Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

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Originally Posted by Shadow_Sama

I think at this point, Square Enix should make a poll on the Lodestone website and put up a vote and ask the community itself. Should Blue Mage remain a limited job? Or should it be converted to a normal job? Along with an explanation of the implications of both paths. Sometimes, it's best to see what the community thinks collectively to see how to proceed forward. They did this before during A Realm Reborn about unreleased job classes. I don't see why they can't do it again.

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It would be a largely useless poll. They have stated that they aren't interested in BLU (and several others) as a standard job, nor would they even entertain the ridiculous suggestion that BLU can be all of the above like so many armchair game designers keep bringing up.

They don't have to change direction for BLU at all. They have not once called BLU anything other than a success. Why would they even attempt to change something that they a) are continuously supporting and b) has been worth the investment?

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Originally Posted by Ursa_Vonfiebryd

I think it's fun and I enjoy the comedy of it. Also doing a full blu run of Syrcus Tower was pretty epic and while it was difficult, it was also rewarding. I think the reason BLU is so 'limited' was because for it to be a real contender it would have to lose some of what makes it unique to make it a viable job for current content. There's no real rhythm to it. Just... Bristle/Whistle + skill, DoT, ad infinitum. I think in the end it would end up like Redmage: a job that's a mix of two that we already have. Yay.

It could be better but I'm enjoying what there is so far. At the very least blu log encourages PF parties for full blu clears. Those are always fun. Carnival is meh for me. I wish less of the spells were locked behind it.

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I highlighted the part where i think is one of the potential of making blue a real job, and i think that's one of many point that OP trying to make. it's functioning perfectly in normal dungeon/alliance raids/savage raids, we even have achievement for doing so, they definitely can be tuned potency and skill wise to cater to normal team composition, and it's overall very fun to play with.

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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According to some posters, they're going add all of the essentials in and around the starting areas. You know, the devs have nothing better to do than adding boss abilities to some random lvl 4 trash mob, as they are wont to do. And who can forget about making things mandatory in order to have access to DF, because people just love that and totally won't ignore the only job with these restrictions.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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Personally i just want Blue Mage as a Caster DPS, no tanking or healing shenanigans. For me it's okay to just cut down the job fantasy and accuracy(compared to other Blue Mage iteration), and make it a streamlined like other FFXIV job, as i just want a functional job. Though i want the current skill system to be completely rehauled to be streamlined, if you've played Blue Mage for a while before you know Water Cannon is not Blue Mage's main GCD, but Sonic Boom, which makes the Job kind of like Healer which spams one skill while pressing OGCDs when they're up. As for skills like Missile, Launcher, Lv 5 Death, etc. personally i'm okay with them to be just cut out from the skill pool completely, or just nerf them to make them usable.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

According to some posters, they're going add all of the essentials in and around the starting areas. You know, the devs have nothing better to do than adding boss abilities to some random lvl 4 trash mob, as they are wont to do. And who can forget about making things mandatory in order to have access to DF, because people just love that and totally won't ignore the only job with these restrictions.

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essentials like basic GCD won't hurt though. They can make it like, for example our basic GCD was taught by Martyn. then after certain level Martyn taught us that we can learn from monsters, yadda yadda. They really don't have to make the whole limited jobs system with its own exclusive contents if they are not interested. This whole thing feels like they are trying to do it half-assedly just because people were asking for it. might as well delete it altogether to shave off some expense if it were to be the case and just spend the budget elsewhere, IMHO. the fact that we've been getting only 2 new jobs and rarely new race after heavensward speaks volume that they spend too much resources on said matters.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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They can add trials that you can only clear with certain skillsets that you acquired. So for example. To be able to queue as a tank , you should only be able to complete the tank trial which require tanking skills. Same with healer and dps roles. They also need to change some skills so it can fit into the party

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Originally Posted by Alysella

They can add trials that you can only clear with certain skillsets that you acquired. So for example. To be able to queue as a tank , you should only be able to complete the tank trial which require tanking skills. Same with healer and dps roles. They also need to change some skills so it can fit into the party

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I think this suggestion is a bit counterintuitive because that means they have to develop another system for every dungeon/trials. It's a shame that there is no workaround that except to have Blu mage gets their monster skill after reaching certain level, much like other job's "Job Quest" skills. Until today we still have people with general jobs who aren't performing as expected in dungeons and trials, some don't do job quests, queueing as Class instead of Jobs on high level dungeon, etc. So it's not just blue problem anymore, it boils down to the player if that's the case.

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Originally Posted by Volsungr

I think this suggestion is a bit counterintuitive because that means they have to develop another system for every dungeon/trials. It's a shame that there is no workaround that except to have Blu mage gets their monster skill after reaching certain level, much like other job's "Job Quest" skills. Until today we still have people with general jobs who aren't performing as expected in dungeons and trials, some don't do job quests, queueing as Class instead of Jobs on high level dungeon, etc. So it's not just blue problem anymore, it boils down to the player if that's the case.

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Or they can just give you the basic skills that you need for each role in the beginning like tank stance, basic heal since they already gave us basic dps skill. You can get more advanced skills from trials and raids. Because from what you said, its more to the player itself instead of the class flaw.

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Originally Posted by Alysella

Or they can just give you the basic skills that you need for each role in the beginning like tank stance, basic heal since they already gave us basic dps skill. You can get more advanced skills from trials and raids. Because from what you said, its more to the player itself instead of the class flaw.

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this sounds more plausible IMHO, at its roots and based on previous iteration of final fantasy, blue mage is a versatile class. so giving players choice at the start gives some fresh air to the game. they've done it with smn sch so no reason they can't do it again.

