known or developed over the course of 5 years or so - things like the effect of weaponskill mods and mab and so fourth which we take for granted were found out in much the same way.

[Delekii]

Vry and I did some testing on physical potency, and it's really ambiguous. To be honest, no clue what it actually does.

First of all, we tested what we thought it did, which is increase blue attack somehow, increasing the pdif.

I have 5 blue skill merits and 2 potency, vry has 8 and 5 (capped). With identical stats, we always had identical mode, but Vry's damage range was always slightly higher than mine (high min and max by 2-3 damage). After that, I put on AF Body, maintaining the same equal stats. We then tested again, and it flipped. Our modes were still equal, but now that I had 9 blue skill over Vry, MY min and max were 2-3 points over his.

If Potency does indeed change attack or pdif, it would be so, so insignificant that it wouldn't even be worth spending the merits on. Since 15 blue magic skill was enough to swing the damage from Vry's benefit to my benefit, we're talking, for potency to actually change pdif it would do so less than like 5-10 attack, for a 3 merit difference. Seems impossible that that is what it actually does.

We then went to test accuracy incase potency actually meant accuracy somehow, and got equally ambiguous results. From my last tests:

First test acc gear:
Warp Cudgel
SH+1
DEX 63+12
240 club skill
All other gear either had no acc, or is accounted for in dex.

Melee accuracy: 163 hit / 55 miss (74.77%)
Headbutt: 89 hit / 11 miss (89%)
Sprout Smack: 69 hit / 7 miss (89.6%)


Second test, I substituted SH+1 for Magus Jubbah (testing for any relation between blu skill and acc at all), costing me exactly 10 acc.

Warp Cudgel
DEX 63+15
240 club skill
All other gear either had no acc, or is accounted for in dex.

Melee accuracy: 106 hit / 45 miss (70.20%)
Sprout Smack: 73 hit / 15 miss (82.9%)

Today, we were fighting steelshells again, EM with 285 evasion. We both wore identical total accuracy, 269, so expected melee accuracy would be 67%. I hit 80/110 sprout smacks, for an accuracy of ~73% acc. Vry hit 84/105, for a total accuracy of 80% accuracy.

Vry hit much higher accuracy than me, indicating that indeed potency COULD be related to spell accuracy. However, today's test was totally different to the other day... the other day with an expected melee acc of 75% I hit close to 90% spell accuracy. Today with an expected melee acc of 67%, I hit 73% spell accuracy. That is a very, very big difference. Either I was really lucky the other day, really unlucky today, or something else is going on..

[VZX]

Not Blue mage related, but now I can say for sure that distribution for pDIF, when pDIF=1.0 is within the range of your pDIF, is 1/3 of the time (+-2%) your pDIF will lie on that number, the rest is evenly distributed.

[Kiarax]

Interesting Delekii, but now I have no idea what to do with category 1 merits.

[VZX]

Just another possibility to actual formula

I believed the "attack" for blue magic is blue magic skill * coefficient.

Second possibility I can think of is "attack" = blue magic skill + base attack (which is unique for each spells. i.e. low number for disseverment, higher number for DDeath or Frenetic Rip)

[rath]

Vry and I did some testing on physical potency, and it's really ambiguous. To be honest, no clue what it actually does.

First of all, we tested what we thought it did, which is increase blue attack somehow, increasing the pdif.

I have 5 blue skill merits and 2 potency, vry has 8 and 5 (capped). With identical stats, we always had identical mode, but Vry's damage range was always slightly higher than mine (high min and max by 2-3 damage). After that, I put on AF Body, maintaining the same equal stats. We then tested again, and it flipped. Our modes were still equal, but now that I had 9 blue skill over Vry, MY min and max were 2-3 points over his.

I always just assumed potency was critical. Because the temp items that increase critical give a "potency" effect.

[Delekii]

Vry and I did some testing on physical potency, and it's really ambiguous. To be honest, no clue what it actually does.

First of all, we tested what we thought it did, which is increase blue attack somehow, increasing the pdif.

I have 5 blue skill merits and 2 potency, vry has 8 and 5 (capped). With identical stats, we always had identical mode, but Vry's damage range was always slightly higher than mine (high min and max by 2-3 damage). After that, I put on AF Body, maintaining the same equal stats. We then tested again, and it flipped. Our modes were still equal, but now that I had 9 blue skill over Vry, MY min and max were 2-3 points over his.

I always just assumed potency was critical. Because the temp items that increase critical give a "potency" effect.

