Sukutak here with another part of the “101” series, which gives an overview of the game’s classes and roles.  This is not an extensive how-to guide and won’t provide optimal skill rotations, but it should give you most of the information you need to start blasting your enemies with fire and ice!

A Little Lore

In the hands of a skilled practitioner, thaumaturgy can be a force of terrifying destruction. At the heart of this school of magic lies the ability to call forth and command the latent aether within oneself through deep introspection.
To then mold that aether into sorcery, the thaumaturge makes use of a scepter or staff, within which is housed a medium—a natural stone imbued with magical properties. Thus armed, the thaumaturge is capable of wreaking considerable havoc via ruinous spells and curses.

Thaumaturge’s Role

See the DPS 101 guide for an introduction to the DPS role.

Where to Start

The thaumaturge class can be unlocked in Ul’dah at the Thaumaturge’s Guild.  Cocobuki and his brothers will train you to channel the elements through your staff. Every five levels, you should return here for another quest to get gear upgrades and (at level 15 and 30) abilities.

As You Level

Thaumaturge is interesting in that it only needs a few of its abilities for damage; most of the rest are some form of utility. There are three main elemental spell lines: fire, blizzard, and thunder. Each of those is broken down into multiple abilities. Fire I and Blizzard I are both single target spells, mainly used for damage (although Blizzard I also applies Heavy, reducing the movement rate of your target). Fire II and Blizzard II are both AoE spells for use against groups of enemies. Fire II creates an explosion around your target, while Blizzard II is centered around you, requiring you to be close to the enemies. For the first few levels, those will be your main spells; we’ll get to thunder later.

The main thing to understand with thaumaturge is the interplay between the fire and ice buffs your abilities give you. Most of your fire spells give you a stack of Astral Fire (AF). At first you can only have one stack, but when you hit level 20 you will be able to have two, and at 40 you will be able to have three. While you have AF:

• Fire spells will do more damage the more stacks you have, but will cost more MP to use
• MP will not regenerate
• Ice spells will do less damage, but will cost less MP to use

Ice spells, meanwhile, give stacks of Umbral Ice (UI). If you have stacks of AF and use ice spells, the UI stack will cancel one AF stack until you have no buff, then afterwards you will start to gain UI stacks with each cast. UI has the following effects:

• Fire spells will do less damage, but will cost less MP to use
• MP will regenerate at a highly accelerated rate depending on the number of UI stacks

Playing thaumaturge (and later, black mage) well depends on maximizing your use of these two buffs. Your best damage comes out while you’re in AF mode, as your Fire I casts (or Fire II for AoE) will do bonus damage. This will eventually cause you to run out of MP, however, so you must switch to UI to regenerate it. While you’re in UI, you can use blizzard spells to deal a bit of damage. Unfortunately, they do significantly less than fire magic does. Once you’re full on MP again, back to AF to pump out more damage!

To accomplish this, you’ll mainly use Transpose at first. This ability swaps one buff for the other, instantly bringing you from AF to UI or vice versa. With transpose, you can use fire until completely out of MP, hit transpose, and immediately start regaining your MP. Eventually, you will get Fire III and Blizzard III. Casting a III spell instantly gives you the maximum possible stacks of the respective buff.  This lets you quickly swap from AF to UI with a single cast, without being dependent on transpose. Please note that the III spells are not as useful for damage as I spells and so should not be spammed: fire I or II are still your best options for damage, once you have all your AF stacks.

There are a few other damaging spells you get as thaumaturge. Scathe does very little damage, but it has no cast time and so can be used while moving/dodging. Thunder is a damage over time spell, dealing damage every three seconds as long as it is on your target. It is generally a good idea to cast it during UI, as you want to fit as much fire magic as possible into AF. Eventually you will unlock a trait called Thundercloud which will buff your Thunder spells: the DoT from Thunder will have a chance to trigger Thundercloud every time it hits. Thundercloud makes your next Thunder spell become instant (like Scathe, allowing you to move without interrupting it), cost no MP, and deal bonus damage on the first hit equal to the damage of all its ticks. It then continues ticking away doing damage, so you get nearly double damage whenever you cast something with Thundercloud!

Unlike Fire and Blizzard, Thunder spells are all very similar. They deal the same damage with each tick, but have higher durations as they go up in rank (24 seconds for thunder III, 21 for II, and 18 for I). Thunder I is the fastest and cheapest MP-wise to cast, so usually you want to use it to give enemies the Thunder debuff. Once you get a Thundercloud proc, though, you want to use the highest level Thunder spell you have as the increased duration will also mean more bonus damage, and the increased cast time and MP cost will be negated by Thundercloud.

Cross-Role Skills

Please see the DPSing 101 guide for more information about cross-role skills.

Acquiring Your Job

At level 30, you can evolve from thaumaturge to black mage. This increases your stats, allowing you to do more damage, and lets you unlock more abilities and spells.  To do this, you must complete the level 30 thaumaturge quest. It is no longer necessary to level a sub-class to 15 to unlock your job, as of Stormblood.

That should be enough to get you started as thaumaturge! Go channel Robert Frost and end the world with fire and ice.