Blue Mage Guide
A note to my readers:
- This article is my opinion of how a Blue Mage should be played or how I analyze the statistics/methods of playing the job. It is in no way the standard or the way it should be played. I respect other’s opinion and preference so take this just another way of playing Blue Mage.
- I will constantly add and modify if they are necessary ‘-‘ but information here should be complete. (IMO) XD
Welcome!
I’m glad you found your way to some-what the MaiTalu’s Blue-Mage Guide. Anyway, on the next few page, you will be reading about the way how MaiTalu play as a Blue-Mage DD (Damage Dealers) backed up with statistics and analysis. Whatever happens, I hope this was an interesting read to you. Before you start, lets watch some vids ‘-‘ (Be vary warned, includes spoilers for the Blue-Mage quests; around 90 seconds.)
[Update] Before you keep reading, do remember that this guide was written on September 27, 2006 and /dnc, campaign and all other new content was not available, so please do take that into consideration while reading this guide.
Video: Playing the Blues (DivX, 53MB), drawing by Farkee of Fenrir. Please right click the link and hit save as. Its too big to stream.
If you want to comment during your read, please leave it on this page. I’d love to hear that you’ve found this useful, so I can improve on/write more about other things. Also, others can read the comment to see if they want to read on and I only need to check 1 page to see what others perceive about my writeup.
My English is my second language so bare with me if some sentences are way off in grammatical structure.
Guide Index
- Maiev’s Guide to Blue Mage! [You are here]
- What is Blue mage?
- Blue Mage’s Abilities
- General Blue-Mage Knowledge
- Intermediate Blue-Mage Knowledge
- Advanced Blue-Mage Knowledge
- Maiev’s Discussion on Blue-Mage
- Conclusion
Why read on my Blue-Mage guide?
I wasn’t that bad, at least I hope not ‘-‘. I don’t want to blow my own horn but just some screenshots of people who I party with! (I don’t know them either!)
I’ve out-parsed at least 95% of my party members since Lv40 (when Chain Affnity [CA] is made available). These are all accompnied by a parser results (Actually I have all parser results if the party lasted 1hr+, for the statistics to be sort-of reliable. You can read all about my Blue-Mage post right here.)
- Out-parsed blu/nin, Out-parsed other blu/thf,Out-parsed war 71 72 when I was 70/71 blu
- I have done extensive research, and the parser proved that I was on the right track.
- I have received a lot of comment about how I play my blu is what they want to see others doing.
- I am not pulling data out of my TaruButt, but from websites which have high creditability.
Obviously I rarely party with other blue-mages, so the only source of information was forum, and the only source of feedback is from my party members.
I’ll try very hard not to be bias until the last section where I give in my opinion, in which I compare /thf and /nin, so anyway, I hope this would be an interesting read for you.
25 Responses to “Blue Mage Guide”
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typo in “What is blue mage?”
You don’t learn Headbutt off Mandragora, but OrcsQuadavs :p
haha nice one =P
i really can’t distinguish much between an orc / quadav… only yagudo really looks different ‘-‘
damn this is extremely well written, thanks!
You made me switch /nin to /thf with this guide. (And I’m lazy,so bringing up THF was a really great effort for me!) Now I lol at every blu/nin I see in PTs >:D (pretty much everyone *sad*)
thanks for allowing me to inspire you :)
The ranged Physical blue magics are based on Agi do you macro in Agi gear when doing these?? or just stick to spells based on Str?
Thx for dropping by again. ^^;
Um… yea I do realize there are ranged ones (eg Feather Storm).
All physical blue magic spell goes through the same damage equation, eg D Value = (D SV WSC) * Multiplier.
You are right that some “Physical” blue magic skills takes AGI, but only as a “Secondary” Modifier (WSC), but you forgot that all blue magic will factor in your STR vs Enemy’s VIT (SV).
WSC suffers a diminishing return of 0.83 at Lv75. Lets say you have to choose between 30 DEX or 15AGI, 15 STR
Lets do an example here xD!
D value is directly related to Blue Magic (hence your magic damage scales with your character level), so we’ll leave that variable out.
Multiplier is related to the type of spell used against a certain mob, lets assume you hit the same mob and using the same spell, so lets leave that variable out too.
Your equation right now would be D = SV WSC
If you Equip 30 STR.
D = 30 (0 AGI *0.83) = 30!
