BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[BillyKaplan]

They never completly ruled out party play.

Which leads to the question of why lock it in the first place? That's the point that doesn't add up here.

But don't worry, I'm used to people only seeing what they want to see while completly ignoring proofs that contradict their statements. Even when the proofs comes from the very same source they are using.

I have a tiny violin to play for you, if you wanna

[Fyce]

Which leads to the question of why lock it in the first place? That's the point that doesn't add up here.

Have you missed the obvious point that it is absolutly not balanced for regular party play? They allow it in PF because in PF no one cares and everyone can make their own rules, especially about Lv.1-50 content. But DF is another story.
That's the downside for having a job with a crazy set of skills and balance. (Edit: do note that "crazy" doesn't mean "OP".)

I have a tiny violin to play for you, if you wanna

Sorry, I disabled the sound from perform, it was annoying more than anything.

[BillyKaplan]

Have you missed the obvious point that it is absolutly not balanced for regular party play? They allow it in PF because in PF no one cares and everyone can make their own rules, especially about Lv.1-50 content. But DF is another story.
That's the downside for having a job with a crazy set of skills and balance.

And you're missing the point that it was their choice to leave it balanced like that, and from what we saw of the skills they're already either gated by cooldown, or by potency "nerfs" - which is, again, things people have suggested as design compromises to allow BLU into regular play.
So no, I don't see the point to this, unless it is meant as a beta stage. But if it was, they could've at least had been upfront about it and that would've quelled a lot if not all of the backlash. But no, right now it seems like it's caught in limbo for no particular reason.

[Fyce]

And you're missing the point that it was their choice to leave it balanced like that, and from what we saw of the skills they're already either gated by cooldown, or by potency "nerfs" - which is, again, things people have suggested as design compromises to allow BLU into regular play.
So no, I don't see the point to this, unless it is meant as a beta stage. But if it was, they could've at least had been upfront about it and that would've quelled a lot if not all of the backlash. But no, right now it seems like it's caught in limbo for no particular reason.

Exactly, it was their creative choice to let BLU have a crazy set of skills and an out of wack balance. Which is quite fitting for a Blue Mage. They've always been quite... eccentric.

By the way, they were pretty upfront about their feeling on that job four years ago already. If you thought that it was going to be a "regular job" when they precisely stated the opposite, well, I don't know what to tell you.
And it's not "caught in limbo", it's simply a new type of jobs. I don't know what's so unfathomable about that.

My take on this is, BLU is potentially being put into "beta" so to speak since they are implementing it in stages. This would allow them to balance it over time with all the necessary skills for regular group play.

Never happening. Well, I get the "never say never", but that'd be way too much work. 49 skills, 24 slots, that's 63,205,303,218,876 possible outcomes that have to be balanced (and that will increase over time exponentially as they introduce new skills). You cannot realistically do that without dumbing it down so that multiple skills basically do the same thing, or are made completly irrelevant to the point of player never actually playing them. That'd be quite sad.

The most "realistic" approach would be to do a completly separate "regular job BLU" dedicated to DF and raiding. But that's basically designing and balancing a whole new job. So, not happening until a while... if it ever happen.

[jon041065]

The most "realistic" approach would be to do a completly separate "regular job BLU" dedicated to DF and raiding. But that's basically designing and balancing a whole new job. So, not happening until a while... if it ever happen.

We agree on this besides how much work it will take. I was already saying that the animations could be reused between both versions but it really does seem that they were making a full job at some point before changing it into side content. A lot of the tools to make a full job are already there.

I think really they should have made blu into a full job to start off with and then have the side game content. Maybe the full blu would have come at capped at 50 still but I think announcing both full job and side content would have gone over much better.

[Vahlnir]

Never happening. Well, I get the "never say never", but that'd be way too much work. 49 skills, 24 slots, that's 63,205,303,218,876 possible outcomes that have to be balanced (and that will increase over time exponentially as they introduce new skills). You cannot realistically do that without dumbing it down so that multiple skills basically do the same thing, or are made completly irrelevant to the point of player never actually playing them. That'd be quite sad.

The most "realistic" approach would be to do a completly separate "regular job BLU" dedicated to DF and raiding. But that's basically designing and balancing a whole new job. So, not happening until a while... if it ever happen.

I agree with you, but I was just putting another possibility on the table.

[Shougun]

Exactly, it was their creative choice to let BLU have a crazy set of skills and an out of wack balance. Which is quite fitting for a Blue Mage. They've always been quite... eccentric.

By the way, they were pretty upfront about their feeling on that job four years ago already. If you thought that it was going to be a "regular job" when they precisely stated the opposite, well, I don't know what to tell you.
And it's not "caught in limbo", it's simply a new type of jobs. I don't know what's so unfathomable about that.

