The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Diffusion gear needs to be worn during cast, not ja. I see this on 90% of blu out there.

I just randomly got one leeching on another group, since I was already working on Almace. Not a fan of stepping stones gear so I still use it until I finish. I do know what's better though!

As for nibiru blades, I don't run with a group that can kill Nosoi. Say what you will of that. :P

Wut

The Tanmogayi unity is probably harder than nosoi

obvious gear improvements: Samnuha Tights at or near cap (at is of course best, but SR be a harsh RNG mistress). Stronger Herculean augments. making sure you're hitting 10-11 Dual Wield when under capped Haste conditions. Moonshade with TP Bonus for most WS. Ambuscade capes with the usual melee priorities; Double Attack or Store TP will likely depend on the rest of your gear - I went sTP because Tizona, as well as Crit rate for CDC. you should be looking to get a wide range of T1-2 Escha drops (Omen offers next to nothing for BLU save for niche pieces of AF+3 - WSD Body, M.Acc for when you HAVE to land certain spells), Epona's (easy as pie depending if you have a Monk to proc blue as well as a Brew if you're REALLY concerned. I doubt it is necessary under the current stat glut, but YMMV). Honestly, browse through the gear sets on page one, start with what you can get in the lower tiers, and work up from there. it's all going to come down to how much playtime you have and the effort you want to put in. working up from the bottom will let you be largely self sufficient for gearing solo depending on your CP, spell set, etc.

"Wut" was about the reaction I expected.

I play with just friends, we play the jobs we like. Often that means going without a supporting job other than WHM.

You don't even need teammates with pulses to kill Nosoi.

People like to say that but never keep in mind whether I want to bother solo-trusting or what kind of gear I'm using in the first place.

I don't really give a ***about being the best BLU since I play for fun. I have fun with my setup even if it isn't efficient.

Games. Sorry I'm casual, I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: I do put in some effort to be a decent enough BLU, but stepping stones when I have "good enough" and already working on something better means I'm not going to bother.

Since you'll have Almace AG soon enough and already have a colada, you are good on weapons but if you have trouble killing nosoi, you will have an hard time to improve any of your other gear as you have to kill sky T2/3 (adhemar), reisen T1 (herculean) and SR (samn pants). No idea what your goal in game are but I would want to work on other slots if I spent 250-300M to get a single weapon.

To be fair, it's been a while since we did Nosoi, there have been massive gear improvements for my friends and I in the time.

It's probably not as hard as it was when we tried it the first time.

We actually can kill some most T1s and some T2s in Ru'aun, and while we haven't tried Reisen NMs yet, we are probably good enough to fight T1s there.

I know I have that issue. When I think about the difficulty of a fight, I always compare it to the first encounter I had so I think a lot of fights are way harder than they actually are without taking into account that the the newest upgrade of weapons or even Reisenjima Armor haven't been around at that time.

If you wanna give Reisen a shot and get some herc feet or odyssean legs, Belphegor is stupidly easy. Easier than Nosoi. Just keep his memento mori dispelled with blank gaze and protect against fire magic and he's not dangerous at all.

We never realize how good our gear gets as it improves gradually over time and we don't go back to old content that often. I remember trying to duo Vidala for rawhide body last year on my BLU and getting owned badly after a few level ups. Now it dies in like 1SC

You can solo nosoi in pre-escha gear lol.

Id like to get opinions on what would constitute a good spellset for certain nms. What do yall use specific to Albumen?

I assume that would depend on what buffs you have up. as well as gear used.
the whole If accuracy is not an issue = more att/multi crit hit rate/damage
If acc issue then use acc food/buffs/spells
If Acc/att capped Multi/Crit damage/rate spells maybe more on the Def side since hate switch needs Def + blink.
If issue with Length of fight and Bard sleep lasting max, blu/blm use Ele seal + Entomb so bard can get N/T up and re lul.

So would need more info from you before a specific spell set would be viable.

I was simply asking what people used in their sets specifically for Albumen for comparison's sake. I wasnt asking for help figuring out how to set mine up, just what the preferences were of ppl that still take BLU to Albumen.

I know that defensive spells are used ie: barrier tusk and occultation.
If you wanna know what im using for my base tp set:
Again, only asking for the sets people themselves use if they feel like answering. Not really involving myself to look for answers for me specifically. Looking more for a few "here's what I use".

