A question for the BLU peeps

[Reynhart]

Tbh, implying that BLU must be overpowered in order to be "true BLU" and dismissing any counter examples as "not true BLU" pretty much fits the definition of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

BLU does not need to be overpowered to be a true BLU. But it needs to have several staple spells to be a true BLU. Things like Bad Breath, that inflicts lots of status ailments, in a game where no jobs really use debuff that matters. So either the spell works and it's clearly shifting utility, or everything important resists and it's useless. Things like White Wind that heals everyone for a lot (And sometimes also clears status ailments). Either it works the same and you immediatelly have a DPS with huge healing power, or it heals for a pitiful amount, and it's useless.

The vast array of spells means that BLU is both versatile and efficient, and that can't work in a matchmaking game ruled by the holy trinity. It could work better if the game had a Hybrid role, with several other jobs competing with BLU. And before someone reply "but Red Mage is versatile too", Red Mage is neither efficient at dealing magical damage, physical damage or healing, he just happens to do those three.

And, you still have the issue (Taken from FFXI, but that's their choice) of BLU having to chose its spells in a spellbook, which, considering the completely unexistant notion of choice in the game, is a welcome refresher...but that can create lots of drama in random groups.

[Cabalabob]

D) added as a regular job but creatively adapted to fit into this game.

To bring up the old dead horse, FFXI had a BLU and they didn’t have to compromise its identity to make it work. Sure iconic spells like bad breath, 1000 needles and doom fell to the wayside as they needed to be weakened to fit an MMO but that happened even in single player FF’s I mean when was the last time you managed to land doom on a boss in any game?

There are plenty of ways BLU could have worked both as a solo job and in party play, like giving it a base weapon such as a scimitar or club and giving it a basic job toolkit around that weapon then having the spells be something on top of that, they could have had “limited” spells only available while solo and “required” spells necessary to qualify for party play.

[Melichoir]

Blue mage was never about learning the spells. It's about using them.

Learning spells is just means to an end.

What issue? Some nonsense about how Blue Mage isn't Blue Mage if its not overpowered?

This doesnt help the point. It actually is in favor of my point.

This means that learning spells from monsters is a more convoluted version of NPC quests. Thats it. And you arent learning monster spells, youre learning a spell that is supposed to look like a monster spell but isnt.

And it has nothing to do with being OP. It has everything to do with rebalancing a spell that MONSTERS USE for PC use and what that means in regards to what the class is when you break it down and what that means in principle to the concept of BLU.

Youre not learning bad breath as a morbol does it. Youre learning a skill that mimics bad breath in very small ways. If the player version of Bad Breath is a small aoe cone, 1 status effect that is set, and does moderate damage, is it the same skill as Morbols Bad Breath?

No. Its not. Its a lesser variation of that skill, but it is not that same skill. So youre not really learning the monster skill, but some imitation of one that is balanced for party play. This means, broadly, that any skill you learn will be balanced with other classes in mind and will be in many respects analogous to those classes. Youre not learning the monster skill, youre learning a skill from interacting with a monster that is on the same power curve as every other class.

Nope. A mishmash of unbalanced monster skills that don't form a coherent rotation and can't be used in any relevant content does not count as a class/job. (That's the bloody issue!) They would, in my example, literally design one full job including job quests plus some disconnected skills for the side content they have planned. Bard is not two classes in one just because they have Perform skills.

Pretty much wrong on all accounts here and youre trying to to relate bard's perform skill to BLU. Playstyle is based on a few things, such as how you use skills and in how you interact with the game. I've explained this already pretty thoroughly. Rather than a playstyle that focuses on resource management/rotations/priority systems, the playstyle would be one that focuses more on using the right skills for the right situation to overcome what would normally take a party to do. This playstyle is only possible if the skills are powerful. This doesnt mean you couldnt have rotations or priority or even resource management, but unlike OTHER classes, youre skill use and decision making wouldnt revolve around this. Best way I could equate this is to any action game where you gradually learn new moves over time and are free to use them as the situation calls for it.

Furthermore, cause youre so keen on ignoring this, let me reiterate - To create a solo content class that operates completely without a party WITHOUT rebalancing dungeons or content would require it to have one set of playstyle to make it remain interesting, and then have another playstyle that is balanced for party play that ALSO makes it interesting. You would need two playstyles for ways to interact with the game. And it wouldnt be a matter of adjust 'power'. You can consider that out by simply looking at how SYNCING works in the game. Run a dungeon unsynced and tell me how often you use full rotations and proper mechanics. This is a game design perspective: Having one class have two separate playstyles and the work that would be required to balance for it would be costly.

