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[Alisae]

Join WPD for BLU

[Shougun]

Considering we got two DPS in Stormblood, people would have been upset if we didn't have healer/tank for SH...although to be fair, it's not actually confirmed we'll have another healer

On another topic, the more I think of it, the more appealing it feels to replace gear with spell hunting for BLU. It would break the mold of grinding tomes every 6 months, and you could still aim for the same content, with some skills being available only in Savage on even patches, and in the next 24-man raid, exactly like the upgrade system for gear. You would replace obsolete spells the same way you replace obsolete gear, for example replacing 1 000 needles by 10 000 needles, or even 100 000 needles in a few years, etc...And the spells you equip could have a corresponding "ilvl" that would work with the DF or RF requirement.

I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or agreeing haha, sorry XD. Are you quoting that line because you're like "yeah, we should be getting a healer and tank otherwise people will be upset" (which is really me agreeing with you first lol) or were you under the interpretation that I said something counter to that?

Just in case I meant by that line if we had no info/leaks/trailers to go off or if for some thal knows why reason I had personally made the plan for SE - I'd of course follow the SB+ needs to be tank and healer, by making dancer healer and tank blue mage (aka if I could go back in time and wipe away the gunblade tank hype, which I would NOT do now - just leads to further upset). While unchained (non-DF version of blue) would be very strong/unbalanced damage/solo power with some hints to tanking style, in attempt to give DD players a palate cleanser of destruction as well as an easy and comfortable taste of tank (like SMN does, somewhat, for SCH - DD to healer, blue mage is the gateway of DD to tank). In that way while yes technically DD received no job in the expansion yet they would have something down their alley (for cleaning up old content that no one is running, also where normally wipe mechanics can't be solo'd, and getting a wonder of what it'd be like to be tank, maybe converting some people along the way). Of course if they go the three job route then everyone gets one job, given enough time (Tank/Healer right away and DD a bit later via advanced blue).

As for the idea of spells = gear/ilvl, that's an interesting concept.. Obviously it'd need a few systems, checks and balances, but given enough creativity and careful crafting it might work~ Certainly would be a different concept. Worse case scenario for "gating" some of the progress like other jobs have with weekly tomestones would be unlocking special arenas to learn spells from (you unlock fights against special monsters that have spells to learn to up your "ilvl", or less fun increase the % of earning a spell that's hard to get).

[Reynhart]

or were you under the interpretation that I said something counter to that?

I understood what you said as "without any prior information on any jobs, people would have been ok with BLU (A regular DPS BLU) being one the SH jobs, alongside a healer (or a tank)". If it's not, then yes we're agreeing that we need both a healer and a tank. Which goes all the way back to the difficulty of creating a "dual crystal" BLU in the first place.

by making dancer healer and tank blue mage

That could work, in theory. Since BLU mostly was a very versatile job, it would probably get less salt than when DRK was revealed to be a tank. And it's probably easier to design a "solo" branch once the core is sturdy enough to survive regular hits.

As for the idea of spells = gear/ilvl, that's an interesting concept.. Obviously it'd need a few systems, checks and balances, but given enough creativity and careful crafting it might work~ Certainly would be a different concept.

First thing is tweaking BLU gear so that it doesn't give any stats. The good part is that it wouldn't compete against other caster...it could wear replicas to have access to every skin for glamour purpose. As for gating progress, I think there are plenty of solutions, that wouldn't really be hard to implement especially if we still have the Masked Carnival. Your idea of a special arena could be unlocked for the week by dropping a "monster sprout" from Raids, so that you'll face a weaker version of that monster as a solo BLU. And on top of that, the arena would drop Whalaqee Shards so that if you're unlucky with your special carnival attempt, you'll eventually be able to buy the spell with a completed Whalaqee Totem, like Savage tokens.

So, to sum up, we would have a BLU with a set of core skills automatically unlocked, but with skill variants hunted in open-world or instances to tweak those skills, and an endgame spell hunt in place of endgame gearing. I'd really like to keep some customization with the skill variants, as long as you equip enough of them to match the required ilvl. Yeah, frankly, I think that could work. The good part is that each ilvl upgrade would not automatically make all your skills obsolete so that each hunted skill would probably have a longer lifespan than the gear jobs usually grind for. That would be a really good incentive to not skip a whole step of content if you'd like a very specific skill.

[Jandor]

On another topic, the more I think of it, the more appealing it feels to replace gear with spell hunting for BLU. You would replace obsolete spells the same way you replace obsolete gear, for example replacing 1 000 needles by 10 000 needles, or even 100 000 needles in a few years, etc...And the spells you equip could have a corresponding "ilvl" that would work with the DF or RF requirement.

That's a genuinely interesting idea.

[Havenchild]

I'm fairly surprised that there are actual people against a more refined middle ground for BLU that stands true to it's roots but with an FFXIV twist.

Having completed all the content BLU can possibly give at it's current stage, to see anyone say this is impossible to implement or be too difficult is insane. They have made/and changed 3 classes in their FFXIV counterparts but kept similar to some extent (SMN/RDM/AST) and people albeit swallowed those down easier (sometimes not).

Will it require effort by the Dev team to balance? Absolutely but I think I can say a majority of the player base would like to see BLU as a fully flushed out class. The masked carnivale could instead be its actual Job quests alongside the ability learning.

The element to learning skills can stay there, a requirement for skills learned before raiding can be implemented, a rotation can be generated, and immunities can be granted to bosses as they already are.

Imagine BLU as a tank for a minute as an example. How vast of an improvement would this be to the overall game in terms of tank availability alone?

