Blue Mage: Best thread ever

[Ophannus]

Ah I see. But still I would think Physical Acc would at least be useful for landing our damage spells and for Heavy Strike. Also is Amorphic supposed to be weaker than Quadratic? Getting way higher values on Quadratics against fodder mobs than with Amorphic

[Martinius]

Ah I see. But still I would think Physical Acc would at least be useful for landing our damage spells and for Heavy Strike. Also is Amorphic supposed to be weaker than Quadratic? Getting way higher values on Quadratics against fodder mobs than with Amorphic

Yup, that's the trade-off. CDC > AS is better ws, Req > QC is better spell.

[Helel]

Ah I see. But still I would think Physical Acc would at least be useful for landing our damage spells and for Heavy Strike. Also is Amorphic supposed to be weaker than Quadratic? Getting way higher values on Quadratics against fodder mobs than with Amorphic

I would absolutely merit physical potency over magic. Was someone arguing otherwise? I'm pretty sure magical accuracy (merit) only applies to magic blue magic (i.e. firespit or something, and not sudden lunge).

[Ophannus]

I think Prothescar advocates Magical merits in his BLU guide on FFXIAH. I think the magic accuracy applies to magic blue magic accuracy as well as the magical accuracy of the status effects(since we know magic accuracy enhances accuracy rate of things like status weapon skills and Violent Flourish, it can be surmised that magic accuracy affects the debuff portion of physical spells.)

[Yugl]

Written by Doctorugh on BG Wiki:

You can cap the damage potential on a particular mob if your current HP > 1/2 mobs max hp.The lower the mob level the higher the cap damage (does a max of 65% damage to anything too weak, dc). The cap on high dc, EM mobs is 50%. Has properties of both physical and magical blue magic. You can skillchain with CA, but resist rates on damage are light based. Also your melee acc has nothing to do with the spell landing.

I have not heard of the last part (65% max dmg is known). Any links?

[Alistaire]

I think Prothescar advocates Magical merits in his BLU guide on FFXIAH. I think the magic accuracy applies to magic blue magic accuracy as well as the magical accuracy of the status effects(since we know magic accuracy enhances accuracy rate of things like status weapon skills and Violent Flourish, it can be surmised that magic accuracy affects the debuff portion of physical spells.)

Yes, I've seen that, and I also disagree. And as far as sudden lunge goes, if it's high enough to resist the effect and you need to depend on stuns you shouldn't be depending on sudden lunge to stun it.

[Alistaire]

I have not heard of the last part (65% max dmg is known). Any links?

Test on light elementals @ qufim and then thunder elementals there and see if there's a difference? Also if resist rates are like a light-based nuke, would it potentially get boosts like a light-based nuke too? Korin obi/twilight cape?

[Yugl]

HP: 1580
Target: Light Elemental
Damage 1: 477DMG
Damage 2: 616 DMG
Only one sample, but looking good for the light damage idea. If this turns out to be magic damage, I may need to correct for MDB though.

Took elemental to 85% HP. May just have to work on this from the ground up.

[Prothescar]

Yes, I do advocate Magical Accuracy over physical accuracy for more than just Sudden Lunge, especially in the age where there's such an abundance of physical accuracy in TP and spell sets as opposed to magical accuracy, which is far harder to fit into a gear set without taking up precious inventory space. Either merit is a miniscule enough difference that it doesn't matter which one you do, however I can't think of a single good argument for +10 physical accuracy on blue magic spells aside from Heavy Strike.

It's not like you're going to be capped accuracy on any sort of target that you'd use blue magic on or anything... while in contrast, you're going to be using magical effects such as stun, defense down, etc. on higher level targets, which are more likely to resist you if you're just using your natural skill.

[fantasticdan]

I can't think of where physical accuracy merits would be useful outside of heavy strike. Your accuracy is generally going to be capped with proper gears, unless you're fighting high level stuff that physical magic sucks on anyway.

You are NOT going to cap magic accuracy on things like rex/bismarck, and extra macc is potentially helpful on additional effects and debuffs, especially for VW procs.

