As it is currently, what BLU can improve on?

So, I know that there are people who thinks BLU is a waste of resources, or that it should be a regular job, but if Blue Mages are bound to stay as they are nowadays, always one level tier behind, and with the limitations, how do you think they can be improved?

Not in any particular order of importance:

1) Weekly Log objectives: They need to be soloable, more as you can get credit for them alone, because currently you can't. We have Basic Instinct to attempt this, and a good solo challenge as it is harder than with 4 people. This would mitigate the bad party finder experience outside of job update times.

2) Aetherial Mimicry: This is such a crucial spell that need to exist outside of the regular blue magic repetoire and added as an innate job action learned early on. There's literally no choice behind picking it up (we have functional 23 slots), and at the end it can even be a newbie trap, since is easy for sprouts to miss it entirely.

3) Blue Mages added to the PVP roster: Jobs are essentially completely reworked for their PVP iteration, so there's no reason why not offer BLU enjoyers this option, and there's a lot of venues to explore, such as Aetherial Mimicry granting one of another job's action.

4) Updating early: I feel that x.2.5 would be a good time to give the update, since the first part of an expansion is usually lacking in content, but also to make it relevant for longer. For example, right now, is possible to farm some Endwalker FATE's up to Mare Lamentorum.

Tank CDs generally need to not be a cast. This is especially true of Chelonian Gate and Diamondback,as their use already has an inverted cast time of being stuck doing nothing, and Force Field for being a coin flip on it doing anything in the first place.

Aetherial Mimicry in general doesn't count towards spell slots, is simply an interface to become a Tank/Healer/DPS, available at level 1. You actually become that role too for the purposes of "role slots", and for things like tankbusters or boss autos.

Tank Mimicry causes Tank Augmented skills to become instant cast abilities.

Blue Mage gains a Limit Break based on which of the three Mimicry's it has, Tank LB, Healer LB, or Caster LB. A different DPS LB fix could simply be a free cast of Final Sting/Self Destruct without killing yourself and having increased damage under "Limit Break" Status or something.

Make Angel Whisper's Recast significantly reduced under Healer Mimicry.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

Tank CDs generally need to not be a cast. This is especially true of Chelonian Gate and Diamondback,as their use already has an inverted cast time of being stuck doing nothing, and Force Field for being a coin flip on it doing anything in the first place.

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I agree. Some folks think that mitigators being so clunky to use is part of the "skill" of the tanking Blue Mage, but I strongly disagree. Diamondback, fine because it's such an OP invuln, but the others defnitely need to have no cast time in the Tanking Mimicry because putting a high skill threshold there simply raises the skill floor in a basic aspect of tanking (mitigating tankbusters) and kind of turns people away from the role.

If you don't remember these old fight's timelines, you'll defnitely have a hard time and put more pressure on your healer.

I was also kind of bummed by Force Field. It's extremely unreliable in the situations we'd need it the most.

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Originally Posted by MikoRemi

Make Angel Whisper's Recast significantly reduced under Healer Mimicry.

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That would be a great QoL for sure. Example given: feels really bad in a raid party fight, the boss is about to die and someone dies and won't learn the spell because the Angel Whisperers are on cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I was also kind of bummed by Force Field. It's extremely unreliable in the situations we'd need it the most.

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I was honestly expecting to see some sort of double hit attack from the new fight just because of that skill. Like a meteor that does fire and blunt damage that you could barely, if at all, survive if both parts went off in full but cutting either in half would let you survive it and not need to anchor yourself with a Diamondback if you had Force Field for it.

Does moon flute need to have a debuff that stops you playing for a while? Can't they just give it a long recast time so you're only able to buff yourself every 2 minutes or something. The debuff that prevents you making any actions altogether feels like bad design.

24 spell slots feels like not enough. Personally I wouldn't have any limit at all and let people cram as many things as they want on their hotbars. It's not about balance because the job was never balanced, I think it's just an arbitrary limit to make it seem less complicated to use. I think the limit makes it more complicated instead because you have to keep changing the set to access different utility stuff.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Does moon flute need to have a debuff that stops you playing for a while? Can't they just give it a long recast time so you're only able to buff yourself every 2 minutes or something. The debuff that prevents you making any actions altogether feels like bad design.

