Noob BLU questionsFollow

So, I started in on BLU, and I was hoping someone could help me with a question please.

Where monster correlation charts are concerned, I'm looking at this one:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Blue_Magic_Monster_Correlation_Chart

When I look at the second ecosystem, for example, I see that Helldive is from the Bird Family. I have two questions, please.

1) Does this mean, as the chart implies, that Helldive is strong agains Aquans?

2) Does this chart mean that Helldive is weak agains either Birds or Amorpha or both families or neither family?

Thanks in advance.

Edited, Jul 7th 2011 3:02pm by Thydonon

I've not touched BLU in several years, I got it to 37 long ago as a Rdm SJ and then just left it there. I geared it up again today and began to level it, but there are a few things I'm curious about though, and I have a nooby question my self. I figured I'd post here rather than start a new thread.

Looking at the ingame spell descriptions, It seems like most spells are modified by TP in some way or another. So should I ever sit on TP and sacrifice my Weaponskills? I dont recall ever seeing any BLU's save their TP, so I'm assuming that the TP mods are too small to be worth the sacrifice? Is there any exception to the rule? Or am I misundestanding how it works?

That is the single biggest newb mistake with BLU. I really wish this was limited to people under 37... but I've been seeing it come back with Abyssea noobs.

Short answer, No, do not sit on 300% TP

Long answer:
The "Damage/Acc/Addition effect varries with TP" ONLY applies under the effects of Chain and Burst Affinity.
This is why our 2hr SUCKED ASS until this recent version update (where it gained the properties of CA & BA along with 300% TP effect).

This also applies to modifiers (yes, IIRC, mods to spells still apply without CA/BA but the effect is dramatically increased, and without the CA, particularly, buffer, you can suffer). Loading on STR for certian spells will help. BUT, do not do it at the sacrifice of Haste/Acc Gear. It doesn't matter if you have +300 STR if you can't land the first 2 hits of QC.

BLU is a bit of a balancing act there.

For the OP - Monster correlation is pretty cool, but once you start getting into the 70's - 90's it really stops mattering. Your big spells (Goblin Rush, Quad. Cont. Bethenic Typhoon, Disseverment, etc) - all come from mobs that are really outside of the standard "food chain". Second of all, even if it's slightly affected by correlation, you're not going to stop using it, nor are you going to remove it from your spell set.

We really need a new sticky about BLU myths again....

Anyway, quick rundown:

Myth: 300% helps my spells all the time.
Fact: This only helps under Chain and Burst Affinity. You're actually hurting your damage output by not WSing and SSCing every chance you get.

Fact: Monster Correlation does help in certian situations
BUT: Do not give up a good spell/spell set trait just because of the mobs you're fighting

Myth: I should be wearing MP+ and refresh gear.
Fact: While MP+ and Refresh gear can help at the start of a fight/event, they dramatically lower your damage potential in all situations. Refresh gear is great for idling in (IE, between pulls or between pops). +MP doesn't help at all. Never give up MAB/Macc for refresh if you're nuking (IE Serpentes boots/gloves for AF3+1/2 hands and feet) or Acc/Haste (Serpentes for Homam/Dusk/Aurore/Enkidu's boots) or Smexy (Walmart Turban for AF3+1/2 head). You should, instead focus on Auto Refresh trait, Battery Charge, Refresh Atma's (MM is a MUST in most situations) and temp items for your MP issues. The exception is Mirage Jubbah and Mavi Minitan +2. Both these items feature the refresh trait (1 & 2 MP/tic respectively) - but also feature +acc and/or Haste.

Myth: Magic Attack Bonus affects my physical spells
Fact: WRONG!!! I don't know where this one started. Perhaps because we're mages and we have spells. The reality is: Physical spells are affected by: STR/Attack, DEX/Acc, Blue Magic Skill Level, and Weapon Skill Level of the weapon in your main hand. Conversely, Magical Blue Spells are affected by INT/MAB/Macc, MND for cures and Blue Magic Spell levels.

Fact: Macc helps me land additional effects better
BUT: This should be added in, in macros, only when spell casting. You know what affects your additional effects even more? Blue Magic skill. Cap your skill. Merit your skill. Swap in Magus Jubbah, Mirage Mantle, Mavi Scarf, Mirage Head, BLU+ ring and gloves if you've been lucky enough to get them. If you have problems landing an addition effect then... the mob's naturally resistant/immune and you can't do jack about it.
Macc/MAB swords are a WASTE. You have so much more potential with STR/DEX/OAX swords than you do with those.

