Update / Revisit Your Blue Mage Thoughts (& Limited Jobs)

I'll have my own thoughts below but wanted to go for the tl;dr point of the thread first- just update what you think about blue mage and if you want you can mention limited jobs in general. If you love it and want more post it, if you don't post that, whatever is your feeling.


Now onto my thoughts (which you can address or not, really can just post "blue mage / limited jobs rox" or "sux" and would be on topic to me). I just wanted to post my updated thoughts but also see other people's. Also I personally don't want to make my thoughts focused on full job / not, but wanted to be sure I was at least stating as a foreword that I still wish I could have played it normal (and technically I think "both normal and limited" would be potentially the most interesting).

As a future reference when I say 60-70 spells I'm referring to the spells added at the time the job was raised to 60 and raised to 70 (there are some skills that go sub 60 that were added at that time, I include them in this statement).

First note to me is the job ability design from 60 - 70 has been A LOT better. Far more interesting skills in and of themselves and I think also just overall better designed skills (smart design, cool mechanics self contained within the ability, powerful skills that are helpful / add value to your kit, etc). For example, Ultravibration- kills petrified and frozen enemies, on a cooldown. Short description but let's talk about it, first it has two different buffs it responds to, this means that there are multiple potential options NOW and in the FUTURE for this skill. That's amazing, it means you might come back to it or you might be able to make a different use out of the same skill as someone else. It's sort of future proofing. Contrast that to say "use Water blast, increases potency of Water cannon by 100". Honestly that's not awful but it's clearly strongly tied together, and I don't want to suggest that skill can't exist but.. going back to Ultravibration it gives the skill a special sense of longevity and options that I just think is good design choice for blue mage. Next what happens? It kills the enemy- WOW, awesome effect so it'll obviously feel pretty cool but wait do you remember the endless spam of thousand needle? Oh no this skill is going to be non-stop spam and damage the quality of play of the job-- wait no it also has a cooldown! So the skill is powerful, option and future proof, and doesn't damage the rest of your gameplay mechanics. As a final note the skill is also not chance based, so when you use it you get rewarded immediately- it's not spammy with a bunch of wiffing. Might point out how basic instinct also mentions "or when all party members are incapacitated" which adds even further use case to the skill rather than it being just a toggle for solo players, clever.

Missing is not fun imo, especially and particularly when you have solutions that could have been 'better or equal to' not missing a bunch in a row and knowing you'll do the action, say like missing 10 times and then instant killing or just using 9 skills to kill them, the later would have been far more fun, and ultimately I think 'fun' is the goal here.. so to me skills that miss by design should be analyzed again and again to see if it really needs to be that way and if nothing else can be done instead.

They've made updates to the lower level skills before, like potency boosts or new skills even, but my feedback as #1 would be along the lines of "please review older skills". Personally I think /most/ skills should be designed in such a way that they don't jump off the cliff at the next skill wave, or even sometimes jump off the cliff as soon as you obtain them (they're useless before you've even earned it), so basically not like linear progression. Of course making 200+ abilities way down the line would be quite hard. I use these games as an example a few times for this but think like Hades or Diablo 3. How each skill has its own value but then you see that value again in the future as you get certain combinations of events (new weapons, runes, boons, etc that cause suddenly that value to return again- it's not like you get "punch" at level 1 and then "double punch" at level 4 and so "punch" is now forever useless).

On the other side of that coin, particularly speaking early level skills, are abilities that just outshine everything else so much that you spam them over and over. Naturally Thousand Needles for the very early levels would be an example (which does stop being a problem, because.. 1,000 damage lol). If you change Thousand Needle suddenly as a pure nerf people would now be 'punished' for not leveling when it was OP, so I want any changes to be mindful that you don't really want to be making things feel like punishments. Sometimes a skill has an effect that is so OP that it gets nerfed in unfun ways, which I'm thinking of the % based skills like Death. Spamming death again and again and again until it 'works', or later when you get tail screw which can for a short time become your new "thousand needle".

Like for Death, at least imo, I think it would have been far more interesting to use if it was in the design style of Ultravibration. Perhaps death now just 'works' but it has a long cooldown that can get shortened by killing enemies (so in a dungeon you might get to use it up to two times), if it fails it can deal heavy damage and have a shorter cooldown. Similar concepts going to other % based spells, the solution doesn't always have to be cooldown + if doesn't work then add damage (but that is a solid function). A thought that might have decent implications is a generic blue mage debuff that can be used as part of other skills, say if you use petrify but they're immune then they gain a stacking blue mage debuff that you might be able to consume for some other powerful effect (this means you might have a build that is status effect based and it doesn't totally suck just because some monster is immune, like a boss- rather your failed debuffs translate into other mechanics).

Then there are skills that I just think can be helpful but are.. 'eeh...' feeling to use (I don't find them fun to use, even if they're useful). Say for example Moon Flute, Diamondback, or loom. Both Moon and Diamond have the issue of taking yourself out of the action, which is just generally a really bad feeling. Stuns in games always feel bad, no one likes getting stunned. It was even removed from warrior. Dragoon does have an animation lock period but that is exceptionally short, I think even if it goes to the theme of the skill that the 'punishment' for these two skills really should be re-addressed so they're just generally more 'fun' to play. I'm not arguing they're useless, they totally have use, but I believe they could just be a lot more 'fun' to use. Loom I believe just really shouldn't have a casting time, or perhaps gain some other benefit to use like perhaps it debuffs enemies you appear by or it shakes off a debuff from yourself. Movement skill + casting time, especially since you can't target massive distance away, makes the skill feel exceptionally niche use while also not feeling that awesome to use (like it does have a use, for example the particular fight in the carnival, but I don't think it feels interesting to use).

I noted overly spammy and or linear replacement skills but also wanted to note that most low level (sub 50) skills are also just generally not that interesting as a whole. But wanted to reiterate that I think 60-70 has done well having a lot of the skills be interesting and well designed. I generally don't think hyper strict rules are helpful but at least in guidelines for design it would be nice if nearly every skill could answer "is it fun to use on it's own?" "is it fun to use in relation to other skills?" "does the skill have value in the future?" "does the skill have value when I obtained it?". There are, imo, many skills that answer poorly to all four (particularly looking at the first wave of skills, the 50 ones, but of course filler skills in general apply)- you get it, the skill is useless, and you know the skill will continue to be useless, and even though it's useless maybe it would be fun to use..? but it's not. I think a skill that fails all 4 questions should then be reviewed, and maybe sometimes you need 'filler' skills but filler, for a job that is limited, should be the minority (or goal)- at all points of leveling. I would say when you get a complete level 70 kit that you will be filling yourself with skills that pass the vast majority if not all those questions, which is good, but I don't think it's a good thing that is what it takes (PF-exclusive skills, level 70 / level + unsync, etc). Most jobs, imo, are far more interesting than a level 50 blue mage even if you have all the level 50 skills (I mean level 50, not synced 50). A synced 50 blue mage with level 70 PF skills is going to be far more interesting than a level 50 anything (and that is of course due to two main reasons, A. blue mage get to keep their skills when syncing, so you just get a bigger kit to play with but also B the 60-70 spells are just generally pretty cool and so if you have those skills then you've got a pretty nice selection of interesting well designed skills). Level 70 blue mage with all skills is still pretty interesting even when you compare it to a level 70 normal job, and that's a good thing. Which is all to say because blue is limited the goal should be blue always being interesting because you've got very few to zero reasons why not to be that way.

So the tl;dr of the first major section is just reviewing skills and whenever you see the opportunity to "make them fun" and improve the gameplay of early blue mage as well this type of design will improve later blue mage since suddenly you might look back at an older skill and go "you know, I could actually use X in my kit!" even though you're a level 70 with all the skills (this can happen now, but it is pretty obvious which skills are going to be that candidate and which skills are doomed for dust- say unlike a Hades or Diablo 3 like set up where it might have been novel to tinker with when you first learned it and then novel again later because of some special situation). I understand some of them were more just sort of carnival filler as their purpose but when possible even take those to a new direction, move away from the idea of filler as much as possible. For example, and this leads into the next part, but Fire Angon doesn't do what the boss does and is rather just a generic non-fun to use skill that will act as filler until you get something far more interesting. Fire Angon could be improved and be an earlier level skill players get to play with that has weird interesting effects, so like the boss tosses multiple spears down in the fight that all radiate a fire damage dot. This multiple toss opportunity could be in a growing mp cost per cast, or a modifier to all fire spells (each fire angon active makes all fire spells cost more), or charge mechanic, and then the pulses get triggered by another activity - like if the pulses triggered by fire you might have non-fire elements help the ability recover charges faster.

The next part being just trying to add onto the four concepts previous with "equal to or better than" - better doesn't mean strictly potency wise (can be convenience, or general interesting effects / mechanics). So Fire Angon would certainly fail this as well, meanwhile you might example the later 60 - 70 spells as examples where they honestly became more complex than the original but that was a benefit (so they changed, but they changed for the better- made them more interesting rather than less). Pretty much anything % based is likely to fall into this group, as other spells already talked about (Fire Angon). Angel Whisper would fall into here in the sense of series but in this game it exists to obviously just be a simple raise. With Angel Whisper perhaps it might be if you have Basic Instinct active (which can only happen if you're the only one alive / solo) then you may use it to grant yourself auto-life which instantly returns you to full health or half health and a short invulnerability period when you fall below 1 (and perhaps goes on a longer cooldown than it already has). As an aside I think buffing Angel Whisper for normal play would be nice, for the vibe of the skill even if it's simply like revive target with weakness (as it does now) but with full life (or maybe revives target without weakness, half life) and keep the cooldown if you want (just something to make it not feel like 'a very bad raise' lol).

Third just wanting to push the solo-ability / smoothness a bit more. You can see many solo videos already, so this isn't a concept that is foreign to blue mage.

I've a few thoughts on both so starting with smoothness, currently due to basic instinct you can go through sync with a lot more content than you could have before and get 100% drop rate spells, which is pretty awesome. That smoothness kind of dies a lot in certain content because you don't have sustainability until you get later skills that pretty much rely on getting the earlier skills you can't obtain synced. You're not without options, you can cap your level and then unsync the content and do that a few times but I really don't think that should be the target goal because it means you have to go past many core skills that would be fun to use so you can then go back down to them (so you're having a substandard leveling experience). Smoothness therefore means looking at making the progression of skills be more exciting and requiring less RNGeus runs for abilities in instances (because instance RNGeus is the worst, open world is easy because you can just go next to next, but with instances it's just so many steps to repeat while you're not playing your job to a satisfying level because you're not getting the skills you need to do that).

Part of the potential fix to this would be making the earlier level skills more interesting, because then if you need to skip an instance until you can run it unsync then it's fine.. the job is still 'fun' (currently most interesting skills are in instances and there are not that many interesting skills in general from the open world which compounds the issue, simply making more skills fun and more valuable would alleviate that). Next concept might be adding mimicry to the carnival as that adds a huge amount of sustainability to your heals (in general getting sustain options a bit earlier, reducing white wind spam which can get old fast if that's your sole sustain), allowing players to learn that or like skills more readily would be a large change (you can unsync mimicry if you're having issues, but the delay in this skill is going to delay many other skills that need that boost in sustainability / quality play and therefore you delay the 'good experience' all together and that is not good). Like I said you could just cap and then unsync but I don't think that is particularly clever goal because it's saying "play for a longer period of time incomplete and not very interesting"- smoothness would be tweaking spells and spell placement so you get "learn interesting spells and play interesting ways the entire time" and that would be great. Another thought might be basic instinct may upgrade and have tank and healer mimicry (it already buffs damage so adding DD buff might be a bit redundant and even more OP, but you could if it ends up being 'fun'). I think the last would be neat to reduce the amount of heal spam you sometimes see, but obviously making overall it far more powerful solo (so.. I'd suggest trying it out just to see how it plays but it may be 'too much', I do think it would be nice for solo builds though as it opens up every skill since you would have both mimicry that affect skill outcomes and I think choice paralysis from having too many great choices is a great thing, rather than it being pretty obvious "not going to use that skill cause it'll be trash cause I'm not going to be tank mode").

I talked about pushing the solo-ability above already but wanted to add a few bits specific to it. I think because the power level squish we're going to get in 6.0 that it would be even better if they ensure and enshrine this idea as we read that a consequence to the squish is solo-ability isn't going to be as strong for our normal jobs (so rather than losing a feature, blue mage will be ensuring it steps into that place). If you have the whole kit it kind of does that already, of course with the above comment on smoothness and the known pain if you don't learn the skills in PF when it's "hot" (which is why I think it should be strong enough to solo all the content, in an enjoyable smooth growing way, or there needs to be a significant reward helping blue mages learn skills, in this way those players who used to do stuff solo can still do so- of course needing to use basic instinct). The other thought though to expand this idea and perhaps add some more value to the whole carnival and group run experience is maybe a new blue mage token / shop. The carnival challenges could reward this token which SE can put some of the different tokens into it (mgp, hunt, gp, tomes, etc), perhaps a pink frilly version of the morbol mount (massive amount of tokens), but more to my point there could also be incense you could burn / break in content that would send you super sayian. Like a stick of blue monster mist which causes you to go Howel monster mode / werewolf on a full moon (lore restricting where you can use it).

The purpose of the incense allowing players to circumvent the issue of the PF dying or just not being interested or welcome in it (like if you wanted to join but didn't have a skill they wanted you to have, or you didn't like PF but were still interested in the job), want to learn that skill but it's not possible to solo due to a skill you're missing? Crack some blue mist, get a huge boost (thinking it might open up the potential for alliance raids). Maybe it simply turns your basic instinct into primal instinct - imagery might be like Fran on mist from FFXII as well- more hp, damage, both mimicry, and mp regen. It also acts as a sort of casual get your story mode for players who might not be 'good' for whatever reason, can still enjoy it later (using this you can still 'sync' the content, helps with progression of skills if you weren't doing the order right or didn't want to go up and unsync). The token concept besides to encourage players to think about group as an option (but not ruin them if they can't or don't want to) also might prevent over farming as well since you'd have earn the token first, well it wouldn't prevent it entirely but it could slow it down (if one wished may have the incense cost like "x blue tokens + 1 beast trinket" and each beast tribe sells a trinket for a certain number of tokens- ensuring a pacing to it all). Or may consider tokens letting you gain upgrades to certain abilities, if SE was like "okay we'll review old skills but we don't want to make it too powerful right away", spend 15 tokens and earn an upgrade to Blood Drain that causes your next few attacks after the skill to heal you a % of damage dealt. Weekly challenge log, besides the carnival, could have something like playing with a group sync gets you x more tokens ( rewards at 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 or whatever - just to encourage group play as well). If mist mode / primal instinct super mode was a toggle skill rather than something you purchased (certainly more convenient) perhaps you reduce the reward to something akin to running a trust (you don't get all the chests when using trusts). Can add some other neat stuff perhaps like expensive treasure maps that have much higher chance at portals, or extra drop on non-raid / ex content when you use in the boss room of a dead boss (drop just for the user, so if you were hunting for glamour it would be quite helpful).

Mentioned the Angel Whisper idea while using Basic Instinct (returns angel whisper to it's classic power vibe, when solo / last resort opportunity) but wanted to also suggest a skill I think a skill that'd be massively powerful and helpful in solo content, and perhaps not requiring SE to tweak as many fights, is the ability to drop markers. Would be neat if the skill had value in non-solo play too though. Maybe it's inspired by that Moth boss who makes clones of you, that way in group play perhaps it has some relationship to damage (as you couldn't have it dropping markers in group play and not just make the entire encounter cheese). Might also have something like charges when basic instinct is active (maybe a way to even accelerate cooldown, like every 200 potency of wind damage reduces the cooldown by X).

An aside thought, while I think just making each skill have some interest (answering those four questions positively basically) an idea I saw that I thought was neat was each spell learned potentially made you stronger- this might also go into the whole smoothness or solo-ability thing, might not need to go to level 70 to do a level 50 dungeon unsynced but rather just 'go learn the other spells near your level and come back' (and also means a complete blue log is a reward in power). Might not want to bind that to basic instinct though since if your group died and you suddenly became 100 item level over the content you'd destroy it lol. Another tangent thought- going off the token idea and the grabbing spells for power concept, and FF11, I did like the idea of spells making passives and that the passives may influence your job design- now perhaps it's not like FF11 where you have specific spells on to keep them equipped but it would be neat if perhaps you had spell alchemy or something and you might combine certain spells and spend a token to unlock new effects you could slot in almost like a witcher mutagen (in FF11 for example you could have dual wield by having certain blue magic spells equipped). Combine blood drain and some other skill and suddenly you've got a vampire passive which causes you get a small % of hp on all damage done. Pyromania skill which causes your fire spell effects to be bolstered, or whatever. You'd have to be careful they don't pull a Thousand Needle to the job (a combination is so strong that it ends up making the job more simple to the point of brain dead spam rather than more interesting), but it could be quite neat (think also like horadric cube storing legendary effects like in Diablo 3). I enjoy the concept in my head, and in other games that have that, but I'm not confident in the value passive would add to blue mage lol (so It's just a thought thrown out there, like the vampire thing could be neat, but you'd need more than a few passives to make it worth while / interesting mechanic of merit and you don't want any passives that cause implosion of the job design, like I said "no Thousand Needles").

Finally, I just think being able to do PotD / Eureka could be cool. Definitely want to create a new leaderboard just for blue though lol. Maybe use the tokens above for entry, if SE is worried people would farm Eureka too quickly and drop Eureka market board prices.



So anyway, 1/100the word count summary:

I think the newer spells are far more interesting, I wish the older spells felt similar, I believe in general the majority of spells should be able to pass a self and group test of value (interesting on their own, interesting in a setting that includes other skills- older skills and many of the generic filler don't do well here, however the newer ones tend to do well here and often show a sign of clever design that I think many older and filler skills are lacking), while being careful not to take the fun out of it (if it's too strong solo could be 1 skill boring, that is bad and with a full kit blue is certainly not in a bad place) but I would like to see the solo concept nudged a few more times due to the power squish that is coming in 6.0 and particularly the smoothness of that experience (rather than getting to level 70 to unsync content with a bunch of uninteresting skills you can largely sync the whole way up with interesting skills the entire time).

