Thursday, May 15, 2008

Blue Mage - Equipment update

I've been concentrating a lot on Dancer lately, from exping on it, to saving gil and buying gear specially for Dancer. Blue Mage has suffered a little from neglect as I've been a little lazy in swapping equipment whenever I change jobs. I've also been using some new equipment that, while good on DNC, isn't exactly playing to BLU's strengths.

So, now I'm going back to examine my available Blue Mage equipment and I'm grabbing anything that's reasonable off of the Auction House to try to get the best possible performance instead of this weird melee/spellcasting mix I've been using recently. I actually have most of the gear that I need, but I haven't set up the macros to take full advantage of the gear yet. Equipment sets are split into:

Physical Magic Set
Emphesis on Str & Dex, with Vit close behind for Cannonball. This is the set of gear I'm casting in 90% of the time. Looks like I'll be macroing in:
- Voyager Sallet (Str+3, Dex+4)
- Light Gauntlets (Str+3, Vit+3)
- Marine F Boots (Str+3, Dex+3, Vit+2)
- Spike Necklace (Str+3, Dex+3) or Chiv Chain (Str+3, Accuracy +5)
Also considering picking up:
- Warwolf Belt (Str+5, Dex+5, Vit+5) - Almost definitely getting this since it's pretty cheap
- Smilodon Mantle +1 (Str+5) - Around 30k on the AH... it's 3 higher strength over Amenet +1
- Ruby Ring (Str+4) - Another 30k on AH... I'm not sure this is necessary, and I'd be giving up even more accuracy for this... probably not worth it
I'll be picking up the Warwolf Belt and giving this setup a try in Assault tonight. Hopefully I'm not giving up too much accuracy with such a heavy strength build.

TP set
I only switch to this equipment when either MP is low, or we're dealing with such weak mobs that using physical magic won't be worth it... main differences from the physical magic spells above is an emphesis on haste & accuracy. Equipment is:
- Walahla Turban
- Cobra Mittens
- Dusk Ledelsens
- Swift Belt
- Peacock Charm

MP Set
Not much to be said about the equipment here... This is just gear to give me extra MP I can spam out in the first fight. Right now, I get about 200 extra MP, pushing me up to around 830MP before I start a fight. This gear gets macroed out as soon as fighting starts and I've spammed a few spells, and doesn't get macroed back in unless I have to /heal for MP

Mind / Charisma Set
I haven't even started to work on this set yet... the idea behind it is to pile up as much mnd as possible in order to maximize Magic Fruit for main healing, or to maximize the damage of Mind Blast & Magic Hammer, the later of which also means that I'll get that much more MP back. Charisma would be for an "Eyes On Me" magical attack build. Possible equipment would be:
- Errant Houppelande (Mnd+10, Chr+10) - 50-70k on AH
- Yigit Turban (Mnd+4, Magic Attack Bonus +2)
- Yigit Gages (Mnd+5, MAB+2)
- Yigit Crackows (Mnd+3, MAB+3)
- Sapphire Ring x2 (Mnd+4) - 40k each on AH
- Angel's Ring x2 (Chr+4) - 80k each on AH
Now I'm not entirely sure if having a Mnd or Chr set is really worth it. There are situations where I do have to main heal, and I guess it would be interesting to see if Magic Hammer can be used to keep MP up... for magical nukes though, it might be better to just stick to breath spells

Breath Set
Frost Breath, Fire Breath, Poison Breath... the simple modifier to these magical attacks is HP. The only problem with equipment swapping for these breath attacks is that after swapping equipment in, I'd have to cure myself to full HP for the equipment swap to have full effect. Again, like the mnd set, I'm not sure if it's worth getting gear and carrying it around for the possibility of using Breath attacks, especially given how much MP these attacks require and how long they take to cast. It might end up being better to tell a RDM to nuke while I take over healing the party.
I haven't thought much about gear for this set... Mainly HP+ gear >.<

So... that's it for Blue Mage... at least until I start getting some Homam or Denali gear! The very least I'm going to do is set up my Physical Magic set, then investigate how effective a Mnd set is for healing. If you have any suggestions on possible gear, do tell!

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