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Originally Posted by Alysella

Or they can just give you the basic skills that you need for each role in the beginning like tank stance, basic heal since they already gave us basic dps skill. You can get more advanced skills from trials and raids. Because from what you said, its more to the player itself instead of the class flaw.

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Originally Posted by Mariel_Crystallie

this sounds more plausible IMHO, at its roots and based on previous iteration of final fantasy, blue mage is a versatile class. so giving players choice at the start gives some fresh air to the game. they've done it with smn sch so no reason they can't do it again.

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while I agree that blue mage should go back to their roots and given freedom of how we should develop the class, gating them to choose 1 route or the other at the start is a bit constricting imho. take example of arcanist into smn/sch branching. you could let the player experience how it feels first as dps until level 30 then i guess we can make it branch from there. with the vast amount of monster in eorzea i think it's completely possible to branch blue mage there.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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Have a set of skills that work in DF and those that don't, the ones that work in DF are gilded (gold border). Blue Mage maintains their limited side, including their sped up exp. Rather than spend time leveling they will spend time gathering their spells. In order to join content they must have the spells that exist below the level range of said content. So for example if you want to join level 42 dungeon you'll need everything level 42 and below (that's gilded) and even though some people may be level 45 in the dungeon you'll not be required to have earned that spell (just like some people don't have certain skills yet due to level). This is conveniently handled by a flipping job stone (so your hot bars will not be destroyed every time you want to switch, and there will be no issue of blue in a synced content suddenly switching to their other content or whatever). You can view this similarly to what they do in PvP for every single job (so it's not like they're foreign to this idea).

As for the progression, many of the skills will be easily pick-up able by doing current content as it exists and Blue Mage will now have access to the DF. Just like in PF when you DF and get a spell (while synced) you'll have a huge boost to your spell learning rate (so likely any instanced content will be learned in one go). While also they've limited side, so they can run around as a limited blue mage and pick up their DF skills, then they can also go into DF as their DF side and continue to pick up skills (both for limited and DF).

Now of course there are some weird skills (like if they wanted to give Blue a skill from Alexander lol), on content that even with access to DF would be a pain to learn- those you could make as part of the challenges in the carnival (just like you can learn ram and dragon voice through the carnival rather than doing the other instanced content that requires a group). This can be a perfect opportunity at the big quest points in the job, like other jobs that have usually a big fight at the 10s, so you could get some of the harder spells at these points (rather than forced to do some obscure content that even if was part of DF would still take a 50 min queue). Can also consider that some spells could be introduced backwards too, like your level 72 spell might be some mega spell from level 50 content that you can solo unsynced (may have to run it two or three times but entirely do-able, within reasonable time too).

Also to include we've already a method to obtain some spells through the totems, so you'd have that as well. In a unit all these methods would provide blue mage the ability to obtain any spell they need to obtain without having to resort to extreme uncomfortable effort or even remove the major component of learning stuff.

Some of these gilded spells will have double variant based on whether you're limited or normal, for example doom while limited could be as it is and the duty finder side would have an in theme but clearly 'balanced' narrative like casting doom would kill trash at some large % of hp (say 50%) but go on a decent cooldown (wouldn't work on anything inside a boss room, including boss trash), any time doom didn't kill something out right (so like bosses) doom would instead apply a doom debuff that increases damage taken by % and then at the end deals significant damage. Although personally I think the job would be more fun if they add more interplay mechanics and less spammy concepts, I'm speaking on the limited side, so adding cooldowns, more interactions, more instant casts /etc - so I'd suggest doom is more likely but far less spammable, rather than casting it 10 times in a row because 'fail fail fail fail fail fail fail', you'd cast it once every so often and every time it went it would work (minus perhaps some gating for FATEs). They've tried this a bit with some of the recent blue mage spells (I think of like Surpanakha for example), so I think they were actually listening to feedback as the creativity of the skill design increased quite a bit (of course almost all of them were PF exclusive lol, and we still have loads of what I'd call... 'meh' mechanical spells where they could have had some more give, take, response, glide, whatever marketing word you want to go for for interplay and general gameplay overlaying)

All together with the hyper accelerated exp you'd have an offset in cost needing to run around and gather your spells (hardly any time spent leveling, time spent going around the world instead). Limited blue would maintain some sort of restriction like unable to complete content that is of your current expansion (so it works on anything previous to whatever expansion you're on). Besides novelty, and that special blue sync-PF they made, limited blue can also see use in being a sort of cleanup job for obscure content (both solo and in groups, doing stuff unsynced with a 'limited' blue would be a large boon).

I would note at this point an idea passed around I quite liked and ran with was that learning spells increased your power, so here in you might then have this idea that anyone could use limited blue without having to 'main' blue (and get great potential power from the job) while those who 'main' blue still have to spend their current tier tokens to keep the DF side in line just like other jobs (the idea also adds a lot of value to spells that currently otherwise are pretty much valueless beyond the collection satisfaction of 'catching em all'). Of course the spell power would still sync for all that special blue part challenge and for FATEs so you don't ilvl900 a level 4 FATE (act as a sort of ilvl, limited blue not caring much about gear, but DF blue does). Making the job a bit more easily accessible to those who'd never want to main the job but still get some value out of the limited side (collection based rather than gear based), while also adding some extra quality of life to those who main it so they can more easily go out and obtain skills they need on their own (if their PF/DF is failing them).