Like I said I was going to largely avoid the whole make it normal thing (though I would have liked that, and both via advanced being extra lovely), but I wanted to touch on the limited concept since I figured people would anyways. Personally I think the idea of some side content, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, but using iconic jobs to do it can be bad and or at least polarizing. A concept I've suggested before for the limited pool that I think would do well was perhaps a Magitek Operator (G-warrior, Xenogear, etc- limited job concept). I was really, really, really, disappointed when blue mage first came out. The recent 60 and 70 skills have me happier in the skill design department (but I do think the job still has room to improve), but in general when you're looking forward to SE figuring out a cool way something might work (like they did to red mage) and then something comes out like how blue mage did (level 50 blue). It was a very disappointing experience. With blue mage quickly gaining a lot of solo power (basic instinct being a MASSIVE boost to that), I think a few tweaks to smoothing out the job could be really nice for that solo aspect and if they went further, like making earlier skills generally more interesting and valuable as a whole it could be better for both solo and group blue mage players. You can never please everyone but I think it might help if they didn't call them the iconic name if they continue, or at least start them out in a more interesting position (if blue mage had the potency boost they did, release blue mage was awfully weak lol, and the quality of clever skills they had at level 60 - 70 at the level 1 - 50 I think it would have gone down far better in general- while 'normal' jobs need careful balance I think accidentally going too far when working with limited is FAR better than too little). An example of a name shift might be Sheperd instead of Beastmaster, but if they just started them out with far more pizazz, power, and interesting design it would help (if they were limited). Not sure what they'll do next and I don't really want to 'kill' the idea of limited (I really want to promote the idea of Advanced / both though), but I just hope if they do this again that they'll do it a bit more carefully (like I said when blue first came out, I was honestly really disappointed in the game as a whole- the whole game started to get painted negatively because I was really looking forward to the job and then I was like "I hate this job", while I still have wishes for the job even now as I listed above, the feelings are definitely different and I at least look at like level 60 - 70 skills, gameplay mechanics, and blue mages playing in videos and I think "that's pretty neat").

I would also like to say and thank, as I do believe and state in general, I feel SE listens to player feedback and while they might not change their entire vision / direction it seems apparent to me that if they can they do accommodate other players wishes. Of course we can't say for sure what is just coincidence and what's not, but I think they have evolved blue mage to player feedback (early on they slapped 100 potency onto most things, then the skill designs changed a lot, basic instinct, etc).

Super tangent but wanted to say looking forward to the fanfest, it's cool they've some digital stuff planned in and out of game. And I didn't get to say it before but their other new game looks interesting, movement is super fluid, and of course still interested in FFXVI.




If anyone scrolled to the bottom of my post to be like "I don't read long posts" (and didn't read the first sentence. . . lol), just post what you think about blue mage given all the updates so far. If you don't know what is different go check it out or ask people in the thread if there was any change that was interesting. Point of thread is to update / revisit your thoughts on blue mage and limited jobs in general if you want (I focused on blue mage, but that was my choice). Happy or constructive negative thoughts welcome, this isn't to be a thread to say only good things (or only bad things)- hopefully lol.

Blue Mage is in a good place because it's allowed to do old extreme and savage content and some of this has a mount attached to it. I think the Stormblood ones should have a mount as well, but there are at least achievements for them.

It has a lot of other things you can have fun with, like soloing old content synced, the masked carnivale and being able to learn spells from locations other than the ones mentioned. It's been exciting just learning them from alternative locations than where everyone else got them, such as maps, open world bosses and higher level dungeons.

I know it's mostly player meta gaming but it feels like it's a bit too centered around bursty moonflute cycles and outside of that it feels -really- spammy.

I still think it's boring but at least you can get almost all the spells without having someone carry you.

1) There needs to be a better way to obtain the different stances. Make using the ability rotate them, let us mimic our chocobo in their stance, make some dummies we can mimic at the job NPC. Something other than what is. Trying to find that lone tank or healer sucks. Especially with the different glamours they can get.

2) Tanks need their abilities to be instant when tank specced. Plain as that. Especially defensive CD's.

3) Healers need to have their Rez CD removed when heal specced. Imagine if WHM/SCH/AST had a CD on their rez. Well, people might be forced to actually do mechanics then.

BLU has the same problem as it always had: not enough useful content to do: Carnival is usually a oneshot thingy, BLU log is dead this late after release (good luck trying to get people for the 24 man) and the Savage raids are only for a tiny minority. Also the rewards for Alliance seals needs an update.

I fully admit I used to be in the "stop wasting resources on this niche rubbish and scrap it" group (and probably for fair reason considering how much worse lv50 BLU was) but I'm happy to be wrong in the end. They took a great deal of feedback onboard and polished BLU into something that is actually a lot of fun to play. The 60-70 toolkit is night and day difference to the original 1-50 toolkit. The Primal skills are satisfying to use, Base Instinct is an amazing ability, there's enough useful variety to truly toolbox and the buffs to learn-rate of skills make it far more fun than back when you had to spam Shiva EX 120 times or synch it with no Raise or Mimicry.

I'm sort of undecided how I feel on certain aspects like Mimicry. On one hand it's less convenient to have to track down a healer or tank player to copy, but on the other-hand it has some of that old-school MMO charm where you had a little "tedious" prep work to get ready for battle, rather than having it all set for you. I won't mind too much if they change it though.

All that said, there's always room for improvement and I feel BLU has only just started getting interesting. A few for me would be:

-Making the weekly Carnival and Blue log more rewarding. This is a big one, hardly anyone is doing the Blue log and you need a full synched BLU group. The Carnival too is rather empty. With Hunt linkshells being a thing, Allied Seals just aren't that great a reward and grabbing an S rank here and there is far easier than getting a full group together and beating an EX trial synched. You only get 2-3 weekly target or Carnival bonuses and it should be something to look forward to.

-The Morbol Mount was a brilliant idea but needs to be expanded upon. Ideally there should be a mount for Stormblood EX/Savage too, then 2 more mounts for completing all dungeons/raids/trials on Normal mode, one up to Stormblood and one including. Sure it'd be quite easy, but the idea is to bring more players into trying out BLU and give them an initial goal. Combined with better Carnival/log rewards, you'd see more overall interest in the class, leading to more groups, leading to even further interest.

-Tank cd's should not all have a cast time. Boss tankbusters have a cast bar for a reason, to react with instant mitigation. BLU's cast time makes tank unnecessarily difficult. Loom should also be instant or have damage attached.

-Cold Fog should include dodge and evade to trigger or it has anti-synergy with Toad Oil which is an important ability. Phantom Flurry's tooltip should mention the first part ticks more often than normal DoT's. Base Instinct should persist on death and Mimicry should not be able to be clicked off or cancelled unless you have a valid target selected to replace your Mimicry with another one. It'd also be nice to have one or two instant GCD's, for example Rose of Destruction could be one, for weaving in abilities more smoothly outside of certain windows.

Rewards and content are definitely the main thing to address though. This patch actually brought in less with no mount and only a single carnival boss. Entice people in, so we have people to enjoy the class with and reasons to play it.

Bluwu and blucob please

If there is one thing to appreciate about the BLU concept is that you get to know all kind of content, for better or worse, which you might normally not do, e. g. the trials in the Hidibrand substories, extremes (unless you like harder content or just enjoy all content the game offers) and all sort of optional dungeons. To be fair, it's still once-and-done deal, ignoring multiple runs if unsynced, but if you were not interested in the optional hard labeled dungeons before, there you go for BLU spells.

Otherwise? Leveling with 1k needes is painfully slow, yet without the safety buffer of Mighty Guard I'd feel too fragile early on (probably a "me" issue). I'd have appreciated if more dungeon/trial spells had overworld options like Aether Mimicry so that it would make solo synced dungeon runs maybe a bit less obnoxious, but that's just qol.

tl;dr, same theme to thread if you don't want to read what I wrote it doesn't matter to be compliant to the thread theme- just update whatever the heck you think about blue mage with hopefully the idea that you tried it again. You may still think it's gold dust or a garbage fire, just hopefully you've attempted to check it again (not using old notions ideally).

Wanted to go over the level 1 to 50 spells since that was my major complaint, also wanted to hear more from people, both those who love and those who hate the job, specifically in the context of trying it post all these updates (not the initial experience impression, an updated impression which may be the same, worse, or better).

As stated above I feel the 1 to 50 spells cause a few issues and are in general relatively ... not great. Issues ranging from just not very exciting compared to the possibilities (or being less exciting than their monster counterpart), to their set and spam only X spell over and over to learn and instantly forget Y spell, to how they don't allow you to sustain yourself very well so you have to opt for leveling up with bad skills, with highly repetitive actions, so you can then come back around to get the better skills unsync with sometimes low drop rates (which means more bad skill gameplay, so you can slowly piece together some of the more interesting content, other jobs at similar levels far outpace Blue Mage in engaging mechanics until those later steps of acquiring the more interesting usually instance gated (a problem given how after FotM most people are going to have to go it solo) and later level more interesting (60-70) spells).

Given that this job is limited I believe there should be a strong goal to making the spells as fun as possible, then useful, and ideally but less important not immediately replace-able (if they can 'come back around' due to smart design that's awesome). All three being ideal, but at least hitting a few of them.
Something about making each spell seem like something you should use, and yet also have some sense of interaction so maybe certain themes of kits emerge (like oh this goes well with earth, this with that, etc). Random pre-aside note: please reveal which spells share cooldowns, at least when you have both (or more).

No. 1 - Water Cannon: It's the first spell, not surprising it'll be a bit bland.. That seems okay... though it would be cool if not, just because it's a limited job so that doesn't seem entirely necessary unlike a regular job where the first skill tends to be your ice breaker.

Perhaps some interaction with another skill later, or just more to do with itself. With itself might be as simple as water cannon adds a buff called pressure for X seconds after casting which grows for each unique non-water cannon spell cast. May cast water cannon again instantly and consume the buff with extra potency based on buff. Another more simple idea is repeat casts on the target cause dropsy debuff to build / duration reset (which can help play into other abilities later).

No. 2 - Flame Thrower: Disappointing, but that will be like all the other X potency AoE only spells is not great.

Idea that Flame Thrower is a channel spell that has a DoT, as you channel the DoT will stack causing it to reset duration and deal more damage per rapid application, the range of the spell growing, each application also consuming more mana than the last (there is a cap to stacks, the mana cost being fairly substantial at the end but the max channel only being like 5 seconds). There may be opportunity to mix with other fire enhancing spells, like a fire angon triggering blasts at each tick, or perhaps spells that reduce mana costs (or help retrieve lost mana).

No. 3 - Aqua Breath: Has interactions with some other spells, that's nice. Perhaps a special combo with Toad Oil that causes a few bubbles to have incredible surface tension and not pop right away. Which will then float to a nearby monster and after a few seconds pop for aoe damage and reapply dropsy. Secret combo if you cast bad breath through the bubble it'll go purple and have an enhanced DoT.

No. 4 - Flying Frenzy: Please make any and all move spells either far better in some way, or remove their cast time. Damage isn't great, there are some gimmick opportunities where you might want a target move skill but I think the 'feel' of the skill is right in the '....sure I guess' tier.

Idea, short stun (or other debuff in theme of being dazed, like slow), and when you're in combat and not the primary threat (enmity) holder of the target (or the target recently cast a spell on a specific player that was not you) the ability then becomes instant cast, enmity generator, and higher potency, like 100 at least. Short cooldown. Which keeps a theme to where you get it, I think (kill a baby the Zu goes crazy, here a monster goes after your ally).

No. 5 - Drill Cannons: Has combo which is neat, but the status effect is a bit annoying to get which makes the combo a bit meh (though the damage is huge). Maybe add / modify how petrify spell works, or add another interaction. Like Cement (Garlean learned), a cooldown spell, which inflicts heavy slow and gravity on a target and reduces the physical damage they deal substantially for a short period of time- the damage reduction portion being the debuff the spell focuses on and most monsters are not immune to (and the drills can apply their damage bonus combo to that too).

No. 6. - High Voltage: Neat - but just that dropsy comes from one spell so far, might be nice to see another. Mention else where but may play with the idea of polarity and lightning spells (like each element may have a general gimmick concept, blizzard seems to be friends with mp and frozen, lightning with paralyze and magnetism, etc, etc). May come back to this skill. .

No. 7 - Loom: Feels not good to use, I know there is the circus that needs this spell. Still... I think right away removing the cast time and extending the range would be nice. Though I know the lore says short distances... In the case of not touching lore-- Another then might be keeping instant cast, now has 2 charges, when you loom near an enemy it causes them to be startled, or terrified if we're going for a rhyme scheme lol, (debuff) taking 3% more damage and applies an AoE interject. Second cast on a startled enemy will petrify them for a short period of time (enough to get a single cast off). Cooldown for loom is moderate (like 30 seconds to a minute). Might also give extra inspiration to the movement skill without changing the range by adding a short movement speed bonus, or maybe short ninja invisibility (at no move speed cost).

No. 8 - Final Sting: I'm okay with the changes, though I do think fixing up Angel Whisper (at least when under the solo/alone bonus effects of Basic Instinct or something like that) so you can auto raise yourself would be nice.

No. 9 - Song Of Torment: Perhaps an interaction with sleep such that it doesn't cause sleeping enemies to waken. Or alternatively if cast on sleeping enemies the debuff turns sleep debuff into Night Terror which lasts a short period of time but enemies will not waken from taking damage and take increased magic damage. Night Terror enemies will become immune to sleep right away (don't want to go back to sleep, they scared lol). Paralysis can be used to extend night terror slightly.

No. 10 - Glower: Just a super fun animation, the spell effect is close to generic, but the paralysis is a nice extra touch. More mechanics to deal with paralysis would be nice, but the animation is so much fun you sometimes forget it's rather generic spell. Maybe as simple if paralysis is applied then it deals extra potency (meaning you don't glower over and over, same as the boss doesn't spam the skill on one player in the boss fight).

No. 11 - Plaincracker: Generic spell. Perhaps if you stay stationary after casting plaincracker will trigger a secondary cast (not by the player), which damages in a larger radius (similar to some of the boss mechanics we see). While stationary after casting can be a count down buff, and if you cast plaincracker again while the countdown buff is active the cost is doubled (allowing you to echo many plaincrackers at a high price, or a more simple balance mechanic is a short cooldown). Increased damage to movement impaired enemies.

No. 12 - Bristle: Obviously useful skill, though I wish it was an instant cast. Both semi-annoying but also interesting is the % bonus and casting time plays into the balance of other spells (such that you don't want to use it on some skills but you do on others). Probably don't want the exact mechanic on whistle and bristle, but might consider a buff to damage spell that is similar to red mage's acceleration (50% extra damage on the next three casts, cooldown). It's a bit dark arts (with the added aspect that breaking point due to cast time). I don't really like the wording though since it's not super clear on what it does or doesn't apply to, I met a few people that assumed the 50% applies to all your spells.. but it does not.

No. 13 - White Wind: Classic skill, very strong, has high mana cost.. it honestly seems fine. Though perhaps getting a not crazy cost healing spell sooner in the levels would be nice. It can be painful to rely on this one for so long.

No. 14 - Level 5 Petrify: Please do something about the chance base spell ideas. I'd much rather see a larger cooldown or mana cost than wiff a bunch of spells. It's not fun to miss... and it's also not fun to spam the same spell that misses. One concept for these type of chance based spells is to turn them into sure things with cooldowns and when an effect fails (because immune) you can have it do something else like damage. So like level 5 petrify petrifies in a cone, decent to long cooldown, any enemy immune takes 400 damage instead.

No. 15 - Sharpened Knife: The extra damage on stun mechanics isn't bad. Would be neat if there was some incorporation of hatred like concepts, or maybe Rancor (Karma) is another new spell to add to the game. Then you could have an extra combo mechanic with that.

No. 16 - Ice Spikes: Will be a theme for skills that are self buff like this but I think leading towards making them different entirely or have a component of passive and active. For example a skill critical every 10 attacks (as a passive), but if you use the ability the next attack will be a critical and then that goes on cooldown (making it more fun to slot). Better than set it forget it or think of the reasons why stoneskin and like abilities were removed from the game original, there is more fun potential if they're not simple cast and wait and then recast and wait again. Especially since this skill is kind of forgettable as it is (is a semi-fancy arm's length I suppose but eh). So here you'd have cast ice spikes which causes you to gain a 1 min buff like what the skill does currently already, and then the skill changes to another skill called snow flurry (instant cast, oGCD) or something that causes the duration of the shield to reset and restores some mp. The cooldown being semi-long but each time you're struck the cooldown lowers.

No. 17 - Blood Drain: Please change, feels bad. (low damage, low mp gain, using lucid dream smartly should keep you well off). One idea might be Vampiric Hunger buff after use which causes physical attacks to drain HP and magical attacks to drain MP. Or after you cast you gain hunger buff which causes attacks to drain mp and replaces blood drain with satiate skill which causes damage based on amount of mp recovered (and removes the hunger buff, using lucid dream during this would increase Sasisate's damage as would magic hammer and other mp recovering skills).

No. 18 - Acorn Bomb: If you need sleep, which would be a niche scenario, then it's strong but otherwise not. . . I wish it had something else so it would be valued more consistently, but 30 seconds is a really long time at least. Simply having some things play with sleep would help, like the torment song above maybe? There are other things you could have, like loom might interact with sleeping enemies. Just to maybe suggest something less vague.. Acorn bomb inflicts the sleep as is, but when striking an enemy already inflicted with sleep causes each monster to drop an acorn bomb at their feet dealing 100 potency aoe (not waking them up) and becoming immune/resistant to sleep (doesn't remove sleep but they cant be 'reslept' anymore). May need short cooldown, or I suppose change the wont awaken a slept enemy to high chance not to (just a balance system to prevent acorn bomb spam).

No. 19 - Bomb Toss: Early on the 3 second stun is nice (until you get thousand needle lol), but perhaps something to spice it up. Remove cast time but add that to fuse time (bomb drops but takes a second to explode). Short cooldown. If one wanted to go crazier- there are loads of different bombs in the game, you may have combo opportunities there. If you wanted to grant certain vibes, like using missile adds a charge to bomb toss, or barrage causes the next bomb toss within 3 seconds to split into multiple small bombs. That one huge bomb mechanic a few bosses use, could be during the fuse time if you cast a fire spell the bomb gets larger. Ice spells cause the fuse time to gain 3 seconds.

No. 20 - Off Guard: Free 5% is nice but obviously a quite simple spell (I guess 'some' simple isn't bad, but given this is a limited job it's not really important to have that concept and being free of normal job limitations, I thought, was a main reason to make blue limited in the first place). Maybe whenever you dodge, parry, block, or otherwise immobilize the monster off guard cooldown reduces, or the duration of the spell increases? Also maybe a thought on scale like if you know 0-20 spells it's 5%, 21-80 is 10%, 81+ is 15% (alternate thought on scaling that fits in theme with 'off-guard' is X number of debuffs increases your bonus %, like casting bad breath would certainly throw an enemy off guard).

No. 21 - Self-Destruct: Same though as final sting. It's neat gimmick, obviously strong. I like that there is the toad oil combo.

