A concerned Blue Mage, concerned about..certain..Blue Mage spells. improvement ideas.

I doubt that the voice of a insignificant nobody like me would reach the devs, but I still may as well give the fair attempt.. and so, I intend to break my silence today, and speak.

my choice of topic... Blue Mage. In particular, Blue Mage spells. it makes me sad that many Blue Mages refer to certain Blue Mage spells as "trash" and "useless", and more sad that this attitude toward these certain spells is valid, as certain spells do.. quite lack.

the topic that I will address here, is my personal ideas on how some of these spells that are referred to as "trash" and/or "useless" spells, could be improved, to make them better, at least enough so that my fellow Blue Mage will no longer think of them as "trash" or "useless"; if not.. to my hope, perhaps even improve them just enough, for my fellow Blue Mages to consider them as "useful", be it in casual or easy activities, or even in more difficult and challenging activities.
I hope that some how, to all of you, developers of FFXIV, these words find their way, and at least get a bit of notice and consideration; even if in the end, naught becomes of it.

alright, introduction aside... here are my ideas on how to improve these 19 spells that are referred to as "trash" and/or "useless", including a few oGCD spells referred to as completely inferior to the other oGCD spell that they share a recast timer with, and also 2 spells that I simply would love to see improved.

Spell number 1, #3 in the Spell Book: Aqua Breath. the issue with this spell is that it is far too weak, compared to alternative options, but not quite like other spells, if taken into consideration that Spell Speed and DoTs is the best DPS of Blue Mages, Aqua Breath at least has potential, since its main damage lays in inflicting the water-element "Dropsy" DoT.
my idea for Aqua Breath is to improve its potency a little, enough that Blue Mages will consider this spell and its DoT as "worth using".
in actual numbers, my suggestion is to increase Aqua Breath's base potency from 140 to 150, and buff Aqua Breath's Dropsy DoT from potency 20 for 12 seconds, to potency 50 for 18 seconds. as a alternative, Aqua Breath's base potency could be reduced from 140 to 130, and Aqua Breath's Dropsy DoT buffed from potency 20 for 12 seconds, to potency 50 for 21 seconds.
for a balance, double the MP cost of Aqua Breath from 200, to 400.

Spell number 2, #4 in the Spell Book: Flying Frenzy. the issue with this spell is that although it could be a valid movement spell, its potency is too low for most to consider it as "worth it", and many Blue Mages instead choose the Spell J-kick.
my idea is to raise the potency of Flying Frenzy high enough to be considered as "worth using". in actual numbers, my suggestion is to increase the base potency from 150, up to 210. for a balance, raise the MP cost of Flying Frenzy to 300.

Spell number 3, #7 in the Spell Book: Loom. this spell has two glaring issues, as a spell that only has the use of movement... a cast-time and the need to designate a location.
my idea is to make Loom more use-friendly. my suggestion, and also some-what of a request, is for Loom to be made instant-cast and to change it into a "dash", similar to Dancer's En Avant.
as a balance, increase the MP cost of Loom to 500, and change its recast to 10 seconds.

Spell number 4, #17 in the Spell Book: Blood Drain. this spell is not a bad one, but i would love to see Blood Drain improved, and made more useful than it already is. my suggestion for Blood Drain is to grant the spell a additional effect of HP restoration, as I think that it would be great if Blood Drain restores both HP and MP.
my two ideas are to either go with a fun and weird effect of Blood Drain restoring a set HP%, my suggestion being 5% of Max HP, or it could be a generic Cure potency, that makes it similar to the self-healing that Tanks have from Brutal Shell, SoulEater, and Storm's Path.

Spell Number 5, #22 in the Spell Book: Transfusion. for being a self-KO spell, this spell has a underwhelming effect and is considered very.. very.. "useless", in the Blue Mage community. my idea for Transfusion is to make its effect "worth" self-KOing over.
my suggestion is to make the Transfusion sacrifice a powerful effect, keeping its full HP and MP restore effect, but adding to that effect.
my idea is to add that it grants the target a powerful buff, that lasts for 2 minutes, increases damage dealt by 20%, reduces damage taken by 25%, increases HP restored by healing effects and healing Spells by 15%, increases movement speed by 30%, and slightly increases natural HP and MP regeneration.

