Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[Yugl]

It depends on the group you have. A competent group will be able to finish off the first Wivre without roar happening and get erases once in a while for kill the rest off. DRG Drakesbane w/o ATT down is ~1.2-1.7kDMG (Depends on critical hits and buffs obviously). It's true that BLU bypasses the ATT down problem via spells, but it's not an important contribution if you have a decent holder and competent melees. As for the quadav, what you have to realize is that most Dual wielders will do shit damage as you deplete his HP. This continues to the point where dual wielders tend to be useless, and as such, a non-1H DD is highly recommended to avoid time out.

In short, the worse your group is, the more appealing BLU is since the worst groups tend to have problems with Wivres. However, every group should strive to have at least one or two 2H DDs so that you don't time out. Thus, if you're deciding whether or not you should go BLU, determine the competency of your group and the number of 2H (Or at least heavy hitting) DDs in the PT.

[ClarkSammich]

You guys are seriously, seriously exaggerating the difficulty of that fight lol
I've done it PLD WAR WHM RDM, with ~6 minutes to spare at the end.
Basically, bringing a BLU for damage over another SAM/WAR or whatever the fuck probably won't slow you down to the point of causing a time out. If it is, you suck anyway, and BLU isn't the primary reason.


Now, as for BLUs damage against the wivres/NMs, I really don't see it being a problem. Wivres are easy, quadav takes low damage from everyone ever. I've never seen the quadav nuked so I can't really comment, but maybe regurgitation (or more likely, heat breath) would be decent.

[Yugl]

I stated it in a manner that didn't give notice as the to difficulty of the fight. I merely suggested that BLU becomes more appealing the worst your group is. If you have a strong group, strong DDs will be more appealing to kill the quadav quicker. Heat Breath and Regurgitation would be a terrible route (Actually ANY Nukes) to take for this fight since your MP will constantly be strained and nukes don't fair much better than physical spells.

[Rocl]

I've never seen the quadav nuked so I can't really comment, but maybe regurgitation (or more likely, heat breath) would be decent.

I originally did this fight as BLM, and my nukes were absolutely terrible. He's a prick, I doubt Blue Mage spells would do any better.

[Ddboner]

Did this fight a ton on WAR DRG and BLU, contrary to some others experiences I found BLU to be an excellent DD. Big 3 do well on wivers. For quadav, last 30% id say, keep T.roar on as well as attack bonus combo and you wont hit for 0. Also Frenetic Rip/Diss do comparable dmg to other DD weaponskills, I personally eat sushi, but I also tried pizza which worked nice too. Don't discount the poison, each tick probably does equal dmg than a 2hnd DD per hit after 30%. Also you can do alot of dot during the kite phases. Final note, Frightful roar lands on this mob probably 1/3, I wear af1 body while I cast (not even sure if this improves resist rate) and i'm not sure if it stays up after it uses its self buffs, but I cast it none the less.

[Uchitoru]

but maybe regurgitation (or more likely, heat breath) would be decent.

I didn't try Regurgitation, but Heat Breath and Frost Breath were absolutely terrible, and a mass waste of MP. One Frost(1/3hp cap I think?) towards the end did like, 23 damage. Can't remember any Heat Breath numbers at all.

I do remember that our Blm just kind of gave up at the end for Nukes, so I can't imagine Blu's would do crap either.

Maybe a decent option a the start of the fight, but I focused more on physical then(Since my magic set is even worse then my physical).

[Belgaer]

Quadav: Both physical and magical attacks get weaker and weaker as the fight goes on, so it doesn't really matter which you use. Poison is your friend, fellow Blue Mages. You've got your pick of Disseverment with 18hp/tick for 74 MP, Queasyshroom with a supposed 3hp/tick (I can't verify this, however), or Poison Breath with 18hp/tick for 22 MP. I'd go with Poison Breath myself. The poison doesn't last very long (about 60 sec?), but it won't do much less than Disseverment once the damage resistance scales down your damage. You also get Cold Wave, which will lower it's AGI by a fair margin, which in turn increases everyone's accuracy and critical hit rate, as well as causing yet another 18hp/tick DoT. Though...it doesn't stick for long at all, and costs 37 MP per cast, so it can get sort of taxing if you need to heal or spam Head Butt too. Drain spells might be a good source of MP efficient damage as well, especially since they can help cap your HP off for breath spells, while contributing to the cause.

Wivres: It would be a good idea to take advantage of the fact that your spells aren't affected by the hefty Attack Down the wivre's spam. That makes you the best DD for handling wivres (aside from maybe BLM burning them, I guess?). You could also Exuviation it away, but the recast kind of defeats the purpose, as you'll have it back a moment later. I do believe, however, that our new Triumphant Roar over rights this attack down. However, that works both ways, so you could alternate between Triumphant Roar and Exuviation, but you're better off just sticking to your guns and spamming spells. Set the big 3 and Vertical Cleave. You can MB Darkness on the quadav with either Poison Breath, MP Drainkiss, or Digest.

[Meian]

I don't recall Poison Breath being 18hp/tic (if it is then wow lol)

The Quadav's increased defense is just straight up defense or is it purely physical -%? Was wondering how well Frightful Roar did.

