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That being said, this guide is designed to provide a much more comprehensive view to the current iteration of Black Mage with regards to how it is currently used in endgame. It is always smart to do your own independent research and testing. If upon testing you find some incongruence of the mechanics vice how they are presented in the guide, please leave a comment detailing your findings and methodology for how you tested it, and I will try to be diligent in keeping this guide as accurate as I can, and I thank you in advance for any support you provide. Having said that, do not expect that just because you do some testing that I will automatically include it in the guide. The information should be verifiable and repeatable, and not based off hearsay or assumptions unless no better models currently exist. Thank you.


Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone but your job as Black Mage is to hurt things. Party buffing, healing, and tanking aren’t even things you should be concerning yourself with at all. (with a slight caveat on the last, due to Manawall, but that’s highly situational). As a black mage, the amount of damage you deal as an AoE Nuker falls behind Blue Mage and in some respects Beastmaster as well. Your survivability without manawall is a shit sandwich; while we'll go over that later, you aren't a main tank. Also the amount of damage you’ll deal with just your tier 6 nukes is a little less than what a decent DD could just weaponskill for and you’ll eventually run out of MP doing those (without the proper gear setup anyway). Because of this Black Mage in the current meta is really designed with one thing in mind, Magic Bursting.

This is why making sure you’re getting as close to magic burst damage cap as possible is so important. Despite being a straightforward job, some of the mechanics that are involved with magic damage are complex. I will do my best to simplify this later on, but it is information you need to understand if you intend to be useful to anyone. The idea is, after you're done reading this guide, you should not need to ask anyone what gear to wear, and if/when new gear comes out, you should be able to tell at a glance whether it's great--or shit salad.
When in doubt, just test it out.




Manafont – This ability allows you to cast spells without spending MP. Duration of 1 minute, recast of 1 hour. Equipping any iteration after the +2 of Relic body will give you an additional 30 seconds. Note: This does not work with Death. Death will still cost all of your MP even if Manafont is active.

Elemental Seal – This ability is more useful than it might at first seem. It increases magic accuracy dramatically for whatever spell you use afterward, regardless of school of magic, (it even works with blue magic). The bonus itself is bananas, it’s estimated to be somewhere on the order of 250+ Magic Accuracy. This is quite useful to use for buffing Impact, since Impact requires you to lock your head and body to subpar slots. Single spell use, recast 10 minutes.

Source: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Elemental_Seal

Mana Wall – Allows you to take damage through MP instead of HP. This one is interesting indeed, with the proper gear, and Job master, you can be nearly invulnerable, the main issue being that the status effect is susceptible to dispel, and encumberance can still make short work of you. It also limits your max MP pool in most cases, but it’s still very useful and worth building a set for. Supplement this ability with AF3 Boots (preferably reforge +1) and Taranus’s cape, and whatever damage taken gear you have.

Cascade – This ability allows you to relinquish your TP in return for some extra damage. Calculation added is: 0.10(TP/10) or 10% of what the old truncated TP values used to be. For instance, 3000TP will result in a 30% Damage increase. This can be handy in situations where Myrkr is not needed, such as a darkness-weak NM that possesses plenty of MP, as bursting Aspir can be used to return MP pool when doing death rotations. Sadly though, in most cases this will not be preferred over Myrkr.

Manawell – Allows casting of one spell without the use of MP, and can be used on party members. This ability is to BLM, what Spontaneity is to RDM. I recommend use of this spell in conjunction with Elemental Seal before using Impact. This helps counteract the fact that the spell forces you to cast in Twilight Cloak while also elegantly dancing around its ridiculous 666 MP cost.

Subtle Sorcery – Reduces cumulative enmity from magic spells to 0, and also increases magic accuracy. This is Black Mage’s secondary SP, and when job pointed gives a bonus to elemental celerity. When you are burning endgame content, it is worth burning this ability for faster recasts, and even more worth using if you are getting resists, as every bit of magic accuracy helps.


Merits

Group 1


Group 2



And now for the part you actually care about, Which of these am I supposed to merit?

I would say if you have yet to obtain Job master on Black Mage you will want 5/5 Ice magic potency and 5/5 Thunder magic potency, This is because Apex camps are generally at Dho Gates killing Apex aquans, which are weak to both of these elements, One is dark based, one is light based, it gives you some degree of flexibility. When you reach master, swap out Ice potency for fire potency, keep the Lightning potency.



Arguments can be made for combining Elemental magic accuracy with either Ancient Magic MAB or MB, or combining the MAB and MB if accuracy is not an issue.

Aspir Absorb amount is a nice to have, but not necessary category.

While there may reasons to change Group 2 merits depending on what content your doing, in general Elemental magic debuff duration and potency categories should be avoided (it applies to rasp etc but not valuable debuffs).

Do not forget: Make sure to merit Elemental Magic Skill, Dark Magic Skill, Enfeebling Magic skill, Max MP, and INT and MND all to their maximum values.


Support Jobs

Scholar



Scholar will be your go-to support job for Black Mage in many instances, especially if you have very good fast cast sets. Scholar support job gives you access to Sublimation and Grimoire (Light Arts and Dark Arts) And as such gives you Alacrity (excellent way to help mitigate Death’s dreadful base recast time of 180 seconds). Manifestation, which allows you to get in an extra breakga if things are going south, and also by virtue of Addendum: Black gives you access to Dispel as well. On the light arts side of things you get access to Reraise, which can be good if you do any sac-holding on higher tier NMs. You do, however, only get up to Cure III.

Another important reason for SCH sub is for Klimaform and Weather spells. Bear in mind that a SCH main with 100 JP will have a higher tier weather spell than you do, but this is still useful in situations where you are not in the same party as the SCH making skillchains, or in Apex parties where you may have no SCH in party at all.

