Blue Mage - Force Field - What is it good for? Nothing?!

https://i.imgur.com/xxT7VSD.png
Despite Force Field being seemingly very strong, it has a lot of problems.

The skill grants EITHER physical or magical mitigation up to 50%, but we have no control over which one we receive.

Meanwhile, duration is only 10 sec, which means it's not very good for "general" damage mitigation, but is more intended for blocking a predicted incoming attack, such as a tank buster.

Cast time is same as Diamondback, which means we likely need Swiftcast for it. It would be a nice weaker alternative for Diamondback while maintaining mobility. But since we can't choose physical or magical mitigation, taking away Swiftcast for such a skill just to gamble your life away seems silly. Might as well stick to Diamond back for tank busters.

Comparing it to Dragon Force (under Tank Mimicry), which provides a solid 40% damage mitigation against both physical and magical attacks and being 5 sec longer, Force Field seems vastly inferior.

If Force Field is instant-cast, and being slightly longer in duration, then at least we can gamble with it before a tank buster... and if failed getting the right type of mitigation, we immediately Swiftcast Diamondback. But even like this is kind of stupid, because one will need to cast it long before one sees a tank buster cast bar, in order to have enough time for a back-up Swiftcast Diamond back. It's a lot of foresight, but very little reward, as it doesn't really hurt to directly Swiftcast a Diamondback anyway.

All-in-all, I can't find a good use for it despite it "seemingly" being useful. If someone has a good idea of how to utilize this skill, can you please share your insights with me?

ERP ability that highlights the binary nature of vulnerability down effects.

You’d think the devs would have learned by now if mitigation isn’t reliable it’s useless, we’ve seen it time and again in this game yet they keep coming back for more…

If they made it work kind of like virus/feint it would go a long way to making the move viable, e.g. 50% physical mitigation + 25% magical mitigation or vice versa. But as it is, it’s incredibly niche.

As for times to use it. Personally I use it when there’s a lot of adds spawning doing different damage types, for example when I was soloing vauthry he spawns 4 gargoyles and a succubus, the gargoyles scream for magical damage while the succubus uses a physical tank buster, for the first wave I used Angel snack (healer mimicry so no dragon force) to just heal through it and for the second wave I used force field. Regardless of what mitigation type I get it would mitigate something.

Hm.. Has anyone tried it out in Goldor fight? It could maaaaaybe be useful in second phase adds attack, if that's all mixed.. but that already has safe spots, so it's not like it's entirely necessary.

Otherwise, yeah, there's little to no real use case for it. That said, historical-BLU is no stranger to "why would I use this?" spells. I'm not completely against the idea of it.. but, wouldn't ever slot it unless I'm doing something weird and have extra room for it.

I suppose, arguably, its existence might be justified by speed-runner types, that might want to absolutely minmax optimization. The sorts of people that will absolutely gamble on the skill make-or-breaking a run just to squeeze out some better DPS and show off a new record or something.