The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Would it be a dumb idea for first 3k tp AM with Tizona to offhand Blurred Sword +1? And then when AM3 is up swap to Tizona/Thibron?

Yeah.

Could you help me understand why?

Swapping weapons = goodbye aftermath

Yup, swapping weapons at any time results in the loss of your Aftermath. No exceptions :(

Oh ok thanks, I thought as long as you kept main hand it would be fine.

Has anyone tested the su5 paths to see if any of them make sense?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Zomorrodnegar right?

I don't know what was up in their heads to add Chain/Burst Affinity
Recast on Path C. I don't see how that makes any sense at all to begin with lol

Blu isn't played the way it's intended. That Aug is more in line with how blu should be played instead of the warrior analog you use it as.

Yes.

I'm wondering how the subtle blow would play out with this weapon?

Not sure if you are sarcastic here or not, but i would gladly play it like that if that augment would be -90% recast. -25% changes nothing.

Trying to figure out how you believe it’s “Intended” to be played because BLU is a Tool-Box job designed to let us play it however we please?

Wanna heal? Got it
Enfeeb? Got it
Tank? Got it

Or are you meaning we should use our spells more? Because our Physical Spells suck. Completely pointless to use. If they naturally SC’d that would be different but as they are now? No good can come of it

it doesn't mean a right or wrong, it just means that they only way to have a "unique to blu" aug path, is what they chose. The way you use blu, nothing they put on the sword would've mattered.

Really only 3 options they had, increase blu spell damage, increase duration, or lower recasts on abilities.

Like blu should use it's abilities more often than literally zero times. And it should use spells for something other than self buffs and the occasional stun. Instead of playing "sword warrior". (when in a dd position, as opposed to blu cleaving) but thats like suboptimal n stuff.

Fair enough I suppose but I feel it fair to say that the more experienced BLUs use it for more than just smacking stuff. When in Dyna D I’ll assist the alliance with Sleepga and apply either a 15% or 20% Def Down depending on situation, Stuns as you already pointed out, Heavy Healing or Erase-ga all without losing my DD Spells and cracking out 50k Expiacions at break-neck speeds.

The sword simply doesn’t offer anything genuinely useful to BLUs utility imo. And even if it did, Tizona overwhelmingly overshadows it (Infinite MP is pretty damn serious)

As far as the JAs... I Unbridled Learning and Diffusion (literally all of us do) but unless SE cuts the Affinity Timers way down, it’s just kinda pointless. And even if you cut it 90%, it’s still pointless because Tizona

Edit:

I feel SE might need to change some of BLUs Abilities to make them more attractive because like you said, they see Zero-Use

And, let us not forget that it's entirely possible that these (and all weapons) will rank past where they are currently. If it were 90% now, it would have no where to go at rank 50

I kinda disagree. When you use spell with chain affinity you lose all tp anyway, so you could macro this sword just for ca before spell and switch back to tizona. Now if you want to spam burst affinity you would probably also use chain affinity or self sc with sword. Either way you would end up with 0tp after ca cast or some tp after ws, so again macroing sword for ba activation wouldnt cost you almost anything You could also simply use sword and burst affinity for non magic burst nuking (cleaving something for example). Having ba for every aoe would be pretty significant boost. You could actually play a role as magic burst nuker like blm too. BLU magic bursts are actually pretty strong and you have ability to burst with light or darkness spells which blm cant do beside Death afaik.

Ca is useful for 4step double light too.

Comet

Never heard about BLMs seriously nuking with this spell. How good is a damage with it?

I've only ever done it on a Death > Comet chain, which has been a long time. Damage was like a T5 nuke IIRC.

Ok so not bad I guess. Its hard to tell how good is tenebral crash in comparision tho. Light nukes are still BLU advantage tho afaik.

Properly buffed, T Crush, Spectral Floe, and Blinding Fulgure should be hitting around 40k unresisted which is significantly stronger than a BLM can nuke non-burst if I’m not mistaken.

It might be viable if you make a dedicated setup for it and trade 5 Spell-Point merits for 5/5 Affinities. That, plus this sword path C would put you at 75 seconds recast. Useable but what fights would warrant it right now?

Sorry maybe I wasnt clear enough. I was talking about "what if" this sword had -90% recast. In its current state its almost useless.

Ahh gotcha

So call me crazy... But path C in precast to burst/chain affinity only?

-30 seconds on recast is nice.

Thoughts?

If you want to pay/have 220m to throw away on "nice", then have at it hoss. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone that really uses BA/CA outside of salvage solo cerberus and stacking BA on cleaves.

You generally switch weapons on cleaves so if you wanted a 220m macro piece, yeah, there's nothing better.

We BLU cleave dynamis. Mostly for that tbh.

It is the only way to decrease burst affinity recast right?

And I would be crafting it.

Every gain is a gain, it's only a matter of prioritizing where to put your gils.

Is there another way to decrease that timer? Maybe i'm overlooking something?

Merits category 1