The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

I'm inclined to agree that perfect Reisen augs are too lofty a goal, even for a so-called "dream" set. The problem is, how and where do you draw the line?

The next round of spreadsheet updates will be much better equipped to handle Reisenjima augments. They should have been out by now, but I'm also involved in an entirely different project that's taken up a lot of my time in the past few weeks and I've hardly touched XI at all in that time. I'm in a bit of a lull now while waiting on some hardware, so I'm going to prioritize the spreadsheets best I can over the next week or so.

I can be pretty defensive, so apologies for that coming out.

How would everybody involved in the thread prefer the handling of the "perfect" sets? Obviously I'll keep HQ abjurations involved, as, while absurdly expensive, they have clear and precise augment paths.

Would simply lowering the stated stats on Herculean items be decent? Honestly, those stupidly perfect augments are not needed to have them be BiS, in most situations. They just provide the highest theoretical DPS possible while not at attack cap. There are times where losing too much attack on a piece of Herculean does have Adhemar shoot up to beat it. Most of the time, though, 4 TA is what's really needed. This is most prevalent with the hands and feet, while the body slot is almost always the most contested.

If people could share some suggestions, I'd be happy to incorporate some generally agreed-upon tweaks to gearing recommendations.

For SAM TP sets I just assumed 25 acc/att and 1 STP or 1 DA below max. WS sets become a bit more complicated to find a fair baseline since the attribute slot becomes much more valuable, but also increases rarity. I think I just assumed 1 WSD below max (maybe 2), 5 STR and 25 acc/att. Still pretty difficult, but obtainable. It also shows what people could shoot for using any Reisen stone, not just Fern.

I think it's a very interesting and healthy debate to have. The spreadsheets have brought us to a point where we are so focused on min/max that we loose the purpose of the guides in the first place. If Herculean Boots are the best in slot without augments, it doesn't matter that they're still the best in slot with max augments. The question would really be what level of augments are required to make them best in slot.

I know the spreadsheets don't lend themselves to that, and I know you already do a significant amount of work on this guide-- which is GREATLY appreciated. I think the part that people are missing is where that line is (which, of course, depends on your other gear). If you're assuming HQ sky gear isn't attainable, then maybe identifying the cut-off point for augments (30 acc makes it better, 25 acc is not enough) would be helpful? In the end, any effort to encompass every single contingency is destined to fail.

Admittedly, it has to be so so so so SO much harder to moderate a guide in the age of variable augments than it ever was before. Thank you for all the work you (and all the other awesome BLU contributors) do on this thread!

To be honest I like the way you did it,
I don't see any problem with it at all and it helps people understand what stats to aim for.

I think it's good to have what can be attained and how to gear if one can do it. I mean the only reason why we don't have even more sets is because that takes time to calc them and post them. Oraen already took the time to make it, I say leave it.

But I think it's far more important to teach people how to gear than it is to just provide sets to copy. The more people who know how to do it the better. I wish I wasn't so bad at the damage calculations myself.

I did a similar thing for GEO guide, if I ever have a piece of reisen gear posted as BiS I'm assuming it within 75th percentile so as to not be too absurd of an augment but still achievable.
eg. 5 fastcast on merlinic pieces for FC, 20mab/20macc 7 burst for gear pieces, etc...

If anybody deserves thanks or praise, it's Nightfyre, not me. He single-handedly ran the guide, improved the spreadsheets, retested previously established WSs, and also addressed questions and concerns in the thread while I was basically non-existent for a few months. He deserves so much recognition for all he contributes.

To sum up my previous absence without getting into things, previous family issues returned and ended very poorly. Things have settled quite a bit since then, and I'm hopefully around for the foreseeable future. I am very sorry for the hiatus.

Also, it has been brought to my attention just how powerful AM3 Almace/Colada is in comparison to AM3 Tizona/Almace. In ideal situations for both combinations, an Almace mainhand will actually pull ahead by a decent margin. Nothing game-changing or revolutionary, but at capped attack/acc situations, you're looking at approximately a 2% DPS increase. This oversight is entirely my fault for not properly investigating AM3 Almace, and I'm very sorry that the information hasn't come to light until now.

I would very much appreciate if others could check out the sheet to double check this. Ejiin brought this to my attention and I definitely trust his results in addition to my own that I've found over the past couple hours. However, I'd like all the confirmation I can get on this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qi2xqbwcfsr4brx/BLU%20DPS%20Almace%20VS%20Tizona%20%282%29.xlsx?dl=0

Oh he came back? Thought he quit.

Tizona vs Almace was basically dead even prior to the revised CDC values, so I'm not surprised to see Almace pull ahead slightly on CDC spam given its superior white damage output. Skillchain damage should rein that margin in slightly, but at most that might just make it even again. Ease of use is also a relevant consideration. I still like Tizona mainhand for certain DD situations (opening with 3k Expiacion into a four-step light skillchain completely wrecks a lot of low to mid tier content, especially with my pocket GEO spamming MBs) and the utility value goes without saying, but I definitely find myself changing up my mainhand between all three 269 skill weapons to fit different situations.