No. 22 - Transfusion: O_O.. Obviously full mp / hp is nice but the cost is quite extreme. I think perhaps it would be more enjoyable by simply changing it to "uses own mp and hp to restore the target mp and hp" (if they are missing 1k, you will use 1k of your own health up to 1 hp remaining). Doesn't cause brush with death anymore. Having this skill equipped increases healing received by 25% and adds extra mp regen (passively). May cast on self to shield for current amount of hp for 10 seconds, after shield falls off 75% of the amount shielded will drain from your hp pool over 10 seconds (paying back your loan lol). Add cooldown (since brush with death mechanic isn't there anymore).

No. 23 - Faze: 6 second cone stun isn't horrific, and there is a stun related mechanic with sharpened knife. Just a bit basic, especially once you get skills that can 10 or 20 second stun like with the frozen mechanic lol. One thought then is when fazed using earth element spells causes them to become dazed (fazed and dazed! lol). Dazed perhaps acting like pacification (or another type of stun, longer duration than stun), dazed will be removed by the next spell but cause that next spell to deal double damage (as daze does in some other FF games, daze debuff will naturally need a resistance mechanic).

No. 24 - Flying Sardine: The fast cast interject is obviously quite helpful. Useless for damage but interject on demand is cool. Only comment that I think if the spell worked with another shark related skill (like in the Stormblood dungeon, or the Void Ark sting ray boss). Using flying sardine to chum the waters for some neat interaction. But yeah, interject for days is helpful.

No. 25 - Snort: There is a fun nature of tossing an enemy around but the actual usefulness is limited to some very niche scenarios. Could copy the mechanic from the circus where you can fast cast or something afterwards (the boss casts fireball quickly after snoring). So here you'd get a buff called cleared sinus (even though technically the lore of the spell says you don't use your nose, maybe cleared passages to be more vague and lore friendly lol). AST lightspeed like effect for a short duration (spell time cutdown). Another might be it turns the monster around and causes them to be immobilized for a few seconds (which means mage monsters couldn't act).

No. 26 - 4-Tonze Weight: 30 second aoe 40% slow, not useless when you're trying to keep distance. Might suggest a skill that floats enemies or something later but counter idea here is maybe just in general earth spells deal more damage against those who have gravity (or it could be specifically this skill, weighted down debuff which causes increased earth potency and reduced chance to miss).

No. 27 - The Look: Those eye effect spells look cool.. The effect is obviously useful if you're a tank. Maybe monsters that look at you during the effect get a debuff that gives them reduced healing (just like 5%, vaguely similar to how the dragon has that other disease spell) and also makes your next few spells have increased enmity.

No. 28 - Bad Breath: Just seeing all the status effects is fun. The spell is useful for a bit but, I do feel a few status are missing. Maybe my mind is just used to the classical ability which destroys your screen lol, for example where is silence (and others). Not that it really needs it, just seems like a few are missing. Maybe some thought on it comboing with another skill to make you want to still cast it later when you can do big damage (a small DoT and some debuffs isn't that helpful when you can kill the monster quite quickly), but it's one of those classic spells that is fun to use. Maybe Toad Oil can be used to increase the duration of some of the debuffs. Another ideas which might make this spell useful (without changes to it) is a new spell which causes an enemy to take damage for each unique debuff that falls off (and if the damage is quite a bit the balance factor could be each debuff that falls off the enemy becomes immune to).

Parasitic Terminus 150 potency for each unique debuff that either fails to apply or wears off, monster becomes immune to that debuff in either case for 20 seconds after Parasitic Terminus ends (maybe a 20 second lasting spell with a decent cooldown).
I could see badder breath (ShB marbolo) added, with perhaps more effects for a longer duration but has a cooldown (bad breath is spammable, badder breath is not).

No. 29 - Diamondback: Please avoid any abilities that remove complete control of anything (no self stuns, at least "complete" self stuns / pacifications). Complete self stun meaning you can't take any action, incomplete might be you can take some actions. So here Diamonback perhaps prevents you from using offensive spells and moving (but you can use loom, and maybe heals, etc). If you jump you'll remove diamondback (and the effect can also be canceled from the buff bar, like right click your chocobo mount buff). More interactively though- Diamondback becomes ricochet while the buff is in effect, which starts with no charges and doesn't have a recharge timer; however, for every 5% of your hp damaged during this the ability gains 1 charge (the ability randomly targets nearby enemies and does decent potency damage).
But really please strongly reconsider this 'pure'-self stun / pacificiation mechanic, it's really really not fun. At all. At least add some wiggle room / activities within it.

No. 30 - Mighty Guard: Obviously basic instinct can make this spell really friendly but I'm surprised the tank stance came back seeing as it was removed, and generally a well liked move to do that. Again like above on the idea of passive / active and not pure set it and forget it. One idea is while Mighty Guard is active, and in combat, every 5000 mp used Mighty Guard changes to S. Mighty Guard (taking a tip from FFX lol)- here you gain an instant self target only dual regen (heals hp, is also a regen shield- 100-150 potency). An idea I think might have more mechanical issue, though I potentially like, is that while in combat with the buff active you can cast mighty guard again to add hp regen, increased defense, decreased damage reduction, but you loose mp per tick while it's active (making maybe some of the mp regen spells more attractive than they already are). Problem of course being canceling the spell becomes a bit harder since you'd have to cast it twice to cancel (or right click the buff), like cast to go mighty guard, cast again to go super mighty, and cast AGAIN to lose it... that's just a pain in the bum lol (but I do like the idea of a mighty guard like effect with the consequence of mp management, perhaps that could be a different spell that shares effects- like a new mighty guard that doesn't reduce damage and is like 30% less damage, but spells cost 20% more or something). Anyway, some thought into an idea that might avoid simple toggle spells (at least when possible, and it's more fun).

No. 31 - Sticky Tongue: Fun to use because "get over here!" is just plain fun. The stun itself isn't bad either. Leaving it alone would keep it relatively simple, but at least yanking people around can be helpful and is fun. Just for the sake of adding more .. because it's not meant to be balanced here's an idea though (not really needed)- Toal Oil causes Sticky Tongue to become AoE. Sticky Tongue when cast on enemies closer than 5yd (or some short distance) will remove one positive buff on the target and heal you 50 potency (toad oil effect still works).

No. 32- Toad Oil: The evasion is pretty powerful in some situations, and the buff effect on certain spells is nice and I encourage that further. But in the theme of not having basically set it and forget it like spells, going passive and active. Toad oil while equipped perpetually increase your evasion by 15% (passively). When cast toad oil increases your evasion by another 10% and increases the duration of your next buff / debuff spell and the potency / effect of fire spells (has cooldown, is instant cast).

No. 33 - Ram's Voice: The debuff is insanely easy to use and insanely powerful. The damage is a bonus. Might be cool if there was a radius water spell that left an effect on the ground (let's say toxic sludge or something), and then if you cast ram's voice afterwards it causes the ice to stay rather than vanish leaving a strong slowing frigid zone. But anyway, rams voice is hyper useful... looks cool. Just making some thoughts to ensure people want to weave spells in (easier said for oGCD type stuff).

No. 34 - Dragon's Voice: Big aoe, nice damage. A handy combo spell to this might be an aoe knock-back (circular, we don't have one that goes around yourself in a circle), because it needs to be between ram's voice and dragon's voice a fast cast speed would be important. Then you could freeze, knock out to the perfect distance, hit them with dragon, and then perhaps use the draw in effect. The shape is certainly a bit awkward when not dealing with stationary enemies though.

A new mechanic you might add to a number of lightning and unaspected / physical spells is polarized. So like by being hit by blue mage's lightning they become polarized and you could push them out, draw them in, send them to a polarized totem etc. Then in this idea like how the Chimera boss has a heat seeking orb, you could have an orb spell that you drop which goes to the nearest target and priority nearest polarized target for additional damage (but other lightning spells might also apply this concept). Anyway both ram and dragon are fairly fun to play with even if they do become too much bread and butter during leveling for a while, I think to help with that over buttering is just making the other skills around this time more exciting.. but at least I think they could be left alone and still have a lot of fun value.

No. 35 - Missile: Well obviously powerful when it works. I just really dislike the chance based spells. Turning every chance based spell into the same type of "now it's guaranteed but has cooldown" concept might get boring fast, so here is a different take on the concept. Now it's chance based, like before, but repeat casts in short duration increase the mana cost (stacking) and increase the chance (stacking). So you could miss, cast again, take like 150% mp, be very likely, maybe miss, cast one more time and it is just guaranteed to go off but costs like 250% mp. The cost doesn't reset for a decent duration, like 30 seconds or something. So if you cast again it would be some crazy 450% mp and still guaranteed I suppose, and again it's basically all your mp. Something I do would like to see consistent though is a visual sort of shield and or sound effect for immune monsters though, even if you miss, so you can hear and or see that feedback right away (oh, it missed, but oh also it's just not possible on this enemy- apply that to most if not all things, like if cast silence or something, of course the sound shouldn't be annoying or the visual, because you might see it quite a bit).

No. 36 - 1,000 Needles: . . . . . spam spam spam spam spam. Obviously CRAZY useful at early levels, but so useful it's all you cast pretty much. Nerfing this without making more exciting, and frankly more powerful (early level), skills would be bad though. Maybe when you have this spell equipped every 1,000 potency you do in damage the spell becomes free, but until then it costs a lot. Like if you had 500 potency built up the spell would cost 3000mp, 0 - 5000 mp, 500 - 3000, 750 - 2000, 1000 - free. Or just add a cooldown or something. But again if you nerfed this spell without adding other exciting, easily accessible spells that are stronger, this would seriously hurt the joy and speed of leveling blue mage up early levels. It's novel the first time but it gets really tedious and unfortunate later, as you get all these spells that are in comparison (and in general, if we're talking the early 1 to 50 open world spells) relatively meaningless with little value to fun or gameplay (which is why I bothered tossing ideas for 1 to 50, since I think the 1 to 50 blue mage is a.. not good.. period for the job).

No. 37 - Ink Jet: Compared to some other debuffs blind isn't that great, though it occasionally may be useful in some cases, especially when you add evasion to that lol. Might be difficult to code but a cool effect might be blinded monsters occasionally see an image of you that is offset from your position and they target that with anything from physical attacks to actual spell and aoe mechanics. So you might see a monster cast fireball off your position a bit, not even targeting you but something next to you. The lore says it's an improved water cannon, so might add parallels to that, like Ink Jet uses the same building pressure mechanic as water jet (something would be nice since ink jet blind will general have trouble comparing to the amazing stun of a ram voice, and for the most part when used on bosses a lot of this stuff is going to be immuned).

No. 38 - Fire Angon: Probably one of the skills that 'triggered' me early on with blue mage. If we're going limited there should be a goal to make spells equally or more cool than their originals, else if you were going to go balanced then it could have just been a normal job. Fire Angon failed that, because it was a cool spell that became super generic. Of course sometimes the boss variant might not make any sense or a slight nerf makes the spell more fun (because of a gimmick mechanic, say the Thok Ast Supra spell is different but still very cool and fits in theme). I've already suggested a lot of fire stuff so.. one might want to think of other elements lol (to ensure they've got fun things to goof with), but just because it's clearly a fire spell here's an idea. Fire Angon has a charge that recovers with non-fire spells (or is at least accelerated that way), each fire spear you put down deals damage in that area and has a short timer and will radiate AoE damage when you cast a physical or fire spell.

No. 39 - Moon Flute: Please remove the pure-self stun concept!! It's not fun to self stun yourself. When Warrior didn't have to mouth wide open beg like a baby bird for esuna when coming off berserk that was way better. Please don't go back to stunning yourself. Not being able to play, even if it's a trade off mechanic, is just not fun (imo). You could have something like making the waxing and waning relate umbral and astral elements (stereotypically speaking, I know you can aspect them to either) then you want a wide range of elemental spells (maybe even it's like for each unique elemental spell you cast, during the proper phase of umbral / astral, you gain 100 potency and once the flute is over it'll deal the total potency), you might have it so offensive is allowed in one phase and defense in another. Maybe it's something crazy like during waxing you deal increased damage (and maybe increased mana cost) and during waning 9 spells are selected randomly (the rest are locked out until waning is up) and you can cast 3 of them for free (no repeat casts, order up to you, cooldown is reset, temporarily, on those selected, being returned to their cooldown timer they were before waning began whether used or not - if wanting to be extra nice remove waning once the three spells are used).

Another thought to remove the self stun but keep some of the sense of sacrifice is it increases the damage you receive during the waning phase. Some people like the crazy huge final sting / self destruct damage they can achieve with this skill but just that self stun is ... big, real big, frowny face.

No. 40 - Tail Screw: Chance based spell, please consider a different application. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Is not fun, and ultimately you just think why didn't I just kill them the normal way, what a waste of my time to cast (so not only is it not fun but it is the opposite of fun since it adds regret / annoyance). Because this is to 1 hp the missile idea of mp increase in cost / chance might work but I think the balance would be all sorts of off and encourage it to be used in a less ideal way (people might just accept the mp cost and sit around and wait for mp to come back or something bad like that). So a cooldown or a different mechanic might be good.Cool spell, just don't want people to repeat the 1k needle spam again (a job with hundreds of abilities and people only cast one spell over and over because it is either the most effective or seems to promise it would be).

No. 41- Mind Blast: Love the lore description. Might add some combos to other mind game like spells, sleep, loom, song of torment, etc. Create a sort of Mindflayer / lovecraft blue mage if a player desired (a build that actually makes sense, not "look ma I put all these spells that don't work well together together" lol). Adding more interactions with the debuff could add value here, since the debuff is just okay as it is (and there are better debuffs outside of niche situations). An extra idea maybe here is when an enemy has a debuff Mind Blast causes dots to tick (doesn't change the duration of the debuff) but reduces the time paralyze, blind, or sleep (which ever is greater), enemies that are slept have an increased chance to remain asleep, those awoken by mind blast take twice as many ticks. Mind blasted enemies deal less magical damage for a short time. Just for the overt sake of a lovecraft combo idea, Mind Blast on an enemy that has been blinded will make that debuff turn into Eldritch Hallucinations which makes blind permanent (or until leaving combat) and causes water, and ice theme spells to deal more damage (as well as continue to blind the enemy).

No. 42 - Doom: Again chance spell. Perhaps here when cast on a monster immune to doom it'll do significant damage and go on cooldown (maybe increase their damage taken for a short time). If the spell succedes the spell goes on an even longer cooldown. Thus the spell is helpful against bosses that are immune to death.

No. 43 - Peculiar Light: Just by lore I'd love to see mighty guard on interact by adding increased enmity from afflicted monsters. Beyond that like off-guard it's rather basic.. Just for the heck of spicing things up. Perhaps here debuffs that are applied WHILE peculiar light is active last 3 more seconds. Debuffs from water, ice, and unaspected spells last 6 more seconds (may say umbral related spells).

Primal spells: I do like how each primal spell has a use case, there was some thought put into that style of design, they are fairly balanced between all of them and in the idea of balance they're interesting to read.. yet also for a 'limited' job it feels bland still. If this was a normal job I would think it's more expected (since they'd need to be more balanced then). I don't hate them, probably because the rest of the 1 to 50 are really basic and these have good oomph and are oGCD... but compare them to later primal spells and the potential of wacky-doodle that blue mage could get up to and then feel really close to a normal spell a job would get at level 50 (not horrible but not really "that's a limited job spell that is")

No. 44 - Feather Rain: Summons one plume per 2 enemies which will run to the enemy and explode after a short period of time, the third plume will be a spiny plume.

No. 45 - Eruption: Has a concentric circle of a smaller radius, enemies hit within that smaller radius circle will be locked on by a subsequent two eruptions (not each, just total those hit in the center two will be chosen randomly at offset time for the following two eruptions, the repeat eruptions should probably deal a bit less damage).

No. 46 - Mountain Buster: Extra damage against those inflicted with gravity. If wanting to add more might be mountain buster changes to stomp with 1 charge for every two enemies hit with mountain buster.

No. 47 - Shock Strike: Extra damage against those inflicted with dropsy, the 'extra' might be thunderspark is randomly assigned to half the enemies hit.

No. 48 - Glass Dance: Just take the thousand needle mechanic here, increase the damage though. Just like in the actual Shiva fight, spreading the damage to all those hit (so a lot more when it's one target).

No. 49 - Veil of the Whorl: If you had a huge pack nice I suppose but it's hard to feel it as it is. One idea might be while active your magic defense is increased slightly, water spells apply dropsy, wind spells automatically trigger a draw in effect which causes veil to tick for damage (losing a tick worth of duration on the spell, and of course monsters to get pulled in closer to you).

Just some ideas to maybe kick start some change to some of the spells. Not a list of "if this isn't added Imma be maaaaadddd" lol. Though I do really want to see 1 to 50 get a remix, I think there are some ideas here and there but the job shines with the design shift (imo) of the 60 to 70 era spells and I'd like to see that more liberal "for the fun of it" kick back into earlier stuff that felt far more balanced as if blue mage was going to be a normal job (which some people suspect but that is aside the point, if blue mage is going to be limited then make it scream consistently in nearly every spell why it was that way, a cacophony of shouting and shrugging at the standard requirement of balance and just doing whatever is fun because it's 'fun'). Obviously fun is a bit subjective, some problems with that lol, but I don't think spamming 1 skill over and over for 30 levels is particularly a shining example of potential fun (or letting someone else create big groups while they power level you, which I did not do, but I don't count that as fair assessment of the experience of leveling the job then - that's an abnormal way which is fine to do but shouldn't be what the job is built around "I assume you'll be power leveled so no bigge" no.. lol).

Random aside 1: Add a libra skill early on that boosts the chance of learning a skill from a monster (a little for outdoors, a lot for instances) afflicted with libra and reveals an elemental weakness (if that's not possible just reveal one randomly, and increase the damage to that element by a decent amount). Non-stacking.

Then condensed-libra (already a skill) can become a stacking but longer cooldown spell, each time you cast it on an the same enemy (name) you gain a stacking buff that increases your damage slightly (not nearly as much as libra, but this skill is applied to you so it stacks and doesn't fall off when the target dies) and your learn chance of any spells coming from that specific monster (again a little outdoors, more instances, casting on a different enemy causes the stack to reset, logging out naturally the same thing).

Random aside 2: Please make basic instinct's buff not removed when in the open world. Annoying to have to keep re-applying the spell. Although I've not done that No. # spell in the list the idea of passive active might apply here. Such that if you have basic instinct while solo, or all players but self are dead, in content designed for multiple players, you automatically gain 100% damage and the speed buff. However, if you cast basic instinct regardless of your group status you'll gain 5% damage and defense buff, increased to 15% when your hp is below 35%. Meaning if it's on your bar the buff is always there even if the clause of the buff isn't met (so it isn't applied), and then there is an interactive competent so you get a passive and an active skill bundled together.


