Blue mage Meriting

[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

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.

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!

Standalone you can roughly assume that the Little 3 spells have the better MPamage 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).

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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.