The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

You don't need to swap into Terra's Staff to cap PDT, you can get close to 57 with Merlinic augments, and 54 with Hagondes 4 PDT pieces, which still lets you swap in Wicce Sabots +1 with Mana Wall and still have 50

Also this is a thing now:

Mallquis Saio +1

what merits blm using these days? (dont play it, just going through my lvled jobs)

If you don't play it, just dump em into random categories since it won't matter?

typically wind/fire/thunder potency depending on what i'm going to be fighting regularly, sometimes ice as well. when i'm lazy i think i just leave it on fire and thunder

The AM2s aren't incredibly relevant any more with the advent of tier 6 and -aja spells, so just make sure you unlock then all. Potency used to be a no brainer of 5 in lightning and 5 in blizzard, but I recently dropped my blizzard for fire and am quite happy. I do so little ice bursting compared to fire these days.

In addition, you can literally change your merits for about 20 minutes worth of AoE farming. So just put potency in what you need for the event are hand if you're really anal.

BLM is simple: 5/5 group I + II for the weakness of whatever you're going to fight.

For example, if going to do Zerde and your team is using Fusion, 5/5 Fire and 5/5 Flare II.

(AM2 are still great for MB'ing if -ja and VI are down)

if your going to throw them in so they mean nothing then why bother do it at all? If im gonna do it, im gonna try and do it right.

I used to switch them between Fire/Thunder/Aero depending on what we were doing, although I don't think we'll ever do Kirin with mages again. I think you can dump them all into Flare II/Thunder II and max out Fire/Thunder potency unless you plan on doing Kirin with your BLM. They are better than T4 so they are sometimes useful for bursting.

What he said, 100%

If you have the gear to hit 50 without using Terra's staff, definitely don't swap staves! Grioavolr has fast cast on it anyhow so if you're already PDT capped you don't need to swap staves for any reason.

Honestly I forgot that Grioavolr natively had Fast Cast on it, and I'll change that in the fast cast sets. So long as you have Myrkr unlocked you should try to remain in one staff, even if that means losing out on a bit of PDT or fast cast.

The only exception to this is if you are doing something like tanking Albumen's adds with Mana Wall, or something similar to where you aren't nuking anyway, in those situations it opens up more slots to help you achieve 50% MDT if your augments or gear isn't quite as good.

Much like the BLU lua, the sets don't always have the perfect sets to use, and are not supposed to be treated as gospel. Instead, they are designed to put out goals, from least to most attainable in order. Again as stated in the beginning of the guide... The reason the mechanics themselves are explained in the guide is in the hope that if you read it in it's entirety, then you should be able to judge whether or not a piece of gear is worth getting in your opinion... Other things that haven't even been covered yet play a factor as well, such as min/maxing versus how many jobs you play, sometimes you have to make compromises so you can have general proficiency across multiple jobs, etc.

Hi guys,

Im confused between the uses of Lathi and Grioavlr. As far as I know, I should only stick to 1 weapon for BLM, as changing weapons would mean loss of TP, and consequently, less Myrkr.

Can someone clarify why Grio is better than Lathi? Thanks

It has significantly more M. Acc, and can get up to 10MB at the loss of some MAB provided you get a good augment.

Not to mention if you are locking into one staff grio also has Fast cast.

You'll likely end up making multiple Grios- ideally one specialized for Death (MP,macc/mab,magic burst bonus, using Taupe for most MP), and one for Elemental Nuking(INT,macc/mab,magic burst bonus,likely focusing with Pellucid for maximum macc/mab augment, fern an option to increase cap on magic burst bonus if your other gear deems it necessary).

Every time I use Death it's because the entire fight is built around using a Death strategy, and I'm not casting regular nukes outside of possibly Comet. And in fights where I'm casting elemental nukes, Death would be a horrible choice to use.

I've stopped using my MP+ Grio entirely. The extra macc from INT tends to beat MP post magic evasion update on CL140+.

IMO, you really only need two now: a general INT/MB+ Grio and an enfeebling one. The second, I mostly only use on my other mage jobs.