Weather spells, for those not acclimated, are buffs that enhance damage and accuracy of correlated elemental magic (which pairs well with Klimaform).

Red Mage

Job Traits


Red mage gives a good supplement to Fast Cast, and gives you access to phalanx for Manawall, Aquaveil, and a self Haste, also unlike SCH, it gives you Cure IV and Refresh.
You also gain access to Convert, but in ideal situations you shouldn’t need to rely on it.

Summoner

Nothing too special aside from Mewing Lullaby with Cait Sith, which can be helpful if everyone is doing it to prevent TP moves.

White Mage

You better don’t…

Ninja

You pretty much only use ninja sub for Wrathare, because of his en-death.
In group setups, other subs really don’t offer you much benefit.

Blue Mage

This is pretty much BLM's only option in terms of tanking.
if you have a +10 enmity cape from ambuscade, and other various enmity pieces,
You can use the BLU sub hate spells for tanking just as you would on RUN or PLD.

Spell set:
Cocoon (50% def boost)
Jettatura (Enmity generation)
Geist Wall (Enmity generation)
Soporific (Enmity generation)
Chaotic Eye (Enmity generation)
Pollen (Resist Sleep)
Wild Carrot (Resist Sleep)
Blank Gaze (Enmity generation)
Sheep Song (Enmity generation)

This is only really effective in magic burst setups, or if you are Mana Wall 'super tanking' adds that nobody else will be touching.

How to do it:

Make sure all of your spells are set beforehand or you won't be able to use them for 60 seconds. Make sure to bring a super revitalizer.

You grab the pop, head out to the pop area, pull out trusts if low-manning.
Use mana-wall (make sure you have a set for this), and cast cocoon, then pop.
You begin rolling through enmity spells. (This includes Stun, even if using stun m.acc set)
Use cocoon again.
Once you've rolled through a few spells and participated in the burst cycle, you can consider using Aspir if the NM is susceptible to it, this helps mitigate the MP that is being drained from tanking.
Essentially you repeat this process.

If the fight continues dragging on, you can simply use your super revitalizer, and recast Mana Wall, it is capable of overwriting itself, if it continues past that and you have a COR, they can Random Deal > Wild Card > Random Deal, giving you 1~3 extra mana walls, meaning you can hold a mob for 15~25 minutes if your set is good enough.

If you are super tanking, it is often very effective to pair this with a RDM, as they can give you Refresh III and even Phalanx if they sub SCH.

For Albumen
If you are tanking Albumen's adds, swapping the bard in for occasional charols, and WHM for the occasional barspell is helpful too, the BRD can Ele-Seal sleepga to the adds to come in and reroll buffs for this strategy, or if your m.acc set is good enough, and the group is coordinated enough, you can simply Breakga the mandies and they can use that window to give you buffs, make sure you have some MP reserves before doing this, however, as while you are in your precast/midcast, you will take significantly higher damage from being hit. This can be mitigated via Aspir or Devotion. (You can aspir the WHM mandies while they are petrified or asleep, it will not wake them)

Anything Else
In some very limited circumstances /DNC can be useful when using mana wall to solo things, using occult accumen to generate TP and waltez to remove debuffs, but frankly you're better off soloing on a different job than doing this.



Skillchains and Magic Bursting (intro)
So you’re new, and you aren’t exactly familiar with all this Magic Burst Business? We’ll explain a little bit here but we will revisit this topic later. A magic burst occurs when you end a cast after a skillchain has been “closed”, but it’s not quite as simple as just nuking whatever you please. The element of the spell you cast must align with the skillchain that precedes it.

The following tables should help you remember what to burst on which skillchains







If you’re ever in need of some way to figure out what weapon skills/Pet BP/Ready moves make what chains, this tool is a godsend: http://www.ffxicalculator.com

Important Note: Skillchains must be timed properly. You cannot just spam weaponskills and get the desired result in this case. When two proper weaponskills are used with the proper timing, it will make a Skillchain. Magic Bursting can be done for up to around 10 seconds after the closing weaponskill lands. However if someone else does a weaponskill after that skillchain, it will close the bursting window. It is essential you don’t just let your DPS do whatever they want or damage will suffer as a consequence. The exception to this is if the weaponskill used afterward is of the correct properties to upgrade to the next skillchain. One example of this would be if a scholar were to use Immanence > Fire, Immanence > Thunder; you can burst Fire on the resulting Fusion. But if your paladin uses Savage Blade after that, since it’s Fusion/Light, It will close a light skillchain, effectively giving you a longer burst window. Moral of the story is, just plan ahead and make sure all your party members are on the same page.




Job Points

Getting into a capacity point party is going to be a very important thing for you if you plan on playing BLM as an endgame career, however it’s important to know the entry requirements for Apex parties and/or Reisenjima AoE parties. They each have their benefits and flaws. Apex parties tend to be a fair margin faster, and less dangerous as a general rule, but require you to have 35~40+% Magic Burst Bonus in gear before they’ll even consider taking you. Reisenjima parties are a little slower, and harder to get used to, but you get tons of eschan silt for radialenses, and as an added bonus your burst damage matters less than your raw Magic Accuracy and Attack Bonus which depending on your luck with augments could be a boon.

Below is a list of all the Job point categories for Black Mage, give them a look over, then afterward we’ll go over which ones you should focus on.


So what comes first, you ask?

