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[SpankWustler]

This is a stupid and pointless and probably already answered question in addition to deviating from the current line of discussion, but gear that enhances breath spells has no effect on White Wind, right?

That sounds like a very accurate description of Water Bomb given what I remember of the modifiers while high on painkillers at 5 AM, Yugl.

As for Dark Orb, I am excited about finally having two strong spells of the same element (Everyone's Grudge, Dark Orb) for nuking in Abyssea. Not that I or anyone else does that particularly often anymore, but the animations look neat and I like to justify the horrific amount of inventory space that a nuking set takes up by using mine sometimes.

[Prothscar]

No, breath enhancing gear does not have any effect on White Wind.

[Defiledsickness]

blu is probably still gimped against NM's but at least Heavy Strike is awesome on regular mobs. it beats out QC for Damage/cost especially in abyssea with crit mods for it and CDC. and we are even further from needing a refresh atma (always good).

i mean we always needed /thf to be effective on NM's at 75, did you really expect it to change? at least people bring Blu to everything since it can do anything if needed (i've finished off VW nms etc when they killed the tank and started on mages. or tanked etc).

we just got a -15% dt spell, already had an 8shadow blink spell (almost instant cast), and already had great tanking spells; blu will still be badass this update.

[Yugl]

The duration, cost, and mechanics (Multiplication as opposed to addition) of barrier tusk stinks and unless I'm getting a ton of inventory on spell points (or a good JT), it's probably not worth setting. Yes, I expected change going from 75 to 99, but I guess that was expecting too much of 24 levels. We already rock regular mobs and most won't demand the excess damage produced by Heavy Strike.

[Mefuki]

blu is probably still gimped against NM's but at least Heavy Strike is awesome on regular mobs. it beats out QC for Damage/cost especially in abyssea with crit mods for it and CDC. and we are even further from needing a refresh atma (always good).

That's one of my points, though. We already do very well against normal monsters. We can spam Delta Thrust, we can use CA-->Savage Blade--->Goblin Rush on every other or every third mob and, if fighting multiple monsters, finish one off with BT while getting the next prepared for combat.

There's a kind of thought process that SE should be going through when releasing new BLU spells and when applied to Heavy Strike would look something like:

Who's the target of the spell? Your opponent.

Physical or magical? Physical.

Does it have additional effects? No.

Is it conal or AoE? No, neither.

Any unqiue mods or properties? Well, it's got a 75% STR mod and it autocrits.

Ok, so by this point we've firmly established that this spell is for our physical DD role. However, this is where the reasoning breaks down a bit. We already do very well against normal monsters, so obviously it shouldn't be made for them.

What would you use it on/when would you use it? With those mods, it'd be perfect on high level NMs. Excellent, that's exactly what I want to see, a spell that fills a niche that's missing from one of our roles. But, wait, now we're doing too much damage to regular monsters, so reduce it's accuracy. A lot.

So, now we have a spell that was designed to be used on high level NM's but with accuracy so bad, it can't land reliably on an NM designed for the 90 cap at level 95 and using sushi. I understand wanting to limit the damage done to regular monsters for the sake of game balance as well as balance between our other physical spells but I feel reducing accuracy was the wrong way to do it.

As a fix, I propose that the accuracy of Heavy Strike should be commensurate with the target's level. The higher the target's level, the greater it's innate accuracy. This way, it can still maintain it's niche function while still keeping things on an even footing with the other jobs as well as our other physical DD spells.

What do you other BLU's think?

[SpankWustler]

As a fix, I propose that the accuracy of Heavy Strike should be commensurate with the target's level. The higher the target's level, the greater it's innate accuracy. This way, it can still maintain it's niche function while still keeping things on an even footing with the other jobs as well as our other physical DD spells.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder hard it would be to implement, though. Until 75+, almost none of our spells were very unique so I'm skeptical of how much time the team can invest on each individual spell.

Part of me is just glad that we're finally getting unique stuff instead of the same five spells updated for the next ten levels, but a far greater part wishes the unique stuff could help with the "spell attack is rubbish against anything with a funny name" issue that's been present since day one.

[Prothscar]

SE wants BLU to be a jack of all trades. What they don't realize is, the playerbase isn't completely fucktarded, so they bring the jobs with actual proficiency in the roles that BLU can fill rather than settling for 60% maximum efficiency. Give BLU a role that it can perform effectively, and leave the rest as it is: filler, support for those that can actually do the role that we're meant to be able to do but perform ineffectively at.

[Demonofhunger]

I think we've gotten spoiled with the last few updates that actually had things we needed and wanted.

Since this update only has one thing we need and want (a spell we can use against HNMs), I think we should just count ourselves lucky.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

I think we've gotten spoiled with the last few updates that actually had things we needed and wanted.

This entirely.

[Trisscar]

This entirely.

Same here. Even without some godly spells for BLU I can still gank the mobs for all I'm worth. And really, what more do we need?