Maximizing your damage as a Black Mage
A Black Mages ultimate goal is to try to dish out as much damage as they possibly can - which is often what often leads to their deaths. Nonetheless, they’re always looking to squeeze a few extra damage out of their spells. There are a few key ways you can do this, we’ll detail them below.
Intelligence
INT is the most vital stat for a BLM, it basically determines the damage and resistibility of your nukes. You can find INT on a plethora of gear and food, and you should always be looking for more of it. It is roughly 3 more damage for every one INT. Some key pieces of INT gear will be wands, rings and capes.
Magic Attack Bonus+
There are a few pieces of gear in the game that will enhance a Black Mages epic trait Magic Attack Bonus, which grants a pure damage bonus to spells. Any gear that enhances this trait is almost always worth it. Some notables pieces are: Sorcerer’s Ring, Uggalepih Pendant, Zenith Mitts/Morrigan’s Cuffs/Robe, and Novio Earring.
Elemental Staves
You can equip these at level 51, and if you don’t get them, you are truly gimp. Elemental Staves grant a huge damage bonus to your spells. There is one for each element, and each one will boost its respective element by 10%, and it’s opposite element will be decreased by 10%. So you swap these out for each spell you use. The HQ versions are 15% instead of 10%, if you can afford them, they are worth it.
These are the 3 main things you can do to maximize your damage as a black mage, another thing we should mention is elemental magic skill. It can be invaluable in certain situations, and it will greatly decrease your chance to be resisted. In some cases, it’s better to use more elemental magic skill over some of the above listed. There is a lot more to Black Mage than just these things, and it takes time to learn the job in full, but this should help you start working on your overall damage output.
Macro Syntax I: Casting a Spell
In this new section about Macro syntax, we’ll be looking at the basics, and some of the finer points, of setting up macros. Macros are an automated way of performing a short series of tasks. For instance, instead of navigating to your spell list, scrolling through it to find a spell, and then pressing enter 2 times to finally cast it; you can simply set Ctrl + 1 to perform that same action, with those 2 quick key-presses. Every Wednesday, we’ll go over some of the syntax that allows you to make macros. This week, we’ll teach you how to cast a spell using Macros.
Since this is the first article on Macros, I’ll go over how to get to them and basic usage. If you’re on the PC, then press the - key in the top right corner of your numpad, that will bring up the menu. Press your left or right arrow key to get to the second section of the menu, and scroll down to Macros. You’ll see 20 “books”. Each book contains 10 macro pallates, and each macro palate contains 20 macros. Giving you a total of 4000 possible macros. Since there are 20 jobs, and there are 20 books, using one book for each job would be a great idea. You can change the names of each book too, making organization easy.
Once your in a book, you can use your arrows to select a macro. When you have the one you want, you can press Enter to view the contents. To edit a line, use Up/Down and Enter. You are limited to 6 lines, the first box is the name of the macro.
A blank macro.
In order to cast a spell, you need to put in the first line this text:
/ma “” <t>
In between the quotations, put the name of the spell. Make sure to use correct capitalization and spacing. Now, whenever you are targeting a monster, you can press Ctrl + 1 and it will activate whatever spell you put in. You can combine it with other macro syntax for more advanced maneuvers, but we’ll go over that another time. That’s it for this week!
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Refresh
Refresh - it’s like crack for mages. For those who don’t know what it does, it restores MP at an interval of 3 seconds, continuously, until the effect wears off. There are a plethora of items, spells, and foods in the game that can give you this effect. In this post, we’ll detail most (if not all) of those ways.
Spells
A Red Mage’s Refresh
The most commonly used form of Refresh, it’s generally a RDM’s bane, as they’ll be asked to constantly Refresh all the mages in their party. It restores 3 MP a tic.
A Bard’s Ballad
A great set of spells given to bards, the lower level one provides 1 MP a tic, and the higher level one provides 2 MP a tic. Because Bard’s can put 2 spells on a single person, you can stack these 2 spells to provide the equivalent of a Red Mage’s 3 MP a tic refresh, but won’t be able to put any other singles on a player.
A Corsair’s Roll
Given the name Evoker’s Roll due to a Summoner’s natural Auto-Refresh ability, Evoker’s Roll has the potential to be the most powerful refresh in the game. As some may know, Corsair’s rolls work on a number system. Each roll a lucky and unlucky number, the lucky will generally provide the second-best effects, and the unlucky will provide effects similar to the lowest rolls. Each roll can be anywhere from 1-11. Numbers 1-4 provide the effects of an Unlucky roll. Rolling 11 will get you the highest effects. Going over 11 grants a bust, giving the Corsair negative effects. Each roll can be enhanced by having it’s respective job in the party. So having a summoner in the party and using Evoker’s Roll, you can get another 1 MP a tic.
Rolling an eleven without a SMN in the party will get you 4 MP a tic, and with a SMN will get you 5 MP a tic, the highest refresh in the game. For a quick note, the Unlucky Number for Evoker’s Roll is 9, and the Lucky Number is 5. Corsairs get their Refresh before Red Mages also, getting it at level 40, versus the 41 that RDMs get it.
Those are all the spells for Refresh, next up are Foods.
Foods
All foods are made through Cooking, aside from Amrita which is an abjuration item and found as a temporary item in Einherjar.
