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Intro

This guide was created by Sabishii of Asura (formally from Pandemonium and Odin) with the intention of informing aspiring Blue Mages of the usefulness and general mechanics of spells at all levels, as well as traits, and other useful information. Some spells are useful, some aren’t, some are useful at certain levels, but lose their usefulness, others are always useful. This guide was created to explain which spells are the most useful, when to use certain spells, and so forth. I've also added job traits, since we've gotten more traits lately, some more useful than others.

Also here is a good link to show where and when to get your spells: Click here.

About Blue Magic Spells

There are several categories of Blue Magic spells. First, there are physical spells, that often have additional effects like stun (see Headbutt, Sudden Lunge). They deal physical damage, and are therefore subject to physical damage type resistances, bonuses, and immunities. For example, piercing spells are strong against birds (like using Disseverment against Colibri in 75 era. Physical spells rely on physical accuracy to land, and with physical spells that have additional effects, these additional effects are reliant on magical accuracy to land. So your physical spells will have 3 components: landing the spell with physical accuracy, landing the additional effect with magical accuracy (this will only happen if physical lands), then doing damage with the spell (dependent on your STR and other stats). So if you cast headbutt on an enemy, if the spell misses, it'll do no damage, no stun. If you land the physical component, the magic effect (stun) will be checked, and whether the stun lands, will rely on your magic accuracy and whether the mob is immune to stun or not. If the spell's stun is resisted, or immune to stun, it can still do damage.

Second, there are elemental nukes, which do magic damage. Each one has an elemental type (searing tempest for example is fire based, Tenebral Crush is Darkness, Blinding Fulgor is Light based, and so on). These spells rely on your magic stats: magic attack, magic accuracy, magic damage, and whatever stats each spell relies on as a modifier, whether it's INT, MND, etc. Magical/Elemental blue magic used to have really bad damage potential, long casting and recast times, you had to have a bunch of niche gear and elemental staves to get any kind of decent damage out of them. However, with the rise of Adoulin, and Post-Adoulin, spells were added that can do massive AoE damage. You also had the addition of tons of fast cast, and magical/mage gear for BLU. At level 99, with ilvl 119 gear, you can pump out huge AoE damage on large groups of mobs. Not only that, but many magical spells also have additional effects (like the physical spells have). Examples include: Tenebral Crush, which does dark damage, and inflicts defense down; Searing tempest: fire damage and inflicts burn; Entomb: earth damage and petrify; and Spectral Flow: ice damage and terrorize. This list is just a few examples. There are even spells like MP Drainkiss that act like Aspir, Magic Hammer, which combine doing Light Damage, then acts like Aspir to drain the MP the enemy has, then give the amount of damage dealt as MP back to you. Blood Drain, and Blood Saber, are like single target, and AoE Drains, healing you for the damage they deal (but those two are low level ones that do not have high damage potential). Your Area of Effect magic nukes are amazing for "Cleaving" (or AoEing) large number of mobs, for purposes such as gaining EXP/Merits/Capacity points, or Power Leveling friends in Escha zones. These make Blue Mage the most powerful AoE job in most situations. Black Mage may have -ga and -ja spells, but those are subject to diminishing returns on multiple targets. Each additional target hit after the first starts to take less damage. Same with the GEO -ra spells. Blue Mage nukes do not have that limitation. Go nuts, destroy all those trash mobs. Subduction (wind damage, and super potent gravity) is your best friend in this kind of situation). Subduction's gravity is stronger than RDM's gravity II. Watch the mobs crawl to try and reach you. Laugh in their faces.

Thirdly, there are your Enhancing spells (aka buffs). Gear that increases enhancing duration DOES NOT affect any blue magic. For example, Erratic Flutter, your Haste II spell, it's duration is 5 minutes base, and is unaffected by any enhancing duration gear. Most buff spells are only self-cast. You cannot cast Erratic Flutter on anyone else, or Nature's Meditation. There are exceptions, however. There are spells that are buffs that can effect the whole party in range. Diamondhide is a buff spell that provides stoneskin. It is self-cast (the only viable target for this spell is yourself), but it is an area of effect, that'll provide your party with Stoneskin. If you cast Erratic Flutter, it is self-target, providing you 5 minutes of Haste II, the Job Ability Diffusion (available from merits), will transform non-AoE buffs into AoE buffs. The more merits you have in Diffusion, and wearing the relic boots when you pop Diffusion (precast of diffusion), will also increase the duration of your AoE buff. Enhancing magic will enhance your physical damage, magical damage, provide buffs such as haste and aquaveil, and haste.

Fourthly, there are Enfeebling spells, such as your AoE sleeps (Sheep Song, Yawn, Dream Flower, etc.), enfeebles (Cold Wave for Frost, Venom Shell for poison, Enervation for Physical and Magical Def down, etc.). There are silences, there are stuns that do not do damage, stat downs, etc. The most important of these spells, can be ones that provide both dark and light elemental based sleeps. They're crowd control. You can pull a bunch of mobs, sleep them, then pick them off one by one. Or burn them down with your elemental nukes.

Finally, there's Healing spells. These either act like cures, or status removal/erase. Pollen is like cure I, though only self-target, Wild Carrot is stronger than that (maybe a cure 2 or 3?) and can be cast on self or party members, Magic Fruit is the most MP efficient cure. It's like Cure 4 in potency. Plenilune Embrace is stronger than Magic Fruit, but costs more MP (106 MP vs magic fruit's 76 MP). It has the additional effect of providing an attack and magic attack buff on the target (it can be cast on self or party members). However, these buffs are affected by the Phases of the Moon. Restoral is a self-cast cure, cures for a cap of 1040 HP (without accounting for cure potency, and day/weather buffs). It's a massive cure, but with a massive cost: 127 MP. You can probably cure for 1560+ HP (if you have light weather to increase past that) at full 50% cure potency. But it's only self-cast, and it burns through your MP like no-one's business. Personally, I stick with Magic Fruit, because it's the most bang for your buck. There are also spells (Exvuation and Winds of Promyvion), that remove status effects. They don't remove status effects that are removable by -na spells (poison, curse, doom, paralyze), but they do remove status effects that are able to be removed by Erase (defense down, magic defense down, gravity, etc.). One special spell, Uproot is considered a nuke (it does AoE damage), but it's also a healing spell (it'll remove all status effects, including ones removable by -na spells like poison, curse, paralyze, etc.). However, holding it back is that it's an Unbridled Learning spell (all "HNM" type spells like behemoths, and other Mega Boss spells, are tied to the job ability Unbridled Learning. We'll go into it later).

Now back in the 75 era, you would weave physical spells with your melee, build up TP, and unleash a self-skillchain with "Chain Affinity" (or CA), which will make your next physical spell able to be used in a skillchain. This allowed you to self-skillchain (such as savage blade to CA Disseverment to yield Distortion (Water/Ice skillchain). This was your bread and butter damage. Post-75 era, your physical spells started to lose damage compared to melee. Adoulin continued this trend, and make the problem worse. Your physical damage spells, no matter how much ilvl gear you wear with accuracy and stat vomit, will NEVER match a good weapon skill. It also became really easy to self-skillchain with weaponskills alone. Chant du Cynge does light with itself, Requiescat to Expiacion does darkness. Savage Blade is amazing damage if you don't have Tizona (use it when over 1000 TP). If you have Tizona, Expiacion will be even stronger than Savage Blade (use it over 1000 TP). You can do some cool stuff (if you see fusion go off in a party, you can do Savage Blade off to make a Light SC, then Chant du Cygne to double light). However, Chant (CDC) has waned in potency, with weaponskill adjustments that were made. Savage Blade/Expiacion are the strongest weapon skills we have (though they do not self-skillchain with themselves).

Also, a note about Colibri mobs (those pink Toucan mobs in Aht Urhgan). Those mobs can mimic black magic spells (they will get hit by one, and recast it back whoever has aggro on the mob). Blue magic cannot be mimicked by Colibri mobs, so don't worry about them blasting you with subduction if you cast it on one (Colibri and Greater Colibri are included in this, while Lesser Colibri do not mimic).

Abyssea and Elemental Spells (Trigger Spells)

Since Abyssea came out BLU are wanted for abyssea for yellow (elemental) triggers for NMs. Triggering yellow weakness greatly enhances the drop rate for upgrade items for trials/empyrean equipment, and it stops the mob from casting magic for a short period of time. You'll want to set three elemental magical spells according to the day the NM is claimed. You'll want to set the element of the day before, the day of, and the day after the day you CLAIMED the NM on.

This is a list of the elemental BLU spells placed in the correct order.

Element	Spell
Fire	Heat Breath
Earth	Magnetite Cloud
Water	Maelstrom
Wind	Mysterious Light
Ice	Ice Break
Lightning	Mind Blast
Light	Radiant Breath
Darkness	Eyes On Me

So, for example, you claim your NM on Earthsday. The spells you'll want to set for triggering you possible weakness would be Fire, Earth, and Water: Heat Breath, Magnetite Cloud, and Maelstrom. Regurgitation would not work, because it's these 8 specific elemental BLU spells (be thankful they removed 1000 Needles from the list of possible triggers).

You'll need to cast your spell when the NM is: not using a TP move (regular attacks from Iron Giant NMs count as TP moves for some reason), not casting a spell, and not affected by a weakness. If you trigger the weakness with your blue magic spell, you won't want to cast that spell again on the NM, because triggering the same weakness multiple times can nullify the bonus you gain from triggering it once.

Voidwatch Triggers

Note that I haven't done voidwatch yet, but I dug around and found some information about it. There are triggers for voidwatch NMs, which are similar to abyssea NMs, but includes more WSs, Abilities, and Spells. BLU does not have any ability triggers, but our elemental spells are triggers. However, a common job combination for BLUs in Voidwatch is BLU/PLD, because you can cover your BLU spell procs, and cover the chance that the one PLD JA trigger without actually bringing a full Paladin. Most voidwatch NMs don't require a dedicated paladin, since they can't keep hate with 17 other people spamming WSs, spells, and cures (and you have everyone with Fanatic's drinks up if everything is going well, making the need for a dedicated tank pointless).

Element	Spells	Spell Points
Fire	Firespit, Heat Breath, Thermal Pulse, Blastbomb	14
Earth	Magnetite Cloud, Sandspin, Cimicine Discharge, Bad Breath	13
Water	Maelstrom, Acrid Stream, Corrosive Ooze, Cursed Sphere	14
Wind	Mysterious Light, Hecatomb Wave, Leafstorm, Reaving Wind	13
Ice	Ice Break, Infrasonics, Cold Wave, Frost Breath	11
Lightning	Mind Blast, Temporal Shift, Charged Whisker, Blitzstrahl	17
Light	Radiant Breath, Actinic Burst, Blank Gaze, Light of Penance	15
Darkness	Eyes On Me, Death Ray, Sandspray	8

BLU has a lot of spell triggers, one BLU can only cover half the triggers, you set one half of the elements for BLU try to proc. If you have two BLUs in the party, coordinate with the other BLU to have all the BLU spells covered, set the elements he doesn't have set. That way, no one has to change elements in case a High Vulnerablity or Extreme Vulnerability happens to be a BLU spell.

Healing Magic

Another important note about Blue Magic Spells: we get a few healing spells. They are all affected by MND (some are also affected by VIT, Wild Carrot and Magic Fruit in particular), just like cure is. However, the White Magic Cure spells have one advantage that Magic Fruit and Wild Carrot don’t have. You can target someone outside of the party to cure them. Blue Magic healing spells cannot target someone outside the party, so you can’t use them to power level someone, you cannot even target someone in another party, but is in the same alliance. Just be mindful of this fact.

Diffusion and Buffs

Eventually, when a BLU gets to level 75, they get the chance to put in merits. One of the job abilities and traits we can merit is Diffusion, which when a self-target buff is cast after the job ability is used, the buff gets turned from a self target to a AoE Buff for all party members. The following spells can be used with Diffusion:

Plenilune Embrace, Magic Fruit, and Wild Carrot do not work with Diffusion because they aren't self-targeting spells, they can target party members. Diamondhide and Healing Breeze are self-targeting, but are party AoE spells anyway.

Diffusion combined with certain buffs can generate a considerable amount of hate, which can make them useful for tanking situations. Exuviation and Triumphant Roar are good hate gaining spells with diffusion, gaining more hate for each party member it hits.

Physical Magic

Physical Spell Stat Modifiers and Accuracy

Physical spells are different from magical nukes. Like Weapon Skills, they also use a variety of modifiers. How do you know what stat to boost for what spell. The safe bet is Strength, since all spells are modified by a stat dependent on your STR, then are modified by whatever other stats it’s dependent on. For example, Bludgeon, you might find, is modified by Charisma. However, if you deck yourself out in full CHR gear, you’ll find you may not do as much damage as if you decked out in STR. That is because it is modified at first by Strength, then by charisma. When you use chain affinity, it gains a bigger boost from CHR, but since STR affects all your physical spells it is important to concentrate on STR gear. DEX is your second best bet, the three big multi-hit spells are affected by DEX. Also, DEX gives you accuracy which brings us to the next big point: physical spells are dependent on main hand accuracy. Just like a DD needs accuracy to hit a mob, a Blue Mage needs accuracy to insure not just their sword hits connect, but their spells connect too. If your spell misses, you’ll see a message like: “*Your Name here*’s spell has no effect.” You don’t want to see that, so you’ll end up gearing yourself similar to any other damage dealer, like DRG, SAM, DRK, MNK, or WAR for example. You’d better buy those woodsman/sniper rings, and wear that life belt. Sushi is also an excellent food to eat, though early levels, it is better to eat Rice Dumplings, since the straight accuracy bonus will be better than the percentage increase you get from sushi, and it’ll increase your STR and attack as well (good for those sword hits). But attack, while it should not be neglected, does NOT affect physical spells. It’ll just affect your sword damage.