Never happening. Well, I get the "never say never", but that'd be way too much work. 49 skills, 24 slots, that's 63,205,303,218,876 possible outcomes that have to be balanced (and that will increase over time exponentially as they introduce new skills). You cannot realistically do that without dumbing it down so that multiple skills basically do the same thing, or are made completly irrelevant to the point of player never actually playing them. That'd be quite sad.

The most "realistic" approach would be to do a completly separate "regular job BLU" dedicated to DF and raiding. But that's basically designing and balancing a whole new job. So, not happening until a while... if it ever happen.

I agree that attempting to both balance and make compelling gameplay over a fully customize-able hotbar of over 48(+) skills is... well it's just something else lol. FFXI I think got away with a lot of it because when balance was off they just told the player "tough, deal with it". haha.

Of course as you know I believe your second possibility is the one those who want to see blue in duty finder should push for, and myself have been (well I talk about the "tamed" skills in the book, when the stone is flipped but I think you know what I mean).

Also just for thread reference, in case I need to reference myself later once Blue Mage is out lol.

My concerns and thoughts - Right now I see three possibilities, as of now:

1. SE is designing Blue Mage to be OP with all these monster skills, level 5 death is just going straight up kill things with a level 5 multiple with some chance to fail. Casting Ultima is going to make the room drop and pop, usually.
   
2. SE is designing Blue Mage with the mind of "balanced" solo open world, and mildy balanced dungeon combat. Such that Shiva's bow attack will not deal incredible damage like it does, blue mage is going to struggle to solo many dungeons and especially extreme content. It may very well be impossible to solo some of the content, Blue Mage maybe a bit stronger and versatile than most jobs but is not OP in the way one might think "oh wow, that's OP".
   
3. SE was going 1 and then heard feedback and is now moving towards making it function in duty finder after some patches to bring in the rest of the skills.
   
4. I don't see this one yet, but I would like 4 to be they mix together OP party finder / solo with restrictions and then also balanced kit allowed into current content (via specific highlighted skills in the blue mage book and a flipable job stone that'll turn them into tame variants).

Now 1 is how I saw this originally, and to be honest I thought to myself it sounded fun to go gather some OP very nearly 1:1 monster abilities and beat them up and rofl stomp dungeons. I still strongly wanted to use blue mage in group duty finder content, but I was intrigued with the idea of throwing balance to the wind for old content (like normal jobs going into stuff unsycned except even more extreme).

However after seeing shiva bow do very light damage and some of the info on bad breath I believe they're going route 2. Route 2, IMO (lol), sounds rather boring and personally as someone who liked other FF Blue Mages I think.. "that's a waste of a good job" (imo). It's important to state we can't know what route is for sure, or if they'll change their mind, especially as we haven't even tried it yet. As you said they could have just had bad gear or maybe even there are rotations that boost blue spells such that they dark arts something and it becomes much stronger. So my fear is we'll get 2, and I don't really have an interest in that - but I am fine to wait before going "wow, that's not fun". (I'm saying "I'm worried" currently).

3 is actually where I'm between losing hope and gaining hope lol. What if they're attempting to bring Blue Mage into duty finder content right now and it's going through changes and growth to that? Certainly I see Bad Breath and think to myself "this is almost balanced for regular play, tweak the cooldowns and it'd probably be fine".

I hope we get 4, I don't see it happening - yet at least, and I greatly prefer 1 over 2. 3 sounds like an emotional roller coaster that could turn out "omg thank you SE for not leaving Blue behind!" lol.

[Hercub]

My concerns and thoughts - Right now I see three possibilities, as of now:


[*]SE is designing Blue Mage with the mind of "balanced" solo open world, and mildy balanced dungeon combat. Such that Shiva's bow attack will not deal incredible damage like it does, blue mage is going to struggle to solo many dungeons and especially extreme content. It may very well be impossible to solo some of the content, Blue Mage maybe a bit stronger and versatile than most jobs but is not OP in the way one might think "oh wow, that's OP".
[*]SE was going 1 and then heard feedback and is now moving towards making it function in duty finder after some patches to bring in the rest of the skills.
[*]I don't see this one yet, but I would like 4 to be they mix together OP party finder / solo with restrictions and then also balanced kit allowed into current content (via specific highlighted skills in the blue mage book and a flipable job stone that'll turn them into tame variants).[/LIST]Now 1 is how I saw this originally, and to be honest I thought to myself it sounded fun to go gather some OP very nearly 1:1 monster abilities and beat them up and rofl stomp dungeons. I still strongly wanted to use blue mage in group duty finder content, but I was intrigued with the idea of throwing balance to the wind for old content (like normal jobs going into stuff unsycned except even more extreme).

