[Kaslo]

This is an attempt to provide an in-depth look at sub job options for Blue Mage to avoid the needless threads about sub jobs. I will provide info on useful abilities and pros and cons to each sub job. I will try to be as fair and unbiased as possible, though I will separate into Top, Middle, and Bottom Tiers. Information is accumulated to what I have read on these forums and personal experience.

Note: Abilities/Spells listed are listed at the level of Blue Mage you would get it from the sub job. Also, order of listing does not signify one job being better than another.

Top Tier Sub Jobs:

White Mage: Allows for a wider array of healing spells and offers the ability to main heal. While main healing is not what most Blue Mages prefer it is still a viable option. Also, with future updates Blue Mages might acquire more healing Blue Magic Spells. Blue Mage can viably begin to main heal at level 22 with the acquisition of Cure II.

Things to Note: Healing Breeze (16) and Magic Fruit (58} seem to be affected by Healing Magic Skill.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

14 – Protectra
18 – Paralyna
22 – Cure II
18 - Blindna
30 – Divine Seal
34 – Shellra
40 – Sneak
42 – Cure III
42 – Regen
50 – Raise
50 – Invisible
50 – Auto Regen
54 – Protectra II
64 – Erase
66 – Reraise
72 – Teleport Mea
72 – Teleport Dem
72 – Teleport Holla
74 – Shellra 2

Thief: Allows for high spike damage. Very well liked since Sneak Attack and Trick Attack stack with Physical Blue Magic. Much in the way SAMs can have TP every minute to Sneak Attack or Trick Attack a Weaponskill, Blue Mages will have a spell they can use. Thief becomes a viable sub job at level 30 with the acquisition of Sneak Attack. Thief really shines from levels 60 to 70 with Death Scissors and Trick Attack, but is still popular and viable earlier than that.

Things to Note: Spells that use ranged accuracy for their accuracy, such as Quezzyshroom (8}, Feather Storm (12), and Pinecomb Bomb (36), do not stack with Sneak Attack or Trick Attack. Also, when using Sneak Attack with a multi-hit spell only the first hit of that spell will be a critical hit.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

30 – Sneak Attack
50 – Flee
60 – Trick Attack

Ninja: Allows Blue Mages to wield two weapons and access to Utsusemi spells to mitigate damage. This job is viable starting at level 20 or 24 for Dual Wield and Utsusemi: Ichi respectively. Ninja is a popular choice for solo play. Spells like Metallic Body (8} and Head Butt (12) allow for easier recast of Utsusemi without spell interruption. Also, Refueling (48} is very helpful with this job to decrease Utsusemi recast times and reduce delay from Dual Wield. Also, Dual Wield will give you an additional hit to your weaponskills. Ninja really shines at level 70+ with the rise of burn parties.

Things to Note: The Job Trait Subtle Blow does not seem to reduce TP gained by the mob from the use of Blue Magic, or if it does it is a very small reduction.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

20 – Dual Wield
24 – Utsusemi: Ichi
30 – Subtle Blow
50 – Dual Wield II
74 – Utsusemi: Ni

Scholar: Allows for a wider array of healing spells and offers the ability to main heal. While main healing is not what most Blue Mages prefer it is still a viable option. Also, with future updates Blue Mages might acquire more healing Blue Magic Spells. More beneficial subjob than White Mage due to the higher healing magic skill. Also, Sublimation offers a source of MP restorance.

Things to Note: Healing Breeze (16) and Magic Fruit (58} seem to be affected by Healing Magic Skill.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

10 – Cure
20 – Light Arts
20 – Dark Arts
20 – Poisona
24 – Paralyna
34 - Blindna
36 – Regen
42 – Drain
44 – Silena
60 – Max MP Boost
60 – Cure III
60 – Sleep
64 – Cursna
64 – Dispel
70 - Sublimation
70 – Raise
72 – Aspir
74 – Regen II

Middle Tier Sub Jobs:

Warrior: Allows Blue Mage to serve as a tank for parties. With the abilities Provoke and later Warcry Blue Mage obtains reliable ways to gain enemy hate to tank. Also, Double Attack will increase TP gain and can boost your weaponskills from time to time. This job is viable level 10+ and really shines from levels 10 to 30. Also, with spells like Pollen (1) and Cocoon (8}, and later Magic Fruit (58}, Blue Mages can act like Paladins to a certain extent. Also, the spell Head Butt allows Blue Mages to Stun-lock a mob while tanking to prevent damage. At levels 30+ Warrior as a subjob helps with a Blue Mage's Sword Damage. The Job Abilities Berserk, Warcry, and the Job Trait provide real bonuses to melee damage.

