The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Reisenjima cleave is greater then apex parties when u are a blue Mage.

My setup. Paladin puller or anyone with movement gears sub ninja. 3 times cleaver (blue Mage beastmaster black Mage) corsair healer.

Trick is pull 8-15 mobs whatever u can handle and timed cleave. Anyone a little too slow and someone will die when u have 10 plus mobs beating u. Alternate burst affinity if more then 1 blue. Puller never stop pulling. Fight single targets to keep chain going in between pulls.

Best camp is the flying pig camp in flux 3 where there's also chigoes to keep chain going and can magic hammer them for mp back and a lotta lotta mobs.

Which AF1/2/3 do I need to get? I finally leveled my BLU to 99 after leaving it at 45 since, like, 2007.

Looking at it, seems like:
AF1 body
AF2 head/hands(azure lore boost)/feet/(body for standard fast cast?)
AF3 body(blu FC and TP til herc)/legs/feet(can I be lazy and just use amalric?)

I'm good on spells and gear to get thanks to the guide, aside from not being sure which adhemar NQ pieces to replace with herc since I will not be getting Adhemar+1 for now.

Nightfyre did a good job of explaining this so I'm going to copy what was said. Only thing I'd say is for AF head it is decent as a starter piece for nuking since it has mab and macc.

Edit: And AF legs are nothing really amazing but they are decent to put in your fast.recast set so you don't get interrupted if you were pulling high lvl mobs and nuking them down. They also have a good bit of str and a unique boost to burst affinity. In general af/relic/empy gear doesn't hurt to have and af is very cheap if you are just starting out. Relic is still pretty difficult to +1 as VW items are still around 1.5 - 3 million gil. I'd +1 the body for sure but the rest can wait. head and feet are good but yea. I regret +1ing relic legs, lol. Don't do that. +1 empy feet is a step down from amalric I think so def do those. empy +1 legs are very good. Then body > hands > head +1. Blue skill is still relevant esp for returning players as it helps with learning spells and is good for landing spells (macc).

While true, if Herculean Helm is in the picture (as it sounds like it is), just augment one of those for nuking.


The main priority, as Nightfyre said in that quote, is Relic feet. Basic reason is Mighty Guard.
At base, it's a 3 minute spell tied to a 5 minute (or 45/60 minute) JA. With full Diffusion merits, plus the bonus from augmented/reforged Relic feet, and Unbridled Learning Effect II JPs, you can push the duration a little past 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, Diffusion is a 10 minute JA, so you still can't quite full-time it. However, you can go from Diffisioned UL to UL keep it on for over 8 minutes out of 10. Or alternate with another BLU to keep it on the party full-time (or Entrusted Indi-Haste with a well geared/JP'ed GEO), etc.

Nice for other buffs too, of course, but Mighty Guard is what really elevates upgraded Relic feet to perhaps the most important JSE piece for melee.

I'm looking to make upgrades to my current Nuking set. I am about 3 months back into the game after a 2 year absence.

Here's what I have as of this morning.

ItemSet 341699

Augments: Gabaxorea have INT+10, MAB+7
Psycloth Body is path A
Amalric Hands are path D
Telchine Braconi have MAB+14, MACC+14, and INT+9
Amalric Nails are path D

I know there are obvious upgrades like Nibiru Cudgels (just a couple more Zi'tah T1s before I can pop T2s), and Amalric head/body/legs.

Are there any other relatively easy to acquire upgrades to my nuking set I should strive for?

You should consider Herc head instead of Amalric. It isn't too bad to get and augment. Magic path with pellucid stones is usually generous unless you have notoriously bad luck.

Salire Belt is an AH-able nuking belt option. Also Sanctity Necklace from Quetzalcoatl. (which you should be doing for vorseals anyway)

More productive, I agree, but not faster CP, unless we're comparing CPing on Apex mobs with a pick up group rather than your linkshell/friends. Most JP I've gotten in an hour on Apex mobs is about 350.

Reaving Wind caps at 1000 TP. Flat reduction, not a percentage of current TP. If there's a skill-dependent component to that reduction it caps somewhere below 500 skill, not going to bother testing for it.

