Much needed improvements to blue mage

[Malthar]

Ok, SE. I know some of what I'm about to post has been mentioned before, but I'm going to tidy everything up in a summary here.

Below are some of the improvements that needs to be made to blue mage and the reasons for them.

1) Physical blue mage spells should grant tp.
Dark knight, scholar and black mages have occult acumen. Why shouldn't blue mage? I mean, what's more occult than blue magic?

2) Physical blue mage spells should have the chance to double attack and attack should factor into the damage.
They're physical. Physical damage should have all the physical modifiers attributed, such as attack, critical, and double attack. TP can already be applied to spells using chain affinity. Let's go the rest of the way and include attack, critical, and double attack.

3) Blue mage has too many procs to do in voidwatch.
For the love of all that is right and good, do something about this! How about an ability for blue mage to use any spell in its repertoire for a minute without the need for spells to be set? Actually, how about dual-purposing Unbridled Knowledge to enable such an effect.

4) Give blue mage a spell to protect and shell themselves.
Do I need to explain further?

If you like these improvements then like this post.

[Tennotsukai]

Nice! I'll show support of this and add some. Breath spells + many other spells are completely useless other than as procs. We do not equip them...EVER!!! I.E. Ice Break (except for proc), feather barrier (previously said duration will probably increase), and about 50% of our other spells are useless now. All of these should be examined, played with, and compared to our more mp efficient and more utilized spells. On content we fight now there is no reason to use breath spells except for procs. A nice overhaul on blu (not to nerf it) could happen for the new expansion.

New spells, fixed spells, and maybe even new JAs to change things around (like a magic attack bonus stance JA or, consume, an ability to increase chances of learning a spell.)

[Rambus]

I always thought only CA spells should be the ones that give tp/ double attack/ so on. How is giving blu a few buffs when the overpowered talks go to the GS merit ws?

Also I like them to think about ways of just letting us use all our spells while set point stuff be more for traits and maybe more upgradable traits:

With limited MP pool and only a margin of our spells even being useful, I don't think having access to all spells at once would be overpowered while we only gain traits from those set, that sounds like a perfect idea because Job Traits are the only main reason it'd really even be overpowered. And if your worried about because we'd no longer have to set damage spells to take up our points, then lower the number of points o something to allow fewer traits.

I lot of upgradable traits is hard to do unless you are stuck curing (I/E 30 something set points for clear mind IV)

I just got gates the other day and i am not impressed. Are all the special spells like that underwhelming too?

Anyways the VW crap is ridiculous. After being gone for a year that was the change i expected most to happen (Along with AL changes but 50% is still a failing grade), not different menu icons for spells and ws.

IF SE did not want me playing blu then that was a good way to do it since it did work.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

1) No. Let's look at Occult. DRK - Useless. BLM & SCH - Useless. BLU - Useful. Sorry, BLU doesn't need anymore ways of TP gain or Damage output.

2) No, powerful enough.

3) Yes, but only for a reduction of the spells.

4) Yes, No, Maybe...

[Plasticleg]

1) No. Let's look at Occult. DRK - Useless. BLM & SCH - Useless. BLU - Useful. Sorry, BLU doesn't need anymore ways of TP gain or Damage output.

2) No, powerful enough.

3) Yes, but only for a reduction of the spells.

4) Yes, No, Maybe...

So when is BLU nuking with Elemental Magic spells?

[Daniel_Hatcher]

So when is BLU nuking with Elemental Magic spells?

What are you on about? the OP wants BLU to get a trait that works with BLU spells.

[Prothscar]

Blue spells wouldn't give nearly as much TP as a 200~400MP elemental magic spell would.

Further, no, physical blue magic is not powerful enough. Try casting some physical blue magic on anything that checks T++ or above, targets where additional attack or critical hits would make the most difference, and tell me how that goes for you.

[Tennotsukai]

TP is tp...always nice to have.

[Aeonk]

I'd settle for removing the damn accuracy penalty to Heavy Strike.

[saevel]

Blue spells wouldn't give nearly as much TP as a 200~400MP elemental magic spell would.

Further, no, physical blue magic is not powerful enough. Try casting some physical blue magic on anything that checks T++ or above, targets where additional attack or critical hits would make the most difference, and tell me how that goes for you.

That's LCF and you know it. Blue physical spells have an attack bonus that varies with each spell that more then ensures you get a decent Ratio on them. All melee's hit for sh!t on IT++ stuff, it takes double if not triple Min + Chaos with Berserk and / or Last Resort to make them do decent damage on things 10+ levels above you (-0.5 Ratio). In all other ways BLU is ridiculously stupidly powerful. It doesn't help that current game content focus's on 60~90s fights vs overpowered super NMs, content which reduces the game to a couple of jobs only.

OC wouldn't do much for BLU anyway, but DA / Attack working on BLU spells would just have SE nerfing the sh!t out of BLU later. Go ask the RNG's how that felt.

The most you can ask for is having the LCF penalty reduced a bit, instead of -0.05 per level make it -0.03 ~ -0.04. This way spamming BLU spells won't become stupidly overpowered while making them a bit more effective in those super short 60~90s fights that Tanaka was so fond of.