Physical Spells and TP

There is a big misconception among new BLU with physical magic and TP. The spell descriptions say that certain effects of the spell are modified by TP. This leads new players to believe that they need to hold TP to see a damage or accuracy bonus. A good example is Bludgeon. The spell description says, "Accuracy varies with TP." The problem with this is, TP only affects the accuracy when Chain Affinity is used. Square-Enix noted that in the version update that came with the expansion Treasures of Aht Urhgan. When you use Chain Affinity, the next physical spell you use gets enhanced, damage modifiers or accuracy modifiers will be affected by your TP, and you will lose your TP once the spell is cast. But it doesn't matter, since TP won't affect your magic normally. Only when Chain Affinity is used will TP affect your spells. That means you can stop storing your TP and not using any weapon skills before you get chain affinity.

On the other side of the matter, blue magic spells give TP similar to how regular magic spells give TP. However, some physical magic spells hit more than once. Bludgeon can hit thrice, so the mob can get triple the TP of a regular spell if all hits of the spell connects. Normally, physical spells give 10 TP per hit. So Claw Cyclone will give back 20 TP, Bludgeon, Jet Stream, and Frenetic Rip give back 30 TP, and Disseverment and Hysteric Barrage give 50 TP back, all the other single hit spells give 10 TP back. Now if a spell doesn't completely connect, if only one hit of Bludgeon connects, the mob gets back 10 TP instead of 30 TP. If you only get 2 hits in, the mob gets 20 TP. The amount of TP given back to mobs can be reduced by subtle blow, so a BLU/THF with Raja's ring for example, gives 5% less TP to the mob with all their attacks, including physical magic. A BLU/NIN gets the Subtle Blow job trait, so they get a larger negative bonus to the TP they get back, and even more so when your BLU/NIN has Rajas equipped, or whatever other equipment you can find that has Subtle Blow (not that there are many). This normally isn't that important, but just be aware that a BLU spamming multi-hit spells may cause the mob to use TP moves faster.

Skillchains

Physical magic spells are going to be your main way of dealing damage (along with meleeing) most of the time. They are your most cost efficient, fastest casting/recasting, and strongest spells available. They are similar to weapon skills, in that they are have different stat modifiers that affect the damage. Also, when you use the job ability Chain Affinity, they become quite potent, and allow you to skillchain with other players, and even self-skillchain. This makes the Blue Mage extremely versatile skillchain partners once we reach level 40 for Chain Affinity. Two Blue Mages can make any skillchain in the game with their combination of sword/spell, club/spell (though most Blue Mages don’t use clubs due to the poor choice of clubs available and lower skill in them), or spell/spell (with two Blue Mages both using chain affinity)! Early on, our skillchain of choice is Fusion and Gravitation (if you use a club, you can do Fragmentation). At high levels, once you get Savage Blade, you can do Self-Distortion, and Self-Light very easily. Savage Blade + Disseverment gives you Distortion, and Savage Blade + Cannonball gives you Light. However, it takes some fancy macroing and timing to do decent damage with self-light (which would involve using Sneak Attack and DEF, STR, and VIT gear). Most BLU/NIN prefer (due to the lack of SA) to use distortion, since disseverment is such a powerful spell in most cases, and the skillchain will do more damage than Light, surprisingly. In HNM cases, you would find yourself more useful to not skillchain at all, and use Chain Affinity + Sneak Attack + Cannonball (or Vertical Cleave, depending on whether the mob is kited or not and your gear set up).

SATA Spells

This brings up another point. Physical spells are capable of being combined with Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. Sneak Attack guarantees a critical hit, boosting the damage of the spell, however, similar to weapon skills when combined with sneak attack by a player subbing THF, only the first hit of a multi-hit weapon skill or physical spell (yes, physical spells can have multiple hits, just like a weaponskill) will be a guaranteed critical. Just like a DRK/THF doesn’t use sneak attack with Guillotine, don’t expect to use sneak attack with bludgeon and expect a HUGE damage increase, only the first hit of the spell will get the damage bonus. However, Trick Attack works differently. Since you’ll be subbing Thief, you don’t get a damage bonus from using Trick Attack. However, trick attack transfers the enmity (hate) gained from the WHOLE spell onto your trick attack partner, so it works with multi-hit spells like Bludgeon and Jet Stream. So, your best bet with Sneak Attack is to use a single hit spell. The very best spells to combine sneak attack with are as follows: At lower levels, Mandibular Bite and Sickle Slash, at mid-levels, Death Scissors and Dimensional Death, then at endgame: Cannonball and Vertical Cleave. When you use Sneak Attack with a spell, you’ll want to macro in ALL your STR gear (with the exception of Cannonball). This is due to the fact that all those spells rely on strength. Cannonball uses defense and VIT, as well as STR as modifiers, so it requires a specialized build.

Efflux

This is a new JA we get at lvl 83, as stated it gives a TP bonus to the next physical spell you cast. I have no idea how much, but it does give a nice pure damage increase even if the spell has TP modifiers to ACC under chain affinity or something else. Combined with Chain affinity, Efflux can give a sizable spell damage increase. It's especially effective with quadratic continuum. It has a 3 minute recast so it doesn't always line up with chain affinity. But it's a really useful JA.

Gifts and Job Points

At level 99, post Adoulin, Job Points and Gifts were added. Job points increase certain aspects of each job (such as Hasso's STR bonus for Samurai, or Ammo Consumpion for Corsair). Gifts are bonuses you gain for have enough job points spent. If you're a serious BLU, you want to gain as many job points as possible. It is possible to solo job points in certain camps as a Blue Mage using the subduction mana-burn method. Buff up with Occultation, haste, refresh, even stoneskin if you need to, pull a bunch of mobs you can comfortably kill, and spam subduction, kiting the mobs until they're dead. Some other nukes can be useful if the mobs are strong against wind (charged whisker, thermal pulse, etc.).

Here's a list of job point categories and what I feel of them:

Name	Description	Notes
Azure Lore Effect	Increases the damage of physical blue magic spells while under the effect of Azure Lore. Increases damage by 1.	Helps azure lore physical spells' damage a bit. You'll want to max out EVERYTHING eventually, but this one can wait.
Unbridled Wisdom Effect	Enhances the potency of Conserve MP while under the effects of Unbridled Wisdom. Enhances potency by 3.	Makes all those MP expensive spells from unbridled wisdom sometimes cheaper to cast.
Blue Magic Point Bonus	Increases the maximum number of blue magic points. Increase blue magic points by 1.	This gives you more set points (but not set slots) by 1 per upgrade. Max this out immediately, it's the most important job point you can get. Having this category maxed gives you 10 more set points, and this stacks with assimilation, giving you a maximum of 70 set points at your disposal. Work on this first.
Burst Affinity Bonus	Increases blue magic spell damage while under the effects of Burst Affinity. Increase damage by 2.	Magic bursting is rare for Blue mage, but it does affect the magic damage a little bit when you use burst affinity. Not a major priority.
Chain Affinity Bonus	Increases physical blue magic skillchain damage while under the effects of Chain Affinity. Increase skillchain damage by 1%.	This increases your skillchain damage when you're using chain affinity and trying to skillchain, usually your self-skillchains (like Chant Du Cynge + Sinker Drill = Darkness). It's nice for solo skillchaining, because parties tend to spam weapon skills and interrupt your skillchains.
Phys. Blue Magic Acc.	Increases the accuracy of additional effects of physical blue magic. Increase additional effect accuracy by 1 percent.	This increases the magical accuracy of physical spells' additional effect. This is a sizable chunk of magical accuracy, because it's 1 PERCENT per upgrade. Having 10 job points in this gives you 10% magical accuracy bonus for sudden lunge's stun effect. This is also an important upgrade. Maybe try to upgrade this second.
Unbridled Learning Effect	Increases the damage dealt by blue magic usable under the effects of Unbridled Learning. Increase damage by 1%.	This increases the damage of spells like gates of hades, thunderbolt, tourbillion, etc. Not much to say about it.
Unbridled Learning Effect II	Increases the effect duration of blue magic usable under the effects of Unbridled Learning that affects party members. Increase effect duration by 1%.	Probably the worst of all the job points, and the most confusing. None of the blue magic unbridled learning spells affect party members. It affects the buffs, like Pyric Bulwark and Harden Shell's duration. For Carcharian Verve, it only affects the aquaveil duration, I've heard, and not the magic/physical attack bonus. Focus on this last if possible.
Efflux Effect	Increases the TP bonus from physical blue magic spells while under the efect of Efflux. Increases TP bonus by 10.	Efflux increases the TP bonus of spells, and stacks with chain affinity. They're synergistic in that regards. This increases your physical spells' damage. This is a nice upgrade, it'll give you +100 TP bonus to physical spells when using efflux.
Magic Accuracy Bonus	Increases magic accuracy. Increase magic accuracy by 1.	This magical accuracy upgrade is less than "Physical Blue magic Acc" but it affects magical nukes and physical additional effects. Gravity from subduction is more likely to hit. This makes this a priority.

Gifts

Spell Strengths and Weaknesses

Magical spells have different element types (earth, fire, wind, etc.), come from different enemy types (aquan, beasts, demons, etc.), and physical magic comes in the three different damage types (blunt, piercing, and slashing). Some enemies have resistance to some damage types (slimes are resistant to physical damage), while some are weak against others (pots are weak against blunt damage). Know your enemies well, for as a BLU, you are using your own enemies attacks against them, it is similar to how a BST needs to know how to use the creatures he charms against other enemies.

Spell Types – Ecosystems

Spells come from different kinds of mobs that serve different roles in Vana’diel’s ecosystems. If you’ve played BST, you’ll know that certain mobs can intimidate, or be intimidated by other mobs. It’s like rock-paper-scissors that goes on like this: Beasts beat Lizards which beat Vermin which beats Plantoids which beats Beasts, Aquan beats Amorpha beats Birds beats Aquan, Undead and Arcana oppose each other, Dragons and Demons oppose each other, Lumorian and Luminion (two types of creatures in sea) oppose each other, and Beastmen stand on their own. A beast type spell will have an advantage against a lizard enemy, but a beast spell will be weak against a plantoid mob. Not only that you need to be aware of the elements as well. Magical spells of one type can be resisted if used against a mob type that it is weak against. This is called Monster Correlation (BLU’s AF helm enhances this effect, as do one of our group one merits).

Blue Magic Job Traits

Blue mage gets a lot of job traits that normally belong to other jobs. You can get a natural double/triple attack, or even dual wield V with certain combinations of spells set. There is a good guide on blue magic job traits on what spells gives what: Blue Mage Job Traits. To obtain one tier of a trait, you need to set enough spells with the same trait that gives you 8 'points' toward that trait. In the spell set list menu, you look at the number next to the trait, and it's usually a number like 4 or 8. Those numbers have to add up to 8 for the first tier of a trait, 16 for the second, and so forth. Auto Refresh is special, in that at lower levels, to obtain the trait, you needed more spells because they're worth not as many points toward auto refresh until you get winds of promyvion, plasma charge, and actinic burst, which each give 4 points toward the 8 you need for auto refresh.

Blue Magic Trait Break-Down

Double Attack/Triple Attack - Blue Mage's Double attack and triple attack aren't as high in percentages as the warrior/thief versions. Setting two tiers of double attack spells actually grants triple attack instead of double attack II. Triple attack (or double attack) is essential for a melee Blue mage. This trait isn't affected by the blue mage job trait gifts.

Magic Attack Bonus - Important for a blue mage who is using nukes (like subduction). However, I prioritize the spells I need as nukes over having one nuke with a lot of magic attack bonus traits.

Dual Wield - Can get up to Dual Wield V (ninja lvl 99 tier) with enough spells set, and high enough job point gifts.

Gilfinder/Treasure Hunter - Setting all 3 spells count towards the trait gilfinder upgrades the trait to treasure hunter I. This isn't affected by the blue mage job trait bonus gifts. It's there if you need it for farming stuff, but you can also get a thief trust that has treasure hunter if you really need it.

Magic Accuracy Bonus - Tenebral Crush gives the unique job trait magic accuracy bonus on its own, which is a nice trait for either landing spells like sudden lunge, or nuking spells. It doesn't hurt that tenebral crush also gives a defense down effect, and is a really strong spell (particularly with clubs equipped and a good magic attack set). CAN be upgraded with the blue mage job trait gifts.

Accuracy Bonus - Having Nature's Meditation for accuracy bonus is important when you're meleeing, a lot of high end content is highly evasive. Nature's Meditation also gives around 20% attack when cast, so it's a must have spell.

Store TP - It increases your TP gain which is important, particularly for Tizona blue mages, but also for others. It doesn't cost much to get store TP, set sudden lunge and fantod and you've got store TP, so why not have it if you're meleeing?

Fast Cast - Blue Mage's first tier of fast cast is weaker than red mage's first tier of fast cast, however, it's an important trait, and it's attached to Erratic Flutter, one of our most important spells. It gives Haste II when cast, so no matter what you're doing, you'll always want haste II up. Nukes like Tenebral Crush have long cast times unless you have plenty of fast cast gear and traits ready.

Auto Refresh - Having Winds of Promy. and Actinic burst gives you an innate source of refresh, it's important to be able to cast the spells you have and not run out of MP. Being limited to only auto refresh tier I sucks, but it's not affected by job trait gifts, and you can't upgrade it past Auto Refresh I. Have battery charge or /RDM's refresh ready at all times. You could also ask a red mage for refresh II on you, or summon a trust like Arcelia who will refresh II you (Koru-Moru won't refresh II you, unfortunately, he hates BLUs for some reason).