If you equip 15 STR 15 AGI
D = 15STR (15AGI*0.83=12.45) = 27.45
You are kinda missing a little bit of damage by equipping AGI. You gimped your SV by equipping AGI (since you got to swap, say a Triumph Earring which got 2 STR for 3 AGI), but also your secondary modifier takes a hit from it since its a “secondary”.
http://www.neko-sentai.com/images/BlumageNFO.htm
Around 15% down the page will show the secondary attribute modifier.
You can equip AGI, but only at certain spot, its only worth it if you can “overcome” the diminishing return of the secondary attribute. 3 AGI > 2 STR, but I’d take 10 STR > 9 AGI. Just remember the 0.83 penalty and you know how to squeeze most damage out of your spell ^^;
Do I equip it? nah :x no space, I usually carry STR and MND equipment for Magic Fruit! My Fruit cures for 405 ^^; More MP efficient then say.. Cure 4 =P You can tell your RDM to better off refresh you and let you heal hahahaha!
I hope this helps ^^
Quite well put, Maiev. I was a big supporter of /Thf from level 30+, but had to switch back to /Nin since the majority of my tanks were unable to keep hate over even sparse casting(and even an instance where a Ninja couldnt keep a colibri’s attention over my melee damage alone >_>). Now I use it more for convenience, since the parties Im in tend to be 3 Blu, Rdm, Brd, {Random DD} on Colibri(Chain 27X is our current record) and events like Salvage/Einherjar/Limbus where 10+ DDs are turning it this way and that.
btw, Trey is a member of my ls(OmegaRebirth). I dont recall any discussions of you, but considering how far back this is and how bad my memory is, even if I were in the conversation Id be unlikely to remember it. Also saw you mention Lagsave somewhere on your site. You a friend of Balak?
I have a question on what subjob to use for when fighting imps solo and in EXP on BLU. I’ve always found it more flexible going as /nin because of amnesia and silence aoe constantly. After imps and on to mamools, I highly believe /thf would be the best ticket to go. What is your belief on the two situations?
Hello there! :)
/nin and /thf are all situation IMO. You can push better damage from THF if use properly, but /nin isn’t completely garbage. A horribly or non-skilled use of thf can be easily beaten by a /nin simply because Duel Wield gives them a 10% faster swing. Also, subbing nin allows you to hold a better sword, hence giving you better stats.
So IMO, the choice is really up to you. If you are confident with your BLU, then by all means go for a /thf. But if you just wanna be average, chill, there is nothing wrong going as /nin. Just remember /thf takes skills and its a challenge. Its like driving an automatic versus a manual :)
Currently my Blu is lvl 47 and i was wondering if subbing /thf would be wise before 60 or is it better to wait for SATA…and if /thf is ok before 60 what spells should i use with sneak attack? i’m still pretty new
Hello Rawger, thanks for dropping by.
I believe at your level, you already hav Sickle Slash. If memory is correct, that is a one hit MA that is similar to a Gekko that takes STR modifier (I think it is), so a SA that crits that spell would be crazy.
However, without TA, you might have trouble surviving. So most of the time you wouldn’t even do something this crazy unless ur CA + mob is almost dead. So if you just want to chill and relax in a party, I’d just sub nin but… if you want to get some excitement and try to win the parser, I believe /thf is a good pick.
Regardless, better to start early than late. Trying to understand how to play blu70/thf35 is a little bit embrassing :)
Hope that helps.
All I can say is…….wow. It makes me think more about /thf w/ blu. I didn’t really do PTs with blu a lot. I pretty much solo’d my way to 40’s as a blu. I did later on join a blu set pt with others, so we kinda had to play it safe. The set up was 4 ppl being, 2 blu/nin (I was one of the blu/nin), blu/whm, and blu/brd. Strange setup I know, but was able to get to lvl 65. My group broke up, and I took a break from blu to lvl other jobs. I started playing again, but I really wasn’t sure on how I should play blu in a regular pt setup, but from reading this, it makes perfect sense to go with /thf than /nin. This really helped a bunch. I do have one question. Is there Other SJ you like to use, maybe when your not in at pt. Like in Besieged or Campaign?
Thank you Maiev for responding to my comment im now 55 Blu and still loving it. I’m really excited to try out death scissors with SATA at 60. However gear is getting expensive and i was wondering which pieces of the blu af would u use to 75? also i have bounding boots…should i still wear wear that over blu af feet or jsut macro in the boots for dex mod spells?