I knew someone would misunderstood. I mean blue Mage In general would do faster Jps in a cleave party then apex. I don't think blue can pump out the same type of magic burst damage as a black Mage.

In general Apex > reisenjima cleave but were u a blue Mage in that 350 Jp an hour party?

Any melee job can do apex.


Edit:unless you can't sc.

I've been self-skillchainer on PLD even. Samurai Roll is a hell of a thing. Don't know why you'd think a BLU would be trying to MB instead of self skillchaining.

SAM roll really is broken these days.

It's been "broken" for years actually, even back when delve2 was just out, I've been doing self SC on COR with SAM roll on. It's just that ppl don't utilize it nor invite COR to melee pt at that time, so it wasn't a thing back then.

So, i just gotta ask... did you bring a mule?

I've been recently doing Ayapec and i've had notoriously bad luck.
So this may be old hat now or w/e but I couldn't really find anything about the mob outside of cookie cutter PLD + RNG or PLD + MAGE shite.


I've won like two fights trust-lo out of... let's just say a lot of attempts. I've actually scoured videos and looked for strategies but I noticed what appeared to be some recurring patterns and i corroborated those with the videos on YT and my own experiences.

I compiled it all after watching about 7 different videos and notes from my own fights and wrote it all up on wiki and put some citations on the talk page. I actually had to make the page, if you guys could check it out. I'm infuriated that this mob is giving me this much ***, but I either have the absolute worst luck, or there just seems to be something about the fight i'm missing.

Ayapec is pretty easy if you stop it's gimmick. Ayapec's AoE Damage increases significantly the more buffs it has up. The best way to fight it is to dispel EVERYTHING it tries to give itself. It TPs in cycles so it gives you time to strip it's buffs but if you fail to do so, you'll take nearly doubled bubble-shower damage.

Outside of that, fight as normal. Sanguine Blade does pretty good damage and gives a free-heal

I did this with about 95% success (learning curve) with my BLU/RUN, WHM mule on a cure bot, Amchuchu tank, Star Sibyl, w/e else. Any decent Healer Trust should be fine but a hand-made mule will have MUCH better MP efficiency.

Ok, so what i take from that is, that i know you didn't read my post. Dispel doesn't reduce Bubble Shower damage, it triggers him to only use Bubble Shower, where in by other means he would rotate it's use buying you time. I explain this in the post and on the talk page, provide citations, and even went so far as to give a proof of the mathematics of how his Bubble Shower mechanics works.

Gracias por sus ayuda, pero no gracias.

Wait, you were asking for tips about the NM and I was giving what I learned from fighting it. For me, the biggest problem with Ayapec is the AoE Damage. Everything else is pretty easy to deal with...

I'll try to elaborate.

Ayapec will always cycle it's TP moves,

Bubble Curtain > Scissor Guard > Crab Shell > Bubble Shower.

When I first started out trying to "Solo" it, Bubble Shower was doing ridiculous amounts of damage to me even with Thunder Runes and Barwatera from the mule (some 260~ water resist)

Then I started dispelling it to remove stoneskin and sometimes you'd have to dispel 2 or 3 times to get the skin off. On those Dispel's I noticed that the following Bubble Shower was doing 500-800~ ish instead of the usual 1500-2000~ So I tried stripping all of it's buffs and voila, It turned from a barely beatable fight to a comfortably beatable fight.

Dispelling all of Ayapec's buffs helped tremendously, I hope the information helps.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that his bubble shower buffs him with some buffs he always tries to put on before doing anything else.

I never asked for tips about fighting the mob. I said I noticed its mechanics, and I asked people to check out the article on the wiki. And help test my thesis. Because i think it's possible that he can be fought and he'll never even use bubble shower, because I'm bored as *** with the game. Which you have now not done twice, instead opting to post 'your experiences' which, fly in the face of 'my experiences' and the upwards of 8 videos of Ayapec fights available for view on YT at this moment. Who am I to believe? You, or my lying eyes? You, or the mathematical mechanics I verified against my own logs and those 8 videos?