Blue Magic Spells

Levels 1-10

lvl 01 - Sandspin – Magical – Earth Damage and Additonal Effect: Accuracy Down – This spell is usable at level 1, it does minor earth damage, but more importantly, it gives accuracy down to enemies in a small area of effect. No one is going to equip sand spin for the damage. But they are for the accuracy down. This is useful even at high levels and in BCNMs.

lvl 01 - Pollen – Magical – Recovers HP – Also usable at level 1, this should be one of the first spells you should try to get. This is the equivalent to a cure. However, it’s only a self-target spell, meaning you can’t use it on anyone else. It’s good early on in your early levels, however, unlike the mob you get this spell from (Bees), this spell has a cap of 34 HP healed (there are ways to increase it, such as the Light Staff). So, soon you’ll find that Pollen becomes less and less useful, and you would want to replace it with another spell that’s more useful. However, early on, you may find you can pseudo-cure tank in the dunes. With pollen, cocoon, provoke (sub WAR), and high damage spells, you can cure tank like a Paladin does (maybe even better in the dunes). Just bring some MP drinks to reduce down time to help. It might be a good time to start leveling your cooking skill.

lvl 01 - Foot Kick – Physical – Damage (Blunt) – No Thrills, basic low damage spell. No bells or whistles here. It can be useful for building a mob’s TP for learning spells.

lvl 04 - Power Attack – Physical – Critical Damage (Blunt) – No thrills, low damage physical spell. Like foot kick, you’ll use it once you get them, and then replace it when stronger spells come across. Though this CAN be useful later on, just when you want to spam a low damage spell just feed a mob TP so you can learn a spell.

lvl 04 - Sprout Smack – Physical – Damage (Blunt) and Additional Effect: Slow – This spell does something neat, it gives the enemy the Slow status effect, around 15% Slow. This can be useful with a ninja tank for keeping up shadows. It’s definitely useful for awhile.

lvl 04 - Wild Oats – Physical – Damage (Piercing) and Additional Effect: VIT Down – This spell is a godsend at low levels. The damage isn’t significant, the VIT down effect is important, especially on mobs like Crabs that have High VIT and DEF. The effect decays over time, so the mob will regain VIT gradually.

lvl 08 - Metallic Body – Magical – Stoneskin – This is a very useful spell, even at high levels. This gives you Stoneskin, though it is weaker than the white magic spell Stoneskin. It is overridden by stoneskin, and is affected by your level and blue magic skill. It’s low cost, and still usable at level 75, though it won’t take a whole lot of punishment.

lvl 08 - Cocoon – Magical – Defense Bonus +50% – This is also a very useful spell, this increases your DEF by 50%. Good for when you take hate, are tanking, or soloing. Also, this spell is a MUST for when you use Cannonball. Since Cannonball has a DEF modifier, this will boost your damage by a noticeable amount.

lvl 08 - Queasyshroom – Physical – Damage (Piercing) and Additional Effect: Poison (3 HP/tick) – This spell has some use, while it has a weak poison effect, in ballista, this spell STRIPS all shadows from Utsusemi, which is useful.

Levels 11-20

lvl 12 - Battle Dance – Physical – AoE Damage (Slashing) and Additional Effect: DEX Down – This spell can help you decrease accuracy further (though not as well as Sandspin), but the damage isn’t stellar, and you don’t see a huge change. However, you would want to equip this spell since it is one of the spells that can give you the attack bonus job trait.

lvl 12 - Head Butt – Physical – Damage (Blunt) and Additional Effect: Stun – This spell is godly, you will always be using this spell, even at level 75. This spell can helps make the BLU what it is. This allows you to stun enemy TP moves, spells, and keep enemies from attacking so you or your party can get utsusemi shadows back up. Always keep this equipped, you can alternate using this spell with other DD physical spells. Your NIN tanks will love you for this spell. Always keep this spell set. Just note that stun can be resisted, it helps to have magic accuracy as well as haste in your gear set for casting this spell. People make magic accuracy magian swords thinking it helps their spells, it'll help prevent resists from head butt stun or other additional effects of spells, it won't help the spell ITSELF to hit, just additional effects. Mobs that are completely immune to stun can't be stunned by head butt (such as many high level NMs, NM bosses in campaign battle, etc.) it's not foolproof, like the dark magic Stun spell. It can miss complete, the stun can get resisted (you get a knockback animation if head butt stun is resisted, the mob will get pushed back, then return to its regular position).

lvl 12 - Feather Storm – Physical – Damage (Piercing) and Additional Effect: Poison – This is similar to queasyshroom, fairly low damage combined with low damage poison. Not much special to say about it. Can be used for the useless Rapid Shot job trait (useless for BLU anyway, since we only get a few throwing weapons, yet lack a skill in them).

lvl 16 - Helldive – Physical – Damage (Blunt) and Additional Effect: Knockback – Another no thrills physical spell, but this does knock back, which has a possibility of interrupting spells cast by mage mobs.

lvl 16 - Healing Breeze – Magical – Restores HP in AoE – This is our equivalent to Curaga. It is affected by MND, and has a soft cap at 180 HP. Useful for support situations in parties, though it draws in hate. It also can be used for the auto-regen trait when combined with sheep song. Divine seal increases the amount healed by this spell, and so does a light staff. Seems to cap at around 120 HP cured.

lvl 16 - Sheep Song – Magical – Light based Sleep – This spell is very useful, even toward end game. If you get a link, perhaps while fighting undead, whip out sheep song, and all the mobs in a small AoE (centered around you) will fall asleep. This is similar to lullaby, in that it is light based. A light staff can help the potency of this spell.

lvl 18 - Bludgeon – Physical – Three-fold damage (Blunt) – This spell will be your basic, bread and butter attack for awhile. It is affected by CHR, which is surprising, but it is also affected by STR, and you’ll notice a larger return if you increase STR rather than CHR. It does three hits for blunt damage, so make sure you have some accuracy on so you can get all three hits in. It's more MP efficient than other physical damage spells for a long while (such as claw cyclone).

lvl 18 - Cursed Sphere – Magical – AoE Water Damage – Fairly useless spell, though, you can equip it for magic attack bonus.

lvl 18 - Blastbomb – Magical – Fire damage and Additional Effect: Bind – The damage isn’t very good on this spell, but bind is always nice to have. It’s good in ballista for getting your opponent to stand still. The bind is ice based, while the spell is fire based damage. Regurgitation is better when you get it at higher levels.

lvl 20 - Blood Drain – Magical – Steals enemy’s HP (Dark Damage) – This spell pales in comparison to digest. When I used it, I was getting around 20 HP back, less than pollen. It doesn’t really seem worth using.

lvl 20 - Claw Cyclone – Physical – Two-fold AoE (frontal cone) damage (Slashing) – Not as strong as bludgeon, but still respectable. Be careful if there are any other mobs around you, because it hits anything in front of you. It’s worth having equipped for awhile. Can be turned into a single target by facing away from the target and casting.

Levels 21-30

lvl 22 - Poison Breath – Magical – Water Damage and Poison in a fan shaped AoE (Damage based on HP) – This spell is your first breath spell, however, it is rather weak. The poison effect is 4 HP/tick, but only lasts for 30 seconds, so it does around 40 damage worth before the poison wears off. It’s useful for the clear mind traits.

lvl 24 - Soporific – Magical – AoE Darkness based Sleep – Similar to sheep song, this puts all enemies in the AoE to sleep. But unlike sheep song, this is dark-based sleep (like the Sleep spell). It is useful for links or emergencies.

lvl 26 - Screwdriver – Physical – Critical Damage (Piercing) – This spell is useful against amorph mobs (like hecteyes). Not as strong as bludgeon, but if you do a BCNM such as Under Observation, you’ll want to use it, since it gains a damage bonus due to both it’s piercing damage, and it’s aquan nature.

lvl 28 - Bomb Toss – Magical – Fire AoE Damage – This spell is useful for only one thing, the STR +2 stat bonus it gives when set. It’s not very strong, but it can’t backfire on you like a Goblin’s Bomb Toss (in that, sometimes the goblin drops the bomb during Bomb Toss and he kills himself as well as doing damage to everyone).

lvl 30 - Wild Carrot – Magical – Restores HP to one party member (Light) – This is a VERY useful spell, and I wish I had it early on in my BLU career (it wasn’t learnable when I started leveling BLU right after the Expansion came out). It is much stronger than pollen, and you can cast it on any party member (but not people outside of the party). It is based on MND and to a lesser extent, VIT. It’s replaced by Magic Fruit later on.

lvl 30 - Grand Slam – Physical – AoE (Blunt) damage – Not very useful in most cases. You learn it from Gigas, but there isn’t much reason to set it. It can be used for the Defense Bonus Trait, but that trait isn't that useful. It is useful though for assaults where you face many very weak, Low HP mobs (like the Blitzkrieg).

Levels 31-40

lvl 32 - Sound Blast - Magical - AoE INT Down (Fire) - Lowers INT, making enemy spells do slightly less damage, and decreasing magic defense (which is dependent on INT). It's only one spell point though, so you could set it with Cursed Sphere for a cheap Magic Attack Bonus trait. But other than that, not that useful.

lvl 32 - Chaotic Eye - Magical - Gaze attack Silence (Wind) - This spell is one of the more useful ones, though if you have a WHM or other mage, you won't really need this spell, but it can be useful for soloing. It's silences, but it is a gaze attack, meaning you need to be facing the mob's face for the silence to stick, else it has no effect. It can also be used for getting Conserve MP.

lvl 34 - Death Ray - Magical - Darkness based damage - It's interesting since it's one of the few darkness based nukes, but at 49 MP, (opposed to Bludgeon's 16 MP cost) it'd be cheaper to just cast anything else instead, besides the fact that you need CHR to get it to do decent damage.

lvl 34 - Smite of Rage - Physical - Damage (Slashing) - It does some nice damage, and when combined with Bludgeon, it gives you the undead killer trait.

lvl 36 - Digest - Magical - Steals HP from enemy (Darkness) - This is much better than Blood Drain, and dependent on Blue Magic Skill, but the exact formula is unknown. It's nice if you burst it once you can do Gravitation.

lvl 36 - Pinecone Bomb - Physical - Damage (Piercing) and Additional Effect: Sleep - The damage isn't that great, but that's not why you set this spell. You set this spell because you want to sleep something. It's similar to the WS Shockwave in that it does damage and sleeps at the same time, but it's single target. If you get a link, or aggro, you can quickly pop off a pinecone bomb and run away or finish what you're fighting. Fairly fast recast time compared to sleep spells, but the sleep doesn't last as long as the spell Sleep (though the duration depends on how much TP you have if you use Chain Affinity). The sleep is Darkness based.

lvl 38 - Blank Gaze - Magical - Gaze attack Dispel (Light) - It's unique because it's a light based dispel like BRD's magic finale. Very useful in case you don't have a RDM or BRD (or if the one you have is too busy to dispel at the moment, or he sucks). You must be facing the target's face in order for the spell to be effective.

lvl 38 - Jet Stream - Physical - Three-Fold Attack (Blunt) - This is Bludgeon's big brother, it uses more MP, but it's stronger. But once you get it, it'll be one of your favorite spells. It's useful in two levels after you get it, because once you get Chain Affinity, you can use Red Lotus Blade > Jet Stream > Fusion. It can be cast from a bit of a distance, and it will always hit three utsusemi shadows in Ballista.

lvl 38 - Uppercut - Physical - Damage and Additional Effect: Knockback (Blunt) - It has some nice stats when set, and can also be used to make the Fusion skillchain, but it's not as strong as Jet Stream. Best use for this spell is for the Attack Bonus trait.

lvl 40 - Mysterious Light - Magical - AoE Wind Damage and Additional Effect: Weight - An expensive alternative (73 MP) to the Red Mage's Gravity spell. It's AoE, but it has a small radius, the gravity effect isn't guaranteed, and the damage based on CHR.

lvl 40 - Terror Touch - Physical - Damage (Blunt) and Additional Effect: Attack Down - It's useful only for the attack down effect, it has a long cast time for physical spells.

Levels 41-50

lvl 42 - Venom Shell - Magical - AoE Poison (Water) - Very expensive MP-wise for a poison spell, it doesn't seem as strong as the mob version (12 HP/tick). Not worth it.

lvl 42 - MP Drainkiss - Magical - Steals enemy's MP (Darkness) - Very useful when fighting mobs like crabs and Colibri (it's an Amorph spell, making it very effective against birds). It doesn't require any INT to work well, but just slap on your AF hat when using it against Colibri to increase it's effectiveness (since it has the Monster Correlation increase on it). Colibri and Greater Colibri mimic normal magic spells, but not Blue Magic, making this safe to cast against them. However, certain NMs (see Chamrosh) can mimic any kind of magic (including blue magic physical and magical spells, excluding Self-Destruct), so Chamrosh will reflect it. However, MP Drainkiss sees decreased effectiveness compared to Magic Hammer at max level, due to the advent of magic damage+ equipment.

lvl 44 - Mandibular Bite - Physical - Physical Damage (Slashing) - A very useful physical spell, it does good damage, costs less MP than Jet Stream, but the damage is on par with it. A basic, bread and butter spell you will be using for awhile, since after you get this and sickle slash, there is a drought of physical spells. Oh, and you can do Induration with it if you want the mages to magic burst Ice off of your skillchains. Circle Blade > Mandibular Bite > Induration. It's a good Sneak Attack spell when you're BLU/THF.

lvl 44 - Blitzstrahl - Magical - Damage (Thunder) and Additional Effect: Stun - It does low damage unless you stack up on INT and MND gear, slow casting and recast time, this isn't a suitable stunning spell, since when you want to stun something, you want to stun it fast, and this spell is anything but fast.

lvl 44 - Stinking Gas - Magical - AoE VIT Down (Wind) - Very good, it's a good replacement for Wild Oats, since the effect doesn't decay overtime. Also used for an auto refresh job trait.

lvl 46 - Magnetite Cloud - Magical - Earth Damage and Additional Effect: Weight - it does more damage than Mysterious Light, since the damage is based off of your HP (like a breath spell), but it's expensive at 86 MP per cast with a long cast time.

lvl 46 - Geist Wall - Magical - AoE Dispel (Darkness) - Useful, if you can't get in front of the mob, or you need to another dispel (such as for certain assault missions like Lamia No 13), though be careful with nearby mobs, since it is AoE.

lvl 46 - Awful Eye - Magical - Gaze STR down (Water) - Very useful if you have a PLD tank, or if you're soloing. It's a gaze attack where you need to be right in front of the mob with it facing you.

lvl 48 - Sickle Slash -Physical - Critical Damage (Slashing) - Very powerful, can be alternated with Jet Stream and Mandibular Bite. This was one of my standard spells until I reached the three big multi-hit spells (hysteric barrage, frenetic rip, and disseverment). Can be used for Gravitation, Red Lotus Blade > Sickle Slash > Gravitation (Earth & Darkness). If you're a BLU/THF you can use SA when you use Sickle Slash for a guaranteed critical hit, it does some nice damage. If you can do so, you can also magic burst MP Drainkiss if you're EXPing on something with MP (like Crabs).

