Alright, I Did It. [Blue mage Review]

[LeoLupinos]

I'm glad BLU has the majority or the low % learn in instanced content. Trying to learn with overworld mob was hell. Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

[Kabooa]

I'm glad BLU has the majority or the low % learn in instanced content. Trying to learn with overworld mob was hell. Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

Because everyone else uses Duty Finder, and odds are, the Blue Mages have conscripted a level 70 friend to run them.

[Kalise]

Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

Because, for BLU, you have to specifically and personally put together a group that wants to farm the same dungeon/trial over and over and over until you get your 5% learn chance proc.

While, for the rest of the game, you just queue up whenever and get auto-matched, no fuss. You can spam the same dungeon as much as you want and you'll just keep getting new people matched with you, there's no need to find 3 other people who also want to just spam that one dungeon.

This isn't to mention the fact that most of BLU's actually decent skills are ones that are locked behind RNG in Dungeons. Ram's Breath and Glower are the core damaging skills for BLU. But in order to get them, you have to grind through the dungeons with just 1000 Needles. Which is not a particularly fun or engaging experience, spamming 1 skill for kind of mediocre damage (By that level, 38-50, 6s for 1000 damage is not very good. Let alone how frustrating it is to then have to move to avoid mechanics and restart your 6s cast...)

All this, when BLU was kept out of the normal systems and touted as a "Solo Experience".

[zuzu-bq]

I very much agree with most of the problems you presented there. And I come here to bring my own toughts on how BLU was implemented.

The Pros, what I love about it:
• The job is very fun, you can do so much and having most of the spells have the same potency was a great idea to let players have freedom to cast whatever they want in any order and still do similar amounts of damage.
• Populating the overworld was great, I haven't seen this many people running around maps outside of expansion launches since FATEs were relevant for EXP in ARR.
• A different job to play the game with and an incentive to do level 50 things sync'd for fun with new players.
• Going from solo drops of ATMAs and other specific things like Light on Eureka and many of the farming low chance gets to a party drop is amazing. It felt awful to abandon your friends or be abandoned on those other solo drop chances and now it all feels like a party acomplishment you can cherish your victory together and walk to the next spell of your checklist as a team.
• The future possibilities of new spells later on.

Conflicting toughts, they're mostly positive and my rants on what could be even better:
• A different concept of leveling worked really well until BLU hit the same wall the ARR which is around the 40ish until 50. The structure of BLU leveling is very well tought early on, many skills to gather at early levels of enemies so you can basically gain EXP while doing so and have fun experimenting the new ability while gaining EXP. But around the EXP wall of ARR level curve you basically get to hunt the Voices from Cutter's Cry at 38 and from there you've nothing new to go learn if you've been hunting spells (as you should) until 47's Aurum Vale. I was trying to avoid the famous Power Level strat that has been in the game since forever until I hit that wall honestly. While I had a great time leveling without it with friends, feeling like my only resort to reach AV's level was power leveling felt a bit like the purpose of BLU leveling was defeated for a brief while.
• Which leads me into my second point. The job was presented as a solo experience, which as the OP said is far from truth. Gathering with friends or even random players throught PF to level and catch new spells are the best ways to progress as a BLU mage. This isn't a game design issue, it is more of a presentation issue. They marketed the job wrongly in that, which can led intop pre-launch disappointment for those who wanted a multiplayer experience and a launch disappointment for those who expected more of a solo experience. At the end, the progression is a very fun multiplayer experience while the carnival is a very satisfying solo experience. The implementation on that was good, the presentation pre-launch bad.
• While I understand why BLU can't do Palace of the Dead (mostly on EXP gain and how they learn spells I'd assume). I'm very sad to see BLU can't do PvP either, which I'd assume to be because of EXP only. Would be fun to see what spells they'd pick for BLU PvP kit while shaking the game a bit with an entire new job. But I think to do so they'd have to chose to remove EXP from it. But about this all what I mean is that BLU seems a very fun job top play in these two sets of content which may sadly never happen for reasons I understand very well.
• Two suicide spells too early on can make players frustrated when they learn you can't learn spells when you die. Specially one of them, being Final Sting, having you to fight a Hornet that will most likely kill you with the spell you want to see and can't interrupt. While I haven't had issues with this myself, I've seen it lead to frustration for others.
• No Limit Break. Seriously, why? I can't even find a reason behind this one. Not a problem really, just weird.