Then there are loads of other ideas that can come in parallel to it to make it smoother or whatever but that would be the beginning jist. Such that you'd not be doing something incredibly silly like someone suggested by loading level 4 areas with mega bosses (I've seen no one suggest that. . . . not sure how it was a response to you lol), you'd largely keep consistent progression while using the carnival and totems where necessary (as a crutch technically), and you could even maintain the limited side through all of this (so you could have a huge book, just like PvP though some skills wont translate across into DF).

Of course one of those is that I think blue mage's limited side, if the goal is truly 'original blue' shouldn't be even designed with PF in mind (otherwise why is our Angel Whisper the worst one in the series? Clearly they're designing the job around PF which is holding it's 'true blue' nature back, perhaps less so than a DF would but if people are horribly against DF then I question why we should also let PF do it too then), and ideally (again personally) would be designed with a sort of affix / trading card concept. Such that skills begin to collide into wild combinations, and nearly no affix is just 'useless' (like many blue mage skills currently are). Like you might think of Diablo 3's legendary system and how at first an affix is neat but not great for your kit but later after trying a new spell or getting a new piece of gear suddenly you come back to it and rebuild your whole style for a while because you can and you start playing mental Lego. I don't think spamming one skill over and over to level the job was that interesting of design, and I had wished they made the job more explosive and thoughtful. It does become better as you get PF exclusive spells (which is another issue, as they said the job was designed for solo play, and locking that up into PF means your job is stuck to the whims of the server and what is 'hot' at the time), but even then the set up is pretty limited and forced even more limited by the forced trinity mechanic they added (while a novel gimmick I think it wont be a good choice for the creative future of the job, they could have kept adding those diverse skills without forcing you into a kit (and rather made interesting interworking spells that made people want to design kits over being forced into one- like if a set of healing spells played into each other's hands then you've to decide between different sets of cool interactions, like different legendary affixes, rather than "welp guess my damage is going to be AWFUL cause I'm in tank stance, so I /have/ to choose these spells")). So probably weird sounding as a lot of people liked the power buff from going the DD route of the trinity spell (or that blue mage healer has way more damage spells than our actual healers, which is more of a comment on our current healer status than the value of the forced trinity though), I think that spell is ultimately bad for the future of the job and they should find other means to introduce power scaling (like interesting interactions, or adding a more creative version of their passive system from FFXI).

Very experimental concept at the moment (as in I shower thought it, sounded plausible but also sounded like it was going to take a lot of polish not to have eight thousand holes like swiss cheese)- As there are a lot of 'different color' spells with a status change here and there one thought would also be you could have a sort of rotating kit that allowed blue to have many more skills than normal, like in your first act (keeping carnival theme) you get a semi-random selection of tier one skills, second act tier 2, and then your cherry on top 3. Act 1 being the 120 potency, act 2 being the 220 potency spells, etc. Each slot could have a general theme such that there is a reason to consider the slot beyond just the color and the debuff, like your act of courage might deal with some support buffs, perhaps in order to deal with your ancient blue magic (the most powerful) the DF variant has to pick certain acts to boost that, meanwhile like Ninja or other jobs they occasional touch upon the other rotations for other reasons. Then you get a situation where you might get a stun, sleep, or paralyze debuff each being a different act (all being the same potency) and you have a decision on top of a rotation. There would be some side utility skills that would respond to your debuffs on enemies to produce additional effects, bosses who normally ignore all this stuff would rather get tainted by a generic blue mage debuff that would still interact with your skills (in this way you don't break the job when monsters are immune, can keep many debuff skills, like bad breath becomes an incredible application of the debuff, and can work in a sort of new concept of a debuff 'support' job rather than the support support of something like dancer).

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

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Well at the beginning water cannon is a must since it’s your first spell before anything else, plus you can only start queuing at around level 15 hence why I said they should add more spells form mobs in the starting zones near cities.
Aggro abilities would be healing wind and frog legs, however it is only an issue in an all Blue Mage composition and the only way healing wind can steal your aggro is if they are in mighty guard. It is fine in normal comp as the standard tank can easily hold the aggro against healing wind. Frog Legs is a provoke and it is doing what it is intended to do.
These Instant death/OP spells have already been nerfed to the point where you cannot even use it on some FATE bosses, final bosses of a dungeon and raid bosses. Yet you can’t use it in Masked Carnival either, the only good thing for it now is trash mobs in dungeons which is a good thing because as it stands it can be a normal job in normal party composition. FFXI only has Doom spells and no single digit or instant kill spell and rarely anyone uses the Doom spell because it doesn’t work in High end content or in Ambuscade where fights constantly change every month and the trash mobs in there are the bosses themselves and they are immune to Doom.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

According to some posters, they're going add all of the essentials in and around the starting areas. You know, the devs have nothing better to do than adding boss abilities to some random lvl 4 trash mob, as they are wont to do. And who can forget about making things mandatory in order to have access to DF, because people just love that and totally won't ignore the only job with these restrictions.

