Blue Mage Tanking

[Wenslydale]

I seem to recall reading somewhere in the BLU mage thread that the Job Traits that BLU can set are only the first tier, and 2 first tier traits do not make a 2nd tier. Hence, Setting defense bonus while /war is useless because you already get first tier defense bonus from /war.

[Ultimagi]

I seem to recall reading somewhere in the BLU mage thread that the Job Traits that BLU can set are only the first tier, and 2 first tier traits do not make a 2nd tier. Hence, Setting defense bonus while /war is useless because you already get first tier defense bonus from /war.

Has innate Defense Bonus, freeing up Blue Magic points for other spells

Please read before posting.

[dawdr]

A few things:

Filling the other slots with Enmity would help hold hate. I'm pretty sure Saline Coat caps Magic Defense at +50 so there would be no need to waste equipment slots on it. Although it does deteriorate, it's not hard to cast it just before the enemy finishes their spell. What weapons would be worthwhile for this setup? Macuahuitl +1 would probably work nice, but what Shield?

The shield debate really does not exist. You would want to use a Genbu's Shield unless you're really reaching for a resist built. There are not a lot of options for shields for Blue Mage and the -10% physical damage taken is pretty much as good as it is going to get.

Warrior
Has innate Defense Bonus, freeing up Blue Magic points for other spells, and Defender for even more. Also provides Provoke for volatile enmity generation, but lacks cumulative enmity.

Bringing up Defense Bonus and going so far to say that you'd spend set points for it were it not for Warrior getting it innately doesn't make much sense to me. I mean that's what...20 defense in the end when you've got your buffs up? Don't think it'll make a difference. You did forget Warcry though, which is useful for a little more VE if you've got some people around you.

I like Warrior subjob for Einherjar crowd control tanking myself. You just turtle up to bajesus and back and hit something like Actinic Burst or Temporal Shift for quick VE on things, maybe Provoke a straggler, and then start with your VE spells like Exuviation. Sandspray, or spikes spells. Also things like Geist Wall and Stinking Gas have some hate and can be useful depending on the mobs.

Red Mage
Can spam Blind to generate lots of enmity, and provides weak Phalanx and Barspells if they're unavailable from support mages. Fast Cast and Magic Defense Bonus are also available without using Blue Magic points.

I can see this being good in some places but not as good as it is on something like Paladin where they have some innate Enhancing Magic skill to make the buffs a great deal more potent. If those buffs are that important to you, get someone else who does have the skills to make them stronger. Irritatingly enough though, with a middling Mind set, you can get Stoneskin to be stronger than Diamondhide (which caps at 209 providing you have every piece of Blue Magic Skill gear that is available, along with full merits).

It also sounds like you're under the impression Blue Mage can set Fast Cast, and I assure you we cannot. We get Homam Cosciales and Loquacious Earring. That's it.

Ninja
Has Utsusemi, but no enmity generation. Utsusemi would probably be necessary for some fights though.

This works just like every other job in the game does when subbing Ninja. Make angry with what you've got to do so, keep angry as long as you're able to. For me, this is usually Actinic Burst + Exuviation (which I always have set anyway) on top of my damage.

Outside of what you've suggested so far, I do think that there may be some merit in subbing Paladin for tanking purposes. Some nice spells and abilities to be gotten from there, though I don't know how nerfed they are from subbing.

The problem with subbing anything other than Ninja to tank on Blue Mage is, though, that all you have naturally in the form of damage reduction are a 4 shadow blink with a long wind-up, either really weak but cheap or still weak and stupidly expensive stoneskins with long recasts, a rather nice though decaying magic defense boost, and Cocoon. Blue Mage doesn't even have innate skill in shield, meaning that you're relying on your subjob's level 37 skill. It's certainly doable to tank on Blue Mage, but you're going to soak up a lot of resources doing so.

[Ultimagi]

They really should add more shields for Blue Mage, and give us skill in it. Right now we have Genbu's Shield and Acheron Shield for Cannonball that I can think of.

I realize Blue Mage can't set Fast Cast, I was being concise. Sorry if it was misleading.

As for sub Ninja, I've always hated this game's dependence on it. People seem to worship the idea of Dual Wield, without any regard to any other reason to use another subjob. In a tanking situation, it is completely necessary to have Utsusemi sometimes. But if I'm going to be spamming that, I'm going to do it on Red Mage with Haste and Fast Cast, not Blue Mage with a Physical Damage Taken -% set.

[Tsuko_Asura]

And I've always hated how people refer to utilizing a powerful tool as dependence.

Regardless, you seem to have a predisposition towards 'becoming another job', more specifically, Ninja, which is a bit silly when you're trying to imitate Paladin. Blue Mage tanking does work, which was demonstrated when quite a few people gave it a shot against some pretty significant opponents, but the fact of the matter is, you're going to take more damage than other jobs, and you're going to have more difficulty maintaining hate than other jobs.

