Healers and Blu

[Saefinn]

snip

Heh, no worries and glad it's working out so far for you.

But I think this is also the beauty of it. Much of this stuff works a lot on trash pulls and normal mobs, but big bads and bosses have a resistance to much of it as to not screw with the scripted mechanics of fights (and stuff that does, wouldn't be missed if taken out). That said, I think if added to other jobs there'd be argument for including them as part of scripted mechanics of fights, taking an existing fight for comparison, Eden Resurrection Savage, the two adds have to be stunned.

What if there were more fights with this kind of thing and a plethora of CC effects that are useful. More of them existed in the game in the earlier days, but seem to have been treated as bloat. Whereas my argument would have been "make them more useful". Especially as it'd be appropriate for a Final Fantasy game and other similar styled MMO's have pulled it off like SW:TOR, the Dirty Fighting Gunslinger build, for example, was a fun one to play.

I'm actually hoping that Blue Mage has been used as an experiment on SE's part to see how well some of this stuff actually works without worrying about balance. And if not, that there's good lessons learned from it regardless. Unfortunately, Blue Mage is also getting its share of complaints, so I don't hope that reflect bad on the parts that have been enjoyable.

[Arcari]

I'm glad I spent time with Blu mage and still have whole Carnival and half the spells to go. Might not even need a quarter of them, but it's so much more fullfilling grouping up, talking strats with people and having so many ways to fight than spending another roulette with Broil III. Now all Blu is missing is the pet hotbar and a Cleric stance.

Heh, if you really want a challenge, try optimizing Moon Flute as a Healer (or even Tank) BLU. It'll feel like Cleric Stance, but even more punishing for screwing up, considering you can't do anything for 15 seconds afterwards. :P

On a serious note, I implore anyone who isn't feeling all that great towards the current healers to actually give Healer BLU a try. It's quite the refreshing change of pace.

[Sloprano]

*good stuff about jobs.*

Indeed, Carnival is already testament to that SE can make fights that can work with status effects and are more than training dummies on wheels. Playing Blu more both solo and in groups I descend into further madness trying to see what thought process they were going through when they decided on 5.0 SCH. Because what is still the reason for losing skills when syncing down? Damage? Here we have four blu mages stunning, paralyzing, blinding, dotting, petrifying, silencing, knocking back, knocking forward, knocking 50% health off in one spell, but other jobs aren't allowed the same pleasure for reasons unknown. Not that it matters much on SCH, there's still only Ruin/Bio be it Satasha or Hadex.

Yes! In SW:TOR what enjoyed more than the Imperial Agent storyline was playing as IA Operativ as medic. You actually had a wide variety of skills both for damaging, healing but also support: Stuns, heals, dots, hots and even stealth. It's a really good example because it feels like something on it's own and you identified clearly the skills you'd use to keep a party alive when it came to it, you know like 3.0 Scholar, not the 5.0 Healer. And blu is that again:
* Lots of skills with unique effects, be it damage, status effects or element.
* No flashing combos just skills with effects that compliment each other.
* Everything a gcd and except some cooldowns, always available even in lower levels.

There is the chance that Eureka and BLU is SE's stepping stones to make combat jobs fun everywhere, from level 1. Exploiting a mobs vulnerability to a status effect or element feels so much more fullfilling trying to mash some spells in lit up order. Minus the elments, everything else was how I was introduced to the game via Arcanist and set the tone for how fun it could be. I also like to think that this means we could go back to having more skills than there is room for, and just swap around like with the Blu Spellbook and make dungeons more than two gates and one boss rigmarole. Early ARR was laden with dungeons with interesting bosses and Im seeing that same glint in the Carnival, just imagining what a Deep Dungeon with this kind of imagniation could produce when not tied to making dungeons a fiften minute button spam but instead stop and look for a moment because the mob you usually Interrupt now is immune to it.

Which is why I don't mind bosses having some immunities: We can roll over and have fun playing with regular mobs, but then bosses come along and tell you to roll up your sleeves or you're not getting past. You know, like video game bosses being the challenge for the cumulative exam for everything you've done up to that point.

Heh, if you really want a challenge, try optimizing Moon Flute as a Healer (or even Tank) BLU. It'll feel like Cleric Stance, but even more punishing for screwing up, considering you can't do anything for 15 seconds afterwards. :P

On a serious note, I implore anyone who isn't feeling all that great towards the current healers to actually give Healer BLU a try. It's quite the refreshing change of pace.

Thanks, have tried it and have led to more memorable moments in Carnival and dungeons running around for fifteen seconds after the plan backfired than the thirty-seventh time I ran Amaurot and managed to hit one extra Art of War on the third pack. I find it more akin to the old Berserk and now I miss that too: Spells with clear advantages with also massive downsides that always makes you do moment-to-moment decisions if it's worth it or you got a plan that might just work. Like tank's stances and Cleric Stance as you said.

[Saefinn]

Aye I think they both show potential for what can be. Annoyingly, I don't think Eureka or Blue Mage have been given the justice those ideas need. They claim they learned lessons from Eureka and the latter half of Eureka was much better than the former from what I understand (I didn't get that far, as I decided it wasn't worth the grind of the first 2 areas). So I hope they take a philosophy of improving good ideas that were poorly done rather than discarding them. I know some are like "please don't add more Eureka content" but there were good ideas in there and makes sense to improve on them.

But one thing BLU has had me thinking about is, how many of my healing skills are bloat? I've not had much chance to experiment, but I'm looking to see if I can come up with a SCH set up that has said bloat removed from my crossbars and see if it's a viable way to get enjoyment from the job outside of Savage (as I figure self-nerfing in Savage might be a point of controversy).

However, if you take something like Indomitability, it's a really useful skill that makes getting people back to health really easy and you barely have to think about it. Making the one simple change of removing it, I'd have to make use of other stuff in my toolkit that's less effective. Fey Blessing does the same basic thing as an example but has a longer cool down and is less powerful, so I might plan those more than I might Indom. Then I might make more use of Emergency Tactics + Succor. It may free up more Aetherflow to spend on Energy Drain to make DPS marginally less boring.

Though this is hypothetical as I've not really played with it yet.

[Raikai]

I really like BLU healing as well, I try to do that every time I play... My only real wishes for that aspect of the job:
- An insta cast or OGCD heal. BLU got no emergency button to save the (very fragile) blu tanks if you used your swiftcast;
- Rez with 3 min cooldown seems a biiiit too much. Maybe reduce that to a 60s or remove it altogether?

OP you also forgot Cactguard. While it's something that should be cast by the offtank, in 4-mans is a nice little mitigation tool for the healers.

[Arcari]

I really like BLU healing as well, I try to do that every time I play... My only real wishes for that aspect of the job:
- An insta cast or OGCD heal. BLU got no emergency button to save the (very fragile) blu tanks if you used your swiftcast;
- Rez with 3 min cooldown seems a biiiit too much. Maybe reduce that to a 60s or remove it altogether?

OP you also forgot Cactguard. While it's something that should be cast by the offtank, in 4-mans is a nice little mitigation tool for the healers.

5 min cooldown for BLU raise actually.

Angel Whisper is balanced around the assumption that all 4 and/or 8 BLUs have it, so if it worked like a normal Raise... it'd be just a tad ridiculous. :P

That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to having the Healer spec have a bonus of reducing its cooldown to like a min or so.

(Of course I'm also of the mind that caster Raises are too much of a crutch in general and that RDM/SMN should have then removed or given the BLU treatment but that's another discussion altogether lol)