A question for the BLU peeps

[Kaurhz]

Granted, having the class fit into Duty Finder, and raiding would be fantastic and ideal. However...

I do not think it would be worth risking ruining the identity of the class. I'm sure they could have found a middle-ground, but I do think this middle ground would be much worse than our current situation. Balancing 48+ skills would be pretty obnoxious and nigh impossible a task. Even if they did significantly reduce the skills from this class, I do feel it would ruin what identity this class would have. You'd feel this particularly in raid content. Further, if this job can, and does break the boundaries of what has been done in this game before then I would personally welcome it with open arms.

Not to mention, for the most part I am a solo player, and any form of solo content which graces me, I will embrace with open arms. It's the best gathering job we'll ever have

[Dualgunner]

If BLU isn't BLU without Lv5 Death, why do we accept BLM as BLM without Death?

[TheHeavenAbyss]

I suspect they might not even pay that much attention about having the "classic spells" for Blue Mage. When SE talks about identity, I think they mostly mean the method of copying the spells from enemies, regardless of what those spells are. So, besides some really obvious cases like Bad Breath and 1000 Needles (iconic attacks from iconic enemies that appear in almost every FF anyway) we may just end up with a lot of abilities from FFXIV enemies that might not even have been used in other FFs. I mean, how many FFXIV enemies even use LV5 Death? I know Page 64 in The Great Jubal Library does. I wonder if we will we be able to get it. Does any Goblin use Goblin Punch? I don't remember.

(I've been saying Death instead of LV5 Death, but the point is the same lol)

[Beckett]

Tell me, how do you use spells like Death or Bad Breath "not exactly" like monster without making them completely different spells ?

The premise is flawed from the start by assuming that we have to have those spells. There are tons of monster skills available that don't break the game, so why would Death need to be included in the limited selection?

And yes, we know that Bad Breath is for sure going to be an ability we get, and I'll even grant that it's easily one of the most classic and expected of Blue Magic abilities. If Bad Breath wasn't part of Blue Mage's kit, it's absence would be noted. But just because it's included doesn't mean it has to be overpowered. Even if it were to work just like the enemy's version and do Silence, Slow, Heavy, Blind, Poison and Paralyze, that doesn't mean it would do all of those things on a raid boss. Enemies have immunities, and some abilities are just straight up useless depending on what you're fighting. You think anyone is bothering to use Fluid Aura on Omega?

But let's take a look at exactly how Bad Breath works in this game and apply it to a raid situation. The Heavy and Paralyze would absolutely fail, the 30 second Blind might too, depending on the boss, which leaves 5 seconds of Silence, 20 seconds of Slow, 30 seconds of Poison. If you were to use this ability every 30 seconds, even with the immunities it would still be pretty overpowered. Change the cooldown to something like 2 minutes, and it becomes far more balanced while still being useful and still making you feel like a Blue Mage when you use it!

Again, the premise that Blue Mage absolutely could not have been made into a normal, balanced job is completely flawed.

[Beckett]

Well, they said Mr. Atma was the one that came up with BLU and the whole limited job design. He also did Diadem and Eureka. So you know where BLU is going.

Oof. Though I actually did think the second iteration of Diadem was fun, it's just that there was absolutely no reason to keep doing it once you got what you wanted, and they never supported it by adding new rewards, so of course it died. As much as it sucks that Limited BLU is starting capped at 50, the fact that they have a roadmap for it already means that they're planning on continuing support for it, at least for awhile.

[HorseBoots]

Ok so like, let's break down the meat and potatoes of this thread here. To answer the OP who clearly just decided to light the match here and dip;

D) Offer both a new DPS that can play with everyone else while also getting it's fun little collection mini-game on the side. A perfect compromise for both sides of this argument that really shouldn't exist in the first place. I would have rather had a proper job with all the benefits and sacrifices made to make that concept work. Just like how I was fine with it when they did it to Scholar, Dark Knight, Red Mage, Summoner (eventually) etc. The carnival and the 49 goofball spells to collect can still exist, but it should have been designed as additional side content for Blue Mage to enjoy, not the only thing made to justify it's existence and development time.

E) If BLU really was just straight up impossible to make an ordinary functioning job, then I would have rather have had the year of development time put into it be put into making sure Shadowbringers could launch with 3 real jobs instead of the rumored 2 instead of just making a cool new way to earn a B rank's worth of Allied Seals a week.

And that's coming from a die-hard BLU main from back in XI. I really would have rather had nothing than what is being proposed here.

To the people who think that BLU couldn't be balanced because monster abilities are too strong and they will be 1:1 replicas; No, it won't be. Even if BLU stays segregated from the rest of the game it will still be in-line to not completely obliterate the little bit of overworld content it can even do. At best by some creative combinations of spells you might be able to get away with soloing something that would have been typically impossible to solo as a level 50 job (Not that it matters since literally every single piece of level 50 content can now be soloed by various jobs at level 70 currently, including Bahamut Prime.)

And if the spells were made to be 1:1 exact copies... cool, I can cast a spell to deal exactly 1000 damage in a game where just about everyone is throwing out hits for 10 times that amount, or a spell with the cool ability to see the immune notification for every status effect in the game at once.