[AoshiZ]

Tanked Byakko over a year ago when blu came out. Blu/War. It was a last minute decision because we were short and I had a Pld/War as the other tank. Genbu Shield / Jelly Ring / Umbral Cape. Full Homam. Defensive food to combo with defender and used that to do 400-500 damage cannonballs for Hate. Along with provoke and magic fruit i was easily able to hold hate and trade hate with the pld.

Overall took less damage per hit than the pld. Fairly easy to tank. Pld's gear wasn't uber by any means and this is not a comparison of blu versus pld, but more of a Blu can do it easily.

[Nadie]

I've tanked a lot of things as BLU/NIN, from Ultima to T10 assaults to wyrms to ZNMs, and a lot more... it not only works - it works well. There's advantages and disadvantages compared to PLD, NIN and RDM, but overall, I find a BLU tank that knows what they're doing to work perfectly fine in stead of any of the other, with a few exceptions (mainly fights where you can't use AoE spells), and I actually prefer tanking on BLU when possible.

[Karshe]

You can easily macro a sword into a spell, much like how Ele staves are macro'd into elemental magic. Then you could keep Earth/Terra Staff on Seigan/Third Eye macro. Hell of alot of blinking would be done tho.

Oh I know that, but I was responding to this in support of /SAM in regards to Meditate.

3rd hand info, but Pld in my ls often mentions a JP post about blu/sam w/ terra staff, third eye tanking and using meditate to get tp up for stronger spells. dunno how much truth there is to it, just throwing it out there.

Meditate is obviously useless unless you switch to a sword and then meditate... but that seems pretty silly if you're "tanking" since you'd lose seigan.

I still think /SAM is a very silly tanking choice in comparison to /NIN.

[Ultimagi]

powerful tool

Dual Wield isn't as powerful as everyone thinks it is, which is exactly my point. It provides no extra attacks until level 25 Ninja. Then even when it does, it reduces your Store TP to match the reduced delay, resulting in no net gain in TP. Furthermore, your extra attacks feed more TP to the enemy than Subtle Blow reduces. There is one reason Dual Wield is useful, and that is for an extra attack on physical Weapon Skills. Another very rare circumstance is when it provides a bonus from an offhand weapon that is unavailable from a different subjob. When I see 90% of Blue Mages, Dancers, Thieves, and other jobs who rely on TP subbing ninja, I call that a dependence, and somewhat ignorance. If you're not pulling and/or expect to be taking damage in some way, you do not need Utsusemi, therefore there's no reason to use Ninja as your subjob.

Back to real discussion:
Thanks for the testimonial AoshiZ, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I have full Homam at the moment, but I'm wondering if the Darksteel Harness +1 set would perform better.

Also to some of the other replies, remember the assumption that when you're tanking you have Refresh and Ballad, unlike when you're a melee and nobody cares about you. I think subbing Samurai is pretty much useless just because of the -100% Fast Cast from Seigan. Subbing Paladin would provide Flash and Sentinel, which I didn't think of, which generate a lot of enmity. It also gives Defense Bonus and Auto Refresh, freeing up Blue Magic points. Has anyone tried this?

[Tsuko_Asura]

I was talking about Utusemi, I loath DW.

And if you're after enmity, /PLD isn't the way to go. /RDM and /DRK will provide significantly better results.

[astura]

If you look up kaekos emnity testing blu has spells with similar MP/cost enmity ratings as a pld and access to similar gear (-% physical and magic damage haste refresh) the diffrences are mainly shield skill (A+ vrs none) and job ability usage (sentinel/rampart naturally and guardian/chiveliry with merits). If you considered abusing sentinel for VE/CE we can also consider a blu abusing Diffusion+exuviation every 10 minutes (buts that's 10 minute recast vrs 4-5 minutes for a pld with sentinel) The main advatage a BLU would have over a pld tank is reaching a higher MDB bonus then a pld. Given they can equip almost the same MDB gear blu can set the trait and use a spell.

Is blu able to tank? I'd certainly think so the ability/gear/merits are there.
Magic damage diffrence? Outside aegis they take the same -% magic dmg but blu can get much more MDB then pld
Physical damage difference? blu gets -10% more dmg taken while pld has A+ shield skill.
Should that matter?Solo tanking its like a ninja (but lower parry/evasion) you can get hit or you start to get beat down bad you have cures to reestablish hate.Co tanking it shouldn't matter (-28% physical dmg down on blu with shield -38% with terra staff)

All said i feel the main difference is pld is more JA reliant while blue is spell based reliance
but they both can do the same things just diffrent ways at the end of the day.

