Blue Mage: Are you kidding me!?

[Auryan]

Whose ready for Blu burn parties.... This guy is

I like you. Amidst this sea of endless negativity and complaints, you act like an island of hope and optimism. I have been trying so hard not to spoil myself on the locations of the spells. I cheated a little and went through the list of spells (but not the location and mob names!) and I'm glad that I don't know most of them. Can't wait to start BLU learning parties and see how crazy we can get with BLU. Hope you have fun with BLU.

[Kabooa]

Balancing is possible, but always comes at a cost. I would love if it we can keep this crazy and funny BLU and put it in max lvl 8/24 mans, but I know that it just would cause problems and I accept that. I am willing to wait to play it and see if I find it fun. If not I'll do like I did with other things I didn't like, such as RDM, LoV and Diadem: ignore it. I think that's a viable option.

Nobody wants Blue Mage to fail.

We just want to use Blue Mage in the content we like.

If Blue mage turns out to be fun, it will only be more infuriating that it's relegated to the Not-Gold Saucer.

[Kalise]

And a problem that a lot of people have with the job quests is that they don't like doing them, even if they get abilities as rewards. And here you have the awesome idea of tying all of BLU skills to things that most people don't like doing. What can possibly go wrong with that?

The interesting thing is, that because of the learning system, these skills aren't actually tied to doing the job quests. I never stated that these "Core" skills were only able to be learned through the job quests, merely that the job quests would direct you to go and learn the skills.

Of course, you'll get people who don't do the quests and don't go and learn said skills, but then that's exactly the same as every other job where people will end up lacking certain, potentially pretty vital, skills if they decide to forgo job quests.

In fact, for BLU there's the bonus that, people might just go and learn these skills without doing the job quests, while for every other class, that's not the case. A level 70 Gladiator is never going to end up attaining MANY skills unless he does a bunch of job quests.

The problem with core abilities is that you end up making these abilities mandatory.

Meanwhile, the core argument is that people will consider these abilities mandatory anyway and thus will pressure BLU's to have learned them.

Not accounting for the fact, that, currently what we can see is we have several spells that are interchangable, because they do essentially the same thing with very minor differences.

The idea of these "Core" skills is that they will provide a baseline that will mean you have at least the minimal amount of skills to be a functional member in a group. It doesn't preclude you from opting to instead use alternative skills that provide a similar function.

Like, the general premise is you get a single target nuke or 2, an AoE or 2 and maybe some utility as "Core" skills. This means that you can function in a group (Or solo). As you can nuke down a target and maybe toss out some AoE. While having something like a DPS boost CD so you can kind of stay on par with other jobs in terms of DPS.

But if you decide to use a different single target nuke, or a different AoE, then that's fine. That's your decision. If it's a bad decision then either you'll end up being slightly less effective than you would otherwise be, or you might be massively less effective to the point of being likely to realize that (Such as if you were a BLM spamming Flare) otherwise it might just be the same as using the "Core" skills because it might just have the same functionality.

The general idea being that a BLU shouldn't feel as pressured to go and find certain spells, since they will be able to just do their job quests like any other class and attain everything that they should "Need" in order to participate in group content, just like any other class.

With the additional aspect of where they are able to make the decision to go and find additional spells to use and play with.

There are a lot of people who delight in theorycrafting ways to cheat and cheese content, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the rest and future BLU spells.

And there are equally a lot of people who can provide feedback about the functionality of skills and address when they could do with tweaking to prevent the cheesing of content.

Like, already in this thread, people have managed to look at the datamined skills and determine which skills could lead to potential cheese and then look at ways to address them.

I am willing to wait to play it and see if I find it fun. If not I'll do like I did with other things I didn't like, such as RDM, LoV and Diadem: ignore it. I think that's a viable option.

Meanwhile, part of what I'm campaigning for is the fact that this limitation is a precedent for ALL future "Limited Jobs".

So, while it's all fine and dandy for me to say "Well, I don't like playing BLU so much so I'll just ignore it" but then the issue is, what if they release a new Limited Job that I DO find incredibly fun, that I wish to play a lot and wish to be able to do all in-game content with, but I can't because BLU set the standard for Limited Jobs all having these (In my opinion, unnecessary) restrictions thrust upon them.

Also, slight thing, is it's gonna really trigger me to see on the job page a bunch of 80's and then right at the bottom, Blue Mage with a big fat 60 (As they're planning on pushing the level cap up with the next lot of spells during the first patch into Shadowbringers)

[zylo1010]

I like you. Amidst this sea of endless negativity and complaints, you act like an island of hope and optimism. I have been trying so hard not to spoil myself on the locations of the spells. I cheated a little and went through the list of spells (but not the location and mob names!) and I'm glad that I don't know most of them. Can't wait to start BLU learning parties and see how crazy we can get with BLU. Hope you have fun with BLU.

I was negative when I learned I can't main it for current content. But now I'm just excited to play it in any form.

[Blueyes]

Made something for the "BLU doesn't have a rotation" crowd:
https://imgur.com/a/aM0qhyM

There are likely some errors in here (I think thousand needles could be a GCD later in the opener, but I CBA to check), also could change based on mana costs when they come out, but the general structure is there

Edit: I can't count, there are 24 skills on here where i say theres 23 at the bottom

Indeed there are some errors, but yes, your point still stands.

Blue Mage is a lot like Bard.

