BLU DD analyze

Recently, someone on my server posted a "BLU should get invite to incursion cuz I can support and outparse MNK and SAM" then started lots of drama. In fact someone sent a /tell to me in game saying BLU is useless in incursion cuz of stun and so on, only bad mages need a BLU.

Also there are several thread on OF complaining how MNK is much stronger than BLU and such.

So I decided to post some opinion regarding this matter. IMO whenever this DD issue is brought up, it always became a 1 sided POV with everyone and their mother exaggerating to defend for their favorite setup.

IMO, BLU is indeed a DD job that you sacrifice some output for extra support, which is fact. However, BLU's output is also fairly close to a MNK, while MNK provides extra HP and formless, BLU provides hardenshell(which can be AoEed), cocoon and aoe erase.

I haven't play the job for a while, however, after sitting down and play with spreadsheet, I was fairly shocked at how much dmg increase BLU got recently, mainly because recent set point increase which allows extra DD job trait.

At 70 set points, besides basic TA/DW3/acc bonus/cocoon/def down/haste2/WoP/store TP1, BLU can also set:

1) Extra 2 tiers of acc bonus, anytime you need acc buff, this job trait allows more multi attack in gear.
or
2) Crit attack bonus
or
3) Skillchain bonus
or
4) Mix them....such as 1 tier of acc bonus+ crit attack bonus, remove wind/cocoon/haste2 for extra DD job trait.

Note that I think I'm missing some other DD trait, since I'm not familiar with new traits/spell after 2014.

Since my spreadsheet does not have crit attack bonus job trait, I'll set acc bonus3 job trait for now.

I think one of the major advantage of BLU is the high acc without the need to rely on  JA such as focus. The downside is that BLU doesn't have good offensive JA like Impetus.

Spreadsheet target: tojil, no acc buff from food, no COR and GEO, just BRD march and min. Both MNK and BLU uses R15 path B delve2 weapon, using gear sets on the last page of AH forum. I also switch sets for MNK when focus down to make sure acc is exactly capped.

MNK's avg DPS while factoring impetus/focus/berserk up and down: 711
BLU's avg DPS, while factoring berserk up and down: 647

I may be gearing wrong on both jobs, but it shouldn't make more than a few DPS difference. Around 90% of MNK it seems. If you don't have a mage that can haste 2 or need to turtle, BLU can get a lot closer to a MNK.

While it's not SAM(which is an untouchable DD anyways), IMO BLU can compete with other DD under certain circumstances. The question is, will you sacrifice 10% dmg to invite a DD that can do 10% def down, AoE def+, aoe erase and self haste?

Note that the argument of "just stun the move in incursion" is invalid IMO, anytime the move goes off it's dmg decrease for everyone. I've been clearing delve before ilv added to the weapon when stuns were really important and the groups that can clear them always had competitive stunner, I've never seen a group with 100% stun rate unless they're using robot. Sometimes ppl just miss stuns, it's called human error.

IMO, if you factor the human error in event, BLU isn't that bad as a DD. It's certainly not half of MNK like how ppl on OF claimed.

BTW, I used to defend for the usefulness of other job's job point category, now I'm starting to see how broken BLU's job point category is - -. You can gain 1~2 extra job trait with 10/10 job point, when job point category increase to 30 it'd be utter OP, while other DD job may not gain extra job trait since max lv stick at 99.

Oh and btw, some fact:

Almace 119 isn't bad at all, don't listen to what forum person says, especially someone on the forum who often downplay the performance of legendary because he doesn't have one. According to spreadsheet, when ODD is up it certainly beats delve2 R15, and ODD is fairly easy to activate, unlike AM3 from mythic.

If you look at the fact that almace has extra acc, and the ability to activate odd at 1000 TP, it can probably compete with mythic under certain situation as well.

BLU!

Ever since last update WoE coins price dropped a lot, so I decided to finally unlock CDC and play with BLU again.

I haven't play BLU and gear it properly for nearly 1 year D: My gears are sooo 2013! I missed sooo many spells D:

One of the main reason is because unlocking empy WS was too expensive for me, and BLU is nearly unplayable without CDC after WS update. Further more, my COR almost always bring more to the pt in terms of pt output, so I'm mostly on COR 24/7.

Anyways, now that I can finally afford CDC thanks to dice price drop, time to play BLUUUU! 

So, what's my opinion about BLU atm?

In WoE BLU seems like a popular job, on my server at least. Mainly because ability to deal ranged dmg via dart. Against fodder= haste2+ melee, against NM with terrible AoE= dart.

In Incursion, it can parse surprisingly high v.s another top DD like SAM. Mainly because aoe erase attack down and slow= more dmg. Self buff haste2 after haste/march dispel= more dmg as well. Harden shell/cocoon means less turtle, and you do need a lot of turtle to stay alive in incursion.

