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.

[Prothscar]

Yea. I'd easily got 1/5 or 5/5 on Convergence well before I consider Diffusion to be honest. It's a pretty good JA except for the recast time.

[renasci]

5/5 phys potency
5/5 macc
5/5 assimilation
1/5 diffusion
1/5 convergence
3/5 enchainment

is the route i personally went

[larrymc]

5/5 CA
5/5 Physical Potency
5/5 Assimilation
4/5 Enchainment
1/5 Diffusion

Blu gets far too much M.Acc gear to need to spend merits on additional M.Acc.
If you are in a lowman group, having 1/5 Diffusion works well for fights that dont last that long, being able to give all party members 9 "Blink" shadows to start with, or increased defense bonus, or magic barrier, depending on the situation, can be quite useful.

What I would *love* to be able to do is take those 5 Phys merits from group 1 and add them to group 2 with limits lifted to 10 - 10/10 Assimilation (Yes please!).

[saevel]

5/5 Physical Potency

Not trying to be mean, but that's just +10 accuracy on spells. BLU gets far too much acc in gear / trait / skill to need to spend merits on additional acc. +10 M.acc is more useful for things like stun / bind / sleepga (dream flower / ect..) and Sang Blade then a free PCC during spells only. Most BLU spells already get something like ~30 bonus acc along with your Sword skill + Sword merits.

[larrymc]

Not trying to be mean, but that's just +10 accuracy on spells.

Thats fine, I love constructive criticism. With my personal experience, I find that I dont have any problem landing stun / bind, etc with consistency without the m.acc merits. At one point I had full m.acc (for a year or so), and after removing them I didnt notice much of a difference. Phys potency on the other hand seems to make a significant difference for Heavy Strike which is my favorite spell for damage output vs MP used and TP given to mob.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Heavy Strike is inherent -60 accuracy (roughly), full merits bring it up to... -50 accuracy. For one spell.

[larrymc]

Heavy Strike is inherent -60 accuracy (roughly), full merits bring it up to... -50 accuracy. For one spell.

That is actually the point. For most blu spells or additional effects, a +10 acc is a very minor improvement since the accuracy for both is already quite good. For this particular blu spell, since it was so heavily nerfed by SE, the difference is quite noticeable. Heavy strike is strong/good enough that it deserves some extra attention to make it land more.

[Neisan_Quetz]

You shouldn't be having accuracy problems against weaker mobs, and it shouldn't be used against stronger mobs with the large accuracy penalty as there are better options. I don't find Heavy Strike good enough post nerf to warrant G1 merits on, with a large accuracy penalty and weakened mod iirc.

[saevel]

That is actually the point. For must blu spells or additional effects, a +10 acc is a very minor improvement since the accuracy for both is already quite good. For this particular blu spell, since it was so heavily nerfed by SE, the difference is quite noticeable. Heavy strike is strong/good enough that it deserves some extra attention to make it land more.

A.spikes / Q.Cont / Q.Strike are usually better the H.Strike unless your inside Abyssea with RR set. And you shouldn't be having acc issues inside Abysesa anyway.

[Tashan]

I'm old school, so I'm still sitting on 5/5 Physical Potency.

I won't be removing them anytime soon however. Missing hits makes more an impact to me than MACC resistances.

[larrymc]

A.spikes / Q.Cont / Q.Strike are usually better the H.Strike unless your inside Abyssea with RR set. And you shouldn't be having acc issues inside Abysesa anyway.

I think its just a difference in playstyle. Inside Abby, VW, all the G1 merits are virtually meaningless because of atmas, temps, atmacites. If you use blu alot outside of these events as I do, then you want to focus on spells that do the most damage for minimal MP, and that is Heavy Strike by a huge margin, better than A.spikes, Q.Cont, and Q.Strike. MP conservation seems to be a lost art. I use A.spikes for skillchain with CDC primarily.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Not sure what you're getting at. You should be focusing on melee damage with CDC anyway, unless you're talking about Baudelaire.

[SpankWustler]

I think its just a difference in playstyle. Inside Abby, VW, all the G1 merits are virtually meaningless because of atmas, temps, atmacites. If you use blu alot outside of these events as I do, then you want to focus on spells that do the most damage for minimal MP, and that is Heavy Strike by a huge margin, better than A.spikes, Q.Cont, and Q.Strike. MP conservation seems to be a lost art. I use A.spikes for skillchain with CDC primarily.

Right now, stuff outside of Abyssea and Voidwatch generally means level 75 content. You have gained roughly 130 accuracy from skill since that content was made.