lvl 48 - Blood Saber - Magical - Drains HP from all mobs in range (Darkness) - Seems fairly pointless in most situations, it's not as strong as Digest, and if you're getting pummeled a bunch of mobs, you're better off trying to sleep them all than draining their HP. It's very situational. But it IS a godsend when trying to defeat many weak attacking mobs (like the Blitzkrieg assault).

lvl 48 - Refueling - Magical - Self-Haste (Wind) - This spell gives you about 10% haste, with a fast cast time, and fairly fast recast. For BLU/NIN, who crave haste to reduce dual-wielding delay, this is awesome. It's free haste. Only other jobs that get free haste are RDM and WHM with their own Haste spell. It lasts longer than the white magic Haste spell too, though it's slightly less haste. Refueling is overridden by the white magic spell Haste. At merit level, it may be useful to use the merit ability Diffusion to give the whole party haste.

lvl 48 - Jettatura - Magical - Gaze attack, enemies in a fan shaped AoE are afflicted with Terror (Darkness) - This is a unique spell, in that it's the only player spell that gives the status effect terror. Terror is just like stun, it stops the target from acting temporarily. However, it can be resisted easier than stun. It is not as potent as the version the hippogryphs you get it from use (or the terror abilities wyrms use), but it can terrorize multiple targets that are in front of you, and are looking at you. This spell does generate a lot of hate, so it can be used as a hate tool.

lvl 50 - Frightful Roar - Magical - AoE Defense down (Wind) - This spell ranks among the more useful spells. This is the same kind of DEF down that acid bolts can give. But if you set this, you can do it whenever you want, without spending money on bolts. Also, it can be used for getting auto refresh.

lvl 50 - Ice Break - Magical - AoE Ice Damage with Additional Effect: Bind - This spell is fairly useless, since you already have Blastbomb for bind, and that is ranged with a longer cast time, though if you were in a situation with a bunch of mobs on you or someone next to you, you could possibly cast this spell, then move out of melee range. But wouldn't it be better to just cast a sleep spell instead? Very situational.

lvl 50 - Self-Destruct - Magical - AoE Fire Damage (dependent on HP) - You know that attack that bombs do? When they blow themselves up? This does just that. You blow yourself up. Except when bombs do it, they die, and this just reduces you to 1 HP, not only that, but it weakens you as if it DID kill you. This spell is useless, except for the fact that you can use it for the auto-refresh job trait. Only reason you would need to use this spell is if you want to die fast for some reason, like to get tractored somewhere.

Levels 51-60

lvl 52 - Filamented Hold - Magicial - Slow in a Fan-shaped AoE (Earth) - It's a stronger slow than the slow that Sprout Smack gives, so it can be useful for soloing if you want a mob to attack slower, it gives 25% Slow.

lvl 52 - Cold Wave - Magical - AoE Frost - This gives an agility decreasing frost effect on all enemies in the AoE. This is helpful on high agility/evasion mobs since it's very strong (more than -35 AGI) but the effect decays over time, and does 18 damage per tick. It is also used for auto-refresh.

lvl 54 - Hecatomb Wave - Magical - Wind damage in fan shaped AoE with Additional Effect: Blindness (based on HP) - Not so useful, it is very MP costly (116) and has a long cast time, though it does damage proportionate to your HP like a breath spell, but it is a lower tier breath spell, at 75 with 1195 HP, it should do around 350 damage, while later breath spells do a greater proportion of your HP in damage.

lvl 54 - Radiant Breath - Magical - Light based damage with additional effect: Bind and Silence - Interesting to have a light based nuke that isn't Banish or Holy. It has a long cast and recast time (as do most breath spells), but it does even less damage than Hecatomb Wave.

lvl 56 - Feather Barrier - Magical - Evasion Bonus (Wind) - This gives you an evasion bonus that lasts even less than cocoon does, it lasts only 30 seconds, making it's usefulness limited. But it can be combined with Diffusion.

lvl 58 - Flying Hip Press - Magical - AoE Wind Damage based on current HP - If you need another breath-like spell early on, here is one. Damage is one-third of your current HP.

lvl 58 - Light of Penance - Magical - Reduces TP with Additional Effect: Blind and Bind (Light) - This sounds useful, but it really isn't since there's no way of telling how much TP you're removing from the target, it isn't as strong as the full TP wipe that the Tonberry get when they use it. If you can use it in Ballista, it could be cool. However, you'll want to equip this as soon as you can, because it can be used for auto-refresh.

lvl 58 - Magic Fruit - Magical - Restores HP to party member (Light) - This is a must have spell, great for soloing, and just an all around useful spell. It's stronger than wild carrot, based on MND and on a lesser degree VIT. It only can cure within the party though. But with a /WHM sub, and full MND gear, you can push this spell into Cure V levels.

lvl 60 - Death Scissors - Physical - Physical Damage (Slashing) - Finally another physical spell! This one is very strong when combined with Sneak Attack. An early staple for BLU/THF, and is part of an Attack Bonus trait combo. Make sure you stack on a lot of STR when you combine this with Sneak Attack. Also, it's best used when you have a bit of TP built up.

lvl 60 - Dimensional Death - Physical - Physical Damage (Blunt) - Another spell that's good with Sneak Attack. Not as strong as Death Scissors, due to the lower STR modifier, but it can be used to make a Accuracy Bonus Trait.

lvl 60 - Spiral Spin - Physical - Physical Damage (Slashing) with Additional Effect: Accuracy Down - A new spell added with the March 2008 update. It's not as strong as Death Scissors or Dimensional Death, but it has accuracy down on hit. The accuracy down effect doesn't seem to last as long as Sand Spin's.

Levels 61-70

lvl 61 - Eyes On Me - Magical - Darkness Damage - Another, stronger Darkness based nuke. It's based off of CHR though, so you need specialized gear to make it worthwhile. Very useful at end game against mobs that are strong against physical damage if you have the set up for it.

lvl 61 - Maelstrom - Magical - AoE Water Damage with Additional Effect: STR Down - Another costly nuke that has INT as a main modifier, with a MND secondary modifier.

lvl 61 - Bad Breath - Magical - Earth damage in a fan-shaped AoE (based on HP) with Additional Effect: Multiple Enfeebles - A staple of Blue Magic, can Bad Breath live up to it's reputation in previous FF games? The survey says no. It does a minimal amount of damage for a breath spell (175 damage for a lvl 75 with 1200 HP), it costs 212 MP (more than the other breath spells, even ones you get later on), and the only good thing about it is the myriad of status effects it can inflict. The only time you would want to use it, (NM mobs) there are other jobs you can count on to do any of those enfeebles for far less MP that'll stick longer. Don't bother using it unless for fun, or for a Fast Cast trait when combined with Sub-Zero Smash.

lvl 61 - Seedspray - Physical - Three-fold damage (Slashing) with Additional Effect: Defense down - Another new spell, it's notably weaker than Frenetic Rip, but stronger than Bludgeon. It is a ranged spell, similar to Cannonball. Tests show a 15 foot range. Defense down is around ~9% instead of 15%, so it's weaker than Frightful Roar in that regards.

lvl 62 - Body Slam - Physical - AoE Physical Damage (Blunt) - Not very useful, you don't really need AoE physical damage much, and it isn't a great amount either. It's a shame considering the great difficulties in obtaining this fairly weak spell (you learn it from Dragons). Good against large amounts of weak enemies (like certain assaults like Blitzkrieg or the burning circle fights in Wings of the Goddess like Fire in the Hole).

lvl 62 - Memento Mori - Magical - Magic Attack Bonus (Ice) - Very important if you plan on casting magical nukes, though they don't affect breath spells. It adds +20 magic attack for only 30 seconds, so make it count, that's probably enough to cast one or two good spells.

lvl 62 - 1000 Needles - Magical - 1000 damage divided between all targets in the AoE (Light) - Useless, plain useless. It's very unreliable, being it's a hit-or-miss spell. Most of the time, the spell will fail, unless convergence is used, a light staff, and/or magic accuracy gear is equipped, and no damage will be dealt, while you waste 350 MP. We will not be 1k Needling HNMs any time soon. You'd be better off using a buffed SACA Cannonball, a geared Mind Blast or Eyes of Me. The only use for this spell is for fun.

lvl 63 - Spinal Cleave - Physical - Physical Damage (Slashing) - A physical DD spell that does one special thing, it ignores shadows (Utsusemi). This trait is shared by Vertical Cleave.

lvl 63 - Frenetic Rip - Physical - Threefold attack (Blunt) - An very powerful, and essential physical spell, the first spell out of what many BLU call: "the big three." These are multi-hit spells that BLU/NIN at high level use do to a lot of damage. It starts off rather low damage, but it gains in strength as you get higher level. This spell is a bit more consistent in damage than Hysteric Barrage and Disseverment (since it has less hits). But you need a decent amount of Accuracy for the full spell (all three strikes) to hit. This spell isn't so good against mobs that have high evasion or high defense. Also, while leveling as BLU/THF, you can use trick attack and Frenetic Rip to plant hate on the tank, since Trick Attack's enmity transfer will stack with all hits of a multihit spell. You may use a high damage, single hit spell with sneak attack (like Death Scissors), then shed some of the hate by trick attacking someone else with Frenetic Rip.

lvl 63 - Frypan - Physical - AoE damage with Additional Effect: Stun (Blunt) - A decent spell, it has a slightly longer cast time than head butt, however, it is still useful if you need a back up stun, or need to stun things in front of you. It also looks funny, it's an actual frying pan being banged in front of you. It is also good when fighting large amounts of weak enemies, like farming, or certain assault-type missions with weak enemies (see Body Slam).

lvl 63 - Hydro Shot - Physical - Physical Damage (Blunt) with Additional Effect: Enmity Down - This is another interesting spell, it decreases your enmity? The damage isn't very good though, and if you sub /NIN, enmity is never a trouble, since you can blink through most things with shadows. Why is this a physical spell instead of water?

lvl 64 - Feather Tickle - Magical - Reduces TP (Wind) - A use challenged spell, since it doesn't do a full TP wipe, you can't really tell how much you're decreasing the mob's TP by. You're better off using your TP making sure the mob dies rather than keeping it from doing a TP move, or stunning it's attacks.

lvl 64 - Yawn - Magical - AoE Sleep for all enemies facing you (Light) - A very useful spell, though enemies need to be facing you, so maybe it might be useful for you do to do a spell like Actinic Burst to get their attention, then hit them with Yawn to put them to sleep.

lvl 64 `- Voracious Trunk - Magical - Steals one beneficial effect (Wind) - This is dispel, but with a twist, you transfer the buff you remove to yourself, so if your target has haste, you get haste. But it has a high MP cost, and a long cast time, plus it can be resisted. However, you WILL want to equip this when you get it just because it offers points toward Auto-Refesh.

lvl 65 - Infrasonics - Magical - Decreases enemy evasion in a fan shaped AoE (Ice) - Finally, a spell that can decrease an enemy's evasion, is this the solution to DD's need for sushi? Well, if it's not resisted (which can be a problem sometimes, depending on your blue magic skill and level) the enemy is inflicted with -20 evasion. But it may not last the whole fight, and if there are any other mobs around you, if can aggro them too if they're in front of you.

lvl 65 - Zephyr Mantle - Magical - Blink (Wind) - The usefulness of this spell varies on your subjob. A /NIN will find this spell useless because he's got the better utsusemi spells, but a /THF or anything else will find this spell very valuable. This works exactly like the white magic spell Blink except for one thing. Regular blink gives you 2 shadows, this spell gives you 4 shadows. That is why the recast time is longer than blink, it's basically a double blink, but still goes by the rules that it has a chance of blocking attacks instead of always blocking attacks like utsusemi shadows do. Also, it's useful for setting in conjunction with Frost Breath or Chaotic Eye for the Conserve MP job trait.

lvl 66 - Frost Breath - Magical - Ice damage in a fan-shaped AoE with Additional Effect: Paralyze (Damage dependent on HP) - This is one of the best breath spells you can use. Useful against anything resistant against physical damage, like NMs/HNMs/gods/Jailers. It can paralyze, which is always a good thing, and like all other breath spells, it ignores magic defense, but not magical resistance (like Proto-Omega), though it is still subject to resists. You need to have full HP to do full damage with this spell, so if you get hit, you'll do less damage with it. HP+ gear can help a bit to squeeze out more damage, but the cast time is rather long, so it is hard to hit kited mobs with it. It is also one of the spells you can set to get Conserve MP.

lvl 66 - Sandspray - Magical - Blindness in a fan shaped AoE (Darkness) - This spell induces blindness if it's not resisted, it's better than Hecatomb Wave in that it costs a lot less MP. However, darkness based enemies, and enemies resistant to darkness can resist this spell.

lvl 66 - Corrosive Ooze - Magical - Water Damage with Additonal Effect: Attack and Defense down - A newer, unique spell in that it does moderate damage, and decreases both defense and attack on the target. But the defense down is only ~5%, and the attack down is likely to be the same, so it's a weaker defense down than Seedspray and Frightful Roar.

lvl 67 - Enervation - Magical - AoE Defense down and Magic Defense down (Darkness) - This spell would be useful in HNM type instances where mobs can have a great amount of magic defense/resistance. But this spell itself can be resisted. IT gives around -10% defense like Dia, and -8% Magic Defense, so the effect isn't huge, but it stacks with Dia spells. It doesn't last very long though.

lvl 67 - Diamondhide - Magical - AoE Stoneskin to all party members in range (Earth) - This is spell is stronger than Metallic Body, and is just like Earthen Ward. The amount of damage absorbed by this spell is computed by your level and blue magic skill. MND has no effect on it like Metallic Body, and unlike the White Magic Stoneskin spell. Though it has a rather high MP cost (99 MP), it is useful for fights against mobs with strong AoE attacks.

lvl 68 - Warm-Up - Magical - Accuracy and Evasion up on the caster (Earth) - A very useful spell in cases you need accuracy/evasion, and don't want to use food, or food just isn't enough. For example, if you're fighting colibri, you can't really use sushi on them, because if you get hate, they can take your food away by using Snatch Morsel, and if you use something expensive like Sole Sushi, it'll be hard on your wallet. So, if you need more accuracy, you can cast Warm-Up. It gives +10 accuracy and +10 evasion, and lasts 180 seconds. At merit level, you can give the whole party a boost with the merit ability Diffusion, the whole party in range will get the accuracy and evasion bonus.