[ "Delta Thrust", "Barbed Crescent", "Empty Thrash", "Heavy Strike", "Thrashing Assault", "Sudden Lunge", "Fantod", "Diffusion Ray", "Sickle Slash", "Tail Slap", "Sinker Drill", "Paralyzing Triad", "Nat. Meditation", "Erratic Flutter", "Occultation", "Tenebral Crush", "Cocoon", "Barrier Tusk", "Vanity Dive", "Frenetic Rip" ]

i use 3 blus, so i start with diffusioned mighty guard, barrier tusk, and harden shell.. someone can super revitalizer and reapply harden shell if the fight lasts longer than 2:30..

this is just what i use for basically everything, if optimizing for specifically albumen then you could drop cocoon/magic fruit/barrier tusk for asuran claws, dark orb, and occulation to get a level of counter trait and occultation itself (harden shell and cocoon don't stack and you hopefully have a good enough mage to not need magic fruit in a zerg.. obviously one blu will miss out on counter to be able to do barrier tusk)

(Necroish, but I've been away and was just checking old mentions.) except i showed that i did get Lizard Killer II as blu. My testing showed 10%, with 4000 samples. That's Lizard Killer II. Lizard Killer I is 8%.

Hey there, quick question: When you are under capped haste situation (erratic + MG), Adhemar jacket + Suppa would be enough to cap DW?

Thanks!

Here is a link to dw cheatsheet:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Dual_Wield

Use it, love it.

It depends which level of the DW trait you have set.

DW I: 10%
DW II: 15%
DW III: 25%
DW IV: 30%
DW V: 35%
DW VI: 37%

You'd need ~36% DW from gear+traits under max magic and gear haste, so subtract your current trait level (see table above) from that, and the remainder will be the amount of DW from gear you need to cap delay reduction.

The link Afania posted does all the math for you, but it's important to understand how they arrived at those numbers.

All right, thanks both for the answers!

Finally, got first Aeonic and was looking through my spreadsheet to determine if I can dual wield Almace and Sequence and rotate depending on Savage or CDC.

Noticed, for CDC at least, that off-handing Sequence will incur a DPS penalty and lower my WS damage(capped and uncapped) compared to my Colada. Is this typical? Do most of you Almace/Sequence owners continue to use your Colada? Is the penalty to DPS unnoticeable in real situations?

I would like to dual wield both but if the DPS loss is that great I will yield to the numbers and lockstyle. I do not even think my Colada is that great (although it has max DEX aug).

Here's the same question asked a while ago with a good answer. TLDR: perfect colada should be slightly better if it existed but given how easy aeonic are to get these days sequence is less time/mental health invested (and better in capped accuracy situation due to the higher STP)

Just a word of caution for those of you using Oraen's lua included in the guide, it doesn't actually included s function for Sinker Drill so you'll have to copy the syntax under the STRVIT section and add it in yourself

One question about the gear sets in the 1st post, specific about the MAB sets ... Why is Almeric in there (For Top tier in this case) and not Jhakri? Trying to understand and find my prioritys.

For example the hands — Jhakari +1 (I won't get +2 anytime soon) will have
INT+33 MND+35 CHR+20 ... Magic Accuracy+37 "Magic Atk. Bonus"+37

While Almaric with Path D like suggested would end at
INT+24+10(34) MND+34 CHR+19 ... Magic Accuracy0+15 "Magic Atk. Bonus"+23+15(38)

+2 Obviously beat them in those stats.

Is it just for this one MAB and INT and loosing 22 MACC won't matter? Okay, I can see the use of spell interrupt-down, at least when you "plan" to get hit - but beside that?

For reference, I am still a returning player, back since maybe 2 months after 3,5years break; I could get some Jhakari+1 currently or NQ - but would it be worth it?
I could maybe also get Almeric stuff. Slowly rebuilding sets for BLU (my BLU was mainly used in 75 Era and for Procs+some DDing in Voidwatch)

The main consideration with Jhakri is that, while it has excellent offensive stats, the defensive stats on it are relatively poor. Since BLU nuking is often/mostly utilized for cleaving, I believe the recommendations for the nuking set are running on the assumption that you'll be taking hits while in it. Swapping to a set with no +HP, low defense, low magic evasion, etc is not ideal in that case.

Additionally, Jhakri has very little Haste on it, which would be detrimental to recast.

Jhakri is still very nice to get for BLU, especially if you don't have a lot of other options. It shows up in a number of the other sets in the guide, just usually more in places where it's only equipped for a split second - WS sets, physical spells, etc.

All that said, you can certainly use it for nuking too, just keep the downsides in mind.

No increased duration on Diffusion going from the +1 to the +2 of the feet.

Its VERY EASY now for blu to cap FC, was before but even moreso nowadays with the pinga set. You should not have an issue with getting casts off, especially with aquaveil up.

Recast though can be an issue potentially, however blus on a 15 haste belt..... and belt is the weakest (if no day) nuking slott, so not a huge downgrade there if you really are waiting on timers, but honestly its not even needed, you will still have timers up by the time you have pulled.