The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Would this also include gear with Drain potency + on?
E.g.: Fucho-no-Obi

Unless my memory is horribly distorted, no +drain potency items work with BLU spells.

Full Hagondes for Sanguine Blade/Subduction and Iuitl helm/legs are so worth it ;p

Don't remember if I ever tested Drain potency on gear, but I know Aspir potency never worked with MP Drainkiss. Suspect Drain is probably the same. I don't even know if I have any data left to correlate with this though, it was years ago.

Full Iuitl set is probably going to be it for me for a bit unfortunately. Going to prioritize an Uson first, then probably Thaumas body after skirmish armor.

Pixie Hairpin +1 is best in slot for Sanguine Blade, and based on augments with Hagondes, the gloves from Shiva and boots from AA Hume may be better.

Also keep in mind the guy had some catch up to do, so those may not be in his priorities :p

Solid info with the exception being Ra'Kaznar solos, or perhaps just an addendum based on my experiences. I wouldn't actually recommend doing outer Ra'Ka solo with anything less than a 3Legs. With anything less, it's a stupid gamble against the clock where if everything doesn't go absolutly perfectly you do nothing but waste time and money. A 3Legs gives you 6~7 Fragments from a strong, 4~6 from a medium, and 1~2 from weak. So you'll average about half the necessary fragments right there. A Ra'Ka 113 is fairly economical and can be completed quite readily. Factor in gil/time/repeatability it seems to be the most efficient.

Again, i've only done this a few times solo.

Yes, thank you, I forgot to mention the higher leg tiers. Having the bonuses from the NAs makes soloing far more manageable.

I do technically have the money for Pixie +1, it's just a matter of actually bringing myself to buy it...

Is there a point with augs at which hagondes would beat it?

And thank you max, those kinds of tidbits are fantastic life/gil/time savers.

No, Pixie is affinity, which is a much larger boost to magic damage of that element than just normal MAB. I have a Pixie and know that it's great, but if you're just diving into BLU, you should look to spend that money on more general gear, such as airlixers for Qaaxo, skirmish pop building, and buying stones for augmenting.

Any uses for Sanare Earring in a club build for BLU? Looking at it and don't see much uses for it, unless on some other jobs that I don't play?

Full Iuitl+1 for some TP options and MDT set, and full Hagonde for the MAB augments would go a long way for any starter BLU :) I did both sets to +1 with 3/3/3 pops and full members, nice way to rack in a few merits/job points also :) Not to mention wailing stone+2 items!

Having an OP piece of gear is not going to make you good at the job, having well rounded sets (not perfect) and actual ability will make you good at the job assuming you have the ability to remember when to use ja/spells/ws etc

It's like people with a Mythic but parse half what a Delve weapon player does, because they have 20% accuracy vs 95% and wonder why they suck.

Honestly you can get all your hagondes from nothing to +1 version in about a day (thats 6~7 hours) even with ***luck as you will probably get enough wings to just buy what doesn't drop.

Also dont want to overlook a good DT set.

DT paired will sanguine blade will save your ***.

All it's good for really is MDB and even that is questionable as MDT earrings may end up doing more for you depending on shell etc.

Can get more acc/atk from other earrings otherwise

A friend and I just did a bunch of 113 Ra'Kazner runs and i figured I'd share this map i made

Chests will give a random amount of fragments 4~7, however mimics will only ever give 1. They will spawn in random location anywhere in the large rectangular rooms among the normal mobs. Widescan will help shave off a few minutes of running around looking for Noetics, just be cautious of where you are standing when you use it. It will typically only show positions of mobs based on the colored segments (separate maps) you are currently in. And you still have to be in range. Marolith NM, as normal, will never show up on widescan while passive.