Things to Note: While Warrior offers job abilities to increase attack, attack does not affect Blue Magic Spells. However, attack will increase damage from your weaponskills.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

10 – Provoke
20 – Defense Bonus
30 – Berserk
50 – Defender
50 – Double Attack
60 – Attack Bonus
70 – Warcry

Black Mage: Allows Blue Mages the ability to increase the effectiveness of their Magic Blue Magic spells. Not a great sub job choice for exp when compared to other jobs, but is very nice for certain missions and endgame activities do to increased INT, Magic Attack Up, and Elemental Seal.

Things to Note: Dark Magic skill seems to increase effectiveness of Drain and Aspir type Blue Magic spells like Blood Drain (20), Digest (36), and MP Drainkiss (42).

Important spells/abilities/traits:

20 – Magic Attack Up
30 – Elemental Seal
40 – Conserve MP
60 – Magic Attack Up II

Red Mage: Allows Blue Mages to boost Magical and Physical Blue Magic Spells in an even manner. Compared to Black Mage, Red Mage offers less of a bonus to Magical Blue Magic Spells but replaces this with a small boost to Physical Blue Magic Spells. Also, Job Trait Fast Cast allows for spells cast and recast times to be diminished, similar to the status Haste. This can be very beneficial for breath spells that tend to have long cast times.

Things to Note: Dark Magic skill seems to increase effectiveness of Drain and Aspir type Blue Magic spells like Blood Drain (20), Digest (36), and MP Drainkiss (42). Also, Healing Breeze (16) and Magic Fruit (58} seem to be affected by Healing Magic Skill.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

28 – Cure II
30 – Fast Cast
40 – Magic Attack Up
40 – Sneak
42 – Regen
50 – Invisible
66 – Phalanx
70 – Fast Cast II
En-Elemental Spells (Various Levels)

Beastmaster: Allows Blue Mages to charm mobs to help them fight enemies. Beastmaster is a very popular choice for soloing, similar to Beastmaster as a main job, and spellhunting.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

1 – Charm/Fight
1 – Widescan
20 – Gauge
20 – Heel
24 – Reward
30 – Stay
50 – Sic
60 – Tame
70 – Leave

Dark Knight: Allows a Blue Mage to greatly boost the effectiveness of their Physical Blue Magic. Dark Knight is a viable sub job because of the large STR boost, small MP boost, and the ability to stack Souleater with Physical Blue Magic. While not seen much in exp, Dark Knight can be useful in certain missions to help with zerging due to the use of Souleater to boost damage. Has been reported to be a great subjob for gathering enimity with Stun and Last Resort to tank the Jailer of Love.

Things to Note: Dark Magic skill seems to increase effectiveness of Drain and Aspir type Blue Magic spells like Blood Drain (20), Digest (36), and MP Drainkiss (42). With Stun and Temporal Shift you will be able to Stun more on HNMs (that usually resist Head Butt and other Stun Physicals) than any other job, if you can Stun with level 37 Dark Magic Skill.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

20 – Attack Bonus
30 – Last Resort
60 – Souleater
60 – Attack Bonus II
74 - Stun

Botom Tier Sub jobs:

Monk: Allows Blue Mage the ability to increase their Breath Spell damage due to high innate HP. Since Breath-type Blue Magic Spells are affected by HP, Monk may be useful to increase that damage. Also, Monk’s Boost ability may increase damage from some Blue Magic spells (unconfirmed).

Things to Note: The Job Trait Subtle Blow does not seem to reduce TP gained by the mob from the use of Blue Magic, or if it does it is a very small reduction.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

10 – Boost
10 – Subtle Blow
20 – Counter
30 – Dodge
30 – Max HP Boost
50 – Focus
70 – Chakra
70 – Max HP Boost II

Bard: The only useful option Bard gives to Blue Mage is the ability to put up a single Bard buff.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

50 – Mage’s Ballad

Corsair: Similar to Bard, this will allow Blue Mage the ability to put up a single Corsair buff.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

10 – Phantom Roll/Double Up
10 – Corsair’s Roll

Dragoon: Dragoon offers the ability to Jump to Blue Mages in addition to some Attack Bonus. Might be useful at lower levels (20-30) but soon looses effectiveness that other sub jobs offer.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

20 – Attack Bonus
20 – Jump
60 – Accuracy Bonus
70 – High Jump

Paladin: Paladin offers more defensive abilities to Blue Mage. Also, Paladin offers some healing magic and a small boost MP.

