Blue Mage Melding, Stat Priority, and Consumables — Endwalker 6.45

This section covers stat priority, materia melding, and consumables for Blue Mage. For full gearsets, refer to the Blue Mage gearing page.

Blue Mage is in a unique spot where it benefits from all DPS stats pretty equally. What this means in practice is that your gear actually means very little and it mostly just comes down to practice. That being said, the priority can be simplified to the following:

1. Intelligence
2. Spell Speed until Moon Flute opener can be performed consistently.
3. Spell Speed and/or Critical Hit
4. Determination
5. Direct Hit
6. Spell Speed or Critical Hit (whichever wasn't used before)

We actually are able to go for a hybrid Crit/SpS build because of the new level 80 gear. This is the best option for a general-purpose build, as it allows you to comfortably perform the Moon Flute opener with respectable damage and still play as tank and healer when needed. The gearing page outlines this in more detail.

Blue Mage has a different damage formula from the rest of the combat jobs. All of our weapons have exactly 1 weapon damage and we scale a bit more from Intelligence as a result. Generally speaking, we will always want to go for the highest item level gear that is available since this will have the most Intelligence.

The biggest part of doing DPS at Blue Mage comes down to whether or not you can consistently pull off a full Moon Flute opener. This is doable with 0 additional Spell Speed, but it is highly ping dependent. The first step in gearing should be to figure out what GCD you need in order to do this comfortably and meld to reach that

Blue Mage can optimize for either Spell Speed or Critical Hit and perform approximately equally. Spell Speed will perform more consistently, while Critical Hit has a slightly higher damage ceiling. This is still being tested for level 80, but initial calculations show the same result.

If you plan on playing Blue Mage as a tank or healer, Spell Speed will be the best choice. All of our mitigations are tied to a cast time, so minimizing that cast time is crucial. As healer, all of our heals will be tied to the GCD so it is safer to minimize that cast time as well.

Blue Mage benefits more from Determination than Direct Hit, but the difference is quite small. With DPS Mimicry we gain an additional +20% Direct Hit chance for free. Direct Hit scales linearly, which means as we add more Direct Hit each additional point of Direct Hit is relatively "weaker." Determination also scales linearly, but since we don't get a bunch for free it makes our free Direct Hit scaling more impactful as well. Because of this, Determination is very slightly better than Direct Hit for DPS.

If we're playing as a tank or healer we definitely prefer Determination. As a tank we will likely have Mighty Guard on so our DPS is quite low by default, which means the already small difference can be completely ignored. As a healer, we are able to add additional healing potency to our heals through Determination.

The materia melding follows the stat priority mentioned above, so the logic for melding is pretty straightforward. If playing tank or healer, meld as much Spell Speed and Determination as you can. You can also do this for DPS, or you can meld as much Critical Hit and Determination if you prefer. If your main stat (Spell Speed or Critical Hit) and Determination are capped on an item, use extra melds for Direct Hit.

Potions in FFXIV are pretty simple and follow the same logic as all other jobs: pick whichever potion gives you the most of your primary stat. For us that is Intelligence, and Grade 5 Tincture of Intelligence will cap out for us. Higher grades are fine, too, we just don't get any additional benefit. Use whatever is cheapest.

The food you use will depend on which stats you're optimizing for. The gearsets listed on the Blue Mage Gear Page will list appropriate food.