The Beast Within -- A Guide To Blue Mage

Taupe is ideal with that augment pool, yes.

Taupe forces the stat+ augment; the other four augments have a 60% chance each to appear.

Augment distributions for all augment pools except special stats appear to be flat. Special stats reportedly get max stats just 3% of the time with a fern stone. Let's be generous and assume 10% for the non-fern max.

Off-path augments occur 10% of the time in stat and special pools. Beyond that I'd assume that each augment is equally likely. That means a 30% chance for DEX and... 15% chance for DA? Six available on-path augments? Doing this off the top of my head, so correct me if I'm getting that number wong.

So for each category, the odds of getting an augment that is no worse than what he already has:

damage: 0.6*(1-3/20)=0.51
accuracy: 0.6*(1-19/20)=0.03
attack: 0.6*(1-13/20)=0.21
DEX: 1*0.3*(1-13/15)=0.04
DA: 0.6*0.15*0.1=0.009

That DA augment in particular is a killer. Less than one in one hundred augments would get DA+3, and there's no guarantee it'll have everything else. Even with some leeway on other augments, your odds go downhill pretty quickly.

The DPS difference between his sword and one with D+20 with everything else the same is only ~1%. Given the odds, I would consider that avenue of improvement a very low priority.

tl;dr *** Oseem and *** Reisenjima

DA doesn't "mess" with AM3, it's just less valuable given your higher base multiattack rate. A high STP augment is pretty comparable to DA for Tizona, so it's really more that you have a slightly broader set of viable augments.

Taupe's definitely best- I don't really know why the guide implies otherwise. EDIT: Errr used to, I guess it was corrected recently.

Remember that melee damage splits are heavily skewed towards weaponskills nowadays. Splits are anywhere from 60:40 to 70:30 in favor of WS depending on gear, buffs, and target. Offhand damage affects half of those hits (actual fraction by DPS is smaller due to aftermath/base damage differences), along with just one hit of each WS. You'll average around 1.2~1.6 extra hits per WS, so with CDC that means the offhand hit is only worth ~15% of the WS as a whole. WSC and fSTR contribute about 2/3 of your total base damage on CDC, further marginalizing that base damage increase.

That's all before factoring in skillchain damage.

Mainhand base D is much more significant, yes.

edit: saying "less than 1%" might've unfairly described the difference. It's pretty close to 1%, probably slightly more if you're outside Escha zones.

What are people's thoughts on a path choice for Iris and possible companion swordS?

Acc path if you need it, reaugment it to path D (blu skill) for niche use once you have Tan+1 and Nibiru or Colada.

Hey, kinda out of the blu but I would like to hear some ideas on enmity reduction when dding. More and more I have been seeing it might be an asset to try and avoid the mobs attention if at all possible. I know blus have tons of damage mitigation techniques but we just aren't invincible.

Changed my merit other category to decrease enmity and thinking about some gearswap sets I could make. I have normal acc superacc and thinking about an enmity high acc set.

Also thinking using my PDT and MDT offensive sets will not only decrease my dps (to avoid mob hate) but of course increase damage resistance.

Edit: Sub jobs too mitigate dmg/debuffs like /nin, /run, /dnc (help remove debuffs off stupid trusts that despite running away are still in aoe range of debuffs)

If only we had an enmity douse spell...

Just looking for some ideas on enmity mitigation and just better ways to deal with mob attention aside from just turn or run away.

My PLD friend and I just make liberal use of Cover. It's actually pretty awesome for Not Dying.

Lmao holy S*** we actually DO! I forgot about that spell XD. Yea its just I was fighting Sarama pld (AG mythic/aegis), geo, whm, (dd changed from blu to AG rng to bst), and me. We had a cor that left and we replaced with trust. I saw your post spicy on discussions about that mob and a fully dedicated whm just wasn't what we had but not blame casting as I kept getting 1 shoted by a Fire II after chainspell but that was 2/5 of our attempts which all failed. But basically what I saw is if I could avoid tanking and being the highest dd then we would have won cause the pld could take with no problem magic damage and all but CDC spamming I was 70% of our dmg output. That's why I want to avoid mob attention.

