The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Basically anything. NQ Tanmogayi is a very bad offhand.

atm have D15 acc10 att2 DA3 but still rerolling

Finally got my colada. Spent a lot of taupe stones, managed to get DMG+3 DEX+15 ACC+19 ATK+14, already better than my nibiru blade. Just couldn't get a lot of damage, with the DEX, ATK, ACC, and another stat though.

Which is better: Iris/Niburu or double Niburus?

The latter, unless Iris's hybrid nature is providing some useful utility.

I was wondering because Iris has a much higher damage

Heavy Metal Plates: 1361/1500
Riftcinders: 30/60

I think it's time to move over to Morta full time, and hopefully finish up plates and cinders at about the same time.

I have a feeling that the update is gonna require more plate farming to upgrade this weapon beyond 119. /slashwrist

Hmm so do you think Aello has better drop rare on hmp vs qilin? Debating on putting time into farming hmps now. Kaggen takes forever and it's potentially 2000 kills.

The pouch droprates are the same for all three.

Less run time to get to Aello, so she's the preferable target so long as her mechanics/TP moves don't slow you down. Otherwise you might as well make the hike to Qilin.

The droprate is roughly 6% across the board:

http://ffxidb.com/items/5910

Click the "voidwatch chests" tab to see the droprates. Aello is listed slightly higher at 6.3% but also has a much smaller sample size.

Aello is considerably more annoying to kill than Qilin. It's gotten to the point that just about every aspect of her pisses me off (which tells me I've been spamming her too much these last 2 weeks). She spawns with 3 adds that like to scatter like roaches when a lightswitch is turned on, so it makes her obnoxious to target. She has a move that causes amnesia (albeit, rarely) that can last up to 50+ seconds. However, the worst is Shrieking Gale which causes knockback and always seems to dispel haste or attack bonus...

Qilin dies much faster, has no annoying tp moves, takes a lot of damage from light skillchains, but is more annoying to get to. Overall I consider Aello faster just because she's so close to the HP #5 entrance, but after you've killed her 100+ times in a row and your luck with pouches has been poor, everything she does just makes you rage...

Regarding Kaggen, it's nice to see plates drop so often, but his droprate is only 35% per individual plate:

http://ffxidb.com/items/3509

So, per 100 kills against Kaggen you could expect to see roughly 35 plates. Per 100 kills against Aello you could expect 6 pouches, which contain 3-15 plates (avg of 9 per pouch). With 6 pouches at 9 per pouch, you'd expect to see around 54 plates per 100 kills - considerably more than Kaggen.

Just yesterday I cracked 129 pouches (pouches stack to 99, so I didn't crack any till I knew I was close to finishing to save inventory space). In those 129 pouches, I got 1141 plates.

1141 / 129 = 8.84 plates per pouch (very close to the 9 I estimated above)

How do you consistently proc for drops? Or do you just kill and hope for best?

There's the VW campaign going on this month for capped lights immediately, so just murder to your heart's content.

Now just need a +2 TH for capped th without /thf sub. lol

RIP Serpentes at long last.

How many dark matter have you used so far Stamos?

lol probably more than a relic's worth in gil

Iris (Path B)provides a substantial damage boost to physical blue magic while using Chain Affinity along with Hiashi Kavuk +1 and Assim Charuqs and the job points. That was my experience with it. Pretty fun to see 15k-25k Sinker Drills without Azure Lore up. Thrashing can get roided out too with Iris.

Straight CDC spam it wont win but its definitely best for physical spells. Especially 2 of them. Path B only though.

Kaht, have you been using displacers for your VW kills? I'm tempted to join the VW spam bandwagon late in the campaign and I'm tempted to max out displacers for a quick kill but doing that will eventually add up. Generally I'd just like to use enough displacers that I can kill efficiently without the NM getting annoying.

Already answered this in ls, but for posterity's sake: I've been using 2 displacers per Aello and 3 per Morta. Strictly for the increase in speed. 5 per NM seems excessively expensive.

Hrmm was just looking through the guide for a friend and noticed I don't see any gearsets for what BLU should use when they are doing self buffs/aoe buffs. Its just full blue skill with duration+ gear where available right?

Most of our buffs don't care about skill and/or have fairly low caps. Diamondhide/Metallic Body only need 16 skill from gear (500 total) to cap if you have max merits/JPs and are rarely used anyway; Magic Barrier doesn't seem to have a cap (or I just haven't hit it yet) so you can mix skill and haste/FC/-recast to taste. Occultation is something of a unique case given the wide intervals between tiers; generally you'll shoot for either 500 or 550 depending on your gear/JPs. There's a set within the last few pages that shows how to hit 550 with a good chunk of fast cast and Hashi hands +1. If TP is irrelevant you can add dual path D Iris to break 600. 650 is possible, but requires nearly every piece of skill+ gear available including Renaye Ring (meh). Not terribly practical. That's about it really.

Refresh duration/potency gear is a thing, but I think I've yet to set Battery Charge even once since my return. Can usually rely on Magic Hammer if Tizona's not enough/I'm not meleeing. Phalanx+ gear doesn't affect Barrier Tusk, though it's a nice thing to have if you use Phalanx from /RDM for cleaving or such.

For anything where you can't get extra buff duration (Battery Charge) or more potency (Battery Charge, Magic Barrier, Occultation tiers), you can just throw in the AF3 gloves and/or whatever Conserve MP gear you happen to have (Carmine Greaves, Solemnity Cape, etc) into the remaining slots. Extra Fast Cast can also be good for buffs you may want to cast more often (possibly Occultation).

The formula for Restoral that's in the guide and on BGwiki is incorrect/incomplete. I'll post a revised formula once I've worked it out, but here's an interesting tidbit in the meantime: it uses blue magic skill instead of the usual healing skill.

Magic Fruit hard caps at 610 HP healed before cure potency modifiers or weather/day bonuses (edit: as per the below, Magic Fruit is unaffected by day/weather effects. Plenilune/Restoral function as expected however). That's a maximum 1189 HP self-heal excluding weather, 915 on others. Plenilune uses the same formula and tacks on an extra 100 HP cured, so 710 base cap/1065 on others/1384 self. Restoral appears to cap at 1040 base/2028 self (self-target only).

Magic Fruit actually isn't affected by weather.

I'd completely forgotten about that, thanks for the reminder. Will add that to the guide & BGwiki.

I had some mana issues once they added Mighty Guard and resorted to using Battery Charge on long duration fights. Not often but sometimes.

:OOO gg man ... gg

1451 plates, 60 riftcinder.

I'm looking forward to finishing plates early this evening, and then going to bed on time for the first time in 2.5 weeks...

Still bitter over Atramentous Libations, if it temporarily boosted max HP, White Wind would be sick. I love seeing 2200+ HP healed with Body Boosts in WoE.