To whoever is actually trying to make the argument that any sort of compromise to make the BLU concept viable as an ordinary job would just "Turn BLU into a reskinned black mage": That argument is so incredibly stupid and hyperbolic that it makes my head spin. That's like saying that Ken and Akuma are "just reskins of Ryu" Besides, even with that dumb argument... BLU is still classified as a magic DPS in it's current state. It equips magic DPS gear, and it shares magic DPS role actions.

[LineageRazor]

Would it feel like Blue Mage to you guys if the White Wind spell was a Heal all type of spell, like Medica, instead of a spell that cures based on the HP the user has?

Yes. This is exactly what they did in FFXI, and Blue Mage there is one of the most popular takes on the class ever. I don't think that anyone ever complained that BLU was RUINED FOREVER because White Wind didn't work the same way it classically did. They accepted that the traditional White Wind would not work in an MMO like FFXI. As for this game, if they wanted to give a clever nod to the original version of the spell, they could have the potency of the cure scale with the user's HP, much like the damage potency from PLD's Spirits Within scales with the PLD's HP.

What if Bad Breath was just a DoT+vulnerability debuff instead of inflicting a bunch of status ailments (that have varied even in different FFs)?

Why can't it be both? Just have bosses resist the status effects, like they already do from other sources of those status effects.

What if Death, instead of one-hit-killing, just dealt massive damage (and maybe could be used to kill enemies outside DF)?

This, or take the example set in Eureka, where Death has a greater chance of working the lower the mobs' HP is. And, of course, bosses should be immune, including Hunts and FATE bosses.

What if 1000 Needles, instead of doing always 1000 damage, just dealt damage in a regular way (or maybe could just deal 1000 damage and just be accepted as useless in end-game, which is probably the way they'll do it anyway)?

1000 Needles is always an odd case. Their solution in FFXI was kind of bizarre. At the time BLU was released, 1000 irreducible damage was actually quite powerful, and so they nerfed that spell HARD - it was given a high HP cost, a high equip cost, a very long casting time, and something like a 90% chance of missing. It was kind of hilarious how scared they were of this ability. Naturally, 1000 damage is small potatoes in FFXI now, so the spell is worse than worthless. In this game, honestly, they could either leave it as terrible ability that only ever does 1000 damage, or they could scale it up in various ways (but, ideally, it should at least always deal an amount of damage that is a multiple of 1000).

I don't think that, by saying "If Death was too difficult to implement, we could accept if they didn't include it", is suddenly accepting that they take away everything else that a Blue Mage is. As was said before, even the Blue Magic spells' effects have changed from different FFs and some only appeared in some. Would it be that unreasonable to adapt them to FFXIV and not include everything? You still have a lot of iconic spells that could be included easily as damage dealing spells (with any other properties that they could decide to add for job mechanics), like Goblin Punch, Matra Magic, Aqua Breath, Flamethrower or as support spells, like Angel Whisper (to Raise) and Mighty Guard (to add some defensive buff to the party).

Yeah, this is exactly what I've been saying! BLU can still be BLU without cutting and pasting its mechanics from another FF game. It's not as though those games have been cutting and pasting from each other!

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Why can't it be both? Just have bosses resist the status effects, like they already do from other sources of those status effects.

Yeah, you're right. I just meant it as, if bosses are going to resist most status effects, have it at least leave them with a DoT (like Poison), to still be useful in boss fights (or not, not all skills are useful in a boss fight).

As for 1000 Needles, I'm not sure how it should be implemented. I guess if it dealt a fixed amount of damage it could be useful in lower levels but not higher, but if they added some debuff effect to the skill, it could still make it useful in end game content.

[Reynhart]

Myself and others obviously feel the cost they have gone with to break the mold some is too much.

That's still what I don't understand. We don't have BLU in the game yet, and we know nothing about how it will evolve in the future. If BLU reach lvl80 not far after the release of SH, the time locked at lvl50 will mean nothing in the long run.

I never said for blue mage to not have iconic spells but that it doesn't need a one hit kill spell. I could have elaborated more and said to level restrict it. Like it can kill enemies X levels below you and do a lot of damage if it's unable to kill the target.

One hit kill are not the only spells that would break the balance in the hand of a DPS. The trinity is too restrictive for a truthful to be implemented.

I wish they broke the mold with a talent system instead.

I sure hope, and I'll try to post that question the next time a "ask your question" topic is created for a Live Letter. But I understand why they would do it that way. Breaking the mold with a side content is easier than changing everything.

[Beckett]

We don't have BLU in the game yet, and we know nothing about how it will evolve in the future. If BLU reach lvl80 not far after the release of SH, the time locked at lvl50 will mean nothing in the long run.

It's true we won't know anything for sure until several patches into 5.X, but we do know these two things:
1) If a BLU meets the level requirements, they can enter any instance (other than Palace of the Dead and PVP) as long as they're in a pre-made group.
2) The devs have been adamant that they don't want BLU to be involved in endgame content.

Unless one of these two things changes, it's safe to assume that BLU will never reach the same level cap as the rest of the jobs.