Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[darkepyon]

Now I don't feel as bad for not having homam legs though I do still want them for PLD and DRG. Looks no stranger alongside our usual gear than, oh say, ocelot trousers.

[Aben]

Aurore is so hideous lol

I hadn't looked, but aurore is pink...that really sucks. ;_; I liked looking pimp in the homam.

[Krazy]

I'll wear my pink clothes as proudly as Vegita does.

[Sho]

Moar BLU update. D75 confirmed @ 328~329 Skill.

Following VZX/Studio Globi, the next tier to confirm would be Skill 337 -> D77 using floor[Blue Magic Skill×0.11]×2+3. Think we should have enough skill to warrant a test on it (just enough in fact if you cap and have 8/8 merits and relic head).

[Myriads]

Think I've found the best skill up mobs. Popping your own T1 VNMs will take you directly to 80 cap skills. :D

Would you say the Ground Guzzler worm is the best? He seems the easiest to handle of all of them for a mid geared solo-exper like myself.

[Aben]

I'm capped at 302 skill at level 77. Assuming 15 more at 80, I'm at 317 without any blu magic skill. Add af1 body and af2 head, you hit 337. However, there are a couple more blu magic skill pieces added. +5 from hands and +4 from neck, at least. With 346 blu magic skill you could hit 79 base D, although the sacrifice in the hands might hurt a little.

[Sho]

Would you say the Ground Guzzler worm is the best? He seems the easiest to handle of all of them for a mid geared solo-exper like myself.

Ahh ironically, that was the first VNM mob I started to wack on that skilled me up to 291 Sword, along side Globster as well. If you are fighting Glob, make sure you spam Sanguine Blade, as you'll drain 200~400 easy from them. You can also fight Rummager Beetle. I'd avoid most everything else for skill up, unless you have a duo buddy.

[Crab_Cake]

Aurore and teal sets can be bought by cruor in Abyssea. Both have a few stand out pieces and a few 2nd places to other options (homam and morrigans). Cruor is rather easy to obtain too. My homam is sad, but my lack of morrigan's is rather happy.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Cruor_Prospector

Wow, I'm actually tempted to actually buy the addon now.

No random number generator + point system = win.

Interesting these aren't rare/ex though, you can sell them to make some gil while they're new.

Only thing holding me back from buying the addon is the fact that I probably won't find a group to do this with.

[Myriads]

Ahh ironically, that was the first VNM mob I started to wack on that skilled me up to 291 Sword, along side Globster as well. If you are fighting Glob, make sure you spam Sanguine Blade, as you'll drain 200~400 easy from them. You can also fight Rummager Beetle. I'd avoid most everything else for skill up, unless you have a duo buddy.

Good to know. I can often bring a friend as a 76 WHM who can act as a dedicated curer for me, (while they skill divine and such too on the worm) so it looks as if this will work well for me.

I didn't realize that Sanguine Blade is so good. Something to look forward to.

Thank you for the info.

[Nightfyre]

I'm capped at 302 skill at level 77. Assuming 15 more at 80, I'm at 317 without any blu magic skill. Add af1 body and af2 head, you hit 337. However, there are a couple more blu magic skill pieces added. +5 from hands and +4 from neck, at least. With 346 blu magic skill you could hit 79 base D, although the sacrifice in the hands might hurt a little.

Loss of stats in hands and neck hurts too much, unfortunately. It would still be worth testing if the pieces happened to fall in your lap though; not like we won't be getting more skill in 3 months or so~

[Sho]

Loss of stats in hands and neck hurts too much, unfortunately. It would still be worth testing if the pieces happened to fall in your lap though; not like we won't be getting more skill in 3 months or so~

It's almost bittersweet in a way. It would confirm that SE didn't simply forget about Blue Magic Skill progression in correlation to physical Blue Magic, but instead hid another tier/semi-nerf within a gear "upgrade."

I'd like to think those gear pieces will offset the loss of stats, however. If nothing else, it shoots our enfeebs up super high for some, if he/she merited Magic Acc+.

