So basically it sounds like I'm best off with Ayanmo (at least at first; will probably pick up Jahkri with the tokens when I start grinding metals) because of the awesome haste/defense/melee stats it has.
The refresh on Jhakri would be nice, but see thing is, you're losing a Lot of stuff like DA, Haste, etc. And I was assuming that Physical spells would work off of Physical Melee stats, but not everything is common sense in this game, lol. Other than Fruit, White Wind, and 1-2 other spells... I've never really seen the need to do Magic spells. I know it is possible, and that it might even be good, it's just not my playstyle. I envision BLU as more of a melee that can do more than 1 thing every 30-60 seconds unlike the actual melee classes that do nothing but auto-attack, weaponskills and the occasional job ability once every few minutes. That's one of the reasons why I picked BLU -- I don't like standing there waiting for 1000TP to actually be able to do something other than watch my character swinging.
But yet, Ayanmo is highly tuned towards Defense, would have been nice to get a set that has a bit less defense but better melee offense but meh. Whatever.