[Yugl]

I don't recall Poison Breath being 18hp/tic (if it is then wow lol)

The Quadav's increased defense is just straight up defense or is it purely physical -%? Was wondering how well Frightful Roar did.

I'm almost certain it's physical damage reduction since nukes are affected as well.

[Meian]

I'm almost certain it's physical damage reduction since nukes are affected as well.

Well it would be magic reduction too but I guess in the way that works it prolly makes sense...

[Belgaer]

I'm not really sure if it's a gradual increase in defense and magic defense, or if it's a straight damage resistance. However, it grows at a steady rate as it's HP decreases. The last 25% of it's HP you'll only be hitting for 0-5 damage or so, and that number slides toward the 0 rapidly after that. You'd be lucky to break 50 damage with Disseverment near the end, with all hits landing. Frightful Roar doesn't really seem to make much of an impact iirc, but it's hard to eyeball it when you have the others's damage filtered. lol

After some testing, I was wrong about Poison Breath. It did seem to be pretty potent on lesser mobs, and I did notice some slight fluctuation in the amount of dmg/tick, which was strange, but for the most part, it did 4hp/tick to my PLD/WHM (I was taking auto regen into consideration) friend. I'm kind of wondering if it's poison isn't actually affected by level or Magic Defense Bonus, honestly... That would explain why it seemed to do a lot more per tick when I was trying it during some farming. That would also make this the only DoT in the game that's affected by MDB to my knowledge.

So for anyone who cares...

Disseverment = 18hp/tick (-180 HP over 30 seconds)
Cold Wave = 18hp/tick
Venom Shell = 6hp/tick (-60 HP over 30 seconds)
Poison Breah = 4hp/tick? Needs more testing. (-40 HP over 30 seconds)
Queasyshroom = 3hp/tick (-30 HP over 30 seconds)
Feathstorm = I believe it's 1 or 2 hp/tick, but I didn't test it.

[midguardian]

Disseverment = 18hp/tick (-180 HP over 30 seconds)

I've never timed it, but Disseverment poison can last a lot longer than 30 seconds.

[Yugl]

I've never timed it, but Disseverment poison can last a lot longer than 30 seconds.

I think he's just explaining the DMG per half minute. Disseverment lasts roughly 2minish.

[Psion]

Disseverment poison seems to last different times to me. On HNMs and tough mobs like proto-omega, it lasts 1.5-2 minutes or so normally, while exp mobs and lower it seems to last nearly 5 in some cases. The duration on the same mob though, seems to be fairly consistent for the most part.

[VZX]

Disseverment poison is 5 minutes unresisted. I used it a lot when soloing marid.
and 1 tick is every 3 seconds.

[Belgaer]

Psion and VZX are right about the duration. It does last much longer, but is prone to partial resists affecting it's duration.

Thanks, YugI. Yeah, I meant to show how much damage they do over 30 seconds's time, as the shortest maximum duration of DoT we have is 30 seconds, and I've rarely, if ever, seen a DoT last less than 30 seconds if it does stick. Wow that was a long run-on sentance. I couldn't test any of the poison durations, as I was on my friend's time, unfortunately.

[Belgaer]

Testing on the effects of Dual Wield proved that, if it does add another hit to multi hit spells (or any), the additional hit does not feed any TP to the target. Testing also proved Store TP increases TP you gain from getting hit, which I didn't know and thought was kind of cool.

As for why multi hit spells seem to do anywhere from 15%-25% more damage than with other subs, I'm at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas, or am I just imagining the whole thing? Comparing to /WAR, /NIN has 2 more DEX over it, where /WAR has 2 more STR. /WAR would have the edge as far as Disseverment and Frenetic Rip go. So why do I do 1k-1.3k Disseverments on Greater Colibri as /NIN and only 900-1k as /WAR? These are consistent stats over several meripos, so the numbers lead me to believe something is up.

[Yugl]

Testing on the effects of Dual Wield proved that, if it does add another hit to multi hit spells (or any), the additional hit does not feed any TP to the target. Testing also proved Store TP increases TP you gain from getting hit, which I didn't know and thought was kind of cool.

As for why multi hits seem to do anywhere from 15%-25% more damage than with other subs, I'm at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas, or am I just imagining the whole thing? Comparing to /WAR, /NIN has 2 more DEX over it, where /WAR has 2 more STR. /WAR would have the edge as far as Disseverment and Frenetic Rip go. So why do I do 1k-1.3k Disseverments on Greater Colibri as /NIN and only 900-1k as /WAR? These are consistent stats over several meripos, so the numbers lead me to believe something is up.

Imagination or NIN sub is affording you more ACC in uncapped ACC situations. Possibly due to DEX Base or the ACC of the second sword.

[Kyte]

Do you have parsed data over semi-constant conditions?

[TheMysteriousX]

There is another way to test the number of hits, but is a little bit fiddly and only works up to 3 hits.

Find a NIN mob (Tonberry?) and hit it with a blue magic spell. See how many shadows get eaten.