Thank you SE for...

[Burningskull]

Making a "Solo Job", locking over half their abilities in Dungeons / Trails that you either need a party for or out level and solo them, making those abilities random that you learn them, and then making it so you need those abilities to do your job quests. :end sarcasm:

First Impressions: Not really that impressed. I'm lvl 35 and have "most" of the overworld abilities. I've been trying to get them as I level aside from some of the ones where there is griefing going on. So far my strongest attack spell is still Water Cannon... unless you count 1000 Needles that takes forever and a day to cast. Bad Breath is okay but doesn't last that long. Ice Spikes and Toad Oil seems like they should last longer. I tend to get bored really easy on this job only using the same 3 spells or so over and over even tho i have a bunch but they are situational. Also I feel like I'm back in Eureka except the over world is better cause things don't kill me in 2 hits.

[Rosentretter]

If you're using just 3 spells at 35 then you're playing it wrong. Also, there was no need on creating another one of these threads.

[Dyvid]

Can't you run these with Company Squadrons?

[ReiMakoto]

If you're using just 3 spells at 35 then you're playing it wrong. Also, there was no need on creating another one of these threads.

Mind telling me how to play it "properly" then, at 35 thousand needles is very clearly the optimum thing to be doing for damage in 90% of situations, unless you really dont want to use it, in which case its off guard and water canon, maybe bad breath for damage down, what else is there that isn't just weak aoe/ just inferior to those

[Atlas-04]

If you're using just 3 spells at 35 then you're playing it wrong. Also, there was no need on creating another one of these threads.

At level 36 1k needles is the optimal thing to do it seems. almost 1 shots enemies and my chocobo finishes them off a second later. Even with off guard running 1k needles out damages 3 casts of water cannon. The leveling experience is the worst of any job so far imo. Thank god for exp boost.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Toad Oil lasts for two minutes. That's longer than I was expecting.

[Rymm]

Tsk, no creativity!

I'm having immense fun, using many of the spells in my toolkit. Put up mighty guard and toad oil, pull as many mobs as I can reach without them leashing (9 being my biggest group so far), ice spikes as I pick them up, once I have enough I top myself off, cast bristle, drop guard, throw bomb, acorn bomb, heal, bristle, 1000 needles, bomb, bristle, bomb, heal, and clean up any stragglers. Whole process takes about 30 seconds and, as long as I'm farming mobs at or above my level, is worth a half to a full bar of xp. I haven't got any dungeon spells yet, but PF is overflowing with groups doing BLU runs for everything from Tam-Tara to the Ex primals, so I'm not fussed about what I'll do when I get there.

I'm only level 23, but I've been having a ball. Maybe because I care more about doing what's fun than what's "optimum". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So yeah- Thanks SE! BLU has been great so far! <3

[AxlStream]

The leveling is a formality. The real fun is the Carnival.

[Bacent]

Toad Oil lasts for two minutes. That's longer than I was expecting.

180 seconds actually. It just shows 2m on your buffs since it's under 3 min, but above 2 min when you use it

[Reiryuu]

Tsk, no creativity!

Put up mighty guard and toad oil, pull as many mobs as I can reach without them leashing (9 being my biggest group so far), ice spikes as I pick them up, once I have enough I top myself off, cast bristle, drop guard, throw bomb, acorn bomb, heal, bristle, 1000 needles, bomb, bristle, bomb, heal, and clean up any stragglers.

Since you dropped the "creativity" card

Why are you dropping Mighty Guard when you're going to use 1000 needles? The fact that Mighty Guard is up does not affect 1000 needles at all. Neither does bristle, by the way so there's no point in casting it before using 1000 needles. You can cast all that with mighty guard up and not even need to heal. I mean, sure you can be blissfully ignorant that you're spending a lot more time casting spells you really don't need to in order to kill a mob, all power to you. But don't attack someone's creativity because they are not traipsing around and picking daisies and having fun with that like you are. Now I will offer some apologies for my tone, but I really hate people who are blissfully ignorant and "having fun" retorting against people who are at least trying to get some criticism across.

The points the OP makes are completely valid. Blue is terribly designed and the idea of a "limited class" is just stupid with the product we have been given. Seriously, did SE do any planning? This is meant to be a "solo" job. That's why we CANNOT ENTER DF. Yet, our level 20 job quest requires learning a spell from a dungeon and it's not a guaranteed learn. Meaning we either have to: overlevel the dungeon and run it solo ourselves over and over again with no XP or anything or bug people to join us in party finder over and over again until we learn the spell because the only mob you can learn the spell from is the last boss and you have to run the entire dungeon again if you happen not to learn the ability from him. Why should we have to use Party Finder for this!? If you're going to make us learn abilities in dungeons and require them for our job quests, then for crying out loud [B]balance the job enough to let us use the god-damned duty finder./B] Hell, you cannot even enter a dungeon with your grand company squadrons as BLU. Let alone Deepcroft being one of the dungeons allowed. (At least it's not in my list, I checked.)

To further accentuate the poor design choice of the spells and "progression" out of 49 spells almost HALF of them are only learned from a level 49/50 dungeon. And 2 of them are comically impractical to use because they actually kill you for using them. They had the basis of a fine design for BLU and a BLU mage system in the FFXI blue mage. All they had to do was incorporate it into their design for FFXIV and they could have had something far better than what we had here and if they had spent just a little bit of time and energy, they might have even been able to balance it to be a fully realized job. Perhaps even using a point system towards a role where as if you had enough spells to meet a certain role's requirements, you could queue as that role in DF. But they were too lazy, and nowhere nearly innovative enough to do so and hence we got this barebones collect-a-spell minigame in the form of a "job" that no one really wanted (the minigame, not the job). And to clarify that last statement, most people who wanted BLU expected to have to travel around and learn spells. I'm sure most of us even wanted that (I did) but the fact that once you learn the handful of them that you can learn up till about 30 or so, you have to grind to 50 to get most of the rest which is stupid.

Can I also just point out that the BLU job quests are absolutely stupid as well? I have to learn Mind Blast to kill 2 moles? Seriously? And for XP and some gil... even into the 30s. No new abilities or even a freaking weapon upgrade. I know INT is supposed to be the main factor for abilities, but hell can't we get an upgrade to the level 1 weapon sometime down the quest line not at 50? Assuming we even get one then?