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At this point you’re shoving words into my mouth. I said there are over 57 Unique spells I have found in the starting zones near the city states. They are not essentials by the definition of endgame essential spells but rather essential in a sense of a basic kit before we attempt to gain the essential spells for high end duties or to participate in duty finder early on. I didn’t say “Give the level 3 mobs Feather Rain”, which is a gross exaggeration of what I said. So I will list them out the starting Zones skills (1-15)

Lower La Noscea
Numbing Tendrils - Aurelia (Paralysis) (Line Aoe)
Fowl Stench - Wild Dodo (Accuracy down) (Cone AoE)
Titan's Anger - Kobold Supplicant (Earth) (Circle Aoe Around target)
Titan's Boon - Kobold Potman (Buff) (Defense up)
Enstone - Kobold Dustman (Buff) (Add earth element to weapon attack)

Middle La Noscea
Fireball - Puk Hatchling (Fire) (Circle Aoe around target)
Screwdriver - Pugil (Water) (Fan Aoe) (Piercing)
Backflip - Puk Hatchling (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Fleece Butt - Lost Lamb (Blunt) (Single-Target)
Curse - Bogy (Unaspected) (Circle AoE around caster)
Pulverizing Pound - Wounded Aurochs (Blunt) (Fan Aoe)

Western Thanalan
Shatter - Rusty Coblyn, Copper Coblyn (Earth) (AoE Around Caster)
Small Claw - Thickshell (Slashing) (SIngle Target)
Cold Gaze - Desert Peiste (Paralysis) (Thin Cone Aoe)
Body Slam - Desert Peiste (Blunt) (Circle AoE around caster)
Small Claw - Thickshell (Slashing) (Single Target)
Gas Shell - Scaphite (Poison) (Thin cone aoe)
Painful Whip - Scaphite (Blunt) (Single Target)
Detonator - Bomb, Glide Bomb (Fire) (Large Circle Aoe around caster)

Central Thanalan
Acid Spray - Antling Worker, Antling soldier (Poison) (Cone Aoe)
Trap Jaws - Antling Worker, Antling Soldier (Piercing) (Single)
Frenetic Flurry - Spriggan Graverobber (Blunt) (Single target)
Jittering Jig - Spriggan Graverobber (Buff) (Attack Up)
Haste - Spriggan Graverobber (Buff) (Recast time of everything reduced)
Romp - Spriggan Graverobber (Blunt) (Fan Aoe)
Enfire - Amalj'aa Impaler, Amalj'aa Striker (Buff) (Make auto-attacks fire)
Devastate - Amalj'aa Striker (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Labored Leap - Toxic Toad (Blunt) (Circle aoe around caster)
Lap - (Blunt) (Single Target)

Central Shroud
Cap Bump - Forest Funguar (Blunt) (Single Target)
Stagnant Spray - Black Eft (Water) (Fan cone Aoe)
Acid Mist - Microchu (Poison) (Circle Aoe around caster)
Proboscis - Chigoe (Pierce) (Single Target)
Frost Breath - Anole (Ice) (Fan Aoe)
Reckless Charge - Hoglet (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Deadly Thrust - Diremite (Piercing) (Single Target)
Aqueous Discharge - Tree Slug (Water) (Circle aoe around caster)
Seed Volley - Roselet (blunt) (Single Target)
Swift Sough - Roselet (Pushback) (Cone Aoe)
Hell Slash - Magicked Bones (Slash) (Single Target)
Proboscis - Chigoe (Piercing) (Single Target)

East Shroud
Peck - Northern Vulture (Piercing) (Single target)
Wing cutter - Northern Vulture (Wind) (Fan Aoe)
Reckless Charge - Wild Hoglet (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Aqueous Discharge - Tree Slug (Water) (Circle Aoe around caster)
Firecracker Shower - Goblin Hunter (Fire) (Circle Aoe around caster) (Stun)
Bombardier - Boring Weevil (Single Target) (Blunt)

North Shroud
Enaero - Ixali Dulltalon (Buff) (Add wind element to your attacks)
Swift Gust - Ixali Dulltalon (Buff) (Evasion Up)
Coming storm - Ixali Slowbeak (Buff) (Haste)

Middle and Lower La Noscea
Foul Bite - Wild Jackal (Piercing) (Single Target)
Sanguine Bite - Wild Jackal (Line Aoe) (HP Drain)
Bubble Shower - Megalocrab (Water) (Fan Aoe)

North Shroud and Lower La Noscea
Stone Throw - Galago, Opo-opo (Earth) (Single Target) (Blunt)

Central and North Shroud
Acid Mist - Microchu (Poison) (Circle Aoe around caster)

Central Thanalan and Middle La Noscea
Sharp Sting - Huge Hornet, Killer Wespe, Wespe (Piercing) (Single Target)

Central and Western Thanalan
Hammer Beak - Hammer Beak (Single Target) (Blunt)
Poison Breath - Hammer Beak (Poison) (Fan Aoe)
Gnaw - Orobon - (Piercing) (Single Target)

Central Shroud and Western Thanalan
Snap Jaw - Yarzon Feeder, Bog Yarzon (Piercing) (Single Target)
Wing Cutter - Nesting Buzzard, Arbor Buzzard (Wind) (Cone Aoe)

Central Shroud and Western Thanalan
Peck - Nesting Buzzard, Arbor Buzzard, Wild Dodo (Piercing) (Single target)

All Starting Locations
Bombardier - Little Ladybug (Single Target) (Blunt)
Somersault Slash - Wharf Rat, Star Marmot, Ground Squirrel (Single Target) (Slashing)
Firecracker Shower - Goblin mugger(Fire) (Circle Aoe around caster) (Stun)

Allow me to correct myself as well for some of my past posts. I say at the start you learn 9 spells before you hit level 15. Which were Water Cannon, Final Sting, Ice Spikes, Blood Drain, Acorn Bomb, Bomb Toss, Self-Destruct, Faze, Sticky Tongue. What I forgot to mention is that when you learn 5 spells, you learn Healing Wind as a Whalaqee totem. This means you have learned 10 spells so now you immediately learn 2 new spells which are Off-guard and Mighty Guard which are also Whalaqee totems. Already they have given the basic utility necessary for each role with only these 3 spells at 15. So before you hit level 15 you’ll learn over 12 spells.