You mention (below) that you dont think people would be jealous? Tell me something, do you think people would be a-ok if the devs said "Well, we were gonna put dancer and Gunblade in, but we scrapped those plans because we decided to focus on just BLU, which will probably end up in a DPS slot btw."

Think people would be alright with that? Tanks and Healers dont get any new class to play because devs spent their time trying to balance BLU. And before the obligatory "Theyd be able to do all 3", everything takes time and money, and there is a finite amount of it, whether you like it or not. I get teh impression that the Devs were probably AWARE that there would be unhappy people over the limited class thing, but between extreme balance issues and providing players what they felt they would like to play more, they went with it. Because I highly doubt the first thing they did was go "Well you know what, screw players. Lets make a limited class."

It's more likely, when it comes to development, that BLU has been on the books for a while adn theyve been trying to figure out a way to make it work and couldnt. And short of scrapping it, someone suggested the limited class idea.

Why? Because Limited Jobs were a bad idea to begin with and any suggestions to fix it are aimed to not make things worse than they have to be. I know the devs have a tendency to stubbornly ride their mistakes to the bitter end (Diadem) but that's really not necessary. I don't believe that getting the best possible outcome for Blue Mage will spark jealousy in those who play other jobs, because Conjurers got their mount quest and Bards got their Perform system without any such controversy.

You dont know it was a bad idea to begin with. All you have, much like most of us, is speculation. Youre assuming theyre going to be bad, but you have zero proof outside of speculation based on what little information we have. Notice how Im not saying that BLU will be the most awesome and amazing thing? Im fairly certain that my position has been "Lets see what its going to be like." but the position of detractors is "Ive made my verdict - its gonna suck no matter what." Which is unfortunate because I get the vibe a lot of people will just hate the class, no matter how fun it could be. They'll hate it on principle with their vision of it being colored by subjective opinions theyve argued on the internet over. You want to have issue with it? Go for it. Do it afte ryou play it and see how it works out. If its as bad as you thought itd be, then write a forum post and let the devs know. Give feedback after youve had time to play with it.

Situational stuff was part of the BLU identity, was it not? The player using Bad Breath rarely could also be achieved by giving it a resource cost that makes it worthwhile only in AoE cleave situations. For single target you'd use some other monster skill. And another skill for sustained multi-target, etc. The filler skills would also be learned from monsters so I don't see the problem. If I go in the open world and fight regular monsters of my level, the skills they use are often quite unimpressive and would be perfect as fillers without any nerfing.

So, without applying anything I said, youd be ok with unimpressive monster skills as 'filler'? Color me a touch skeptical.

Second, do me this favor. Level up a new character, no special gear. Then go fight some monsters and stand in their pancakes. Tell me if that skill doesnt hurt then. Even those 'filler' skills hurt if youre not overgeared, as theyre supposed to. You mistake the fact some people are over geared for world monsters as those skills being weak, or how an AI has a limited use on a skill, but in the hands of a player who can adapt and think, those skills gain power.

Tbh, implying that BLU must be overpowered in order to be "true BLU" and dismissing any counter examples as "not true BLU" pretty much fits the definition of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The only things that actually seem to define a BLU are that 1) they can learn skills from monsters and 2) they fight using skills learned from monsters (Blue Magic).

Youre not reading what Im saying and as a result, youre coming to the wrong conclusion. As I said, again and again, IF you leave the skills AS IS, they would be to powerful for party play. There is no getting around this fact. Other people who dont even agree with me broadly acknowledge this point. The skills would have to see power reductions for party play. TO REDUCE POWER, it would mean making them in line with ALL OTHER CLASSES. In the case of bad breath, it would lose almost ALL it's status effects, its range would be greatly reduced, as would its power. After all that rebalancing, it is not he same skill as the original monster skill and would be as powerful as any other classes. This would invariably mean that the original possible and most likely playstyle would not work, and would need a new playstyle. That new playstyle would have to incorporate elements other classes already use as a means to remain balanced. The rebalancing of skills and putting in a combat system more similar to other classes (at a base level) would throw into question the point of learning monster skills. As at that point, youre not really learning those skills, but rather youre just on an NPC quest that has RNG involved as to whether or not youll get your skill in a timely manner. When you go down to the basics, this makes that iteration of BLU teh same as other casters, except it has a harder method of getting its skills. Thats it.