I am about 99% fern will not get you more MBD on Grio, 10 is the cap, just like fern wont get you 11 enhancing duration. Point being ive never seen an 11 burst grio or an 11 enhancing duration grio. Ive burned millions of silt on Grio (ashamed to admit)

I had 4
Enfeebling (only switch staves on SCH not on BLM)
Enhancing duration (recently got rid of for gada/omen shield)
Nuke (BLM toggle)
Death (BLM toggle)

like mentioned if your using death the strat probably revolved around it so you can have one on the entire time since your casting basically all death or no death. Havent done t4 reisen to comment on the INT>MP for acc but it makes sense

tldr$ for sure Nuke/Enfeeble ones

in the lua having problems toggle death
got some error

index field a nil value

Isn't Deatcast supposed to be DeathCast. Not to good with lua just noticed that.

even fixing that didnt work.

Is the state DeatCast/DeathCast defined in job setup?

To be honest there are some parts of that lua that need to be removed, the DeatCast was there from when the original author of the lua had made it, and with the MP arguments I've put in the lua, they are completely irrelevant now, as you swap into death idle mode automatically when your MP reaches a certain value (provided you properly defined them), I left instructions in comments on the lua on how to do this, I'll edit the lua and get rid of all of it's no-longer-needed vestiges.

Yay, was hoping you or someone would do this eventually :D

So minor updates to the node, with a now functional table of contents and more recent gear updates.

If anyone wants to make some art for the front page that would be welcome PM me if anyone is interested.

I notice there are no Jhakri +2 pcs anywhere. Where do they stand?

In the NQ burst set, you have NQ Amalric robe listed over Merlinic Jubbah. While not having to deal with Oseem is appealing, its easy enough to get enough MACC/MAB through augments that Jubbah should win easily.

In the NQ free nuke and burst set, Merlinic feet would need close to maximum augments in order to compete with Jhakri +2, which isn't listed anywhere. AF1+3 feet are a thing too.

In the Mana Wall set, you have Flume Belt listed, which BLM cannot equip.

Why would you use Ghastly +1 over Psilomene/Strobilus for Myrkr? Influx Earring > Etio, Dualism collar +1 > Orunmila, and an augmented Kaabnax hat beats NQ Coif for the NQ set and is probably easier to obtain for someone starting out.

A Phalanx set may be worth mentioning.

Why Vanya hands/legs in the Aquaveil set, opposed to Regal Cuffs/Shedir seraweels? EDIT: I see the set is intended for CID, but I think the pieces that enhance the spell are probably worth mentioning.

Impact is a thing.

No mention of Stun?

In the NQ burst set that is there because that body is actually easier to get than Merlinic jubbah, as a pld and a blu can solo pakacet but not so easy to spam maju, that being said there are 'Hq burst sets' in fact 3 that do just as you say they use Merlinic jubbah.

The problem with the AF feet +3 aside from the time investment, AND about 6.5M at current prices, have only 26 mab in free nuke merlinic feet with crappy augments win short of high macc fights which the merlinic only needs 22 mab to match then the macc yes needs to be near max, blm af feet simply are not good enough unless you are A getting resists with out them and B have already used max macc food.

the Jahkri +2 feet are a band aid not a solution they have problems them self the same issues as the AF feet but tilted to macc 42 mab 39 vs the af feet mab 26 macc 54

merlinic under perfect augs which yes will take alot of stones (which are easy to solo) will have macc 40 mab 55 and this is a free nuke set, most of the time on blm you gain your dmg through bursting so we are splitting hairs, FN will always loose to burst.

nice catch on the mana wall set will talk to the person with the gearset to change it.

Both of those drops do work and if they are in the ah that's fine if you have the inventory to spare.
Earring is same you gain 5 mp over Etio but loose another inventory

Dualism collar is a good call its a 30 gain.

The hat, the nq hat beats Kaabnax by 20 mp via path A and Hq by 40 mp.

A phalanx set should be your enhancing gear, unless you have a set of gear that gives phalanx + via dark matter, which earlier you said that getting augments on merlinic feet would be hard

Av works differently than it did in the past it works for X amount of times it procs then it goes away it would absorb 2 more buffs then, you could just recast the spell.

Stun and Impact are treated as enfeebs, you should, and most lua's do put you in your magic acc gear for these spells.

And I Will make a myrkr set with the gear you suggested short of the headpiece all are upgrades.

Edit spelling

sorry for lengthy post

Augmented Kaabnax gives 135 MP total, and NQ Coif is only 121, right? Am I missing something?