BLU Balance

[Zetaking]

@Fae well its funny you rate blu in a vacuum instead of how it works in group play, you make it sound like tank, blu, blu, blu, blu(or cor) geo is the god form of a DD party atm, tho that could not be further from the truth, the effects of stacking different jobs yields so much more run, blu, war,(whm rdm or sch depending) , geo(tho if you have a rdm as healer brd might be better), cor is the truest power house. In that set up if the war and rune have there aeonics no weapon combo the blu will have will let them win the dmg, in fact because of all the def down this set up would have and the power warcry will give, rune would without a shadow of a doubt crush the blu and war. Now all this is assuming top of the line gear JP ext

on your avatars points cant really fight it, blu was given some serious advantages to most DD's when it comes to weathering magic dmg, the next to fastest jobs for clearing it quickly tho, is rune and then rdm or pup(fear the people that know how to use this job) defiantly not bst, also i gotta ask how do you not go splat,on bst, to the 1hours i mean pup can be 2 miles away bst.... yea they get to hang 10 on the tidal wave >.>

@jakuk drk/rdm tho odd can nearly do it (25 gear 25 ja 15 magical), and dont have to nurf there tp to do it... maybe there attack some but yea... drk

[Traxus]

BLU can solo VD avatar in sub 3 mins, we'll list it as 3mins

No it can't lol, not even close. VD avatars are slow (and quite difficult) to solo on BLU since you need to tank up + cast shadows + contribute to healing yourself to even survive, and if trusts die to AoE you are probably done. If you really want to solo VD avatars there are better jobs for it like SCH, PUP, or RUN.

The only HTB that is worth farming for gil on solo BLU at all is tenzen, and that basically requires mythic (for mp to keep casting shadows) or using multiple MP meds every run. Even with AG mythic + near perfect gear it's about a 5-7 minute clear time when you include putting up buffs and trusts, not sub 3. Average BLUs can't solo this at all, let alone avatars.

[Kyte]

I can kill Tenzen in ~4:30 (from enter time) on BLU, and I can use any high end weapon for that. Tizona isn't specifically necessary- I've played around with doing it with Sequence and Almace as well and they both work out provided you're using King of Hearts for Refresh and Apururu for Devotion. However, someone who kills more slowly would probably run into MP issues.

Either way, exceptional proficiency at farming a single fight does not warrant a job nerf. BST is (still) quite good at soloing many of these as well and I don't really see people asking for that to be subject to further adjustment.

[Ataraxia]

In all fairness, Rudra's was extremely broken. We (I) acknowledged this, there were ENTIRELY too many bandwagons.

BST was extremely broken, the nerf was completely unfair to the way it was broken though.

BLU right now is extremely imbalanced. the traits are highly excessive.

But let's be honest, pup right now is extremely broken too. So is geo. So is immanence. So is enmity zero 100k nukes. Everything is out of whack right now.

Rudra's storm was only good if you use sneak attack or climactic flourish which is every 1 minute or 1 minute and 30 second. Rudra's storm can no longer be spam like a good weapon skill anymore. It's probably broken like you said because 3000 tp does too much damage. I think they shouldn't have nerf the 1000 tp Rudra's storm. As a Blue Mage I can do a whole lot every 5 second with Chant du Cygne. If you haven't play blue mage than you are missing out. No one really care about this job for 7 long years until now so best regard to Grekumah master of blue mage.

I have nothing against puppet master at this point or any other job because SE already nerf the entire game by lowing NM evasion. The summoner does 99,999 flaming crush and no one cares. People still use BLM, SCH, BST, WHM, RUN to clear Reisenjima helm NM which still is a challenge to some people. However, the elite have no problem clearing them and tons of Aeonic Weapon are being made weekly and monthly in some LS.

[Ataraxia]

I'd rather see jobs buffed at this point than jobs nerfed.

I agree other job needed Buff. Nerfing a Blu Mage at this point is like taking the very soul of a Tarutaru and removing it existence from FFXI. We all know when a Tarutaru is happy more money for SE and more subscriber. Akihiko Matsui knows this best of all because he is a Tarutaru... =)

[Kyte]

Rudra's storm was only good if you use sneak attack or climactic flourish which is every 1 minute or 1 minute and 30 second. Rudra's storm can no longer be spam like a good weapon skill anymore. It's probably broken like you said because 3000 tp does too much damage. I think they shouldn't have nerf the 1000 tp Rudra's storm.

