Stat Priorities
Stat and Melding Priorities for Blue Mage
This page will cover the general logic behind stat and melding priorites for Blue Mage. For full gear sets refer to the Gear Sets page.
Stat Priorities
Blue Mage is in a unique spot where it benefits from all DPS stats pretty equally. What this means in practice is that your gear actually means very little and it mostly just comes down to practice. That being said, the priority can be simplified to the following:
- Intelligence
- Spell Speed until Moon Flute Opener can be performed consistently. If you intend to do the DOT openers, you need to get your GCD down to 2.20 with food.
- Critical Hit
- Determination
- Direct Hit
Gear that has both SpS and Crit is extremely uncommon, but the level 80 Phantasmal gear actually has a few pieces like this which allows us to focus on both stats. This is actually what the best general-purpose build is, as it allows you to comfortably perform the Moon Flute Opener with solid damage and still play as a tank and healer when needed. The gearing page will outline the options in a bit more detail.
Blue Mage has a different damage formula from the rest of the combat jobs. All of our weapons have exactly 1 weapon damage and we scale a bit more from Intelligence as a result. Generally speaking, we will always want to go for the highest item level gear that is available since this will have the most Intelligence. The full theorycrafting information by Mahdi can be found here.
The biggest part of doing DPS at Blue Mage comes down to whether or not you can consistently pull off a full Moon Flute Opener. The standard Winged Reprobation opener is doable with 0 additional Spell Speed, but the DOT opener using Breath of Magic or Mortal Flame will require a GCD of about 2.20. This is still skill and ping dependent so you may need to meld additional SpS to make it more comfortable. The first step in gearing should be to figure out what GCD you need in order to do this comfortably and meld to reach that.
Spell Speed vs. Critical Hit
This debate had more relevance at level 70 when the two sets were dramatically different, but most Blue Mages will want to go with high Spell Speed to make completing a Moon Flute Opener more practical. In general the two sets will still perform roughly equally. High Spell Speed generally performs more consistently, while focusing on high Critical Hit has a slightly higher damage ceiling.
If you intend to play Blue Mage as a tank or healer, Spell Speed will be the best choice. ALl of our mitigations are tied to a cast time, so minimizating that cast time is crucial. As healer, all of our healing seplls are also tied to the GCD so we want to minimize that cast time as well for smoother healing.
Why Determination over Direct Hit?
Most jobs just focus on Critical Hit and Direct Hit, but Blue Mage is a little bit different. With DPS Mimicry we gain an additional +20% Direct Hit chance for free. Direct Hit is a flat +25% damage bonus and scales linearly, so as we add more Direct Hit each additional point becomes “weaker” relatively. Determination also scales linearly, but since we don’t get a bunch of extra from DPS Mimicry it means that it is “stronger” relatively. The difference is extremely slight, but it does make Determination slightly stronger.
If we’re playing as a tank or healer we definitely prefer Determination. As a tank we will likely have Mighty Guard on so our DPS is quite low by default, which means the already small difference can be completely ignored. As a healer, we can strengthen our healing potency by adding Determination.