Blue Mage merits/gear for Cannonball build question

[Yvonne]

Lately I had a chance to test out some ball builds on Khim. Out of the three Khims, one thing that really disappoints me is that even with full Convergence/magic Acc. merits, I still can't land a Frightful Roar on them. Anyone else have these problems? If you don't, mind if I ask what was your gear set up for it?

Since we're on the topic on gears, what's better overall for cannonballs? Sword/board or Staff/strap? There's way too many things cluttered in the "Blue Mage Findings" topic in the advance forums. Like, what's with hand-to-hand doing as modifiers on the wiki?

Anyway, I'm also starting to feel that Convergence was a waste. Especially now with assimilation up to 5 upgrades. For a BLU that does HNMs, how do you guys feel about merit placements? I'm currently capped on all merits, but I'm about to reconsider on Convergence and Magic Acc.

[whoami]

Really as far as magic acc you just got to live with the fact you just wont land certain spells on certain mobs. Now that thats out of the way it really depends on what your role is. Imo if all you use convergence for is enfbles like frightful roar youll get 90% land rate with a debuff set.
I cant think of anything else but i go hq staff/grip>af body> any macc (mix of homam head, morrigans head/hand nahsira hands/feet/legs balhran's ring new +2 macc ring). If you got the best of this with blu merits you could get 307 skill+grip macc +15% hq staff+21 macc gear(5 head 5 hand 6 rings 3 nashira legs 2 nashira feet?) but merits +13 macc should get you 320 skill to reliably land what could be landed in the first place.My set up atm of morrigans head/hands merits and hq staff i'll land frightful roar around 90% on kirin so take that with a grain of salt for comparison.

Anyways merit set up you got a few choices now.
Assimilation alway usefull for any role more set points and another combo is nothing to sneeze at.
Convergence macc and 25% more magic dmg. Usefull to land debuffs and if you build a nice magic set for spiking dmg every 10 minutes. Myself i personlly use it for making sure a debuff lands by stacking it with burst affenity as well.
Enchainment up to 50 tp bonus. This is usefull for merits and relly bringing up your dot by raising minimum dmg using spells that get a good tp bonus like VC cannonball or acc for disservement. Low recast of ca makes it usefull as well now.
Diffusion great spell if your focused on a tanking role or giving a massive buff right before a planed event (like CB on ultima or hate spike tanking or a MB is planned so drop a buff on mages etc). If your serious about tanking you should consider highly maxing this.
5 assimilation 5 enchainment: the general role that cant go wrong. Sure no hate spike but its not like it changes blu tanking and with a proper macc set up you wont notice the lack of convergence
5 assimilation 5 diffusion: you relly only get convergance for a tanking tool. Max it or go home if your tanking as this is a major hate tool and being able to get high CE/VE every 10 minutes will have you as a main tank. The draw back is that you will need to get some hard to get gear pieces like morrigans body (for head slot and auto refresh) and homam to max haste for recast. The rest of the gear is standard gear for tanking. Know your VE/CE values and get some practice in you can step up tanking and main tank all the time. You may need to watch your hate values very carefully if you have a co tank due to the way diffusion hate can work.
5 convergence 5 enchainment all about the max dmg over time. You lose set points but you focus on being able ot land debuffs that matter for dmg more reliably and able to step up for nuking if needed.

Anyways ive tested on gods (i know i know not hnms but there a comparable source at least) and lots of every other mob and until your def ratio to mobs def ratio is caped sword and shield will give you more dmg then anything else. Def raises atks as atk here and gives you linear returns while str just matters to determine the upper range of dmg. S/S (Sword and shield) will raise both the cap and minimum though the cap will be higher with staff and grip youll get less #s then with shield. aim for a balance of str and vit with def on them. (dont get crappy def items with high stats but done do the opposite either)
anyways khimeria is suppose to be a bitch to debuff without es for mages i think so dont feel to bad taou hnms are magic user unfriendly but others arent so bad.
If you really want to have some macc boost but keep up optimization and flexability go a 1 convergence 4 assimliation and 5 enchainment. you'll have a high DD output and a macc boost available if you need it for situations.