lvl 68 - Firespit - Magical - Fire damage to a single target - This one of the few single target magical nukes we get. It hurts when Mamool Ja use it, but it's not a breath spell. It's dependent on INT and MND, so it requires a specialized build (Fire Staff helps too). The stats it gives when equipped are useful (+3 STR) but heat breath costs 1 less set point, so once you get that, you might want to set that instead of this.

lvl 69 - Tail Slap - Physical - Frontal AoE damage (Blunt) with Additional Effect: Stun - This is similar to Frypan, but is only frontal effect. If you need another stun that can do decent damage, you can set this (also part of the Store TP trait combo). But nothing will replace the cheap, fast Head Butt.

lvl 69 - Hysteric Barrage - Physical - Fivefold attack (Blunt) - This is the second attack of what is called by many BLU: "the big three." This spell starts of weak, but when you get higher level, get more powerful, around level 70+, you will see that this is one of your strongest physical, non-SA spells. It can also be used to solo Detonation (Wind): Vorpal Blade > Hysteric Barrage > Detonation.

lvl 69 - Regurgitation - Magical - Water Damage with Additional Effect: Bind - Another bind spell, it seems to stick quite well in early tests, and costs a single magic set point. A winner for the Bind effect, and cheap INT/MND from setting it. Dependent on MND.

lvl 70 - Amplification - Magical - Increases caster's Magic Attack and Magic Defense (Water) - This increases both Magic Attack and Magic Defense on yourself. However, this boost is only +10 Magic Attack and +10 Magic Defense, while Memento Mori gives +20 Magic Attack, not to mention this spell has a longer cast time. However, they cost about the same amount of MP.

lvl 70 - Cannonball - Physical - Physical Damage (Blunt) - This spell has some range to it, so you can cast it from afar, however, it still stacks with Sneak Attack (ranged attacks and ranged weapon skills like Sidewinder, don't stack with Sneak Attack). This is an excellent spell to use against HNMs as a BLU/THF. However, you need a specialized build to get the most out of it. Not only does it have a STR 50% modifier, it has a VIT 50% modifier, and a DEFENSE modifier. This makes Cocoon an excellent spell to have set and casting it before you shoot off a Cannonball improves the damage considerably. Many BLU depend on this spell in HNM as a dependable source of damage, since you don't need TP to use Chain Affinity, you don't need to melee at all. Slap on as much DEF, STR, and VIT as you can, use Cocoon, CA + SA, get behind the mob, and launch your cannonball. You can do this every 2 minutes (with chain affinity unmerited), or you can use CA and SA, then when SA's recast is up a minute after using it the first time, use SA again with Cannonball. Also can be used to solo Light (Light, Thunder, Fire, Wind): Savage Blade > Cannonball > Light. However, light is not always effective against many mobs. Darkness tends to do more damage (see Vertical Cleave).

lvl 70 - Asuran Claws - Physical - Six-fold Damage, accuracy varies with TP (Blunt) - This is a new spell, learned from Gnoles. TP modifier is accuracy. The power of this spell is notably much weaker than Disseverment, Frenetic Rip, or Hysteric Barrage while costing more MP than any of them. It does cost only 2 set points, and is combined with Enervation to form the Counter job trait. However, it is very disappointing, and usually not worth setting or casting. It would only do a bit more damage than a bludgeon, but at a much higher cost.

Levels 71-75

lvl 71 - Lowing - Magical - Inflicts plague on enemies in an AoE (Fire) - An interesting spell, the plague status effect decreases MP and TP. The target loses 5 MP a tick, and 3 TP a tick. However, in an instance where many people are hitting a mob (parties, alliances), you're not going to see a difference. Mob MP is inconsequential in most cases, they're not going to run out of it, and mobs gain TP rather fast, especially with direct damage blue magic giving 10 TP a HIT (more for multi-hit spells), and everyone swinging their weapons and casting nukes, the mob is going to get +100% TP rather fast even if you're draining 3 TP every three seconds.

lvl 71 - Heat Breath - Magical - Fire damage in a fan-shaped AoE (damage dependent on HP) - Another breath spell, this one is very useful against mobs resistant to physical damage (such as gods, sea jailers, and some mobs in Limbus). It costs a lot of MP, but it does good damage, more than the physical spells would do at the times you need it. Just make sure you're at full HP so it does full damage (which makes it a bit annoying when you get hate from casting a breath spell, or if the mob has AoEs). Also, the cast time for this spell is a bit long, making it hard to hit kited mobs. Again, +HP gear can help squeeze some extra damage out of your breath spells (but you still need to be at full HP for it to count).

lvl 71 - Triumphant Roar - Magical - Self-targeting, short lasting +15% (38/256) Attack bonus - This spell is like Warcry, but self-targeting (unless you use diffusion). It lasts for 60 seconds, so you can use it before a weapon skill for increased damage. However, it isn't that useful, since your sword damage isn't as good as say a WAR's dual wielding axe with rampage, or any higher level G-Axe skill. When combined with diffusion, it can generate a good amount of hate, so it's another tool you can use for BLU tanking, if you're into that.

lvl 72 - Disseverment - Physical - Fivefold attack with Additional Effect: Poison (Piercing) - One of the few piercing spells we get, and it is the most powerful multi-hit blue magic spell we get. Part of "the Big Three" spells (Hysteric Barrage, Frenetic Rip and Disseverment). This spell needs a lot of accuracy for all 5 hits. But it can do a lot of damage, especially against birds and imps. You can solo Distortion (Water and Ice) with this spell: Savage Blade > Disseverment > Distortion. Also, this spell can create Darkness (Darkness, Earth, Water, and Ice) when used in a skillchain with another BLU (Vertical Cleave) or any other weaponskill that has a Gravitation property (see a Skillchain chart). However, higher level mobs (ones with high amounts of evasion/defense), do not take a lot of damage from this spell. But it may still be useful if only for the poison effect. Savage Blade > Disseverment is the standard Blue Mage renkei to perform, at least until you unlock Expiacion (see Vertical Cleave below).

lvl 72 - Saline Coat - Magical - Increases Magical Defense (Light) - This handy spell is useful for times when you have to face a lot of magic, such as astral flow and other AoE magic (like Central Temenos 3rd Floor where you have to fight the Yagudo SMN NM: Pee Qoho the Python). It gives a +40 magic defense bonus that decays over time.

lvl 72 - Sub-zero Smash - Physical - Frontal Cone physical damage (Blunt) with Additional Effect: Paralysis. With Chain Affinity, TP modifies damage. The damage this spell does isn't considerable, but the paralysis can come in handy. I tend to stack on STR and MND gear, and hope the MND affects the paralysis potency. But this spell is cheap, and it's earned a spot in my spell set because when you set Bad Breath and this spell, you gain the Fast Cast job trait for -10% cast time, and -5% recast time on all spells. Not a big deal for most BLU spells, because they're already fast, but with homam legs, loq. earring, and ACP body/AMK head geared with fast cast, you can get 26% fast cast, which can help with /NIN Utsusemi: Ichi casting. However, most BLUs won't opt for that, because they can probably find other uses for those add-on pieces, such as a godly WS hat, or a free BLU hauby (ACC+ ATK+ 10) or something for another job. Also supposedly does more damage when you cast facing away from the mob. I've yet to see this damage bonus though.

lvl 73 - Ram Charge - Physical - Physical Damage (Blunt) with Additional Effect: Knockback - A rather useless spell that has the same stat modifiers as the Sword Weapon Skill Savage Blade (STR 30% MND 50%). Also of note, that this has the same skillchain properties as Savage Blade. However, this is only a single hit attack. Since you have Savage Blade, you don't really need to use this spell (especially since you can't self-skillchain with two physical spells due to the chain affinity recast).

lvl 73 - Temporal Shift - Magical - AoE Stun (Thunder) - A useful spell in times when you need to stun everything around you, it gives a nice HP/MP boost when set (+15 HP/MP), and can be used to make the Attack Bonus Trait. The stun effect doesn't last too long, it might be better to use Actinic Burst to flash everything to use Yawn than this.

lvl 73 - Mind Blast - Magical - Thunder Damage with Additional Effect: Paralyze - This spell is really cool looking, which is always nice, though it requires a substantial MND score to do a lot of damage. It is affected by MND, and you need some magic attack bonus too. A Thunder Staff always helps.

lvl 74 - Actinic Burst - Magical - AoE Flash (Light) - An extremely useful spell when confronted with many mobs attacking you at once, the flash effect doesn't last a very long time, but it draws some good hate, and may give you the time to cast a sleep spell (like Yawn). For those who don't know, Flash decreases accuracy for a short period of time, stacks with accuracy down and blindness status effects. It also very useful because you can set both this spell and Plasma Charge in order to get a cheap Auto Refresh trait. So you MUST set this spell and Plasma Charge, because it frees up spell points you'd otherwise be using for Auto Refresh.

lvl 74 - Reactor Cool - Magical - Defense bonus and Ice Spikes (Ice) - This spell increases your defense, and gives you ice spikes that can paralyze when a mob hits you. However, the spikes don't last very long, and most of the time, you're going to not want to get hit, you could be subbing /NIN for utsusemi shadows, or /THF for Sneak Attack and using Zephyr Mantle for blink.

lvl 74 - Magic Hammer - Magical - Light Damage and Additional Effect: Aspir - This spell does damage, and drains an amount of MP from the mob equal to the damage dealt (only if the mob has any MP). It's now AMAZING when combined with magic damage boosting weapons (like clubs). When, say, doing Yorcia Weald Alluvion skirmish, all the mobs you're fighting have MP. Use it against anything except the multi/single butterflies, and the hybrid light-fire elementals, and you'll completely fill up your MP. Anything with MP that's not undead could be used to give you MP if you can do damage with this spell. Used to create the Magic Attack Bonus trait.

lvl 75 - Plasma Charge - Magical - Shock Spikes - This spell is essential, not for the short lived shock spikes (similar to Reactor cool, but without the defense up), but for the STR +3/DEX +3 stats it gives, AND the fact that it is part of the two spell Auto Refresh job trait combo (Actinic Burst is the other spell). The shock spikes also can stun the mob if they hit you, but most of the time, you don't want to get hit, that's what utsusemi and blink are for.

lvl 75 - Vertical Cleave - Physical - Physical Damage (Slashing) - This spell does very good damage, especially when you sub /THF and use Sneak Attack. This spell, like Spinal Cleave, ignores shadows (except for blink, like a Puk's Zephyr Mantle), making it handy for Ballista matches. Stack on STR, since it has a STR 50% modifier for it. Also, if you have another BLU with you in a party, you can use CA Disseverment > CA Vertical Cleave for Darkness (or the other way around, the order doesn't matter). Also, from the September 2008 update, the new Blue Mage Job-specific Mythic WS Expiacion allows you to solo Darkness. Expiacion + Vertical Cleave > Darkness. This WS would make this an even better skillchain to do than the Disseverment Distortion that most BLU/NINs do. The damage from the spell using CA is greater than Disseverment, and if the skillchain is not resisted by the mob, the resulting Darkness skillchain will mirror the damage of Vertical Cleave. A 400 Expiacion followed by a 700 damage Vertical Cleave can result in a 700 damage Darkness when not resisted (for example). If uninterrupted, and proper timing, you can also Magic Burst MP Drainkiss off your Darkness Skillchain (if the mob has MP and is not undead).

lvl 75 - Exuviation - Magical - Self-Erase and Restore HP (Fire) - This spell acts like erase, removing one status their own specialized spell to take care of. Further more, it also cures the amount of HP less than a Cure II. Yeah, this spell is nowhere near as potent as the version used by the giant Wamoura mobs. However, it does have strong enmity generating ability, especially when combined with diffusion and nearby party members, a BLU can generate a lot of hate for tanking situations.

Levels 76-80

lvl 76 - Plenilune Embrace - Magical - Recovers HP and increases Attack and Magic Attack (Light) on party target - The new Cure IV. Depending on MND, it cures for over 400 MP (I was getting 488 HP cured at 76 with 100 MND). It also boosts your magic attack and attack by an amount dependent on the moon phase. The amount cured does NOT vary by the moon phase though. You can get a 5% (new moon) to at least ~12.25% increase in attack (Waxing Gibbeous). The magic attack bonus increase is unknown though. It could be useful to cast this before a nuke near a full moon. Otherwise stick with traditional magic attack bonus spells (like Memento Mori). It's more expensive for a cure, but as you gain higher levels, you get higher cures and more HP. Depending on your MP pool or set points, you may want to stick with magic fruit until you get a higher base MP (or if you need more important spells set).

lvl 77 - Acrid Stream - Magical - Damage in a fan-shaped AoE, additional effect: Magic DEF down (Water) - One of the new spells from Abyssea mobs. It's INT modified and heavily modified by magic attack. Grab a water staff, put on your INT and magic attack gear, use your convergence JA. Testing it quickly with an INT/magic attack set against marids, I got similar numbers to regurgitation with an NQ staff. Not sure how potent the magic defense down effect is, but it can help a group cast stronger nukes on a mob. Combines with demoralizing roar to make Double Attack.

lvl 77 - Leafstorm - Magical - Damage in an AoE surrounding the caster (Wind) - From treants, we learn another spell. LEAVES! I'm reminded of Woodman's Leaf Shield from Megaman 2. Anyway, INT modified and magic attack bonus like Acrid Stream. It seems rather weak, maybe a little weaker than the other new nukes, but it has some range because it's an AoE. Combines with Cimicine Discharge to make Magic Burst Bonus.

lvl 78 - Cimicine Discharge - Magical - AoE Slow around the caster (Earth) - Those annoying gnats give us another slow move. It could be useful if you have a bunch of mobs around you and you've got them slept, enfeeble them all with slow. It's slightly cheaper MP-wise than Filamented Hold, but I've yet to see information on the potency of it. I can't even use this spell yet. Combines with Leafstorm to make the new Magic Burst Bonus trait. I've also heard it has a very large AoE range.

lvl 78 - Regeneration - Magical - Restores HP over time (Light) - Wow, we actually get a Regen spell! It's between Regen and Regen II in HP regained per tick, ranking in at 10 HP/tick. HOWEVER, it lasts longer than regen II, lasting for 90 seconds for 300 HP restored. It looks fantastic for a cheap healing spell. A lot cheaper than magic fruit. But beware that it's not cure, it's regen. However, it's self-targeting and works with Diffusion.