[Prothscar]

Can think of two monsters where the 10 accuracy from Physical Potency merits will ever be in play: Ig-Alima and Botulus Rex. Magical Accuracy will be useful on far, far, far more monsters than those.

[saevel]

Larry,

Most of us have CDC which out damages all those. Thus we only cast physical spells under two situations, first being for SC (CDC -> CA Efflux A.Spikes is darkness) and second being for when your just CDC'd and need to deal 1~3K real quick to finish the monster off.

HS simply has too much of an acc penalty to effectively stack STR, you'll get more mileage out of Q.Cont (need for DwIII) and A.Spikes (for self darkness).

[Tashan]

It's so good to see a debate like this :D


Not sure what you're getting at.

A.spikes / Q.Cont / Q.Strike are usually better the H.Strike unless your inside Abyssea with RR set. And you shouldn't be having acc issues inside Abysesa anyway.

http://www.emoticonswallpapers.com/avatar/games/Larry-tears.gif

http://eightarc.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/phoenix-wright-objection.jpg
In Larry's defense I'd like to discuss MP: Damage ratio's and also Damage Over Time efficiency.


MP: Damage Ratio

Where spells are evaluated based on the damage they provide for the MP they cost. Spells Benthic Typhoon, Delta Thrust and Heavy Strike have higher MP: Damage ratio's than spells such as Amorphic Spike's.

This isn't straightforward to evaluate as damage is never a constant result, and different situations adjust independant variable's greatly. However as a brief example:

Let's assume Heavy Strike deals ~1500 damage constantly, and Amorphic Spikes does ~3000. MP cost for each spells are 32 and 79 respectively. Under this assumption, for every 1 MP


Heavy Strike -1 MP:46 Damage (46.875 3 d.p. floored.)
Amorphic Spikes - 1 MP: 37 Damage (37.975 3 d.p. floored)


With Heavy Strike, you are getting more bang for your buck! :cool:

Standalone you can roughly assume that the Little 3 spells have the better MP:Damage ratio's but spells such as Amorphic Spikes have great skillchain's where you're effectively doubling the damage you put out.



Damage Over Time Ratio's

This is where you try to maximise your effieciency by dealing the most substainable damage wihtin a set amount of time. Once again, this greatly changes from situation to situation and monster to monster

There's so much to consider here it would take a really long time to go through everything individually but there are a few thing's can be used as a rule of thumb.

In situation's where Physical Spells (PS), Weaponskills (WS) and Melee Damage (MD) all work effectively:

A Blue Mage deal's the most damage over time by using PS, WS and MD with each over.
Blue Mage has enough native MP recovery options to sustain repeated casts of the Little 3 PS spells over a long period of time.
Blue Mage has enough native MP recovery option to be able to skillchain every 1:40 mins as well as "spamming" the Little 3.
With an Almace, BLU has enough tool's to maintain Aftermath LV1 constantly whilst doing the previous 2 points.

When put altogether BLU has extremely high DoT results. The majority of this comes from PS and not actually WS/MD.


Most of us have CDC which out damages all those. Thus we only cast physical spells under two situations, first being for SC (CDC -> CA Efflux A.Spikes is darkness) and second being for when your just CDC'd and need to deal 1~3K real quick to finish the monster off.

Not sure what you're getting at. You should be focusing on melee damage with CDC anyway, unless you're talking about Baudelaire.
Please do not focus' solely on spamming Chant Du Cygne or Skillchaining. Do all three!

Once again though, a change of situation will affect this (e.g. Blue Mage in Voidwatch).

----

SE really needs to implement spoiler tags, my post's are way too long.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I wrote a response, then realized I cast spells more often than that post implies. I still don't spam them however. Depends on sub and target.

[Tashan]

Yeah tbh I never actually felt all you did was spam CDC or SC only.

[saevel]

Depends, what exactly are you doing? If your goal is for maximum damage, then spamming CDC is what you want to do. Casting damage spells delay's your attack rounds and reduces your TP gain rate.

And lol at HS doing 1500 average, unless your not counting the 0's from it missing. A.Spikes is a SC spell, it's DMG:MP ratio is bad, but all of the big number spells are bad MP ratio's. What your looking for isn't DMG:MP since that's a bunch of BS, your looking for DMG:Time ratios. How much damage are you doing for the period of time you spend casting. Even at low MP you can still TP / WS and CDC will beat all our spells that don't have CA + Efflux on them. This is why a damage orientated BLU should be /WAR with DWIII + TA set and not /RDM with Mag. Acc swords.

