A question for the BLU peeps

[Reinha]

However, if you dumb the skills down, youre no longer in the situation where you can solo content and now are more geared for party play. This means the aforementioned system of picking skills for the situation gets thrown out. Instead, they would need to implement a new playstyle. One that is either rotation/priority or resource management based. This then becomes the defining identity and factor of the class. When this happens, it becomes just like every other class in that regards. You end up homogenizing it in efforts to balance it. The whole idea of learning monster skills also becomes moot because at that point, as learning skills from monsters is just a harder method of getting skills compared to other classes with no better yield because the skills have to be balanced to be as powerful as any other class. Because skill acquisition is RNG, not done in any order, and actually by-passable, this complicates how to balance the class at lower levels, unless you mandate that they need to acquire certain skills, which means it becomes just like any other class, except hard to get skills again.

The initial identity of BLU revolves around using MONSTER skills with a playstyle that fits into that theme. HOWEVER, after nerfing things, the identity of BLU switches to whatever the new Playstyle they generate where acquiring skills from monsters is just a side objective. In this regard, BLU loses its unique identity and becomes "just another caster class" with skills that are no better or worse than any other caster broadly. This is what is meant by "Re-skin", or by saying "You just want a caster thats BLU in name only."

This is the issue Im not seeing people resolve. Once you nerf the skills, it doesnt have the same identity as it initially did.

Regarding the situational playstyle versus the usual dps rotation, I think the Perform system which was made for BRD would be great for BLU. Activate "Solo Mode" and a new set of action bars pop up, and they include a selection of monster skills you are supposed to use outdoors and in the Carnival (what has been developed for the job so far). The skills you can put on these action bars come from a separate list of skills you learn from monsters through RNG, will never be balanced, are easy to implement because of that, and cannot be used against enemies higher than level 50 or in instances except the Carnival.

Another set of skills could be learned through job quests up to level 70, which would enable BLU to be a real job that can do every piece of content this game has to offer. These job quests could be ignored by anyone who does not like the play style, and this would prevent the player from entering any content BLU is currently planned to be banned from.

Additionally, nerfing dps does not have to mean loss of skill potency. It can also be done by increasing the casting time or cooldown of skills. It would be possible to have massive nukes in the party-oriented rotation learned from job quests. A slow casting mage or a mage weaving several mid-length or long cooldowns in their base rotation would both be a totally new kind of mage play style, which shows that BLU doesn't have to be a copy of other mages.