Really, what is the excuse here? Considering they have all the power to control everything in game, why be scared of a class that can sandbox a little.

[Stigmar]

So yeah I waited to see how it would go I have all the spells and masked carnival done and unfortunately the only thing broken about blue mage is it doesn't do whats on the tin and that's ability to solo.

As for over powered? Under powered there is not reason this couldn't be a main job since you limited all the good spells already in fact blue mage could use some buffing even if it stayed a limited job.

Interesting Idea but please don't bother again if this the end result as its a class with nothing to do nothing to spend allied seals on making its own special content point less maybe if they added centrio seals as a reward it might keep it going for a while.

[RadicalPesto]

Sorry but it's a useless topic.
If SE had made the BLU a limited job, there's a good reason for that.
And if the devs give you that, it will be "nert this, buff that blablabla...". Endless story.

I think it's really funny that people will literally accept being given a non-job over the HORROR of people discussing balance issues on the forums, balance issues which, were Blue Mage to be made into a proper job, would only affect Savage and Ultimate anyway. That and the fact you seem to believe the dev team is infallible (despite having proven mistakes such as Pagos in their record) makes it seem you didn't think too hard about this.

[BillyKaplan]

If SE had made the BLU a limited job, there's a good reason for that.

I will give you there probably was a reason. But they also had a reason for Greed Only on alliance raids. Hell, they thought Eureka was a good idea and it's maybe the single most divisive thing they've introduced into the game. Not everything the devs do ends up being good for the game and its playerbase.
Will they change it based on this thread and others like it? Maybe. But they definitely will not change a thing if people don't ask them to, if people don't let them know there's negative feedback.

[shao32]

I don't see a middle ground with BLU to be honest, a job that have 50-170 skills balanced against the other 15 jobs? It's easy to say it will be hard but it can be done when you are not part of the balance team that have to deal with it, right now BLU have the number of skills of 2 jobs and soon it will be even more, it's not going to be hard, it's going to be a Damm nightmare to balance that, we are talking of the same Dev team that keep DRK, WHM and MCH in the current sad status the entire expansion and the ones who take ages to buff SAM and BLM and keep the WAR and SCH mandatory another 2 years more and ppl want to make his job extremely more difficult at the same time we get more jobs and stuff? BLU will eat a insane amount of resources and time for that and it will be probably meta forever since the chance of find unintended ways to use it and exploids it will be more high that any current job.

The only way I saw BLU being unlimited as any other job is having a hard limit of 20-30 skills like any other job and being balance with the other dps, the learn mechanic is lackbuster since compared to any other job BLU can appear with only water cannon if they want, I agree with Yoshi there, of course it will be dedicated BLU mains that will have everything and say this is a weak excuse but I wanna see who many are going to accept BLUs in they party that miss half of they skill set making infinity longer to kill stuff in a dungeon, make it have certain number of skill to let it get in? And if the player miss key skills? Devs will have to work pretty hard to make a dedicate matchmaking requeriment for BLU, again not a problem for dedicated BLU but it will no take much time until casual players complaing a lot for this, it can be done yeah so I'm indiferent with that.

I understand the sentiment of wanting to main BLU but we have to be realistic, it's or one thing or another, BLU now is in his first stage and really I don't like it the way it's going not bcs the mechanics or masked carnival but the way it's going to broke all the content in his way, all being said they at least should make a duty finder only for BLUs to improve the learning of skills in dungeons and primals with other BLUs rewarding with higher chance to get the skill in that way and other rewards to keep ppl using it to help new ones like a BLU roulette or something like that.

[Alleo]

I don't see a middle ground with BLU to be honest, a job that have 50-170 skills balanced against the other 15 jobs? It's easy to say it will be hard but it can be done when you are not part of the balance team that have to deal with it, right now [...]

The only way I saw BLU being unlimited as any other job is having a hard limit of 20-30 skills like any other job and being balance with the other dps, the learn mechanic is lackbuster since compared to any other job BLU can appear with only water cannon if they want, I agree with Yoshi there, of course it will be dedicated BLU mains that will have everything and say this is a weak excuse but I wanna see who many are going to accept BLUs in they party that miss half of they skill set making infinity longer to kill stuff in a dungeon, make it have certain number of skill to let it get in? And if the player miss key skills? Devs will have to work pretty hard to make a dedicate matchmaking requeriment for BLU, again not a problem for dedicated BLU but it will no take much time until casual players complaing a lot for this, it can be done yeah so I'm indiferent with that.

You kinda just gave the answer in your own post. Have x amount of skills that are balanced and that are the only onces allowed in instances. And have the rest of the skills be unbalanced and for solo content and overworld. There a middle ground. And if balancing the same amount of skills that other jobs need, is too much work then maybe we should never get a new job at all because each new one will need some balance.

And the argument that some would go into dungeons with only one spell? Why is that fine for Blue but not for every single other job? What stops other jobs from going into something with only one spell? Exactly, nothing. Suddenly making Blue the example that is not allowed to do that is just bad. Solution for this: Introduce a system that checks if the players have the needed skills and if not, dont let them in (no matter which job) and on top of that they can also give a fixed bar like they do in PVP. There no more job that will go into a dungeon unprepared.

Also breaking content: This was already proven to be false at least with his skills right now. There are some stronger primal ones and some others but first most of these dont work on certain bosses and second the rest of the skill are quite low in damage outputs. So if a limited job that needs to get skills from certain content cant do that solo or with blue mages only...then maybe that is a limited job that is far away from breaking content thus should have been able to go into instances the normal way and be a normal job.