[Tashan]

I know it's long, but can you please re-read my previous post. I feel as though you are not paying attention to the detail and have not understood it.

Edit: I don't mean to offend you, sorry if it sounds that way.

[SpankWustler]

First off, I think I love this image: http://www.emoticonswallpapers.com/avatar/games/Larry-tears.gif Yes, I definitely love it. His eyes are a UNIVERSE of tears.

Second, I generally do content involving low level monsters on Beastermaster rather than Blue Mage, so I'm curious how drastically Blue Magic damage goes up as monsters go down in defense and level.

If the increase is actually as drastic as I'm remembering from the few times I've decided to cast pointy things on old content, I'd think that at least Benthic Typhoon and Delta Thrust would be worth casting due to the combined damage and enfeebling effects.

A lot of stuff does die fast, possibly before Defense Down or Plague would matter, but a lot of stuff in old content also lives a long time just by virtue of having too much damn HP.

[larrymc]

When doing content where MP conservation is important, like Neo-Dynamis, or NIv2 (the two events I play the most at the moment), I find Heavy Strike being very effective at dealing significant damage, without depleting the MP pool too fast.

In Dynamis, /war is not really a viable option for JA proc, as /dnc is needed for that - so total damage is a combination of fast swings with DW3+STP+DA, CDC once the proc happens, then depending on how much HP is left, either SC with A.Spike, continue swinging with aftermath, or a quick death with HS or DT.

Using Blu in NIv2 is quite different - Mobs need to be either 1 shot or killed in seconds. Swinging at them & using CDC takes too long for a normal mob. HS will usually 1 shot non-NMs.

[saevel]

I've done Dynamis many times as BLU/DNC + THF/DNC (my friend). We fight DC's for coins and +2 items. DC's tend to have weird lopsided stats. Some of them have a ridiculous amount of HP but otherwise mediocre stats, while others have normal stats except ridiculous defense (for a DC) and others have normal stats except ridiculous evasion. It's very much a YMMV deal. Otherwise BLU crush's the mobs in Dyna, spam JA procs then slaughter it with CDC. I find spells to rarely be worth it as I mostly use my MP for Dream Flower and Magic Fruit so neither me nor the thf need to waste TP on cures. One CDC -> CA + Efflux + A.spikes is enough to take a DC mob from 90% down to 20~30% which is usually followed off by a Q.Strike to finish em off. Time is very important in Dyna, I don't like wasting time casting two to three spells when I can cast one and have the same effect. HS actually works pretty well in Dyna, only things like DC crows and such have enough evasion to make landing it a PITA.

[saevel]

Tashan if a player has access to Almace and can reasonably go /WAR then they would get better damage vs time out of Melee + WS with the occasional self SC then they would spamming spells. Casting one spell or three spells doesn't ultimately matter as each one is reducing your melee damage and Tp gain rate. You end up reducing more damage then you get back from spells, this goes double for anything level 100 or higher. Attack food, Bergressor, DA, TA, +crit and ODD all effect melee damage and CDC but they do nothing for physical spells. The more you have of those first the less physical spells become worth. The only time that casting a physical spell, outside of SC, becomes worthwhile is when you need to finish a monster off quickly after a WS and are willing to sacrifice the MP to get the job done and then it's a high damage physical spell your going to want.

[Tashan]

Honestly, I'm speechless.

Please read this again and if you don't understand it I'l try and make it simpler:


Damage Over Time Ratio's

This is where you try to maximise your effieciency by dealing the most substainable damage wihtin a set amount of time. Once again, this greatly changes from situation to situation and monster to monster

There's so much to consider here it would take a really long time to go through everything individually but there are a few thing's can be used as a rule of thumb.

In situation's where Physical Spells (PS), Weaponskills (WS) and Melee Damage (MD) all work effectively:

A Blue Mage deal's the most damage over time by using PS, WS and MD with each over.
Blue Mage has enough native MP recovery options to sustain repeated casts of the Little 3 PS spells over a long period of time.
Blue Mage has enough native MP recovery option to be able to skillchain every 1:40 mins as well as "spamming" the Little 3.
With an Almace, BLU has enough tool's to maintain Aftermath LV1 constantly whilst doing the previous 2 points.



When put altogether BLU has extremely high DoT results. The majority of this comes from PS and not actually WS/MD.