(after thought)
honestly 5 more set points can only get you 2 str maybe 3 str tops from any current set up you use which is barely a step up from current dmg. that being the case diffusion isn't that useful outside tanking and if you are tanking cap it. so your looking at a macc boost to land eneveration or frightfully roar both of which drop def and increase dmg more then 2-3 str or vit can ever do unless that would break you into what i would believe is a str/vit tier of dmg. so while it doesn't seem to directly increase your dmg it increases everyones dmg by landing def and mdb/def down on tougher mobs. Also if you got rdms bug them to toss dia 2/3 on mobs and if you got a brd get a minne and staff/strap it up with ballad II then unless your using 2H then double minne (SV if you want relly epeen #s) to get the max dmg boost you can.

[Yvonne]

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to do Gods or Kirin yet (on BLU that is), so I'm not exactly sure if my merits work or not. I am surprised that you mentioned Burst Affinity actually adds to accuracy. Is that true to a certain percentage? Also, what's the deal on wiki about Hand-to-Hand being a modifier to Cannonball? Some prank?

My general feeling about roar is pretty much close to yours. I would rather have the SAMs on my LS benefit from the Roar then just giving me 2-4 extra STR. That's what I was originally aiming for, but since the only HNM I can touch right now as BLU is Khim/Cerb, it's really had to tell if it's working. Even on my BRD, I normally sub BLM to land Elegy 100% on ToA kings. Otherwise, it's like 1 out of 9 times landing Elegy without ES.

Here's my gear set-up for BLU Ball so far:

Vulcan Staff (Ifrit Sword)
Mythril Grip +1 (Genbu Shield)
Bibiki Shell
Wivre Mask
Fortitude Torque
Heims Earring
Minuet Earring
AF1 Body
Pallas Bracelets
Flame Ring
Sattva Ring
Sim +1 mantle (Shadow Mantle on darksday)
Warwolf belt
Galliard Trousers
Rutters

I'm kinda strapped for gil atm, but I'll upgrade in time.

[Suiram]

Saying Cannonball is Hand-to-Hand means it gets bonuses/penalties from the same mob families and in the same proportions as H2H damage. So if you Cannonball a skeleton for instance, the damage is calculated normally and then a 12.5% bonus is applied on top of that. Or if you use it on Temperance, you won't do any damage in rings or vertical-lines forms.

[LinktheDeme]

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to do Gods or Kirin yet (on BLU that is), so I'm not exactly sure if my merits work or not. I am surprised that you mentioned Burst Affinity actually adds to accuracy. Is that true to a certain percentage? Also, what's the deal on wiki about Hand-to-Hand being a modifier to Cannonball? Some prank?

My general feeling about roar is pretty much close to yours. I would rather have the SAMs on my LS benefit from the Roar then just giving me 2-4 extra STR. That's what I was originally aiming for, but since the only HNM I can touch right now as BLU is Khim/Cerb, it's really had to tell if it's working. Even on my BRD, I normally sub BLM to land Elegy 100% on ToA kings. Otherwise, it's like 1 out of 9 times landing Elegy without ES.

Here's my gear set-up for BLU Ball so far:

Vulcan Staff (Ifrit Sword)
Mythril Grip +1 (Genbu Shield)
Bibiki Shell
Wivre Mask
Fortitude Torque
Heims Earring
Minuet Earring
AF1 Body
Pallas Bracelets
Flame Ring
Sattva Ring
Sim +1 mantle (Shadow Mantle on darksday)
Warwolf belt
Galliard Trousers
Rutters

I'm kinda strapped for gil atm, but I'll upgrade in time.

Khimera as well as a lot of other nms resist enervation for some odd reason. And by resist I mean it says flat it it has no effect.

[Kkel]

For one, Enervation is Dark based. Sticking any kind of Dark Magic on Khim is an effort in futility. I've found Frightful Roar to be much more reliable than Enervation, which i think is garbage.