Some content ideas to maybe go along with more blue, besides the obvious allow blue to Deep Dungeon (with their own leaderboard, and perhaps their own solo achievement as not to ruin the necromancer title... though removing some randomness to the necromancer title itself would be nice lol). Then Eureka (which may need to be personal queue only, though I understand making a whole zone for one player is probably.... costly).

Then we might have Beastmen getting new beast tribe quests that use the daily tokens (and sync), new spells to learn with them, the monsters synced and designed a bit towards blue in mind (not super puzzle like the Circus but with the idea that blue mage is doing this vs a normal job). The tokens of tribes can be used to perhaps unlock rewards / certain concepts. New monster arena, like FFX, can use some FFX akin mechanics for it too (out hunting for monster parts), these fights being more combat focused than puzzle (circus can continue to be a puzzle, while like Diablo the monster arena is designed more generally to be challenging but not "oh you didn't take this ONE spell? You're ruined - which happens fairly often in the circus"). The beast tribe daily quest tokens being part of this could be used as a means to justify rewarding current tier tomes (since they can do that already, and this way adds extra value to blue for those who like that)/ Monster Arena could also repurpose a lot of the NM / HNM hunt monsters in a burning circle like concept.

Far more crazy idea but a thought might be ability alchemy, thinking like Witcher and Mutagen or Diablo 3 runes or Hades Boons like stuff. So you might be able to unlock changes to blue skills, upgrades to blue skills and your blue in general, via completing this content (like both the circus and monster arena might award blue tokens). Upgrading spell example might be by unlocking a trait to Basic instinct you can choose that or Primal Instinct which default adds primal mimicry (the effect of healer and tank mimicry, cannot be combined with the standard aetherial mimicry). A little bit like Crisis levels in FFVIII and how it affects blue magic, except here you're adding merit / traits. Rather than some non-turn-off-able concept think more Diablo 3 with runes. So you unlock the primal trait to basic instinct and you can choose to use that modification when you select the spell or you can choose not to (and there may be other modifications). Just going off the deep end then might be each spell unlocks passives, akin to how FFXI worked, but you get a 'sphere grid / materia grid (like FFVII weapons but far more complicated)', maybe think Path of Exile item slots, and you can combine these abilities spheres on your grid to create big passive bonuses and unique effects to your character (the grid getting bigger as you level up and maybe do some unlock content). So you'd go from single slotting acorn bomb for immunity to sleep and some extra hp to comboing a bunch of skills together to gain ribbon, lich, fast cast on every third spell, dual cane wielder, etc (inspired by PoE / FFXI's blue mage). Those slots to be clear not determining your abilities, just a whole new wild way of empowering blue and changing how you play it.

Canes might be a place for that type of customization as well, like Ramuh's cane may add a chance to randomly strike a currently aggro'd monster on magical casts, and adds a job UI of your cane becoming a sort of tesla coil for electricity which can impact other mechanics (even if simple like discharge half your electricity on physical attacks for big damage, but the more charge you have the quicker your spells cast / recover). Each cane could mix up the blue mage bag of tricks in weird and game changing ways, and you can use glamour if you liked the look of one and the effect of another. Canes could be bringing the primal's crafting material, a special crafted cane which can be bought for a lot of alliance tokens (and sold on the MB), and then completing some challenge fights in the monster arena. Or whatever content SE thinks of that is hopefully not exclusively grindy lol (either isn't grind or has ways to be less, like if you didn't have a lot of tokens from blue mage content / whatever, you could simply just buy the base cane).

A general modification might be an upgrade that increases your power level based on the number of spells you know, increasing your ilvl up to the current end game ilvl (but not your actual level - the stat distribution can be based on your current equipment, as if they were synced upwards).

Although that all could just as well be 'more new spells' instead of changing and morphing current spells. (I do like the # of spells known increases your ilvl up to current maximum, and primal instinct though, even if not tied into those more crazy side suggestions, I think both would be nice to have, damage is already pretty good currently, but sustain can be a bit too much FFXI RDM doing solo lol).

tl;dr, same theme to thread if you don't want to read what I wrote it doesn't matter to be compliant to the thread theme- just update whatever the heck you think about blue mage with hopefully the idea that you tried it again. You may still think it's gold dust or a garbage fire, just hopefully you've attempted to check it again (not using old notions ideally). Like, dislike, no change, are all not wrong answers.

I'm mostly hoping the class gets a secondary resource and more short cooldowns in its inevitable 6.x update so that the "filler" part of its rotation between burst windows is more interesting.

I had a great time with it...for two days after each update...

Considering how it obviously has an intended rotation, I still think they could easily implement a standard loadout to make it fit in a standard party, while keeping some achievements locked to BLU parties. They could even adjust potency depending on the party composition, that would be fine too.
Maybe add a couple GCD filler skills so that we don't spam sonic boom too much, maybe a 1-2 combo.

I also think the level cap should have been lifted to 80 before the end of the expansion.

Basic instinct was a fantastic addition and I hope they add more skills to make BLU even stronger when playing solo.

I hope that at some point they let us do ultimates as BLU. And if they are afraid it will "ruin" the feeling of acomplishment from the people that cleared with regular jobs or whatever, just put different achievements if you do them as BLU, you could get a new title instead of the one for regular jobs (The Blue Legend for example).

I actually really enjoy Blu and often being it on roulettes with my friends for cheese factor. The only thing I dislike is some of the carnival being too tight. None of it was too difficult, but once you figure out what to do and do it well, it shouldn’t drag on.

Like, probably Gogo is a good spot for a “hard” carnivale fight.most of it should be 1 or 2 gimmicks that once you figure out, you can stomp through it. (To be fair most are this way already)

A big offender for me was Red fraught and Blue… a lot of instant death and the fight just goes on and on unless you have a lot of OCD abilities. It feels like old school Titan where you just have to memorize the rotation.

The only other thing is I feel you should not need to do anything in a party, ever. Like you should be able to solo Garuda at 70 and get her ability relatively easy….as is the rng is really low and annoying. It should fully embrace being a “solo” job, or you should be able to just power through all related content with trust or squadron,

BLU is great.

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

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This would be fantastic. To be able to do Eureka and get certain skills etc from eureka bosses would be perfect. I absolutely hate having to “hey guys, sorry but can we run Sastasha hard to get ink blot?”

Glad to see folks enjoying BLU. I've been an avid BLU soloist and player since the 70 update. I would likely have been even before, but I just didn't have the drive to play it as most of my friends didn't.


I love where it stands, because it has created its own communities that revolve around it, and it is an absurdly powerful job(it has an extremely high skill ceiling due to this). I know the first page is largely months old responses, but I see a lot of misunderstanding on the first page.

For instance, in your spell description/ideas list, Shougun, you ask where Silence is on Bad Breath because it doesn't apply a long term one... it does inflict Silence though. The player based interrupt kind, same as Flying Sardine, just not an instant cast.

Blood Drain restores 500 MP per cast, and it can be spammed. Even accounting for the 100 MP cost to cast, this actually means that if you take into account the natural 200MP per tic regen of MP in combat, you are getting 600MP every time you choose to cast it over anything else. This can and will quickly restore your MP, allowing you to chain even the most expensive spells back to back after Blood Drain use. It's insanely powerful and does not need to be improved.

A large part of the skill involved in BLU is that everything has a cast time. This actually makes Spell Speed pivotal for nearly all builds, with a Crit/Det build only edging out on DPS by 0.5% with less consistency. This makes BLU tanking and BLU healing more difficult than their normal counterparts, but it also means that when you take up those roles that you have to commit to those roles more than the actual jobs that are labelled with those roles. Keep in mind that BLU healers actually can have the other 7 people all act as Co-Healers whenever it's deemed necessary due to White Wind being Roleless for its incredible heal.
BLU tanking is very fun, because it's the least required role for the party, but this makes it be placed into the hands of a single person, at least if your group is rolling to skip hard mechanics. Because you have to cast your tank spells, which in the most serious of things is usually the near-invuln Diamondback, this makes your spell timing and cast speed more important than anyone else's in the party. A spell speed build usually allows you to beat a tank buster cast bar. The new tank spells only have niche use, but are very useful if they allow you to get away without Diamondbacking even once to save you MP.
Chelonian Gate is also an example of a spell designed for the expansion it comes from, as it is triggered easily by almost every Stormblood based tank buster, so that you can use its 1000 potency(half a Final Sting) attack every tank buster during the right moments. Best of all, you can hold its channel for a time even after Divine Cataract activates if you deem continuing the mitigation necessary.

In general play, for dungeons, the tank mimicry is unnecessary as Mighty Guard is roleless, and a Healer with Mighty Guard can effectively tank any dungeon boss and any dungeon pull(heck DPS can too, but white wind spam is less fun). The optimal way to do dungeons is a Healer BLU tank with 3 DPS BLUs staggering Ultravibration so that every pull is instantly killed, and so that bosses are met with full Moon Flute destruction.

In this way, BLU is not an intuitive job. There are very few players that could play any BLU role in a raid setting or any BLU role period to their fullest extent, let alone BLU to its fullest power. Calls for changes to how it works are generally from a non-BLU perspective. They want it to play more like Not-BLU jobs.

I also see a few folks saying the Omega raids should have a BLU mount. Well, the 50 raids didn't have one attached at first either. I assume it will follow the pattern that once we get level 80 BLU, it will get another variety of Morbol or other similar BLU-esque mount for completing both Omega and Eden Savage raids.

BLU raids are nuts, because of Moon Flute. BLU can skip some very complex mechanics, even in the Alexander Savage raids now, thanks to the Stormblood spells. This cuts the earlier fights to half their intended script or less. The end tier fights take much longer, but are still shorter. Without exception, the question of a BLU clear is never, "Can BLU do this fight?" it's, "How fast can BLU annihilate this fight?"

One thing I would like to see added to BLU achievements is a BLU solo achievement list. BLU Soloing is one of the easiest ways to become very good at the job, since everything rides on you alone. There's ultimately no incentive for it, though, because there is nothing gained other than endurance boasts.

I have pretty much 3 asks for the BLU.

1. Let BLU go to Eureka, given how strong BLUs are in Overworld style content and their use of all elements, they would not need the element wheel but would need to use the right element spells and they would be unable to use lost actions. It just breathes a bit of life into an area that is effectively dying content outside the few really devout groups and gives BLU a new area to play around in while utilizing more of their flexibility.

2. Overhaul some of the filler spells, badly. There's a reason Electrogenesis and Sonic Boom are the most widely used fillers and that's because they feel good to use (Electrogenesis is a targetted AoE from target with the initial hit being full damage on the target, Sonic Boom is an exceptionally fast windup making it good for movement) some of the fillers are just plain bad or gimmicky to the point they aren't useful. The Look is a good example as are the Knights Tours which are completely unusable on bosses due to the bind gimmick.

3. A Blulette option. The BLU log is a step in the right direction but people feel less incentive beyond the initial buzz and that's something that could be fixed by adding a daily BLUlette. I can typically find a BLU party for spells, but finding ones that actually want to clear content outside a spell drops off the final dungeon boss is few and far between.

My wish list for BLU:
-BLU-only Duty Finder and daily Roulette: perhaps require players to have certain skills first. I recommend to require them to have at least: White Wind, Aetherical Mimicry and Diamond Back. With duty finder for BLU only, you will also help other BLU to get spells and fill up logs.
-Aetherical Mimicry: Make it works like Monk's Form Shift: first use = DPS stance, second use = heal stance, third use = tank stance, the come back to DPS stance from tank stance. You can change role freely in dungeon, but not in-combat, similar to AST's stances. Less the hassle to stalk other players to get their roles.
-Limit break: work differently depend on your stance. DPS = single-target Limit break. Heal = Heal + Rez (LB3). Tank = super defense.
-Relic grind: BLU can pretty much do everything for Zodiac and Anima grind. You don't even need them to go into Eureka and Bojza to get relic materials, as other classes can farm it for them. For Eureka, put a NPC outside for weapon barter should be enough.

While I'm not going to go into a spell by spell diagnosis, I do agree the 1-50 kit needs some revisions, in part to better prepare the player for undertaking specific roles within the trinity. Healing sticks out here with White Wind being an MP hungry spell, but conditional in what it restores and oftemtimes overkill. Mog Pom should most definitely be locked to King Mog and should arguably be a bit more useful without Mimicry. Tying Angel Whisper to Carnivale clears was also a bad move.

Mechanically, though, I'd ask for multi-stage Carnivale fights to restart at whatever stage you were on if you died. As another poster pointed out, a lot of these are just pure "do the dance" slogs once you figure out the gimmick, but needing 2-3m every time to get to the 2nd+ part just to wipe again because you didn't figure it out yet, bad luck, etc., makes the experience more of headache than it should've been. Otherwise, I'm fine with the Carnivale largely being one and done because I don't want another set of yet more compulsory daily/weekly tasks, especially if that translates to BLU-specific rewards/power.

Otherwise, I'd say spell sets solved one of my older gripes and the general nerf to suicide strats tied into that. Not a whole lot can be done about the post-patch popularity and eventual wane, as that's a factor of all content. Adding what BLU can access is the otherwise sensible alternative and I think Eureka and eventually Bozja is a good idea for multiple reasons people already covered. I think at this point, the only real "new" thing they could do is reward a new type of crystal based on whatever mimicked role you cleared a duty as. This can then be used on other jobs to give them a little bit of EXP as a little bonus for participating in BLU things once you have your spells/mounts/etc.

I hit 60 and took a look at the list of moves I’d need to be viable and….dungeons and raids. Dungeons and raids mainly only soloable if I’m maxed and get level 70 gear…

I think it’s very awesome that the class “designed for solo play” requires so much partying content, and gets locked out of Duty Finder to boot. More like the “you MUST have friends” class.

Maybe if they were allowed to go to Eureka so you can use the class to get that stuff cuz you missed the bus, that’d be something, but they limit this Limited Class WAY too much.

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

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Basic Instinct offers no additional protection, and it’s only damage buff is just reversing Mighty Guard’s downside. Go into an instance solo-synced, you’re screwed.

I wonder what the future of limited jobs is cause I don't remember hearing anything about them during the info releases for EW we been getting.

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Originally Posted by VictorTheed

I wonder what the future of limited jobs is cause I don't remember hearing anything about them during the info releases for EW we been getting.

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Sprawl and bloat for jobs in general probably means there won't be any more limited jobs, and frankly I'd rather them focus on making BLU better than trying to shoehorn in another underdeveloped mess like the 1-50 BLU.

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

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What could be neat for beastmaster as a limited job is if monster breeding was also a thing.

I'm thinking in battle or in dungeons you could still have charm to grab whatever is nearby, but you'd also be able to summon say your "plant-type" or "lizard-type" or "critter-type" or w/e terminology. And you'd also have a capture command.

Outside of battle, perhaps in a new or revamped zone (the arena in Foundation comes to mind) you could breed monsters of the same type to boost stats and combine skills on the offspring to have better beasts to summon in battle.

+1 against reworking Blu into a normal job. I like that it’s very gimmicky and basically revolves around figuring out how to best clear certain obstacles. And even then, I think once figured out the carnivale still has a small handful of battles that are really tricky and it feels good to be able to clear them. With proper gear and prep, none of it was that hard. (I cleared with ilvl 400 tomestone gear with crit or det materia; nothing fancy by any means).

If nothing else, the carnivale is a great resource for just learning mechanics. Or practicing dodging or personal reaction speed.

Even then it feels like the carnivale is just a training grounds for what else is possible; like these are guaranteed doable…but can you clear all of coil? Ex trials? That’s where a lot of fun comes in.

At first, I wanted more of an elemental wheel or loop of abilities instead of just spamming …but it works fine, and maybe that could be explored in future limited jobs.

On the topic of Beastmaster….personally, if I was developing it… I think I’d have it set where you can summon 3 critters at once (self contained light party), each with 3-5 abilities that you have to kinda of play off each other. In practice this would essentially be 3 different small hot bars with each having their own gCD. Different party builds to allow for maximum cheesing.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Blue Mage is in a good place because it's allowed to do old extreme and savage content and some of this has a mount attached to it. I think the Stormblood ones should have a mount as well, but there are at least achievements for them.

It has a lot of other things you can have fun with, like soloing old content synced, the masked carnivale and being able to learn spells from locations other than the ones mentioned. It's been exciting just learning them from alternative locations than where everyone else got them, such as maps, open world bosses and higher level dungeons.

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Before blue mage was released, I said there would be two possibilities- one of which I'd hate (and I did, blue mage at 1 to 50, especially before the double potency buffs and such, had me feeling very very annoyed and sometimes seeing the job in my job list was frustrating to the point I wish I could have removed it from my character. I still believe the 1 to 50 spells do not encapsulate the best ideas of what a limited could be but changes, and particularly 60 to 70 era spells have helped the overall experience). One it was going to be a party focused limited job that would die very rapidly and be absolutely annoying to self progress. The other would be that it might be considered solo king and would be viable to self progress, do the content that was designed for it, but also allow players to do content they might have otherwise been unable to do on their 'normal' job of choice.

Obviously when first released it wasn't received well, and as they made changes it has been received better. The closer we got to full solo potential I see the more people speak well of it. There were some who had fun in the group setting but look at that now.. it's very well super dead. The group concept can continue for short terms of fun but the job cannot stand on it's own under that premise. I'm glad they added basic instinct and I strongly believe each time they improve the ability for the job to do it's own thing, and occasionally have fun in a group as it's very very 'side thing'. The far better.

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Originally Posted by hobostew

I know it's mostly player meta gaming but it feels like it's a bit too centered around bursty moonflute cycles and outside of that it feels -really- spammy.

I still think it's boring but at least you can get almost all the spells without having someone carry you.

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In the current form I also REALLY dislike moonflute. That design would never fly under normal job situations, at least anymore, and it's just not even fun under a limited situation. It's not like it's removed because it was too much fun for warriors lol. It's just awful to sit there with your hands on your lap waiting.

Moonflute is super powerful, so I'd use it in a group setting but I actually don't use it when alone because I just dislike the spell so much even though I know the intention was to use it because of how big of a damage boost it offers for your burst spells. I very much want moonflute to change.

The spammy part too is not great, as you get more oGCD and more interestingly designed spells later it gets better but certainly 1 to 50 is less interesting than playing a normal job (which is my main critique that remains for blue mage. 1 to 50 is just not a really interesting time to be a blue mage).

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

1) There needs to be a better way to obtain the different stances. Make using the ability rotate them, let us mimic our chocobo in their stance, make some dummies we can mimic at the job NPC. Something other than what is. Trying to find that lone tank or healer sucks. Especially with the different glamours they can get.

2) Tanks need their abilities to be instant when tank specced. Plain as that. Especially defensive CD's.