lvl 79 - Animating Wail - Magical - Haste (15%) (Wind) - 15% haste that lasts for 5 minutes. It DOES work with diffusion, unlike with one of Scholar's abilities unable to make WHM or RDM haste AoE for the party. Replace Refueling with this as soon as you can use it, it's a godsend. Your party of melees and your mage will love you if you diffusion the party with it. Makes Dual Wield with Blazing Bound set.

lvl 79 - Battery Charge - Magical - Self-Targeting Refresh (Light) - A 3 hp/tick refresh only targetable on the caster, but can be combined with diffusion for an AoE refresh! Recovers X HP over time. Costs 50 MP. You have a net gain of 150 MP. Yes. This is what we've been waiting for! A way to keep your MP up without a red mage! With 15% haste AND refresh, it puts on par with RDMs for soloing some things, IMO. You need to set this spell! (Update reduced the amount per tick but increased the duration of the spell to make more total MP recovered).

lvl 80 - Blazing Bound - Magical - Deals damage to an enemy (Fire) - It's some sort of fire nuke. It combines with Animating wail for Dual Wield. It probably works similarly to Leafstorm and Acrid Stream in that it's INT based and heavily modified with magic attack. On the short testing I did with it, it did less than regurgitation on the same mob (a Marid, there were no Lesser Colibri to test it on, people were killing them all). I couldn't test it for very long because the marid I was fighting wanted to flatten me. But it does have a long range like cannonball. Combines with Animating Wail to make the dual wield trait.

lvl 80 - Demoralizing Roar - Magical - AoE Attack Down (Water) - The Wivre spell, when used by a wivre, it inflicts a potent attack down that basically strips down a majority of your attack, leaving you hitting the mob for single digits or 0's. We know terror touch inflicts a 15% attack down effect. I don't know how potent the attack down is on this spell. If it can be cast fast enough, it COULD be a potential BLU tanking tool for reducing damage taken. You can pump up your defense with cocoon, you can refresh yourself now, and you can reduce the damage done by the enemy further with Demoralizing Roar. Now if only SE will give us the wivres' stoneskin Granite Hide attack. It might press us one step closer to godhood. Maybe with the next level increase . . . Anyway, combines with Acrid Stream to make the Double Attack trait.

Levels 81-85

lvl 81 - Final Sting - Physical - 88MP - Bees - Deals physical damage proportional to HP. Reduces HP to 1 after use. Damage varies with TP - Probably going to see as much usage as self-destruct sees, which means, it'll likely never get used. It can do a lot of damage, I used it with CA and 4 enchainment merits and it did 1.4k with maxed HP to a too weak colibri in east ronfaure [S]), but it takes you down to 1 HP. If I had more TP, or if I had Efflux, the damage it could do would be scary. But it's extremely dangerous, you need shadows up, stoneskin, and pray the mob doesn't turn your way if it survives. Savage Blade > Final Sting > Light skillchain (and most likely certain death if your shadows go down), however, it's harder to SC with Final Sting than other spells, because it has a long cast time. Whirl of Rage and Final Sting can make the Zanshin trait.

lvl 81 - Goblin Rush - Physical - 76MP - Goblins - Three hit Physical damage: TP modifies Accuracy - (Blunt) - This spell is really good. It does a lot of damage, on par with Disseverment, if not more on higher defense mobs. Savage Blade > CA Goblin rush results in a Light skillchain. Set this as soon as you hit 81, you will not be disappointed. Replace hysteric barrage with this. Setting this with Benthic Typhoon creates the Skillchain Bonus trait.

lvl 82 - Vanity Dive - Physical - 58MP - Wanderers - Physical Damage: TP modifies Damage (Slashing) - Does good damage without CA active, and it's one hit, so it doesn't feed TP. It makes accuracy bonus with disseverment, frenetic rip, or dimensional death. I think it's safe to say you can replace frenetic rip with it, especially since it costs one less point than Frenetic rip (2 points vs 3).

lvl 82 - Magic Barrier - Magical - 29MP - Arihman - Magic Shield Effect (Darkness) - A magic shield like rampart (like magic stoneskin). Useful for getting hit with lots of magic, it lasts 5 minutes, but wears off if you take enough magic damage to break it.

lvl 83 - Whirl of Rage - Physical - 73MP - Evil Weapons - AoE physical damage with Stun effect: Damage Varies with TP (Slashing) - It does decent damage for an AoE spell, one of the strongest AoE physical spell we have so far. It has a longer cast time/recast time than head butt, plus it costs more to cast. It's a second AoE stun like Temporal Shift, but less reliable, but it costs less spell points to set.

lvl 83 - Benthic Typhoon - Physical - 56MP - Murex - Conal Damage and Lowers target's defense and magic defense. Damage varies with TP (Piercing). - It's a nice attack, it's conal, so you need to be careful with it. But it does darkness with expiacion like vertical cleave. It lowers defense and magic defense by around -10%. Doing darkness with this spell, if it hits multiple targets, it does several darkness SCs on the mob you were initially targeting. It does good damage, could even replace vertical cleave. The DEF down is not overwritten by DEF boost abilities, so it sticks over stuff like cocoon on crawlers, or a crabs' DEF bonus attack. It also has an AGI modifier, but I wouldn't suggest carrying around AGI gear for this. Another thing, it seems like an inaccurate spell, I get misses more often than most spells. It's weird, it seems less accurate than vertical cleave. Creates Skillchain Bonus job trait with Goblin Rush, which is a nice thing to have when self-skillchaining.

lvl 84 - Auroral Drape - Magical - 51MP - Weeper - AoE Blind and Silence (Wind) - It blinds and silences the target, a nice two-for-one enfeeble. Makes fast cast with sub-zero smash or bad breath. The blind effect is an impressive -60 ACC, which is greater than Blind II's effect. However, it has a short duration, both the blind and silence last 1 min max I think.

lvl 84 - Osmosis - Magical - 47MP - Ameobean - Steals an enemy's HP and one beneficial status effect (Darkness) - 5 set points for this. Drain's HP (formula Blue Magic Skill x0.77 ) and absorbs a buff. It has a fairly long range compared to MP Drainkiss for example. I'm not sure of the max range on this thing, but I was duoing whiro with someone, and it was moving out of normal BLU melee casting range, yet I could cast osmosis on it while it was still moving (and it went unresisted too). I didn't check the range, unfortunately. It can make a fun toy for absorbing mob buffs too. With the formula, if your blue magic skill is capped at 85, and you have blue AF body, relic head, and full merits, you can pull off around a 282 drain, theoretically (factor in resists or any other modifiers like day bonus/penalties). You could push it higher with the new empyrean pants +1/+2 with more blue magic skill. It has a faster cast than voracious trunk. Can make magic defense bonus trait with Magnetite Cloud or Ice Break.

lvl 85 - Quad. Continuum - Physical - 91MP - Gorgers - Four hit damage: Damage Varies by TP (Piercing) - Could be a good addition to our bread and butter physical spells (the big 3 or 4 if you count Vertical Cleave). It's VERY strong, TP modifies damage, and it's a great spell to use with Efflux, which gives a large TP bonus, AND it gives a further damage bonus. I've seen bigger numbers with CA and efflux than any other spell so far. Savage Blade > CA Quad. Continuum makes distortion like disseverment can. Can make the Dual wield trait with one of the two other spells that can make dual wield. Requiescat to CA quad. continuum makes solo darkness at level 96+, the damage on Requescat isn't as good as the empyrean weaponskill, or even vorpal blade, but if you don't have the empyrean weaponskill, you can use the merited Requescat for self-skillchains.

lvl 85 - Fantod - Magical - 12MP - Hippogryphs - Enhances Attack and Magic Attack (Fire) - It stacks with itself like boost, it stacks 10 times, and gives a boost to regular attack, and magical damage (physical blue magic AND elemental blue magic). It adds more damage to your next spell of any kind. It stacks with other attack bonus buffs too (P. Embrace ATK or Triumphant Roar ATK, P.Embrace's M. Attack, Amplification or Memento Mori). But it only lasts for the first spell you cast, so it's a very time consuming way to increase your damage. If only more buffs increased our physical spells' damage. Setting Fantod, with Sickle Slash or Tail Slap makes the Store TP job trait.

Levels 86-90

lvl 86 - Thermal Pulse - Magical - 151 MP - Wamouracampa - Does fire damage in an AoE and additonal effect Blindness (Fire) - The first of a few good magical damage spells. Modified by INT and magic attack bonus. When paired with gear, INT and Magic attack bonus atma in abyssea, you can push some good numbers, plus the MP cost doesn't matter so much anymore with refresh atma and MP boosts. It makes attack bonus when paired with other spells that make that trait. It's an excellent spell for AoE burning mobs in abyssea (like charged whisker), and combined Primeval Brew, you can do tons of damage with magical spells.

lvl 87 - Empty Thrash - Physical - 33 MP - Craver (Empty)- Does damage in an AoE, TP affects accuracy with chain affinity (Slashing damage) - Another physical AoE spell that might be suited for AoE type fights like the Blitzkrieg assault I've mentioned so much. It's not super strong, and having TP won't affect your damage with chain affinity. It can make the double attack trait.

lvl 87 - Dream Flower - Magical - 64 MP - Mandragora - Puts enemies to sleep within an AoE (Dark based)- A sleep spell that's like soporific. It's dark based, it's like sleep II (90 seconds), so if you need an extra sleep, it's there. But it doesn't overwrite Sleep II, Sleepga II or itself. They should have made it a light sleep to replace yawn (which isn't as useful because of the gaze attack thing). It can make the magic attack bonus trait.

lvl 88 - Occultation - Magical - 138 MP - Seether (Empty) - Creates multiple blink shadows (Wind)- It's like zephyr mantle, except it's dependent on magic skill (400 skill gets you 8 shadows). However it's much more costly MP wise. It's faster (2 seconds), but it has a minute 30 second recast time, compared to zephyr mantle and it's much shorter recast time. It's not like utsusemi, and /THF is mostly dead, so if you're /NIN, you wouldn't bother with this spell at all. Makes the evasion bonus trait.

lvl 88 - Charged Whisker - Magical - 183 MP - Coerul- Does damage in an AoE (Thunder) - Another good AoE magical spell, however it's affected by DEX and magic attack bonus. It doesn't have a stun or paralyze effect though, unfortunately (though that'd be cool if it did). Makes Gilfinder with Everyone's Grudge. People can use Thermal Pulse and Charged Whisker to AoE burn mobs, and solo Shinryu with a Primeval Brew.

lvl 89 - Winds of Promy. - Magical - 36 MP - Thinker (Empty) - Single effect Erase in an AoE effect (Light) - It's like using diffusion with Exuviation, but in one move (excluding the crappy heal)! It removes one negative status effect that erase can remove from the whole party. It's useful for a support move. It can make auto refresh (worth 4 points toward it).

lvl 89 - Delta Thrust - Physical - 28 MP - Peiste - Three-fold physical attack with additional effect: disease. Chance of effect modified by TP (Piercing damage) - It's a very cheap spell to cast, it's potent for it's MP cost, but it's not going to make outrageous numbers. It's modified by 20% STR and 50% VIT. I'd say it'd be like bludgeon for a fast, cheap spell to spam to give enemies TP, but the disease effect would nullify that. No idea how potent the effect on this spell is.

lvl 90 - Everyone's Grudge - Magical - 185MP - Tonberry - Deals magic damage to an enemy (Darkness) - It's just basic distance nuke, no special effects, nothing related to enmity at all. It's got a distance like cannonball or regurgitation. It's got good enough damage, probably better than eyes on me. It's modified by magic attack bonus and MND. Somewhat disappointing to see that it's not modified by enmity, but it's probably for the best. I've seen a video of a BLU using grudge, thermal pulse, and charged whisker, along with sanguine blade to solo Shinryu with a Primeval Brew. It can make gilfinder with charged whisker.

lvl 90 - Reaving Wind - Magical - 84 MP - Amphiptere (bird) - Reduces TP in an AoE effect (Wind) - You know how awesome Light of Penance was at reducing TP? This is about the same: it's not awesome. No knockback effect, just a -100 TP effect to enemies in effect. Even if you cast it, the enemy will probably still use a TP move anyway. Monster correlation (bird) will affect the amount of TP reduced (an additional -25 TP). It's useless. Our spells and everyone else's WSs will produce more TP than this will be able to control. It can create the trait Magic Burst Bonus.

Levels 91-95

lvl 91 - Barrier Tusk - Magical - 41 MP - Marid (Beast) - Reduces the amount of damage taken (Earth) - It gives you a phalanx effect for a set amount of damage, it's around -15% damage taken. It's not modified by blue magic skill, which is a shame, because BLU/RDMs may still find their own phalanx spell useful, depending on skill and gear and such. Recast time is 1 minute and takes 3 spell points to set. It's still useful for BLU/NIN or BLU/DNC. Can be used with other spells for the HP Boost trait.

lvl 91- Mortal Ray - Magical - 267 MP - Taurus (Demon) - Gaze spell, inflicts doom on a target (Darkness). It's expensive in both MP and set points (4 points), is incredibly inaccurate, has a 60 second countdown, as opposed to the 10 count regular doom effect mobs give, and doesn't work against NMs. It's trash. Learn it for completion's sake. At the most it's a toy. Can be combined with other spells for the dual wield trait.

lvl 92 - Water Bomb - Magical - 67 MP - Poroggo (Beastmen) - Inflicts water damage to enemies in an AoE: additional effect silence (Water). Another silence spell, but with light water damage. The silence effect lasts upwards to one minute. I find myself not using this spell often, I'd rather use a spell that I normally set, Auroral Drape, which has silence and blind, and has more useful spell trait (Fast Cast). Water Bomb can be used for Conserve MP.

lvl 92 - Heavy Strike - Physical - 32 MP - Golem (Arcana) - Inflicts large physical damage to the target, damage varies with TP (Blunt). This is actually a great spell, it's cheap to set (2 set points), only 32 MP, it has great damage when not used with CA or efflux, the only problem is that it has a large accuracy penalty compared to other spells. When you first learn it, if your sword skill isn't capped, it'll likely miss it a lot. It has somewhere around a -60 accuracy penalty according to some testing people did (BG wiki/forum). You can use CA/Efflux to increase the damage, but it doesn't have good skillchain properties for self-SCs. You'll want to gear in Strength and Accuracy gear for this spell. It's a great spell for your regular rotation of non-CA/Efflux spells. Used for the Double Attack/Triple Attack job trait.

lvl 93 - Dark Orb - Magical - 124 MP - Gargouille (Demon) - Deals darkness damage to a single target (Darkness) - Actually a really powerful single target nuke once you boost the spell's damage with magic damage. Thanks Kyte! Creates the Counter job trait. INT based modifiers.

lvl 94 - White Wind - Magical - 145 MP - Puk (Dragon) - Heals party members in the AoE (Wind). Finally! The famous blue magic spell White Wind. It heals yourself and all party members in range (but not alliance members). The modifiers are cure potency, and your max HP. MND has no effect on it. I have gotten some large numbers in abyssea, due to cruor buffs, and cure potency can really push big heals out. It's a lot stronger than Healing Breeze. Creates the Auto-Regen job trait with other spells.

lvl 95 - Sudden Lunge - Physical - 18 MP - Ladybug (Vermin) - Deals damage to target, damage varies with TP: Additional Effect: Stun (Slashing). This is a GREAT spell. It does little damage, but it replaces our old friend Head Butt. The stun is longer lasting than Head Butt's stun. It lasts for a good few seconds unresisted. Creates the Store TP trait with other spells.