EDIT: BG is showing up as a reported attack site in my browser now, lol

[Prothescar]

EDIT: BG is showing up as a reported attack site in my browser now, lol

Same

[Alistaire]

Ditto

[Yugl]

Looks like all the info from Doctorugh's edit is correct (Unsure about resistance being light based):

HP            Target           DMG    rHP    Weapon?
1580          Yag BLM          69     35%    O
1580          Mandy            171    18%    O
1580          Bee              145    18%    O
1580          Yag SAM          155    35%    O
1580          Dhalmel          200    35%    O
1580          Bee              153    18%    O
1580          Sapling          136    35%    O
1580          Weapon           256    35%    O
1580          Pixie            135    35%    O
1580          Weapon (Xarc)    487    75%    X
1580          Weapon(Xarc)     553    71%    X
1580          Weapon(Xarc)     1305   35%    O
1580          Weapon(Xarc)     1305   35%    O
1580          Weapon(Xarc)     1200   35%    X
1580          Elemental        131    91%    O
1580          Skeleton         560    69%    O
1580          Skeleton         434    76%    O
1580          Skeleton         379    80%    O
1580          Skeleton (KRT)   24     68%    O
1580          Skeleton(KRT)    34     68%    O
Critical HP   Goblin           12     89%    O
Critical HP   Goblin           42     71%    O
1580          Marid NM         235    99%    X
Critical HP   Marid NM         0      100%   O
Critical HP   Djinn            7      99%    X
500           Chigoe           630    39%    O
600           Chigoe           336    68%    O
600           Chigoe           342    66%    O
1505          Sapling          1269   60%    O
601           Chigoe           702    35%    O

At slightly less than 50% of the mob's HP (Chigoes have ~1.1k HP), you get the mob to 39% HP (Cannot be half resist). At 600 HP (Over half their HP) I was able to land full damage with ES. Without ES, I managed to land a half resist.

I'm going to contest the light based resistance though because I was able to bring a light elemental (Sky) to roughly 85% HP. I only managed ~90% HP on a ice elemental at Xarcabard and 90% on a water elemental at Cae Mire. Remember that this is considered a piercing damage physical spell, so elemental's physical resistance explains the reduced damage. Could use extra testing, but sick of this atm.

Edit: Interesting question though! We see that the NM took 0DMG from the NM. If that is due to PDT, this spell may be useful for tracking whether a mob has PDT or just high DEF.

[Prothescar]

tbh what you have there is more than enough... the spell isn't useful anyway aside from the possible application you have in the edit.

[Fereydoon]

Is there a version of Yugls BLU XML that's updated for 99? The one in the OP of the Spellcast thread currently has Barbed Crescent as a toggle, for example.

[Ophannus]

Had high hopes for Final Sting if it was as effective against NMs. Was hoping kind of that it would be like a mini Zantetsuken on NMs and do tremendous damage on things with high HP but oh well.

[Helel]

Everyone keeps saying physical potency merits aren't worth having except for heavy strike, when it seems to me that heavy strike alone is reason enough to merit physical potency. It's going to depend on what you use BLU for I suppose, but if you're taking BLU into nyzul then I would highly recommend physical potency. Even with pizza +1 heavy strike is inconsistent in there. It is very valuable however considering how many blunt-weak opponents (pots, skeles, etc) there are. Heavy strike to Goblin rush is usually enough to take down any pot or skeleton very quickly.

It's also very valuable in dynamis. Versus EP mobs I would assume you don't need the extra acc, but versus DC mobs the extra accuracy will come in handy (even with pizza +1).

Overall, I use heavy strike ALL the time, therefore, for me, it makes much more sense to merit physical potency. I use RNG for voidwatch 95% of the time, especially on bismarck/rex (wildfire go), so I'm not familiar with all the magic accuracy you may need versus those.

[Yugl]

Is there a version of Yugls BLU XML that's updated for 99? The one in the OP of the Spellcast thread currently has Barbed Crescent as a toggle, for example.

I updated the version up there; should still use barbed but can distinguish between the WS and the BLU spell. New-new will be incoming, but I'm still working on that.

[Fereydoon]

I updated the version up there; should still use barbed but can distinguish between the WS and the BLU spell. New-new will be incoming, but I'm still working on that.

Do I have to change anything in my resources for it to work? Or is it fine as is? Also a ton of new triggers were added/changed since I last played BLU, did you make another guide for those like the initial ones?

Edit: There also doesn't seem to be a set for tping in refresh, was that removed?

[agerknux]

Hate to change the subject but just wondering about blu spells (and future use).

Currently our main source of damage in end game content practically starts and ends with CDC. That said what is it that makes our spells weak?

Based on what I searched on wiki and posts, my assumption is that the "blue attack" no longer can keep up with an nm's defense forcing us to have an abysmally low pDif?
If that's the case, then only way we can up our damage is through defense down enfeebles?