[dev1110] Job Adjustments: Blue Mage

BLU can Requiescat Puddings and other NMs resistant to physical damage (*), sleep things resistant to dark sleep (*), quickly erase multiple people, dispel soulflayers (*), provide emergency heals, stunlock annoying NMs (*)...

MNK hits things. That's about all it's got going for it, and it's not even the best choice for that.

(*) also BLU hits things.

Hasn't it been determined that two-handers benefit the most from embrava/haste? Why would anyone take 4 monks anyways? I've always thought it was best to have different types of damage, so 4 of any job doesn't sound like a good setup. If I did take 4 of one job it would never be 4 monks.

largest gain =/= best DD

Which is not to say that a 2hand job is or is not ideal, just that the presence of Embrava is not necessarily causative.

Wow. Take your PUP fetish elsewhere.

Lets not turn this into yet another Nyzul thread, Blus and Sams have always flourished in the event, and Neo-Nyzul didn't change that.

On topic, I've never been the blu to use Diffusion, right now I use blu solely for dynamis, and I duo-trio with a pair of dancers, so this update does nothing for me and I don't see it having an impact on most Blus out there.

Haven't been one for Diffusion either. People tout its utility, but it doesn't really have any. Anything that a BLU with Siffusion can impart upon the party that's actually useful can be done by other jobs, sometimes even more effectively.

Buffs that are suitable to cast with Diffusion:

-Animating Wail (Can be done by just about any mage or support job and can already be AoE'd by SMN. It does make it much more MP efficient for the BLU though.)

-Battery Charge (I would rarely ever consider this tbh. It's more MP efficient for the BLU, but Animating Wail is moreso.)

-Triumphant Roar (For circumstances where you don't have attack+ temp items. Its duration doesn't make it very useful for anything except zerg type situations and other boss encounters that you do not expect will last long.)

-Magic Barrier (Questionable since every other form of Stoneskin overwrites it and it's only good for magic damage.)

-Exuviation (Not so much anymore, but it alone used to be worth merits in Diffusion.)

-Orcish Counterstance (Idk, this would mostly be for fun. I don't see it being terribly useful in any real situations especially due to the duration.)

-Occultation (Meh. Would be better if Blink wasn't wiped by AoEs, but it could be ok for some stuff.)

-Amplification (A decent MDB and MAB boost for a decent enough duration.)

-Saline Coat (For some sort of oh ***moment where you know there's a big magical AoE coming up. Honestly, these situations are incredibly few and far between and the duration is pretty trash.)

Buffs that are not suitable for Diffusion:

-Cocoon/Harden Shell (Why)

-Pyric Bulwark (One free physical hit isn't that impressive. In my experience it doesn't work on dangerous AoEs either.)

-Memento Mori (Duration is far too short to be worthwhile.)

-Reactor Cool (Why)

-Warm Up (Why)

-Plasma Charge (Why)

-Barrier Tusk (Duration is too short.)

-Regeneration (Worthless when a mage can provide a stronger regen where you'd want one.)



Don't think I missed any. tl;dr: Diffusion isn't really useful, and heightened durations won't really change that. If only they'd lowered the recast to 5 minutes, it would be considerably more attractive.

It's probably weaker than DRK or WAR on boss floor, but certainly one of the best DD on kill all/family floors.

You only do 1 or maybe 2 boss floor a run, if bad luck probably 0 boss floors. But you're going to do way more kill all floors or kill family floors during climb, thus it's larger gain for your pt, and you gain ability to stun lock some NMs.

Stun lock is probably the real reason to bring it IMO, or maybe some additional dmg if WS is locked. Blank gaze is nice on soulflayers, but most of the time casting it on EP/DC soulflayers is just a waste of time. Req is decent dmg on flan NM, but DRK with twilight scythe can get the job done as well.

I'm not allowed to have a PUP fetish :c

I often AoE animating wail just because I often lowman stuff and don't always have a mage in pt to haste. For example...duoing salvage with a THF, or duoing/trioing Abyssea with NIN or WAR. WHM is completely not needed, and AoE haste allow me to use other SJ for more dmg output.

I think Diffusion > Wail is the most common usage, but i still /shrug off Diffusion. I lowman abyssea less and less, but when I was doing it, the other jobs simply did without haste. I certainly didn't think about changing my subjob to support the party, every job in abyssea can pretty much sustain itself.