Your main focus on Black Mage will be Magic Burst Damage bonus You want to get this to 20/20 as soon as is feasible, as after a while it will allow you to “Solo DD” the Apex mobs; which is to say that once your DD’s have opened a darkness skillchain, you only have to nuke your two spells and the target is dead. This most likely will not be the case when you start out, and this category will make the largest difference, the fastest. Next priority should be Magic Accuracy, it will diversify the content you can do. Throw a few points into Magic Burst enmity reduction and you should be good to go, smooth sailing to master. The Mana Wall effect is one of the best categories, but likely something you won’t really need to focus on until later, but if you have done those other categories and are wondering what do to next, it makes a solid option.


Every time you would be able to spend enough points to get a new burst bonus gift, it's worth considering going back to dump points.


Elemental Magic

First Things First: How does magic damage work?

Well, the calculation looks like letter-salad if you’re not familiar with the terminology, but here’s the equation as it is understood so far:

Damage Dealt = D × MTDR × Affinity × SDT × Resist × MB × MBB × Day & Weather ×MAB/MDB × TMDA × Potency Multipliers

D: dINT+(Spell Base damage + “Magic Damage +#”)

MTDR: Multiple-Target Damage Reduction (for area of effect spells)

Affinity: Elemental Affinity effects such as from Pixie Hairpin +1/Marin Staff/Atma/Atmacite

SDT: Species damage taken (Such as Flan’s weakness to magic, Qutrub weakness to physical etc.)

Resist: Reduction of spell damage based on Magic Accuracy (Defined below)

MB: Magic Burst (was originally 1.3x multiplier, but is now 2.85~3x Multiplier)

MBB: Magic Burst Bonus: Job traits + JP category + Gifts + Gear (Theoretical cap at 107% with Amalric Gages +1, 106% otherwise) (40% Gear soft cap, 10/11% Burst II, 13% Job trait, 20% job point category and 23% in gifts) Remember that your gifts and categories, and traits are all seperate from gear caps, you are nerfing yourself if you dont equip gear simply because you have the gifts and category.

Day & Weather: Hachirin-No-Obi will take care of this requirement
- 10% bonus for magic of the day
- 10% bonus for magic matching single weather
- 20% bonus for magic matching single weather and day
- 25% bonus for magic matching double weather
(Such as SCH Weather II spells)
- 35% bonus for magic matching double weather and day
- Will also gain an equivalent negative bonuses during opposing day/weather

MAB/MDB: Caster Magic Attack Bonus divided by target’s Magic Defense Bonus
-Much as is the case with magic evasion, in most cases you’ll only have a general idea of what the values of the target’s magic defense bonus is.

TMDA: Target Magic Damage Adjustment: Damage Taken Reduction (% values such as what’s found on gear, or granted through special sources, such as an Apex crab’s 50% MDT from using Shell)

Potency Multipliers: Ebullience, Klimaform Bonus, Wicce set bonus, and I believe also 2% per merit point on Group 1 merits of the associated element.

There are a few things to consider for magic damage. As always your intelligence plays a role, and for a long time nobody was 100% sure how INT affected Magic Damage across the board, though it was understood that dINT plays into the base magic damage calculation of the Magic Damage Dealt equation. (Don’t panic if you’re new, we’ll go over that in a moment).

What was also understood to some degree at the time, though not as well documented as it is now, is that INT plays a role in magic accuracy of Enfeebling Magic, and Dark Magic, as opposed to MND which as a general rule affects Healing magic, Enhancing magic, and Divine magic respectively. There are exceptions to this, and Blue Mage for instance diverges from this model to a rather large degree, but there are still a few pieces of important information to be gleaned from this.

First off, INT based spell damage will be based off of your dINT + “Magic Damage +”. To understand this rudimentary building block of this damage calculation we must first understand what dINT is. Luckily this is very simple, yet not entirely intuitive. It is your INT, (Base + Bonus) minus the monster’s INT. This essentially means that if your INT was 110 – Monster’s INT (lets go with wild rabbit so 0) that would give you a dINT of 110. As a 99 Master Black mage with no gear but full merits you cast stone for 385 on a wild rabbit. (no affinity merits in stone). Of this, 110 comes from dINT (110-0), 42 comes from Magic Damage + gifts, (45~51) comes from the spell's base damage, then that number (203) is then multiplied by 100+MAB/100+tMDB so as 99 Master BLM you have 90 MAB with no gear on. That's 190/100 = 1.9 x 203 = floor(385.7) = 385*.

But with Lathi the number jumps up quite a bit.

(110(+32)) + (42(+232)) + (45~50 Stone) = base x MAB
(142 + 274 = 416 + 51) x (((190+68)/100)-(100/100))
467 x (258/100)
467 x (2.58) = ~1200*

*These figures are not necessarily what you will get.

This gives you an idea of how the first few elements of spell damage work, but it is sadly very lacking on a grand scale, for one, spells have a base damage that seems to be to some degree based off of the amount of MP they consume, though this term is not linearly defined (yet). Also while we are in the vein of what affects magic damage, Elemental magic skill does not affect damage, it only affects the Magic Accuracy of associated spells and interrupt rate. That being said, cap it out and merit it to full or you’re bad, understand?

The next piece of this INT puzzle is what it does to magic accuracy. Back in the earlier years (before 2008 or so) it was understood that INT played a role in your ability to land enfeebling magic of the INT aligned schools of magic, but what was less known, or perhaps not known at all at the time, is that it also correlates to your magic resist ratio of elemental magic damage as well. To delve further into this, Magic accuracy, and in turn, your INT, will have some degree of effect on the final damage ratio of your spell, this is aside from the effect those stats play on Magic Hit Rate which will be covered in the Enfeebling magic section.

To start with there are several factors that count as magic accuracy. Your INT, Your corresponding magic skill, and of course, your “Magic accuracy skill”, and “Magic Accuracy +” stats.

