Maintenance Is Boosting Magic

They are increasing the damage of all the elemental spells and lowering most of the mp cost, casting time, recasting time. Perhaps this might give BLM a little more to do in game?

Yup! More pew pew tier one and two spells instead of one gigantic spell ever so now and then.

Plus! Seeing this new gear with the "Magic Damage +" on it might be a great way to increase lower tier spell damage with less enmity!

Source?

What new Magic Damage + gear are you talking about? Ya have a link?

OH... here is the source for the damage increase. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/35228-July-9-2013-%28JST%29-Version-Update?p=452806&viewfull=1#post452806

http://bg-wiki.com/bg/Bookworm%27s_Cape
http://bg-wiki.com/bg/Bane_Cape
http://bg-wiki.com/bg/Buremte_Hat

You know I noticed that the explanation of the damage increase mentions two different outputs for damage. One for a low INT difference between caster and target, and another for a INT difference of 100. So perhaps it would be smart to start stacking INT instead of MAB on BLM armor.

I totally agree! Yesterday BLM needed nuking sets for max damage. Now we ll need damage sets for certain mobs!?

You can use the spreadsheet I built last month (mentioned in the Kaboom! thread) to see how gear fares with the new formulas. Yes, int becomes significantly more useful. Lower tier spells (both spell tier and elemental tier) becomes massively more MP efficient. There is no single optimal gear set, from what I can see (aside from pieces with massive amounts of all damage modifiers); you'll need to consider different combinations of gear for different blocks of spells.

I haven't worked in the new magic damage values yet, though. Will try to update that shortly.

Update: Added Magic Damage stat to the spreadsheet.

Just gonna throw this out there. Against a mandy outside of town, Thunder5 (cost 306) did 4297 and Stone5 (cost 156) did 3838. My BLM has 5 merits in thunder potency also.

Same gear, switched magian thunder staff for magian stone staff, both +6

I'd say that's good incentive for nuking other spells besides ice/thunder.

I nuked a few mandy outside too, and starting with 154 int and +62 MAB in gear, using chatoyant staff, 8 MAB added the same damage to stone5 as 8 INT did. I also found 1 MAB to be worth about 1.3 INT for thunder5.

Nothing amazing but yeah...

Magic dmg + is simply adding the listed value to the dmg or what? So a 300 dmg Stone casted with Magic dmg +50 would be 350 dmg?

I did'nt even think of that as possible, I just expected it to be pure dmg%+ like ele staffs etc...
But that would make more sense.
Suddenly the club seems a bit less broken

It appears to add directly to the base V value of the spell, before any int/MAB/weather/affinity/etc calculations.

+99 damage from the club is incredibly potent for the tier 1 spells, pushing them from ~470 (Magian staff) to ~600 per nuke in an optimized gear set (Water becomes 600 damage for 9 MP every 3-4 seconds). The club is only a mild upgrade for tier 2 spells, and a downgrade for any higher tiers. It's also a nice bump for tier 1 -ga spells and -ra spells.

The JSE cape is a very minor upgrade over Goetia, but a downgrade from Taubran, even on the lowest tier spells where the Magic Damage stat is most useful. It is a small m.acc gain over other options, though.

Buremte Hat curbstomps any other head options for nuking, regardless of spell. (Water becomes 700 damage for 9 MP every 3-4 seconds, if paired with the club.)

I find that this change is by far the most noticeable at low levels, since I just tried it on my level 11 RDM, and it seems like tier 1s cast as fast as dia and do 3x as much damage as before. Before, it didn't even seem worth casting, since my sword would hit just as hard, but now it takes off a big chunk of the mob's life and barely takes any time at all. Nice.

Any feedback from Blm or Geo delve nuker ?