Basics of Baldesion Arsenal Gearing
Inside each Eureka zone, your gear syncs down to ilvl 300. This applies to Baldesion Arsenal as well, so any materia melds on gear above ilvl 300 is basically ignored. In order to cap substats, ilvl 430+ gear is recommended. For quick reference the cap points are outlined below (beware these values might change with any further stat squish):
| Stat Cap Points | |
|---|---|
| Head/Hands/Feet | 69 |
| Chest/Legs | 110 |
| Accessories | 55 |
| Weapon* | 114 |
*= 81 for Paladin Sword and 33 for Paladin Shield
Any stats above these points will sync down to these values for corresponding gear piece.
Elemental Bonus and Haste
Gear with Elemental Bonus on them are the strongest upgrades you can get in Eureka and therefore is very important if you want to optimise your damage output or defense. They are considerably stronger than any other gear. These gear include Elemental Armor +2, Kirin's Osode/Vermillion Cloak and Physeos weapon.
Haste is a separate speed modifier than Skill/Spell Speed that makes your auto attacks, weaponskills and spell casts faster. Each point of Haste reduces your GCD by 1%. It doesn't effect DoT potency compared to Skill/Spell Speed. Haste can be found in gear such as Kirin's Osode/Vermillion Cloak, Cassie Earring, Blitzring and Optical Hat.
Elemental Gearing
There are five possible pieces of elemental armor which you can obtain for each job from the vendor in Hydatos and elemental weapon. To obtain these pieces you first need to get the elemental +1 gear piece by spending crystals and unlocking the vendors by discovering all of the logogram combinations. You can then spend Eureka Fragments obtained from The Baldesion Arsenal to upgrade these pieces to +2. These have the same appearance/ilvl and normal substats but now come with an additional stat, Elemental Bonus.
For all jobs you can skip the body piece, due to the purchase of the Kirin's Osode or the Vermillion Cloak, for casters and healers you can also skip the head piece (unless you really want head glamours but it will be slightly weaker than the vermillion cloak).
Fragment Spending Order
| Fragments Required | Elemental Bonus | Elemental Bonus per Fragment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Head/Hands/Feet | 21 | 87 | 4.14 |
| Chest/Legs | 35 | 131 | 3.74 |
| Weapon | 100 | 348 | 3.48 |
This means to get the most efficient bonus per fragment while getting your elemental armor is in this order:
Head/Hands/Feet > Legs > Weapon (remember casters/healers can skip head piece and all jobs can skip chest piece).
Kirin's Osode and Vermillion Cloak
The Best in Slot body pieces for all jobs are easily available before even starting Eureka or doing BA. These can be purchased from the Nostalgic Fellow on Pier 1 in exchange for 2 Cryptic Seals for physical jobs or 3 Damascene Clothes for casters/healers.
Vermillion Cloak's Elemental Bonus account for both the head piece and the body piece.
These come with +3 Haste each effectively for free and 5 materia slots which work inside Eureka (anything above ilvl 300 will lose it's materia bonus when entering Eureka due to the ilvl sync).
What to meld on your Osode/Cloak
Rank 6 materia are the way to go with the melds on these due to the level of the gear (rank 6 materias provide +16 substat). You can find recommended melds for each job below:
| Role | Recommended Melds |
|---|---|
| Tanks |
|
| Healers |
|
| Physical Ranged |
|
| Casters |
|
| Melee* |
|
*= for Ninja replace 1 Direct Hit with Critical Hit
Physeos Weapon Substats
As a general rule, there is no need to worry about getting the substats until you upgrade the Eureka weapon to it's final Physeos stage with the elemental bonus. Prior to it gaining the elemental bonus you are better off using a ilvl 430+ weapon or something like the Shadowbringers relic where you can spread the substats ideally yourself to cap them.
Once you get the Physeos weapon after fully upgrading through the relic steps and then spending 100 Eurekan fragments it will only show your jobs main stat and vitality.
To start rolling for substats on the Physeos weapon you will need some Smoldering Protean Crystals. Each stat roll uses up 2 crystals (with the exception of the Paladin relics which use 1 for the sword and 1 for the shield and are rolled seperately). You can obtain these crystals in Pyros by exchanging the light you accumulate there at the forge. If you want to learn more about light farming, check the Pyros Light Farm Guide.
Once you've got some smoldering protean crystals and your physeos weapon head over to the Mnemeworks station near Gerolt inside the base.
When starting out with a new weapon the first thing to do is keep accepting each roll that comes up until you get 5 lines of substats unlocked. Your first roll will only have one and then it increases one by one from there slowly, it usually takes around 10-12 rolls to unlock all 5 lines of substats.
Be sure to click the Apply Mneme button to confirm the change (we will be confirming every change regardless of substats until we get 5 substat rolls).
The available substats depending on the job is given below:
| Tanks | Healers | Physical Ranged | Casters | Melee | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Hit | X | X | X | X | X |
| Determination | X | X | X | X | X |
| Direct Hit | X | X | X | ||
| Skill Speed | X | X | X | ||
| Spell Speed | X | X | |||
| Tenacity | X | ||||
| Piety | X |
Substat optimisation
When rolling for substats the maximum each individual line can give is 84 (on Paladin the max line roll is 60 for the weapon and 24 for the shield), and due to the item level sync any substat value above 114 (81 on Paladin sword and 33 on the shield) is wasted (this is the cap for substats at ilvl 300 on a weapon).
