The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

/sigh. I nor anyone else said it was better than Tizona......

Wondering if Prothescar wants to update the guide with one yet more "Zahak Reborn v2" set in addition to the current one.
That set still works today, as much as it's just a "generic" one. But it was created during a time where CDC was still somewhat relevant and as such Crit traits were quite nice.
I feel today that's not really much the case anymore.
So, while I still believe that set is still nice, I was wondering if Prot or anybody else can come up with another alternative 2024 version of the "Zahak Reborn" set.

What would you put in place of the Crit+ spells? Some other job trait? Or just fill the slots with some generic utility spells?

Attack bonus 3 is an easy swap to make if utility/defensive spells isnt needed

Sinker Drill is not only a trait spell imo. It's actually a great spell to close darkness after 3000TP Expiacion for AM3. Especially on some piercing weak mobs like some Naakuls in Sortie. It's also good to kill trash mobs if they are left at 0-10% hp, for example in Odyssey C run, again especially on piercing weak, slashing resist mobs.

If you are lucky and get a set proc on efflux/CA/SP Sinker, you can see something like this :)

Dropping Sinker Drill and Magic Fruit for White Wind and Winds of Promy is great if you aren't rolling with a WHM.

If you don't need utility, either Blinding Fulgor for Magic Evasion Bonus III or your choice of spells for Attack Bonus III. You could also set an extra tier of Dual Wield and use Dedition Earring instead of Eabani, which is almost an extra tier of STP.

It's my default. White Wind is simply way too strong to drop it.

100% agree, but I don't know that I'd recommend it to a newer or freshly mastered BLU, esp. if they're still working on Tizona.

I would think only sword that could come close to competing with tazona is onion sword 3, gl getting that tho.

Did you see it in action?
I didn't sofar but even if we leave the MP disadvantage aside onion sword III doesn't get any kind of aftermath and while it has a high DEX modifier it has around 2-3 times worse TP scaling depending on when you fire your WS.
The extra blockrate also goes to waste 99% of the time on BLU so what's left is a decent, maybe BiS ACC offhand or a good Fusion option.

If you account the resulting skillchain DMG 100% in favor of the onion sword III user then it might be on par or surpass tizona expiacion and if I had one I'd definitely would try to utilize it together with a tizona and naegling users but I'd guess a different job can get more out of it.

You do realize that those WSs are completely different right?

Expiacion is fTP front loaded WS with almost whole damage on main hit. Fast Blade II is fTP replicating WS, so each hit has same weight for it's damage (in reality first hit will still be higher damage because WSD only work for first hit).

Fast Blade II itself is a stronger WS than Expiacion, but +49.5% bonus to Expiacion on R15 Tizona puts Expiacion avg damage much higher. Fast Blade II in bis set with strong buffs is very random WS. It will do anywhere from 20 to 95k damage with Thibron offhand, depends on TP overflow and multi-attack proc. On avg way less than Expiacion doing around 81-90k reliably in the same scenario. If you add AM3, Tizona just smokes Onion Sword III. Naegling and Maxentius easily beat Onion Sword III too.

Onion Sword really have two uses. It provide strong slashing option for DNC, who lacks access to Naegling (Naegling would be much stronger option for DNC though) and provides strong Fusion SC property option for BLU, DNC and I guess BRD and partially for RDM, who has Excalibur to make Fusion, but Onion Sword III would be a strong upgrade. It's however far behind top raw damage options like Tizona, Naegling and probably also Caliburnus (Can't verify, since we still don't have right numbers for Imperator. The ones from JP dude listed on BG wiki are terribly wrong).

I have stage 5 sword / tizona and imperator hits for a little less then expiacion but can skillchains. You need a bit more attack when using imperator and tp speed will be slower then tizona. I think that the onion sword would fall behind both these options (and naegling / maxentius) for blue unless you need fusion for some big light skillchains.

Have you played with the Prime Sword on RDM? I assume the TP issues go away, but the attack issues become glaring.

It sounds like you're using in-game equipsets. If this is the case you should avoid quickcast like the plague, since it will ALWAYS cause you to cast your spell in your precast set, losing all potency/macc/skill that you will have in your midcast set. Exceptions to this would be things with no potency/macc/skill in them, like Erratic Flutter or Cocoon, but there aren't many examples like that. Best to avoid it IMO.



Depends how much HP the mob you're fighting has and if you're in the middle of a SC, there really isn't a 1-size-fits-all answer here. For Savage & Expiaction you get more damage the more TP you have, so the WSD will go up (until you hit 3k effective TP), but if the mob is going to die from your next WS regardless of TP, it's a moot point. Really depends.

