Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[Arkanna]

Has anyone noticed if we got a ninja buff in the last update?...

Last night was the first time in about a week I was able to bring out the BLU for anything, and it felt considerably more effective than it has recently (mainly meaning spell damage). Granted, I was in the Sagelord Assault where the mobs are not IT's, but it still definitely felt stronger. The only thing that had changed was, I added one level to blue magic skill merits, up to level 3 (yeah I know, I need to merit a lot more).

I could have just had a lucky night I guess.

[VZX]

everything seems normal to me

[Kaslo]

I think he means 45% haste with 25% haste from marches/refueling and 20% from gear, which is not that crazy. I have 18% with homam legs/feet, dusk gloves, swift belt, and w. turban, 21% if I use nashira body. Still, I don't see what getting double marches has to do with blu competing with other DDs, since they'd be gettin

Yeah you can always say your blu outparsed random pickup war/mnk/etc noones ever heard of, but who cares, of coarse any dd job can beat any dd job with differences in gear quality/player quality.

Well if you looked to what I was responding to the total haste is not that much of a difference (5%) when it's 45% (BLU w refueling) v 50% (normal DD with haste) than the difference of 10% (Refueling) v. 15% (Haste)

a 10% difference in hastes versus a 33% differences in hastes

[fantasticdan]

5% haste is more significant when you're already sitting on a lot of it due to increasing returns, that argument makes no sense.

[Coolmints]

Here is my BLU/NIN parsed against NIN, WAR, bb MNK/NIN with a BRD and RDM at Great Colibri camp prior to the 2h update.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...bluVsMnk-1.jpg

We did pretty well and got to chain#100+ but later lost chain due to other party.
NIN/WAR = full haste setup, ninja af body, walmart hat, dusk hand, swift belt, U/U etc, and believe he had max katana merit

WAR/NIN = nearly full haste setup w/o swift belt, no merits, Maneater/(another decent axe), was semi-afk and holding TP

MNK/NIN = acc setup, o-hat, palw body (cant spell it) with critical enhancement, okote, 2x snipers, byakko haidate, black belt, nearly full merit (80%)

BLU/NIN = walmart hat, homam body and feet, swordbelt+1 (lol), dusk hands and legs, 2x snipers, Tiphia sting, fortitude torque, Perdu/Senior Msk sword. Max merit, 80MP, 8/8 swords, blu skills, near max chain affinity recast reduction, and blu physical potency. Tier II merit didnt come out yet.

I got refresh most of the time, but I used Healing breeze often to cure dds. And I used MP drinkkiss/Magic Hammer to maintain MP for disseverment and frenetic rips spams. Note that my primary dmg were from spells, at least for colibri camp and imps. Since I swapped gears so many times between full MND for healing breeze, full str for spells, and tp, I didn't see sigificant gain from my haste gears. My str setup yielded about 120 str and 70-ish dex.

I had tried re-adjusting my melee/spell/ws ratio by spamming less spells from 38% / 54% / 8% to roughly around 45%/45%/10% but then I noticed that other dd were catching up to my parse.


Here is my knowledge on pushing my blu dmg potential:
As for a choosing a sub, in my experience /thf has the most damage potential due to higher damage/mp but lacking quick damage migitation. Also, I had an urge to spam spell whenever CA is up (108 sec recast is awesome) even the tank haven't engage, and I prefered to /nin and tank most of the time. This would encourage other dds to spam ws w/o holding back.

As for /war, I can see the increase in melee potential with beserk and DA but it is only applicable to the melee output, which is generally about 40-50% of your total dmg. Moreover, you lose the defensive side like /thf and attack don't apply to blu physical like SA do.

I only time I see /war is viable when you are being the main blood tank, and I knew one so far with good gears attempted at Great bird camp at CoP area and worked fine (his main job was PLD). Also, when you have no sanction/refresh support and leave you with 60%+ of your total dmg to be melee but still require to spend MP for defensive spells.

[shukuffxi]

Well here is the things you forget:

1. We have an A- in sword, far from shitty, meaning good ACC and ATTK (yeah no berserk :/ but really I only notice that difference in weaponskills)

Yes, we do have A- in sword. Most DD jobs have similar skill ranking in the weapons they use for XP, with exceptions of things like Ridill. So it's not like we're way ahead in skill.