This means to get optimised substats can take a lot of luck and rolls. As a general rule of thumb you want a nice spread of values across all substats. With the perfect set of substats being 114+ on one stat and 84 84 84 on the other 3 substats. Same idea applies for Paladin but with their own stat caps for each of the sword and shield. Ideally the substat that you take to the 114 cap would be the one that your specific job benefits from the most inside of Eureka.
General substat priority for each role
- Tanks: Critical Hit
- Healers: Critical Hit
- Physical Ranged: Determination
- Casters: Spell Speed
- Melee: Critical Hit (Samurai) or Determination (Remaining Jobs)
Accessory Substats
Since Shadowbringers it's been possible to cap both of your accessories substats in Eureka with the ilvl sync. Since the Endwalker stat squish any ilvl 430+ item will sync down with both of their substats capped at the values available in Eureka with it's ilvl 300 sync. This means to fully optimise substats on your accessories the main aim is to have any ilvl 430+ accessory with the main 2 substats your job wants. Cassie Earring and Blitzring are special cases and will be covered below in their own section.
Accessory substat recommendation
- Tanks: Critical Hit and Determination
- Healers: Critical Hit and Determination (or Determination and Spell Speed except Sage, will be explained below)
- Physical Ranged: Direct Hit and Determination
- Casters: Determination and Spell Speed
- Melee: Direct Hit and Determination
Imperial Jade Accessories
These are the ilvl 290 accessories which can be pentamelded, since the ability to hit the cap on both substats on accessories in Shadowbringers these generally are no longer worth it and the ilvl 430+ optimal substat accessories work out better.
There are some very niche cases where they might be better than ilvl 430 accessories for tanks but the difference is generally close to negligible and not really worth it since you lose a few points of your main stat and HP in return.
Cassie Earring and Blitzring
Back in Stormblood, these items were very strong due to them providing vitality values that were unobtainable with other gear at the time (note that back then the Blitzring was actually a belt item called the Speedbelt).
Since Shadowbringers and subsequently Endwalker and the new stat scaling, the benefit of these items is entirely found in the +3 Haste each of them provides. This haste however comes at the cost of two substats value on both items. With Eureka scaling this works out at 55 of each substat per item, so you are effectively losing 110 of each of your desired two substats if you choose to go for the Cassie earring and Blitzring.
Small point on vitality:
Your vitality stat will also change a small amount when using these accessories compared to ilvl 430+ options. Physical jobs lose 9 vitality and casters/healers lose 4 vitality when using the Cassie Earring. Physical jobs vitality is unaffected by using the Blitzring and casters/healers actually gain 5 vitality when using it. Note these changes are miniscule and not really worth considering in much detail.
Deciding if the Cassie Earring and Blitzring are worth using will depend entirely on the job you are playing. In most cases with most physical jobs like melee, tanks and physical ranged, the better option is to go for the ilvl 430+ accessories with ideal substats. There may be some argument to be made for some physical ranged to use it due to the drastically reduced GCD time for Eagle Eye Shot but this is difficult to fully test and may cause clipping or weaving issues elsewhere. It also depends on the length of the boss fights and how many sets of Eagle Eye are used.
Caster's are where the haste bonus can start having a larger benefit here and it is strongly worth considering getting them if you are looking to optimise on Summoner or Black Mage.
With healers it depends on which job you are on and how you are playing it when deciding if the Cassie Earring and Blitzring are worth it. White Mage and Astrologian can benefit from Haste moreso than Scholar and Sage. You can use them to fit 1 more GCD inside Magic Burst window, but you will run out of MP much quicker with added Haste so be careful if you choose to use them.
Quick note on Critical Hit and Spell Speed
This is a complicated topic that can be discussed on its own but in summary, Critical Hit is not the best substat inside Eureka unlike the rest of the game. At ilvl 300, the gain and modifiers for Critical Hit is very low and doesn't scale well. Determination/Direct Hit outweighs the gain from adding more Critical Hit. However the difference is very low and you shouldn't be concerned too much about it. It is okay to meld Critical Hit on your cloak or use Critical Hit accessories, damage difference will usually not be noticeable.
Spell Speed on the other hand is a bit more risky topic to discuss, especially for healers and Red Mage. For healers except Sage, using Spell Speed accessories can be very good depending on your playstyle. With sufficient substats you can fit 1 more GCD under Magic Burst and in general cast more spells on a fight. It can also be very useful if you are healing multiple Double Edge users for a shorter cast time on your healing spells. You will probably want to have a Rejuvenate tray if you go that route though.
For Red Mage, it is quite controversial to get more Spell Speed in most of the game, however in BA most of your damage will come from your spells inside Magic Burst window. Even though Red Mage doesn't scale well with Spell Speed; your oGCDs (Fleche, Contra Sixte, Corps-a-corps etc.) are not enhanced by Wisdom of the Elder, your melee combo is not enhanced by Magic Burst (even though enhanced melee combo is magical, they are weaponskills and not spells) and you will spend most of your time casting spells building your combo for Magic Burst window. This is why Spell Speed on Red Mage in Eureka/BA is actually beneficial because it allows you to cast more spells under burst when your own toolkit works against you.