The fun thing was, considering FFXI, BLU would be possible as is in a party environment IF the game was more nuanced. FFXI worked this out because there was a lot of factors that worked out in balancing the class and skills and allowed the skills to exist much more closely to their original design. We dont have that. It's unfortunate, but teh simplified system here is what is hurting BLU from being BLU in ffxiv.

[Reynhart]

I mean when was the last time you managed to land doom on a boss in any game?

Lucis Ring works on the Adamantoise in XV.
Death works on a super monster that has more HP than the final boss in XIII, so it may count.
Yojimbo can kill anything in one hit in X.
The End can kill anything in one hit in VIII.
A good slot combination can kill anything in one hit in VI or VII.
RUB/Bane/Death can kill several bosses including Chaos when FF I was first released.
If you manage to manipulate the level of bosses in V, Lvl 5 Doom doesn't bother with immunities.
And I even think that Arsenic Knife can one shot Vegnagun in X-2.

And that's not counting every undead bosses that die in a single Life or Phoenix Down.

[Auryan]

I couldn't have put it better myself. Your last paragraph really captured the essence of the problem: XIV's rigid trinity battle system. And the devs knew that the limitations from the battle system would cause issue for potential jobs. And I'm surprised they went this route. If anything I expected them to RDMify BLU. Which a lot of people wouldn't mind, but I think THAT would've been lazy and disappointing. Especially for a weirdo like BLU.

In the future if BLU is ever going to see party play (doubt it), instead of bringing BLU down to the level of the battle jobs, why not raise them to BLU's level? I really hope that at some point they would look into expanding the battle system (add a support job designation) or allow the option to hybridize the jobs. Bring nuance like you stated.
I remain cautiously optimistic. If they can make the trade-off rewarding and fun, I don't have any problem with it.

[Tlachtga]

This doesnt help the point. It actually is in favor of my point.

it's really not. To elaborate:

This means that learning spells from monsters is a more convoluted version of NPC quests. Thats it. And you arent learning monster spells, youre learning a spell that is supposed to look like a monster spell but isnt.

I literally don't care about this whatsoever. I don't care what spells look like, what they're supposed to be, as long as they do what I want them to do.

Like, PLD's Holy Spirit could be them flinging cream cakes at the enemy (Pattisier from Bravely Second when SE?) and I wouldn't care as long as it did was still 380 potency and benefited from Requiescat.

And it has nothing to do with being OP. It has everything to do with rebalancing a spell that MONSTERS USE for PC use and what that means in regards to what the class is when you break it down and what that means in principle to the concept of BLU.

You're so hung up on this idea of job identity that its fine to make a job a dead-on-arrival garbage fire?

Youre not learning bad breath as a morbol does it. Youre learning a skill that mimics bad breath in very small ways. If the player version of Bad Breath is a small aoe cone, 1 status effect that is set, and does moderate damage, is it the same skill as Morbols Bad Breath?

I fully expected this, years ago, before even RDM landed, because it would be dumb as shit to think Bad Breath would work as the Morbol's version and still be balanced, if you could CC enemies to hell and back like that.

I figured they'd have to be sacrifices somewhere, considering how the game works. Sadly, the devs chose to sacrifice the job's ability to actually do relevant content.

No. Its not. Its a lesser variation of that skill, but it is not that same skill. So youre not really learning the monster skill, but some imitation of one that is balanced for party play. This means, broadly, that any skill you learn will be balanced with other classes in mind and will be in many respects analogous to those classes. Youre not learning the monster skill, youre learning a skill from interacting with a monster that is on the same power curve as every other class.

That's like saying Bad Breath in FF7 isn't truly Bad Breath because it won't work on Emerald Weapon the same way it works on the party. I guess Enemy Skill materia isn't true Blue Magic. Safer Sephiroth is immune to the Roulette enemy skill. Guess the version you get isn't the true Roulette. I could go on.

Lucis Ring works on the Adamantoise in XV.
Death works on a super monster that has more HP than the final boss in XIII, so it may count.
Yojimbo can kill anything in one hit in X.
The End can kill anything in one hit in VIII.
A good slot combination can kill anything in one hit in VI or VII.
RUB/Bane/Death can kill several bosses including Chaos when FF I was first released.
If you manage to manipulate the level of bosses in V, Lvl 5 Doom doesn't bother with immunities.
And I even think that Arsenic Knife can one shot Vegnagun in X-2.

And that's not counting every undead bosses that die in a single Life or Phoenix Down.

