Rework Bluemage!

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Snip.

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I like this idea. Gives the job some free-form rotation based on what you need. For the first rotation you might want Song of Torment to hit the hardest, so you use it after your fire spell, but the next time you get to wind the song is still active, so you use another wind spell.
Also building to more powerfull spells would be nice, such as the primal spells.

I think they’re already working on one or two more limited jobs atm. I highly doubt they’re gonna fix blue mage because of it :/ limited jobs were such a stupid and out of touch idea.

It's a shame they're sticking with the limited job system for BLU.

They could of made it where even if you leveled to 80, you have to talk to the NPC that starts the quest to "unlock" it for use, but it would have strict requirements like having nearly all spells and completed tiers of the masked carnival. Yes, you'll get those who complain that it isn't free to use at the start, but it's a compromise for those who really want to main it for MSQ and such.

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Originally Posted by Tracewood

It's a shame they're sticking with the limited job system for BLU.

They could of made it where even if you leveled to 80, you have to talk to the NPC that starts the quest to "unlock" it for use, but it would have strict requirements like having nearly all spells and completed tiers of the masked carnival. Yes, you'll get those who complain that it isn't free to use at the start, but it's a compromise for those who really want to main it for MSQ and such.

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Honestly, I'm fine with nearly anything. I recall from the live letter that they said BLU content will be in patch 5.12. I would think it's around end November or start December. So that's close to a year without any new content for BLU since it was released in January.
If they want to go forward with limited jobs, they need to support them more than just release and forget.

At least normal jobs get new content each patch in the form of new dungeons and trials for combat, or new recipes and deliveries for crafting/gathering.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

I like this idea. Gives the job some free-form rotation based on what you need. For the first rotation you might want Song of Torment to hit the hardest, so you use it after your fire spell, but the next time you get to wind the song is still active, so you use another wind spell.
Also building to more powerfull spells would be nice, such as the primal spells.

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I also wanted to keep some of the spell selection aspect of BLU as well. I think with a basic gauge and spenders you could have a check-list instead of a fixed duty set.

So for example, for the DF set it could require that you slot at least:

1. 6x different elemental builders.
2. 3x single target spells that work as a combo.
3. 3x AoE spells that work as a combo.
4. 2x different small blue token spenders.
5. 2x different large blue token spenders.
6. 1x crowd control spell.
7. 1x enemy debuff.
8. 1x self buff.
9. 3x oGCD abilities.

1 spell can check off multiple things.

An AoE ice spell that binds would check off 1, 3 and 6.

An oGCD that requires a small blue token would check off 4 and 9.

In theory you keep quite a bit of customization while ensuring that a BLU in duty finder always has a minimum level of kit.

https://youtu.be/aBiC1rNhzLY a vid made by someone who did their homework. It's worth a watch

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Originally Posted by Jandor

For example, you use an earth spell and it gives you an earth buff, any water aligned spell used will do bonus damage because it's going "through" the element it's strongest against.
So your water spell then does bonus damage, removes the earth status, and replaces it with a water one. Then you use lightning to attack, clear the water status, and complete a basic 3 button combo, gaining a 'blue mage token' to be spent on a more impressive non-aligned spell like 'Bad Breath'.

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This idea has potential, though I'm not sure of what to use as the big payoff abilities. Primal spells seem a bit odd to me since getting them is a bit of a pain and they already have prohibitive/shared cooldowns.

You're right that BLU would need something beyond the system you described, which is why I'll toss in Spell Combinations. Imagine additional slots in the BLU spellbook that have a link between them like the linked materia slots from FFVII, and setting two abilities in those slots allows them to either combine into a new ability or combo into each other.

What sparked the idea was Ice Spikes + Thousand Needles, either creating a new attack that deals ice damage at the cost of no longer dealing 1000 fixed damage (though it'd scale with stats like normal AoEs) or allow Ice Spikes to be comboed with Thousand Needles (casting Ice Spikes reduces the cast time of the next Thousand Needles by 4s and causes it to deal ice damage). Another example would be Toad Oil comboing with Flying Frenzy to apply an oil debuff on target that increases damage taken from fire-aspected blue magic (Bomb Toss, Flamethrower, Eruption).

While combining spells would be harder than allowing them to combo, it might be possible to combine the OP spells (Lv5 Petrify, Tail Screw) with other spells to make them usable in normal duties while still allowing you to use them in their OP state outside of dungeons and raids.

I guess they realized BLU wasn't causing enough damage relative to other DPS at 50 to have mostly buffed its skills across the board in 5.1.

They did however deny spamming of Final Sting/Self-destruct for whatever reason.

Still think they might as well try to balance as a normal class if they're bothering to put this much thought into its changes, though.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I guess they realized BLU wasn't causing enough damage relative to other DPS at 50 to have mostly buffed its skills across the board in 5.1.

They did however deny spamming of Final Sting/Self-destruct for whatever reason.

Still think they might as well try to balance as a normal class if they're bothering to put this much thought into its changes, though.

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Its actually potentially a nerf as peculiar light and off guard are now just a trick attack effect and cant be stacked, so whilst all the potencies are up we're losing the very power multiplicative buff stacking effect, also there's aoe dropoff for non primal skills

I didn't even notice the Off-guard change for some reason.

I don't really mind it since it made target swapping a pain and doing such is important in a lot of the Carnivale fights, though there is a fair chance their DPS will go down due to their burst phase being weaker and AoE having drop off.