Resists are what occurs when your combined stats above do not provide enough magic accuracy to get a resist “level 0” or “no resist”. This is the "Resist" section of the Magic Damage equation.

⦁ Resist Level 0: No resist (1:1) Damage dealt ratio.
⦁ Resist Level 1: Half resist (1:2) Damage dealt ratio.
⦁ Resist Level 2: Heavy resist (1:4) Damage dealt ratio.
⦁ Resist Level 3: Extreme resist (1:8) Damage dealt ratio.

These reductions are separate from any buffs the targets receive that give MDT or MDB or target specific elemental resistances such as family strength/weaknesses.

The exact magic accuracy threshold of when these resist echelons occur is not currently known, and I am speculating it is somewhere to the degree of approximately every additional 40~50 magic accuracy you are missing seems to put you another tier down. For instance if you hit unresisted virtually 100% of the time it’s unknown how much Magic accuracy you could lose before going to resist tier 1, but if you were already averaging resist tier 1, that is to say having majority half resists and some full damage, some 25% damage hits, if you were to be missing yet another 50 magic accuracy it stands to reason you would deal a majority of 25% damage hits, and rarely, if ever, hit for full damage.

There are a few more kinks that work their way into this equation as well, and will affect what you should aim for when gearing. INT does NOT always linearly count as magic accuracy, but in some situations, it does. The exact crossover rate will be difficult to determine based off of iLevel of content alone, since not all families of monsters across the same levels share all of the same base stats.

A hard number for consideration is that when dINT is above 10, it takes 2 INT to equal 1 magic accuracy. However, when dINT is less than 10, that is to say, your INT is less than 10 greater than the monster’s INT (at the time of cast, this would be the value of your midcast set obviously) each INT would then count as an additional point of magic accuracy. With the large amount of stat vomit gear in the game, and the fact that monsters do not get gear to boost their INT, as a general rule Magic accuracy should outweigh INT.

But, it’s worth noting that this dynamic may change depending on what gear is available for the slot and what content you are doing. For Schah, INT might actually be worth it if you were weighing 35 Magic Accuracy and 40 INT vs 30 Magic accuracy and 50 INT, the second option might actually be better for you. But then again, if your GEO is going to use Indi-INT, you’ll want the Magic accuracy option, because if your dINT does go over it ends up being less effective. Ideally you want to get right to dINT 10 and everything past that should be magic accuracy focused, but needless to say since it relies on knowing the target’s intelligence, that’s easier said than done.

As using artificial means to increase magic accuracy/resist rate such as GEO’s Languor/Focus spells, Klimaform, Elemental Seal, Assassin’s Drink and Crepes only affect the final resist rate of you on the monster, They do not actually affect your dINT calculation, it’s quite likely in this case that INT might give you full magic accuracy values.

As far as I’m aware though, this difference in INT:M.acc ratio works much like a progressive tax system works, and just because you get above dINT, doesn’t mean that all of your INT suddenly only counts for half, it simply means that any amount you have over that amount will only grant you half as much. If you don’t want to do the math, a general rule of thumb should be against any mage type targets above level 145, it’s probably safe to assume your dINT is below 10, and thus INT will count as magic accuracy. It is for this reason that when you have two Idris GEOs in higher tier content that some prefer the indi spells to be Indi Focus and Indi-INT because both will give large bonuses to magic accuracy.

Magic Accuracy Skill is not entirely understood, and I have seen from an official Dev post that it is half of the skill listed on the weapon, however this does not seem to be entirely accurate unless we are to believe that dual wielding melees have been given a 100 magic accuracy bonus over staff users. More than likely what is going on here is that the only thing considered for Magic Accuracy considerations from Magic accuracy skill is the main-hand weapon, or that the calculation for how much Magic accuracy it gives you depends on whether or not the weapon in your main-hand is capable of being dual wielded. We would otherwise be forced to conclude that Mythic Blue Mage has an enormous Magic accuracy lead on Mythic Scholar, which I doubt is the case. More than likely we just got a lazy, half-true answer.

Sources: Feel free to review these if you want more information.
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Intelligence
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Hachirin-no-Obi
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Accuracy
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Attack_Bonus
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Damage_(Statistic)
⦁ https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Resist

TL;DR

I know, it’s boring. <|Yawn|>. But it’s important for this reason. Imagine you have a very large amount of Magic Attack Bonus, and you’re rocking Path A Lathi, and capped magic burst damage with Master on your Black Mage, but hey, you’re Magic Accuracy is nothing special. Whatever, rock on right?!

No. If you would have had a bad ass fire VI burst that would have hit for 80K, but since you have so little Magic accuracy, now you’re looking at a Level 2 resist, meaning your sick 80k Fire is now hitting for 20k. Hitting with No MAB augments at all with good Magic accuracy augments on the same master BLM would likely have hit harder. You have to weigh the value of magic attack bonus versus magic accuracy, and in the end, especially on the higher level content like Reisenjima T4’s Magic accuracy ends up being more important. Keep this in mind next time you are weighing the use of Amalric gear versus Augmented Merlinic gear. Another way of looking at it is, just the same as you’d look at a melee job with Accuracy vice Attack and STR—All the Attack and STR in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t hit your target. The same could be said for Magic Accuracy.



Spells with different mechanics

Death

The elephant in the room, this spell does not follow the same formula that Elemental Magic does, and is not considered elemental magic.
No, instead this spell is Dark Magic, and follows its own unique calculation.

(MP×3 + Magic Damage)×(MAB/MDB)×(Affinity)×(Day/Weather)

(Magic Damage term caps at 32.)