24 spell slots feels like not enough. Personally I wouldn't have any limit at all and let people cram as many things as they want on their hotbars. It's not about balance because the job was never balanced, I think it's just an arbitrary limit to make it seem less complicated to use. I think the limit makes it more complicated instead because you have to keep changing the set to access different utility stuff.

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I strongly agree with Moon Flute's horrible design. I know how useful it is and I can play around MF, but spending 15 whole seconds just running around... I cannot, in good faith, say that's good design in a battle system like XIV's. I was hoping that we could get a replacement, or at least variation, for Moon Flute at 6.45, but alas we didn't.

What they could do with Moon Flute:

a) Waning Nocturne debuff causes your actions to do only 10% of their damage for 15s. Still a nasty debuff, but at least allows you to do something marginally useful. like support spells or just pushing that little damage for your totals.

b) Waning Nocturne turns you into a voidsent (so it matches the spell's lore) with a weak combo action (akin to the Succubus transfiguration from PotD). Again, still a bad damage handicap, but better than nothing.


I like the idea of Moon Flute not having a cooldown, because it can potentially allow additional applications once you get more spells than you can fit into those 15s of buffed damage, but the downside is truly awfully designed.

Changes I would love to see for Blue Mage hmmm.

First and biggest make Aetheric Mimicry a role skill so it doesn't take up a spell slot for a skill I cast once. Let it cycle through roles when pressed so I don't have to run around trying with my poor vision to figure out who is what class. Also make mimic set a limit break based on it.

Second let me run trust/duty support as if I were the role aetheric mimicry says I am.

Third as someone who struggled through 30 of the 32 carnival stages for the angel whisper totem (a weird choice to hide a major group skill behind 30 stages of solo activity) and will eventually get around to finishing the other two. Make Exhibition versions of the stages required for the story quest, make those exhibition versions not give rewards or achievements just progress the story so people who want achivements and to feel like they succeeded can still run the regular carnival and those that just want the story can run the exhibition mode. Make the exhibition made have a difficulty selector like most job's solo activities do. Not really tied to this just think it would be nice.

Also add a savage version of the carnival for those people who really want to challenge themselves.

Fourth as long as I am asking for stuff that will never happen, let blue mage partake in things like Palace of the dead, just pick a bunch of blue mage spells and set them to be unlocked at certain levels so it works like a normal job for that area. Or let me pick spells that will unlock at those levels. It would just be fun.

Blue mage daily with the condition that Aetheric Mimicry becomes a cycling button. Similar to mentor roulette in that you get queued up for any eligible piece of content.

Allow the bonus effects to work on more enemies. If it’s not allowed in regular content then there’s less reason debuffs shouldn’t apply to bosses. Deep freeze and perpetual ray may be exceptions on actual bosses though, as funny as it would be to interrupt ultimate crossover that way.

More spell slots - ideally at least 30 + role

Access to deep dungeons certainly. Presented as a solo job there’s no reason it should be excluded from the game’s most prominent solo content. If deemed necessary, discounting groups with less than all but more than 1 blue mage, but seeing as summoner is allowed there that argument is pretty thin.

Each one or two raid series achievement awards a tangible achievement ie a mount. Coils + Alexander give morbol, Omega + Eden should give something - cassie morbol/tokkapachi wearable mount/vauthry that carries by the scruff of your neck. Something that leans a bit on the sillier side but is still unique/not a recolour.

Allow it to turn in msq, but with a “weird queues, low level cap” disclaimer or only if blue mage isn’t your highest level job.

More puzzle carnivale stages: 4 one or two phase fights that aren’t mechanic vomit style and the story boss. I think this would help people get angle whisper. I think the boss capstone difficulty is broadly fine, although 32-2 could have done with maybe a couple more mechanics and the reduction of gold rush. Maybe a fire version and a lightning version or at least changing the aoe colours to help differentiate the orange circles on the orange floor. I ended up just diamondbacking it and healing through the vuln stacks. I like that it doesn’t have screen-obscuring charybdis this time around though.