Orange Juice, Apple Juice, Tomato Juice, and Pineapple Juice
All of these three provide 1 MP a tic. Orange Juice provides that effect for 90 seconds, giving a total of 30 MP per drink. Apple Juice provides the effect for 135 seconds, giving a total of 45 MP per drink. Tomato Juice provides the effect for 180 seconds, giving a total of 60 MP per drink. Pineapple Juice is the best of the four, providing the effect for 240 seconds, giving a total of 80 MP per drink. Pineapple Juice caps at 30 cooking, and is a great item for low-level mages to make, especially in the Kazham areas.
Grape Juice, Melon Juice, Vampire Juice
All of these provide 2 MP a tic. Grape Juice provides the effect for 90 seconds, giving a total of 60 MP. Melon Juice provides the effect for 135 seconds, giving a total of 90 MP. Vampire Juice is different, in that instead of just providing 2 MP, it will give 2 HP a tic as well. It lasts a total of 90 seconds, giving 60 MP and 60 HP back.
Yagudo Drink
This also gives 2 MP a tic, but we didn’t put it with the above 3 due to the large amounts of win it emanates. Despite it’s 3 second use time, it will provide you with a total of 120 MP over a period of 3 minutes. It’s the best MP refresh food beside Amrita, which we mention below.
Amrita
This is a truly beastly item. Amrita is an abjuration item, which uses the cursed item Cursed Beverage (we would have never guessed), and uses the Libation Abjuration dropped from quite a few NMs and BCNMs, and is purchasable for 250,000 Gil (but that’s really probably not worth it). Amrita will give you the effect of Regen and Refresh, at a rate of 5 per tic. Yes, you heard us right, it’s on par with the most a Corsair can give, and gives you the complementary HP effect as well. Not to mention it lasts 5 minutes, if you do the math, that’s 500 MP and HP. Pretty sweet, huh? Find out more about how to get it on FFXIClopedia.
That finishes up food effects. Next, we’ll cover a few notable pieces of refresh gear.
Refresh Gear
There are tons of items that provide the effect of refresh. They all give 1 MP a tic, and the effect stays on perpetually, so long as you wear the piece of gear. Since there are so many, we’ll cover just a few pieces that you may want to get in your arsenal.
Dalmatica
We’ll start with the almighty Dalmatica. Many consider this piece to be a show-off piece (we think it looks pretty sexy as well), and there are indeed better pieces for all the users aside from Red Mage, who can benefit from it in certain situations. Red Mages will generally be the first to get this in an HNMLS. The Refresh effect is really the only substantial effect it gives, but there are some benefits from it’s other stats.
Ares’s Cuirass, Marduk’s Jubbah, Morrigan’s Robe
The Refresh effect on these 3 Salvage body pieces pale in comparison to their other insane stats, but it obviously is worth mentioning. All three pieces are generally worth obtaining, and you’ll probably use them all the time, though in some situations, other pieces may work better.
Noble’s Tunic, Black Cloak, Vampire Cloak
The first 2 are great pieces for their intended jobs, the Noble’s Tunic generally being the more sought-after piece. The Refresh effect is a great added bonus. The Vampire Cloak is a nice piece for DRK’s to throw on whenever they need some Regen/Refresh, but there are much better pieces that will take priority over it.
Cleric’s Briault, Sorcerer’s Coat, Vermillion Cloak, and Yinyang Robe
All four of these are great pieces, the Yinyang Robe being the best we’d say. The Cleric’s Briault is probably not the best piece to use for the Refresh Effect, as you’ll generally have Noble’s Tunic, but when you swap this in for using Regen, it will keep your Refresh going from Noble’s Tunic. The Sorcerer’s Coat is a nice piece when Elemental Skill is needed, but other pieces will take priority over it most of the time. The Vermillion Cloak is an amazing piece for the level you can get it at, but it’s not a necessity. There will be pieces that take precedence over this, but it’s a great piece to swap in for healing or other downtime. Saving the best for last, the Yinyang Robe. This robe is freaking amazing for Summoner’s, as with the Salvage gear, the refresh effect pales in comparison to the other stats. The Blood Pact ability delay -5 is great, and the Avatar Enmity will help keep possible hate off of you. The refresh provides 1 less MP you’re loosing per tic while you have a summon out, so further preserving your MP.
Those are the most notable pieces of gear, there are others, but they generally aren’t used for the Refresh, and/or are latent effects/enchantments.
Job Traits/Other
There are 3 jobs that can get Refresh as a job trait. Those are Summoner at level 25, Paladin at level 35, and Blue Mage at level 58 (if said BLU has the correct spells equipped). All of these are 1 MP a tic and last forever, and you can get the effect from using the jobs as support jobs, making summoner a viable sub for mage classes. To learn more about how to get Auto-Refresh on your Blue Mage, read here.
The last 2 ways to get are through Sanction and Sigil, the Besieged and Campaign equivalents to Signet. You can attain them for either 100 Imperial Standing, or 50 Allied notes, and they last for the duration of the status effect. They both provide 1 MP a tic.
And one last thing. Using all the above methods, it would be possible to attain 20 MP a tic as a Red Mage using Amrita, Refresh, Mage’s Ballad I and II, Evoker’s Roll with SMN in party rolling 11, wearing a Dalmatica and Duelist’s Chapeau, using Sanction/Sigil with refresh effection, and subbing either SMN or PLD. One thing we’re not sure of, is whether you can stack gear refreshes (Dalmatica and Dualist’s Chapeau), if not, it would be 19 MP a tic, which is still insane.
That wraps it up for this huge article on Refresh, we may eventually do an article on the many uses for Refresh, but I think that’s enough about Refresh for now. Let us know in the comments about how you use and benefit from Refresh.