Your guide was fun to read and really helpful. :) Thanks so much. Could you perhaps email me a list of gear that would be good for blu at lvls 30-40? I am really unsure about that and want to make sure I do the job well. I would really appreciate it. ^^/
would anyone be willing to put their BLU windower macros up here please, so i can see. thank you
Enjoyed the read. Not many blue mage guides are correct; most are filled with tons of misinformation and wild-ass guessing.
In regards to shitting on /NIN, there are several situations where /THF is unfortunately not viable. The biggest one is Nyzul Isle. If you do not have Monomi or Tonko, you’re going to fail, or use up several stacks of oils/powders per Nyzul run, or have a RDM who hates you and wants to strangle you to death.
And you can’t SA Faffy anyway, unless you want to get spike flailed. =P
I suppose you *could* use /DNC for this, and play a more support-role BLU. I haven’t tried it myself as my DNC isn’t capped for SJ yet.
The other place I’ve found /NIN to be vastly more useful than /THF is Campaign battles. I used to play Campaign as /THF exclusively, but I found myself dead more often than alive. The net result was that I dealt far LESS damage, even doing more damage per hit with SA or SACA Cannonball or Death Scissors. /THF in Campaign generally netted me 1k or less EXP, while I rarely see a battle with less than 3k on /NIN. (Assuming I was there from the start of the battle.)
~Aislin (Ramuh server)
Well.. /nin is fine, I mean obviously I solo imps in it. But in a party setting… I dun think its that practical.
This guide was written way back when Blue first came out, so obviously /dnc wasn’t available. And so this guide could use some updating.
You can trick with thief on Fafnir. You don’t really need to do it from his back, jus enough (slightly behind hind legs). There are screenshots and I’ve seen JP thf did dit (I however, did not try it, simply I didn’t do HNM anymore since Blue.. or have a chance to go blue as KS99 etc).
Campaign is a lot more dangerous obviously in campaign, since those NPC is nothing than just 1 CE of hate on them. Again, this wasn’t available when I wrote this so.. that’s got to be factored in. But in an exp party, certainly its doable. Everything is controlled in an exp party, and with teamwork, I am pretty sure /thf still rocks socks :D
=)
GREAT GUIDE HAS HELPED ME A BUNCH, STARTED TO LEVEL MY THF FINALLY, THANKS TO YOU. WISH I COULD SEE YOU IN ACTION. IF YOU DO HAVE TIME CAN YOU EMAIL ME THE MACROS FOR CASA AND FOR CASATA. I SUCK AT THEM LOL. THANKS AGAIN
@DRAGONBITE Hay ;) THanks for dropping by!
I’ll finish my blue guide just for you :)) It’d be a little bit though haha, since I’m a little busy with work! stay tuned :)
YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE A GUY FEEL SPECIAL, LOL. ALSO THANKS FOR ANY HELP YOU CAN GIVE ME. LOVE PLAYING MY BLU AND I WILL TAKE ANY HELP I CAN GET. O.<
Ok so just a question what do you take first str or accuracy? I mean If i have option of like +3 str or +5 acc which would be better option? Im currently 54 blu and just got my thf leveled to 32 other day and have been using blu/thf but I must be doing something wrong. I SACA Sickle Slash but only get like 200-300 dmg wen other DD’s in my party were getting like 400-500 off ws’s and thf was gettin around 700 with SATA. So just lookin to figure out where I’m going wrong,love your guide by the way! Blu power!!
Hello Flax :D thanks for your love XD
If you are SATA-ing your Sickle Slash, pure STR. When you SATA (doesn’t matter even if you have just SA), you are “guarantee” to land whatever your next attack is. So if that’s guarantee, you do not need any accuracy.
For the purpose of your question, blu/thf, take the 3 STR (I’m assuming you are wearing Sun Rings / Sniper).
TP/Melee with Acc. You’d need your Acc anyway for any spell you might cast while you melee, since Blu spells depends on Acc. (You’d probably exping on IT anyway, so you want your Acc to hit a mob higher level than you!)
If you are trying to squeeze most damage out of your sickle slash “without SA”, then that’s when you look at your accuracy.
At around Lv54, you won’t have that much access to Acc, so I’d take the Acc. If you have access to parser and sees your “melee” acc is 94/95%, then chances are you will land your WS 94/95%, in that case you do not need more Acc.
Acc experience a diminishing return after 95%, so don’t bother with more Acc if you are meleeing with that Acc already with whatever you are equipping.
Hope this helps :) just leave a comment if you have any other question!
Cheers :)