If you're using a Moonshade like you should be (plus potentially Aeneas), then there's no such thing as a 1k TP Rudra's.

[Urmom]

I don't recall, but I think BST could stand farther away. I know they could stand a little farther back because they had to be in range of pet, not the enemy. I just can't recall just how far Readies could be used from (last time I played BST was aby besides a few weeks of renewed interest--something to gain-exp on).

Til the recent changes, one of the problems I had with balance is that SCH and BLMs could idle -50% DT and bust out megaton-sized nukes by flipping gear for a second. Melee were frequently struggling to stand near the boss and hit the boss. The AGI changes have helped that some.

RNG and COR weren't quite so priveleged. You had to meet the same acc demands as melee (easier for RNG) and wanted useful traits like Store TP.

Further than what? It was more or less same as max cast distance. I say more or less because mob and pet sizes can change things slightly. Which is slightly less than ranged attack distance.

But yeah I fully acknowledge meleeing held significant risk but that didn't really apply to nukers like you mentioned. Generally though melees were sacrificing safety for dps but with current meta not always the case

I wouldn't really give rng/cor passes because of acc since well so did the pet jobs but could also get buffs for it too. That said ranged damage has other problems that hold the amount of dps they can deal back... namely the ~1 delay between shots that isn't effected by snapshot at all really slows tping down. And the huge pdif update they did to help bring melees and autos pdifs more on par with well bst pets basically increased ranged pdif at all to the point melee is actually higher for the first time in game history. They even somewhat acknowledge it was a problem... with the rng automaton and increased it by about 60% but ignored ranged attacks for players <.<. Of course if you change things up and are able to buff/debuff for it and aren't against nms that it doesn't work well on leaden salute/true flight can help you kind of ignore the meh pdif thing but it takes more work than most often think it's worth. Whatever Gastraphetes 4 lyfe!

[OmnysValefor]

Further than what? It was more or less same as max cast distance. I say more or less because mob and pet sizes can change things slightly. Which is slightly less than ranged attack distance.

I don't recall if Readies were usable from outside casting distance. BG says 18' (still lol), so that was probably the maximum. But yeah, being able to stand off the flank of your pet on some particularly large mobs (which many bosses are) could give you the range to avoid aoes meant to hit the group. It's no different than healers standing at max casting distance on the tank and barely edging out of some aoes.

But yeah I fully acknowledge meleeing held significant risk but that didn't really apply to nukers like you mentioned. Generally though melees were sacrificing safety for dps but with current meta not always the case

I wouldn't really give rng/cor passes because of acc since well so did the pet jobs but could also get buffs for it too

One of us is misunderstanding the other. You seem to be thinking that I was saying rng/cor had things easy. I'm saying they were safer than melee frequently but because they couldn't just fire away in -DT gear (they'd miss). Sure core and SCH have regain buffs, but you'd be a madman the wait exclusively on those.

BSTs were effectively ranged DD with no risk or opportunity cost except for time (and not even that during Unleash)

---

I hope Nerfs aren't coming to BLU because I like the utility of it and a lot of players do. I can do good damage (not the best, most pure DPS can wreck me) and provide support to my group. I genuinely think it represents more of a problem that a job can be effectively replaced because of someone having one spell (RDM) than someone else having that spell. A good look at the support role of red mage would be nice, and perhaps the gear available to them. With Temper/Temper II, it could be quite awesome to see RDM on good melee gear.

It's a shrinking game. The prevalence of certain jobs (GEO, BLU, WHM, PLD, RUN, SCH, BLM, THF) aren't why you don't see Red Mages, Bards, or Monks. The state of RDM, BRD, and MNK is why you don't see them. (Yes, I know Honor March is awesome. Most Bards don't have Honor March, most RDM don't have HQ carmine and access to the necessary gear to be "pretty good").

In spammable content like Ambuscade frog, probably the most useful mage is SMN for Hastega II. Sure it won't take a decent RDM long to pass out hastes, but it's slower than a BLU or SMN. When you're doing the content dozens of times, 30 more seconds matters.

I don't play with any great SAM. I play with great players that dust their good SAMs off sometimes, but it seems like a glance at Overwhelm could definitely be in order. At 75, most tanks didn't have much in -DT gear and took hits about as hard as the melee with them (Sorry, defense was mediocre at 75), it wasn't necessarily a death sentence to stand next to the PLD. A lot of cases with SAM now, it is.