However after seeing shiva bow do very light damage and some of the info on bad breath I believe they're going route 2. Route 2, IMO (lol), sounds rather boring and personally as someone who liked other FF Blue Mages I think.. "that's a waste of a good job" (imo). It's important to state we can't know what route is for sure, or if they'll change their mind, especially as we haven't even tried it yet. As you said they could have just had bad gear or maybe even there are rotations that boost blue spells such that they dark arts something and it becomes much stronger. So my fear is we'll get 2, and I don't really have an interest in that - but I am fine to wait before going "wow, that's not fun". (I'm saying "I'm worried" currently).

3 is actually where I'm between losing hope and gaining hope lol. What if they're attempting to bring Blue Mage into duty finder content right now and it's going through changes and growth to that? Certainly I see Bad Breath and think to myself "this is almost balanced for regular play, tweak the cooldowns and it'd probably be fine".

I hope we get 4, I don't see it happening - yet at least, and I greatly prefer 1 over 2. 3 sounds like an emotional roller coaster that could turn out "omg thank you SE for not leaving Blue behind!" lol.

I don't know who you are but you are bad ass. I agree.

[Auryan]

1. SE is designing Blue Mage to be OP with all these monster skills, level 5 death is just going straight up kill things with a level 5 multiple with some chance to fail. Casting Ultima is going to make the room drop and pop, usually.
   
2. SE is designing Blue Mage with the mind of "balanced" solo open world, and mildy balanced dungeon combat. Such that Shiva's bow attack will not deal incredible damage like it does, blue mage is going to struggle to solo many dungeons and especially extreme content. It may very well be impossible to solo some of the content, Blue Mage maybe a bit stronger and versatile than most jobs but is not OP in the way one might think "oh wow, that's OP".
   
3. SE was going 1 and then heard feedback and is now moving towards making it function in duty finder after some patches to bring in the rest of the skills.
   
4. I don't see this one yet, but I would like 4 to be they mix together OP party finder / solo with restrictions and then also balanced kit allowed into current content (via specific highlighted skills in the blue mage book and a flipable job stone that'll turn them into tame variants).

Now 1 is how I saw this originally, and to be honest I thought to myself it sounded fun to go gather some OP very nearly 1:1 monster abilities and beat them up and rofl stomp dungeons. I still strongly wanted to use blue mage in group duty finder content, but I was intrigued with the idea of throwing balance to the wind for old content (like normal jobs going into stuff unsycned except even more extreme).

I'm the opposite, I find point 1 to be the most boring of the options. Point 2 would be my pick. This option creates the opportunity of looking for other BLUs with different builds to do trials and 8-mans. It sounds like it'd be fun to organize an all-BLU party with my FC. As for point 3...that is highly unlikely based on the way they develop content. BLU has been in the works for over a year now and what we see are the results of that time in development. Feedback is usually taken after the content comes out. A famous example would be Eureka. 4 is also unlikely. I really don't think it's as easy as just curating "party-friendly" spells. It would require SE to essentially create two entirely different jobs under the title of BLU. So much work to balance the party mode and provide updates to the solo aspect.

I think it's more likely that BLU will stay as is and will slowly rise in level caps and get additional content to the Carnival (and hopefully other things). I hope that it can get to the newer Shadowbringer areas early in the 5.x series, but barred from any raids (along with the usual restrictions).

[jon041065]

I'm the opposite, I find point 1 to be the most boring of the options. Point 2 would be my pick. This option creates the opportunity of looking for other BLUs with different builds to do trials and 8-mans. It sounds like it'd be fun to organize an all-BLU party with my FC. As for point 3...that is highly unlikely based on the way they develop content. BLU has been in the works for over a year now and what we see are the results of that time in development. Feedback is usually taken after the content comes out. A famous example would be Eureka. 4 is also unlikely. I really don't think it's as easy as just curating "party-friendly" spells. It would require SE to essentially create two entirely different jobs under the title of BLU. So much work to balance the party mode and provide updates to the solo aspect.

I think it's more likely that BLU will stay as is and will slowly rise in level caps and get additional content to the Carnival (and hopefully other things). I hope that it can get to the newer Shadowbringer areas early in the 5.x series, but barred from any raids (along with the usual restrictions).

Hello again Auryan. Hope you're doing well.

I'm still going to disagree. I hope 4 happens in the sense that there is a way to switch between OP limited blu and a full job blu so that the people that want the solo job don't have it changed on them. I think 3 is the likely outcome out of the four though.