3) Healers need to have their Rez CD removed when heal specced. Imagine if WHM/SCH/AST had a CD on their rez. Well, people might be forced to actually do mechanics then.

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The ability to rotate stances would be nice. I personally would like them to go towards passive & active design spells though. By that I mean not a spell you set and then forget, like a stance, but that you might set and have reason to use as well. The easy example was just critical strike passive that every three hits you critical, if you press the button however your next attack will critical (passive isn't turned off), now you have a cool passive and a useful active all bundled together. Just having a spell take up a slot to take up a slot is a strong "meh"/10 for me lol. If anything perhaps mimicry because some sort of special ability that doesn't count to your 24/24 and has a job UI guage or something. Being able to toggle modes would be nice. Adding an active / passive relationship could be cool too. But yeah it's an obtuse design for the sake of being obtuse... Not crazy for that. I enjoy role play certainly but being painful reminds me of the worst of old school role play design, rather than like oh cool I can go down this secret path because I had a relationship with X this spell is more like "oh cool I miss half my attacks because I'm a cave dwelling race that can't see well in the sun".

I don't appreciate the cast time on most spells, I find that is unnecessary and counterproductive to more interesting gameplay so I'd agree there. Especially as some of the spells with cast times are made less worth it due to the cast time. Loom with cast time... HUGE thumbs down. Like HUGE. I frowned when I used that spell the first time. I even casted it near monsters and stuff just to hope there was a cool combo at least to make the cast time worth it. Nah.. lol.

There is some fore thought that some people might like with cast times and tanking, but I think that's not that fun. I suppose it could be left as "maybe blue tank isn't for you" but I still don't think it's that great given it means you have to know the attack is coming or have some crazy good spell speed.

Yeah I thought Angel Whisper would be an Auto-Life, and hence a cooldown was very well justified, imagine if you could self-destruct and then keep fighting. Oh my god so strong. But they made generally a super strong spell in FF history one of the worst raises in FF history. Fire Angon and Angel Whisper are two spells that I would say damn well near 'triggered' me into a tight spiral of frustration. They went against everything I felt they had suggested purpose of going limited was and just felt bad while disrespecting the source power. I can see how a tank with raise might want a cooldown if they were thinking we need a vague sense of balance (though again, it's a limited job.. stop thinking so hard on that, just make it fun, and stop thinking about the rest of the rules, otherwise don't make another limited job because it's massively wasted potential.. imo lol.).

It honestly still frustrates me to think about lol. Early blue mage had me upset about the game in a way I had never felt before (even housing), and I still see remnants of that design in the job (which I am hoping is purged without remorse), but I do like some of the more clever spells added recently and the leeway taken to make certain spells more exciting (like Supra captures the spirit but is clearly not the exact same, or Ultravibration is crazy strong, when fighting stuff not immune to instant ko at least, and has two ways to interact and yet is also not damaged by a spam addiction because of the cooldown).

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

BLU has the same problem as it always had: not enough useful content to do: Carnival is usually a oneshot thingy, BLU log is dead this late after release (good luck trying to get people for the 24 man) and the Savage raids are only for a tiny minority. Also the rewards for Alliance seals needs an update.

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Yeah the blue log while a nice concept is destined to be dead content (all things die, by destined I mean it happens VERY rapidly and such has no life span similar to normal content you either get in right away, be circumstantially blessed (on call friends who do what you ask, good for you), or don't get to do it), which is why they should make solo the main thought and party the after thought at all times (after thought doesn't mean remove, just not a primary design objective at any point - if its meant to be focused on group content then it should be normal). Every spell, all content, should be made solo first. Because of what blue mage is (limited) it will /never/ be able to survive as a living content past the hot flavor of the moment. And even then, even when hot because of a new patch you wont have all that content becoming alive again. If you get lucky a huge streamer may awaken the content for a few weeks to a month but it will die again. There is no sustainability in the current design of blue and party associated content. Unless they want to go crazy and be like "100 current end game tomes per new player ran through blue log", in which case you'll welcome the bots but I guess you can revive this content.

I had suggested at the end of my second long wall of .. wallyness lol some ideas that may help. Adding a monster arena, beast tribe quests, current tomes (mostly tier 2, but could be some tier 1 at a similar rate to how beast tribes normally gave them), new canes, ability alchemy, etc to spend alliance tokens on.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I fully admit I used to be in the "stop wasting resources on this niche rubbish and scrap it" group (and probably for fair reason considering how much worse lv50 BLU was) but I'm happy to be wrong in the end. They took a great deal of feedback onboard and polished BLU into something that is actually a lot of fun to play. The 60-70 toolkit is night and day difference to the original 1-50 toolkit. The Primal skills are satisfying to use, Base Instinct is an amazing ability, there's enough useful variety to truly toolbox and the buffs to learn-rate of skills make it far more fun than back when you had to spam Shiva EX 120 times or synch it with no Raise or Mimicry.

I'm sort of undecided how I feel on certain aspects like Mimicry. On one hand it's less convenient to have to track down a healer or tank player to copy, but on the other-hand it has some of that old-school MMO charm where you had a little "tedious" prep work to get ready for battle, rather than having it all set for you. I won't mind too much if they change it though.

All that said, there's always room for improvement and I feel BLU has only just started getting interesting. A few for me would be:

-Making the weekly Carnival and Blue log more rewarding. This is a big one, hardly anyone is doing the Blue log and you need a full synched BLU group. The Carnival too is rather empty. With Hunt linkshells being a thing, Allied Seals just aren't that great a reward and grabbing an S rank here and there is far easier than getting a full group together and beating an EX trial synched. You only get 2-3 weekly target or Carnival bonuses and it should be something to look forward to.

-The Morbol Mount was a brilliant idea but needs to be expanded upon. Ideally there should be a mount for Stormblood EX/Savage too, then 2 more mounts for completing all dungeons/raids/trials on Normal mode, one up to Stormblood and one including. Sure it'd be quite easy, but the idea is to bring more players into trying out BLU and give them an initial goal. Combined with better Carnival/log rewards, you'd see more overall interest in the class, leading to more groups, leading to even further interest.

-Tank cd's should not all have a cast time. Boss tankbusters have a cast bar for a reason, to react with instant mitigation. BLU's cast time makes tank unnecessarily difficult. Loom should also be instant or have damage attached.

-Cold Fog should include dodge and evade to trigger or it has anti-synergy with Toad Oil which is an important ability. Phantom Flurry's tooltip should mention the first part ticks more often than normal DoT's. Base Instinct should persist on death and Mimicry should not be able to be clicked off or cancelled unless you have a valid target selected to replace your Mimicry with another one. It'd also be nice to have one or two instant GCD's, for example Rose of Destruction could be one, for weaving in abilities more smoothly outside of certain windows.

Rewards and content are definitely the main thing to address though. This patch actually brought in less with no mount and only a single carnival boss. Entice people in, so we have people to enjoy the class with and reasons to play it.

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More to do with the tokens, or different token rewards would certainly be valuable! I had thought of a whole new type of blue mage progression potential with the tokens (ideas on first page, second post). Buying retainer tokens and teleports with them is okay but after you have 6k retainer tokens it's a bit old for sure :p. I can imagine perhaps other long term expensive content around tokens, like in another semi-unrelated thread talking about what to do with squadrons and trusts. Idea was to make trusts go to the ground and back up while squadrons move into their own sort of conquest content, then you might be able to use tokens to purchase things on that end.. Adding an entire new content for the purpose of blue is silly, but just a thought that you can put more things that are longer term purchases in there.

I hope if they add another mount that it is achievable solo, because the party side of the mount will die and then it's just a panel that's not going to be useful very quickly. Like hilarious good luck to do some of it past when it's hot. I understand people had fun when it was active, but that's a very short window of time and unless they add substantial long term reward it will do that every time. Like if you added 100 end game tomes for people who do it the first time.. I suppose that would work, but that is one heck of a bribe. The mount itself is a bribe I honestly thought was a bit cheap, since it was enough for a temporary wave but once you "got yours" it died off in a way sealing off the tunnel for most players (and so I hope they don't just do another mount and that's it, no other changes- I think that would be bad and hyper temporarily inflate the content).

Another on the tank CD haha, I do think tank CDs is weird too. It's not that fun of a 'feel' to have to bother with, I agree. Especially for those used to regular tanking lol.

Cold fog comment is interesting, I agree an inclusion of that circumstance would be nice. More informative tooltips is also nice, drives me crazy that you wont get to know what is 'shared cooldown' lol. I can imagine most people who don't read guides wouldn't know that there are groups of primal spells that don't share cooldowns. Agreed Basic Instinct shouldn't fall off, you may even say it stays on in satiations it can't work (it just.. doesn't apply the benefit, though I prefer to not have skills that are basically passives that just sit there - a passive active relationship is preferred imo).

Said it before blue mage was announced but unless they do some serious bribing this job will always be destined for personal content with exceptions of those who can summon people on demand (or have /a lot/ of time to wait for the right circumstance). Adding rewards is still a smart idea, I just don't think anyone should expect blue mage to be able to hold it's own unless it's insanely rewarding to the point you're like "oh wow... "WHY WOULDNT I DO BLUE MAGE?"" otherwise it should largely be designed with the idea you're going to do it on your own (and rewards shouldn't be stuffed into the party concept as it's the band-aid of a band-aid, it's not like normal content- it /wont/ hold unless it's a huge band-aid).

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Originally Posted by MPK

Bluwu and blucob please

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I see no reason why not, just make sure the achievement is not the same. Do you get blue mage weapons? Could you get the other job weapons (that seems a bit cheesy for the other players who did it the normal way though)?

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Originally Posted by Mahoukenshi

If there is one thing to appreciate about the BLU concept is that you get to know all kind of content, for better or worse, which you might normally not do, e. g. the trials in the Hidibrand substories, extremes (unless you like harder content or just enjoy all content the game offers) and all sort of optional dungeons. To be fair, it's still once-and-done deal, ignoring multiple runs if unsynced, but if you were not interested in the optional hard labeled dungeons before, there you go for BLU spells.

Otherwise? Leveling with 1k needes is painfully slow, yet without the safety buffer of Mighty Guard I'd feel too fragile early on (probably a "me" issue). I'd have appreciated if more dungeon/trial spells had overworld options like Aether Mimicry so that it would make solo synced dungeon runs maybe a bit less obnoxious, but that's just qol.

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I feel that's the best thing Blue can offer in general, is it allows for a huge array of otherwise normally unsolo-able or annoying to do so. If you wanted to do the old content again 'but a bit differently this time' I think there are better ways than designing a whole job around that, especially since it's proven to rapidly die content.. I think, personally, is a waste. The rest of it will be hyper-temporal offerings and such that I don't think blue mage should be designed around them (like the blue log). If you're a streamer the blue log is probably like OH WOW SO GOOD, if you've done it when it was new or have a large group of friends that do what you do maybe as well, but otherwise.. it's not a content you'll get to readily enjoy (at least without great spurts of wait between, and dash of luck).

STRONG agree on the needle type content. 1 to 50 blue mage is not really that enjoyable. There is this short bit of WEEEE as you blow things off the map with 1k on a 250 hp monster, but the spam.. the lack of mechanically interesting concepts.. The fact that most of the better spells are locked off into instances you cannot solo until you get a number of spells later.. It's not a good period. And it's a period that some people got to skip because of powerleveling, but I didn't and I have to say it was very lack luster. I have quite a few spells now, some of it going back down unsync with a bad kit (until you get those other spells that you had to unsync overpower to get).. and so you can see more of the job come together later, but the progression and selection is entirely non-ideal and completely unnecessary imo. "But they captured the wonkiness' of blue, blue mage is painful early on".... Why would you purposefully capture the bad part that doesn't actually have a fun value? Especially when the job can't be normal, it's not like it needed the balance? Like I said above this is the old school role play that I don't think should be continued, I do like role play in general, but this is "I'm a cave dwelling race so outdoors I miss 95% of my attacks" ... it's just '..you could have represented role play, like the aspect of getting spells, without that issue- this is just purposefully obtuse without an exclusive benefit to role identity I say 'why???".

Like 1k needle was a huge power boost in the job, as we both agree, but they could have had it be this awesome strong spell ALONGSIDE other awesome spells and you get to weave and pick far more interesting moments than. Leveling experience from 1 to ram / dragon voice "111111111111111111 heal 11111111111" then "121212121212 heal" to a bit later "213 11212121212121 heal". Until finally you get a collection of spells that can flow together and you to enjoy the job to a tier that normal jobs had many many many levels ago already surpassed. To say another way, due to the design of how the job is, you're going to have a long period of time, even though you're a higher level, where the normal level lower leveled job would have been more interesting gameplay mechanically - only until obtaining some key spells does it suddenly go from "level 10 normal job" to onto the levels you'd expect from a job. As I did the vast majority of the spells I have on my own there was a long period of time where I was doing it because I wanted to provide feedback but honestly thought the construction of the job was not very good (and if I hadn't have really wanted to play blue before, and thus cared about the job, would have just stopped and said "meh I don't like the job, wont level it"). The job does get better, but the path there I don't think was particularly a good path (nor do I like all the dead bodies, dead spells that I deem useless or very uninteresting to use, is ideal- given it's a limited job I would hope to suffer analysis paralysis rather than "meh meh meh meh meh, clearly I need to use these set of skills to be considered good unless it's this one specific thing in the carnival').

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'm mostly hoping the class gets a secondary resource and more short cooldowns in its inevitable 6.x update so that the "filler" part of its rotation between burst windows is more interesting.

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That could be quite cool. A random aside was canes you can earn that have special effects, and maybe each had a gimmick. Say using Ramuh's cane would sharge your cane with static, changing your cooldowns, casting speed, allowing discharge of energy for huge physical damage attacks, etc.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

I had a great time with it...for two days after each update...

Considering how it obviously has an intended rotation, I still think they could easily implement a standard loadout to make it fit in a standard party, while keeping some achievements locked to BLU parties. They could even adjust potency depending on the party composition, that would be fine too.
Maybe add a couple GCD filler skills so that we don't spam sonic boom too much, maybe a 1-2 combo.

I also think the level cap should have been lifted to 80 before the end of the expansion.

Basic instinct was a fantastic addition and I hope they add more skills to make BLU even stronger when playing solo.

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When I first saw blue, and there are rumors of this, I thought blue mage was a normal job that got thrust into limited due to time constraints / costs. It really looked like a lot of pieces were balanced for normal play (it used to have really low potency on everything too). There have been a hundred and one different ideas to make blue normal, many keeping the spell learning concept, I think it's still possible, but if it's to be limited I at least hope it earns it at each and every moment (they've made changes, like boosting potency, more interesting spells for the most part in 60 to 70 era, basic instinct, but the 1 to 50 spread is still relatively "meh").

I would love to see the job get level 80 gear just so I can have it compete with my normal jobs more consistently (instead of using say PLD for doing some old content solo I'd consistently choose blue). One idea to prevent some of the perhaps coding issues if you had a level 80 BLU (DF, etc) might be depending on number of spells you know your gear's ilvl is boosted up to the current maximum ilvl (such that your level 70 blue mage in most ways is a level 80 in power, but still has the level 70 restrictions for content).

Also strong agree, solo blue, strong imo, is the only future proof way of making blue. The group content can exist as an aside but it should not in any circumstance be the 'main' portion of consideration for such a job (limited).

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Originally Posted by FatalFatalis

I hope that at some point they let us do ultimates as BLU. And if they are afraid it will "ruin" the feeling of acomplishment from the people that cleared with regular jobs or whatever, just put different achievements if you do them as BLU, you could get a new title instead of the one for regular jobs (The Blue Legend for example).

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Yeah think that is entirely reasonable. The change ot achievement is a good idea to reduce backlash for the pretty hard work the majority have to put into it (I know there is some paid piloting or whatever but the ones that did it the regular way.. good lord lol).

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I actually really enjoy Blu and often being it on roulettes with my friends for cheese factor. The only thing I dislike is some of the carnival being too tight. None of it was too difficult, but once you figure out what to do and do it well, it shouldn’t drag on.

Like, probably Gogo is a good spot for a “hard” carnivale fight.most of it should be 1 or 2 gimmicks that once you figure out, you can stomp through it. (To be fair most are this way already)

A big offender for me was Red fraught and Blue… a lot of instant death and the fight just goes on and on unless you have a lot of OCD abilities. It feels like old school Titan where you just have to memorize the rotation.

The only other thing is I feel you should not need to do anything in a party, ever. Like you should be able to solo Garuda at 70 and get her ability relatively easy….as is the rng is really low and annoying. It should fully embrace being a “solo” job, or you should be able to just power through all related content with trust or squadron,

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I like the idea of the carnival but the execution isn't entirely my tea. I get it. I don't think it should be removed or greatly re-imagined. Just... well I suggested the monster arena specifically because of that. I'd prefer some combat related challenges, maybe with some light less 'tight' puzzles, such that you can try different kits and just have fun as if you imagine trying different kits in diablo 3 or hades like games.

10,000% agreed for the party. Blue can have some fun in groups, and the whole mog tome thing is a great opportunity to put blue groups together, but the job SHOULD NOT be designed around party and I feel very strongly about that. It is just a non-maintainable relationship. People mention incentivizing it to reduce the issue but it cannot be done unless the bribery is insane. I mean they put a really cool mount into the system and it only temporarily did the job. Adding another one is going to just be another temporary fix. It wont last, and it's not like it lasts very long either. It doesn't even make it to the next patch.

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Originally Posted by SamsonBlacke

BLU is great.

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Glad you're enjoying the job. Purpose of the thread to discuss feels ;).

Any particular reason why you like it? Any changes from launch to now that stand out?

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

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I feel Eureka blue (and deep dugeons) would be loads of fun, and also add a lot of things to do with blue (floor 200 blue would probably still be a bit challenging but far more do-able).

Big fan of blue mage weapon doing something. I like the bonuses too, one idea suggested on the first page second of my posts was blue alchemy where you could use tokens earned in blue content and spells you learned to make perhaps morphs to spells (like runes in diablo) and or like passives to your job. Acorn bomb equipped into your blue soul stone, or whatever concept, you've immunity to sleep now, combo that with another skill and it's immunity to sleep and + 10% hp.. or maybe it morphs into half duration sleep and you heal 20% health when slept. I say the blue soul stone, and like ideas, because I'd prefer you can combo passive outside of combo'ing actual skills, only because I'm not sure blue mage 'limited' would get the attention needed to ensure you have that insane level of a web going on of balance and kit building lol... That would be some high level web building to do both.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

This would be fantastic. To be able to do Eureka and get certain skills etc from eureka bosses would be perfect. I absolutely hate having to “hey guys, sorry but can we run Sastasha hard to get ink blot?”

