The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

I know the guide hasn't been updated with the new Reisenjima stuff yet, but is there any info about how NQ abj gear stacks up in the tier list? Clearly the HQ sets are the best because of their set bonuses, but I was wondering things like is NQ Adhemar still worth using over Herculean gear? I recently got the abj for Adhemar hands, and was debating over uncursing the gear or just trying to get some Herculean gauntlets.

I can think of a number of relatively easy pieces of gear to target - Rawhide set as a whole is good. Hands are fairly strong too. Wouldn't ignore Psycloth either - legs are a good Fast Cast/MAcc piece, and hands would be a decent nuking piece to start with.

Thereoid Greaves for WS from Warder of Dignity. If you can manage the Fenrir HTB, several items there have some use (body/sword/back).

Alluvion Yorcia is very doable solo though, and potentially very useful for BLU even if you don't do more than clear the first floor. There are two spells to learn from each hybrid elemental type, plus ones from the butterflies and stuff. Pretty much, all the staple nukes save Subduction can be learned there.

What I'd suggest is building something like a 1/3/1 Sash pop (so that you get more time in zone). Trade Obsidian and pop Kirin right off. In my experience, he's (usually) fire and forget for the first floor. You can then go focus on getting your friend spells.

Obviously, snagging other important things like Mighty Guard will make a big impact as well.

Along the lines of that, you'll want to find some nuking weapons to target for him as well. There are select swords that aren't bad - Mediena from Fenrir, as mentioned, is decent - but largely that'll mean clubs. Nibiru would be ideal if you could manage them (Nibiru Blades would be great too), but whatever is within reach works.

Once he's gotten a nuking set rolling, honestly, he can probably solo Yorcia for himself if he wants gear from there.

Thanks for all the tips Isiolia :)

The herculean gear can obtain augments that will push them past the worth of Adhemar. The trek to doing so can be painful and long. The random augment system means you could never see a good augment or you could get lucky and drop DEX+10 Acc/Attk+40 TA+4.

Whereas adhemar only takes some bead grinding or AH time to get your 'lixirs. One's a sure return on your time, the other may or may not be. Either way, they're both upgrades. Go after what seems possible!

is hetairoi ring worth it over epona for cdc by any chance?

I did some playing around in the DPS spreadsheet, putting in some Herculean augments. Looking primarily at CDC sets for now. A brief attempt at looking at TP sets suggests that even a perfect Herculean gloves with +4 TA and maxed acc/attack still lost to Adhemar Gloves in TP phase due to what I assume is a lack of Store TP. So in that case I guess I will make my Adhemar gloves after all. Here's my CDC tests, ignoring any HQ abj gear:

I tested four different Herculean augment sets, for each equip slot: the first two sets are "good augs," Attack +20, Accuracy +20, and either TA+4 or WSdmg+5%. The other two are "max augs," DEX+10, Attack +40, Accuracy +40, and again either TA+4 (wiki lists 5 as the max, but I've only ever seen 4) or WSdmg+5%.

Head:
Adhemar Bonnet B > Herc TA max > Adhemar Bonnet A > Herc WS max > Herc TA good > Herc WS good

So maybe the head piece isn't the best to start with since it doesn't have much in the way of melee stats on it to begin with. So let's look at the hands, but let's dump the WSdmg ones because they clearly weren't cutting it in the first comparison:

Hands:
Herculean TA max > Adhemar Wrists B > Herc TA good > Adhemar Wrists A

So absolutely perfect Herculean gloves will beat out NQ Adhemar gloves for WS. (the ratings for the test I ran on the spreadsheet were 11892 vs. 12177)

Slighty more abridged: the absolutely perfect aug body, legs, and feet are also better than the previous best in the slot for CDC, but the "middle" augment versions are worse, except the mid-aug herc pants are still slightly better than max Samnuha.

Like Oraen said, it depends on your other gear

Does herculean helm with +15 dex and +3 percent weaponskill damage beat a max dampening tam for CDC?

Herculean helm = Plus 11 more dex, + 15 more attack and +3 percent more ws damage while losing 20 accuracy and +3 quadruple attack.

WS dmg I am pretty sure is first hit only

Even if 1st hit only does that herc augment beats dampening tan for CDC?

Plugging it into my set, it does. But NQ or HQ Adhemar head kills both by a lot...

How do those comparisons look for CDC when using Herc with Crit DMG+5% for the special slot, instead of TA or WSDMG(dont' use WSDmg for CDC) :P

wow thanks... so adhemar for both ws and tping? Thanks again in advance.

I have different results than Oraen in regards to Dampening Tam/Adhemar for TP. But in regards to WS, Adhemar head wins easily


Bonnet kills Herculean Helm even with +15 dex/5% crit hit dmg. 4 TA and 6% crit hit dmg is hard to beat. Along with 40 attack

Also, since it's not in the OP, and the spreadsheet in the OP hasn't been updated yet. Make sure your spreadsheet has the corrections put into it. I can't verify what you guys have until I get to work tomorrow and use my fixed one there. (Don't want to go through fixing another version at home ~i'm lazy).

whats the best CDC set up look like now a days i got some decent herculean gear but its mostly acc and atk

Just a suggestion but it would be cool to have a tier set for all the sets like tp, CDC, mab that are not the +1 abj so we can see how the NQ abj gear stacks against non-abj gear. I mean we can all pretty much guess that a full set of abj +1 gear is gonna win almost hands down but as I am lookin through the forum there seems to be lots of questions about NQ stuff. HQ just seems a little unrealistic to obtain atm so...Yea! Would be cool if we could see more NQ in gearsets "Yes, please"! ty

Burst Affinity weapon option: Chatoyant Staff

My results are also going to be based on my other gear. This is just speculative to a few things that I tried.

