Blue mage Meriting

[Rewdawg]

Yes wonder what everyone idea is on where to put my merits points on for blu in group 1 and 2?

[Feffie]

personaly i have 5/5 physical potency and 5/5 chain affinity recast in group 1 and 1/5 convergence (had a long time ago and just havent changed it) 4 into diffusion for that fun AoE buff stuff and 5/5 into assimilation for more blu points, hope this was helpful xD

[Tashan]

Must-Haves:

Group 1
5/5 Chain Affinity - Faster CA's, More Skillchains, More Damage.

Group 2
5/5 Assimilation - More Spell Points, More Spells, More Job Traits, More Blue Mage.

Options:

5/5 Burst Affinity Recast - Underrated option imo. Allows you to use BA 20 seconds faster. Usefulness depends on how often you make the most of BA.

5/5 Physical Potency - Said to be an increase of 10 Accuracy. Not amazing, but not harmful.

5/5 Diffusion - A personal favourite. If you're a person who plays BLU in many low-man style situations it can be extremely useful. Usefulness is limited based upon party member's roles.

5/5 Enchainment - Mainly used to boost the damage of some spells through Chain Affinity. Definently worth doing, especially if you cannot find a use for Diffusion.

---

My Set: 5/5 Chain Affinity Recast; 5/5 Physical Potency; 5/5 Diffusion; 5/5 Assimilation.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I went 5/5 CA 5/5 Physical 5/5 Assimilation 5/5 Enchainment. I personally can't get enough out of Diffusion to warrant it, but if it gets changed I might put at least 1 into it.

[Transmit]

5/5 CA, 5/5 Physical, 5/5 Assimilation, 4/5 Enchainment, 1/5 Diffusion here. Hopefully Diffusion is in line for a boost and 1 merit will drop it down to the minimum recast timer at least.

[saevel]

Went
5/5 CA Recast
5/5 Magic Accuracy
5/5 Assimilation
5/5 Diffusion

Physical Potency is just +2 acc on physical spells per upgrade. So I chose to go with +10 Mac Acc for additional effects like Stun / Bind / Poison / ect. Used to be 5/5 Enchainment but switched to 5/5 Diffusion for when I'm low manning stuff with friends. SE will eventually reduce it's delay to 10m and I may adjust my points then (could be lower who knows).

[Prothscar]

5/5 Magic Accuracy
5/5 Chain Affinity

5/5 Assimilation
5/5 Enchainment


Currently the optimal solution. For group 1, 10 magic accuracy is infinitely more useful than 10 physical accuracy. Unless they add a Composure effect to Diffusion, it simply isn't worth it considering the short duration of most BLU buffs and the redundancy of the two that are of a decent duration. 50 extra TP on Chain Affinity is a reasonable boost to spell damage on quite a few of our current best spells.

[Neisan_Quetz]

The relic+2 augment could have been that, if it wasn't based on amount of merits...

I flip-flopped on the physical/accuracy merits months ago and just left it, changing them around isn't difficult.

[Prothscar]

Relic +2 augment is far too impotent to remedy the issue.

For perspective, with 5/5 Diffusion merits:

Adds 1:15 to Animating Wail and Battery Charge. (3:45 left on Diffusion timer)

Adds 0:15 to Cocoon, Triumphant Roar, Barrier Tusk, and so on. (8:45 left on Diffusion timer)


In one time of you putting on Cocoon or another 60 second duration buff and being able to do it again, you could use Chain Affinity 5~6 times with +50 TP on each of those spells (straight up extra damage, extra critical hit rate, extra accuracy, extra effect durations depending on the spell cast).

[SpankWustler]

Relic +2 augment is far too impotent to remedy the issue.

For perspective, with 5/5 Diffusion merits:

Adds 1:15 to Animating Wail and Battery Charge. (3:45 left on Diffusion timer)

Adds 0:15 to Cocoon, Triumphant Roar, Barrier Tusk, and so on. (8:45 left on Diffusion timer)


In one time of you putting on Cocoon or another 60 second duration buff and being able to do it again, you could use Chain Affinity 5~6 times with +50 TP on each of those spells (straight up extra damage, extra critical hit rate, extra accuracy, extra effect durations depending on the spell cast).

Also, assuming there is an incoming change to Diffusion and the change is "lowered recast changed to increased duration", the increase would have to be 18.75% (or 15% if the relic bonus is a separate term) duration for each merit to make it possible to full-time Animating Wail or Battery Charge. I seriously doubt it will be that drastic.

One merit in Diffusion might not be a bad idea, since it's only a loss of 10 TP on Enchainment, but I can't imagine the increase per merit ever being drastic enough to make 5/5 that useful. Most of the stuff I'd really want to cast on others is defensive and situational anyway, and thus either needed the majority of the time to impact how the fight goes (which isn't possible) or not at all because other measures have been taken to defend against whatever.