The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Well, if you had an iLvl almace it would be worth using CDC for the AM anyway. (If it was a mob that didn't need special damage from requiescat) if they added 30-40% damage that would be icing on the cake. But, I doubt they will modify them as they already mentioned nerfing Dmg ratings. Not to mention the fact they didn't even want to upgrade REMs anyway. We can always hope tho!

cdc isn't what needs a buff, it's the most potent physical damage ws for swords, the weapon itself is the crux of the whole thing, but req will probably best cdc for damage if you're fully buffed by a little bit with cdc winning until you're underbuffed enough to floor crit rate

Spreadsheets shows this as a spitball figure ~

Req
3318


CDC
2827

This is assuming DA augments on Iutil gears, probably not the best gear on my sets as I would need to play around with it but its a not too shabby set.

Aftermath however plays a Huge part to BLU White damage and would beat out the meh WS damage from CDC.

CDC would only beat Req with a 20% WS bonus and wouldn't be a contender on anything requiring a weakness to be exploited. Unless you could 300tp at start before a PDT effect sets in, but that's a minimal increase in DPS.

on CDC you would need a fair amount of Crit rate + to make it beat Req consistently and unless you're willing to drop some of your DA augments for Crit plus, Req will continue to win.

CDC was only so redonk powerful due to the attack penalty on Requiescat and Abyssea atma's, remove the attack penalty on req and it used to win consistently regardless.

The Aftermath is the key point here.

EDIT**
This is assuming capped buffs of course ~

For the Max Tier TP set in the OP, does Thurandaut Hat really beat out say Iuitl Mask with it's 2% TA and 2% DA augment with Windbuffet Belt(another 2%TA and 1%QA) since the haste from head/body/hands/legs/feet sum to 25% then 2% from Ionis? Just seems like the Haste from Twilight Belt is unnecessary since head/hands/legs/feet/body give 25% and Windbuffer has better TA/QA than Twilight's 2% DA.

yes

unless you have capped magic haste + 10% haste samba in which case you only need DW1 or else you're actually losing tp gain, so other dw is superfluous

Wow I didn't know the DW enhancements from Thurandaut Hat and the DW earrings beat out like 10% DA 4% TA and 1% QA from Iuitl Mask/Windbuffet/DA earrings. Guess I gotta change my set.

The closer you get to max delay, the more powerful any delay reduction gets, dual wield just doesn't seem to get the credit it deserves.

A simple way to think about it is at 100% delay, a 1% haste value would make your delay 1/100 faster where as when you are at 79% haste pushing to that 80% mark makes your delay 1/21 faster. So what was a 1% increase now becomes a 4.76% increase.

When you have to compare the value of different delay reductions, handy little tricks are nice until you are stacking large amounts of multiple delay reductions and then it gets more complex. But in general, all things being equal, delay reduction is almost always your best bet for dual wielders.

True, the math isn't 100% but I was just using it as a simple example that was easy to see growth.

Just looked at Prothescars sets for CDC and I have a couple of questions.

You're using the Bladeborn earring set but the Spreadsheets shows Brutal + Moonshade with TP bonus out performing the Bladeborn set, is there something you're taking into account I've not seen such as the Crit defence on content?

This is the set I was looking at,

ItemSet 275523

The only obvious substitution I'd make is Rancor for the elemental Gorget for the Accuracy bonus and not having -PDT up.

(Left the Almace on here but on spreadhseets I used the Bura and R15 sword)

Wouldn't RANK15 Manibozo legs > Nahtirah by a fair margin?

Unaugmented Manibozho should beat Nahtirah.

I don't see why you'd drop rancor for ele and keep Atheling over Rancorous Mantle. 5% crit rate has to beat 3 DA.

You're right, it does.

I was more questioning the earring combination he had.

I have bladeborn/steelflash winning (by less than 1%) in both capped attack situations (shouldn't be using CDC at that point) and uncapped (where it is sometimes actually applicable). The difference is less than one point of damage.

If you start going down below 1.5 ratio, moonshade and brutal come out ahead.

so, it's probably better to use monnshade/brutal if you'reinaposition to use cdc over req?