[saevel]

All you've done is make a statement advocating a blu spell the weaker more MP:Damage efficient spells. Appeal to authority isn't a valid argument point.

[Tashan]

All you've done is make a statement advocating a blu spell the weaker more MP:Damage efficient spells. Appeal to authority isn't a valid argument point.

Don't understand this at all.

[Silvra]

Group 1:
5/5 Physical Potency, 5/5 Magical Potency

Group 2:
5/5 Assimilation, 4/5 Convergence, 1/5 Diffusion.

I am hoping that the timer for Diffusion will be brought down, even so I will probably switch my Diffusion and Conergence merits around. I always merit for balance on my jobs.

[Tennotsukai]

I really wish I had more time to get myself an Almace.

[Silvra]

UPDATE CAME OUT TODAY ABOUT ADJUSTMENTS!!

[dev1110] Job Adjustments: Blue Mage

Diffusion
Recast time reduced from twenty minutes to ten.
Additional merit points no longer reduce casting time, but instead lengthen effect duration.


Looks like diffusion merits go!

[Tennotsukai]

Interesting. I wonder how much time diffusion is going to stack onto the duration of some of our buff spells now. Glad I kept diffusion maxed.

[Prothscar]

Will have to be a very significant boost to buff duration to make Diffusion worth meriting fully. 1/5 could be argued, but still have only very niche uses. Here's why:

Buffs that are suitable to cast with Diffusion:

-Animating Wail (Can be done by just about any mage or support job and can already be AoE'd by SMN. It does make it much more MP efficient for the BLU though.)

-Battery Charge (I would rarely ever consider this tbh. It's more MP efficient for the BLU, but Animating Wail is moreso.)

-Triumphant Roar (For circumstances where you don't have attack+ temp items. Its duration doesn't make it very useful for anything except zerg type situations and other boss encounters that you do not expect will last long.)

-Magic Barrier (Questionable since every other form of Stoneskin overwrites it and it's only good for magic damage.)

-Exuviation (Not so much anymore, but it alone used to be worth merits in Diffusion.)

-Orcish Counterstance (Idk, this would mostly be for fun. I don't see it being terribly useful in any real situations especially due to the duration.)

-Occultation (Meh. Would be better if Blink wasn't wiped by AoEs, but it could be ok for some stuff.)

-Amplification (A decent MDB and MAB boost for a decent enough duration.)

-Saline Coat (For some sort of oh shit moment where you know there's a big magical AoE coming up. Honestly, these situations are incredibly few and far between and the duration is pretty trash.)

Buffs that are not suitable for Diffusion:

-Cocoon/Harden Shell (Why)

-Pyric Bulwark (One free physical hit isn't that impressive. In my experience it doesn't work on dangerous AoEs either.)

-Memento Mori (Duration is far too short to be worthwhile.)

-Reactor Cool (Why)

-Warm Up (Why)

-Plasma Charge (Why)

-Barrier Tusk (Duration is too short.)

-Regeneration (Worthless when a mage can provide a stronger regen where you'd want one.)


For 5/5 Diffusion to be effective you'd have to have a 10m or more Animating Wail, which would mean we need at least 75% buff duration from merits. You'd also have to hope that those buffs don't get dispelled or otherwise nullified, limiting the usefulness further. Several buffs aren't even worth casting in the first place, and most others serve very very little purpose.

[Tennotsukai]

Good points, Prothscar. Also, can't imagine them giving diffusion such an effect to increase a buff by 30 seconds per level. I suppose it might be interesting to see on animating wail with af2+2 aug, but I suppose I need to rework my blu's merits again. bleh...

[Prothscar]

Maximum buff duration bonus is +45% with 5/5 Diffusion merits and Mirage Charuqs +2, putting the max Animating Wail at just under 7:30. 1/5 only, don't bother with the boots.

[saevel]

Everything you just listed Proth only applies to big event play, basically where you have a bunch of support jobs and melee.

I've found diffusion to be ridiculously helpful in small group events, typically the ones where the only WHM is someone's dual box. I usually duo Dynamis with a THF friend, he pulls a bunch of mobs and I Dream Flower them, we're both /DNC. In this case being able to give him haste, or even the third / fourth person (sometimes we have another one to two people come along) has proven to be helpful. Even if it's only 50% of the time, it's still represents a greater total damage increase then any other T2 merit other then Assimilation. Only other option is 50 bonus TP every 1:40 seconds.

[Tennotsukai]

hmm.. was thinking about using refresh in a small group that all needed it, we could almost get 8 minutes worth with a grapevine cape.