2. With marchx2 and normal haste gear means that 45% haste v. like 50% that's not that noticeable difference really with the delay of 1h weapons (even dual wielded) usually you never see yourself stop swinging.

If you have a BRD who's singing March x2. Not everyone has luxury of 2x BRD PT, and BRD+COR PT are becoming even more common, depending on camp/BRD, you might never see a March. And we only reach high amount of Haste gear like that if you can get Homam Legs/Hands/Feet above all other job.

3. Spells stack ontop of our melee DoT

Yes, obviously you add the damage from our DoT + our spells + WS, I never said it didn't.

Now the reason I said decent is because of lack of berserk and a higher than 45 base dmg sword. But other than that our DoT is not bad, but if you neglect it, it will be bad and your total dmg will go down.

I wouldn't even call it "decent", i'd say "acceptable" maybe. Because we lack any real innate trait/ability to improve our melee DoT (About all I leave on is Acc Bonus, set points are better used for other things than Attack Bonus I imo). All things equal (say all jobs equally pimped out) if you fall behind all the other melee DD in terms of DoT, it's not decent, it's near last place Maybe it's just semantics, but that is how I see it. Seriously, how does 2 Sword swings (with 5% DA and 3% TA or w/e people have decided for Homam Body) compare to a WAR hitting 2x with Axe's, like 15% to DA, Berserk. Or a MNK (Let's say /NIN, so no Zerk/DA) Who hits so much harder, has the same 5% DA chance as us, Kick Attacks, etc. Anyone can go on, it's fairly obvious.

the reason we are not sought out for merit parties is because many BLU neglect DoT and then become limited by thier mp pool.

To me at least, that is not the reason we are neglected for merit PTs. We have innate limitations upon us (weaker DoT/MP Concerns/mediocre weapon and gear selection compared to other DD) that a BLU has to be at the *TOP* of his game, to be anywhere close competitive to equally geared other DD. Then take into account BLUs rep these days is pretty crappy overall (Take a look at gimp gear threads and such, they are littered with BLUs >_<), and you are left with how BLU is today, for XP ^^

All the above said, this is *just for XP*. What melee can Haste themselves? Or Stun enemies with good reliability ever 4-5 seconds. And Flash the mob. Oh, and we can Aspir in 2 different ways. We can also give similar Defense Down effect to Acid Bolts. We can also Slow mobs. And have several different sleeps. Of course we have Cure III/IV basically as well too. These are things that make BLU kick ass, certainly there is more.

p.s. for the record I have pulled hate off WARs with just melee DoT >.>

Yesterday I outparsed a SAM as COR/RNG. I think it says more about the SAM than my lolCORdd XD

[edit]ed like 4 times for typos -_-

[Lordender]

I honestly don't feel as if we blu's are all that great in merit parties, its not a job i would go seeking on to merit tbh. There are alot better merit jobs out there but thats not to say a good blu couldn't hold their own but would get blown away by very well equipped melee. I'm looking at that parse and i see a fairly well equipped mnk, gimp war, well equipped blu and a decently equipped nin.

[Valrath]

Biggest issue with blu is that it started strong in April, 2006, but it has yet to see any major updates. Sure we got some new spells and weapons, but no major job adjustments like other jobs have. WE have stayed roughly the same while other jobs surpassed us with job boosts. Hopefully, SE will get around to us and give us a few more tweaks. More ways to increase blue magic skill would be nice. There's no lvl 65 blue magic torque, no lvl 30 blue magic earring. No sea cape with blue magic skill. It's AF and merits only. Really wished SE would just release AF +1. Can't see much harm in using Limbus for it. There's no storyline or anything to it. Relic be cool too, but not from a large scale event like Dynamis.

[lysol]

I think biggest misconception comes from crappy blus while our ws numbers will never quite be like other melee we can easily make that up with a spell or 2 per fight. Ive parsed a few merit parties and a few limbus runs also and I always do very well in top 2 normally and a few times ive parsed against other blus in blu burns has been pretty ugly seems a lot of others just dont focus on melee quite enough thats where Id normally kill the blus in same party while my spell damage would be a tad lower melee normally doubled other blus

[Lordender]

I think a big problem for blu's is lack of good camps in a merit party situation(not talking about imp solo), I think a blu's best merit camp is the greater colibiri camp where a pimp geared thf that is played well would absolutely destroy us in damage for very little upkeep.

