Blue Mage Advice Plz

So i started lvling BLU right when ToAU was added and retired it at 65, i just started it again and its at 75, but i need to know if DA can proc on Physical Spells, also what Atmas are recommended for BLU, and Trials Swords excluding Emp, if it isnt too much to ask.

- No, DA cannot proc on physical spells (95% sure).
- Voracious Vivian, Minikin Monstrocity are the two easy-to-get ones that I always used - but when you start blu cleaving that's a whole discussion in itself.
- Str sword is nice, -pdt and +mdb swords are really really nice to have in your arsenal.

Da can't proc on spells.

atma
Razed ruins
Apoc
gnarled horn
minikin

I highly recommend getting chant if you can, obviously empy is a bit much as you stated but you could go for the Badalaire +2. Other than that the STR swords are pretty good.

a) No DA cannot proc on physical spells

b) Good atmas worth noting would be:
For Physical spells: Atma of the Voracious Violet(VV), Razed Ruins (RR), Gnarled Horn(GH), Alpha and Omega (A&O)
Magical spells: Baying Moon, Minikin Monstrosity (MM), Ultimate, Blinding horn, Lion
and some general use Atmas would be: Apocalypse (good for triple attackfor tp gain and weaponskills, quick cast for the occasional instant-cast spell, and reraise so you can swing away like a meth head on stuff and not even give half a crap) and Minikin Monstrosity if you find yourself low on mp a lot

c) Some notable trial swords would definitely be STR swords, DEX swords are situational for things with high evasion, which is a very rare occasion, the walk of echoes sword with Chante du Cygne, and needless to say Almace.
M.acc swords are generally useless and a waste of time in my opinion, in general most intelligent members recognize this as a sign of being unversed in the ways of blue-mageyness due to its lack of utility and general display of just eagerness to fill up a slot with an easily obtainable weapon...for lack of a better term.
Also I know it isn't a trial sword per-se but you might also want to look into an Isador

kool thx for the input, i figured DA didnt work on the spells but wanted to make sure, i was thinking of doing 1 STR 1 DEX Sword, but if 2 STR is better ill just do that, and as for Atmas i have all of those, ill play around with combos when i get to 90

Yeah isador is an underrated sword when you're going /nin. With isador + fast cast job trait + fast cast acp body + homam legs + loquacious earring it's quite easy to get ichi shadows up in between a mob's attack round without slow. Of course, if you're not "tanking" I guess it's not a big deal, but if you're playing BLU correctly you should be tanking.

For Almace BLU: GH + RR + Apoc is generally the best trio. With almace, I rarely even use any spells (inside abyssea) and just focus on melee dps.

Without Almace BLU: VV + MM + RR is what I would recommend. Without an almace, you should be doing exactly the opposite and spamming your spells as much as possible. This combo is excellent for destroying regular xp mobs. Not as great on NMs, especially those with high defense.

Trial swords:
-I would actually recommend the PDT sword first. The reason for this is if you don't have almace, your strength is already pretty high with VV anyway, so the str swords don't have as much of an effect. The PDT sword + Genbu's allows you to spam your spells like crazy on pretty much any mob in abyssea and not worry about getting killed. BLU can also tank incredibly well with PDT sword + Genbu's, or Almace + PDT sword. The PDT sword is also very very easy to upgrade compared to the str sword. Fire weather sucks. You can work on the str one after.

-Str one as I noted above

-Agi one? I know some people evasion tank on BLU. Personally with isador, I've never had the need for this. Like I said, it's really pretty easy to keep shadows up on BLU with all the fast cast.

-Double attack +10 is a great offhand when you get Almace

is /nin about all you go? I have absolutely no knowledge about blu but trying to do it right as I have an almace

between occultation/etc and a curemule are other subjobs a possibility for nms as opposed to xp mobs or whiskering?

Even though BLU can set Dual Wield II as a trait, you give up Dual Wield III if you sub anything else. that's a 10% delay increase, which can add up in the long run (especially for almace users.)

That and you give up set points and potentially useful spells for the sake of setting Dual wield, when you can get a better version of it naturally from another sub.
In terms of tanking... I'd say /NIN isn't required as much as a good PDT set. Occultation and max PDT will normally be sufficient, but avoiding dmg will always be better reducing it. Especially when you combine all 3. Only exception to that rule is Ochain, which is retardedly good.

Voracious Violet is an absolute must, STR +50 is insane for both capping fSTR, and any physical spell you cast; save for Benthic Typhoon, and Vanity Dive, they should all have a STR mod. Disseverment and Goblin Rush also have DEX mods, and Razed Ruins makes for huge Vorpal Blade damage, making it not a horrible choice for a second atma. If you're not going to macro gear, then you're going to be a terrible Blue Mage, but if you do, then you can get enough refresh through gear, and Battery Charge to make Minikin essentially worthless. Apocalypse isn't bad, but offers absolutely nothing for your spell damage, so I usually opt for Stout Arm in it's place.

Quadratic Continuum, Goblin Rush and Disseverment are essentially the 'new' big 3. But you'll also find good damage from both Vanity Dive, and Benthic Typhoon if you're having trouble with recasts. For swords, I reccomend any in the STR and/or DEX path. Isador is also nice as a transition piece, or when you're tanking, and Khanda +2, either Double Attack path, or OA2-4 is insane for TP gain if you're using a critical hit WS and Razed Ruins.

Edit:

People keep reccomending PDT swords, which while they aren't bad, only offer a damage boost to Quadratic Continuum; a boost that is equal to that of the STR swords, and surpassed by the Attack on them.

WSC does not cap, the STR swords never outlive their usefulness, and I guarantee you, that your attack won't be capped on BLU.