I am by no means good with the spreadsheet but when I drop "Empyrean AM rate (mainhand)" down from 50% to 30%(AM1) Almace still wins? Not by much but is there something else I'm not seeing?
Total DPS
Almace = 4523.822
Tizona = 4518.876

There is also a slight discrepancy between which slot you have each in. Only 20-30 dps difference but slot one is given the advantage.
T-4551.482 - A-4773.130
A-4784.120 - T-4518.876

Also, Tizona is TP'ing in Adhemar body(instead of herc), Reiki Yotai and Eabani Earring which is overcapping DW by a lot. And I'm not sure why but the set bonus for adhemar was giving both crit rate AND DW..? I think there was some issue with this sheet.

Umm, that's weird. The spreadsheet in that link either changed or I've some how managed to get a different sheet?

It now shows them much closer Almace = 4784.120 Tizona = 4705.732 and at a glance the DW issues are corrected.

So we can either ignore everything I said because I screwed something up or that DPS sheet changed. ^^;

The issue with that sheet is a typo.

Column AO, row 19 has

=SUMIF(INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 0, 1), "="&AP2, INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 0, MATCH("TPSet2Gear", INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 1, 0), 0)))

instead of

=SUMIF(INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 0, 1), "="&AO2, INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 0, MATCH("TPSet2Gear", INDEX(SetBonusLookup, 1, 0), 0)))

So it's basically calculating the Adhemar Crit rate set bonus as DW as well, which messes with DW calculations.

I corrected it in the sheet I linked, but the one you were working with still had the problem.

You guys gotta tell me when you see things like that lol. It's fixed now.

I guess parses are worth something. Because I could have sworn I was winning when I had only almace/colada against my friend's tizona/almace but when I got tizona/almace we started evening out.
I know some others who thought the same thing but didn't want to post on here and get flamed for suggesting it.

almace is better than tizona on short fights where you cant trigger AM3 or keep it up, that being said, it depends on the player, parsing with a blu friend when he had alma/colada and me tizona/alma, i was ahead but once he switched to the same combo, things got even.

Also a question regarding the updated sets, i asked oraen in PM but he didnt answer me, all the RME sets are under AM3 effect right?

thanks

A statement like this would be worth very little alone. Parses need to be averaged up on quite a number of fights to blend in confounding details.

The DPS sheets assume you're a perfect WSing robot who does nothing but that and reapply certain buffs. It is a measure of what your DPS would be, ON AVERAGE, in the situation you've set up if nothing went wrong. They are also by no means perfect. As we just saw, we had an issue with the sheet which showed a 265DPS difference between Almace and Tizona but is now only a 78DPS difference.

I've had fights where my fotia proced 4 times in a row but that doesn't normally happen. I've had fights where I'm dead, petrified, tanking and have to swap to PDT gear, casting defensive buffs, forgot food, curing, paralyzed, ect. You cannot depend on these always being the same which is why parsing is not a reliable method for comparing things unless you can get a very good sample size and isolate confounding variables. A normal parse will let you see what you did, what you didn't do and how you as a player can improve your DPS or explain to you why you didn't do as well that round. We have these tools but you need to understand their place.

They do assume AM3 up. During a cold start, you'd want to use the standard set.

That's what i was thinking, ill test the sets and see how they work (even if 2 of them just have the same earrings on different position and 1 -different- augmetn on the body), got all gear outside adhemar +1 so should be easy to do.

It's not so much that the spreadsheets assume perfect play as that they assume consistent play. If you want answers for how real situations affect those numbers, you have to explore different situations and build a sort of composite result out of your findings. Vary your buffs, the amount of downtime for casting/abilities, your TP overflow/target TP value, what gear you're using, etc. Statistical outliers such as particularly good Fotia luck are difficult to capture in spreadsheet format, but if you look at some of the numbers behind the scenes you can get a decent idea of how such things will affect your damage output in favorable situations.

I have Tarthar and Danielot Flurry/FlurryII Phuoc when I want to win the parse. Works miracles.

Everyone knows that winning parses is more about sabotaging everyone's performance rather than improving your own. Making sure the SAM can't melee the front, overwriting the WAR's Warcry with your own, killing Flurry with Haste, SATAing onto a fellow DD so he has to focus on tanking, etc.

Any BLUs in here happen to use Ashita?

Apparently there once existed an addon for Ashita called ImmortalLion that is pretty much identical to AzureSets that I am trying to track down. I can't use Windower (long story...) and having the utility of the addon would be fantastic.

Doubt I'll find it but posting was worth a shot =/

Multiple BLUs *none of the BLUs wanna drop storetp tier to do def- for the group*

Not to change topic since I know it's a blu thread, but it's much more likely for the tank, or other dd's to move at the last second whether purposeful or not. Also, a huge portion of thf dmg comes from trick attack and sneak attack rotations, if there's two thf and no tank they will trick attack each other it's not a ploy to lower another dd's dps. If you don't want to be tanking take a real tank and open a skillchain for thf to close on the tank. A good group will do what results in the best ally dps not personal and I've been on both ends of that, being an enabler and the one who gets the glory, with a good group it doesn't matter and your coordination and results become what does.

Playing blu, i can say there is nothing wrong with tanking. Its not my favorite part of the job but one i'll do if necessary. Many party members i hang with enjoy coming thf, and when they go to TA or SA i aid them, i don't hinder them. their ability to add to the dmg or even capatilize the damage is excellent.

I'm at work so it's hard to compare sets. is the new ambuscade set gonna compete with almaric for nukes? been holding off on almaric trying to save some gil

side question on new gears for blu magic cleaving what should the augments be on the mantle ?