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At least you're lucky enough to do that lol. "Hey guys can you do this irrelevant content to help me get skills for a largely irrelevant content" fails pretty hard when given out to the general public. I've two people who are happy to do things together but beyond that anything that needs more than three is just like son of a chocobo, I guess that's impossible to achieve now thanks to how the content is designed. Of course you already said in an earlier post about the solo concept, which I am full power no stopping at go to collect 200 gil on board with lol.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Glad to see folks enjoying BLU. I've been an avid BLU soloist and player since the 70 update. I would likely have been even before, but I just didn't have the drive to play it as most of my friends didn't.


I love where it stands, because it has created its own communities that revolve around it, and it is an absurdly powerful job(it has an extremely high skill ceiling due to this). I know the first page is largely months old responses, but I see a lot of misunderstanding on the first page.

For instance, in your spell description/ideas list, Shougun, you ask where Silence is on Bad Breath because it doesn't apply a long term one... it does inflict Silence though. The player based interrupt kind, same as Flying Sardine, just not an instant cast.

Blood Drain restores 500 MP per cast, and it can be spammed. Even accounting for the 100 MP cost to cast, this actually means that if you take into account the natural 200MP per tic regen of MP in combat, you are getting 600MP every time you choose to cast it over anything else. This can and will quickly restore your MP, allowing you to chain even the most expensive spells back to back after Blood Drain use. It's insanely powerful and does not need to be improved.

A large part of the skill involved in BLU is that everything has a cast time. This actually makes Spell Speed pivotal for nearly all builds, with a Crit/Det build only edging out on DPS by 0.5% with less consistency. This makes BLU tanking and BLU healing more difficult than their normal counterparts, but it also means that when you take up those roles that you have to commit to those roles more than the actual jobs that are labelled with those roles. Keep in mind that BLU healers actually can have the other 7 people all act as Co-Healers whenever it's deemed necessary due to White Wind being Roleless for its incredible heal.
BLU tanking is very fun, because it's the least required role for the party, but this makes it be placed into the hands of a single person, at least if your group is rolling to skip hard mechanics. Because you have to cast your tank spells, which in the most serious of things is usually the near-invuln Diamondback, this makes your spell timing and cast speed more important than anyone else's in the party. A spell speed build usually allows you to beat a tank buster cast bar. The new tank spells only have niche use, but are very useful if they allow you to get away without Diamondbacking even once to save you MP.
Chelonian Gate is also an example of a spell designed for the expansion it comes from, as it is triggered easily by almost every Stormblood based tank buster, so that you can use its 1000 potency(half a Final Sting) attack every tank buster during the right moments. Best of all, you can hold its channel for a time even after Divine Cataract activates if you deem continuing the mitigation necessary.

In general play, for dungeons, the tank mimicry is unnecessary as Mighty Guard is roleless, and a Healer with Mighty Guard can effectively tank any dungeon boss and any dungeon pull(heck DPS can too, but white wind spam is less fun). The optimal way to do dungeons is a Healer BLU tank with 3 DPS BLUs staggering Ultravibration so that every pull is instantly killed, and so that bosses are met with full Moon Flute destruction.

In this way, BLU is not an intuitive job. There are very few players that could play any BLU role in a raid setting or any BLU role period to their fullest extent, let alone BLU to its fullest power. Calls for changes to how it works are generally from a non-BLU perspective. They want it to play more like Not-BLU jobs.

I also see a few folks saying the Omega raids should have a BLU mount. Well, the 50 raids didn't have one attached at first either. I assume it will follow the pattern that once we get level 80 BLU, it will get another variety of Morbol or other similar BLU-esque mount for completing both Omega and Eden Savage raids.

BLU raids are nuts, because of Moon Flute. BLU can skip some very complex mechanics, even in the Alexander Savage raids now, thanks to the Stormblood spells. This cuts the earlier fights to half their intended script or less. The end tier fights take much longer, but are still shorter. Without exception, the question of a BLU clear is never, "Can BLU do this fight?" it's, "How fast can BLU annihilate this fight?"

One thing I would like to see added to BLU achievements is a BLU solo achievement list. BLU Soloing is one of the easiest ways to become very good at the job, since everything rides on you alone. There's ultimately no incentive for it, though, because there is nothing gained other than endurance boasts.

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I said it with the primal spells but I think we're at some odds on perspective. The spells clearly have a sense of balance, almost to the point I imagine Blue WAS a normal job that was then later decided to be not- I know you could use blood drain for 500 mp.. but it doesn't stop me from thinking "wow this spell sucks" (aka boring, doesn't feel fun to use, it's impact while there feels "balanced", and besides is mostly not needed as if you just use lucid dream smartly, in many situations, you don't need it). I, generally, think the 1 to 50 spells are not very interesting, and the job's spell design is consistently far more interesting post 60 (era of adding of spells, I know basic instinct is sub 50, but it was added during the later era). Yeah you can spam blood drain but the goal, imo, is not to be spamming anything too much, and making interactions whenever possible- white wind is OP spam 3 blood drain and cast another... but what a boring sequence for a job that's meant to be unbalanced (hence not invited to play with all the other jobs). It's also why I had suggested more costly spells and then more ways to make returns on mp, so you might build mana draining spells and then mana returning spells, or you might stick more balanced in which case magic hammer and lucid dream on cooldown is pretty much the only thing you need.

You may think blue tank is interesting but I think the casting times just makes it annoying to play, I wouldn't necessarily say that means it has to change.. just that I don't simply agree that makes it fun (disagree actually). Diamondback, and other self stun spells are also exceptionally annoying and unfun to deal with (imo).

Bad breath just to be clear does not inflict silence lol. Edit: another pointed out where we might be misunderstanding, I am not saying 1 second silence I'm saying multiple seconds of silence which is not interject. I'm glad you like the job but bad breath inflicts silence like the sun is 'kind of warm'. It does interrupt, yeah- and in that section of bad breath I didn't say it needed it I just noticed they cut a few classics out of the list. I noticed this both in the shortened debuff list (when applying) and also by the fact that monsters are slapping me with spells while they've been bad breath (and I know from experience in a classic setting you'd not be doing that at all lol). It's not important it has it, I just wanted to note I noticed the list wasn't as classic as normally I'd see it. Not a big deal on that spell (as I comment). But please don't say it's the same, that's just misleading (imo, misleading as functionally not just visually it's not the same- when you're getting pelted by blizzard from a frost elemental you know there is no silence, it's not the same and while it's really not important I don't think it's fair or accurate to suggest it is, they're two different types of enfeebles, like saying paralyze and petrify are the same).

I think 60 to 70 has had a lot more interesting ideas but I still roughly speaking look at 1 to 50 with a strong shade of negativity. To the point if we had back tracked 60 to 70 (erased it with a snap) I would immediately go from "I hope they continue with the more interesting designs, remix old stuff, continue supporting solo" right back to a very salty very grumpy- "blue was a mistake, and as someone who before 2.0 was even out had wanted to play blue direly.. actively have negative feelings about the existence of the job".

So like I said clearly we'll be having some different thoughts, because while I think some of the evolution over time has been nice I still look at the early part and decisions that appear akin to that early style design and think.. obviously not agreeable thoughts lol.

I have seen some of the solo stuff in your thread, which you are welcome to link, shows some cool things and shows some spammy things that I still think should be gone :p (not spammy because you did it wrong, spammy because why I don't like spam). Like I remember playing Paladin long ago as I liked the theme but had long been asking to knock the flash spam off, the job evolved and it was amazing, the new spells are also cool but they added the short holy spirit / atonement spam and I wasn't super excited about that. I still largely like the evolution of the job but the spam section of Paladin is my least favorite part of playing the job (but I still very much like the job as a whole). I don't like spam... leveling blue mage was therefore a painful experience lol. I get some jobs are going to play different because it's good to have variety but I don't see a good argument on why you'd want a job with a huge variety of spells to be like that, seems entirely counter to what I think you'd want (you'd want to relish in the huge variety by having low spam and high paralysis of decisions because everything is awesome). As I described a few times for blue, thinking like a Hades (game), Diablo 3, etc, etc type game where you get choice after choice that just explodes into high diversity head scratching fun (where even when you're wrong it's still fun)- I think that is a great goal for Blue Mage (and may be some elements of that here now, especially as it has evolved, but 1 to 50 felt dully obvious on what I should do and very spammy at the same time).

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Originally Posted by JanVanding

I have pretty much 3 asks for the BLU.

1. Let BLU go to Eureka, given how strong BLUs are in Overworld style content and their use of all elements, they would not need the element wheel but would need to use the right element spells and they would be unable to use lost actions. It just breathes a bit of life into an area that is effectively dying content outside the few really devout groups and gives BLU a new area to play around in while utilizing more of their flexibility.

2. Overhaul some of the filler spells, badly. There's a reason Electrogenesis and Sonic Boom are the most widely used fillers and that's because they feel good to use (Electrogenesis is a targetted AoE from target with the initial hit being full damage on the target, Sonic Boom is an exceptionally fast windup making it good for movement) some of the fillers are just plain bad or gimmicky to the point they aren't useful. The Look is a good example as are the Knights Tours which are completely unusable on bosses due to the bind gimmick.

3. A Blulette option. The BLU log is a step in the right direction but people feel less incentive beyond the initial buzz and that's something that could be fixed by adding a daily BLUlette. I can typically find a BLU party for spells, but finding ones that actually want to clear content outside a spell drops off the final dungeon boss is few and far between.

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1 and 2 are a very strong yes, definitely! I still don't think you'll ever, no matter what you try, get something like 3 on an actual active treadmill unless you add incredible encouragement. Like a BLUette that gives you a range of end game tomes might do it, based on how long the content is, might do it. Yet a major issue, that SE knows and so I don't see why they think the idea is suddenly good when they already know it's a problem, is you'll probably get some really awfully spell spec'd blue mages... so you'll do BLUette quite a few times for a while and then start to get group after group of mages that can't get the task done even though it should be easy simply because they're coming basically naked. It's negative to say I suppose but I sincerely doubt the ability for any content to consistently make a blue group a viable concept for longer than flashes in a pan.

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Originally Posted by Momo_Kozuki

My wish list for BLU:
-BLU-only Duty Finder and daily Roulette: perhaps require players to have certain skills first. I recommend to require them to have at least: White Wind, Aetherical Mimicry and Diamond Back. With duty finder for BLU only, you will also help other BLU to get spells and fill up logs.
-Aetherical Mimicry: Make it works like Monk's Form Shift: first use = DPS stance, second use = heal stance, third use = tank stance, the come back to DPS stance from tank stance. You can change role freely in dungeon, but not in-combat, similar to AST's stances. Less the hassle to stalk other players to get their roles.
-Limit break: work differently depend on your stance. DPS = single-target Limit break. Heal = Heal + Rez (LB3). Tank = super defense.
-Relic grind: BLU can pretty much do everything for Zodiac and Anima grind. You don't even need them to go into Eureka and Bojza to get relic materials, as other classes can farm it for them. For Eureka, put a NPC outside for weapon barter should be enough.

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Adding requirements to the blue duty may help a lot with the quality you receive, though those few would still give you high chance for some very low damage options lol. . IF you did it in ranks (easy blue, hard blue), then you might increase the requirement further to help. Such that easy blue is more whatever and hard blue is like "have at least X rarity skills".

The request for mimicry is pretty common, not just in this thread but I have seen it quite a bit. Different limit breaks could be neat :)

Do you see relic as an opportunity for glamour or were you looking for stats?

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Originally Posted by Saidosha

While I'm not going to go into a spell by spell diagnosis, I do agree the 1-50 kit needs some revisions, in part to better prepare the player for undertaking specific roles within the trinity. Healing sticks out here with White Wind being an MP hungry spell, but conditional in what it restores and oftemtimes overkill. Mog Pom should most definitely be locked to King Mog and should arguably be a bit more useful without Mimicry. Tying Angel Whisper to Carnivale clears was also a bad move.

Mechanically, though, I'd ask for multi-stage Carnivale fights to restart at whatever stage you were on if you died. As another poster pointed out, a lot of these are just pure "do the dance" slogs once you figure out the gimmick, but needing 2-3m every time to get to the 2nd+ part just to wipe again because you didn't figure it out yet, bad luck, etc., makes the experience more of headache than it should've been. Otherwise, I'm fine with the Carnivale largely being one and done because I don't want another set of yet more compulsory daily/weekly tasks, especially if that translates to BLU-specific rewards/power.

Otherwise, I'd say spell sets solved one of my older gripes and the general nerf to suicide strats tied into that. Not a whole lot can be done about the post-patch popularity and eventual wane, as that's a factor of all content. Adding what BLU can access is the otherwise sensible alternative and I think Eureka and eventually Bozja is a good idea for multiple reasons people already covered. I think at this point, the only real "new" thing they could do is reward a new type of crystal based on whatever mimicked role you cleared a duty as. This can then be used on other jobs to give them a little bit of EXP as a little bonus for participating in BLU things once you have your spells/mounts/etc.

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Obviously went a bit crazy going spell by spell, and not so crazy to think they'd change them all, but I would love for them to reduce "useless" / "feels bad to use" spells and I agree help with the acquisition of certain spells to smooth out the player experience (such that you can do your group content if you wanted but also so you don't feel you have to go to cap level just so you can then go back down unsync to get that one spell that was very important to your next power peak you couldn't get simply because no group was available to do it).

I love the Circus fights to be started on their stage, some stages are super easy and then you haven't figured the puzzle yet (which you could easily look up online but you didn't want to).. so then you waste your time on the first stage a few times (even though it's easy it may take a pretty second)... then you just look it up because you're like "nah, don't want to bother wasting my time anymore" and find out the puzzle piece that makes the content become super easy (since it's a puzzle once you have the key it unfolds).

For the last one is it like a dragon scroll (grants EXP straight up) or more like rested exp you can stock?

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Originally Posted by SpanishInkwehsitor

I hit 60 and took a look at the list of moves I’d need to be viable and….dungeons and raids. Dungeons and raids mainly only soloable if I’m maxed and get level 70 gear…

I think it’s very awesome that the class “designed for solo play” requires so much partying content, and gets locked out of Duty Finder to boot. More like the “you MUST have friends” class.

Maybe if they were allowed to go to Eureka so you can use the class to get that stuff cuz you missed the bus, that’d be something, but they limit this Limited Class WAY too much.

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That was a huge, imo, poor wording / miscommunication that has definitely shaded the entire experience for many players. I strongly believe designed for solo play is the right decision, but they obviously didn't do that initially and have recently actually made it more of a thing. Another one that really got me, like actually annoyed and didn't want to play the game a few times, was the whole making it limited so it could have classic spells but then doing things like the worst Angel Whisper in the history of FF or nerfing certain spells from their monster counterpart so they're balanced for group play.. It may have not seemed like I was restrained at all lol.. but it was quite a few times where I just walked away from the keyboard to prevent myself from saying my emotions in a far meaner way of the nicest being "I think you lied" (which I don't feel SE would do.. I don't think they're malicious, but I still personally think it was if not a lie on the very verge of it- I feel a lot of good changes have happened but there is still a negative wall that sits behind some of the better feelings I have for the job).

To be honest I didn't even want 1:1 spells like if you said "death works just like the boss, unless you esuna it you die" I'd be like.. that's too strong, that's just not fun. I rather want them to purposefully make everything have the 'flair' of the spell but always designed to just be exciting and earn the title of being limited (so many things shouldn't matter if you're going to purposefully wall a job off from current content, and new problems like groups are going to be seldom.. the design should greatly both respect the consequence and also lavish in the opportunity of that situation then.. else if it's only 20 tweaks from being normal .. kind of a... "why?" otherwise.. though I do think, and why I like them, the 60 to 70 era tended to do that). Like the other poster who said blood drain is a good spell, sure 500 mp can be valuable in situations but it doesn't feel fun.. it's not exciting to use.. and generally it is honestly not that useful if you can just manage your mp proper in other ways (like using lucid on cooldown).

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Originally Posted by Garnix

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

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I think the slide was just poorly presented, I do imagine it was meant to be 'we've got loads of this solo content, but also some group content'. Which could have been said a lot of different ways to more accurately portray the intent lol. Though as said throughout above, and immediately after the slide, I think group play is a flash in the pan concept that unless you take extreme measures should not be in any situation a major consideration of the job. As in the job should, and always be, "primarily designed for solo". Such that progression of the job is under the pretense you will be doing it solo. There can still be group content, but that's far less achieve-able outside of patch, streamer, or one of the lucky ones that either gets to play long hours or have the proper number of friends on call. For everyone else you're going to have to get lucky (PF has the spell you've been needing, or you've been sitting on your hands for weeks because no one wants to do the raid you need for your log). This isn't like current content that can hold demand for much longer (all things naturally die, and the normal progress for all things that naturally die is they're lessened so you can "un-death" them, yet here blue mage is like two weeks in until the next streamer or patch slaps the job).

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Originally Posted by SpanishInkwehsitor

Basic Instinct offers no additional protection, and it’s only damage buff is just reversing Mighty Guard’s downside. Go into an instance solo-synced, you’re screwed.

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I do think tweaks would be helpful to improve that. Such as just having more interesting spells sooner so you don't have to do that as much (unsync), could help - suggesting spells sooner than can act as sustain in conjunction to white wind (which is obviously situationally crazy op). Another was the libra ideas on the second post which could help increase your learn chance (condensed libra allowing you to stack each time, so repeat slowly go up to assured thing, while libra basic just being a higher chance).

Certainly survivability 'enjoyment', imo, could be improved. By that I picture the solo content in FFXI where, at least back when I played, you'd have players spend 30 minutes (in FFXI) to solo a content with a huge amount of their spells being repeats (high spam). That, imo, is not the ideal example of any sort of gameplay. I think it's cool players could stretch their skills to that level, especially given how FFXI was designed, but when you're purposefully designing solo play you'd want to ensure a higher variety of thoughts and actions. I don't think "spam white wind until you get pom on healer mimicry" is the pinnacle of sustain decisions. Of course diamondback well timed can reduce damage by a huge amount, but using that skill too is just like ... UugghH.. No..... What do you mean I can't cancel this thing? Who thought of that, FFXI 1.0 Tanaka edition called and said to stop torturing me. . lol. Stuns are not fun @_@.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

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I had REALLY wanted to play blue mage main, from a long time ago (I assume not the first but I had asked for it all the way in 1.0), so the whole beginning experience of blue mage was a sick to the stomach, in a first world way lol, experience.. Just like .. my first most accurately described feeling when blue was launched might be something like "Damn it man. I hate this thing. I'm so... at a loss for what to do, I had wanted this so bad but now I don't want it at all". (A word I dont think I've ever used on any other content in the game, even housing I tend to be nicer on - as many things made sense about what happened even if non-desirable, like how it was made for FC only first, and the game was not really that popular when made available).

