The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Just to clarify...your gleti pieces are r0? And Gleti at r0 is showing gain (just the pieces you mentioned) with and without attack cap?

The only rank that matters for Expiacion is really body (and not much too, because DA is really not that strong with 90% of damage on first hit and AM3 on main hand and offhand with probably floored acc), which ranks I mentioned specifically for this reason. Other pieces are mostly getting att/acc/macc from augments and we are assuming acc/att is capped, because otherwise Gleti's PDL has no sense in the first place and I assumed you are talking about situation where you want to use PDL from Gleti's. That being said I mentioned that you are probably gaining acc/att on feet/head, because its hard to get much acc/att on Herc pieces with proper STR/WSD. Next swap that gives a lot of att would be legs.

so for running around using Cruel Joke in Odyssey, do we have any idea as to whether Skill or M.Acc is more important?

I quit around 2017, after completing the AG Almace. Just got back a week ago and from what I read Almace Blu isn't a thing anymore (not like it was really that big of a deal in the past but I believed it held more weight in 2017).

I will be working on Tizona but at the moment I am wondering what would be a good sword to go offhand with Almace. I am running mostly Herc gears (I think i need to do Ody to upgrade the armor) but basically I am just looking for some updated guideline for Almace DD Blue (mostly solo content, if possible)

THank you!

If you're absolutely insistent on mainhanding Almace (solo Light is still very practical in a lot of solo content; on the other hand, Naegling is right there), Tanmogayi +1 or a Colada with max crit rate is going to be your best accessible bets for offhand.

Almace is fine. You can do odin on lower difficulties and try your luck at the sword he drops, or work on kaja sword/naegling and use that for a bit.

the offhand people use for Tizona is overrated in a lot of situations. Tizon's best use is the m.acc and mp management.

I have got Tanmogayi+1 and currently sitting at last stage of Naegling (need those 5 item). So would the Kaja Sword better than Tanmogayi+1 until I can upgrade it to Naegling?

I have never done Odin before I am guessing even at lower level you can't do it with Trusts? I am able to Solo(with Trust) VD Reg Ambus

I'm pretty sure Crit Rate +4% > DEX +10 on higher level content (in the context of CdC), but I could be way off here. You have a pulse, but missing the animas?

I have all the Anima but I need the 5 Pulse. They are around 6milion each on my server and since I just got back I don't have much gil lol. I heard one can farm T3 Echa Zitah I might have to try that

Oh. Yeah, you can get a pulse off the Zi'Tah mercs for 10M on Asura. Dunno which server you're on, but watch shouts. Cells are economically a not-great way to build pulses now.

the MP management and weaker WS aside the main thing tizona has over almace is AM3 and the WS frequency increase that comes with it.
why not do a similar thing to tizona/thibron and go almace/blurred sword +1 or even almace/khadga if ACC permits it? sure the occationaly attacks x times doesn't proc on WS but the high auto attack frequency might justify to still fulltime malignance for STP and the defense perks.
with a regular offhand i imagine TP building becomes rather slow and you'd have to rely on triple attack set instead.

You'd need full Malig before even entertaining a *** Khadga set in 2021. AM3 on Tiz allows you to trade DA/TA/QA for Store TP during Aftermath, but Tiz is also a solid i119 weapon in its own right. /Thibron only works because the WS DMG output outdoes the DPS loss of a gimped offhand (and not as well as many people would have you believe). I really cannot see BLU reasonably replicating kclub RNG here, not with a weaponskill that does not benefit from TP overflow nearly as well.

You need to remember that CDC is multihit WS with same ftp on every hit. Wearing low acc, low att and low base damage offhand for it, would hurt CDC damage, especially vs something like Zantetsuken, which not only comes with high base damage/att/acc, but also provides rare super spikes if QA proc. There is also a problem that lots of TP gained with OAT2-4 sword could go into high tp overflow above 1000TP, instead of much higher WS frequency and while TP overflow is still positive fact for CDC, its very insignificant overall.

I guess for me at the this point I just wanted to maximized the use of Almace (not sure how long it will even take me to get Tizona as i have never done Salvage before, or whatever that place is lol).