I know what it looks like but this does not necessarily mean you should cast death in whatever gear you have that has the most MP. First and foremost your death set can only be as good as your idle set and fast cast set. Whatever your max MP is during that cast at the lowest point is what you are going to have when the spell goes off. Ideally you want to build a special fast cast set specifically for Death precast. (I have a job file that handles this and original fast cast values automatically, but it does require a fair bit of setup). Also, while Death has less of a penalty to Magic Accuracy, it is still subject to the same resist rules that elemental magic is.

Additionally we should clear up a rumor that had been floating around the forums for some time about Death damage only being capped on screen at 99,999 damage, and being able to surpass that. Based on all testing I have done and information given to me by others, this is not the case.
We will put this rumor to bed before continuing. If you wish to read the discussion on it yourself, simply go to http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/38032/kaboom-a-guide-for-black-mage/33/

The misconception was based on someone eyeballing Maju being killed with death and noticed that the Death was doing 12% of its HP when at the time BG Wiki listed Maju’s HP as being over 1.03 million; since then this number has been corrected to being closer to 900,000.

Why this matters is this: People were speculating that if you could indeed break damage cap, that getting better MP+ gear would always be the way to go with Death, but as it turns out, since the Damage is capped at 99,999 you should be aiming for accuracy, You want enough MP, MAB, and Magic burst damage to hit that number, but aside from that you should be focusing heavily on Magic Accuracy. By doing otherwise, the only thing you increase is your chances of getting a resist. (This means that your death set should involve some Merlinic gear.)

A good number most people give is if your MP is above 2100 you should be able to hit 99,999 on a Death burst, I can confirm that even with 2000 MP so long as you have capped burst damage you can still happily hit 99,999 damage; also take care to remember that your MP is a great deal higher in Vorseal buffed zones, (i.e. Escha, and Reisenjima). One quick caveat on this though, Occult Accumen gives you 1/2 the amount of MP you consume so if you want to be able to Myrkr immediately after you should either aim for 2000+MP or use Seraphic Ampulla for the additional occult acumen. Hell I'd say use the Ampulla in all sets, it's only an 8 Magic Accuracy loss.

Comet

Death’s neglected little brother. This is a darkness based elemental magic spell, and shares many things in common with Death. A good set for this should involve Merlinic gear, Pixie Hairpin +1, Archon Ring, and Magic Burst damage items. If you must choose, favor affinity over burst damage supposing they are in equal amounts, as you have so much already on BLM from gifts, categories and job traits that 5% burst damage isn’t quite a 5% increase in damage, but 5% affinity is pretty close to that.



Enfeebling Magic

In a perfect world Square Enix would have made it a very similar process for determining resist rates of status effects in relation to how resists work for elemental magic, but sadly, this does not seem to be the case at all. On the bright side, more is understood about the resist rate of enfeebling magic status effects simply because we’ve been keeping track of this, due to the fact that we’ve been aware of its status as an issue for a longer time.

Your rate of landing an enfeeblement on a monster is handled by what is known as “Magic Hit Rate”. Much as was the case with elemental magic damage, magic accuracy plays a huge role, yet as you will see, the calculation is even less intuitive.

Your effective magic accuracy is your magic accuracy, minus your target’s magic evasion
(dMAcc = Magic Accuracy Total – Target’s Magic evasion)

But if you have an effective magic accuracy above 0 it is calculated as:
Magic Hit Rate = 50% + dMacc ÷100
But if your effective magic accuracy is less than 0 it is calculated as:
Magic Hit Rate = 50% + floor(dMAcc÷2) ÷100

Upon examining this it should be obvious being in the below 0 category is no good. Since the number becomes negative in the second category, it actually begins to count off from that 50%.
It’s time for another example.

Your target has 100 magic evasion, you have 200 magic accuracy.
dMAcc = 100 so; 50% + 100/100, so that’s .5 + 1; 1.5 = 150%
When last tested, the cap was 95%, but anecdotally I’ve never noticed anything below lv100 resisting anything close to 5% of the time, so it’s possible that this might not be the case anymore.
Now the other example, you’re less fortunate. The monster has 100 magic evasion, you have 50 magic accuracy
dMAcc = -50; so 50% + floor(-50/2) ÷100 > 0.5 + (-25) ÷100 > 0.5 – 0.25 making your effective hit rate a measly 25%. This only gets worse the less Magic Accuracy you have.

Another important note: Elemental Seal may be used to greatly increase the chance of a debuff landing. It can take your dMacc from being well under -50 to virtually guaranteeing it will stick.
Source: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Hit_Rate\


Dark Magic

When we say dark magic, we essentially just mean Aspir, Drain will be of little use to you on Black Mage.
Only a few things to note about this:
⦁ In the end you will have three Aspir spells.
⦁ Aspirs can be magic bursted
⦁ Bursting Aspir does not seem to affect the damage of subsequent nukes
⦁ A well geared, bursted Aspir II or III can return your entire MP pool.
⦁ Ineffective against undead
⦁ Can be resisted by same mechanics that Elemental Magic is resisted by
Essentially cast Aspir in Drain/Aspir Potency gear and Magic Accuracy gear.
Make sure to cap out your Dark Magic skill and merit it as well.


Magic Burst (Continued)

As of March, 2015, in the same update that Vagary was released there were some major changes in how Magic Bursts are handled.

Magic burst adjustments (Mar. 26, 2015, Gildrein)

⦁ The potency of magic bursts has been increased. Magic bursts will now deal increasing damage to monsters that have lower resistance to the element generated by the magic burst.
⦁ * The following spells are exempt from this adjustment.
⦁ Geohelix / Hydrohelix / Anemohelix / Pyrohelix / Cryohelix / Ionohelix / Onctohelix / Luminohelix / Kaustra
⦁ The increased potency based on the number of skillchains has been doubled.
⦁ The amount of enmity generated from damage dealt during magic bursts has been decreased.