Should be very easy for you to disprove me, show me a video or a log of him doing a massive amount of damage undispeled vs less damage after being dispelled. I'll wait.

And you'd be wrong.

Meh. It's pretty straight forward, you've apparently been failing against the NM and after reading your wiki post it seems that you aren't debuffing it and turn around saying it's a difficult NM. Ayapec will always use a TP move every 8 seconds or so, as you stated. If all of it's buffs are up, it will just spam Shower and Scissors (at 16+ yalms my mule never got hit with AoE, exact range unknown but there is a safe distance). Full-Dispel will cut it's AoE Damage to 500-800 which is much more manageable than the 15-2000 it usually throws.

As far as experience, I missed the wave so I had to solo the NM 22 times to get my Perun and did it 6 more times to help an LS mate. That's 28 wins I think 6 losses? So yeah idk. Unless you yourself have tried it, don't shoot it down? Especially if it's actually working? This thing is cake compared to SR solo and all I'm doing is Dispel and Sanguine Blade spam lol

I cleaved in Reisenjima to get my BLU to max JP. I even cleaved for other people to get them silt and JP. I ended up with max JP, and 500 stored up, and unable to acquire any more job points fairly quickly.

It was pretty damn fast, and I did it without people helping me. Cleaving in reisenjima IMO is easier than apex, because you can do it solo without anyone. Or you can invite friends to help or just leech.

I went to portal 5 and killed the mosquitos and beetles there on the hill. The mosquitos in particular are weak against ice and light. I set searing tempest, blinding fulgor, tenebral crush, and anvil lightning. It took some practice to get it down, but the part I liked was that both mobs have MP, so you can magic hammer them.

Maybe there's better places now, like the porxie hill and such, but I liked that mosquito hill. Just camp on the bridge.

> it seems that you aren't debuffing

I have been. Thanks. Comprehension doesn't appear to be your thing, I never said don't do them, I said they're of minimal effect.

>Ayapec will always use a TP move every 8 seconds or so,

No he won't.

> as you stated.

That's not what I said. There's that lack of comprehension again. I said he will do a WS every 8 seconds once he starts a pattern. Outside of that he appears to functions by standard TP mechanics. If you don't feed him tp, he won't WSs. If you feed him a ***load of TP real fast, he will.

>If all of it's buffs are up, it will just spam Shower and Scissors
has nothing to do with how many buffs are or aren't up. I explained this.

>(at 16+ yalms my mule never got hit with AoE, exact range unknown but there is a safe distance).

Was your mule the target of the spell? I doubt it. Obviously it's a self targeted spell, but I mean target in the sense of did it have hate. Which is why is said the spell will hit the target regardless of range. Point out where I said there wasn't a safe distance for helpers.

>Full-Dispel will cut it's AoE Damage to 500-800 which is much more manageable than the 15-2000 it usually throws.

Still waiting on proof for that outside of your saying so.

>Unless you yourself have tried it, don't shoot it down?
Heh.. oh sweet irony.

>Especially if it's actually working?
https://www.bing.com/search?q=placebo+effect
I think this trope got started by someone taking a ***load of Bubble Showers in a row, they looked at the last one in their log, rdm happened to use dispel on SS, tard looked in log saw the weak *** damage that i explain why it occurs, concluded DISPEL ftw > hivemind.

Gravity lands on that NM, just cheese the fight that way. Really no reason you should ever die as BLU in that fight, at worst time out.

Read: git good

I don't imagine that's the case. It's either that removing his buffs calls his AI back to a position to try to buff(which he gets through his specific version of bubble shower, in this case), or there is a flaw in his AI that resets him to cast bubble shower ever time a buff is removed for some reason. I think it is way more likely to be the first than the second if dispelling him actually does force him to use bubble shower, and reduces the damage of those bubble showers.

Edit: in the event that everyone is on crack, then I'm obviously wrong because I'm working with flawed info.

He doesn't say he has any herc just unsure which pieces to use in place of NQ adhemar, but yea obviously if you have a herc helm don't bother with AF head as again its just a starter piece.


Download a spreadsheet and plug in the gear to see which augments make herc better than abj gear is Oraen's advice.

Does it not start resisting?