So from what I understand I need to either get Zantetsuken or Upgrade to Naegling. Which one of this 2 is a better weapon?

Not sure what you mean here. /Thibron in practice is exactly as good as on paper. DPS wise its super ahead of any other offhand for Tizona, if you have enough buffs to cap acc with it.

just talking out of my *** here but out of those two pretty sure it's zantetsuken. nageling as great as it is main hand for savage spam doesn't do too much offhand for CDC.

for those that hate on khadga there is still blurred knife +1 which isn't super pricy anymore.

Yup I will work on Zantetsuken, and then i realized i am 30 missions before I can access that BCNM lol. and do you know if the Normal or Easy Odin will have a chance of dropping it, and if it is soloable on Master Blu with Trust?

Zantetsuken can drop on any difficulty, but is one of the rarer drops. I've only done the RDM strat on VD for Odin.

Also, remember that Naegling has 15 DEX. QA procs are gonna be better, but that's not nothing for CdC, either. Depending on what other jobs you play, Naeg might be the more attractive choice depending on your inventory. Additionally, if you're serious about building Tizona, you'll also want to build a Thibron. You can do Naeg/Thib until Tiz is AG'd, then swap off. Keep /Almace as an acc swap.

and there you go. If you're a BLU that gets to reliably cap acc with Thibron, you've got a good thing going for you. I use /Thibron most of the time, but it's not permanently affixed to my offhand.

on BLU it's pretty easy solo on very easy but already can get iffy on easy. wasn't able to down him on normal, not sure if it currently can be done but somewhat sure not reliably.

his dread spikes are a constant threat as he puts them up almost instantly, one unlucky multi attack proc at the wrong time and you're dead. can reduce it's threat a bit by one handing instead of dual wielding.
the other problem is all trusts besides tanks seem to have too low defense to survive zantetsuken x's instant kill and once 1-2 trusts died there will not be enough targets to distribute Geirrothr damage.

maybe you can push defense/attack ratio low enough for your trusts to survive zantetsuken x with /rdm for Bio II, saurian slide, prized crab stewpot and porter crab memento as well as saving diffusion/UL mighty guard just befor you push Odin over the 50% hp mark.
maybe you could surpress Odins TP gain low enough to deny him TP attacks with zomorrodnegar path b, cap subtle blow set and landing delta thrusts plague effect + feather tickle and reaving wind.

tbh i'm very sceptical of both approaches and if you can make one of them work it's still questionable wether the juice is worth the squeeze.

*edit*
another unkonventional approach that i haven't tried yet is summoning exclusively tank trusts as they seem to be able to survive zantetsuken x but at that point dispelling dread spikes is pretty much on you and while he doesn't have too horrible AoE dmg outside of geirrothr healing probably becomes a issue.
it's most likely super slow and sketchy but out of the 3 methods i listed it probably has the best (altho low) chance of success on normal difficulty.

thank you for the explanation!
Probably be a while before I can even try him anyway got a some mission to go through.

My new CDC build
ItemSet 378490
Crit
Almace 5%
Cear 46%
Merits 5%
CDC base 15%
Total 71%

Double Attack 44% (sub war + DA Cape) (assuming body R30)
Triple Attack 10% (5 from spells)
Quad Attack 3%
SC bonus 23% (Quadrastrike, Goblin Rush, Benthic Typhoon)
Crit damage. 11%
DEX 402

Haven't tested this yet fingers crossed

Sinker drill gives critical damage trait, not critical hit rate.

with that much dex tho, should have the 15% from ddex cap, so 85% once you remove drill and add it

Aside maybe the legs for the blu skill, is any of the reforged Empyrean +1 still worth using at this point?

Hands for the cooldown reduction (mainly for Occultation).

Thank you for the correction I just assumed Crit attack bonus was rate not damage. I have also lowered the dex aswell as at the time I was off handing Naegling.

in addition: attack is capped, the mob either dies in one ws, you can't sc for some reason, the mob is not resistant to light damage, etc. it's not as good as people think, simple cdc > cdc with tizona or almace mainhanded will beat out expiacion spamming and beats req > expiacion assuming the light and dark damage taken is equal.