Levels 96-99

lvl 96 - Quadrastrike - Physical - 98 MP - Kindred (Demons) - Delivers a four-fold attack: chance at critical damage varies by TP (Slashing) - This spell has good damage without chain affinity or efflux (not as much as heavy strike though), and can be a great CA/Efflux spell against things with high defense. Replace goblin rush with this. However, the skillchain properties are liquidation/scission, so it's not good for Skillchains. Creates the Skillchain Bonus job trait with other spells.

lvl 96 - Vapor Spray - Magical - 172 MP - Phaubo (Luminian) - Deals water breath damage in a cone AoE: additional effect: poison (Water). No idea how strong the poison effect is, but this breath spell the damage is 50% your current HP. Creates the Max MP Boost job trait with other spells.

lvl 97 - Thunder Breath - Magical - 193 MP - Wyvern (Dragon) - Deals magical lightning breath damage to enemies in a cone AoE (Lightning) - Deals 67.5% of your current health in thunder damage. It's a breath spell, and the strongest we get. Creates Max HP Boost with other spells.

lvl 98 - Orcish Counterstance - Magical - 18 MP - Orc (Beastmen) - Increases counter rate (Fire) - Grants a buff (separate from MNK's Counterstance) that gives you a ~10% counter rate that stacks with gear, counterstance, and the counter trait. Keep in mind you can't counter through shadows, so going /NIN with shadows up is pointless. Has a 1 minute duration. Grants the Counter job trait with other spells.

lvl 98 - Amorphic Spikes - Physical - 79 MP - Flan (Arcana) - Delivers a 5-fold physical attack: damage varies by TP (Piercing) - Another good, strong physical spell. Replace vanity dive with this. Does darkness with Chain Affinity Chant du Cynge, making it the most effective self-skillchain closer with with access to the Almace or Badelaire swords. If you don't have the empyrean WS, you'll want to solo darkness with Requiescat and Quad. Continuum. Creates the Gilfinder trait with other spells.

lvl 99 - Wind Breath - Magical - 26 MP - Dragon (Dragons) - Deals wind breath damage in a cone-shaped AoE (Wind) - A weak, but cheap magical spell. It deals 25% of your current HP in wind damage to anything in the AoE. It's efficient, but in abyssea, breath damage isn't that useful. It has a cheap set cost (2 set points), and creates the fast cast trait with other spells. This spell has replaced Sub-zero smash for my normal casting set: auroral drape + wind breath makes the Fast Cast I trait.

lvl 99 - Barbed Crescent - Physical - 52 MP - Fomor (Undead) - Deals physical damage: damage varies with TP: Additional Effect: Accuracy Down (Slashing) - it deals minor damage with an accuracy down. Makes the Dual Wield with other spells. Has Distortion and Liquification skillchain properties, so it can supposedly make darkness with Requiescat, but it's not worth it, the damage isn't that strong.

lvl 99 - Paralyzing Triad - Physical - 33 MP - Umbril (Elementals) - Three-fold (slashing?) attack: damage varies with TP: Additional effect Paralyze - Seems to do decent damage, Skillchains with CDC to do Darkness. Adds the Skillchain Bonus trait when set, with no other spells required. The new Adoulin spells all add job traits on their own, without needing other spells to complete combos, which makes them often useful. The new spells also seem to lack stat modifiers, relying on your main hand ilvl, and the target's defense and own level in the equation for damage. Paralysis is useful, and it's a better spell than frost breath now, but it's expensive to set, with 6 set points. The current status of BLU is that you're spending more time doing damage with your weaponskills, and less time casting spells, which is very unfortunate.

lvl 99 - Glutinous Dart - Physical - 16 MP - Velkk (Beastmen) - Ranged piercing damage, damage varies by TP - A spell a lot like cannonball, it's got a range of around 21-22 yalms, but doesn't have the defense modifier for damage. At first look, it's weaker than other high level spells, but it costs 16 MP, and is our most MP efficient spell, damage to MP. Plus it's got a very very fast recast time. It's faster than sudden lunge or headbutt. With haste, you can spam this thing all day long on a very short cooldown. By the time the spell animation is over, you could cast it again. It does piercing damage, which makes it effective against Hurkan, the thunder wildkeeper reive bird. You can stay out of range of his deadly TP moves, and spam it over and over. Gives Max HP Boost trait on it's own. Costs 2 spell points to set. Works similarly to Paralyzing Triad in terms of damage: it doesn't seem to have a stat mod. Has the fragmentation SC property.

lvl 99 - Nature's Meditation - Magical (Fire) (Buff) - 38 MP - Chapuli (Vermin) - Attack Bonus (+20%) - This spell boosts your attack by 20% for 60 seconds. Does NOT work on spell damage (unlike the stackable boost spell of Fantod). This only works on your melee (not sure about ranged attack) damage. It'll simply boost your attack by 20%. Also has the added benefit of giving you the accuracy bonus trait on its own. This is a very useful spell for your melee damage. Costs a whopping 6 spell points to set.

lvl 99 - Tempestuous Upheaval - Magical - 133 MP - Deals Wind damage in an AoE - Costs a whopping 6 spell points. Does more damage than subduction, but costs more MP, doesn't have any status effects like subduction's gravity II effect. Gives Evasion Bonus job trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Embalming Earth - Magical - 57 MP - Matamata (Lizards) - Deals AoE earth damage: Additional effect Slow (+25% Slow) - An earth nuke with slow effect. Clubs with magic damage give this more usage, but I haven't used it much. Gives Attack bonus job trait on it's own. 6 points to set.

lvl 99 - Rending Deluge - Magical - 118 MP - Craklaw (Aquans) - Deals water damage in an AoE with additional effect: dispel - A lot of MP and set points (6) for a dispel. Gives job trait Magic Defense Bonus on it's own. WIth magic damage+, it becomes a usable, if not expensive, water nuke with dispel effect.

lvl 99 - Foul Waters - Magical - 76 MP - Acuex (Amorphs) - Frontal Cone AoE water damage with the additional effect: drown (31 HP/tick) - This is an interesting one. 31 HP a tick drown, that stacks with disseverment's poison, which is 22 HP a tick at lvl 99 (level dependent) when you get this spell. That's a pretty strong DoT. It gives resist silence on it's own. 4 spell points to set.

lvl 99 - Retinal Glare - Magical - 26 MP - Panopts (Plantoids) - Deals light based damage in a frontal cone AoE with additional effect: flash. 5 Set points to set. Conserve MP on it's own. The most MP efficient light damage nuke, with the lowest recast time.

lvl 99 - Subduction - Magical (Wind) - 27 MP - Maroliths (Arcana) - Deals Wind damage in an AoE with additional effect: Gravity II - 6 Set points - A very good AoE nuke when combined with an INT/Magic ATK/Magic Damage+ set. That means dual wielding magic damage clubs to maximize damage. It has a large AoE, 11 yalm range, very low spell cost (27 MP), fast casting speed, no recast, meaning it can be spammed without cease. This spell is beastly if you gear right for it. Gives the Magic Attack Bonus trait alone when set.

lvl 99 - Erratic Flutter - Magical (Wind) - 92 MP - Wamoura (Vermin) - Self-Haste II - Wind - A godly spell, giving you a 30% potency haste II effect on yourself that lasts 5 minutes. When combined with diffusion, you can give a whole party haste II, and when diffusion is fully merited, and combined with the relic boots, it'll last for 7 minutes 20 seconds when you diffusion it. Don't leave the mog house without it. Gives the Fast Cast trait when set alone.

lvl 99 - Thrashing Assault - Physical (Slashing) - 119 MP - Meebles (Beastmen) - A Fourfold attack, damage varies with TP - A powerful, albeit slow casting physical spell. When combined with Chain Affinity and Efflux, this will out damage Quad. Continuum. It however has poor skillchain properties, as creates a Light Skillchain when preceeded by Savage Blade. No one really uses Savage Blade, though the damage on Savage Blade post weaponskill update isn't horrible; it's just not comparable to chant du cynge. Gives the double attack trait when set, without any other spells. It's good for saving spell points to more easily fit in the Triple Attack Trait when you set other double attack spells (you need two extra double attack trait spells to get triple attack).

lvl 99 - Restoral - Magical (Light) 127 MP - Gears (Archaics)- Heals HP of caster - A self heal. Obtainable from gears. It's a strong, though costly SELF only heal. Diffusion doesn't affect it because it's not a buff. It can be useful for soloing, though it'll drain your MP fast. Not really worth it, if you can max out 50% cure potency on magic fruit. MAYBE with abyssea HP/MP pools it becomes more worth it. Gives Max HP Boost Trait on it's own. Costs 7 spell points.

lvl 99 - Rail Cannon - Magical (Light) - 200 MP - Gears (Archaics) - Deals Light damage to target - Obtainable from single and multi-gear mobs. A single target nuke, very costly. As fun as it is to go pew pew, I don't see this being THAT useful unless you need light damage. Gives Magic Burst Bonus trait on it's own, requires 8 set points. Wear magic damage boosting clubs and other magic attack bonus gear when using.

lvl 99 - Diffusion Ray - Magical (Light) - 238 MP - Chariots (Archaics) - Deals light damage to targets in range (frontal AoE) - Obtainable from Chariot mobs. Very costly light base fan-shaped nuke. Stronger than subduction, but very costly with a long recast timer. Use subduction instead of this for it has a bigger AoE, more efficent damage, and gravity II effect. Gives store TP trait on its own, and costs 6 spell points to set.

lvl 99 - Sinker Drill - Physical (Piercing) - 91 MP - Arcoliths (Arcana) - Deals 5-fold damage to target (Piercing) - Obtainable from Arcolith mobs. A very strong, single target, physical spell. It hits more times than thrashing assault, with STR and DEX mods. CDC and Chain Affinity Sinker Drill creates a darkness skillchain, making it much more favorable than Savage Blade to Thrashing Assault's Light (or CDC to Thrashing Assault's lvl 2 skillchain). Creates the useful Critical Attack Bonus trait by itself. Costs 6 spell points to set.

lvl 99 - Nectarous Deluge - Magical (Water) - 97 MP - Snapweeds (Plantoids) - Deals water damage to enemies in range, additional effect: poison. Gives a severe poison effect for 30 seconds, weaker than rending deluge. 7 set points, Gives beast killer on its own.

lvl 99 - Sweeping Gouge - Physical (Slashing) - 29 MP - Raaz (Beasts) - Two hit attack: additional effect defense down - A weaker attack, but gives a defense down effect. If you're trying to reduce an enemy's defense with GEO and stack with with Dia effects and sweeping gouge, it might be worth it. 6 set points. Gives Lizard Killer on it's own.

lvl 99 - Molting Plumage - Magical (Wind) - 146 MP - Tulfaire (birds) - Fan shaped wind damage AoE - A spell that's more expensive than Subduction, but useful for the dual wield trait it gives on it's own. 6 set points. Trait: Dual Wield.

lvl 99 - Atra. Libations - Magical (Darkness) - 164 MP - Dullahans (Undead) - AoE drain - A drain that is determined by your blue magic skill. Stronger than Digest, Osmosis, and Blood Saber Ineffective against undead. Magic damage doesn't affect it, but dark affinity will (Pixie hairpin +1, etc.).

lvl 99 - Searing Tempest - Magical (Fire) - 116 MP - Baelfyr Hybrid Fire-Light (Elementals) - Does fire damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius): additional effect Burn (29 damage/tick, -63 INT in ballista, lasts a minute) - It sounds like Gates of Hades, but it's not dependent on the Unbridled Learning/Unbridled Wisdom abilities. This is a really powerful nuke introduced in the June 2015 patch. All these hybrid elemental nukes are really strong. They're more expensive to cast than subduction, but they have useful special effects. You need to have a good fast cast precast set/traits because they have a rather long casting time without it. With the blue mage job traits for Fast Cast (or sub /RDM), and a good fast cast set, it takes a quarter or so of the time to cast, and a lot shorter recast. They do have a recast, unlike subduction, but the main point of these spells are to be a stronger nuke with useful enfeebles, you can pull with subduction to slow enemies down with gravity, then nuke with the element your group of mobs are weak against. They are also useful for difficult NMs that might be too hard to melee against (escha NMs for example). Costs 8 set points, and gives physical attack bonus trait alone.