The Cons, what I hate about it, not many thiings but enough to have me pissed about it:
• Your bread and butter spell until you reach very close to max level is the one and only 1000 Needles, everything else is too weak or straight useless. While it was fun to toy around with it, having it to be the solution to everything got a bit stale and it already became a joke around twitter.
• FATEs don't give you extra EXP like world mobs do. Quite weird, specifically having FATE enemies not having the BLU multiplier on them, specially when some few spells can be learnt by FATE variations of some monsters.
• Having a small chance to learn a spell on some dungeon final bosses seems good on paper. But in practice, dungeons have long runs and the best way to do those and primal spells is to have someone undersize carry it for you. Seems like this defeats the purpose of going BLU and toying with the job to learn new spells. If the drop rate was higher people would feel more comfortable to do full BLU parties for those.
• While BLU's tanking abilities can ruin any regular run of content if a player is clueless or malicious enough, the job itself doesn't break ARR content (RDM's ridiculous potencies break ARR content more than BLU can do it really) so I can't see why it is gutted from random matching on the Duty Finder, specially it all being 4-year old dungeons, raids and trials.

In the end, the many good things of BLU outweight the bads for me. I had tons of fun and I can't wait for the next wave of new spells to learn. And in special, as a player that started during the 2.0 patch, going back to ARR zones and fights is a bliss. There is so much cool stuff on them that just gets ignored by many of us nowadays, myself included.

[Sylvain]

I'm glad BLU has the majority or the low % learn in instanced content. Trying to learn with overworld mob was hell. Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

The problem is that some spell just have ridiculously low %chance to be learned and most content can't be solo'd. Which IS a big problem for a job that is meant to be solo.
I should be able to solo (or easily duo at least) all the lv 50 dungeons with a BLU friend quick enough to make the farming fun.

This is currently not the case, we are simply too weak to do so and having 1 70 carry 3 BLU is the most effective way to learn spells. (which is dull for everyone)

Primordial also don't help, 5% chance is very very low.
Like, "on average" it will take 20 runs, that's a lot, and I feel sorry for those who'll run 50+ primordial

The main post review is, in my opinion, very good and actually quite neutral.
There was no "I wanted it to be X ways", it was a critic on what was advertised, a solo job with combo skills

It is a solo job (masked carnival) but the mean to acquire too many spells (half the book, required to complete the solo content) isn't solo. Grouping should be an option, and being carried by a lv 70 shouldn't be the best way to complete the book (nor to level)
There are spell combo, but most are weaker than spamming a stronger version. This could easily be adressed by simply buffing potency, but at the current moment, it's combo are weak thus uninteresting. (Boosting the combo potency could help BLU solo content)

Having a few spell locked behind group is fine, like the primordial spells. Heck, they could even promote BLU grouping by increasing the chance of acquiring a spell the more BLU there is in a party.
Like a stackable 5% per BLU in a party. See, this would be fine, because it wouldn't be half the book, and doing with other BLU would be better than doing it with 70's

The marking is also honest imo. 6/10
It could be better, definitely, but it's not also a total failure, I'm still having fun, I believe most people had some fun until they started seeing the glaring issue with what was posted.

It is important to give good (and neutral) feedback so the devs can adjust.

If everyone complain "you say it's solo but I have to party/be carried for half the book, that's not solo!" then they can adjust for the next tier (or simply update and boost BLU's spell potency)
If everyone complain that there are too many similar spells and combo aren't strong enough, they know it's something that needs to be adressed.

[Ceallach]

I didn't read the entire thread, but I would like to point out Aqua Breath into High Voltage is 260 potency overall and includes 30 seconds of paralysis. If you need the paralysis more than the damage, this is your combo over the Voices because the Dragon's Voice releases your victims from the deep freeze. In comparison, the Dragon's Voice only inflicts 9 seconds of paralysis, and then only 10% of the time.