is is the part 2 of ffxi power leveling Black Mage Guide.
II - Designing your Black Mage
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Designing your Black Mage - Race
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From worst to best -
Elvann: Too little MP to work with, worst evasion, lowest int.
Galka: Worst MP, way to little to be an effective BLM. Some will claim RSE
(Race Specific Armor) counter-balances this, which it *can* to an extent, but
you still have to get to the early 30s to use that armor. And then, you're
screwed when you want to wear better armor...
Hume: Best non-taru MP, best non-taru INT, decent evasion. ~25% more HP than a
taru.
Mithra: Same as Hume, but better evasion. Slightly lower magic resistance, but
probably worth the evasion.
Tarutaru: Absolutely the best race for BLMs. Highest evasion besides Mithra,
40% or so more MP than Hume/Mithras, and easily the highest INT (resists and
spell damage).
Version 1.3 correction: By resists I meant how much YOU will be resisted, not
how much you will resist other spells. Some people had confusion and mailed me
about this.
In summary, playing a Galka or an Elvann BLM is worthless unless you just feel
like being original (hell, they're only even on here for completeness' sake,
either are a joke as a BLM). Humes and Mithra are so similar it doesn't matter
much which you pick. They're definitely not Taru, but the extra HP (and thus
survivability) is kinda nice. Tarutaru are hands down the best BLM race, to
the point that I've had people tell me they were blowing off other BLMs so they
could take me instead, based of my race.
Designing your Black Mage - Hometown
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You really can do what you want here. Kingdoms determine two things; rings and
conquest. Rings is a simple thing, if you start in the hometown of your race,
you'll get a pretty nifty +stats ring that's Lv1 usable. Conquest is where you
get points (CP) for killing monsters that you can trade for items later. The
items you get are based on your kingdom.
I suggest Windurst because Windurst has a lot of caster CP gear later on
(although none early-on, annoyingly). You also get a good caster ring, if
you're a Mithra or Taru. But it really doesn't matter, you can always play
Bastok, sell your CP gear for cash, and buy Windurst gear with that.
Please view "Black Mage Guide(3)" to get the rest of this ffxi power leveling guide information.