lvl 99 - Blinding Fulgor - Magical (Light) - 116 MP - Baelfyr Hybrid Fire-Light (Elementals) - Does Light damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect Flash - Another one of the useful hybrid nukes. Useful for anything that is weak to light, or resistant to other elements. When nuking, I usually have this set. It gives a handy flash effect, so enemies are more likely to miss you (or whoever their target is). More expensive to cast than retinal glare, but it's not a conal nuke, it does more damage, and has a bigger range. Costs a massive 8 set points to equip, and gives you the Magic Evasion Bonus trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Spectral Floe - Magical (Ice) - 116 MP - Gefyrst Hybrid Water-Ice (Elementals) - Does Ice damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect Terror - Finally, a really good ice nuke. And it's not dependent on unbridled learning/wisdom! The terror is shortlived, compared to absolute terror, but you can cast it more often than Blistering Roar, plus it does ice damage! Costs 8 set points to equip, and gives the Magic Attack Bonus trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Scouring Spate - Magical (Water) - 116 MP - Gefyrst Hybrid Water-Ice (Elementals) - Does Water damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect Defense down (20%) - Another powerful nuke, useful for anything that's weak against water. Costs 8 set points to equip, and gives Magic Defense Bonus trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Anvil Lightning - Magical (Thunder) - 116 MP - Ungeweder Hybrid Air-Thunder (Elementals) - Does thunder damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect stun - It has a short lived stun, but good for stunning packs of enemies you're nuking, while doing lots of damage to them. It doesn't have a fast cast unless you have lots of fast cast gear and traits on, but temporal shift would be better for an aoe stun, and sudden lunge for a single target stun (though sudden lunge gathers more resistance to stun to NMs than other forms of stun). Costs 8 set points to equip and gives the "Physical accuracy bonus" trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Silent Storm - Magical (Wind) - 116 MP - Ungeweder Hybrid Air-Thunder (Elementals) - Wind damage in an AoE around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect silence - This is stronger than subduction, but doesn't have the gravity II effect. However, the silence effect lasts a LONG TIME. Unresisted, it can last minutes, I've heard 5 minutes. I've had troubles resilencing NMs, I dont' know if it makes the NM build more magic resistance to silence than other silence spells, or if it just resisted, or what. This is another useful spell in your toolbox, plus it does a lot of damage if geared properly. Costs 8 spell points to equip, and gives you the "Physical evasion bonus" trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Entomb - Magical (Earth) - 116 MP - Byrgen Hybrid Earth-Darkness (Elementals) - Does Earth AoE damage around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect petrify - This is a strong earth nuke, that petrifies everything it hits unless the mob is immune to petrify. The petrify will last for a good amount of time or until it takes damage from another attack. Damage will break the petrify effect. Costs 8 set points to equip, and gives the "Physical Defense bonus" trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Tenebral Crush - Magical (Darkness) - 116 MP - Byrgen Hybrid Earth-Darkness (Elementals) - Does darkness AoE damage around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect Defense Down (20%). Finally, a GOOD darkness nuke, one that's not a useless drain based off of blue magic skill. Good for things that are weak to darkness and reducing mob defense. Costs 8 spell points to equip, and gives a new trait, the Magic Accuracy Bonus trait on its own.

lvl 99 - Saurian Slide - Physical (Slashing?) - 109 MP - Velkks (Beastmen) - Does single target physical damage with additional effect attack down (25%) - Not as strong as sinker drill, but can do more damage stacked with chain affinity and efflux. The spell description says defense down, but that's typo, it's attack down. Requiescat to Chain Affinity Saurian Slide does Fragmentation, while Savage blade to Chain Affinity Saurian Slide does distortion. It's not a replacement for sinker drill. Costs 7 set points to equip, and gives the RUN trait Inquartata on its own (increased chance to parry).

lvl 99 - Palling Salvo - Magical (Darkness) - 175 MP - Fluterinis (single butterflies) (Vermin) - Does Darkness damage around the caster (~12 yalm radius) with additional effect: Bio (-10% attack, 15 HP/tick damage) - This is weaker, but more expensive than Tenebral Crush, which is the hardest hitting darkness nuke we have. I don't see bio as being more useful than defense down. Costs 7 set points to equip, and gives the RUN job trait Tenacity on its own (increased resist to all status effects).

Unbridled Learning Spells

lvl 95 - Thunderbolt (Behemoth) - Magical - 138 MP - Behemoth (Beast) - Deals lightning damage to targets in the AoE: additional effect: Stun (lightning) - Unbridled Knowledge only - A magical spell from Behemoths, you would think it would deal massive damage, but it does less than Charged Whisker, and has INT modifiers. But it stuns all the targets it hits (unresisted). It's a good spell to use when using charged whisker cleave burn in abyssea with the right atma. You MUST use the JA Unbridled Knowledge to gain access to this spell.

lvl 95 - Harden Shell - Magical - 20 MP - Adamantoise (Aquan) - Increases Defense (Earth) - Unbridled Knowledge - Gives a large (+100%) defense buff. It's an upgraded version of cocoon, it's good for cannonball, but who really uses cannonball post 75 cap? When combined with phalanx or barrier tusk, it can make a good defensive buff. Can be used with Diffusion to grant the whole party the DEF buff. Self-cast only. Needs to be cast with Unbridled Knowledge.

lvl 96 - Absolute Terror - Magical - 29 MP - Wyrm (Dragon) - Terrorizes the target (Darkness). Unbridled Knowledge - It's a long lasting stun (terror), stronger than Jettaura, and actually useful for delve I (Shark, T-Rex, and Bee) boss runs. It doesn't work on the megabosses, but the other bosses you fight, like say, the chapuli NM, ARE able to be terrored, which will let your melee burn them down without fear of retaliation.

lvl 97 - Gates of Hades - Magical - 156 MP - Cerberus (Beast) - Deals fire damage in an AoE: additional effect: Burn (Fire) - Unbridled Knowledge - A strong fire spell with STR and DEX modifiers. It delivers a 21 HP/tick burn DoT on all targets. This is pretty fun to use, just be wary you can't sleep mobs that are taking damage from burn. Tag a mob with disseverment poison, hit him with gates of hades, and he'll be taking around 39 HP/tick in damage. Fun! Must use Unbridled Knowledge to use this spell.

lvl 97 - Tourbillion - Physical - 108 MP - Khimaira (Arcana) - Damage to enemies in an AoE: Additional Effect: Defense Down (Blunt) - Unbridled Knowledge - Another fun spell, does strong damage (when CA/Efflux are used) with STR and MND modifiers, as an AoE spell. It has LIGHT? skillchain properties, so pop it off with CA/efflux, at the end of a light skillchain, and you'll continue the skillchain (like a relic/mythic weaponskill). It has defense down (-33% defense), They fixed the magic accuracy of this spell with a recent patch, it'll land given enough magic accuracy and ilvl gear. You need to use Unbridled Knowledge to gain access to this spell.

lvl 98 - Pyric Bulwark - Magical - 50 MP - Hydra (Dragon) - Resists physical damage (Light) - Unbridled Knowledge - It makes you physically immune to a single physical attack. It lasts for three minutes, but wears off after you get hit by a physical attack. Because of this, it has limited usage. You can't choose which physical attack you want to shrug off, so if you want to avoid a TP move, if you get hit by a melee hit, you'll lose the buff. Maybe use it as a buffer under shadows while blink tanking. Must use Unbridled Knowledge to gain access to this spell.

lvl 99 - Bilgestorm - Physical - 122 MP - Dvergr (Demon) - Deals damage to enemies in the AoE: Additional Effect Duration varies by TP: Additional Effect: Attack, Accuracy, and Defense Down (Blunt) - Unbridled Knowledge - Deals low damage, with Darkness/Gravitation SC properties. It can continue darkness with azure lore/CA active. The defense and attack down effect is -25%. Magic accuracy has been fixed on this spell since a recent patch. Must use Unbridled Knowledge to gain access to the spell.

lvl 99 - Bloodrake - Physical - 99 MP - Vampyr (Undead) - Delivers a three-fold attack: Damage varies by TP: Additional effect Drain - Unbridled Knowledge - A strong physical spell, particularly with CA/Efflux active. It has the distortion SC, making it self-darkness with Requiescat, AND, here's the kicker, it drains 100% of the damage, giving you a very effective emergency self-heal. if you do, say 2000 damage on a bloodrake, you drain back 2000 HP, pretty much giving you a full heal. It'll save your life if you're solo or something. Need the Unbridled Knowledge ability active to cast this spell.

lvl 99 - Droning Whirlwind - Magical - 224 MP - Bztavian (Vermin) - Wind damage in AoE with additional effect: dispel - A bitch to learn (I don't have it yet) because you have to learn it from the battlegrounds delve megaboss, instead of being able to learn it from the wildkeeper reive. According to someone else's test in ballista, it dispels ALL buffs on all the mobs it hits. Tested on a player with 10 buffs up. Only useable with unbridled learning/wisdom up. Has a very expensive MP cost. Learned from the bee wildkeeper reive or bee in delve.

lvl 99 - Carcharian Verve - Magical - 65 MP - Rockfin (Aquan) - Self-buff, raises ATK, M.ATK, and reduces spell interruption rate - Increases attack by 17-18% according to reports. It also reduces spell interrupt rate. Learned from Wildkeeper Reive Shark, or Shark in Delve. Only usable under unbridled learning/wisdom.

lvl 99 - Blistering Roar - Magical - 43 MP - Gabbrath (Beasts) - AoE Terror - Only usable during unbridled learning/wisdom. Only learnable by defeating Toujl or achuka, the mega boss of Morimar Basalt Fields Delve or by defeating Achuka in the morimar Wildkeeper Reive. A short term crowd-control/interrupt/stun move.

lvl 99 - Uproot - Magical - 88 MP - Yggdreants (Plantoid) - Aoe Light Damage, Additional Effect removes Status Effects - Obtainable from Yggdreants (Yumcax and Wopket) in wild keeper revies and delve in yorcia weald. Does AoE damage for a cheap cost, with the main benefit of removing all status effects from yourself. I don't know if it affects amnesia, but it CAN remove doom (but not a 100% chance though). Very useful for a Unbridled Learning spell.

lvl 99 - Crashing Thunder - Magical - 172MP - AoE thunder damage - Waktza (Birds) - Obtainable from waktza (Hurkan and Cailimh) from Marjami Ravine WKR and delve. Is this supposed to be stronger than Thunderbolt? I tried a crashing thunder and a thunderbolt against rocs, both with burst affinity up, and the thunderbolt did more damage with the benefit of stunning for a good long time. Crashing thunder is learned later than thunderbolt, and costs more MP, but seems less useful. What was SE thinking? Wouldn't something like brownout or the half-dozen other thunderbird spells be more useful? The ones with actual status effects on them? Maybe if this WASN'T a unbridled learning spell, it'd be more useful.

lvl 99 - Polar Roar - Magical - 126 MP - AoE ice damage with additonal effect bind - Cehuetzi (beasts) - Obtainable from Cehuetzi (Kumhau and Uktux) and kahmir drifts WKRs and Delve. Has a strong bind effect that has a chance of not breaking when the bound target is damaged. It can last a decent time too, like two minutes when not resisted or broken prematurely. An unbridled learning spell.

lvl 99 - Mighty Guard - Magical - 299 MP - Increases own defense, magic defense, attack speed, and regen (Light) - Shinryu - Obtainable from Shinryu, the final boss of abyssea, this is a staple blue magic spell across many final fantasy games. In FFXI, this spell is AMAZING. It is currently the best spell you can diffusion. It gives a 25% defense bonus, 30 HP/tick regen, a sizable magic defense bonus (don't know exact number), and ~20% magic haste. It has it's own status effect icon, so it stacks with other sources of regen, defense bonus/magic defense bonus, and haste, whether it be haste or haste II (like erratic flutter) or marches. Duration begins at 3 minutes when casted without diffusion, boosted to over 4 minutes when combined with diffusion, the relic boots that enhance diffusion, and job points (unbridled learning II, affects duration of spells that affect allies). Best thing you can do when you melee is to put up erratic flutter, diffusion mighty guard, then go to town on whatever you're fighting. You'll be swinging incredibly fast. I believe you can cap delay reduction with mighty guard. This is the best unbridled learning spell you can get. Get it immediately. The downside to this spell is that it uses a LOT of MP, have enough sources of refresh/MP restoral on you so you don't run out of MP. Tizona users shouldn't have to worry about the MP cost though, since they gain MP back from their melee hits. Only usable during unbridled learning/unbridled wisdom.

lvl 99 - Cruel Joke - Magical - 187 MP - Inflicts Doom upon enemies in range (60 second count) (Darkness) - Defiants (Balamor) - Obtainable from Balamor's Adumbration in alluvion skirmish boss floors and Palloritus in undead zone vagary (Deathborne gate), this spell dooms every enemy surrounding you (I'd like to say the AoE range is less than subduction and the hybrid elemental nukes). However, it doesn't affect NM mobs, and it has a 60 second timer on the doom. It's not very useful, because you can kill most packs of fodder mobs in at least half the time if you're properly geared enough, using a combination of subduction and the hybrid elemental nukes (teneberal crush, et. al.). In the time it takes wait for doom to take effect, you could be doing damage with better spells. At least it's better than mortal ray, which is a gaze spell, and more accurate than it too. But still, you'd be better off saving unbridled learning for mighty guard. DOes NOT work against NMs or mobs much higher level than you (apex mobs in adoulin won't be affected). Only usable during Unbridled Learning/Wisdom.

lvl 99 - Cesspool - Magical - 166 MP - Inflicts water damage additional effect: plague on enemies in range (Water) - Plovids - Obtainable from Palloritus in Brash gate Vagary (Amorph zone). I don't have any first hand testing, considering I haven't gotten the spell yet, but it's on par with Lowing virus. It's not that useful, from what I heard. It reduces a mob's TP and MP. Considering how much MP mobs have (lots and lots), and how fast mobs gain TP (very fast), this isn't very useful. Save it for mighty guard. Only usable during Unbridled Learning/Wisdom.

lvl 99 - Tearing Gust - Magical - 202 MP - Inflicts AoE Wind Damage with additional effect: magic defense down on enemies in range (Wind) - Macuils - Learnable from Putraxia from Duskbrood gate. Damage on par with other nukes, but not spectacularly strong. The magic defense lasts for only 30 seconds. Not as useful as mighty guard, but it will increase the damage done by nukes by reducing the enemy's magic defense. However, it only lasts 30 seconds, that's not long enough. Only usable during Unbridled Learning/Wisdom.

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Azure Tomes: Blue Magic Guide by Sabishii