Shougun brought up a really great system that can be applied to the game, but i'm not sure if it's gonna be rework from the ground up at this point or can be implemented with the current blue mage state, because of the upcoming Shadowbringers contents itself and preparation to the next expansion. although if the system is applied i think blue mage can be a combination of spell collecting that can be used outside of instance and also can be used to raid with RF/PF inside instance, that's really neat and possible given the amount of skills it has.

the hyper accelerated exp might need to be toned down the bit, but we get a bonus exp every time we get a new spell. that way we can either opt to level with friends or solo while collecting skills.

we can probably keep the blue-mage exclusive content, after all they already make the whole system and it'll be a shame to scrape that. they can also keep coming up with a special challenge/additional contents added to the game in the future (all blue raid contents/trial, etc.)
if anything, think of it as a bonus for putting up with the limited job concept for 2 expansions :P

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder. They not only look less interesting than the abilities of other Jobs, but they can also be pretty silly looking and it'd be strange to be stuck with certain specific spells as your meat and potatoes.

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

Sure, this could be a way to get BLU into regular duty finder, but it would not be worth it. It's not the fun you think it would be, to be stuck with weird spells you didn't have to hunt down, when the only value of those weird spells is hunting them down.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder.

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I made a concept on how to integrate the BLU into the regular job roaster here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-(An-Approach)

it also comes with some visualizations. thanks for your feedback guys ;)

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Originally Posted by Floortank

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder. They not only look less interesting than the abilities of other Jobs, but they can also be pretty silly looking and it'd be strange to be stuck with certain specific spells as your meat and potatoes.

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

Sure, this could be a way to get BLU into regular duty finder, but it would not be worth it. It's not the fun you think it would be, to be stuck with weird spells you didn't have to hunt down, when the only value of those weird spells is hunting them down.

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i agree that hunting down the skills is part of the fun, however some of them are locked behind DF duty and we can't queue because the current state of blue mage job. I don't know how it's going over there but in Elemental people hardly do blue mage anymore. I only saw at most 3-4 blue mage PF at peak hours. I think its current state doesn't have enough appeal for people to keep subbing, despite the fun and the potential of blue mage can have.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

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to be fair, in high end "BLU" content like the Heavensward synced savage raids achievement, people only use optimized skill roster, so i don't think there will be any downside on limiting and making a specific set for duty finder or if they want to be used as normal job. because at the end of the day people will only use a few skills for optimization, and leave out all the, for the lack of better word, useless skills.

Blue Mage is fine the way it is.

It isn't. Blue mage now is mostly for memes and old contents. It's basically something that some people will only play when they have nothing to do. For its current state , Blue mage actually getting more updates than normal classes because of their "limited job" thing so its actually using more resources when they can make blue mage to become normal classes and spend the resources somewhere else

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Originally Posted by Alysella

It isn't. Blue mage now is mostly for memes and old contents. It's basically something that some people will only play when they have nothing to do. For its current state , Blue mage actually getting more updates than normal classes because of their "limited job" thing so its actually using more resources when they can make blue mage to become normal classes and spend the resources somewhere else

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Even without nothing to do, Blue mages content isn't very appealing for people to run for most people. the fact that it's limited means newcomers will have a hard time finding group, at least in my DC. then after mini patch like ishgardian restorations or bozjan, it's just gone. the interest meter for blue mages player just straight up plummeted. until a new update, then gods forbid if you late to the train because if you do, hoo boy. you better get ready for the next one and you better catch up fast. if only i can queue for things am i right.

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Originally Posted by Volsungr

Even without nothing to do, Blue mages content isn't very appealing for people to run for most people. the fact that it's limited means newcomers will have a hard time finding group, at least in my DC. then after mini patch like ishgardian restorations or bozjan, it's just gone. the interest meter for blue mages player just straight up plummeted. until a new update, then gods forbid if you late to the train because if you do, hoo boy. you better get ready for the next one and you better catch up fast. if only i can queue for things am i right.

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That's quitter talk. If you wanna do content badly enough, you go and do it.

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Originally Posted by SamsonBlacke

That's quitter talk. If you wanna do content badly enough, you go and do it.

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well he talk about fact tho , that's the current problem BLU have. You want the achievement? you need farm the skills . How to farm skills? you need use full BLU party to do it. old skills below 50 yeah sure it will be easier using undersize , but 60 dungeon skills? nayyy... the content it's self its quite hard if you do it (A4S A8S A12S - full BLU) which cause most of casual/midcore raider not really have interest with it and it has ZERO replayabilty , which to someone already clear those will have no interest at all to do it again. Why would SE keep making a content like this that will dead super fast while they can just make BLU to proper job that we can use for anything? it's clearly just waste of resource right now.

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Originally Posted by Mariel_Crystallie

well he talk about fact tho , that's the current problem BLU have. You want the achievement? you need farm the skills . How to farm skills? you need use full BLU party to do it. old skills below 50 yeah sure it will be easier using undersize , but 60 dungeon skills? nayyy... the content it's self its quite hard if you do it (A4S A8S A12S - full BLU) which cause most of casual/midcore raider not really have interest with it and it has ZERO replayabilty , which to someone already clear those will have no interest at all to do it again. Why would SE keep making a content like this that will dead super fast while they can just make BLU to proper job that we can use for anything? it's clearly just waste of resource right now.