But they have had made a number of changes, 60 to 70 tending to have a far more inspired attitude to spell design, and obviously the insanely helpful basic instinct. I still have some misgivings about the whole experience (1 to 50 being the focus, hence my posts in this thread), but at least "tastes" better rather than before (locking everyone up and dropping the entire sun of primal spells on an enemy is fun), and want to hope in the end they can go farther from what was initially released (remix 1 to 50 experience, continue to empower and put solo as the front runner, without making it 1 shot super-derp, etc). I think if blue mage was primarily designed for solo play and optionally and as an aside for group play it would be in a much better boat all together (which it is not currently though solo has gone from mostly aside to much closer to equal share since Basic Instinct was added).

I actually don't think A is that important, given there are a number of FF blue mages with reasonable size lists (around the same size of other mages) to such the main idea is using monster spells not learning a huge list (though I do think, if they wanted to be crazy, they 'could' make players normal and still learn the spells, though you're right that is very abnormal). People reference how insane some blue spells are but I think often forget how insane most jobs are, Summoner has many counterpart effects to blue mage from the auto life to the full death, each job tended to have something totally broken. It is true blue mage tended to get broken things at a weird pacing in the game, but in the end all jobs were borked (nearly every insane thing you might say about Blue at least one other job would have at the end of the game, life, death, reflect, huge damage, etc).

Big agree on B though. A reskin of blue would probably, especially if they reskin 1 to 50 experience, lead to another negatively received job.

Beastmaster is suggested quite a bit because obviously pet jobs in this game seems to be a nono lol, but I like to suggest magitek pilot (operator) here. As I think a G-warrior-esq job like that would probably fit relatively well in the limited area (makes sense it'd be limited). I also like it since it's not really a job to expect. Some people have said they want to main beastmaster, if beastmaster doesn't come out more polished than blue mage did, they might experience quite the upset then.. Meanwhile who was expecting magitek warrior job? 1 person? 0? lol. You've a lot of leeway, a basis of idea in the game already, and it would offer substantial opportunity for different gameplay design and growth. Beastmaster, in another game, I imagine could be a normal job and so people might look at it that way (I mean in this game we just have a lot of issues with pets so that's why I say that)- so some people might be hoping they get Hunter WoW in Beastmaster FFXIV but then find they can only do a select few things with it.

I like the idea of breeding for beastmaster as it might also open it up for a more diverse, and different, set of content beyond just the combat. To be honest then it might find itself a content home with Island Sanctuaries. Though I kind of encourage they call it shepherd just to reduce the "I wanted to main that" impact for those players.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Bad breath just to be clear does not inflict silence lol. I'm glad you like the job but bad breath inflicts silence like the sun is 'kind of warm'. It does interrupt, yeah. But please don't say it's the same, that's just misleading (imo, misleading as functionally not just visually it's not the same- when you're getting pelted by blizzard from a frost elemental you know there is no silence, it's not the same and while it's really not important I don't think it's fair or accurate to suggest it is, they're two different types of enfeebles, like saying paralyze and petrify are the same).

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Originally, Bad Breath, along with Flying Sardine, Interject, and Head Graze, did inflict silence for one second, but when 5.0 came out, they changed player actions that give silence to interrupt and removed the debuff. When the silence debuff only lasted for one second, I think that interrupt and silence do behave the same for the players, even if there is no debuff indicated now.

Anyway, I agree with other people in the thread that Blue Mage should be able to go into Eureka/Bozja/Deep Dungeons. They could also make Blue Mage be able to use the Squadron Missions and Stone, Sky, Sea, but I do not care if that never happens. Blue Mage relic weapons would be nice for the glamour, but I would like the weapons to have secondary stat customization, unlike now where the weapons have only two materia slots.

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Originally Posted by BowWow

Originally, Bad Breath, along with Flying Sardine, Interject, and Head Graze, did inflict silence for one second, but when 5.0 came out, they changed player actions that give silence to interrupt and removed the debuff. When the silence debuff only lasted for one second, I think that interrupt and silence do behave the same for the players, even if there is no debuff indicated now.

Anyway, I agree with other people in the thread that Blue Mage should be able to go into Eureka/Bozja/Deep Dungeons. They could also make Blue Mage be able to use the Squadron Missions and Stone, Sky, Sea, but I do not care if that never happens. Blue Mage relic weapons would be nice for the glamour, but I would like the weapons to have secondary stat customization, unlike now where the weapons have only two materia slots.

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Ah so maybe that's what they're thinking. But to be clear I was thinking classic FF where you get hit by everything for a long time. Silence 10 seconds would not even remotely equal to an interject of once, therefore what I meant stands but perhaps we needed the clarification. Silence != interject, assuming we are discussing durations of buffs that are not "1 second". Although in a most hair splitting scenario that's still not the same, since interject is instantaneous of one event and the other is an event of 1 second which spans.... 1 second lol.

I do know like spirits within used to silence the enemy to a function which is very very similar to an interject now does. In which case we were suffering a miscommunication as I referenced classic, I don't mean "turn interject back to silence" I mean "where's silence for the 10 punishing seconds I remember it doing in other FF games, that elemental is casting spells at me and I know under a classic scenario, at least some of them, they'd be needing to dig through their pockets instead for a potion" (but also like.. it doesn't really matter, since bad breath is already pretty cool until you get so strong that the debuffs are kind of irrelevant).

Edit: just for giggles I went and got hit by bad breath - I'm wont for hurting lol, does inflict a multiple second silence (among other debuffs the spell for blue mage doesn't do). So I wasn't really out of context for the game itself, but I was meaning classical sense anyways (when your screen is full and you're like 'oh gawd' lol).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Ah so maybe that's what they're thinking. But to be clear I was thinking classic FF where you get hit by everything for a long time. Silence 10 seconds would not even remotely equal to an interject of once, therefore what I meant stands but perhaps we needed the clarification. Silence != interject, assuming we are discussing durations of buffs that are not "1 second". Although in a most hair splitting scenario that's still not the same, since interject is instantaneous of one event and the other is an event of 1 second which spans.... 1 second lol.

(but also like.. it doesn't really matter, since bad breath is already pretty cool until you get so strong that the debuffs are kind of irrelevant)

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I assume the developers did not want players to stop several spells with one silence, so now we have interrupt that is a silence at an instant but cannot be fully resisted like status effects. haha I get what you want from Bad Breath/Silence, though. While the Bad Breath talk does not matter, I find it a little amusing to think about the implementation of silence in FFXIV. :p

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Originally Posted by Shougun

does inflict a multiple second silence (among other debuffs the spell for blue mage doesn't do).

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Other than the long silence, Blue Mage's Bad Breath does not cause the first part of Nausea, the lowering maximum HP by 20%. As a result, they should make our Bad Breath lower maximum HP by 20% as well. :rolleyes:

In any case, I find Blue Mage to be very fun at this stage of its implementation, and I am eagerly awaiting the level 80 update. You mentioned how you would change the current spell kit such as removing the stun-like effects off some spells, but what are you hoping in terms of new spells?

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Originally Posted by SpanishInkwehsitor

Basic Instinct offers no additional protection, and it’s only damage buff is just reversing Mighty Guard’s downside. Go into an instance solo-synced, you’re screwed.

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Basic Instinct increases damage dealt and healing potency by 100% and drops Mighty Guard's only penalty. This boosts Gobskin to a 500 potency shield under healer mimicry and Pom Cure to a 1000 potency Cure 1. You can literally solo the highest level 70 dungeon in roughly 16~17 minutes with it, if you know what you're doing. You can solo the normal mode raids at 70 as well, except for A11/12(without incredible crit RNG).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I said it with the Primal spells

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BLU is balanced within the rules they want players to have. I've read your posts in this thread, and I think you could stand to look at it from another angle. Everything you dislike about the way the spells are balanced or with what they do isn't looking at things from how the other jobs are limited in the game.

For instance, let's compare what is essentially BLU's invuln to the other tank invulns. Diamondback vs. Hallowed Ground, Superbolide, Holmgang, and Living Dead. Diamondback has no cooldown but costs 3000 MP and makes you unable to act or move during this. Essentially, if you need that level of mitigation(and you often will in Savages/Solos), its only restriction is your MP pool. This means, though, if you really need to, you can Diamondback every 5~6 casts of Blood Drain. This essentially makes it Hallowed Ground on a 12 second cooldown. Pure insanity. The other tank invulns don't even compare. It also works to mitigate raid wide ultimate damage, making it more akin to a personal tank LB3.


Let's compare BLU's DPS rotation to other DPS rotations. Primal spells are all insane potencies on relatively normal or low cooldowns. Your filler spells are myriad, so you can have what you spam in down time change, and if you've got the spell slots, you can mix it up whenever/however you want. It's got AOEs, line, radial around BLU, radial around target, 1 second casts for weaving, 2 second casts for power. The only downer is that they left some of the early spells that by rights should just as powerful as later spells in the dust (Lookin' at you, High Voltage). It's flashy, it's cool, and it never feels boring. And it's alterable! No DPS can boast that. It's also the only DPS in the game so far that has access to a full power raid wide heal.

As for early BLU being disappointing... that's actually just staying 100% true to BLU in prior Final Fantasies. There is not a single Final Fantasy where BLU right out of the gate is the powerhouse it becomes by mid/late game. For the record though, I don't think the 1 to 50 spells were disappointing. They introduced a lot of concepts to look forward to, and a lot of them are enhanced by later spells added/come into play with later spells added. The only spell that's disappointing to me is 1,000 Needles, but it's just being true to Blue Mage. That spell falls out of use eventually in every game it's in, except in low level challenges.

BLU is balanced the way that it is so that you have to give it some thought. It comes with the laundry list of monsters and bosses where instant kills/flat damage spells work or they don't. Like the first boss in The Burn is susceptible to flat damage, so you can instantly kill it. If you've got a good handle on what the normal jobs are capable of, BLU is a total monster compared to them in every conceivable way. I like walking up to a boss and casting Tail Screw and seeing it do 3.9 million damage, and then it dies from my cane tinking on it for 7.

Oh, and as far as spam goes... it means no cooldown, which translate to powerful in a lot of ways. There's also just the fact that spam is kind of what we do in MMOs. Like, sure, a lot of jobs don't feel like they spam because they go through combos with different animations, but there's always a limit, isn't there? It always becomes spam in some form, and while I get why you don't like it, it's just the nature of long term fights and play. BLU is by far the furthest job away from spam. That slot belongs to normal job healers since 5.0.

http://i.redd.it/2vqykithzeh71.jpg

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

This boosts Gobskin to a 500 potency shield under healer mimicry and Pom Cure to a 1000 potency Cure 1.

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Doesn't healer mimicry increase Gobskin and Pom Cure to 250 and 500 potency and then increase that further by 20% due to the innate nature of mimicry? This would make Gobskin give a 600 potency shield and Pom Cure give a 1200 potency heal under Basic Instinct. I only ask since I see no one mention the 20% usually. :p Either way, Vyrerus is right about the solo capabilities of Blue Mage! Once Blue Mage is level 80, it will be neat to see what you and other Blue Mages accomplish in terms of solo'ing.

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Originally Posted by BowWow

Doesn't healer mimicry increase Gobskin and Pom Cure to 250 and 500 potency and then increase that further by 20% due to the innate nature of mimicry? This would make Gobskin give a 600 potency shield and Pom Cure give a 1200 potency heal under Basic Instinct. I only ask since I see no one mention the 20% usually. :p Either way, Vyrerus is right about the solo capabilities of Blue Mage! Once Blue Mage is level 80, it will be neat to see what you and other Blue Mages accomplish in terms of solo'ing.

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Considering I just got AM, I snatched up healer and Pom Cure went from curing for like 1000 to 5000 @ 60, that feels more like a potency change of 100 to 500 to me.

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Originally Posted by BowWow

I assume the developers did not want players to stop several spells with one silence, so now we have interrupt that is a silence at an instant but cannot be fully resisted like status effects. haha I get what you want from Bad Breath/Silence, though. While the Bad Breath talk does not matter, I find it a little amusing to think about the implementation of silence in FFXIV. :p

Other than the long silence, Blue Mage's Bad Breath does not cause the first part of Nausea, the lowering maximum HP by 20%. As a result, they should make our Bad Breath lower maximum HP by 20% as well. :rolleyes:

In any case, I find Blue Mage to be very fun at this stage of its implementation, and I am eagerly awaiting the level 80 update. You mentioned how you would change the current spell kit such as removing the stun-like effects off some spells, but what are you hoping in terms of new spells?

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I NEED 20% MAX HP REDUCITON! NAO!!! Lol. Yeah I knew there were more debuffs (well obviously, mentioned them xD), it was just an off hand comment that I noticed fairly quickly that it wasn't a complete bad breath but that even if you made it complete it wasn't entirely relevant. Although on the comment of stopping more than one spell with silence - frozen 10 seconds is more powerful than 10 seconds of silence, I'd think, so it's not that crazy of a thought to suggest, though maybe there is some under the hood issues with things like pacification or silence that just makes them annoying to use over an interject. (Heck those, silence/pacification, could just be the new interject in literal code format lol - dunno).

I suppose 20% reduction is cool on a boss but personally I actually don't want too much "delete's boss hp" and on a normal monster.. meh just give me a dot lol. I referenced the whole true blue thing before as a way to show frustration, particularly when the job was first announced, and honestly is just a remnant thorn in my mind now. With dialog along the lines of "want it be limited to have classic spells" yet then you can obviously tell they chose not to do that due to balance reasons, which makes me wag my finger like an overly dramatic tween in a complicated and silly love plot. "We had to make it limited to give you a true experience, but on the same hand actually you know what- we're not going to give you the classic spells" (line of thought bothers me), but hilariously - I also personally don't even want them I just want them to be fun first (as you noticed but some concepts I think are "that's just not fun at all" like self stun or movement skills with cast times and little else for benefit except for hyper niche situations). For example if Doom worked on pretty much everything it would be... strong.. but.. 1 shotting everything isn't really that fun after the novelty wears off. I'm fine with some stuff being immune, but the whole chance base mechanic I find annoying and I recognize if it was a more assured thing that it would probably need something else. Which is why I make a suggestion like remove the chance, add a cooldown, add an effect if it fails to kill (so it's not useless on targets immune), and now you got a cool "boom you're dead" spell that doesn't waste your time and is also useful in more cases. With variations of that possible like for missile I had suggested the cost, and chance, grow such that you 'may' have to cast it three times but it'll happen (and it'll become insanely mana hungry).

A general want- I do want blue to be considered king of solo, in such a way that even your current jobs are not going to throw shade on blue- blue is the job you'd use to solo if you had wanted to do some old content alone (and then ideally open up more old content, if it doesn't break servers- like Eureka or Deep Dungeons). I think given /some/ situations that's already true (Paladin is still pretty boss with the defense and self heal), but healer mimicry with basic instinct is pretty insane too (given the heal is so cheap to spam as well).

For new spells I don't have a specific spell from a specific enemy that I'm like "must needs that", but I would like to see spells continue to have interplay but also perhaps encourage a theme like concept. The problem with such is that I think it would do better if the earlier spells work on this as well, rather than so late. Besides the fact I just look at a lot of spells as bodies on the path to the mimicry builds (by that I mean mimicry makes a clear set of choices, at least at the moment). But you know you might see, like I tried to suggest with Fire Angon, an idea where each unique fire spell causes a positive interaction, yet then another -not- fire element could be helping bring the cooldown back around quicker.

It's not a new spell but seeing a FFXI like passive system would be neat, particularly I'd hope that it's more of a socket materia (Path of Exile) system in your soul gem. Such that you might combine spells together (in the gem, seperately from your kit itself) to create effects that range from useful but normal "+attack, + hp" to more unique like "+10% evasion, + cast, immune to sleep" to as weird as interactive "when target of a debuff heal 10% hp over 5 seconds, half resistance" "lightning spells have a chance to be cast again at a random nearby aggro'd target" etc. This allowing even more spells, hopefully, to be seen as useful even if they're not.. useful anymore on your hotbar (like lets say 1k needles made a great combo with Cact'guard when slot together in your soul gem, making some interesting effect that's valuable, well a really basic example might be that combo upgrades 1k needles to the next tier 1___k needles (when equipped), but I'm sure better ideas could be made lol).

Talking about trading card games, Diablo 3, Hades, etc- I'd love to see a sense of themes and builds appear- someone who has decided to take a focus on debuffs, water, thunder, whatever, and for the most part those themes can amount to something. Of course with a small selection that concept is unreasonable but assuming they don't drop blue we're going to be like 150 spells in the not too distant future, so.. sounds more achievable then. Such that you might get spell 1 to 5 and be making a theme, maybe you get the mana blood drain idea on the first page and it's not bad but you don't really use much mana so it doesn't help, yet, then you get flamethrower which drains your mana and you go "omg I've got to put blood drain back onto my hot bar, this combo is going to be great", it allows you to go full burn, and then 20 levels later it's thunder and water, with a sort of area creation system (lets imagine some water spells may leave water spills, AoE areas almost like a geomancer mechanic that thunder and even blizzard may interact with), but then you find a passive that reduces your max health yet increases tick rate and heals you 1/2 - 1% per tick (wont work so well if all the spells replace each other's DoTs..., so let's assume they don't lol) - now you've changed all your abilities again, but then you get a new spell that interacts with sleep in a powerful way so you go back and notice/combine the other dream spells and you've got yourself a Chthulu like nightmare mage mind flaying and noodle touching everything. There are builds via the tank, dps, and healer stance currently, but.. not really what I was hoping for- perhaps the best you can reasonably expect for a 'side content' that isn't supposed to get loads and loads of funding (I can imagine making webs of interactions does take longer than maybe SE wants to spend... I mean I've only barely kissed the surface of what you'd have to think about, it's temping to try and make a web oneself but the effort would be both a lot (many hours probably) and likely wasted since it'd be quadruple the length of what I have already typed and of course from "fanficition" tier of work vs professional developers lol, but if it was possible I think that'd be "that's cool... that'd be really cool..."- particularly as it helps justify the huge book, and the huge book and wacky combos justify that it's limited as there are powerful spells but if you can say "change these 10 spells and it's almost a regular job in balance", which was very true at release and still slightly true now, is a different situation than if you were like "you'd have to change 90% of their skills for it to even remotely be fair"). An example of a spell that would immediately bring blue mage back down to earth is getting rid of mimicry, instinct, and the instant death mechanics- suddenly you've taken a absolutely mammoth swipe at the balance issues of blue mage (not saying it's going to be normal ready, but I can see why some people think blue mage is 'close to normal' given that by in a short sentence you could instantly drop blue mage out of the clouds and back close to the ground.. which another way for me to say make it impossible to knock it out of the clouds if it's going to be limited, make it so nearly no single item could fit smoothly because it's just like "IT WONT FIT" and someone screams at you to make it fit and you just cry and say "I'll just have to scrap the whole thing!' lol.).