Most of those aren't Doom specifically as it would work on the party though. The only one that really works in that list is Lvl5 Death from FFV.

[kikix12]

Most of those aren't Doom specifically as it would work on the party though. The only one that really works in that list is Lvl5 Death from FFV.

Final Fantasy have two status effects, one hidden and one visible related to this.

Doom is the visible and Instant Death is the one hidden.

Every enemy immune to Instant Death is immune to Doom, for a very simple reason. Doom is nothing else than a turn counter for triggering Instant Death. Not everything immune to Doom is immune to Instant Death though.

All of the attacks that Reynhart wrote are 100% one and the same. Instant Death debuff that ignore immunity to Instant Death one some or all enemies. If you say that Lvl5 Death works, then all the other do as well. They cause the enemy to "die" regardless of the HP since they don't cause damage. That's the very definition of "Death" spell.

The ones that would not count are Banish and similar spells that do NOT kill, but eject from combat. They do not count as kills so they do not give experience, money etc. These ones do.

[Tlachtga]

Final Fantasy have two status effects, one hidden and one visible related to this.

Doom is the visible and Instant Death is the one hidden.

Every enemy immune to Instant Death is immune to Doom, for a very simple reason. Doom is nothing else than a turn counter for triggering Instant Death. Not everything immune to Doom is immune to Instant Death though.

All of the attacks that Reynhart wrote are 100% one and the same. Instant Death debuff that ignore immunity to Instant Death one some or all enemies. If you say that Lvl5 Death works, then all the other do as well. They cause the enemy to "die" regardless of the HP since they don't cause damage. That's the very definition of "Death" spell.

The ones that would not count are Banish and similar spells that do NOT kill, but eject from combat. They do not count as kills so they do not give experience, money etc. These ones do.

I mean....I was taking his post and relating it back to the whole "blue magic isn't true blue magic if it doesn't work on enemies exactly how it works on the party" opinion from a previous poster. Reynhart's post was a response to the question "when was the last time you managed to land doom on a boss in a game?" and it still stands. Most of those aren't Doom (the counter as you say) and just ways of OHKOing bosses.

And I'm like 99% sure Vanille's Death doesn't bypass Instant Death immunity. I admit, it's been a while since I played XIII but the only super monsters that come to mind with more HP than Orphan was the Long Gui and Vercingetorix, both of which were immune to Instant Death. Adamantoise notably could but I'm pretty sure he had less hp than the first form of Orphan. Correct me if i'm wrong here, it's been years honestly.

Speaking of Death in XIII, that was a pretty crazy idea. I mean, making it do a large damage when the Insta-Death didn't proc/death-immune enemies....

[kikix12]

I mean....I was taking his post and relating it back to the whole "blue magic isn't true blue magic if it doesn't work on enemies exactly how it works on the party" opinion from a previous poster. Reynhart's post was a response to the question "when was the last time you managed to land doom on a boss in a game?" and it still stands. Most of those aren't Doom (the counter as you say) and just ways of OHKOing bosses.

None of them are Doom. But all of them do what Doom is ultimately meant to do, being far more powerful than it.

The posters question about doom was to show that powerful skills are limited or made ineffective in other Final Fantasy titles, so expecting that here is no stretch. But Reynhart have proven that it's not exactly as clear-cut. There are powerful skills throughout most Final Fantasy titles in one way or another, even those vastly more powerful than Doom.

And you can't get more powerful than Yojimbo, The End or the slots. Yojimbo in particular since it's very easy to use and can be forced almost on demand on any single foe with some preparation (except in the original Japanese and NTSC versions). Not even really hard, just summon him for a bunch of fights and pay him some money for a permanent massive boost, then Overdrive him (or Yuna). Voila. You're almost guaranteed to insta-kill whatever enemy you come across.

Granted, those are Single Player games. But I think that this part of discussion is about whether Final Fantasy was have a history of broken skills or not, and it does.


As far as the whole Blue Mage and how it should be implemented, my stance doesn't change. It's fine for it to have those broken skills, it's fine for its skills to be faithful to what they do for monsters. It's perfectly fine because there are balanced monster skills as well. And in the first place, for pure damage skills we don't even know their monster potency and we know monsters have unlimited MP/TP...so any pure damage skill can be made balanced and be 100% faithful...

So out of that mixed bag of skills, it is going to be possible to pick a "balanced" build without having to change anything, and have it be automatically used for Duty Roulette and "current" content without interfering with the class in the "old" content party finder/solo play.