The general potency of Magic bursts was not stated, but seems to have increased from 1.3x to nearly 3x multiplier.

However, a few things have been noted that need further testing. There is a degradation in the amount of bonus given by consecutive magic bursts following a skillchain, especially if they are spells of the same element. This does seem to reset after a set period of time.

For instance:

If two BLM with identical gear bursted Fire VI at the same time, you are likely to see something similar to this. (though I would love it if someone could collate a large amount of data as to exactly how much the degradation is, and how long the resist window is)

Byrne Fire VI => Magic Burst! 65000 Damage => Vir'ava
Verbannt Fire VI => Magic Burst! 37000 Damage => Vir'ava (possibly worse)
Byrne Fire V => Magic Burst! 34000 Damage => Vir'ava
Verbannt Fire V => Magic Burst! 34000 Damage => Vira'ava
(Death follows funny rules and just like with other similar situations, while it is affected by this, it seems to be less affected if you have more magic accruacy. Again, more testing needed)
These numbers are pulled directly out of my ass.
They are simply used to explain the concept of what is going on. If you wait a few seconds after the first burst, the resist rates seem to drop drastically.


Gearsets

Before we get started, lets go over the obvious. These are degrade sets. They are not necessarily intented to be completely adhered to. It should be common sense, but if you have mostly a "Free nuke NQ" Set but you happen to have Merlinic Jubbah with good augs, you should be using whichever pieces per slot you have that are best. The only exeptions to this should be when there are set bonuses to consider. Weapons will be covered in another area, but given the nature of augments and stats, you will likely be referring back to here at some point.

The bulk of these sets were developed by Razmus, only a small amount of edits have been made, though I took the liberty of explaining the idea behind the sets, as I was pretty much handed a list. In the spirit of helping newer players I go into detail about what you want and why.

HQ Free nukes

ItemSet 357843

ItemSet 357845

ItemSet 340456

ItemSet 340458

ItemSet 340457

ItemSet 340459

Free Nuke 3/2018
This set sacrifices some mab for macc. May be needed or it might not, It does have more macc than the Amalric +Af2 +3 head set.

4/5 Amalric +Af2 +3
IMHO this set is best for people who have or had the Amalric set IF the augment on the head was A then you loose 19 macc but gain 35 MAB IF the head was path D then you gain 1 MACC and 30 MAB. Decent trade off. With the introduction of Marine stewpot and Prime seafood stewpot more Macc is available through food making this set win in some cases if the monster does not have absurd magic evasion like Vinipata.

Free Nuke HQ
Has moderate M.acc for general use while maintaining good MAB. Should go without saying but Magic Burst Damage % is irrelevant to this set and other free nuke sets.


Free Nuke HQ2
Set favors Magic Attack Bonus above accuracy, for max damage in relatively non-magic-evasive targets. This will be useful in more content depending on the amount of buffs available to you.

Free Nuke Slight Magic Accuracy
No real surprises here, in some cases you may prefer more Magic accuracy to Magic Attack bonus, you will want to see for yourself based on what gear you have which gear will allow you to get high magic accuracy values without sacrificing large portions of Magic attack bonus.

Free Nuke Max Accuracy
This last set gets complicated, and perhaps should be broken into two sets.


Grioavolr is reccomended in this set, with as much Magic accuracy as you can muster, at least 20 in augs should be used, otherwise it's not really worth it. Amalric Coif should only be used if you are also using the hands, and in free nuking you may or may not want to do that, here's my reasoning for that:


Amalric Coif +1 Path D: M.acc potential 51 + 34 INT = (68~85 depending on dINT)
MAB: 0 (20 with set)
Amalric Coif +1 Path C: 26+20 skill (46macc/20mdmg) + 34 INT = (63~80 depending on dINT)
MAB: 0 (20 with set)
Amalric Coif +1 Path B: 26 + 34INT = (43~60 depending in dINT)
MAB: 0 (20 with set)
Amalric Coif +1 Path A: 26+20 46+INT24 = (48~70 depending on dINT)
MAB: 20 (40 with set)

VS Potential
Merlinic Hood: 15+40 = 55 +29 INT = (69~84 depending on dINT)
MAB: 50

Resulting in trading 1 magic Accuracy for 30 MAB, so in short,this choice is made for you in
3 conditions:

1) If you cant afford +1 Head, you use Hood.
2) If you are using BLM AF1+3 hands for the magic accuracy, use Hood. Unless you are using slops +1.
3) If you do not have at least one other +1 peice for set bonus, use Hood.

The moral of the story is, If you have Amalric +1 what is best in whichever situation can actually get a fair bit more complex. You should simply try out different sets in different content, test your resist rate (depending on buffs) and adjust gear accordingly. At some point I will do testing to find out exactly how much cor rolls and geo bubbles with and without buffs affect the gear's effective maximum content range. Though I'm confident with proper buffs you can essentially use most Amalric +1 set in most conditions. (say if you have Idris geo and COR rolls etc.) At such a time I will include a table showing at which point one set of gear should begin to be favored over the other depending on how much support your group is capable of giving.

If you have Amalric +1 hands and head, in large majority cases it will be safe to use them in this set, though the magic accuracy disparity is quite large (52~70 on +1 hands versus 91~110). It maybe worth making a fifth set, and renaming the set with +1 to HIGH Mag. Acc and having another with Path D head and Amalric slops +1, with +3 hands as your "Max" set. Also worth a mention, AF1+3 hands should in theory still beat Amalric head/hands combo on tier 1 and 2 spells, though not neccessarily tier 3's. Typically you free-nuke low tier spells anyway, it may be worth considering this when you are building your lua, getting MAX optimisation might actually require setting up a toggle for High and Low tier spells rather than letting them be handled by an array like they are in most motenten-based luas.