Things to Note: Healing Breeze (16) and Magic Fruit (58} seem to be affected by Healing Magic Skill.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

20 – Defense Bonus
34 – Cure II
50 - Shield Mastery
60 – Defense Bonus II
60 – Sentinel
60 – Cure III
70 – Cover
70 - Auto Refresh
74 – Flash

Puppetmaster: Puppetmaster allows Blue Mages the ability to call an Automaton to assist them. Puppetmaster does not offer much to Blue Mage, mainly due to the fact that your Automaton will always be half the level of your Blue Mage.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

1 – Activate/Deploy/Deactivate
20 – Retrieve
30 – Repair

Ranger: Rangers give Blue Mages the ability to be more accurate with their Physical Blue Spells. Much like Dragoon, Ranger is viable at lower levels to increase the accuracy of your Physical Blue Magic.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

20 – Accuracy Bonus
40 – Camouflage
60 – Accuracy Bonus II

Summoner: Summoner allows Blue Mages to call avatars to assist them as well as increasing Blue Mage’s MP pool. Like Puppetmaster, you avatars will always be at half your Blue Mage’s level hindering them to only really be able to buff effectively.

Things to Note: For HNMs like Fafnir/Niddhog that have High Defense and can't be attacked from behind, hindering /THF, /SMN becomes effective for Tank Parties to Buff with Diamondhide and Aerial Armor and heal with Healing Blue Magic. Also, SMN provides good boosts to MND, INT, and CHR that can help with a nukeing build for spells such as Firespit, Mind Blast, and Eyes on Me.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

1 – Ability to summon any Avatar you can as Summoner
1- Assault/Retreat/Release/Ward/Rage
20 – Max MP Boost
50 – Auto Refresh
50 - Aerial Armor (Garuda)
60 – Max MP Boost II
Also, each Avatars have abilities they can do with Ward/Rage that I will not list here.

Samurai: Samurai does not offer much to Blue Mages. Samurai is mainly useful for fast TP gain and due to the recast timer on Chain Affinity (2:00) you shouldn't really have trouble with having TP ready when it's up. May be useful in endgame situations where your LS wants you to simply Spirits Within after Meditating.

Things to Note: While listed in the bottom tier of subjobs SAM does offer some things endgame. Mainly the ability to Meditate for TP and Solo Light on mobs you don't want to feed TP, mainly Fafnir and Niddhog.

Important skills/abilities/traits:

20 – Store TP
30 - Third Eye
60 - Store TP II
60 - Meditate

Dancer: Allows for TP based Cures and Enfeebles. With good defense a Blue Mage may be able to solo some mobs.

Things to Note: While you can use TP to Cure and Enfeeble, Chain Affinity will reduce your TP to 0 preventing the use of dancing moves.

Important spells/abilities/traits:

10 – Drain Samba
30 – Evasion Bonus
30 – Curing Waltz
40 – Quickstep
40 – Animated Flourish
50 – Subtle Blow
50 – Aspir Samba
50 – Divine Waltz
60 – Accuracy Bonus
60 – Box Step
60 – Curing Waltz II
70 – Drain Samba II
70 – Healing Waltz

That’s it! You should now be a more informed player in the sub job selection for Blue Mage!

Before you say anything, I know that Ward/Rage are not separated from Blood Pact yet but the update should be soon and didn’t feel like coming back to edit that.

Also, if you have a comment about anything here feel free to post it and I might change some thing, plus I have probably misspelled or miswrote something or left out an important ability.

Thanks to the following for their input: PaladinofLight

[PaladinofLight]

Good job with this: Just a little Tribute though.

/war also allows you to increase your Weapon Skill damage, along with /nin. As in:

/war Berserk and Warcry can really help with a WS and with /nin I believe multi hits weapon skills gain an extra hit if you have offhand weapon on.

[Sho]

I like this post. Good job, Kaslo!

[Kaslo]

Edited to include Paladin's comments and to add Samurai... I knew I had forgot one >.<

[Alphonze]

although i've never heard of a blu/pld anywhere >.>; this is pretty awesome. my only thing is: what's the "Tier" crap? does that define usefulness of the SJ? or is there something I'm missing? cuz it seems all the truly useful ones are stuck under "Tier 1"

other than that part being vague (probly my own stupidity) it's very good. I'd say sticky this and let people comment on what they find as ups and downs for their SJ choices :boing

[Kaslo]

Alphonze :
although i've never heard of a blu/pld anywhere >.>; this is pretty awesome. my only thing is: what's the "Tier" crap? does that define usefulness of the SJ? or is there something I'm missing? cuz it seems all the truly useful ones are stuck under "Tier 1"

other than that part being vague (probly my own stupidity) it's very good. I'd say sticky this and let people comment on what they find as ups and downs for their SJ choices :boing

lol the Tier system is suppose to set it up where the more "useful" jobs are ranking into groups... Top, Middle, and Bottem Tier might be better...

I tend to reverse Tiers sometime, saying Tier 1 meaning Top Tier when is usually means Bottom Tier...