PDT sword is not bad, but you should never be full timing it. If you're tanking it's another story, but if you're not, your tank should be able to keep hate off you reliably.

Again edit:

And whoever advised Genbu's Shield is an idiot. Again, it's nice situationally, but the damage boost you get from setting Dual Wield II, if you dont get it from your subjob, is absolutely insane. It's basically the equivalent to 15% haste.

The fact that BLU gets healing spells means youre not going to die as fast even with a slower healer, as a MNK or a WHM would. The PDT won't make or break you, and as with jobs like MNK or NIN, best to go for pure damage.

There's a tank that can keep hate from Almace BLU?! Gimme.

Verethragna MNK, but that's about all that's given me trouble keeping hate.

Edit: he also specified NON empyrean, as such this was implied in my post. BLU with Almace is going to be keeping hate a lot more often, especially if they're casting, Zorro-ing, and their tank isn't very good.

yeah i wont ever get an Almace as far as i can see, i was working on H2H and no longer have a shell, im just lvling/playing jobs for my social Ls anymore, still like to "do it right" tho, thx again for all the advice

Atmas:
Physical spells: VV,RR,MM is top notch.
Magical spells(for whiskering):Blinding Horn,Lion,Ultimate
Almace: RR,GH,Apoc or sometimes I use RR,A&O,Apoc

Swords: inside abyssea x2 STR swords is pretty perfect. Outside I'd do 1 STR 1 DEX.
If you do decide to make an Almace then your offhand should be the DA+10 in my opinion grants you more DA for your TP phase on both hands as well as in WSs. Also it has great DoT compared to the Oa3-4.

i actually had 1 more question, was just lookin at my gear making macros and stuff, for Ws gear for a body.. should i get the lolpink body or use Loki's, if there is something else i could use that would be nice to know but thats all i can really see at the moment.

And are the Firmament swords with augments decent to hold me over till Trial weapons?

I used Loki's for Vorpal Blade.

Firmaments are ok I guess.

I'd reverse that. Outside Abyssea, fSTR isn't capped. 2STR outside, 1DEX 1STR inside.

And yeah, I wish I had done Double Attack Khanda, but the OA2-4 is still pretty insane.

Firmaments are fine to last you until trials.

Loki's is great for Chant du Cygne, but Vorpal Blade has no DEX mod. I haven't used Vorpal in so long though... you might want a math *** to answer that question for you.

It's a crit ws even without a mod Loki's is going to do well to increase damage. Plus, blu doesn't have access to high str and attack bodies like other jobs do.

It has a STR mod of 30%...

And I agree, we're lacking as far as non CDC related WS bodies go. But Pink body is actually a decent WS piece, as are Mirke Wardecors' with various augments.

Some to consider might be: DA2%, Attack+10, Acc.+10, Crit rate+3%

And like I said, may want to get a math *** to check, because ultimately conjecture is useless.

morrigans body?

That's what I used pre CDC.

I personally think Morrigan's and Aurore would have to fight for best Vorpal piece, both of them being better than Loki's. But the reason I asked for a math ***, is because I have absolutely no resources to support that while I'm off the game.

Well outside ACC isn't capped like it is inside. Really it comes down to a parcer I guess.

What?

Parser data is nice but it's inaccurate and could be flawed based on the simple fact that things like double attack or crit rate on ws are incredibly hard to determine in a parse. Mathing it out is more accurate on potential damage unless you have several thousand trials of data in a parse.

Also, acc is not capped on what outside of abyssea? Lurkers? I can't remember the last time I used my high acc set.

You're not entirely right on this point. The fact is that we don't know how exactly these equations work. They're models, and while some of them are fairly accurate, we don't know that for sure that's how the systems work because we can't see the code.

Case: if you did the calculation for stoneskin at low level, you'd assume that it'd work one way, and you'd make a model based on it. However, at a certain critical point of damage absorption, the model for stoneskin flips. And it does it again at a third critical point. While we have these models now, it was a while before people understood what was going on with them.

Furthermore, the stoneskin example was a rather simple one. The interaction of all the many modifiers on weaponskills (levels of attack, strength, in conjuction with monster defense levels and other factors) make straight modeling of what will happen during a weaponskill difficult to predict. Especially when it's fairly difficult to accurately know certain factors like mob defense.

Even if it is possible to calculate all these rather "simple" interactions, percentage based modifiers, (crit, da, etc) require an appropriate model without further skewing the data.

Getting all the these models to work properly together is a difficult and time consuming process, and it has to be changed every time a rogue variable is thrown in. This is no mean feat, and certainly not accessible to the regular ffxi player.

There's a reason we have models for things like enmity and ss, but not weaponskills.

You should have a relatively long parse to give you good data. But if you're parse is long enough to be statistically significant then you can assume that the trends it shows are true. This is much easier to do and will give more tangible results. If configuration B beats configuration A over a large, statistically significant sample size you can assume that B is the better option for the given situation that you are in.

Hurray for the Law of Large Numbers!

Statistics are useful!

I see what you mean and it's quite a good point. But would it actually save time to parse instead? Would it be easier? If you need to figure out several different situations and several gear choices it would be easier if less accurate to use a damage spreadsheet? How many ws with each variable would you need to do to have a pretty good idea of what's going to win out with a 4 hit crit ws? I'm sure this would be a heck of a lot easier for your average player than setting up an accurate testing setup for parsing. Any thoughts?

Because the models for how all the variables fit together don't actually exist. You'd have to create them. Nobody been able to make spreadsheets for best gear choices for ffxi like they have in wow. Even if you know certain generalities about what's best, you won't know the interactions of all the variables.

You can use those generalities to make informed choices, and then test it by parsing. You can test stuff like this while your light farming or doing things like that. at least for lower defense mobs. higher defense stuff will take a bit longer.