Not necessarily, between 1.6 and 1.8 ratio you still want to use bladeborn/steelflash, 1.8 is about the threshold where CDC becomes completely worthless, but it varies.

Theoretical, how does having rogue's roll tip the scales?

gimme a sec to do some maff.


lucky rogue's is about a 3.5% damage bonus for CDC with capped attack and accuracy, 5.6% for an 11.

uncapped attack, around 1.8 ratio, 5.8% lucky, 9.2% 11.

doesn't do much to change the pecking order, however it changes the point at which CDC overtakes Requiescat a tad. At capped attack, requiescat still wrecks CDC. Again, takes until about 1.7~1.8ratio until CDC can pull ahead; i.e., limited defense down and no box step, or limited attack buffs. Will be great for lowman and solo or situations where you aren't receiving optimal buffs or do not have optimal debuffs.

So it seems the only change will be using CDC when less buffs are available or when you are much below capped attack, I wonder if new spells will tip the scales to one of the other due to skillchain properties. It would be nice to have a cheaper spell to chain with or even a feasible way to make light.

Of course, it'd also be useful. So we won't get that.


wtf post eated itself, i was complaining about useful spell ideas and how we wont get them

why not a way to make dw3 with only 2 or 3 spells...

why not spells that cost 1 mp, deal 10k damage and generate a set amount of emnity.

With 3000 blue magic attack and accuracy....

Well I guess I'm just being silly now.

I would prefer it if they added spells that had longer durations than say Triumphant roar and its 15% attack bonus. Would be nice if it was 3 minutes.

I would personally rather a High Debuff spell that deals moderate damage, so say 2~4k dmg and deals Blind II Slow 2 and Defence down -10% and could have a High mp cost, meaning its not vastly over powered but certainly a fun spell.

Well that's not quite what I said, I was pointing to the fact that getting a pile of new useful spells that don't make decent job traits would suck. You would basically never drop DW3 to DW2 in order to put in a few spells, that's the reason BLU was so dreadful in VW.

Longer duration spells would just result in them being less powerful, with proper buffs, triumphant roar is a DPS loss, self buffs really should work that way. I'm a fan of powerful short duration self buffs that made BLU a powerhouse in lowman situations, but yield to the much more potent and high duration buffs that real buffing classes give. It makes the job more dynamic and allows you to play it the way you want to.

If BLU got a single one of the HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE 500 debuff spells that mobs have been using on us for years, I'd resub in a heartbeat. It always struck me as odd that debuffs universally work different when tied to an enemy. Break is really just another sleep for example.

Like I have said before, since BLU is a combat mage, our buffs are primarily for that role. In other words our buffs fascilitate frontline combat unlike support backline mage spells which are weaker but far less potent(compare Protect vs Cocoon). There are a few exceptions such as Battery Charge and Animated Wail however.

If Triumphant Roar was like ATK+35% for 1min it might be more useful but 60s is a bit too short, it ought to be like 1.5m. Part of the reason why the duration is so short is because it can be fulltimed unlike Berserk(SE doesnt care if the global spell delay/cast time interfers with your capped attack speed, to them they think because it can be fulltimed, it technically must have a downside.

Everyone keeps talking about capped attack requiescat but how realistic is that with Chaos Roll/Minuets/Food/Angon/Dia? Is it piss easy? I forget def values of megabosses but hear numbers like 1500-1700def being tossed around. If that's so wouldn't it be hard to cap attack on a WS with a 20% att penalty?

Delve bosses are more like 2K DEF, but ya, it's definitely unrealistic to assume that you'll have capped attack on mega bosses, but you should be able to have high enough attack to warrant using req over cdc.

Well, when you put it up against what Moonshade offers (2.5% att for req, 2.5% crit rate for CDC) and Brutal's 5% DA, your attack/crit rate would have to be pretty low for Tati/+1 to be preferable. The only thing being @300TP it might beat a MND/DEX earring, but i doubt it would beat Bladeborn/Steelflash.

With the new upcoming 1 hour, depending on duration of JA and the recast of Absolute Terror this could be interesting. Otherwise it will be a great let down as none of our UL spells super interesting beyond casting once..............and of course tourbillion is a useless spell.