BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[Akonyl]

Finally having access to the list of BLU skills, it seems like the excuses of overpowered abilities (which they already have certain bosses immune to) were just an excuse for the actual issue, that they just weren't able to make an interesting rotation.

Some abilities were tied to others (namely chimera skills + primal abilities), so they're not totally averse to the idea of making combos with abilities from different enemies, they just didn't do anything with it. So instead we just get a bunch of abilities that do 120 (or 130!) potency in different aoe shapes.

No reason they couldn't have made a few easy-to-get singular abilities that were "good enough" (like early DRG impulse drive spam), but that if you gathered a bunch of other skills you'd begin to get an actual rotation together that would yield total higher potency.

[BlitzAceRush]

Now having gotten BLU to 50 and tried out getting some primal abilities and messing around with it, my opinion is that BLU is too conflicted to be anything currently.

Given how bosses are mostly immune to their attacks BLU could have been given some more solid abilities, buffed up and made a normal job with the carnival as an addition. Right now while you may be able to utterly destroy trash mobs, bosses pretty much laugh at you, if we were back in the 2.0 days BLU would be shunned from pretty much all content and would be begging for buffs. I felt useless going after those primal abilities, pretty much not even really contributing just getting carried.

They need to commit to a path for Limited jobs because right now it feels like their trying too hard to walk a line that's just leaving them feeling lacklustre.
Either, balance them, give them some core skills and let them function as standard jobs with some fun bells and whistles or just throw off the chains, let them be busted, two shot primal's, solo raids and just be monsters of the content their allowed to do, let them earn their limited status.
Because right now, the only way they're earning it is that you'd not want to subject others to having to carry them in the duty finder.

BLU should be able to solo or with just other BLU's do everything their allowed to do, and well enough for it to feel fun and worth it over just getting a max level normal job to carry them, if limited jobs are going to work they need to feel mighty in the box they've been confined to.

[Tiraelina]

When I come away from playing BLU to 35 and reading things like the experience gain notice...

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...19f12c9b8b10f7

Blue Mages gain increased experience!
We also increased your companions experience gain to entice people to play with them!
...
Oh no! Too many people are doing exactly what we intended using their companions with Blue Mage!

There's an analogue for the design behind BLU in here somewhere. Either because of the XP gains or outlier skills we ended up with a knee capped job. Sure is fun needing to get carried by a friend there SE, all for the goal of doing solo content...

[ReiMakoto]

Snip

What I find interesting, is blu's core design actually lends itself to group play really quite well. DPS wise, even with the primal abilities its still not top of the pack, however as a support, its actually really good. Peculiar Light could make for interesting meta caster parties, (i mean maybe toned down cos 30% is whew), and it fits an interesting niche of a shit tonne of aoe splash damage, so in a situation with an add spawn, if you time it to get off guard on the add, you could still keep uptime on the main boss as well with splash from the primal skills/ aoe filler. I could see it very easily being in the meta balance as the ninja of casters, low personal deeps, with an invaluable strong magic "Trick attack", as well as bad breath as an on demand reprisal. Its so very nearly there as balanced job idea that its baffling it became this... thing. I'm still a very strong advocate of a "core" BLU list of spells that once you've learned and equipped, you're allowed in DF and raids.

[BlitzAceRush]

What I find interesting, is blu's core design actually lends itself to group play really quite well. DPS wise, even with the primal abilities its still not top of the pack, however as a support, its actually really good. Peculiar Light could make for interesting meta caster parties, (i mean maybe toned down cos 30% is whew), and it fits an interesting niche of a shit tonne of aoe splash damage, so in a situation with an add spawn, if you time it to get off guard on the add, you could still keep uptime on the main boss as well with splash from the primal skills/ aoe filler. I could see it very easily being in the meta balance as the ninja of casters, low personal deeps, with an invaluable strong magic "Trick attack", as well as bad breath as an on demand reprisal. Its so very nearly there as balanced job idea that its baffling it became this... thing. I'm still a very strong advocate of a "core" BLU list of spells that once you've learned and equipped, you're allowed in DF and raids.