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Originally I thought they were going to make blue mage 'the job' that you go to to absolutely wreck old content that was not active anymore (so solo), such that players could do content that is normally not possible solo. Especially when they were talking about giving stuff full power. I believe this would have added far more longterm value to a larger audience with blue mage than temporarily active during a hot patch for a niche group of people until people get theirs's and the content dies (meanwhile getting yours is intricately tied to people, making it a pain).

While I still had wanted to play it normal I was warming up to the idea of an absolutely insane blue mage designed for maximum fun and solo content (before the job released). Unfortunately it became clear that SE put PF first, that was their lodestone, their north star, everything else secondary. I know some people claim 'true blue' but it's only partially true blue, they hold the job back for PF and design to it's concept- it's fair to argue it would be have to be held back more for normal (death in theme can exist but it can never work at full power on any boss in a "df" setting, obviously), but that they released blue in full spirit as their primary goal I would call false, especially if you claim it was designed primarily for solo play. PF was their intent, you'd have never received such a terrible angel whisper otherwise, or the spells that require party to obtain.

I think that is part of what drives the salt so strong on this issue- I think I would have cared a lot less if they had communicated more accurately calling it designed for solo play and then intrinsically applying your best and most interesting spells to exclusively party content, calling not to be balanced to party content so they can give it the full experience but then balancing stuff to party content, saying they don't want to require people spells so they did it solo but then making content where you will need spells (sometimes by the game itself), it feels very much like a "don't look at what I did, just hear my words and believe". I don't think SE is evil but it felt bad to watch things feel like lies, meanwhile the job you had been wanting to play for years and years becomes something you've never wanted to play and think is actually not that well made (like if you actually evaluate the mechanics, in many situations things are very ".... that's it?" - right for the next 40 levels we spam one spell, cooooooooo..l.... not even 2.0 paladin was this simple). So much oof.

Also I strongly believe if they were going to go crazy that they would have had a lot more gameplay 'fun' / value if they took some mechanic liberty with the skills to create more interesting inner workings. They do this a bit later in the job, with the party exclusive skills but far too much of the job is pretty boring mechanics and especially given the situation that you have to do party content (for the primarily solo focused job? lol) to get interesting mechanics. If someone is going to claim but but not blue mage then, I would point at all our other jobs where like Black Mage's thunder is a cool proc based system, it would be far more boring if each spell was simply a potency and and elemental damage type. Here, for many of blue mage's spells, they got the most boring mechanical treatment and I feel that's a shame. Or they come with awful use vibes, nothing more fun than having to watch a self stun for many seconds.

I mean to be honest the reasons why I went from warming up to god blue ('actually' solo designed blue) have evaporated in place of PF blue because mechanically I believe a normal blue mage would have been way more interesting. Without party finder spells blue mage is absolutely more mechanically boring than any of our jobs, with PF it's pretty close to our normal jobs (with some wonky balance of course). If they had given blue mage the full financial support to build a mechanically interesting rotation I feel it would have been more fun to actually go through the motions, or alternatively if they had design blue mage more like a wild card game / diablo 3 affix jungle (where spells intermix on multiple levels, rather than the fairly basic way they interact at this time - and many of them can't due to immunities they added for balance).

I also believe you could have mixed some of the PF into that progression (of limited side)- though I clearly think it silly to make blue mage specifically a PF job (as many people point out this has huge repercussions when the content dies so quickly, but I can see ways of not removing some of the PF experience and value), like if each spell increased your spell power of the job (blue no longer using ilvl), if you wanted to run into content faster and avoid collecting everything you'd get a group but if you collected every spell (in order of their difficulty) you'd get stronger and stronger to such a point you could readily solo things. Like if you beelined to the best spells you'd need to use a group but if you got all the spells your level 50 blue mage could do the level 50 savage solo reasonably (at least with a decent kit of spells). There would also be voluntary reduction in your spell level which would grant you bonus to drop rates of items, like if you were spell level 400 you could cut 50% to gain 50% more items and 20% rarity increase. This would further again make PF not a useless concept but allow blue mage to 'actually' be a solo job. Allowing you to see all that old content you'd not be able to see reasonably otherwise (although I still think ultimate should be held off exclusively as a trophy, like maybe you can do the fight but you'd not get the achievement).

Technically I'm not really even against PF limited job concept, I just think choosing blue mage for that was a bad idea. If you wanted to have nuts blue mage it should have been 'actually' solo designed (not mostly PF, with less solo value than any current job in the game has - our normal jobs have more solo design and value than blue except for like the 5 FATE bosses not immune to doom already, and many players want that to change too lol), if you wanted to balance it it should have been normal, if you wanted both you could have done both.

In order of happiness I'd probably have Normal Blue + God Blue (limited side content that is approachable for everyone and designed for solo play), Normal Blue + Limited Blue (blue as is), Normal Blue, God Blue (solo play blue), any other sort of limited job instead of blue (saving it for another time), and I guess if I have to list it 'limited blue' (I don't like straight out removing content but I've a negative image of the job, such that it occasionally sours my mood when I look at the job list- as I've enjoyed leveling every other job in the game but feel blue mage was not delivered very well for multiple reasons ranging from gameplay to communication). In general I think any job that is quite known should be both (advanced job) or using a different name to avoid hitting the fans who had really wanted to main that job, like making Beast Master both or calling it shepherd instead for limited. A job that I think would have worked really well under PF focus limited content would have been a magitek pilot, you would have avoided a lot of trinity, added a lot of freedom to spells and encourage a new style of gameplay, and due to how you visualize progression to mechs it would be easy to have the window of progression evolve smoothly along with PF and avoid such problems that blue mage has (progression can neatly mix linear and horizontal as well as a previous patch softening, making getting up with the PF smooth and joining at random times reasonable rather than).