HQ Bursts

ItemSet 351869

ItemSet 352470

ItemSet 340466

ItemSet 340467

ItemSet 340468

ItemSet 340469

Burst HQ
This set is currently the best burst set for max damage but assumes m.acc support is available and sufficient. It is expensive, but it boasts absurdly high modifiers for MBII, and has less of a m.acc hit than Amalric +1, Marine Stewpot further strengthens where this set sits in comparison to other options.

Burst HQ AF
This set is the option to go for if you're using primarily bursts, and are still getting resisted. It boasts 47 more macc and 2% more MB II than the other set at a cost of 53 Mab, but so long as you are bursting the damage hit is less noticeable (though certainly still there).

Magic Burst HQ
Between the 3 pieces of Merlinic you want to achieve the other 25% of burst damage while maintaining as much M.acc and MAB as possible. Try and balance it out, this will take quite alot of stones to pull it off. If you do not have Amalric +1 then Merlinic Legs will be used in conjunction with NQ Amalric
hands. On the plus side, this gives you a fourth slot to help cap your Magic burst damage in, though if you get the +1 amalric later on, you will have more augmenting to do. Again, Grio plays a factor here. If you have Grioavolr with Magic burst damage on it, it's easier to make the +1 set work, though it's possible to get up to 5% overkill even with just the three slots.

Magic Burst HQ2
Another option is available to you if you get complete max augments on the had and body, you can use a locus ring to get the last 5 burst you would need to hit cap, and use Amalric feet to get extra MAB, this used to concern me in terms of magic accuracy, but stewpots make it work. Dont forget Grio can get Burst as well, you might can use that to your advantage.

Magic Burst HQ3
You can also swap out +1 Body if you have it and make up the burst % between the Static Earring (assuming you dont play PLD, since you'd likely have ethereal instead) and Locus ring. Again don't forget to factor in Grio if you use it, as it can make some of the changes unnecessary. You could swap out body and use max aug grio instead.

Magic Burst HQ Mag Accuracy
Again consider other options depending on resists and whether or not you have Amalric +1. If no +1, Consider using AF1+3 gloves for the extra m.acc (the burst is nice, but that's not really why, they technically still lose in damage even to the NQ amalric) Legs would be swapped for Merlinic.

Note: If the question of why none of these sets include Ea +1 in the hands slot, it's because with the other slots properly geared, the regular burst damage would be unhelpful, and you can still get burst II in this slot with Amalric +1 hands.

Free Nuke/Burst NQ

ItemSet 340460

ItemSet 340461

ItemSet 340470

Side note: Ea NQ set fits between a max aug burst Merlinic set and medium augments, though certain pieces are still comparable, and even better under certain conditions than Merlinic. Essentially between Merlinic/Ea/Ea+1/Amalric/Amalric+1, and the fact that Stewpots are a thing, you have much more freedom when gearing. Select at your discretion, ask for second opinions from others to help out, and if that doesn't help, try testing the Ea sets yourself, as if they turn out to not win, unlike the Amalric/Merlinic, you can just re-sell it.

Free Nuke NQ
Merlinic actually becomes much more compelling in the NQ set depending on your budget Getting the whole +1 Amalric set could cost you easily over 400m, but getting max augment or at least close to max augment Merlinic should only cost around 10m for the whole set (for the augments, anyway; your mileage may vary for getting the gear if you have to hire mercenaries). Again, you really should be doing some napkin math to figure out where you're sitting in each category for M.acc/MAB and decide where to go from there, If you had 2 pieces of the +1 and not the whole set, it does change what you will be aiming for in each set. If you don't have any of it, it's much more straightforward.

Free Nuke M.Acc NQ
No suprises here slight changes to favor magic accuracy a little more.

Magic Burst NQ
As said in prior set, be sure to get your soft cap of 40% MBD, then Mujin and Amalric gets you to 50%, aside from that shoot for a balance of M.acc and MAB.

Free Nukes Low

ItemSet 348764

ItemSet 348765

ItemSet 340465

Free Nuke Standard
I'm assuming if you're able to do ambuscade for the armor, then you can get the cape too, it's the same content.

Free Nuke Low Quality
If you arent yet able to clear ambuscade easily you might could try

Free Nuke starter
Try and get a few Magic Attack Bonus aguments, but realise that your effective content level will be limited until you can get larger amounts of Magic Accuracy gear. You'll need to knock out some ambuscade for Jhakri +1, so before that you can just use Hagondes Coat with MAB.

Bursts

ItemSet 340471

ItemSet 340472

ItemSet 340473

Magic Burst Standard
Again, you'll want as much Magic Burst damage as you can manage up to 40%, You definitely want to go ahead and pay for the Amalric hands if you can, as those are with VERY few exeptions second best in slot, second only to the +1 version. Helios can get Burst damage through the use of the duskdim stones.

Magic Burst Low Quality
If you must, get a merc for the gloves and the neck, You'll be using them for a long time, and they are worth quite alot assuming you arent getting completely ripped off, just ask around, or ask some friends for help. Both come from fairly easy content.

Magic Burst Starter
Note that the Coat will be useless to you unless you have more than 100JP, until then just use a different nuking piece.

Small note for degrades for death: Preferably do not swap pieces for Jhakri unless you have to, they have very little haste, and no MP at all.