I started off /run changed from lots of mab defense to single target as melee hits were doing 300-500 a hit then went to /nin but it was still a bust. Aside from this I find from Sombra dragon fights to soloing T1s in escha if I could some how hide under the tank on the hate list it would be really great. Just trying to think around the problem. Just finished reading your "Out of the BLU" and bg enmity for more ideas. I basically never use my offensive pdt/mdt sets so I am def going to explore what I can do with those sets (practicing ect).

There is at least one neck piece I saw that increase enmity decay. Not sure if it would be VE or CE. Beguiling Collar. I doubt we could do as well as say ranger with decoy shot but maybe there's something blus can do to better avoid hate so we can focus on killing?

Just wanna BLU it better is all.

Beguiling Collar boosts CE decay on hit, but it's a fairly small (5%?) increase. You're probably getting that much or more simply from the fact that you're not wearing a DT neck if that puts you below 50%.

Well... you could sub DRG, and use High jump when you've pulled too much hate. XD Although, High Jump only reduces CE by 30% when subbed.

Another alternative might be Sanguine blade spam. Magical ws have weird enmity. You only get credited for the base+wsc dmg. anything from MAB,dSTAT, weather,affinty, etc doesn't count towards enmity generation. So they generate far less enmity than would be expected from the damage dealt.

Of course, you're going to lose so much DPS from either of these options that you'll be generating far less enmity in any case. lol

If you pt outside of escha zones it's simply near impossible to hold hate off a good melee due to how enmity works outside of escha. You can try unm or htbc with August, it's not going to hold hate more than a few ws.

It's easier in escha, but if you are really, really good DD and fighting T1 you would still pull hate off August occasionally.

Won't a /THF with Trick Attack CDC be more effective in transferring hate to the PLD?

I don't think so, it's noticeably harder to hold hate in older content. It's also easier to hold hate as content lv scale up from what I've heard.

Maybe, maybe not. Level correction is still a thing in most pre-Adoulin zones. If a tank has more trouble holding hate on a c135 UNM than a c135 NM in Escha/Reisenjima, that could imply a difference in enmity mechanics since the DDs should have lower damage output on the former.

How can you be so sure? Tons of testimonials implied that new enmity formula only works in newer content. The best way to hold hate off good melees in older content is probably trying to do as much damage as possible, much like NIN tanking.

I honestly have no clue. That was all done while I was gone, and there hasn't been much in the way of enmity testing since then.

So just acquired some Thereoid Greaves this morning.

I went to plug them into the BLU DPS spreadsheet, and was very surprised to see the following.



Any reason there is such a huge difference between these and my Herculean Boots? They have +9 DEX, +3% TA, +24 acc, and +6 attack augments.

I thought Thereoid was going to be superior to everything except Adhemar Gamashes +1.

Perhaps not? Or is there an error on how the spreadsheet is calculating damage?

(I checked the TP gear and they are the same as well as all buffs and whatnot between both sets)

It's either an accuracy issue or calculation issue. Most likely calculation issue with the crit rate/damage and cdc. I don't have or use the spreadsheet but it's not hard to calculate Thereoid are or should be better than those herc boots unless you desperately need the acc.

I tend to bookmark and label updates that have to do with enmity, as it's kinda an area of interest for me.

Here are the last several enmity adjustments from oldest to newest.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/31310-March-27-2013-%28JST%29-Version-Update

April 30 2013. This one was the spell enmity nerf. not really relevant here.

July 9th 2013. JA min CE nerf.

Feb 14th 2014.

Mar 25 2015.
There have been multiple instances of damage enmity reduction for higher level enemies. The high the level, the less enmity generated. Older content, tends to be lower level content.

It's possible I missed a note on content location/type vs enmity(if you saw one do tell), or that they ninja'd in an adjustment. But I doubt it.Older content is lower level content. this squares perfectly with the SE's reported enmity changes.

I dunno if I'll have time to do any enmity testing, but I'll see if I can squeeze in something to compare dmg enmity in normal zones vs escha. I'll need to find two mobs of the same level the same level...

15dex/4cdmg shits on theroid acc or no acc issue. You ppl underestimate how strong dex is.

Anyone have a link to the spreadsheet?

There must be some difference between two setups that you are missing. There is no way the WS averages would be that far from one another. I could see herc's extra dex possibly evening out the crit rate from thereoid but yours doesn't eve have crit augment.