[Melichoir]

I literally don't care about this whatsoever. I don't care what spells look like, what they're supposed to be, as long as they do what I want them to do.

Like, PLD's Holy Spirit could be them flinging cream cakes at the enemy (Pattisier from Bravely Second when SE?) and I wouldn't care as long as it did was still 380 potency and benefited from Requiescat.

This is literally asking for a mage that has ANY skill then and not BLU. It's quite literally teh point I made earlier about BLU being a reskinned caster. That youre not asking for blue mage, your asking for a caster named blue mage. Thats fine if thats what you want. But it's not a BLU mage in regards to theme if none of the facets of what makes a blue mage a blue mage exist. In this specific case, its learning MONSTER SKILLS. Not any skill. Monster Skills.

You're so hung up on this idea of job identity that its fine to make a job a dead-on-arrival garbage fire?

You have literally zero idea if its going to be a garbage fire, DoA or anything. How do I know this? Cause youve not played it. No one has. Its your own personal outrage and bias speaking to this and in that regards, is absolutely meaningless.

As for identity, identity is what people are ASKING for. People want BLUE MAGE, not just a caster. Theyre asking for a specific thing, with a specific identity. The identity here is a caster who uses monster skills learned from monsters. Thats the crux of it. What you said above in regards to "I dont care what it looks like, so long as it does numbers" is a complete antithesis to what people were asking for.

I fully expected this, years ago, before even RDM landed, because it would be dumb as shit to think Bad Breath would work as the Morbol's version and still be balanced, if you could CC enemies to hell and back like that.

I figured they'd have to be sacrifices somewhere, considering how the game works. Sadly, the devs chose to sacrifice the job's ability to actually do relevant content.

Not to be flippant, but I stated some of this. People broadly agree that the skills would have to be nerfed if they were in party play. The disconnect is how the nerfing of the skills affects teh overall playstyle of identity of what BLU is. It boils down simply to this: As long as the skill is named bad breath, that is fine. Youre using the "monster skill." Even if it's not really teh same skill, and if the class is going to have a playstyle similar to other classes thatll probably revolve around resource management in some regards. Even if learning skills from monsters is a throw-away gimmick for learning these spells-in-name-only, that is all fine. That most skills you get will only be DPS orientated because defensive and support based skills will be limited as to not upset the Trinity. All that is fine, so long as its called BLUE MAGE.

This boggles the brain a bit for me, because after all those concessions, it feels like people are just more concerned with having caster named blue mage, then they are with playing Blue Mage as a class.

That's like saying Bad Breath in FF7 isn't truly Bad Breath because it won't work on Emerald Weapon the same way it works on the party. I guess Enemy Skill materia isn't true Blue Magic. Safer Sephiroth is immune to the Roulette enemy skill. Guess the version you get isn't the true Roulette. I could go on.

So a few things to consider: In ff7 there were items that prevented status effects. It wouldnt be strange for bosses to also have immunities. Second, youre comparing a single player game vs a multiplayer one. If FFXIV was single player, BLU wouldnt matter if it was OP status broadly. However, its not. So you have to consider skill balances in regards to things like raid content or any party play content. Before you get out over your skis on what I just said, the consideration here being made is that immunities on bosses wouldnt rule out a skill being closer to 'true to spec'. PCs arent bosses, so what immunities we would have would be limited in comparison to boss monsters.

Remember, bosses are designed to fight 1v8. Imagine how quickly a boss could go down if one of the monster skills was a tank buster? Or how easy bosses that have Add phases would be if you could obliterate them with monsters who have hard hitting AoEs? I mean you could mitigate against that by restricting skills, but that would be ridiculous in of itself. You could do it by mitigating power and range, but then the skill becomes a reskin of another caster's skill which then raises the issue of why bring a blue if they dont bring anything to the table that a BLM couldnt do on top of BLU just being more difficult to get your skills for. In fact, what then sets BLU apart from other casters other than a more contrived way to get your skills. Again, fi thats what you want, fine. Ask for that. But it wouldnt be thematically in line with the identity of what makes a BLU a BLU.

This, of course, doesnt address many of the other issues that would crop up such as the order you learn skills, how to differentiate blues who have skills vs those who dont in party play, and so forth. All those side issues that come up with a system where you can learn skills in any order and at any time. And I know there are plenty of suggestions how to 'balance' that. But with every balance change, the identity of what people were asking for gets mitigated more and more. Until youre left with what I said earlier - a caster whos called a blue mage, and not a blue mage as the lore pushes out.