The Blue Mage Argument at a glance

[GrenGarm]

I really wonder if the BLU design stems from 14's current refusal to allow customization of jobs.

I loved the cross-job skills of the original design. I thought the role actions were boring by comparison, and now we just get everything, which is even more boring.

BLU by its very nature has too many skills, so you have to customize. But no other job is like that.

Instead of making BLU the outlier and banning it from content, I wish more jobs had the ability to pick and choose abilities. It would help with hotbar bloat and make your job feel more personal.

[Blueyes]

Yes, I would appreciate seeing more people express a desire to work towards a unified solution instead of this "us or them" mentality that is rampant.

One thing is certain, if SE decides to go through with readjusting Blue Mage so that it is compatible with the raid scene, if they wish to not destroy what they have already created for the job, they will be forced to expand the usual limitations of what a job can do. Which I consider to be a good thing.

In a sense, it could be argued that Limited Jobs are expanding the usual limitations, but I would only consider that to be true if Blue Mage was a means to an end. I don't consider it to be an expansion of the existing system when it's a separate system of its own that is kept apart.

SE hasn't given us any indication that the Limited title is intended to be lifted at any point in the future. If anything, the opposite was heavily implied, with references to how the Limited system can be used to implement other jobs that "wouldn't work" in their MMO. Anything can work. It just has to be adapted. And there are ways to do that without forcing it into a cookie-cutter formula.

If we truly were mistaken about how far SE intends to take Limited Jobs, I would have expected word from a community manager by now. "Hey guys! Just so we're clear, the development team wants to raise Blue Mage to level 80 during Shadowbringers' patch cycle. Sorry for the misunderstanding." A comment such as that would go a long way to quell the concerns that many players have expressed. And yet, here we are, a month later, with no words of reassurance given to the community.

And that is why I say that the community should be vocal. We should want and express a desire for SE to take what is good about Limited jobs and have it applied to future jobs that are compatible with their existing formula. Blue Mage included.

[Huntrss]

You Guys Don't get it do you there is a Reason behind SE Actions for Blue Mage or Game + and this is their way to do things Backwards. Congrats You can now become Level 70 get to the 1 - 50 Zones? Congrats your Level 80 GET to Level 1-50 Zones, Congrats your Level 90 get to the loveable 1-50 Zones, Congrats your 100 do the 1-50 Zones They are going so far as mark they must do Level 1 to 50 Zones Locked down and if Must be Ad's saying get to 1-50 Zones. why Because of the Must needed New Players. Just because they say you can be Level 70 in the Game + doesn't mean they don't want New Players not to see you there. When MMO's get up to higher Levels lets say 80's the low levels become empty and what would happen if you were a new player either wonder where all the player base is and hope to catch up or well leave which is most of what happens. notice when they said that if you start Game plus you will have to do the whole story and can't do just certain Quest. we have low end Servers instead of shutting them down by merging Servers lets get the players to Visit them. The whole Fanfest was a Catch 22. To be Blue Mage you must first level up a Class\Job to level 50 where you can unlock The Blue Mage where you will go back through the 1 to 50 Zones and you will be seen in the open where the new player base will see you except you can not do all things like Deep Dungeon (where they can't see you) or PVP where they will not be until level 30. We will get new players and they will stay longer if they have someone there in the same Zones they are in. And if this doesn't work well we are getting Trust. now normally New players would receive a Story skip which would be easy but not the Class\Job skip to many Jobs in the game to pick from to make them all lets say 70 to keep up and what about all the story they would skip out on. Yes they could do Game + but how many new players would do that???

[Astarotha]

ng+ could be a boon to people doing extra jobs, plus theres a bunch of really awesome quests i want to be able to do again (drk 30/50, that one quest where you fight raubahn, or the nadaam <3)

as for blue, using the current setup to make it dfable is completely possible based on current knowledge (once we have the full list of abilities maybe not? but i doubt ALL of their abilities are going to have potencies in the broken range or nearing logos awesome)

first off, make 5-7 slots in the 24 slot book require a certain type of spell like single target, cone, AoE, buff, CC, line, heal. having these basics covered allows you to df while still allowing blues to be distinct (ie blue 1 likes bad breath but blue 2 prefers flamethrower, while blue 3 has hecatomb wave as their required, and blue 4 has all of those because he loves cone spells and has all his free slots filled with them)

to cover level sync give each spell slot a level threshold they become accessible (ie satasha you have access to the first 9 spell slots, by 50 you can use all 24) this puts blue action count and versatility somewhat in line with other classes at x level (but given the very role action feel of the spellbook it means blues keep their aesthetic intact but arent slinging everything at low levels)

beyond that ilvl sync, potency, and contractual boss immunity takes care of the actual mechanical issues with balance blue might have

[Seraphor]

Blue Mage is intended to solo level-synced content.
This means it needs to be able to do what a full party does. Which at the most fundamental level means its average potency has to be 2.5x that of any other dps.
Even before you consider the gimmicks like level 5 death, its already going to be overpowered once its skills have been acquired, and utterly impotent before.
There is no middle ground, especially given that this is a horizontal progression job. You're not supposed to collect all of the skills in a weekend then throw it into raids, collected the skills is the challenge, working out which skills you need in order to do x content so that you can learn y skill to do z content...

[GrenGarm]

Blue Mage is intended to solo level-synced content. This means it needs to be able to do what a full party does.

Source? I never heard this anywhere.

[Seraphor]

Source? I never heard this anywhere.

The trailers shows you soloing Shiva.

[GrenGarm]

The trailers shows you soloing Shiva.

The Shadowbringers trailer shows switching jobs in the middle of combat. Doesn't mean it's going to happen that way.

[Seraphor]

The Shadowbringers trailer shows switching jobs in the middle of combat. Doesn't mean it's going to happen that way.

You're seriously comparing ingame footage to prerendered cgi?

[jon041065]

There is no middle ground, especially given that this is a horizontal progression job. You're not supposed to collect all of the skills in a weekend then throw it into raids, collected the skills is the challenge, working out which skills you need in order to do x content so that you can learn y skill to do z content...

Middle ground would have been to have a way to still have this OP solo job as a DF setting or toggle and a combat job that could be used in the full game. It's not an either or scenario. It would definitely take a large amount of resources so why is it fine for one group of players to ask for something and not another group? Most taking part in this debate could have got the type of content that they are MOST interested in without it being at the cost of what the others want.