Today, I would like to discuss the particular abilities and traits, innate or otherwise, that your Blue Mage would derive the most benefit from, and the various situations for which they are useful.
Support Jobs
Ninja: This is your bread-'n'-butter support job. Why? Sword damage and weaponskills lag behind the high damage, few-hit of double-handed weapons like Great Katanas and Great Axes, and don't hit or critical as often as daggers do. A second weapon, both for the stat increase as well as the increasing returns from Dual Wield II and equipment that enhances the trait, boost DPS rather favorably, and Subtle Blow can only help BLU's native A- sword skill.Access to Tonko and Monomi nullify the need to carry S/I medicines, and with the plethora of Haste available to Blue Mages, Ustusemi shadows provide great survivability, rivaling Paladins subbing Ninja. A vast majority of physical damage, as well as single-target magic damage or debuffs, can be absorbed by some number of shadows, so absorbing a Death Scissors rather than trying to reduce its overall damage may be preferred. Access to flash and multiple forms of stun make putting up shadows even easier, in spite of Blue Mage's naturally low evasion skill.
I do not recommend gear-swapping evasion or meriting it; BLU's native evasion skill is so low that the benefits would be marginal, if any. Blind and slow, on the other hand, do help with survivability, so solo-artists should consider integrating Filamented Hold and Sandspray into their spell-set if there is no debuffer present.
Thief: Thief provides one important strength—the forced critical and 100% accuracy of Sneak Attack. While it doesn't do much for multi-hit spells, spells such as Vertical Cleave and Cannonball, or even Death Scissors, experience such a dramatic increase in damage that the loss of shadows and decrease in DPS is justified. Additionally, because Sneak Attack cannot miss, the Blue Mage can effectively cast in pure potency gear, ignoring accuracy altogether. Abilities like Flee, Treasure Hunter and Steal provide further fluff to this support job.
Blue Mages using the THF support job should consider setting Zephyr Mantle to compensate for the lack of shadows, and, against weaker targets, should make use of Trick Attack effectively to divert enmity. Frightful Roar or other Defense lowering spells are useful if they land and should be considered when applying spells.
Warrior: Warrior has a few useful traits to speak of: Warcry, Berserk, Defender, Provoke, and Double Attack. The main obstacle to subbing WAR is that increased attack does not affect Blue Magic damage, so the only benefits would be to DPS. However, because of the benefits from dual-wielding, these surges in attack may or may not outperform a properly hasted and geared BLU/NIN.
Defender stacked with Cocoon is a useful ability to enhance Cannonball damage when Sneak Attack is disabled (against the Seed Crystal for example), and Provoke may be somewhat useful in blood tanking situations. It does appear, though I cannot confirm, that Double Attack can process on Blue Magic, at least when under the effects of Chain Affinity. I very suspiciously noted instances of double damage while fighting the Seed Crystal that I have trouble attributing to critical hits or damage variance. While Double Attack gear is fairly limited and the highest percent chance is still fairly low, it is worth mentioning, though without the forced critical effect from Sneak Attack, the overall effect will be as unreliable as it is unimpressive.
Blue Mages setting Warrior as their support job should consider Triumphant Roar to really enhance their Attack to compensate for the lack of another sword.
Paladin: I don't think this is a worthwhile sub job. While you will gain bonuses to Magic Fruit from Paladin's native Healing Magic skill, BLU's lack of innate Shield Skill makes Shield Mastery fairly useless, especially against harder targets. Shield Bash on a Blue Mage is effectively an infrequent and inaccurate Head Butt. Finally, while an extra Flash spell may be useful, I doubt it will be effective against T+ enemies with Divine Magic that is capped at level 37.
The only worthwhile ability that comes with /PLD is Sentinel, which appears to be unaffected by the level of the Paladin support job. a 90-to-40% reduction in damage is a fairly good deal, on a relatively low recast timer, and does generate about as much enmity as Provoke.
While potentially useful for blood-tanking, PLD is not favorable for the same reason as RDM: the traits belonging to this support job will simply be too weak to capitalize on. If you want to blood tank, you can do so on virtually any other support job about as well as you can on PLD. Warrior will boost your Defense an additional 25% above the 50% bonus from Cocoon and isn't limited by a timer. The level 37 Shield Skill won't mitigate much damage at all, and Blue Mage emphatically does not need Flash or Sentinel to generate enmity.
