Taking Back Skillchain Artistry

Unbeknownst to me and doubtless a lot of other players, in addition to Savage Blade>Goblin Rush = Light, we also have Expiacion>Benthic Typhoon = Darkness. There's some important things to note here.

First of all, this makes BLU the only job other than SAM to have easy access to both Level 3 Skillchains. I say this because as far as I know, DNC still is restricted to Darkness and because previously, setting Cannonball and Vertical Cleave for the purpose of skillchain artistry was both costly and seldom useful.

Second, unlike Cannonball, Goblin Rush is multi-hit. That's normally a weakness, but in this case, it's a great strength. The single-hit nature of Cannonball generally increased the risk of missing the spell, thereby breaking the skillchain altogether. This was one of a few reasons (the others being ignorance and bias) that BLU was rarely relied upon for setting up Skillchains. Now that we have a multi-hit spell that closes a Level 3 Skillchain, not only will the overall Skillchain damage be higher, the chances of breaking the Skillchain due to misses will be lower.

Last, these spells are useful in their own right. Goblin Rush, I have been told, is essentially the upgrade of Frenetic Rip. It is considerably more powerful for only a marginal increase in MP cost and is still tight on hits to reduce TP feed and misses. Benthic Typhoon is cheap MP-wise, provides the Skillchain Bonus trait and inflicts Defense Down effects that previously required an entirely separate, only-moderately-useful set spell(s) to use. Finally, we have access to both Level 3 Skillchains with spells whose usefulness (outside of /THF and Endgame events) is more than just their ability to close Level 3 Skillchains.

My guess is that Goblin Rush will ultimately be stronger and the preferred Skillchain in most situations, but having easy access to Darkness is extremely non-trivial. As for Distortion from Quadratic Continuum, the damage differential of the spell must make up for the 25% additional Skillchain damage from Light in order for it to be the preferred Skillchain. It may produce a similar situation to what we used to see between Vertical Cleave Darkness and Disseverment Distortion; I found that in lower variable situations, the high number of hits against high DEF/EVA targets rendered Distortion weaker to Darkness, and the opposite being the case in high variable situations. We'll have to see just how potent Quad. Continuum is.