It's naturally very easy to say "I want to have mind bending combinations that are fun" and faaar harder to actually achieve that, which is why I do try to reference some games which I feel have done a decent job on that front (and when suggesting changes to spells that already exist, trying to occasionally build in themes- but.. all very easier said than done). What is it takes years to build and seconds to knock down? :/... I take time to say something like that because normally, I think at least, I've not been so.. blunt? Cruel isn't the right way, but my lack of appreciation I don't think has previously really been so strong (even housing or glamour where I think there is incredible potential to blow people's minds and add value, I don't really have a negative feeling given the situations around it). I don't think it's fair to say arm chair dev since I don't believe I'm better, I don't expect most ideas to be used, but I just hope to well describe feelings, frustrations, and desires, and specially be transparent on that (which is why I occasionally almost reach a third person state of narration of what I feel).

I'd hate not to think of any spells I'd like to see in the future since you've asked though. Strongly believe if you're going to be criticizing something someone has spent a lot of time in that you should at least try to put some time back. Nothing like having someone say "I don't like it, it sucks, remove it" and you of course will naturally have hurt feelings, even if perhaps that person is right in an estimation of there is an issue with the content / media (or they're totally wrong, that's possible too), but then you are left with no where to go or think because all they did was kick down your sand castle and immediately run off. Jerks.. lol.

Some quick thoughts (non-comprehensive, not strict, just things that popped out to me relatively quickly when thinking of spells seen in ShB):

Spell-in-Waiting from Voidwalker could be fun, cast it, next spell you cast gets locked into spell-in-waiting. Perhaps a mechanic added that you need to cast 5 spells afterwards (or time I guess), then you can use whatever was locked in. Meaning you could lock in a 60 second cooldown spell and cast that twice. Just for the sake of it, double debuff duration ignoring resistances (to spice up debuffs, DoTs even, and non-huge burst spells- as otherwise people would probably just Matra Magic twice and call it a good day lol - which I'm fine with, but it would be nice to have someone perhaps scratch out a different path). Technically Double from Hades would do a similar effect but... I kind of thought to avoid too blatantly using a huge spell twice in a row. But I'd be up to persuasion lol.

Although I'm not sure the mechanic I'd love to see a big arm pummel skill from Hades (though sephirot could work too), mechanic issue being if it's the split in the fight it's not really helpful lol. Could use his Captivity, with large arms out from the blue mage (visual potential is pretty good) - monsters that can be locked in a stun / frozen like debuff would be but otherwise it would still continue to do damage in that area, while captivity is active astral (that's dark right?) related spells deal more damage (maybe as long as you're stationary you can cast spells while the two huge claws hold your target in place). Bit.. liberty with the spell but mentally I see being able to recast captivity while it's still active allows you to place down a marker where in the orb (with monsters in it, if they're the type that can be stunned) will be tossed to said location and the effect ends immediately (allowing you to chuck enemies).

I loved the visuals from Innocence so we could just copy paste them all lol. I suppose picking up a few visuals- Rightful Reprobation from Innocence is cool, well really any of the holy sword attacks, though I don't immediately have an effect I want from them. Winged Reprobation has the unique idea that you might encourage the blue mage to move while fighting, if the light walls that circle you move and you want to keep the one enemy in that space you'd cast and move at the same time to keep them in the area of effect as it rotates around you (and thus you around your enemy). This move cast might be fun, and on that note there might be some nice value in seeing a 'lightspeed' (AST) like spell which cuts down the max cast time. Also Beatific Vision could be a fun move skill, as I said before I think move skills should use casting times very very carefully (both loom and flying frenzy I'd put on the 'eh' list, though I suppose that comes from a more active experience of move skills.. like MOBAs, slow move skills just hurt me ... on a personal level! lol)- but to try and counter myself I could see this skill being one where you preload. Cast the spell (Beatific Vision) you float up get all holy and pretty like the boss, perhaps gain a short buff of some sort (Maybe casting holy spells gives you a shield, physical spells have holy swords appear and strike through them in a line like the boss fight, or something else to theme), after some amount of holy or physical damage with 20 seconds you can cast the dash skill (no cast time, deals holy and physical line damage). If we were using the passive idea (PoE, FFXI, materia, etc) might have some augments that fit well here.

Pure Beam from Eden Prime would be loads of fun, maybe it starts with Dimensional Shift which summons a series of orbs in a radius around you- for X seconds (or Y actions) after any line attacks you do take 1 second longer to cast and will be self target (not hurting you, just like the boss) and then each orb will cast that line to a random enemy in combat with preference to those nearest to you. Non-unique Consecutive casts will have reduced potency (could be two different line attacks, could be a line, some other spell, and then another line).

Spectral Thief's dash / shadowdash could be great fun, if the game can handle that mechanical idea (a spell within a spell). Would allow you to reposition during the cast of a spell (doesn't break channel, cast, etc), shadowdash being even more crazy seeing as it might be something like. "Dash to location, even while casting a spell, if casting a no target aoe spell a clone will duplicate the effect in a random nearby location). The idea of a cast within a cast is something I thought might be a fun concept for even normal jobs, like if Bard was singing and yet they also could have other actions going on, or if like while Samurai was charging their blade they might be infusing a weapon art to their scabbard (so when drawn it does something extra, rather than using new buttons it could replace a few 2 / 3 deep combo skills). For blue mage one thought might be gigaflare (that last lunar bahamut), but like when casting a spell you can pound the key as fast as you can to release 1-10 flares each one doing okay damage (but the total being impressive, OR each press loads up so at the end of the cast of whatever you're doing then you launch off all the flares at once dealing a lot more in one go - meaning a a slower cast spell would actually help get off more flares).

So an example of things coming together in theme might be Depth Grip from Rukshs - if water spells, or some spells in general, had a concept of creating zones (which have their own purpose but then might work into others) then you could have this spell come out and do it's thing like the boss. Of course you can simply say it creates two depth grips near target enemy (even if Depth Grip used puddles previously existing, I'd probably suggest that it creates one depth grip of it's own just so the spell isn't entirely reliant on another), but such if you had water spells have a trend to create a mechanic of it's own justification that also flows into others.. could be good. (Similar to how say Hades, the game, works, obviously a better working example than my random throw togethers).

Mortal Flame from the Insatiable Flame where you choose a target and a burn effect applies without timer (dealing damage during this as well), each tick the debuff gains a stack (increasing potency), however you'll also have increased penalty debuff to yourself that grows until you cast mortal flame again (no target needed on second cast, to prevent issues with dead / phase changes) which ceases the growth of the DoT (and then proceeds to count down, there will be a maximum tick damage stack.. just in case someone kits themselves to keep it on indefinitely lol). As you cast Astral spells the mortal flame burn (on target) builds faster but mp costs increase across the board, and prevents mana regen, as you cast Umbral spells the buff and debuff will stop increasing itself passively for 3 seconds and allows for mana regen during that window (however casting Astral spells still keeps it's positive and negative interaction).

Maybe another thought to passives (either in built to a spell with an active, or the PoE materia FFXI thing)- paralysis changing to static charge which interacts with spells (like certain lightning effects might randomly attack them in addition), interacts with paralyze spells and can't be immune / resistant to (but the paralyze is less often and may not even take action on immune bosses, just simply the static applies regardless). Each time an enemy is either hit by certain effects or reaches max stack the charge is removed and you gain a buff which grants reduce cooldowns and increased cast speed on non-thunder spells, but thunder spells have a chance to proc extra effects and are integral to keeping the static coming (this buff being reset when gaining a charge, but also the buff may be used in other effects). All of this mostly because in my mind I picture the Quetzalcoatl boss with Winding Current and you're in the center quickly applying charge to enemies, acting as a tesla coil in the center of it all. "MOAR POWAAA" lol..

Though mentioned in the other post about how Sardine combo'ing with a shark move would be fun, so of the same dungeon with the two shark bros, maybe if you cast the sardine and hit an enemy with Tidal Guillotine it causes a bunch of fish to appear around you like a Death Stranding scene after fighting a BT (fish on the ground). The fish flopping about doing their own small aoe interjects like a mine field. Bull Rush (or whatever that shark attack was called from the Ruby dungeon) healing you (and consuming) each fish you pass through (giving you a frenzy buff that reduces cast time on water and physical spells). Or something.. I just want a shark fish combo lol. Although going off that, and some of the other goofy spells Blue Mage has, might be cute to see a 'theme' (as I mentioned other themes that might come around) for the goofy kit such that you're this sardine wielding, snorting, tingle casting, chicken knifing, fat chocobo stomping (FF7 primal) blue that just somehow works (why.... just because ... lol, importance? Absolutely none XD). If that were to happen obviously more silly spells needs to be added, but I can imagine also the job where you summon pets - like a bunch of baby zu, dodo, or other cute goofy animal.

Wellbore from Amphibious Talos could be fun, a continuous knockback damaging spell with perhaps a slight change such that it becomes an arena where monsters are trapped inside the well (in the boss fight you can escape the space, but here it would be less forgiving). Knockback attacks that move enemies into the well deal extra potency over the potency already taken by enemies hit by the water pressure. To achieve an arena does take a lot of visual space though, maybe so much that one opts for only one geyser instead of four. At least then have the spout throw enemies into the air if hit by the initial cast, then applying dropsy, good time to interact with Depth Grip if such ideas were ever used, and aggressively knocking back enemies (such that you could dance around the spout and the monster is having a real hard time getting to you if a physical enemy).

Griaule's growing may be another, though I don't immediately have a thought of effects beyond the novelty of making yourself big.

I know I just picked a bunch of instance content lol, so one in the open world I think of is Badder Breath though at the same time I don't love the idea of a spell full replacing another spell.. so some difference would be nice. The porksy pigs from the Fae area is a must for spells, especially if one was sincerely building a 'goof' build. Goblin punch from the Li'l Murderer seems like a must, as a classic, although I think more of the lightning bolt of OWWW, and the big poo hunt monsters more lol. Probably rude but Gunitt for more of the deep sea mind flayer theme lol, but that's an S rank so..... ....... XD.

Other quick random thoughts, Elddragon Dive and To the limit (good luck with that one lol), Sewer Water / Wave (maybe combos with poison / bleeding stuff), the mockery enfeeble from the Gremlins in lakeland (maybe good for tank).

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

BLU is balanced within the rules they want players to have. I've read your posts in this thread, and I think you could stand to look at it from another angle. Everything you dislike about the way the spells are balanced or with what they do isn't looking at things from how the other jobs are limited in the game.

For instance, let's compare what is essentially BLU's invuln to the other tank invulns. Diamondback vs. Hallowed Ground, Superbolide, Holmgang, and Living Dead. Diamondback has no cooldown but costs 3000 MP and makes you unable to act or move during this. Essentially, if you need that level of mitigation(and you often will in Savages/Solos), its only restriction is your MP pool. This means, though, if you really need to, you can Diamondback every 5~6 casts of Blood Drain. This essentially makes it Hallowed Ground on a 12 second cooldown. Pure insanity. The other tank invulns don't even compare. It also works to mitigate raid wide ultimate damage, making it more akin to a personal tank LB3.


Let's compare BLU's DPS rotation to other DPS rotations. Primal spells are all insane potencies on relatively normal or low cooldowns. Your filler spells are myriad, so you can have what you spam in down time change, and if you've got the spell slots, you can mix it up whenever/however you want. It's got AOEs, line, radial around BLU, radial around target, 1 second casts for weaving, 2 second casts for power. The only downer is that they left some of the early spells that by rights should just as powerful as later spells in the dust (Lookin' at you, High Voltage). It's flashy, it's cool, and it never feels boring. And it's alterable! No DPS can boast that. It's also the only DPS in the game so far that has access to a full power raid wide heal.

As for early BLU being disappointing... that's actually just staying 100% true to BLU in prior Final Fantasies. There is not a single Final Fantasy where BLU right out of the gate is the powerhouse it becomes by mid/late game. For the record though, I don't think the 1 to 50 spells were disappointing. They introduced a lot of concepts to look forward to, and a lot of them are enhanced by later spells added/come into play with later spells added. The only spell that's disappointing to me is 1,000 Needles, but it's just being true to Blue Mage. That spell falls out of use eventually in every game it's in, except in low level challenges.

BLU is balanced the way that it is so that you have to give it some thought. It comes with the laundry list of monsters and bosses where instant kills/flat damage spells work or they don't. Like the first boss in The Burn is susceptible to flat damage, so you can instantly kill it. If you've got a good handle on what the normal jobs are capable of, BLU is a total monster compared to them in every conceivable way. I like walking up to a boss and casting Tail Screw and seeing it do 3.9 million damage, and then it dies from my cane tinking on it for 7.

Oh, and as far as spam goes... it means no cooldown, which translate to powerful in a lot of ways. There's also just the fact that spam is kind of what we do in MMOs. Like, sure, a lot of jobs don't feel like they spam because they go through combos with different animations, but there's always a limit, isn't there? It always becomes spam in some form, and while I get why you don't like it, it's just the nature of long term fights and play. BLU is by far the furthest job away from spam. That slot belongs to normal job healers since 5.0.

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Hmm, let me try it another way-

I agree that what is nearly on demand hallowed ground (nearly) is pretty strong. That said if I gave you an ability that increased your damage by 10,000% but you couldn't see your screen for the duration of 10 seconds (like it's a black screen, you see nothing you just hear buttons being pressed as you hit them).. Would that be fun? The spell is strong, it is not fun. I don't like using it, I actively dislike using it. Every time I'm approached with a situation that I should use it to win I'm thinking "maybe I'll just wait till I've got more powerful spells or something, god I hate that skill".

Certainly dealing HUGE, HUUUGGEEEEEE, damage (10K %) would be insanely epic. But I'm not going to enjoy it, the rest of what comes is just, obviously this is my imo, my very strong imo lol, is 'un'enjoyable. Using it is like being forced to watch an advertisement in the middle of your movie, an uninvited advertisement.

So like.. I loathe the stun. I joined the sith just to hate on this skill lol. If it costs more, if it gets a cooldown, whatever, if it gets a cousin that is equally strong but has some other balance (cd/cost, etc), just do it.. please lol. Please get this thing away from me XD (you could say "well don't use it then" but clearly there is content and situations where you've not really a choice, it is in some way thrust upon you if you're going to do the larger range of content).

Alternatively my suggestion for the skill was allow loom (or just any skill that specifically deals with movement), maybe some other abnormal skills (most are locked), and as you take certain thresholds of max hp damage you can ricochet back. This concept pulled directly from the boss mechanic itself (like when it goes diamond back and you fire your cannon at the turtle, it hits you back). Is it honestly so problematic to add even a little bit more friendliness to the spell? I'm not asking for it to become a 10k potency spell, and technically how I suggested it (max hp % = ricochet charge) means that if you use it on true nonsense it's not really helpful.

You don't need to convince me the spell can be strong, I agree. I just think it's also a bit like pulling teeth to use which I understand is a bit of a perspective but also at least from reading not a perspective I'm alone with. Which I counter with a stronger point of, if this was a job where tight balance was important maybe we need to be more careful.. but it's not.. so we should, I think, try to aim harder towards what is going to be enjoyable over what is logically balanced (and even then it's not like we have to make an extreme departure).

To your second point I agree that the kit becomes fleshed out later though it's more rigid than I would have hoped. That doesn't mean it's awful once you get that fuller kit just.. given so many abilities I would have hoped for an embrace of chaos (cheesy way to say it I guess). If you've played Hades, Diablo 3, Path of Exile, etc like games- it's the combinations of things that are not as formally fixed (like you'd be a fool to not have the primal spells, and then the buffs related to them, and then you gotta have some sustain, suddenly when you get rid of all the "you'd be foolish not to have X" realities you're left with only a few more abilities and those few abilities don't really change how you play by much, though I'm not saying those few are useless just the play by the point you get to those actual options is more like.. garnish than any game changing choice).

For the High Voltage, and spells like it that get left for dead- indeed would love to see something to help bring them forward (and indeed the spell is cool to watch, like even though it's basic Glower is just a little boy giggling experience for me lol). On the 1k Needles, in the previous post, suggested that perhaps you can maintain the value in use / potentially upgrade it (in the situation suggested it was via a passive system akin to FFVII materia/poe/FFX sphere grid (not static), where you can make combinations and effects akin to how FFXI did but without meaning you lose active spell slots). Obviously for me the spells that disappoint tend to be in the first wave lol.

Further on the "tends to be disappointing in the beginning"- I hear people say that.. but I think that's just ... ... bull chocobo feathers? Lol. I get that's how it had a history of, but why would you intentionally copy that aspect? "This job is famous for being a disappointment for a while, then suddenly being epic, and then being kind of disappointing again!". Yeah. Okay, don't copy that. What do you think of your job? Well it starts out sucky, but it gets fun later! ...."How about.. we don't start out sucky, and we stay fun the entire time?". It just reads to me like "but y tho?". Someone might move to an elevated speech of the fun of grinding out things for progressions and it's nice ot take that journey, but I would say certainly in those games where you get multiple things to play at once (a party of characters) and other examples you might think of there is a general overarching amount of fun ensured and instilled no matter how peculiar the rest of it might be. Here you're only one job doing one thing- making that intentionally disappointing I think is just on the "that's not acceptable" side of things, it's not like I get to do something else while doing something I Think is disappointing- I've just got to trudge through the muck to make it out to the other side. Even if you example a game where you might think of "trudging through the muck" like a dark souls or something, the experience itself is also fun, it's just happening to be punishing at the same time. I don't know how else to say I just don't buy that is a good idea lol. Of course, not everyone might agree so I'm not trying to speak as if it's written in stone fact but obviously my "imo" (as you seem to think the beginning was okay).

There is indeed some thought, and like I mentioned with the primal spells (the early ones) there was a cute sense of subtle balance in the simple spells. I don't think SE is dumb lol. But I don't appreciate the subtleness I guess, which doesn't read as I want instant death on everything. If anything I've been consistent on that- I don't want instant death being spammed all over the place, I don't even really want to use instant death in the first place to be honest (not that I hate that it exists, it is a novelty- I just don't think "oooh yay, I can instantly kill someone" is more exciting that "oh my god this changes my entire kit").

I wouldn't say farthest thing from spam :p (given looking at early stages, which include end levels until you get the right spells if you didn't get them in a group, compared to other jobs), but I would give you that healers hitting one damage button over and over and over and a few oGCD makes blue mage look better. Especially later when they get loads of damage oGCD and can still heal very well.

+1 for meme and friendlyness even though I'm clearly on the negative side :D