• Blue Mage has to manage Off-guard and Song of Torment similar to the way a Bard manages Straight Shot and Iron Jaws.
• Blue Mage has three Primal actions that will be used at set intervals similar to a Bard managing their three songs.
• Blue Mage will spend much of their time using a single action as their filler spell similar to a Bard using Heavy Shot as filler.

Clearly, both Blue Mage and Bard have no place within the current paradigm. /s

[ReiMakoto]

Indeed there are some errors, but yes, your point still stands.

Blue Mage is a lot like Bard.

• Blue Mage has to manage Off-guard and Song of Torment similar to the way a Bard manages Straight Shot and Iron Jaws.
• Blue Mage has three Primal actions that will be used at set intervals similar to a Bard managing their three songs.
• Blue Mage will spend much of their time using a single action as their filler spell similar to a Bard using Heavy Shot as filler.

Clearly, both Blue Mage and Bard have no place within the current paradigm. /s

I know I got the swiftcast thousand needles placement wrong, but mind explaining the other errors, the only other ones I can think of is that moon flute might be a dps gain to use when all of the ogcd primal abilities line up, aka the opener (this is just going off of potency though), and the fact that I put high voltage in the opener for no particular other than I think it will have a lower mana cost than the other 130 potency skills, unless i've missed some skills.

[Dualgunner]

I'm just going to blanket say that if you're disappointed with something in this game, just go make your own game. Show SE how it's done. They're just doing their best to please their players, and I'm really sick and freaking tired of all the complaining.

I think this post deserves a special spot in the annals of the forum history. It's such a powerfully fallacious thing, really something to be admired. If you're tired of the complaining, make new forums where complaining isn't allowed; show SE how it's done.

[Blueyes]

(...)

Oh certainly. I've been trying to wait on discussion those finer details until we get some first-hand experience with Blue Mage, but I can point out a few things that I've noticed.

Fair warning. I'm going to ramble quite a lot.

Firstly, a few quick corrections.

• Sharpened Knife deals unaspected damage rather than slashing damage.
• Aquabreath and Bad Breath are mentioned as spells to cast when weaving OGCD, but those spells have a 2 second cast time which doesn't leave much room for weaving without clipping.
• Peculiar Light is also mentioned as a spell to cast when weaving OGCD, but Peculiar Light itself is actually an OGCD (with a 1 second cast time, oddly enough).
• Glass Dance deals magic (ice) damage so it should be included within Peculiar Light.

I suspect you may be looking at a certain document for information that I myself had come across with some details that didn't look quite right when I saw it. For the best accuracy, I think Garland Tools is the place to look. I had trouble finding a clean list of every spell under the contents of patch 4.5 so what I ended up doing was a manual search for every spell.

With that out of the way, it looks like Bristle is used early on as setup for Song of Torment, but you may or may not run into a weird hiccup. Peculiar Light is an OGCD, but it's considered a spell and might eat the Bristle buff. It remains to be seen whether spells that don't deal damage will eat Bristle. It depends on how they code it. Like how the use of Scathe won't eat Swiftcast, but that wasn't always the case, if my memory is correct. The current setup would be preferable, but it remains to be seen if the game will allow it.

It's tricky to fit Song of Torment, Shock Strike, Glass Dance, and Eruption within Peculiar Light without clipping the OCG. It may be most comfortable to achieve that by double-weaving after a Swiftcast spell. But even then, it's tight. Unfortunately, the only native instant spell that Blue Mage has right now is Flying Sardine, of all things, with its potency of 10. The next best thing would be spells with a 1 second cast time. Of those, Bristle, Fire Angon, Flying Frenzy, and Sharpened Knife seem to be among the better options. Flying Frenzy is mainly mentioned due to melee range being required for 1000 Needles. Flying Frenzy can be followed by Swiftcast to setup 1000 Needles.

I decided to try putting together a revised opener. Odds are it still won't be ideal, but I'll put it out there anyway.

If Bristle + Peculiar Light works:



If Bristle + Peculiar Light doesn't works:

[Blueyes]

As far as the Aqua Breath into High Voltage combo goes, that would mainly be used for the 30 second paralysis while dealing decent damage in the process. (Mind Blast also applies a 30 second paralysis, but its potency is 110 rather than 130.)

If the target can be paralyzed, then the Aqua Breath into High Voltage combo would be the way to go, at least for the initial application, but if the target can't be paralyzed, I would recommend using Glower instead. Glower also has 130 potency at a cost of 240 MP which is the same as both Aqua Breath and High Voltage. Repeatedly casting Glower has the same damage output and MP consumption as the Aqua Breath into High Voltage combo, but without the risk of enemies dying or going immune before Aqua Breath applies every tick of its DoT. Also worth noting is that Glower has a longer range than Aqua Breath or High Voltage. 15y versus 8y and 12y respectively which gives Glower an edge in terms of ease of use while dealing with mechanics.

Overall, Glower appears to be BLU's strongest filler spell at level 50. A lot of BLU's damaging spells are surprisingly inexpensive. There are MP costs tied to all of its OCGD actions which bumps up its MP consumption, but even with those taken into account, it still looks like Blue Mage can get away with spamming Glower while consuming roughly the same or maybe even less MP than a Red Mage.

[ReiMakoto]

Snip

Ahh thanks for the clarification, I didn't think about Garond tools, i was using a reddit spreadsheet and gamerescape. Also are you sure peculiar light functions like an OGCD and not like bards emperial arrow, a GCD with a CD, but I must say I didn't even think about it eating bristle. Even with the clipping I still thing aqua into eruption at the end of that opener would be ideal, less clipping and more potency than knife