I agree, they can work as a full job, more work was done to that end than we thought, it's either that or go nuts with them being limited, let them feel like the biggest baddest fish in their limited pond. Or let them out of it.

[Awful]

I gave up farming the Primal Spells and just did the Carnival, all I did was use Bristle > Off-Guard > Moonflute > Peculiar Light > Final Sting and get a crit or DH crit and you can win every Act in a second.

Such riveting design.

Oh yeah Dooms a good trophy prize it doesn't affect bosses and rarely works thanks SE now I have no reason to do the Primal fights unless I wanna have them for novelty.

[Reynhart]

Like, in most if not all FFs where you have Blue Magic and instant kill abilities, bosses and important mobs are immune anyway.

You can cheese several bosses in offline FFs with BLU (or something else) but it doesn't really matter because there's no balance to focus on. But it was still fun to turn Garula into a Frog, use Moonflute on another to kill it in one hit after, of use exploder on a BLU boss so that he will use it back and kill itself.

I'll simply quote myself from another thread about BLU for matched content.

The reason BLU is excluded from matchmaking is not (at least "not only") for its potencies, but the uncertainty of its setup. You could technically end up with a BLU that didn't learn any of the spell or simply set them "bad". By excluding it, it actually protects people from being paired with "bad" BLUs.

On top of that, you'd also have a very different end result between a BLU lvl 18 in Sastasha and a BLU lvl50, that learned all the EX primal spells, synced 18 in the same Sastasha, even if both players play the job perfectly.

[Reinha]

Its so very nearly there as balanced job idea that its baffling it became this... thing. I'm still a very strong advocate of a "core" BLU list of spells that once you've learned and equipped, you're allowed in DF and raids.

I completely agree. The Active Set saving function for skills could be used to force BLU to have 24 predetermined skills before queuing for any content they are currently banned from. A "Dungeon Set" where the skills have already been placed but show up as question marks until they have been unlocked. The spells could also have a minimum level when used as part of the Dungeon Set, so BLU has about the same amount of spells as other jobs when synched in the DF.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

I completely agree. The Active Set saving function for skills could be used to force BLU to have 24 predetermined skills before queuing for any content they are currently banned from. A "Dungeon Set" where the skills have already been placed but show up as question marks until they have been unlocked.

I also agree with this. I would get behing the idea of "Advanced Jobs" as someone already suggested, as in "this job does not level and learn skills the same as others and requires you to put a little bit more effort into unlocking the things you need to go into the DF", so that people who want to level it know what they're getting into (and content like Masked Carnival would be a "reward" for leveling a more complicated job). If a job that has to be balanced like the others AND has a horizontal progression requires a lot of work I would be fine if we got only one job like that in an expansion instead of 2 or 3 regular ones.

[Jandor]

It's annoying because they could have made gathering these high end primal skills a BLU mini-game in itself.

More elemental skills, a whole range of fire spells for example, and if you queue as a solo BLU for Shiva Ex then elemental weaknesses and strengths are loaded in as well. A "default" 50 BLU isn't OP against Shiva, but loaded out with fire spells you've collected, you could do it.

Could have possibly put a cool spin on some old fights.

Just to add to my own previous post. Elements could have been something cool to apply to BLU in general, when you're using the job a little symbol showing an enemies elemental alignment appears next to their name, clearing duties solo as a BLU then becomes a matter of building a load out for dealing with elemental strengths and weaknesses of the mobs in it.

So it would/could be OP, but it's not brute force OP, it's building a deliberately OP skill set in order to clear content solo.

Solo BLU can do more on its own, it justifies its limited job restriction, and BLU's with friends can carry on getting carried to abilities.

I mean, I'd prefer a real job, but as others have said: if it's to be limited, take full advantage of that limit.