In my brief experimentation so far Chatoyant staff with Obi to force proc Iridescence for a flat +20% dmg is pulling ahead of dual clubs and swords when Blu BA nuking.

Burst Affinity gear:
Magic burst damage+ gear pulled ahead of Burst Affinity+ gear.
My Cornflower cape yielded more than Seshaw cape when at +35 magic burst damage. Slightly strange given I wasnt at the +burst cap yet. When on my other nuke jobs other stats wouldnt pull ahead of +magic burst till after cap.

I was kind of hoping some blu's could take their BA-MB build and put a chatoyant staff with an obi on and see if their damage is higher than it was with previous weapons on a couple different level 99 elemental spells.

Is there a Blue mage spell secondary modifier list for the new elemental spells anywhere?

It doesn't matter because on anything that matters, you will be resisted to the ground.

That's probably where a lot of discrepancy is coming from, I can't believe I forgot to update that. Very sorry to everybody.

Updated sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9dF3NWykG3MVnotdGIwaHN6Q0U/view?usp=sharing

WSDMG is very very VERY lackluster for CDC. If you want to focus on WS gear, Crit rate, crit damage, or TA are the supplementary augments you're after.

I've had 4TA hands and feet handily beating other options IF you are not dropping too much STP. Assuming STP5 trait, lupine cape, Petrov, and Samnuha tights during TP, I have not found situations where NQ Adhemar wristbands win.

In which situations did you find average Herculean beating Samnuha? With utterly perfect augments, I find them to be only slightly above Samnuha.

Don't forget about stat caps depending on stone. So far, there have been zero reports of getting stats above 10 without taupe, and no reports of TA above 3 without fern. So, the absolute maximum cap for gear will look like this:

Pellucid: 10DEX, 40ACC/40ATK, 3TA or 4 crit rate or 4 critdmg or 5 STP
Fern: 10DEX, 35ACC/35ATK, 4TA or 5 crit rate or 5 critdmg or 6 STP
Taupe: 15DEX, 35ACC/35ATK, 3TA or 4 crit rate or 4 critdmg or 5 STP

As I said before, exact augments for the absolute best will differ largely based on your gear and traits. Personally, I have been shooting for TA, acc/atk and hopefully STR on my TP gear. For WS gear, I look for DEX, acc/atk, and crit rate. I have multiple hands/feet/legs/heads and I plug them into the spreadsheet whenever I get new augments to test.

Unfortunately, this system is not like Alluvion where you knew exactly where the caps were and could build that perfect piece one stone at a time. Here, the absolute perfect piece is less likely to happen than getting struck by lightning while finding the end of a rainbow after having won the lottery.

The new elemental spells are listed in the OP with their modifiers pulled from the JP wiki.

And yes, Kite is very much correct. On basically anything above at most 105, you'll be resisted to such extreme levels that any bonus to damage will be completely negated.

I wasn't expecting SE to make the new augment system even more complicated than the older ones in terms of randomnness. Gear set optimization is a total nightmare now, even more so for a job with so many sets to make, such as blu and sch. Their excuse for this time must be that the stones appear to be more readily available (for now) and there aren't any hq stones for higher caps.

It might be fun for the few people who take sadistic pleasure from spamming stones and playing with the spreadsheet all day long for %0.1 more dps or whatever, but personally, I want to play the "game" game, not the "get lost in the world of randomness and never feel satisfied" game.

We shouldn't need to get multiple copies of the same equipment and make thousands of attemps to augment them for different gear sets, but these augments are potentially too strong that you can't just ignore them. This whole thing makes people never be satisfied with their gear sets even if they are miles away from being gimp.

Sorry to bother people but I have a question. Where would a recent 99 Blue Mage farm CP points solo. (0 JP at the moment) I am on Mobile so it's a bit harder to post my equip for effective feedback. These are the items off the top of my head.
1. Nibiru cudgel x2 path B.
2. Amalric/Helios head piece.
3. Eddy necklace.
4. Friomsi/ Novio earring.
5. Amalric Doublet.
6. Helios gloves (whatever they are called, sorry)
7. Shiva ring +1 x2
8. Hagondes pants.
9. Amalric/helios feet.
10. Tathlum +1
11. Aswig (mab + macc belt)
12. Cornflower cape (bluemage skill +10 I forgot rest augments)
Again this is at the top of my head sorry for inaccurate names etc. I just need guidance since I am a noob player that wants to continue to learn and progress as a player.

Acuex sihII.

Those are some very good pieces of equipment for a beginning BLU. As you posted magical pieces, I assume you're interested in cleaving JPs. I highly suggest you start small. Go to Escha Zi'Tah near port 6 with bugards and tarichuks. They're quite weak and will allow you to learn how to effectively cleave. Understanding how to cleave is often far more important than having the best cleaving gear. Just get a feel for what you need to do, what buffs to keep up, how far you can pull without losing mobs, and what debuffs land on what mobs.

As you practice and become more proficient there, you can graduate to Sih Gates acuex camps and eventually move on to Reisenjima mobs.

Half asleep wrong post lmao~ carry on~

I'll do that. Thanks again for the feed back guys.