[fantasticdan]

They should really just have stuck new job AF+1 materials in limbus, and AF2 in salvage. Thou at this point it feels like they're just going to skip new job af2 altogether, and maybe all jobs af3 in the new expansion? I mean ToAU is pretty complete, aside from those 3 tablet island things, I guess the force pop NM's there could drop new job af+1 materials, but that doesn't seem like something SE would do. There is time for one more major update before the expansion, so I'm guessing they are going to implement new job af+1 or af2 than somehow, but not both.

Hopefully blu will get a decent buff just from all the new spells it should have in the expansion, but SE's sluggishness with implementing blu spells doesn't exactly fill me with hope. I mean, how long have wivre been in the game and blu still doesn't have their spell? What about whitewind? What about spells like cackle or bloodrake from dvegar and vampires? I wouldn't be surpised if blu has like 4 new spells when the expansion is released, and the rest they slowly dribble out every 4-6 monthes like they've done with ToAU.

Also, I think a big problem with a lot blus in exp/merits, is the fact that the job has no real middle ground gear between AF and homam/morrigan's, besides like scorpion harness, assault jerkin, and dusk gloves. Other melees have stuff relatively easy to get or buyable like JSE/haub/amir/paluwhan(why can't blu wear this??)/dune boots/etc.

[Lordender]

I think we're just lacking big time in the gear department and very little gear that adds to blue magic skill. I never liked how our +15 magic skill coming from the AF body peice, I think had that been on a diff peice of gear the morrigans robe would be way more to us than just a tp peice. I think we fair well as a job on HNM's but we lack big time in exp parties compared to other jobs. I wish SE would add a parade gorget type peice blu could use and perhaps more +blu magic skill items.

[Coolmints]

What SE should do is take our attack value as a part of physcial spell calculation similar to defense for cannonball calculation. Then, blu can have more build options such as acc build and eat meat. I have tried eatting meat, and use acc build but its sucky.

[Tonko]

What SE should do is take our attack value as a part of physcial spell calculation similar to defense for cannonball calculation. Then, blu can have more build options such as acc build and eat meat. I have tried eatting meat, and use acc build but its sucky.

Horrible idea. Really.
BLU don't eat meat, we eat sushi, and we like it.

[fantasticdan]

I use meat more than I use sushi on blu really. Colibri/imps and most limbus/salvage/assault = meat. No reason to use sushi when you're above 90% acc imo.

[VZX]

imp/collibri I eat mithkabob
trolls should be doable with meat if I got full homam
only mamool I consider as the only place I need sushi
even if my TP gear can hit them reliably, my spell cast gear still need more acc

[Coolmints]

imp/collibri I eat mithkabob
trolls should be doable with meat if I got full homam
only mamool I consider as the only place I need sushi
even if my TP gear can hit them reliably, my spell cast gear still need more acc

That's pretty much what I do, and to make up the lack of acc for my str gears I would wait my tp to be around 50-ish and stack with my lvl3 blu TP bonus (total of 80-ish TP) and use CA + disseverment on mamools and replace af body with homan body. So far my total acc build can reach 390 and 400 with warm-up, but warm-up not mp efficient and I skip it.

[Seki]

Does it make me a dick that I never invite BLUs? I've never partied with one who was worth his spot in the party (past 40 at least)

[Valrath]

Does it make me a dick that I never invite BLUs? I've never partied with one who was worth his spot in the party (past 40 at least)

Yes, it does. Don't dismiss an entire job class because you ran into some gimps. It's actually a pretty good DD, 30-65, if you gear it up right, which only 10% of people do, sadly. In a sea of suckiness, there's usually 1 good player. If a person sucks, boot 'em and invite someone else, til you have 6 good people.

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

Does it make me a dick that I never invite BLUs? I've never partied with one who was worth his spot in the party (past 40 at least)

Yes, it does. Don't dismiss an entire job class because you ran into some gimps. It's actually a pretty good DD, 30-65, if you gear it up right, which only 10% of people do, sadly. In a sea of suckiness, there's usually 1 good player. If a person sucks, boot 'em and invite someone else, til you have 6 good people.

Or don't waste your time, spending more time making the party, and get a job that you know will pull its weight.

btw BLU is entirely unique in that gear alone doesn't make the job, it is almost entirely skill based.