For Blue Mages still wishing to sub Paladin, Auto-Refresh is already applied, so that frees up at least 9 points. Enmity generating spells, such as Triumphant Roar, Jettatura, and Magic Fruit should come in handy, as /PLD's main utility would be potentially blood tanking. It provides absolutely nothing in terms of damage, and /WHM or /SCH provide considerably better boosts to Healing Magic.
White Mage: Geared towards a more supportive function, /WHM is for situations in which Blue Magic is not preferred. The boost from the additional MND and Healing Magic skill is non-trivial, as well as access to Reraise, Teleports, and -na spells. Divine seal is a nice addition, but not terribly functional.
When using the WHM support job, Auto-Refresh and Conserve MP traits come very much in handy. While not the most potent nuke, Mind Blast, being primarily modified by MND, is a relatively low-MP cost nuke with Additional Effect: Paralysis. This is something to consider when integrating nuking capacities with support.
Black Mage: Not a very useful support job due to the Convergence merit ability and native Magic Attack Bonus trait. The only real benefits from this sub are the MP boost, INT boost, additional 4 MAB from Magic Attack Bonus II, and Conserve MP. This frees up a handful of points in spell-set, but overall, getting the Magic Attack Bonus trait is not particularly hard when in nuking build anyway.
Scholar: Potentially the best support job for the nuking/support Blue Mage. The boost provided by Light Arts eclipses the MND and Healing magic boosts from /WHM while likewise adding Sublimation for those instances in which the Refresh spell is absent. Addendum: White provides all the same -nas and Reraise as /WHM but does not provide Erase, which may be troublesome for Blue Mages without a fully merited Diffusion. It is worth mentioning that Dark Arts Aspir is a nice bonus as well against weaker enemies.Blue Mages subbing SCH need not set the Conserve MP trait, but should apply the Magic Attack Bonus and Auto-Refresh traits. Exuviation is a useful spell to have as it is the only way to have access to Erase while subbing SCH, albeit only self-target Erase. Zephyr Mantle and Metallic Body are useful spells to set for parrying enmity gain, as well as counteracting the DoT of Sublimation. With 2 tics of Regen, either through gear or the native trait, a Blue Mage can rest indefinitely while charging Sublimation as long as 1 HP of Metallic Body's stoneskin is in effect.
Monk: This support job is exclusively for use with the eight Breath spells. The HP boost from /MNK is non-trivial and warrants its use when in a pure Breath build. Not many other traits or job abilities are relevant from this support job.When using the MNK support job, Blue Mages should consider applying Clear Mind, Conserve MP, Auto-Refresh and possibly Auto-Regen. Sheep Song and Healing Breeze provide small boosts to HP while likewise affording the Auto-Regen trait and are useful to have set in certain situations.
Dark Knight: Not the best support job due to its shear lack of survivability. Soul Eater will stack with Blue Magic, but will cost high percentages of one's max HP per spell; spells such as Hysteric Barrage and Disseverment will cost 50% of one's max HP if all 5-hits land. The increased enmity generation, HP drain and lack of shadows neuters the potential benefits of this support job, since either the Blue Mage or partner will exhaust too much MP and attention trying to keep the target alive.
Dancer: I do not like this support job. It is true that with proper physical defense reduction equipment and buffs to defense, it may be somewhat feasible to blood tank while /DNC, but wasting TP on fairly sup-par healing abilities does not seem very efficient. Likewise, if an enemy can in fact be Aspir Samba'd why wouldn't you focus on a powerful MP Drainkiss instead? The one saving grace to this support job is access to Healing Waltz, which removes most Eraseable and -na-able effects, but medicine is not that hard to come by.
Beastmaster: I have heard whispers of BLU/BST, but have never seen one in action myself. The biggest obstacle here is enmity generation, in particular when swapping pets. Because BLUs tend to generate a good amount of enmity from spell casting, one can imagine how hard it would be for a fresh Decent Challenge-Even Match pet to regain hate. Additionally, to make good use of this support job, the level of the Beastmaster job should ideally be 75.
Beastmaster will provide a few bonuses: Vermin, Bird, and Amorph Killer, Widescan II, and Charm. BLU's access to Killer Effects and gear that enhances them might be useful, but ask a BST with fully merited Killer Effects just how often they process. I could see Charm as being useful to nullifying agro or handling links, but without protection from the traits of a proper support job, one could only imagine which situations a Blue Mage would not pull hate or could feasibly blood tank its prey without extra job abilities or magic.