It would be nice to have something that boosts physical spells at the cost of weakening magic spells. Final sting is really falling off in usefulness now and it’s a shame to see it go.

Similarly it would be nice to have spells that aren’t doa - see ruby dynamics, dimensional shift, force field, conviction maracas. They’re either direct downgrades or so niche as to be useless. I’d sooner see a saintly beam alike for voidsent or sin eaters, or something strong against spoken etc to incentivise shifting around filler depending on dungeon/raid. Also buff fire angon to 210 to match sonic boom.

Moon flute is fine as it is, flurry/apokalypsis are good enough workarounds for waning while keeping the tradeoff aspect.

Re tank cool-downs, I disagree. Move to a 0.95s cast tier maybe, but it’s fun as it is because it’s clunky not despite.

1: If not becoming the role with Mimicry, then at least color half of my job icons with the mimicry role. I hate joining a party, leader asks about roles, I reply with DPS and the others are silent. Then we enter and have 1 healer and 3 dps. Being able to see in the party screen what mimicry people have would be a massive QoL.

2: Specificly for tank. Make most of their abilities instant cast, perhaps limiting it to defensive buffs and physical spells. Tanking on BLU is incredible cumbersome at the moment with cast-timers. Also would like a shirk spell.

3: Let us into Eureka and Bozja. It's old content now and could be a fun playground for BLU instead of the mostly one-and-done nature of the job.

4: Introduce BLU-specific materia that can let us alter the gameplay style of the job. Perhaps one materia that increased DoT by 1% each, another increasing fire damage and so on. If it's a job that's not like the others, be more creative with the equipment.

5: More support abilities instead of just it being role spells + as many damage abilities as possible. Let us have some more variation instead of yet more 220 potency spells with a different element (when elements haven't really been used since around the lv 60 carnivals).

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Re tank cool-downs, I disagree. Move to a 0.95s cast tier maybe, but it’s fun as it is because it’s clunky not despite.

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0.95 would be a fine compromise, I suppose. The thing is that with the 1.76 cast time, if you don't know the strict timeline of a fight, even a measly dungeon fight, you might be caught in the middle of your GCD rolling and the mitigator won't fire off in time. It wouldn't be as bad to miss a tankbuster if (unlike other tanks) BLU's health didn't spike to an autoattack away from death. I know some people enjoy having that kind of difficulty, but tankbuster mitigators are a basic tanking tool, and making that aspect hard to use just elevates immensely the skill floor, alienating players from the role.

I barely remember Stormblood's raid specific timeframes, let alone the dungeon bosses - which is a no issue for a regular tank since you can react to any tankbusters on the go just fine.

1) for a limited job to be less limited, more content to run it as, deep dungeon and the variety dungeons in the future once we get to be lvl 90. In case for deep dungeon it doesent have to be tied to achivments if thats the issue its more the fun factor im after.

2)Make it actually be able to solo stuff to get spells other then overworld mobs and the carnival, Sure dungeons are a huge iff with basic instinct but even then i feel like stuff just damages you alot.

3) As many pointed out get rid of mimicry and just make it a role to select or something that cycles through roles it just feels so annoying to have to find a role if it could be just so simple.

4)Healers could use a reliable regen spell that isnt on a 2min CD

I love BLU but man 6.45 was rather disappointing if i have to be quite honest, not even a nier raid spell that would have been so awesome in general its disappointing that raids dont give any spells given there are people to fill up a 24 man just for log clears

I have an issue on one of my alts which has no tanks or healers unlocked (on purpose), so I'm gated from joining Party Finder groups which have tank/healer slots specified.

BLU should simply be included in the role it's mimicking for the purposes of joining parties in PF.

Furthermore, DISPLAY THE ROLE IN CROSS-WORLD PARTIES!