Overall, I think this job isn't nearly as bad as everyone said IMO. Time to start drama if I don't get invite on BLU! :D

Head Wind VD

I've been doing Head Wind for DW belt for a while now, after 4 runs I finally got it. Below are some of the experience.

Each cat drops stuff after being killed, therefore this BC can drop loot 3 times and there's a good chance to obtain stuff. It is also possible to obtain gears without getting clear.

First run: Normal
Since nobody has access to D+, I had to start with normal. Made a gimp /shout pt for normal, won after 1 wipe/recover. But I kinda got some experience for it and able move on to harder mode.

Note that the drop on normal is extremely bad, I don't recommend doing normal at all.

2nd Run: Difficult
Basically super buffed zerg with better DD, cleared in 4 min. Atm we still hold the record for this BC with that 4 min kill! :D

3rd Run: Very Difficult
The kill speed in VD is much, much slower than D. So the DD really need to turtle a bit to stay alive. COR dmg suck here because last stand is nearly unusable, even with sushi, full racc WS set, arma 119 it barely land without prelude. If I get madrigal no slot for prelude :( Magical WS doesn't work very well, so all I have left was melee WS D:

I guess melee WS isn't useless for COR, after all.

This VD run was fail because WHM got hit by breakga and nobody had RR :< Belt dropped after BST dead, but I didn't win it D:

4th Run: Very difficult
Won. DW belt gotgotgotgotgot! :D

I'm not sure how was the real drop rate with only 1 D and 1 VD clear experience. It is possible that belt has higher drop rate in VD since it dropped in both VD fight, but not D.

However, VD is also much** harder than D. Mobs in D just melt, in VD it takes a while. DD really need to turtle if shadows not up.

After another weekend yorcia merc, IMO......

The best setup for yorcia delve2 is probably 3 koga fudo SAM + BRD WHM GEO.....

Legendary rank for all coalitions.......

Still a long way to go.............D:

After all that yorcia spam on weekend....

I start to get the conclusion that SAM isn't the only job that got major buff last update.

Before update when I went to yorcia delve with LS, I did around 46% of another rag DRK on NM T1~5, this doesn't include wopket, which resists piercing and the gap usually get bigger. Against another LS SAM who died half the time, I was around 60% of his dmg too.

After update, against same SAM I was only 2% behind with no death. In fact, after entire weekend of yorcia spam with various slashing DD, I was usually around 2%~5% behind. This is when pt with slashing DD who gets extra dmg on wopket, while being an inferior DD with piercing dmg. Some ppl used to do double amount of dmg I can before update, now only ended up only a few % ahead.

I only get to pt with 1 Koga SAM, although I don't think the result count cuz he wasn't playing properly, the parse still shows it's 4% behind after all 6 NM.

Unless ppl suddenly forget how to play DD after update, the only logical conclusion is last update buffed COR's output a lot too. Although in COR's case its less severe than SAM, since you can only have 1 COR in pt and it won't replace every DD, but in SAM's case it'd just kill every other DD job.

There are several reason why the gap became much lower:

1) Leaden salute.

Before update, COR dmg was fairly shit on T4 5 and wopket, with new leaden salute+ voidstorm and darksday if lucky, it's actually decent with 8k avg that isn't affected by evasion or flash from wopket. It went from completely useless on wopket to DD-able now.

That being said, since Fudo is distortion and leaden is gravitation, it makes darkness instead of light D:

I want light q.q

2) OAT dagger.

The new OAT dagger and 1h TP gain update increased WS frequency quite a bit. The ideal roll to get the best out of it is SAM roll instead of DA roll though, since DA roll doesn't increase ranged WS dmg and SAM roll increase TP gain for melee, WS AND QD. With a good number SAM roll, dagger can gain 100+ TP a hit, sometimes it takes 3 dagger attack round to hit 1000 TP with SAM roll.

Note that according to spreadsheet number, in low acc situations with 1 roll being hunter, and using leaden as main WS, SAM+ hunter seems to beat chaos + hunter or MAB + hunter.

It can be quite challenging to do THAT many different rolls in a run while maintaining DPS, especially if mages ask for MAB buff too. I often ended up sticking with wrong roll in yorcia.

Time to grind PR duration + job point D:

3) Buff potency increase with new +5 ring. So yeah, as a buff job, can't ignore the buff potency increase, which seems pretty huge according to some of the testing.

Anyways, time to sell more yorcia win for $$, can't afford Ergon weapon D:

After update....

Did a yorcia 6 NM run after update, it seems this zone is quite friendly with casual now. Even with skirmish GKT SAM(inferior weapon to shark GKT/Koga), mandy died in less than 2 min and morta died in around 2~2.5 min. The entire zone was done in around 21 min with avg DD, which was about the same as Tojil 6 NM run pre-update, but with more plasm. If the pt had Koga SAM it'd probably be a sub 15 min clear!

After I change TP build to OAT dagger+ SAM roll I can no longer keep up with current TP speed, I often ended up WS at 1500 TP instead of 1000. Time to do more macro adjustment. :<