Spell number 6, #28 in the Spell Book: Bad Breath. this is not a bad spell, but as I did mention prior with Aqua Breath, so to would I like to see Bad Breath's "Poison" DoT improved. my idea is for the improvement of the of "poison" DoT.
while my suggestion is to increase the DoT potency from 20 to either 50 or 75, making it a DoT that will be strong enough to be "worth using", even though still no where near the strength of the "Bleed" DoT...

Spell number 7, #31 in the Spell Book: Sticky Tongue. I know that this spell already got buffed before, but.. it did not work. it failed. the difference ended up being for the most part not all that good, so this spell is still considered "trash" in the Blue Mage community. my idea is for further improvement of Sticky Tongue...
while my suggestion, is to please give Sticky Tongue a actual potency, like a potency of 50 or 100, higher than that if necessary, and increase the strength of its bonus enmity generation effect, and please.. keep increasing these.. until Sticky Tongue can generate enough enmity to properly function as a Blue Mage tank's long-range attention-puller.

Spell number 8, #32 in the Spell Book: Toad Oil. the issue with this spell is that after the Blue Mage community extensively tested it, it was discovered that Toad Oil's effect is literally just too weak. it only works in A Realm Reborn, does not work on magic for some reason, only properly works in open-world and dungeons, barely works in Trials, and does not work in raids; due to the current way that the Evasion and Accuracy statistics function.
I do not have a clear idea how to improve this problem, but please.. I at least voice the suggestion to increase Toad Oil's Evasion buff from 20% to 30%, so that it works better in A Realm Reborn, will hopefully work in A Realm Reborn Raids, and perhaps even work in HeavensWard a little bit. Toad Oil needs improvement, and at least a bit of a buff.

Spell number 9, #37 in the Spell Book: Ink Jet. the issue with this spell is that its potency is too low, compared to other spells similar to it. in the Blue Mage community, a GCD spell is usually regarded as "Trash", if its potency is under 220, with Sonic Boom as the exception, since potency 220 has become the base of Blue mages' GCD actions, in thanks to TheoryCrafters.
my suggestion is to increase Ink Jet's potency from 200 to 220, so that it can compare to and be on par with the many other GCD spells that are potency 220.

Spell Number 10, #38 in the Spell Book: Fire Angon. same issue with Ink Jet.. the only issue with this, but unlike Ink Jet, spell that has good wasted potential, is that its potency is only a slight bit lower than its competitors, Sonic Boom and Sharpened Knife.
my suggestion is to increase its potency from 200 to 210, so that it is on par with and equal to Sonic Boom, and so that the Blue Mage community will then come to consider Fire Angon as "worth using".
on a side note, if Fire Angon is increased to potency 210, it would cause a problem for Sonic Boom, because Condensed Libra would tip favor in Fire Angon's direction, and cause a imbalance. to resolve this, and encourage balance, if Fire Angon's potency is increased to 210, either reduce its range by 5y, or increase its MP cost from 200 to 300, if not both.

Spell number 11, #41 in the Spell Book: Mind Blast. this spell does not necessarily need a buff, but as a GCD weave spell, it loses out to the other GCD weave spells, Fire Angon, Sharpened Knife, and Sonic Boom. my suggestion is to increase Mind Blast's potency from 200 to 220, so that it can match other GCD spells, be only a little worse than Fire Angon and Sonic Boom, and match no-buffs naked Sharpened Knife.