Myth: Elemental Magic Skill + affects our Magic Spells
Fact: The only SKILL that has any effect on our spells is Blue Magic. Further more, BLU Skill is only important for landing Debuffs. Stacking it on does not help our damage. In that case, it's all about MAB. So, when nuking MAB > BLU Skill/Macc > Int/mods

Myth: Anything you've ever heard about learning a blu spell in regards to "tricks"
Fact: Here's how you learn a BLU spell: You must be engaged with the mob (attacking), you must be facing it, you must be within XP range. What helps you learn: Capped Blue Magic Skill, + BLU Skill gear and your AF1 Hands. Period. I have seen and had experience with +CHR gear helping. But due to the nature of learning BLU spells, this could be pure placebo and cannot be held as fact.


Hope this helps...

~Ashoka
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Blue Mage

I always took it as Attack to help in the same way that main weapon does. If it doesn't, even more of a bonus.
As for dex, I lumped it in with Acc - IE 2DEX = 1 ACC, not in the case of spell modifiers.




Our cures are kind of in a group all on their own isn't it. Does cure potentcy affect it? Honnestly, I've never really done front line healing, so I don't know too much - more information there, the more it can help people




I've, personally, never learned a spell unless I was engaged and facing, but seen plenty of people not learn it by facing away. Again, as you said, this could be pure placebo again. But, with something so simple as pressing the attack command and facing the mob, kinda easy to hedge your bets.
Learning Blue Magic can be such a pain, with no clear answer from SE....

Thanks for the info though ^^, it will deffinatly be added in :D

Here's the thing, and it comes down to "what kind of BLU do you want to be?"

My question for you is, why are you mage-ing it up while wearing a sword? Yes, Sang Blade benefits from MAB, but this should not be your go-to WS unless you're in trouble or trying to get amber light. Outside of Abyssea, it's even worse. Base Damage is nice on all of the Magian +2's, but, for Physical spells and TPing +str/att and +dex/Acc are going to do so much more for you.

On the flip side, Elemental Staves (esp HQ's - and don't say they're unobtainable, they're like 80-100k, that's 8-10 head pieces from La Theine, you can get that in an hour) and grips are going to do much more for you TP/CW/EG's.

I would actually question why you're TPing with CW/EG in your spell set to begin with. (TP actually works with Attack bonus, though I prefer Uppercut (stats) and Temporal Shift (AoE Stun) - but that's a personal thing).

The best part about BLU is you can customize it to your advantage. But as a general rule, some things fit, some things don't. You wouldn't TP full time in Moldy Earring, because it helps some spells. MAB swords, are, generally inferior for TPing, and Elemental Staves will beat them every day of the week for nuking.


It's also not a myth, there's the math to back it up.

The only situation, I can even remotely see using them is if you're CW/AoE farming. Then drop it in to make sure the stun off of Whirl of Rage ... nope... that doesn't even work, as that's an Macc issue and +BLU skill would help you more.

I could be wrong, please give me examples where an MAB sword would be better for TPing or Nuking in, and I'll change my above statements.
I'm not trying to sound stuck up, as with Sebastion above, there's things I don't know - this is how we all learn. ^^

Edited, Jul 17th 2011 1:43am by AshokaPrime

Fact: 5/5 assimilation or gtfo.

Don't worry, I think just about every BLU has made that mistake.

You're 100% right, the game text is a bit misleading. It's only through a lot of trial did the early BLU's learn about this.

And, believe it or not, I've been in PT's with noob BLU's at 90 who STILL think this is true.

That's why we're here, to help out ^^

Ummmm.....
I honnestly don't know what to say....
Other than, if it works for you... then that's cool. But here, what you're doing is VERY situational and won't work for everyone as a general rule.

I'm also betting that if we sat down and worked out what you're doing we could find better ways for you to solo - but I'm not here to change your play style.

What I am talking about is for most players, mostly within parties - and as a general rule, what I said sticks.

Whirl of Rage can only stun if it hits, good luck hitting with no acc from melee skill.

MAB swords wouldn't/shouldn't have any affect on brewing since Brews set it to cap. This is why only retards choose MAB atmas over affinity damage.

Macc Swords are good for landing headbutt or any other physical spells with added effects on higher level, more resistant mobs. If you ever plan to be a stun lock BLU on anything that can tear its way through wet toilet paper, you should have MACC swords to decrease your chances of a resist.

The MAB swords would affect stun accuracy, but only because INT affects MACC for the stun added effect, not the MAB itself.