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Originally Posted by Mariel_Crystallie

well he talk about fact tho , that's the current problem BLU have. You want the achievement? you need farm the skills . How to farm skills? you need use full BLU party to do it. old skills below 50 yeah sure it will be easier using undersize , but 60 dungeon skills? nayyy... the content it's self its quite hard if you do it (A4S A8S A12S - full BLU) which cause most of casual/midcore raider not really have interest with it and it has ZERO replayabilty , which to someone already clear those will have no interest at all to do it again. Why would SE keep making a content like this that will dead super fast while they can just make BLU to proper job that we can use for anything? it's clearly just waste of resource right now.

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I agree a lot, after the initial rush, BLU's content lack any kind of replayability. The "big" reward being Seals, but at some point you won't have any use for them anymore.

I'd love if in this 5.4 update they would add 3 things:
1) A queue function to the Blue Log entries, while still keeping the manual party finder function;
2) An actual daily Blue Mage random roulette, but with RELEVANT rewards, like clusters, Allegory tomes and better Gil;
3) Blue Mage dungeon run added in Wondrous Tails;

With this, since the roulette has a relevant completion reward, it would insert - some - influx of people running content, so late startes wouldn't have as many issues being able to complete their things.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Originally I thought they were going to make blue mage 'the job' that you go to to absolutely wreck old content that was not active anymore (so solo), such that players could do content that is normally not possible solo. Especially when they were talking about giving stuff full power. I believe this would have added far more longterm value to a larger audience with blue mage than temporarily active during a hot patch for a niche group of people until people get theirs's and the content dies (meanwhile getting yours is intricately tied to people, making it a pain).
snip snip snip snip

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For real 1000 needles wins the award for biggest trap spell in all of eorzea. It isnt till you get to nearly 50 before you realize how underpowered BLU really is, and that 1000 needles is a very bad trap spell, that gave you this false sense of gonna be a good time, to "wow, without proper scaling this ability sucks. and also...most of the abilities are low potency what gives?!"

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Originally Posted by Shougun

magitek pilot

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:O

I never realized I wanted this to be a limited job so badly! And it resonates so much with the most recent lore. It could be a job exploring Garlond Ironworks as their lore focus.

But yeah, the problem on BLU really is the execution. I'm not even mad at it not being a "main job", and like you I was pretty hyped because of the potential. Yet the execution was pretty bad. And still is, and I'm crossing my fingers for good stuff in the next live letter regarding the systems around the job.

Even Beastmaster fits into the "alternative gameplay" concept like a glove, as in pokemon-style content, but... It would all come down to the execution.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

:O

I never realized I wanted this to be a limited job so badly! And it resonates so much with the most recent lore. It could be a job exploring Garlond Ironworks as their lore focus.

But yeah, the problem on BLU really is the execution. I'm not even mad at it not being a "main job", and like you I was pretty hyped because of the potential. Yet the execution was pretty bad. And still is, and I'm crossing my fingers for good stuff in the next live letter regarding the systems around the job.

Even Beastmaster fits into the "alternative gameplay" concept like a glove, as in pokemon-style content, but... It would all come down to the execution.

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I can see it now, youve got the carnival with BLU and they give you the circus with BST. Give em a whip and a chair as an offhand. We get it SE, nice one, Honestly can see the instances now, where bears and lions get released and into the ring, and you have to use Charm skills to keep them from murderizing you.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Technically I'm not really even against PF limited job concept, I just think choosing blue mage for that was a bad idea. If you wanted to have nuts blue mage it should have been 'actually' solo designed (not mostly PF, with less solo value than any current job in the game has - our normal jobs have more solo design and value than blue except for like the 5 FATE bosses not immune to doom already, and many players want that to change too lol), if you wanted to balance it it should have been normal, if you wanted both you could have done both.

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the PF concept is "not that bad" but i think it's still bad, late starters, especially now that we're gonna get level 70 and more skills probably will get added, gets it the worst just like eureka, BLU skills relies on having a full party to get a guaranteed skill learn is the worst part cause now you either have to beg people for help. or open pf and wait until people gets in or go solo with abyssmal learning rate, both which are basically gamble.

they really could've just made two "versions" of BLU, cause i'm not gonna sink so much time in a side content, as it stand, it's too "limited" in a way.

Blue mage job concept itself is not bad. It's just you need blue mage friends to actually play most of the contents. With new level 70 cap incoming, old contents for blue are mostly dead and you will be sitting for hours in pf just to wait for the slot to fill up. They should do something about this. Maybe adding some dailies and weeklies incentive to make people to at least try the job.

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Originally Posted by Alysella

Blue mage job concept itself is not bad. It's just you need blue mage friends to actually play most of the contents. With new level 70 cap incoming, old contents for blue are mostly dead and you will be sitting for hours in pf just to wait for the slot to fill up. They should do something about this. Maybe adding some dailies and weeklies incentive to make people to at least try the job.

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They also can just add the queue function to the Blue Log, on top of the party finder option.
But above that, if they add a button to join a Daily Random Roulette there, with decent completion rewards, they will surely inject more people running BLU dungeon parties, thus making a bit easier for those queueing for specific places.
Also adding a Blue Mage instance completion to Wondrous Tails would give a bit more incentive for people to run them.

