Yellow, Blood, Blue, Booster OH MY

[Megadeus]

I honestly can't decide what to do with these four. I know Quad, Chain, and Mastery are all to be maxed.

The guides I'm seeing say Max Blue, Max Yellow, and then they fudge it and suggest some weird mixes of Blood and Booster.

20% absorbed doesn't sound very good, and 30% distribution doesn't seem like it'd help anyone. But I'm getting a friend suggesting that it's good for survival, and read some places that it's a "reworked MG". I'd care to disagree considering how MG is an amazing 80% and not a pathetic 20% and 30% weirdness.

Yellow I like because it's a speed-up, but it doesn't stack with the absolute #1 Dark Aura (and I don't see how anyone could put Dark Aura as anything less than the #1 basic aura). So far I've only really been using it in conjunction with Inflitrate to travel nicely, and occasionally to get more spammy on bosses, but the atk drop from not having Dark Aura up is definitely painfully noticeable.

Then there's Booster and Blood Drain. Booster seems to last a pathetic duration in all levels, but it has the major advantage of not cancelling Dark Aura - it wouldn't be too bad to just keep casting it every so often (since I don't like bossing), right? Then Blood Drain sounds bad on paper (5%?), but I'd imagine it's actually really good considering how many hits BaMs put out.

I honestly considered maxing Blue and Yellow, then crunching my head figuring out some way to choose between Booster and Blood Drain, but then I realized the aforementioned things about Blue and Yellow.
HALP pl0x.

Yes I know I should probably read that "Battle Mage Aura questions" thread and I will.

[Omar Ranger]

Well here's what I did. Maxed every 2nd job skill except Blood Drain and Booster. For myself I chose 17 Booster and 6 Blood Drain seeing as they have almost equal durations and the 2% gain from 6 Blood instead of the 1% gain from 3 Blood is very very noticeable. Saves me lots of HP pots.
Blue Aura maxed is important since it allows the use of Advanced Blue Aura which can save the life of an endgame Battle Mage at bosses more than once.
Don't sacrifice Yellow Aura for Dark Aura until you have Advanced Dark since actually in some cases with slow staves, Yellow will benefit you more. I'm pretty sure Body Boost at max might make Dark better but I don't know yet. If you want to keep Dark then get a really good Evil Wings since it's speed is Fast(4) and booster with that is plenty of speed. Use dark with it and you are set.

[Phazonkirby]

I messed things up a fair bit, my build is Max Mastery, Booster, Chains, and Quad, 19 Yellow Aura, 13 Blood Drain, 10 Blue Aura. At this early stage of Resistance it's still a head scratcher as to what is best and ideal builds and bla bla bla.

Also the Aura Questions was just something else =P It might help you to read it too.

[Megadeus]

Well here's what I did. Maxed every 2nd job skill except Blood Drain and Booster. For myself I chose 17 Booster and 6 Blood Drain seeing as they have almost equal durations and the 2% gain from 6 Blood instead of the 1% gain from 3 Blood is very very noticeable. Saves me lots of HP pots.
Blue Aura maxed is important since it allows the use of Advanced Blue Aura which can save the life of an endgame Battle Mage at bosses more than once.
Don't sacrifice Yellow Aura for Dark Aura until you have Advanced Dark since actually in some cases with slow staves, Yellow will benefit you more. I'm pretty sure Body Boost at max might make Dark better but I don't know yet. If you want to keep Dark then get a really good Evil Wings since it's speed is Fast(4) and booster with that is plenty of speed. Use dark with it and you are set.

I... uh.... how can I "sacrifice" Yellow for Dark if I've already maxed Dark in 2nd job...?
And will Yellow really benefit me more than Dark, even if it means at least 30-50 points of damage less? For me that seems to be enough to go from 2 hit killing with Dark to 3 hit killing with Yellow.
For the record, I've currently got maxed Mastery, 1 point each into Quad, Chain, and Yellow (....as far as I currently remember).

Also, from what I'm reading unless they're wrong, Strategywiki and the HS GMS DB (too many acronyms) both say BD/SB 17/6 have a 111 sec and 48 sec duration - far from "almost equal durations". Again, unless the in-game is actually different.

[White Mage Abyss]

You need blue for advanced blue, which in fact doesn't suck. It gives you passive resistance IIRC.

Also yellow is the best aura if you're 100% 1-2 hitting without Dark aura, What I mean is, if Dark Aura doesn't raise your KO rate on the monster you're killing, it's crap and yellow aura dwarfs it.

[Omar Ranger]

You really won't usually fight stuff that you don't 1hko and according to the game both durations are around 80 seconds. And by sacrifice I mean use dark instead of yellow.

WMA is right. If you 1hko with yellow and dark choose yellow.

[Megadeus]

What about bossing? Isn't that a big thing later on? Is yellow still better than dark?
(not like I want to do any bossing?)

[Tesiqurasa]

For bossing, Dark will be better (unless you're starting to hit damage cap or something). For Lionheart training, Dark would also be better. Use it when you're not going to 1-3 hit a mob (or come close to changing your hit).

[Falkner]

But keep in mind though Yellow Aura and Booster stacks.

[Megadeus]

You really won't usually fight stuff that you don't 1hko and according to the game both durations are around 80 seconds. And by sacrifice I mean use dark instead of yellow.

WMA is right. If you 1hko with yellow and dark choose yellow.

For bossing, Dark will be better (unless you're starting to hit damage cap or something). For Lionheart training, Dark would also be better. Use it when you're not going to 1-3 hit a mob (or come close to changing your hit).

Ok, I get this now.
So back to the original point - second job skills. Which of the four do you guys recommend to max? I'm really considering going max Blue and Yellow, and then doing what omar's doing (both because it seems stable and I'm lazy) with BD/SB 6/17.

Alternatively, how do these sound to you guys?
17 BD 6 SB
(ok so this one I didn't give much thought into. I like the higher BD but doubt this would give the same duration matching as 6/17 like omar's path)

11 BD 12 SB
12 BD 11 SB
(these two because I'm slightly OCD about stuff and I like balanced numbers. I'm doubting if these are effective as far as duration matching goes, but I'd think individually their half-maxed effects would feel nice. I don't really mind recasting mid-battles since I rarely and don't much plan to go bossing.)
EDIT: After going to do some more research, Basilmarket seems to have the correct in-game stats (seeing as how what omar told me about SB and BD in-game don't match with strategywiki and HS DB), this build seems fairly attractive now. A 3-second duration distance, both lasting just barely over a minute, and both being half of their max potential - BD is at the middle road 3% HP draing, and SB gives its max atk speed boost but not its max duration.


3 BD 20 SB
(Possibly good for if I want to use Dark Aura instead of Yellow but still have a Normal attack speed)
EDIT: Does SB stack with Yellow? I'm considering this build might be ok if it does

20 BD 3 SB
(To be used in conjunction with any of the auras [Blue + BD = Tanking / Yellow + BD = Speed Vamping / Dark + BD = Super Vamping] , because free HP is good. If a 1% change from 2% to 3% is very noticeable as omar said, then I'd have to wonder how good constant 5% is)
EDIT: This build would be good if Yellow doesn't stack with SB