Dev Team, you screwed up.

[Elkanah]

i'm 46 and i feel the same, the damage of water cannon is ridicule.... 200 with off guard, if you use britle and peculiar light it can reach almost 400 damage.... on level 37 monster it take more of 10 cast for kill it....

I get the feeling that brittle should've been an instant cast move like a normal action. Gives potency rewards for damage for 30s or something like a CD would. Having to constantly cast brittle + attack seems pointless when taking too much damage (or some) in between.

[Tempest222]

How is this different to any other content?

Well obviously not all, but most other content I’m the game doesn’t require you to have done it immediately at launch in order to have any chance of actually doing it. New players can amd do start th game all the time amd are not locked out of actually playing the game and progressing through all the now outdated content just because they started late. Anyone can pick up any other job in the game at any time and play it to it’s fullest without having to worry about general lack of comunity interest in said job. Blue mage seems to really only be viable with a party of other blue mages, all with the same goal of farming a certain ability, and when the pool of players looking to do that content dies out, so does any new players chance of playing blue mage. No other job has that problem.

[Phoenicia]

I get the feeling that brittle should've been an instant cast move like a normal action. Gives potency rewards for damage for 30s or something like a CD would. Having to constantly cast brittle + attack seems pointless when taking too much damage (or some) in between.

Don't even do that. Casting a GCD to increase the next GCD by only 50% is DPS loss. 2 GCDs is double 1 GCD, not 1.5 GCD.....

[Kalise]

I get the feeling that brittle should've been an instant cast move like a normal action. Gives potency rewards for damage for 30s or something like a CD would. Having to constantly cast brittle + attack seems pointless when taking too much damage (or some) in between.

Bristle is so out of place in its current iteration. It would need to be oCGD and instant to be any use.

Or if it was to continue being a cast to then boost a skill, BLU would need to have a powerful skill with a cooldown that they want to maximize the potency of when it's available (Provided that a 50% boost to its potency is equal or better than the potency of spending that GCD on a filler). However, this is not the case either.

So essentially, much like many of the current skills, it's just a useless thing to make people pre-release go "OMG BLU has 49 skills, so complicated! Can't be allowed in party content!"

Really, BLU has only like what 6 skills worth actually using for the most part? Bad Breath for the dmg down, White Wind, Off Guard, Peculiar Light and then whatever skill you're spamming for your DPS output (1000 Needles/Ram's Voice/Glower/Drill Cannons/The Look)

With side effect of Mighty Guard being useful while slogging your way from 1000 Needles to something that scales damage...

Like, maybe Song of Torment and the primal skills are also decent, if you can get them...

[wereotter]

Bristle is so out of place in its current iteration. It would need to be oCGD and instant to be any use.

Or if it was to continue being a cast to then boost a skill, BLU would need to have a powerful skill with a cooldown that they want to maximize the potency of when it's available (Provided that a 50% boost to its potency is equal or better than the potency of spending that GCD on a filler). However, this is not the case either.

So essentially, much like many of the current skills, it's just a useless thing to make people pre-release go "OMG BLU has 49 skills, so complicated! Can't be allowed in party content!"

Really, BLU has only like what 6 skills worth actually using for the most part? Bad Breath for the dmg down, White Wind, Off Guard, Peculiar Light and then whatever skill you're spamming for your DPS output (1000 Needles/Ram's Voice/Glower/Drill Cannons/The Look)

With side effect of Mighty Guard being useful while slogging your way from 1000 Needles to something that scales damage...

Like, maybe Song of Torment and the primal skills are also decent, if you can get them...

Personally I wouldn't even count 1,000 Needles once you hit level 50 and have your gear. The cast time on the spell means you're immobile and you do about as much damage spamming The Look in that amount of time. I only use 1,000 Needles at this point when I have swiftcast to go with it, though once I get both I'm willing to bet alternating Ram's Voice and Dragon's Voice might be the way to go.

[Kalise]

Personally I wouldn't even count 1,000 Needles once you hit level 50 and have your gear. The cast time on the spell means you're immobile and you do about as much damage spamming The Look in that amount of time. I only use 1,000 Needles at this point when I have swiftcast to go with it, though once I get both I'm willing to bet alternating Ram's Voice and Dragon's Voice might be the way to go.

Well, 1000 Needles is still the de-facto 20-50 skill. It's also the primary skill that's actually solo attainable while Ram/Dragon Voice, Glower, The Look, Flame Thrower and Plaincracker all require a dungeon in order to obtain.

Meaning, that a solo player's only alternative is Drill Cannons.

[Palladiamors]

Oh thank goodness, I was afraid I was the only one who had an issue with this mess.

Now before I begin, keep in mind that Blue Mage's Maim and Mend goes up to 50% as opposed to 30%. No, that doesn't make up for the extremely meh damage of Water Cannon.

But that's not why I am here. No, I am here to talk about a 'solo' class needing dungeons to even finish its job quests. Tam Tamara gets a bit of a pass because you can solo it with 1000 needles fairly easily. Arum Vale? Well we have a squadron that can go there, right? Nope! You can't use duty finder, you can't use squadrons, the only way for you to do this dungeon ((At this point, obviously that will change with the level updates)) is to find a party. For the solo class. Before you can even do the Masked Carnival. One of the main talking points of the class.

Further, there is NO reason this class couldn't have been balanced for use in duties. All it would have taken was altering how certain skills work in instances ((Lookin' at you, White Wind)) and making bosses immune to more egregious effects and done. Yeah, you're going to have certain people who ask you to have certain skills but thats how it is for EVERY class.

This makes me really, REALLY nervous for future 'limited classes'. They mentioned beastmaster and if they do it anything like this...well. At least I had this forewarning.

[Elkanah]

The least they could've done, if we couldn't use duties, was to put the TRUST system out now with BLU, so you can learn them in the dungeon instances without needing to gather a group of people to learn spells or clear the content like regular duties and other jobs. But no, we have to wait till ShB. I'd much rather have the trust system and know what it's about, and skip the transfer system till after 5.0. Cause something tells me that the transfer system is gonna be a broken mess when it releases anyways, since it may cause more stress to the servers overall on its upcoming.

[Palladiamors]

The least they could've done, if we couldn't use duties, was to put the TRUST system out now with BLU, so you can learn them in the dungeon instances without needing to gather a group of people to learn spells or clear the content like regular duties and other jobs. But no, we have to wait till ShB. I'd much rather have the trust system and know what it's about, and skip the transfer system till after 5.0. Cause something tells me that the transfer system is gonna be a broken mess when it releases anyways, since it may cause more stress to the servers overall on its upcoming.

We literally have squadrons that we can use to learn at least Glower, which is needed for the job quest. But for some strange reason, allowing us to use our SOLO AI PARTY would have been broken somehow.

[Rongway]

Fire, for example, is 180 potency.

Fire is actually 324, as it's expected that you will be in Astral Fire III when you cast it.

Assuming BLU damage formulas have been tweaked so that its potencies correspond to the other casters' potencies (i.e., 100 potency BLU spell = 100 potency BLM spell for two casters in equivalent gear, without M&Mend traits) [I haven't verified that this is the case], Water Cannon would be 270 potency (Off-guard + M&M V) and Fire would be 421 (AF III + M&M II). Stone II (the highest available at 50) is 260 (if accounting for M&M II).

So Water Cannon is probably actually much worse off than you initially suggested.