[Kegsay]

Cimicine Discharge has a longish cast range and a MEGA LARGE effect radius. I just got some Assassin Flies in Mount Z from ~10 away. Needless to say I died!

[Aben]

That may be a good einj/dyna claiming tool then. Cimicine the whole pulled group > Exuviation and you've got plenty of hate over the mages. (Granted with the hate adjustments on sleep/dispel etc, that may not be needed nearly as much anymore...)

[Koyangi]

Loss of stats in hands and neck hurts too much, unfortunately. It would still be worth testing if the pieces happened to fall in your lap though; not like we won't be getting more skill in 3 months or so~

What hands and neck piece specifically?

[darkepyon]

He's talking about symbios gloves (str-4 dex+4 agi-4 blue skill +5) and mavi scarf (sword skill+4 blue skill+4) I believe.

[Masamune]

Sho, can you explain how VZX determined the base dmg for blu spells D please ?

and also testing ways ?

[Kegsay]

Blue Skill I think is sometimes under-rated, arguing that "oh well it only increases D by one, get STR+11 and that'll give at least 2 on fSTR!" However, I notice a pretty nice increase in damage thanks to the bonus Attack+ that skill gives. My question would be has it ever been proven that STR+ adds 'blue attack', in a similar way to normal attacks for one-hands (e.g. STR/2) and a link to testing, since having Skill+ in my opinion is doing more for me than STR alone.

[Nightfyre]

Blue Skill I think is sometimes under-rated, arguing that "oh well it only increases D by one, get STR+11 and that'll give at least 2 on fSTR!" However, I notice a pretty nice increase in damage thanks to the bonus Attack+ that skill gives. My question would be has it ever been proven that STR+ adds 'blue attack', in a similar way to normal attacks for one-hands (e.g. STR/2) and a link to testing, since having Skill+ in my opinion is doing more for me than STR alone.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.htm...&num=23&page=1

Even then, quick copypaste:

Symbios Gloves + Mavi Scarf v Enkidu's Mittens + Kubira Bead Necklace:

2 base damage, 7 "blue magic attack" 4 DEX 3.6 acc vs 12 STR (3 fSTR 6 "blue attack" and potential WSC), 8 DEX, 5 acc

eliminate like factors

1 "blue attack" vs 1 base damage from fSTR, any WSC from 12 STR, 4 DEX, 3.4 acc (including acc from DEX)

It's not so much that skill is bad as it is the mod penalties are fucking terrible.

[Kegsay]

Care to elaborate? Mod penalties?

1 "blue attack" vs 1 base damage from fSTR, any WSC from 12 STR, 4 DEX, 3.4 acc

This presumes that STR/2 = blue attack from Enkidu/Kubira.

As for the testing shown on Alla, forgive me if I misunderstand, but attack (which you calculated to consist of Skill, STR and base(8) contributions) feeds into PDIF, which then outputs a randomised number between PDIF_min and PDIF_max. Your results when testing whether or not STR plays a role only have one number, I presume this would be (min damage+max damage)/2? Would it not make more sense to try to break the max/min limits that the model would predict in order to show STR plays a role, rather than average out a modest 200 tests? If you could take your results and check that, it would be more conclusive than averaging all the time I think (even the mob DEF/STR have been averaged on Colibri which I presume you fought, you didn't say in that test).

EDIT: If you would rather not bother (as I know it can be a pain when people ask you to do other things with past tests -_-) then if you send me the data I'll do it.

[Nightfyre]

Mod penalties by way of the -STR and stats you give up from Enkidu's/Kubira.

I'm not the doc (I don't post on Alla) and somehow didn't catch that; let me run through his numbers real quick...

8+67/2+307=371/236.7=1.567 -> pDIF AVG = (1.2*1.567-0.4)*1.025=1.517

Looks like he messed up WSC too, did them separately rather than together.

1.75*1.517*(17+15.55+28)=160.7

Close to his experimental value, albeit on the high side. Error's only ~1.8% though.