Spell Number 12, #45: Eruption. please, please.. my acquaintances in Discord Server "The Blue Academy", truly.. please forgive me for daring to bring up and re-open this rusty can of rotting worms, but I must. X'D we spent blood, sweat, tears, arguments, and even fights, and a lot of TheoryCrafting, to argue "Eruption vs Feather Rain" to death and like a court case, until we were all blue in the face, exasperated, and done with it, until the bitter end when Feather Rain was proven "simply superior".
because of this, i make the suggestion to increase Eruption's potency from 300 to 310. in this event, Eruption and Feather Rain shall once and for all be equal!, and the choice of either or being simply based off of build; with Eruption dealing higher damage with a non-Spell Speed build, and Feather Rain dealing higher damage with a Spell Speed build.

Spell number 13, #46 in the Spell Book: Mountain Buster. same issue with Eruption, Mountain Buster is accused of being inferior to its competitor, Shock Strike, but the reason this time lays only in the range... I have a idea to improve Mountain Buster, but it would likely not cause balance, and just flip the scale to Shock Strike's ruin, unless Shock Strike is also improved... any way.
my suggestion for Mountain Buster, is to make it more like the real Mountain Buster, and add a additional effect to the Mountain Buster spell, that makes it inflict a stack-able(up to 8 stacks) "Earth Vulnerability" to all targets that it hits. this vulnerability will be +5% damage taken from earth-aspected damage for 5 seconds, per stack, up to a maximum of 30% for 40 seconds.
also increase the MP cost of Mountain Buster from 400 to 500, I suppose.

Spell number 14, #47 in the Spell Book: Shock Strike. as I typed earlier, I worry that although Mountain Buster needs a improvement, to be equal to Shock Strike, my idea would cause Mountain Buster to power creep up on Shock Strike, so here is my idea for also improving Shock Strike.
my suggestion is to add a reference to Lord Ramugh's Extreme mechanics, to the Shock Strike spell. Lord Ramugh's lightning attacks do additional damage to targets standing in water, so Shock Strike could have a additional bonus that increases its potency when cast on a target, or targets, that are afflicted with the "Dropsy" DoT.
also increase the MP cost of Shock Strike from 400 to 500, I suppose.

Spells number 13 and 14, balance concern: Mountain Buster, within reason alternative? / more or less the same as before, but I had a thought. I have no idea how good the "Earth Vulnerability" would make Mountain Buster, and how much bonus damage Shock Strike would need to balance it out, so how about reducing Mountain Buster's base potency to either 350 or 300, and then Balancing Shock Strike's Dropsy DoT combo bonus with the "Earth Vulnerability" effect's combo potential.

Spell number 15, #49 in the Spell Book: Veil of The Whorl. this poor spell gets most regarded as a "trash" spell in the Blue Mage community, and its competitor Glass Dance is vaunted as "simply superior". if the issues with Veil of The Whorl were addressed even a little, it could be a fairly good Blue Mage Tank spell... my idea for improvement?
my two suggestions are to either make Veil of The Whorl a unique counter, with its counter potency scaling to how much damage a attack hits for, which would give it the edge in certain situations, to out-do Glass Dance, or to.. at the least, please.. give Veil of The Whorl some much needed love and a buff. my suggestion is to increase counter potency from potency 50 to potency 75.. but at the least, grant it a buff to its counter to be as good as Warriors' Vengeance.
while, if you.. the devs, would rather not hand out a buffed counter to a full party of Blue Mages, then please.. just limit it to a Aetherial Mimicry: Tank buff. i would love for Veil of The Whorl to be a Spell that Blue Mage tanks can use and benefit from, more than using Glass Dance.. but, that will only happen if Veil of The whorl is improved.

Spell number 16, #56 in the Spell Book: Chirp. this spell is regarded as "useless" just because it only inflicts the Sleep status ailment, while its competitor Acorn Bomb, has the higher range and inflicts the same Status Ailment. my idea for Chirp is to change it into a fairly good Blue Mage Tank spell.
my suggestion is to give Chirp a Aetherial Mimicry: Tank effect, that will add a additional effect to the Spell's base inflicting Sleep effect, with the additional effect being that of B-rank Squonk's(a Paissa) Chirp, which is to also inflict a 15 second duration 15% generic damage-down debuff. this would stack with Bad Breath's unique damage-down debuff "Virulent", and improve Chirp into a Tank spell as valuable as Bad Breath.