Two MACC Shamshir +2 gives the same MACC as an HQ elemental staff.

Two MAB Shamshir +2 would never beat an elemental staff inside Abyssea unless didn't set MAB trait and you had no atma, at which point you're either a giant gimp, or a total @#%^ing retard. Outside of Abyssea, they can compete with a staff for damage, but cost you a lot of MACC, and only surpass it when you have no MAB trait, the WSC of the spell has a high INT value, and the spell is modified by dINT.

There's more things that probably need to be cleared up, but I'm cooking atm. It's really surprising how much the BLU community has forgotten, or the new generation hasn't learned.

Well, my BLM gets a massive boost to nukes from Brews. There is a point where the damage from dINT caps, and this point is well before 999INT. There would have to be MAB to see that kind of damage increase.


Edit: The effect of brew doesn't add +900, it sets it to 10.00 multiplier. The base is 1.00, so +900mab would put you at 10.00. I'll go burn a brew later and strip my BLMs coat. after the first nuke.

Edited, Jul 18th 2011 8:57am by Return1

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. In spells with INT as a WSC mod or using dINT as a mod, the INT would make the swords better. Unfortunately, if you have any MAB gear, set the trait, and have a decent INT build, the Swords will always get beaten out by a staff. The only situation where the swords are better than the staff, for damage, is when your gear is just plain bad and/or you didn't set MAB. The MAB swords would never be as good as the proper staff for the spell in terms of accuracy (Barring already capped without obviously).

Also, I used a brew and used Sanguine Blade on a couple of birds. I used one and then removed my Morrigan's Robe for the next. I dealt the same damage with both, which while a small test, seems pretty indicative that MAB is useless when brewing.

Aloso, BLU is a great tank for nonmelee fights, which are currently rare, but due to make a comeback.

All right, I don't feel like making a new thread for this, and its a noob BLU question sort of, so I'll put it here. I'm having trouble learning infrasonics. Yes, I know, its not the most useful spell, but I want to learn all my spells. For the life of me I cannot get lizards to do it. I mass pull them, get them to 25% health, diaga spam and they do TP move after TP move but not once have I gotten one to do infrasonics. I've easily done 30 lizards like this, and its boring as crap to watch them die to dia. Do I need to do something specific to get them to do it?

Pretty much random from what I have seen I actually like /bst for farming off low level mobs. Its pretty good and mobs feed tp without killing to fast if you pick the right mobs to toss at em. Learning blu spells is one of the random craziest about a job you can learn seeing the move once or spend a few days camping it. For me self destruct was a mother.

Also Blu Skill if it isn't capped cap it fo sure.

See Random is Random lol we all have experienced it and the mobs with a lot of various TP moves are the worst for spell hunting fo sure.

First rule of learning spells: If you're taking "too long" to learn a spell, come post on a web forum and learn it on the next mob!

Second rule of learning spells: Placebo effects always carry the most weight in learning spells.

All it really means is that the BLU healing spells count as Cure spells, minus the funky targeting factors. It doesn't take away from the fact that you can spam Blue Magic as /BLU all day, but it will never increase Elemental Magic or Healing Magic--which means they don't count as either of those, which means Elemental Magic and the other Healing magic effects don't do anything.

To learn Blue Magic you need to be within range of the mob when it dies at the hand of someone in your group and be able to get credit for the kill, you can't learn the spell if you didn't "see" it go off. You also need to have a Blue Magic skill that is within 29 skill points of the blue magic skill cap for the level at which you learn the spell.

Example: For the sake of simplicity I will use fake numbers. You want to learn a spell from a mob, that spell is a level 65 spell. The Blue magic skill cap at level 65 is 200, you therefore need to have a blue magic skill of 200-29 = 171, to even have a chance at learning the spell. Higher skill levels will increase the chance, but it will never be 100%.

Also, I saw someone mentioning INT/Magic+ swords vs STR/Attack+ swords and someone mentioned TP'ing in one then switching. Just wanted to make sure that anyone who didn't already know, switching weapons (even ranged weapons, but not ammo) reduces your TP to zero.

Slight update, in regards to learning blue magic.
My LS and I were in Tahrongi, farming up some Glavoid pops. My friend (BLU) and I were farming amber lights from turtles, as the rest of the LS was camping and killing Adze. Half way through a mob, he goes "huh, learned C Discharge". We were in range to get XP, but he certianly wasn't facing it, and wasn't engaged, ever.

So, I guess the only limits to learning a spell are:

XP range
Blue Skill Cap
Must be in the PT/Alliance.

Good to know.