Aside from during CA if it is a TP>Crit spell, or during SA if it is a melee spell, or any time for ranged spells, Blue magic cant crit.

[rath]

Aside from during CA if it is a TP>Crit spell, or during SA if it is a melee spell, or any time for ranged spells, Blue magic cant crit.

Yes, I just assumed since no tests show conclusive evidence that is actually does anything normally, it only works at those times on those spells.

[Delekii]

Aside from during CA if it is a TP>Crit spell, or during SA if it is a melee spell, or any time for ranged spells, Blue magic cant crit.

Yes, I just assumed since no tests show conclusive evidence that is actually does anything normally, it only works at those times on those spells.

Well, the word potency is used in a few different ways.. I mean, potency on BLM merits directly related to MAB.. etc. I would have assumed that increased crit rate merits would be called something indicating critical hits..

Maybe the merit is actually bugged?

Anyway, at this point I think I'm just gonna merit m.acc and chain affinity recast.. CA recast would allow for smoother 2CA/flight on timmy, and generally allow seemingly more damage at this point than potency does I have severe doubts about it being related to crit, and if it is related to accuracy, it isn't that useful..

[kuronosan]

So if blue magic can't crit, how was I able to break horns on an imp with it? Just curious, since none of my melee hits were critical hits at the time. I mean, maybe I didn't notice the "Krono scores a critical hit!" message during all of the Disseverment spamming.

[Kaslo]

So if blue magic can't crit, how was I able to break horns on an imp with it? Just curious, since none of my melee hits were critical hits at the time. I mean, maybe I didn't notice the "Krono scores a critical hit!" message during all of the Disseverment spamming.

Prob because Spells are "in essence" weapon skills and weapon skills can break horns/weapons in addition to criticals.

[sb]

can elemental magic break horns?

[Rocl]

So if blue magic can't crit, how was I able to break horns on an imp with it? Just curious, since none of my melee hits were critical hits at the time. I mean, maybe I didn't notice the "Krono scores a critical hit!" message during all of the Disseverment spamming.

Prob because Spells are "in essence" weapon skills and weapon skills can break horns/weapons in addition to criticals.

I was under the assumption that those weapon skills only worked because they were the critical weaponskills. (Rampage, Vorpal, etc)

[Delekii]

So if blue magic can't crit, how was I able to break horns on an imp with it? Just curious, since none of my melee hits were critical hits at the time. I mean, maybe I didn't notice the "Krono scores a critical hit!" message during all of the Disseverment spamming.

Don't know why that works if it does work, I've read a lot of people say spam blue magic at it.. I tried but it never worked for me.

There is evidence that melee blue magic can't crit, somewhere many pages back in this thread, it's not hard to test on low level mobs. Well, either it can't crit, or 300 casts or so wasn't enough to get 1 crit.

[Kaslo]

So if blue magic can't crit, how was I able to break horns on an imp with it? Just curious, since none of my melee hits were critical hits at the time. I mean, maybe I didn't notice the "Krono scores a critical hit!" message during all of the Disseverment spamming.

Prob because Spells are "in essence" weapon skills and weapon skills can break horns/weapons in addition to criticals.

I was under the assumption that those weapon skills only worked because they were the critical weaponskills. (Rampage, Vorpal, etc)

I have seen reports of all kinds of WSs breaking horns, and that's why multi-strike WSs are so wanted because it's more chances. none the less it would be about the only explaination for head butt and such breaking a horn.

[Meian]

Had Guillotine break horns/weapons many times before. Could just have been a crit

[Arkanna]

(First, this thread is too awesome to die, sorry for the bump.)

So, now that the 2H update is out, I've been thinking about BLU. You'll notice from my sig that my 75 jobs are SMN and BLM, with BLU joining them very recently (2 months ago or so). My DRG was like 55 before I ever unlocked SMN, which was my first 75. I've been itching to level an effective melee DD job for a long time without going WAR/MNK/NIN. So, I chose BLU around the end of January as a new project.

Ok, enough history. My question is, how do you guys feel about BLU having been one of the better melee DD jobs, only to suddenly become one of the weakest? Don't get me wrong, I'm not crying or complaining, I'm just a little irked that a job I only recently hit 75 on is suddenly one of the "lesser" melee DD's. I fear that we're gonna be stuck solo'ing imps forever (if we can find any, /shrug), since we are neither one of the better DoT jobs nor are we MP-less (both desired traits in merit pt's).

Any thoughts?