Spells number 17 and 18, #65 and #66 in the Spell Book: Black Knight's Tour and White Knight's Tour. these two look good... at first. but they are actually a little lacking, due to in any case where their debuff and Status Ailment can not be inflicted, they lose out to any other potency 220 GCD spell, and the Blue Mage community then condemns them as "trash" spells.
my suggestion is to increase the base potency of both spells from 200 to 220, and increase their additional effect potencies from 400 to 440, so that they can compete with other potency 220 GCD spells, and their combo not be a "potency loss".
with this buff, though.. their combo would gain a fair lead over other spells in Dungeon activities, so for balance, I would suggest also increasing the MP cost of both spells from 300 to 500.

Spell number 19, #70 in the Spell Book: CactGuard, RIP. this poor spell has always been regarded as a "useless" and "trash" spell by the Blue Mage community, which is sort of fair, and no Blue Mage ever "realistically" uses CactGuard, since its effect is too weak and its use is restricted... please, please.. devs, give poor CactGuard some much needed love. X'3 Cactguard much needs a generous improvement, up to being on par with Raw Intuition and Heart of Stone, please.. if you would.
my suggestions are fourfold. #1 please, at least remove its biggest issue.. make it possible to cast on self. this alone would be a notice-able improvement that CactGuard needs. #2 increase its base effect from 5% for 6 seconds, to 10% for 6 seconds. #3 increase its Aetherial Mimicry: Tank boost from 15% for 6 seconds, to 20% for 10 seconds. this buff combined with a cast-on-self buff will make it, in the eyes of the entire Blue Mage community, a spell that is no longer "trash" and "useless", and "actually worth using".
and #4, a personal idea that I would love to see done with CactGuard. make it the first ever spell to have two different Aetherial Mimicry bonuses. I would love it if CactGuard had a Aetherial Mimicry: Healer bonus that completely changes its effect. my suggestion is "Additional Effect: CactGuard instead creates a barrier around self or the target that absorbs damage equivalent to a heal of 400 potency, when you are under the effect of Aetherial Mimicry: Healer. Duration: 30s. Effect can not be stacked with Scholar's Galvanize or Astrologian's Nocturnal Field."
for Blue Mage Healers, this would make CactGuard a barrier spell like GobSkin, but CactGuard would be single-target instead, and stronger than GobSkin,
to make up for it.
in the case that these ideas of mine would make CactGuard "too good", then for the sake of argument, and for balance, also double the MP cost of CactGuard from 200 to 400, give the Aetherial Mimicry: Tank effect a recast time of 30 seconds, the same recast time as Chelonian Gate and The Rose of Destruction, and give the Aetherial Mimicry: Healer effect a recast time of 15 seconds.
CactGuard has way too much wasted potential, I sincerely hope that CactGuard can be improved, as it has the potential to made "relevant" and "useful",
in the perspective of the Blue Mage community...

Spell number 20, #90 in the Spell Book: The Rose of Destruction. as with blood Drain, there is no real issue with this spell, other than that its competitor "Chelonian Gate" is for the most part the "better" spell.
I would love to see The Rose of Destruction improved. my idea is that I would love to see its potency increased from 400 to either 440 or 450, which would improve it from being just a decent spell, to a fairly good damage spell, if buffed with Bristle... though even with this change, its competitor would still for the most part be the "better" spell...
if this buff seems too generous, then for a balance, also increase its MP cost from 300 to 400.