Anyone taking a BLU/??? into Sortie Aminon Enraged, and tanked it similar to Bumby v25?

Magic barrier/antic burst/fantod/aoe healing?

I've heard the idea float around, but seen 0 reports of anyone attempting it.

I'd presume /RUN would be best for resistances + foil.

Notable PROs to bringing BLU over PLD:

• E/G stunlock for majority of the fight via Sudden Lunge.

• Diffusion Nat.Meditation + Tourbillion on most bosses.

• Expiacion being a strong different WS to not wall anyone

• Faster A objective than GEO can? + Option to cleave E flans

CONS:

• Weaker defensively

• More of an MP sponge when healing, RDM would likely have to help heal more, considering BLU needs to be on the front line to AoE Heal and would be susceptible to silence/para

• Difficulty holding hate, especially if Grave Kiting F? Might have to Diffusion Exuviation

• Borderline useless SPs

Yeah I was thinking the DPS on Aminon would really speed things up. It would be getting creative on the other bosses that would be the challenge.

Would tickle/reaving land on basement or aminon?

I've done BLU on 8NM but not Aminon so I can't speak on him but I was only able to reliably get reaving wind to work on Dhartok, wind hands Gartell, and wind/earth Aita. Sudden Lunge is more worth the time on any besides Gartell anyway (cause Stun won't work on him). Honestly the worst part of BLU in there is managing AM3. If you don't get an opportunity to build TP before a boss, you'll find that they're half dead by the time you've put your AM up. For the faster ones like A and E I ignored AM altogether.

Of further note, Defense Down only works on A/B(Wind)/D(Wind/Earth)/E/F(Wind)/H(Wind/Earth). Don't bother blowing Tourbillion on anything else. I've never had success landing it via weaponskill or spell on C/G even with a Wind Threnody (which needs Nitro to land anyway).

Worth noting that a BLU main healer wouldn't have access to status removal outside of Erase without /SCH or /WHM.

Really? When you said Wind Threnody you mean shell crusher, not Tourbillion no? Or are you saying All def downs are wind based? That seems off. Tourbillion itself is Light/Frag for what it's worth.

I'm gonna have to do my own testing because admittedly I havnt paid much attention to whether or not the 'Def Down Wears Off' message pops up and it takes all of 1 second to throw it on while pulling...


That's something I neglected to add, BUT from my understanding most PLD sub /RUN for Aminon runs, so they're missing that option regardless? Atleast BLU has Wind's of Promy., but yes no Paralyna, Poisona, etc and no Bar-Spells

? Yes. Every Defense Down is Wind based. Every Attack Down is water based. Every Accuracy Down is Earth based. The element of the spell or WS attached does not have anything to do with the ailment.

Makes perfect sense... without it being laid out I just had always thought it was per spell/WS. When you refer to Shell Crusher on the wiki for example it specifically states it being Wind Based where other def down effects such as Tachi: Ageha don't stipulate the wind aspect, which I suppose contributed to my confusion.

I know you haven't mentioned slow etc. but it's worth to note that avatars are exception here and Siren's elegy(slow) is wind based and I believe it might be the same for other things likes slowga from Leviathan, Sleepga from Shiva etc. I'm not 100% sure about that though and can't test it now.

Yeah avatars work weird however it's worth mentioning that most basic (immunobreakable) spells don't normally have an "element" at all. When you cast an immunobreakable ailment on the enemy, it checks against their status resistance stats not their elemental resistance.

This includes BLU spells which, while they can't build immunobreak, they can benefit from it. The reason for this is that the Slow, Paralyze, etc from Blue Magic still checks against status resistance and not elemental resistance. Immunobreaks temporarily lower the monster's status resistance to the broken ailment, so BLU spells will check against that lowered status resistance rank. Idk if it's the same for Avatar spells since they work in weird ways but I don't know much about SMN to begin with.

This is stuff that I've only just started researching and verifying myself but the information has been available for a while via JP blogs and Argisto's testing.

The cool thing on BLU since you have alot of running around(downtime) you could really tailor your spellsets to specific bosses, if you wanted

I definitely //asets set X in transit, especially in groups where we don't do ABC 1st but in the middle of run run, I can swap to a cleave set and get A's objective or E Flan then swap back before the boss.

Beithir Ring when augmented replaces Mujin for most jobs for SC damage toggles. It obviously needs to be ranked up, but it's what you're looking for with your current line of thinking.

While Beithir Ring makes somewhat sense, I don't understand why you would tank your WS damage in the pursuit of higher SC damage. It seems self defeating. I minor swap like Empy head to Nyame makes sense. but dropping WS stats for Warder's makes absolutely none to me.