I have capped Blue Magic Accuracy, capped Blue Magic Skill Merits, and 2 merits in Convergence. I've managed to stick Frightful Roar on pretty much all the endgame HNMs (barring Ixion, which i didn't want to get close enough to to make an attempt). Obviously Wyrms like Nidhogg and Tiamat are the easiest due to correct Monster Correlation with Khim being the most resistant. I'll see if i can dig up some screenshots for you.

On a serious HNM i always make the first cast in Auster's Staff, Magus Jubbah, and Homam Zucchetto combined with Burst Affinity and Convergence. ToAU HNMs seem to resist a lot more. I've found it fairly easy to to stick on Hydra (Real, Assault and Nyzul), Cerb (All 3) is about 50/50, and Khim is the worst, probably around 30% on the real version. Actitic Burst seems to be the opposite, easy to stick on Khim, meh on Cerb, and Hydra resisting like a bastard. Convergence typically lets me power through on all of them, but is, of course, limited by it's timer.

I'll probably be lowering my Convergence merits to 1 to pump up Diffusion, but i'd never give it up. It's come in handy for so many different things, like thousand damage Frost Breaths on lolTurtle and sticking AoEs without getting yourself killed in the process, like Aery.

[whoami]

Yeah honestly more macc wouldn't be a bad thing. At 5/5 your looking at 20 macc+initial boost on it. If you convert macc to skill (1skill=.9 acc is assumption based off melee formula) then that 20 macc is the equivalent of 22 skill boost + initial macc boost to landing spells. As far as blu builds i've managed to build mine up over time to look like this:

Vulcan Staff (Ifrit Sword)
Mythril Grip +1 (Genbu Shield)
Bibiki Shell
Wivre Mask
Fortitude Torque
Heims Earring
Minuet Earring
AF1 Body
Pallas Bracelets
Flame Ring
Sattva Ring
Sim +1 mantle (Shadow Mantle on darksday)
Warwolf belt
Galliard Trousers
Rutters

Heres what i would change when you get the time:
Vulcan Staff (wing/+ Sword)
Axe Grip +1 (Genbu/ara[tab] (lvl 70ish shield) Shield)
Bibiki Shell (rse ammo if your elv and msk chachram +2/3 for sea/sky)
Wivre Mask (+1 or dusk only upgrade)
Fortitude Torque (chiv chain would help more imo as the str breaks the xtr/vit barrior to determine your tier of dmg 3 str/4def)
Heims Earring
Minuet Earring
AF1 Body
Pallas Bracelets (alky bracers are only upgrade but pallas work fine till then)
Flame Ring
Sattva Ring (another flame ring if you got gil otherwise a acceptable substatute)
Sim +1 mantle (Shadow Mantle on darksday)
Warwolf belt
Galliard Trousers (i found the heaviest def pants work best after playing with crim legs and morrigans slops)
Rutters

my set up for cannonball i run in this set up:
weapon: wing sword (alt vulcans staff) 2 vit/str
sub: genbus/arch shield (axe grip) 26 def
ammo: msk chakram +2 (tossed bibiki shell ny accident a year before you could restore items) +2 str sea/sky
rings: triumph/minuet 3 str
body: af 3 str
hands: alky bracers 11 str
rings: rajas/flame 10 str 3
back: Sim +1 mantle 5 str 8
waist: warwolf +5 str +5 vit
legs: crim legs
feet: taru rse24 str 4 vit

that leaves me with +43 str(w/o chakram) and only 11 vit. Though i typiccly once im done setting spells and get prot 4 and tav taco on i have 720ish def 59/61 str and 29 or 30 vit. im taru though with 5 str merits so im heavily biased toward str. Also toying around with sizako and VC i found str>2ndary mods on sa spells using morrigan's head/body vrs morrigan's head and af body. I also found that once i broke a certain amount of str my cannonballs on kirin/omega/ultima/sky gods (not genbu that def raising bastard) really got more constant and higher dmg so im certain theres a str/vit threshold to overcome then stack 2ndary mods.