Death

ItemSet 340485

ItemSet 340486

ItemSet 340487

Death MB HQ
Grio augmented with MP Magic accuracy, Magic attack bonus, and Magic Burst damage. Amalric +1 Path A. This is set up for the most potential damage, but you should have a Magic Accuracy verison as well, as it's not difficult to cap damage on death.

Death MB NQ
Whether you want to use Amalric slops here or Merlinic will depend on a few factors, mostly just content level, and how much MP you have. If you are in Vorseal buffed zones and you have the correct blessings (hell even without) you should be able to hit 99,999 damage without the Amalric +1 set. Since damage caps off at this point all you do by not using as much Macc as you can at that point is increase your chances of getting resisted, and thereby lowering your parse. Again, as with the above sections, it will depend on the support potential of your group to a large degree.

Death MB Standard
If you cant get the Pixie Hairpin +1, focus on burst damage for the head piece, use what you've got. Other than that get as much MP as you can, death has less of a penalty to magic accuracy than most spells, so it's less of a priority to worry about here.

Death Precasts

Name of the game is MP and fast cast, in that order. You want to be able to have enough max MP that it wont make your death doesnt get nerfed by your fast cast gear, once you have more than your death midcast set you want as much fast cast as possible. Quick cast is even better for an extra cast of death so feel free to put those in at your own discretion because it could rob you of all your MP if your timing is off. That's mostly only a concern when you do bursts with more than 2 BLMs as if you only have 2 there's a way to avoid ever doing that even with Quick cast.

ItemSet 348755

ItemSet 348756

ItemSet 348757

Death Precast Top
Worth mentioning here that you cant have the adoulin ring from earlier, and weatherspoon, you only get one or the other, I'd pick Weatherspoon personally. Helios Gloves should be augmented with MP from duskdim stones, and Fast Cast 5 from Leafdim stones. Taranus's Cape here will need 10 Fast cast and 80 MP. Psycloth Lappas Path D, Amalric still path A.


Death Precast High
Merlinic should be augmented via Fern Stone for Fast Cast, Helios Augmented with MP and Fast Cast 5. Taranus's Cape should have Fast Cast 10 and MP+80. Psycloth Lappas path D. Amalric Path A.


Death Precast Standard
You'll want Bane cape with an augment with a fast cast of 5 to get started. Psycloth Lappas Path D.

Death Idle/Aspir

ItemSet 348758

ItemSet 348759

ItemSet 348761

ItemSet 348762

Death Idle HQ
You want to maintain that MP and get some damage taken as in alot of cases you are in danger of receiving AoE damage. There are ways around this though such as cleverly using terrain to your advantage. For things that can't be pathed very well like Albumen, the Damage Taken will be very important. You may consider just wearing Amalric head here instead of Spurrina Coif for that reason, as Spurrina sports zero magic evasion, but gives you MP, It's up to you. Personally I would wear Amalric head for the M.eva.

Death Idle NQ
Same story as before except you aren't rich. Keep your MP high and your defense as high as you can while staying above your minimum to cast death at max potency. Can use Twilight Torque if you don't have Loricate Torque +1. Dark Ring augmented with as much PDT/MDT as you can get, Dont worry about breath as you will not be standing in front of the NM.

Death Aspir HQ
You want aspir+ gear, but you also want to maintain a high MP total. Taranus Cape MP+80 and Fast cast (for recast). Merlinic Crackows and Merlinic Jubbah should Have magic accuracy and Drain/Aspir potency augments.

Death Aspir NQ
Same as before except this set sort assumes that you can down tier 3's in Ru'aun, but you arent quite able to do Tier 3's in Reisenjima yet, that and you aren't rich.

Precasts

Precast arrays really dont need much instruction I imagine. I would reccomend at least mulling over whether or not you are comfortable with having quick cast in yoru fast cast sets. You might want it in some precast sets for certain spells, but not all of them. That is all up to you, these sets, also from Razmus, will be laid out as a set of suggestions.

ItemSet 340476

ItemSet 340477

ItemSet 340479

ItemSet 340480

ItemSet 340481

Enfeebling Sets
Enfeebling skill should be favored over magic accuracy, as in many spells it can affect effect and even duration.

ItemSet 357847

ItemSet 348767

ItemSet 348768

ItemSet 340496

ItemSet 340497

ItemSet 340498

Stun Sets

ItemSet 352523

ItemSet 352524

Aspir

ItemSet 348769

ItemSet 340490

ItemSet 340491

ItemSet 340492

ItemSet 340493

Mana Wall
You'll want Damage Taken augments, and you should also consider putting an argument in your lua to swap you into a "Mana Wall mode" where when it is toggled on, your midcast is your mana wall set, to minimize the amount of time not in your DT gear (this is argument is for tanking, if you are soloing, you'll want that mode off in those situations).

ItemSet 347384

ItemSet 349691

PDT Sets

ItemSet 348770

ItemSet 340500

ItemSet 340501

ItemSet 340502

ItemSet 340503

MDT Sets

ItemSet 340505

ItemSet 340506

ItemSet 340507

Idle Sets
Merlinic Dastanas and Crackows should be dark matter augmented with Refresh.

ItemSet 348771

ItemSet 340509

Myrkr HQ

ItemSet 352517

ItemSet 340510

ItemSet 340511

Better Myrkr: Path A or B on Amalric body can be path D, Path A nets the Psycloth boots 124 mp.
Kaabnax Hat augment with Flashfrost Naakual paragon.

Occult Acumen
Merlinic Augments with 11STP(fern stone), Taranus's Cape Aug with +10STP

ItemSet 349309

Misc.

ItemSet 340526

ItemSet 340527

ItemSet 340528

ItemSet 340529

Gearswap
A copy of my lua can be found at:
https://github.com/Akton99/Gearswap-Lua/blob/master/BLM.lua