In this Daily dungeon queue, the Silver star target and the gold star target, they all should also reward some Allegory tomes instead of Allied Seals.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

They also can just add the queue function to the Blue Log, on top of the party finder option.
But above that, if they add a button to join a Daily Random Roulette there, with decent completion rewards, they will surely inject more people running BLU dungeon parties, thus making a bit easier for those queueing for specific places.
Also adding a Blue Mage instance completion to Wondrous Tails would give a bit more incentive for people to run them.

In this Daily dungeon queue, the Silver star target and the gold star target, they all should also reward some Allegory tomes instead of Allied Seals.

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Blue Mage Log is an All Blue Mage Party and again I am going to have to point this out. Not everyone will put in the effort to obtain the spells necessary for each role unless they are well informed about it and most of the time they would skip to level 60 with power leveling. So either adding it as a Blue Mage or Limited Job only queue would be a disaster if anything.

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Originally Posted by TeraTyrantShadic

Blue Mage Log is an All Blue Mage Party and again I am going to have to point this out. Not everyone will put in the effort to obtain the spells necessary for each role unless they are well informed about it and most of the time they would skip to level 60 with power leveling. So either adding it as a Blue Mage or Limited Job only queue would be a disaster if anything.

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Yep, especially with how meticulous skill learning is, most people won't have the "required" skills to properly run a duty unless they really put time and effort into it. Not only that sometimes people doesn't even know what their skills does, they just collect it, this is one of the biggest weakness with how current BLU is designed as a side content, people really doesn't care too much about them.

Blue mage spells keep increasing from time to time. They can't do the basic class quest for tutorial like other normal classes. The spells are mostly reused assets from old contents. Basically they are making blue mage from scraps of stuffs. Class specific gauge for blue mage might be nice to have so it has its own uniqueness and not just spells collector.

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Originally Posted by Mariel_Crystallie

How to farm skills? you need use full BLU party to do it.

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You only need to be level synced to learn skills. It doesn't matter what the party composition is.

People saying that the Blue duty roulette not working because lack of skills, you can just have the Blue Duty Roulette locked until they have those necessary skills. And how do you know what's necessary? The Blue Quests before was already giving us certain skills we had to learn to proceed. They can do it that way, and at the end of the Blue Quest line you unlock Blue Duty Roulette. It's that simple. Especially since getting skills now is 100% easier.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

You only need to be level synced to learn skills. It doesn't matter what the party composition is.

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But still you need a pre-made party to do it and finding people in PF for helping you to do it takes forever. If they really want to fix this maybe suggestion from KuraRedmoon (#276) will really helpful , but still I really prefer BLU has become normal job that can queue dungeon like other jobs.

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Originally Posted by KuraRedmoon

People saying that the Blue duty roulette not working because lack of skills, you can just have the Blue Duty Roulette locked until they have those necessary skills. And how do you know what's necessary? The Blue Quests before was already giving us certain skills we had to learn to proceed. They can do it that way, and at the end of the Blue Quest line you unlock Blue Duty Roulette. It's that simple. Especially since getting skills now is 100% easier.

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If i remember correctly, the only skills that are required to progress job quests are only Water Cannon, Mind Blast, 1000 Needles, and Glower, that's nowhere near enough. I remember that you have to learn a specific amount of skills to unlock something(the totems, was it?) but i don't think it's tied in to the job quest, so a reworking is still needed if we're going with what you said. Even when the "learn specific amount" of skills part is tied in to the job quests then comes "what spells are useful, and what spells are useless in a duty?" because of how many gimmicky spells they currently have, and the easy to get ones are the gimmicky useless ones, so they really have to set what skills are required for them to queue in a duty. BUT even then, people will end up doing all these is a chore JUST to get into duty finder, they might as well not do it at all and just play actual jobs that are more useful and playable in literally every other DoW/DoM content.

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Originally Posted by JiSH

If i remember correctly, the only skills that are required to progress job quests are only Water Cannon, Mind Blast, 1000 Needles, and Glower, that's nowhere near enough. I remember that you have to learn a specific amount of skills to unlock something(the totems, was it?) but i don't think it's tied in to the job quest, so a reworking is still needed if we're going with what you said. Even when the "learn specific amount" of skills part is tied in to the job quests then comes "what spells are useful, and what spells are useless in a duty?" because of how many gimmicky spells they currently have, and the easy to get ones are the gimmicky useless ones, so they really have to set what skills are required for them to queue in a duty. BUT even then, people will end up doing all these is a chore JUST to get into duty finder, they might as well not do it at all and just play actual jobs that are more useful and playable in literally every other DoW/DoM content.

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I mean if you're playing Blue Mage you know what you signed up for. If getting skills is a chore then playing Blue Mage is a chore, cause that's the main appeal of the job. Learning Monster Skills and using them against other Monsters.

It would need a rework going forward. But if this Blue Roulette is only at 70 then they could start it now for sure. But I see what you mean about the job quests needing it. The tricky part is the skills but I don't think it'd be much of an issue.

Still very much in favor of BLU being a full job. Was thinking about it and, seeing as we got 2 BLU patches this xpac, I wouldn't mind seeing a "promotion" type content for limited jobs that happens when the job reaches max level. Maybe you help set up a new job guild for that job; Martyn does mention wanting to create one after all. The team responsible for creating new jobs would have a lot of time over several xpacs to work on the full version of a limited job while it remains in the limited stage.

Once it promotes, the limited version's content remains playable (maybe via a toggle action that demotes you) but doesn't continue to receive new content. This way, new limited jobs (bst, ppt) can get attention and the eventual "promotion" treatment. Unlikely to happen, but it would be a fun way to get a bit of both worlds.