I used to do Diffusion > Saline coat for protection against Citadel Buster.

Absolutely useless. +5% per merit, +50% with 5/5 and +2 feet.

I still use Diffusion for Harden Shell and a few other things :<

im just wierd and should take that merit out and add it to Enchainment...but i dun wanna!

It's even worse actually. The first merit doesn't give 5%, so it's a maximum bonus of +45% buff duration. 1/5 Diffusion could be argued for, but it is not very attractive. The best uses you get out of it will be saving about 25MP every 2 casts of Animating Wail or 22 extra MP from Battery Charge after accounting for MP cost.

Diffusion is nice enough for very rare situational uses but it's not practical unless you can full time the buffs and blu buffs other than haste and refresh are notoriously low duration. I still keep a single merit on it and have occasionally gotten use out of it.

Honestly, i would've liked a Convergence buff also...but we cant have our non-existent cake and eat it too?

I do as well, but I wouldn't recommend 5/5 for anyone.

Convergence is already as good as it's going to get.

My final verdict: 1/5 Diffusion is ok since it's still reducing the recast to 10 minutes, but 5/5 is completely pointless and a waste of merits.

1/5 Diffusion
4/5 Enchainment
5/5 Assimilation

So the ordeal here is it increases the duration of these buffs up to 45%? would that not be good just for self buff alone? not just for others, just a thought.

You could read a couple of posts up the page as to why it is not a significant boost. What I listed is all you get out of 5/5 Diffusion+Mirage Charuqs as compared to 1/5 with no Charuqs. Effectively you gain an inventory slot, a dynamis run or two, and 4 useful merit slots in exchange for a pittance of MP and casting time.

Yeah I was too lazy just came in the room like a guy without pants on.

Not to mention an abundance of things that can dispel.

Back to Nyzul group, the schs generally have free time to cast haste with perpetuance anyway. All of the other good spells are pretty lame in duration. It may have been better if Diffusion was on a 5 minute cool down which would allow us to use something like Orcish Counterstance/Triumphant Roar.

Exclusively looking at Nyzul, you'll get off 1 more diffusion than before if you use it as soon as it's up.

generally...SCH is in Nyzul for Embrava...isnt it? but Diffusion is mainly for buffs that stack with other good buffs that a SCH.WHM,RDM,BRD cant provide in the potency BLU has...but your right...Diffusion isnt really used nor is it really worth it except for a few situations. But is till have it 1/5'd when those situations arise :<

Both of the buffs you'd want to cast with Diffusion can and should be done by a SCH in Nyzul.

The potential blu spells that are unique are
Harden Shell/Cocoon: Short duration

Triumphant Roar: Extremely short duration

Magic Barrier: Better off with diamondhide or whm and/or sch aoe stoneskin than to set this and diffusion it.

Orcish Counterstance: Pretty awesome, if it weren't for the short duration.

Saline Coat: Maybe for anything that nukes hardcore. Not including nyzul, this won't help because of either Fools(VW), or infinite mp of healers (abyssea). I can't comment on legion yet. Oh yeah also kind of short duration.

Pyric Bulwark: 1hit? Already tied to UL to make things worse.
Occultation: Prothescar already mention that everything and their mother practically does aoes.

There are plenty more buffs that are unique to blu that stack with other buffs but pretty much all of them fall short for the poor base duration of them. Even with +2 relic and 5/5, a lot of them still would be useless because its tied to a 10 minute cool down.

although i've always had diffusion 5/5 on my blu for years & found it very useful, when unbridled learning was released it kinda changed things & made diffusion almost a must-have for blu. harden shell IS usable with diffusion, which doubles the entire party's defense & defense buffs for 90sec. this is extremely useful for obvious reasons.

consider that smn's perfect defense also lasts 90sec while consuming a 2hr, but blu's harden shell is accessible every 5min. yes, PD is dt- & harden shell is def+, as i'm sure we're all aware. i'm also aware that dt-95% > def+100%. i just think this is a utility for blu & diffusion that some folks may not have stumbled upon yet.

lol, I think most have known this for at least ~105 days

Yet still, nobody cares about diffusion. I saw this on the main page and thought a new update was happening >_<. Stupid necros for stupid information.

I'm happy with 1/5 merits in Diffusion. I also feel any more than that is a complete waste.