What food to use?

[Sabaron]

Re: What food to use?

Oh I see. I've never actually used it as it's much too expensive, but it appears, now, not worth the bother.

The Rice Dumpling posts pretty good numbers though.

[Taskmage]

Re: What food to use?

I wouldn't exactly call myself an experienced blue mage at level 31, but here's my two cents nonetheless.

In my experience leveling so far, my magic damage has always edged out my melee damage. I'd estimate that my total damage is 40% physical and 60% magical, though it's been a while since I've been on blu so take it with a grain of salt. This may just be because of style; I cast as aggressively as possible without making things too difficult on the tank and use dumplings for hMP and juices to supplement my MP if the pull comes too fast for me to rest much. My spells are going to get more expensive as I level of course, but it won't be too long before the rdm in my static gets refresh, and not long after that I'll get to take advantage of sanction refresh, auto-refresh, and vermy so I don't see my having to choke back too much on my casting in the future.

Since, to my understanding, attack bonuses from food, equipment and job traits don't apply to physical blue magic damage or the magic-based weaponskills, I don't see myself getting much total benefit from eating meat dishes purely for the attack bonus. Str, however, does come into play for calculating fSTR, which is added to the base damage of all physical blu spells as well as being a strong secondary modifier on many of the most commonly used ones, so I want to load up on that as much as I can. What I really want to boost as much as I can is accuracy. Since there's only so much I can do to boost a spell's base damage, I want to make sure that my Bludgeons and Jet Streams are connecting with all three hits to make those str bonuses count for as much as possible. As such, I see myself switching to Sole Sushi like most other melee DDs in the late 30s when I feel the effects of Rice Dumpling start to peter out.

The int penalty from Carbonara isn't that big of a deal. Most spells blus use to DD aren't of the magical type and don't even use int. On the other hand, most sword weaponskills do use int rather than str for their primary stat, notably Red Lotus Blade, which a lot of blue mages use to open Fusion self-renkei. Still, that's one damage number affected by int that only comes up every two minutes at most, and it's really the damage of the skillchain closer that counts. If you're not using Chain Affinity to self-renkei and using it to boost the power of a nice "damage varies with TP" spell then maybe you'll squeak a few more points of damage out of that extra TP every two minutes instead.

Where the food really looks interesting, believe it or not, is the +5 to HP. Breath type spells (Poison Breath, Radiant Breath, Heat Breath) seem to base their damage entirely off your level and your HP, so adding up to 175 to your max HP could for instance increase the damage of Heat Breath by 87 points. I only have Poison Breath at my level, but it's a pretty decent spell and I wouldn't turn down another 17 damage from it. No idea how the higher level breaths pan out, but they seem to scale up in damage and down in mp efficiency at about the rate my rdm's nukes do.

[Sabaron]

Re: What food to use?

I forgot about breath spells. On Heat Breath the damage is roughly HP/2 or yeah, 87 damage off of a Heat Breath when you have full HP and MaxHP of 1289+ (Carbonara is 14%HP cap 175@1289). Galka Blue Mage Breath attacks ftw.

You'll have to check your HP against the cap/effect of each pasta to determine which is the best at your level. Carbonara has the highest total effect, but it's % is low so you need a lot more HP to get the most from it. Ic Pilav also finds its way into the mix but I doubt you'd choose it over say, Peperoncino which is great at low-level and easy to make (cap 70@233hp). Here is the list of the HP foods:

HP Food

When I play BLU (currently 30), I usually let my sword do the talking. As a hume, I'm a bit more durable and have less MP than a Taru. I don't spam Head Butts, I usually hold them in reserve and cast to interrupt like stun using an occasional Bludgeon, and reserving a good bit of MP for tossing cures--at that level, I see a lot of hate-pulls from WHMs so I use my healing magic to keep them cooled down or to pull the monster onto me when I don't have Provoke--since Wild Carrot is ranged and overpowers Cure II at 30th, it makes a great mob-grab spell whereas Bludgeon is too short to pull the mob back and I have to run after it. I'm supposing it's play style and maybe race selection--my parse rates are usually just the reverse of yours, Task, 60% Sword vs. 40% Spell.

[Malacite]

Re: What food to use?

To my understanding, Carbonara provides Store TP +4, not TP +4. So, if each sword swing gives 6.0 TP, this adds 0.24 TP more per swing (assuming not using /SAM or other Store TP equipment), making it 6.24 TP.

I was just about to question this. How exactly does 1 piece of food generate such a large amount of TP gain? Or did I miss something > - > (methinks you just misunderstood how Store TP works)

Thanks for the helpful replies. I think I'm going to stick to the dumplings. Jacks seemed tempting at first, but then I'd only be gaining 5 more accuracy over the dumpling, and +10 evasion vs the nice chunk of attack and STR and hmp.

Also, wouldn't tacos be overkill? Even if I was tanking, it still seems a tad extreme for my level (currently 23 BLU)

[Sabaron]

Re: What food to use?