I've never been in a 3 blu or 4 blu group. I run with a BLU friend frequently, and it's not favoritism towards the job (I kinda wanna play DNC...), it's that Rudra's and CDC don't SC. DNC + DNC would probably outdamage BLU + BLU if you take out all the skillchains your missing. It's not so much that we try to skillchain (we don't) but incidental free damage is nice. Sure we could evisc + CDC or RS + Requiescat but both of those require using generally inferior weaponskills. When I'm farming content (which is what most the game is these days)--Ambuscade, HTBF, lower-tier escha NMs, any random grind, I want to kill as fast as possible and compatible WSs and their incidental SCs is probably the fastest.

I don't doubt ALL BLU groups happen, because people are dumb, but something is lost to that sort of stacking.

Is there some clever mechanic to frog that noone has figured out that makes it reasonable to chip away at the frog? It doesn't matter if there is, the fight is bothersome after the first few times, all players are going to go to the quickest route and this month that happens to be BLU/BLM. BLU hasn't, in my experience, been anything special in most Ambuscades so far (Regular or Intense).

[Urmom]

One of us is misunderstanding the other. You seem to be thinking that I was saying rng/cor had things easy. I'm saying they were safer than melee frequently but because they couldn't just fire away in -DT gear (they'd miss). Sure core and SCH have regain buffs, but you'd be a madman the wait exclusively on those.

BSTs were effectively ranged DD with no risk or opportunity cost except for time (and not even that during Unleash)

Oh I see. Sure that's true... except they could shoot farther away than bst could ready(hell farther than you can cast) so I'm not really sure what your point is as they would had even lower risk (only gotta dt for 1) and about same opportunity costs (dat 5-15% true shot. Not valid on magical ws or additional effects but pets still were getting hit with all kinds of stuff that had some albeit reduced effects on dps). They are just worse at damage for a few reasons which I already covered

Plus you switch gear mid shot anyways... though if you really wanted to I guess you could make a racc/dt/pdt set. Ambuscade is actually kind of good for that if it was ever somehow necessary. Which is what bst often did since the pet still needed acc and dt. The main difference was to an extent you could a little bit macro around some but it did come at some cost to your pet

[Fae]

No it can't lol, not even close

Yes it can as that is close, you were proven wrong in the very next post by someone who plays BLU. Tenzen is also a slower fight due to SAM and PLD 1 hours. I guess knowing multiple BLU who funded RMEA and abjurations that way means I'm imagining things just because you can't do it. All of this of course ignores also everything else that was said on BLU popularity, this is one example and one of many reasons BLU is bandwagoning due to its power.

Either way, exceptional proficiency at farming a single fight does not warrant a job nerf. BST is (still) quite good at soloing many of these as well and I don't really see people asking for that to be subject to further adjustment.

Oh so multiple BCNMs is one fight and one example is all the reasons that were presented, and making more less than half the gil an hour is "quite good".

I hope Nerfs aren't coming to BLU because I like the utility of it and a lot of players do. I can do good damage (not the best, most pure DPS can wreck me) and provide support to my group. I genuinely think it represents more of a problem that a job can be effectively replaced because of someone having one spell (RDM) than someone else having that spell. A good look at the support role of red mage would be nice, and perhaps the gear available to them. With Temper/Temper II, it could be quite awesome to see RDM on good melee gear.

It's a shrinking game. The prevalence of certain jobs[...]

Nerfs have to come to BLU or those SAM you never play with, you never will. The prevalence of BLU is because it has bandwagon'd to historic levels, and the amount of reasons to pick it over other options are so overwhelming everyone else is making that choice too. I'm sure you and many other players enjoy being OP, it doesn't make it good for the game balance or job variety in the game at all though, take your bitter pill, swallow your medicine. SAM, BST, THF, and if you want to go further into the past pretty much every job have all taken theirs when it was their time be a big boy now, it's good for the games health.


Census #2:
93 BLU
59 THF
38 BST
37 BLM
31 GEO
25 WHM
21 NIN
19 RDM
17 COR
17 DNC
15 SCH
16 PLD
14 RUN
12 MNK
9 BRD
8 DRK
8 SAM
6 SMN
5 WAR
5 PUP
4 DRG
3 RNG

Looking pretty familiar as always, #NerfBLU