Spell number 21, #102 in the Spell Book: Both Ends. this spell has the same issue as some other recast-time sharing spells. Both Ends is for the most part regarded as a spell never "worth using", because its competitor "NightBloom" is regarded as "simply superior", while at a instant potency of 600 versus a potency of 1900 over one minute, NightBloom fairly is, to my sorrow, for the most part superior to Both Ends.
my suggestion to sort-of alleviate this problem, is to give Both Ends a strong improvement: either greatly increase its potency up to close to NightBloom's, or change Both Ends to be similar to Triple Trident and Matra Magic, a multi-hit attack. this could be done in three different ways, is what I decided after some thinking...
increase Both Ends' potency to either 850 or 900, and make it a twofold attack, leave Both Ends' potency at 600 and make it a threefold attack, or reduce Both Ends' potency from 600 to 450, and make it a fourfold attack.
both ends needs a competitive chance against NightBloom, or else it will never be used by Blue Mages, and always ignored, like some other unfortunate spells that need improvement.

alas.. to bring this to a close, a few more paragraphs. ;Pc
if you read this far, without skipping any of the entries, my reader.. then you have my gratitude. while, to any and all of my fellow Blue Mages, if you have any thoughts or opinions on these 21 ideas for improvement, or ideas of your own, for the same spells.. or other spells.. that also could do with improvement, then please.. do feel free to post and share in the comments.
either way, it is my sincere hope that the devs will some day take notice of this post of mine, and at least take into consideration what I would like to believe are fair and within reason ideas, for improvement of these misfortunate spells.
...Except for Mountain Buster and Shock Strike, those two were not so within reason... =w=; I am just not certain how to improve Mountain Buster in a way to give it a competitive chance against Shock Strike...

Most blu spells fall into a handful of categories:

Long cooldowns that get used in a single target burst, your filler skills to use between burst, dungeon aoe for trash (assuming you’re not just outright killing any/all trash via rams voice and ultravibration) and stuff for grinding out aoe fates (hydro pull and choco meteor, just to name a few).

Increasing potencies only goes so far to remedy those older spells, a lot of them have their place in the masked carnivale, but that is an unfortunately small portion of what blus actually do. The other major issue plaguing blu is you have so many skills, and only 24 slots to utilize them. Taking burst into account (and the general power creep of the newer spells) makes it so that off guard and it’s aoe variant, as well as condensed Libra, you can’t afford to slot those in at the cost of different spells to bump up your damage. This is of course looking almost strictly at dps blu, tank and healer blu have a bit more leeway for other flavor skills but for the most part there’s maybe 1 or 2 skills you’d get a choice of as a dps blu.

I can agree with that, of course. first point about spell categories, true. and yeh.. in dungeons, a lot of spells became "irrelevant", because of UltraVibration and instant-death nonsense. I sort of feel like UltraVibration was a big mistake that Blue Mage would be better without, but I also acknowledge its usefulness.
some of my ideas are indeed "irrelevant" changes to "irrelevant" spells, with the main point of sharing my idea of the improvement.. just being that it could be done, and I would like the improvement, despite being for the most part "irrelevant".

while on the second point of the spell slots concern, it is a very serious issue, that will only get worse as we get more spells. as far as i have seen, interacting with other Blue Mages.. more often than not, the answer to the more spell slots question is "yes", rather than "no". some of the other Subclasses even have up to 30 actions, and they still function, so there is no reason for Blue Mage spell slots to not be increased to at least 28, unless the devs officially release a statement about why "no".

to be honest, my main ideal for Blue Mage is for the Subclass to have what the other 17 never will, in-class diversity. but pipe-dreams aside, at the least, I just would love to see some of our "worst" spells made better, with no regard to relevant or irrelevant. I love Blue Mage more than any other Subclass, and I just want to see what I perceive as its bad parts being improved.

while my other minor annoyance is the lack of balance, in a few places. I want Blue Mage to make its players feel like they have choices, and that they can use "what they want", or "what they like", instead of there being "simply superior" spells that would make other players turn on the player for using the "worse" or "inferior" spell, instead of using the "better" or "best" spells.

and this is why some of my ideas are a way to "balance" the oGCDs that share recast-time, so that players have a "choice", rather than.. pick the "better" spell and pretend like the "worse" spell does not exist.

and then the last of my ideas, the wild ideas of how to make a "useless" spell "useful", such as with Aqua Breath, CactGuard, Both Ends, and Veil of The Whorl, is because I hate this fact of "some spells are close to useless, so never use them, except for in super niche edge-cases."