Yes, tacos would be overkill for 23, but I also think any kind of sushi before 50ish is also extreme unless you have a hard time meleeing--I have had one occasion to use Sushi at low level. That was with BRD20-26--I found that, even with capped sword skill from RDM, I could not hit the XP mobs well, so I moved to Tuna Sushi for the accuracy and it's secondary bonus to CHR to help stick mob-songs (Requiem/Lullaby); however, I will note that in the one stack of Tuna Sushi I ate, I ate 2 stacks of Rolanberry Pies since most often I'm needed to back-up heal and have very little mp at that level. If you're XPing regularly, you won't be so low forever and if you end up taking a more defensive role later on, Tacos are what you'd eat. That should, of course, be a no-brainer since PLD uses Tacos and BLU tanks in a similar manner to a PLD. I think more in terms of benefit for versatility over the long range rather than the more short-range issue of low-level food. I would also never use Carbonara which is quite expensive for a few bonus points of damage on Poison Breath (your only breath weapon at the moment). I was mistaken about the TP thing--as I said above, I've never actually used it, but was looking into it for future use as BLU. It's confusing because TP is measured in % already, so if it adds 4%... Then I failed to consider the issues with said food as +4%TP on say... a dagger or katana would make it the only food a THF or NIN would use because the TP build with daggers/katanas would be insane.

IMO, there really is only one low-level food for melee and that's Rice Dumpling. I could possibly see Sole Sushi, but I think if you need that, then you're probably over-camping at that level and are therefore slowing your XP rate and need to move to a better spot. My personal feeling is that you should never use sushi unless you seriously need to--people are far too dependent on it. Most camps last for several levels. Sushi is generally employed when a melee is on the low-end of the camp range, but should technically be phased out as they move into mid-high level for the camp because the benefits of an ATK+ food will significantly speed up XP rate once they no longer need as much +Acc to hit.

I have adjusted the original post to reflect the additional information from this thread.

With respect to Jack-o'-Lanterns, I think the ACC bonus is a good alternative to sushi if necessary (again you're probably overcamping if you're eating these) in the 17-25ish range. I think only THF and NIN can really do well with Jacks, and besides CHR-10 = -9 damage per Bludgeon (-0.76DPS if you're casting every 12 seconds).

If you need some more accuracy, there are very few items that grant it to BLU at low-level: Optical Earring (Rare/Ex from an easy mob), Battle Gloves, Bowyer Ring (CoP quest series or purchase--kind of expensive, but not nearly as high as Archer's Ring, the precursor of Sniper), and Shikaree Ring (they're not that hard to get. You can get one while doing RSE or helping someone with RSE in Ordelle's Caves).

The Complete(?) list of Blue Mage Accuracy Gear in Level Order

I also noticed you were subbing Ranger which means that you're finding monsters difficult to hit. You have an A- rank in Sword which means that you're accuracy rate should be similar to that of your melee peers since they don't have much +Acc gear either, so I'll assume they're probably noticing the same lowered accuracy.

A- Rank Sword has a cap of 78 at 25th level.
A Hume Blue Mage has 21 base DEX at 25th level (I don't know what your race is, but Hume generates a relatively safe estimate).

So your unmodified accuracy (when capped @ 25) is going to be 88.5. Sushi is around 15% accuracy (maybe all of them are, not sure) for +18.5 Accuracy. A puller won't pull High Evasion mobs, most generally, unless they totally suck, so you're looking at a differential between +10 above and -30 below mob evasion. The boost in accuracy from the sushi is going to be (very rough estimate) 11.5% which correlates on a Nadrs (18/236) to 0.53DPS which is less than Rice Dumpling.

To the RNG vs. NIN vs. DRK sub:

DRK gives +10 Attack or 0.36DPS (calculated vs. EM/T at 150ATK vs. 150DEF)
NIN gives 10% delay bonus when wielding two weapons or 0.50DPS
RNG gives +10 Accuracy or (very rough) 0.28DPS

Ninja wins the DD war in this case, plus it has shadows.

Once you hit 30, WAR's Berserk might provide a better result depending on your Attack score, but you'll also get Sneak Attack from THF... Hard decision... I'm sorry, I don't have numbers for it Maybe later.

[Malacite]

Re: What food to use?

My gear set up is as follows;

Main: Fire Sword
Ammo: Happy Egg
Head: Bonze Circlet (sp? it's 7 Def and +2 MP. Trump crown is expensive @. @)
Neck: Spike Necklace (Justice badge for healing spells until I hit 26 for Holy Phial)
Earrings: 1x Optical Earring, 1x Energy Earring
Body: Beetle
Hands: Battle Gloves
Rings: 2x Courage Rings
Back: Cotton Cape
Waist: Friar's Rope
Legs: Baron's Slops
Feet: Mage's Sandals



I hadn't even noticed the jack-o-lantern gives -10 CHR >-> damn, that would've been bad. I also never really use sushi at low levels, I only considered the possibility of Tuna for the boost in acc and CHR to boost Bludgeon's performance specifically. So far now it seems the dumplings are working just fine as I expected. I've yet to actually test a CHR build for bludgeon, but somehow I don't think the results would be all that impressive.


Thanks for the replies. Oh yeah, Store TP confused the hell out of me too when I first joined @ _ @ (it's too bad it's not +1 TP per modifier lol > <)

[Sabaron]

Re: What food to use?

Camp the Nadrs. It's an easy if a bit boring camp and no one ever does it. I believe I was 1/5. In addition to being the sexiest Blue Mage sword pre-Kilij, it is also the best weapon until Gladiator at 27 (and I still used it until I grudgingly forced myself into Centurion's at 30).