Traits
Conserve MP: This is probably the single most useful trait a Blue Mage has access to. Testing indicates that on average, a stripped down Conserve MP trait will save about 8 MP per every 100 MP used, but its real utility doesn't come from its use over time. When at 200 or less MP, any chance of saving MP is a boon, sometimes cutting MP costs of spells by half. It stacks perfectly with Auto-Refresh for superior MP management.
Auto-Refresh: Nothing to say here. Any job with native MP can derive huge benefits from an extra 1 MP/tic.
Magic Attack Bonus: Since only RDM and BLM have access to Magic Attack Bonus innately, access to this trait frees up the support job for other, more salient jobs, such as SCH or NIN.Clear Mind: Another underrated trait that is both cheap and useful. The Clear Mind trait will cause hMP to increase incrementally per tic, creating increasing returns to resting. The cheapest pair of spells to set—Poison Breath and Awful Eye or Sandspray—are useful spells to have set anyway, in the case of high-defense or hard-hitting enemies. The only problem with this trait is that as one tries to obtain higher tiers, the set points become prohibitively expensive. It also appears that if Clear Mind is active from a support job, it isn't possible to access a higher tier through setting spells, though I need confirmation on this.
Accuracy Bonus: Most Blue Mages don't even realize that by setting Frenetic Rip and Disseverment together, they obtain a +10 boost to accuracy. This is of course, non-trivial, and should be remembered for hybrid builds that don't necessarily include the "Big Three."Merits
Monster Correlation: While I am a huge proponent of exploiting Monster Correlation whenever possible, this trait is far too situational to make good use of. Using 5 points here to enhance accuracy and damage of some spells against certain enemies seems a waste when you could enhance accuracy and potency against all enemies.Magical Accuracy: This is one of Blue Mage's most underrated merits. A free +10 magical accuracy is absolutely nothing to sneeze at, not only for nukes, but for debuffs as well. If not Filamented Hold, Sandspray, the various sleeps and dispels, and MP Drainkiss, Actinic Burst and Temporal Shift, though Flash and Stun equivalents, are still resist-able without careful attention to magic accuracy.
Diffusion: I know I stand alone on this, but I believe past a certain point, this is the most useless job ability available to Blue Mages. Its prohibitively high recast timer neuters its use with shorter-duration buffs such as Cocoon and Memento Mori, making Refueling and Warm-Up the only truly feasible diffusible buffs. I will say, it is worth keeping 1 point in this ability simply for use with Saline Coat. One cast of Saline Coat can save an entire party from an Astral Flow or other high-potency magic attack. If you so choose to force your Blue Mage into a more support role function, I would recommend capping this ability for use with Exuviation and Saline Coat. The other buffs are simply not all that useful when on a 10-minute timer.Assimilation: A very popular merit ability, but for all the wrong reasons. Most BLUs use the additional points obtained from assimilation to further buff their stats, rather than to afford themselves better traits or even useable spells. For an extra 2 points, you could squeeze an extra 2 STR from Bomb Toss, or you could consider adding something like MP Drainkiss full time. I personally have put 2 points into this. While I see the utility of capping merits in this trait, I personally believe 3 points can be better used elsewhere.
Enchainment: Another popular merit ability, simply because Chain Affinity = More Damage to most. That is in fact the utility of this merit ability, but it will only be very noticeable when used on highly-concentrated spells, such as Cannonball or Vertical Cleave and only at relatively high TP. I personally believe that for situations in which a one-hit spell is more effective (Dynamis-Xarcabard) and while in Cannonball-build, 3 points in this ability is justified, which is the pre-update cap. It is worth noting that Enchainment does not come into effect while Azure Lore is active.
Convergence: This is perhaps the single best Group 2 merit available to Blue Mages. The reason: this is a native Elemental Seal that increases Blue Magic damage by a direct percentage. While stat-based nukes experience increases from statistics and Magic Attack Bonus, Convergence adds between 5 and 25% additional damage to all Blue Magic magical spells, including Breaths. Effectively, you're getting a HQ staff worth of magic accuracy and a positive monster correlation to a Breath spell of your choosing every 10 minutes. I personally would cap merits in this. Those not looking to tap into magic damage may pass this up, but I will argue that that is a tragic misstep.
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