[dxknight]

I don't know if you left it out intentionally or not, but /PLD would also give Shield Mastery@50 and Auto-Refresh@70.

[Kaslo]

I will add Auto-Refresh, I did forget it, but I don't see Shield Mastery as an important ability for BLU.

[dxknight]

It's a job trait that gives bonus TP when blocking with a shield. Even though the bonus may be minimal with PLD as a sub, anyone that doesn't use /NIN will most likely have a shield equipped.

[Kaslo]

ahh I will add it then

[Falconblade]

dxknight :
It's a job trait that gives bonus TP when blocking with a shield. Even though the bonus may be minimal with PLD as a sub, anyone that doesn't use /NIN will most likely have a shield equipped.

Thing is though, BLU has no innate Shield Skill, we'd only have skill from /pld, which would cap at around 140~. Generally, it wouldnt have a chance to kick in.

[PaladinofLight]

Oh Monk's Boost effect does Increase the damage of physical Blue Magic... My friends and I tried with various spells such as death scissors, frenetic rip, bludgeon, foot kick, and all of them stacked.

[Doval]

Things to Note: The Job Trait Subtle Blow does not seem to reduce TP gained by the mob from the use of Blue Magic.

What is this based on? Subtle Blow affects both melee and magic, and considering that Blue Magic is almost a hybrid form of both things, it'd be even more logical for Subtle Blow to affect Blue Magic.

Thing is though, BLU has no innate Shield Skill, we'd only have skill from /pld, which would cap at around 140~. Generally, it wouldnt have a chance to kick in.

You can shield even without shield skill, and I think shielding rates are still fairly good on things you'd solo with a Size 1 shield even with just half-capped skill.

Oh Monk's Boost effect does Increase the damage of physical Blue Magic... My friends and I tried with various spells such as death scissors, frenetic rip, bludgeon, foot kick, and all of them stacked.

I'd like to see proof of this, as well.

[shifue]

dont forget that smn not only the magic add you mentioned but also has a sound stat add for mnd and int so if your wanting to broaden the skills more for doing magical damage instead of going soul support or soul damage and you gain more points to both stats when i calulated here is what i got blue/smn mind and int 66 each mp 570 blue/whm mnd 67 int 62 mp 512 blue/blm mnd int 62 67 mp 531 so over all seems like a sound bet for a magical build these numbers are based of hume stats enjoy

[Barachiel]

The problems I see with /smn are: you lose the magic attack traits you would get with /blm; you lose the healing magic skill with /whm. So while /Smn gives a general boost to int and mnd, those two stats are trivial compared to what /blm and /whm would have to offer in that department.

[Crispleaf]

shifue :
dont forget that smn not only the magic add you mentioned but also has a sound stat add for mnd and int so if your wanting to broaden the skills more for doing magical damage instead of going soul support or soul damage and you gain more points to both stats when i calulated here is what i got blue/smn mind and int 66 each mp 570 blue/whm mnd 67 int 62 mp 512 blue/blm mnd int 62 67 mp 531 so over all seems like a sound bet for a magical build these numbers are based of hume stats enjoy

Yes, I agree with Barachiel. If you're interested in a magic build, you're better off either going blu/blm for Magic Attack Bonus II (at 60 and higher), or blu/whm for added curing ability. Maybe blu/rdm would be okay too. But a blu/smn is only good for one thing... learning 1000 Needles while solo

[Sho]

Maybe blu/rdm would be okay too.

Not just "ok"... Fast Cast Breath Spells is made of win.

[Falconblade]

Sho :

Maybe blu/rdm would be okay too.

Not just "ok"... Fast Cast Breath Spells is made of win.

Especially on Jailer of Fortitude, where he'll run past you before you can get a breath off most of the time.

[Kaslo]

Ok updated Tier system to be better understood (Top, Middle, Bottom) and I am still debating taking out the Subtle Blow comment, however if it does effect it it's very minimal. Also, I think this might be good to Sticky if a mod could do that.

[Doval]

Ok updated Tier system to be better understood (Top, Middle, Bottom) and I am still debating taking out the Subtle Blow comment, however if it does effect it it's very minimal. Also, I think this might be good to Sticky if a mod could do that.

This is why I asked what you were basing it on. Subtle Blow as a stat is totally freaking worthless since you need absurd ammounts of Subtle Blow, or moderate ammounts on every party member, to actually see any difference at all. Subtle Blow isn't something you can just see, especially since mob behavior does not lend itself to that sort of thing. However, just because it's worthless and we can't notice it by observation alone doesn't mean it's not working. You'd have to actually get TP readings from mobs to prove that Subtle Blow doesn't affect it.

Subtle Blow I is just 5%, by the way.