[Ultimagi]

Dark Knight produces enmity with Last Resort, Weapon Bash, Souleater, and Stun right? I can't see the Job Abilities being useful unless they give more cumulative enmity than volatile. As for Stun, I wouldn't want to add to the resistance build and cause something nasty to go unstunned.

[Chojja]

Tanked JoL on BLU/PLD once before...would have to work on the enmity setup a bit next time, but the damage taken was laughable

[Ultimagi]

There's a Tarutaru Red Mage in my linkshell who takes 0 damage Thundaga IIIs from Jailer of Love. I'm quite jealous of him, and he inspired this whole idea. He also laughs at Citadel Busters.

[The Stig]

Meditate is obviously useless unless you switch to a sword and then meditate... but that seems pretty silly if you're "tanking" since you'd lose seigan.

I still think /SAM is a very silly tanking choice in comparison to /NIN.

The idea isn't to use sword weapon skills, but to utilise the -20% physical damage taken and to be able to parry/anticipate with a 2-handed weapon, while Meditating for TP for your spells that actually do damage. I guess this only means magical type damage if the physical BLU spells are based upon your weapon's accuracy though, I'm unsure about this.

[dawdr]

Dual Wield isn't as powerful as everyone thinks it is, which is exactly my point. It provides no extra attacks until level 25 Ninja. Then even when it does, it reduces your Store TP to match the reduced delay, resulting in no net gain in TP. Furthermore, your extra attacks feed more TP to the enemy than Subtle Blow reduces. There is one reason Dual Wield is useful, and that is for an extra attack on physical Weapon Skills. Another very rare circumstance is when it provides a bonus from an offhand weapon that is unavailable from a different subjob. When I see 90% of Blue Mages, Dancers, Thieves, and other jobs who rely on TP subbing ninja, I call that a dependence, and somewhat ignorance. If you're not pulling and/or expect to be taking damage in some way, you do not need Utsusemi, therefore there's no reason to use Ninja as your subjob.

Do people still not know that the level 10 Dual Wield trait is 10% delay reduction, and that the 25 one is 15%? And that lower delay on your weapon means, in fact, faster TP gain rather than slower? I know it's a derail and all that, but seriously now.

Edit: here's a link to a chart from the other wiki that shows TP gain and delays. Remember that delays for Dual Wield are calculated individually, not both weapons together.

[Ultimagi]

Do people still not know that the level 10 Dual Wield trait is 10% delay reduction, and that the 25 one is 15%? And that lower delay on your weapon means, in fact, faster TP gain rather than slower? I know it's a derail and all that, but seriously now.

Just looked it up, I was unaware of the first 10% tier. However, you're wrong about providing extra TP, delay reduction reduces TP gain. It makes no difference, all the points remain valid.

[Karshe]

The idea isn't to use sword weapon skills, but to utilise the -20% physical damage taken and to be able to parry/anticipate with a 2-handed weapon, while Meditating for TP for your spells that actually do damage. I guess this only means magical type damage if the physical BLU spells are based upon your weapon's accuracy though, I'm unsure about this.

I get that, but it's still useless. The idea behind SAM subjob was for damage mitigation with Terra's Staff and Seigan/Third Eye. Then meditate was brought up, and if you're tanking on BLU/SAM for whatever reason you would need to switch to sword, meditate, wait the ~10 seconds for your 60% to fill up, CA+spell, switch back to staff/seigan. I realize you could macro swap the weapons in and out quite easily, however, my point was that if you're subbing /SAM for damage mitigation, you just spent a good 15 seconds without the Terra's Staff/Seigan getting royally beat on. Depending on the mob that can add up to quite a bit of damage, and obviously is not very good damage mitigation.

[WraithLakshmi]

Just looked it up, I was unaware of the first 10% tier. However, you're wrong about providing extra TP, delay reduction reduces TP gain. It makes no difference, all the points remain valid.

Actually, he's correct. There is a decrease in slope of the TP vs. Delay graph at around 180 TP, meaning that further decreasing your delay past this point doesn't change your TP per hit as much as it would in the 180-450 delay range. However, in the case of BLU's, even with a suppanomimi, you aren't going to get your sword delay under 180. In fact, with a Perdu Hanger and Koggelmander, your delay after duel wield will be almost exactly 180 for each. Ninja and Thieves, however, can get their weapons under 180 delay, so the inflection would be applicable to them.

Regardless, the real benefit of duel wielding is the large increase to your melee capabilities. Ninja sub and suppanomimi will give a 25% boost to melee DPS, along with the extra hit on WS. The better your melee capability is, the less you have to "make up" for it by overcasting, so you can be more mp efficient. Against things where our melee will be inconsequential anyway, like HNM, then foregoing that bonus for better spell damage from Sneak Attack is of course the best idea.

[Valkrish]

stop posting and gib results plz