We were able to clear primary objective on these easily in about 20minutes. Friend accompanied me on about 6 runs, but we never got transmelenge. I've done an additional 3 or 4 solo and have yet to get KI. And pulchridopt wings have been sparse. So either the rate at which the KI drops is less than 1/16 on a Visage1 with only primary objective complete, or it simply doesn't even drop on a Visage1, or it doesn't drop on any Visage prior to secondary completion. I suspect it just doesn't drop on a visage1 though. I still have 6 more Ra'Ka 113 simulacrum that i plan on burning through though. Then I will probably try 313

Just finished up the set; prior to acquiring the second shivas+1 with a fenrir+1 in its place was hitting max of 3349, wit out memento mori, none wind/ice day on arch. gears. I figure with the addition of the second shiva that should hit for another 40 or so. All Hago is aug'd with +18~21 MAB, path A Gab.

ItemSet 331951


is the upper limit of Sub 3500 / greatly diminishing return on int/MAB after a certain point?

The Incursion MAB belt might be worth looking into :) Salire Belt from Unity also :)

Can hit up to 4k w/ memento mori up but idk if those are crits or something. I don't pay too much attention. I've noticed it's barely worth it for me to cast memento mori/eat snowcones anymore because I'l still need to cast the same amount of subductions.

Thermal Pulse does a lot better (5-6k) but higher MP cost/can't be
spammed, and also doesn't take a cast off... and dat casting time...

Have yet to try /SCH and windstorm-ing myself while fulltiming obi but I think that'd be the only way to consistently improve dmg, unless I'm missing something.

yeah with MAB V trait and the above set I'm hitting for 3426 now, non wind/ice day. I can see a crit hitting for near 4k. Will have to try sch sub out but the one time i did try it before it seems squishy, I can almost afk with /run and not worry, if not payin attention can be annoying (1 min petrification sucks).

truthfully at this point its more knit picking than having the damage matter because you are right will be casting 2-3 times anyways.

Dredged through BG forums a bit, and found a handy link to a google doc spreadsheet that MIGHT be the one you're talking about, Kyte, since the original by Yugl was hosted on Mediafire (dead link now).

Posted by Tashan of Odin on BG

Hope this was the one you were referring to...

If this is accurate for C.Whisker how would one edit it for Subduction.

So what's the deal with crashing thunder. Is it just a free 5min charged whisker with int mods? It doesn't have the stun that thunderbolt has and its more expensive but is at least stronger? Just seems too redundant to not had some of redeeming quality. Maybe it has some kinda special effect condition like night terror doing more damage to slept mobs, or regurgitation doing more damage from the rear? How would you rank our unbridled nukes in terms of raw damage, between thunderbolt/crashing thunder/gates of hades/polar roar/droning whirlwind. Finally, is charged whisker still our strongest non-UL radial-aoe nuke? I know diffusion ray is the strongest but it's cone.

Hmmm, I was doing a Tojil run earlier and my Savage Blades were consistently doing higher damage than CDCs. Has anyone experienced this? Could it be due to the attack down aura?

I've only ever seen Savage outperform CDC in high TP situations, and in those circumstances, 2 1k TP CDCs would outperform my 1 2k TP Savage. I've never used anything but CDC on Tojil, though, so I don't know if in that one situation it would be different.


I don't use UL spells for anything but harden shell, terror, possibly bulwark if I've 1houred and need the survival, so I can't speak about our nukes from there. Charged Whisker is still a very strong AoE nuke. However, in terms of damage:MP, damage:cast time, and damage:recast, nothing beats Subduction. With proper gear and traits, it's basically a high tier -aga with only a 27 MP cost, practically instant cast time, and incredibly short recast. Subduction is absolutely absurd in terms of magical damage.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Subduction sucks balls it needs to be buffed and be both ice and wind element.

Yeah I already know about subduction. I was asking about our strongest possible radial aoe, not the most efficient. Is it still burst affinity+whisker or is burst affinity+crashing better?

By radial do you mean centered-on-caster?
Subduction is AoE but centered-on-target, iirc.
Charged Wisker and all (iirc) UL spells are coc.
Is that what you mean by radial?

Well, it was Tojil, so it was a High TP situation, although I was WSing as soon as I could. I havent tried Vorpal yet, simply coz I didnt think another crit WS would outperform CDC.