Blue Mage Spell/Skills Feedback (Limited Job Focus)

[Shougun]

About the only change I'd make is for Loom to have a longer range and shorter cast time. Aqua Breath should probably be buffed, too.

I'm really happy with Blue Mage.

Loom having longer range and shorter cast time would be nice, I wanted it to esuna self just to spice up the use a little (hence the extra mp cost too). Plus it sounded about right that if you could teleport yourself that you might be able to shake off some elements too :P.

As for being happy with blue, I've had some fun and I've had a lot of questions lol. First earning 1k needle was a huge high, and revisiting all the other spells felt really bad afterwards though (to me). Which is why I'd love to see blue mage get a buff in many places (without buffing 1k needles ofc), because.. they're supposed to be off from DF due to balance reasons, I don't want to ever be thinking "bet my level 50 black mage could kill this faster" lol.

I'm already wanting a BLU lvl cap increase to learn more stuff and poke at more things with it

Initially I felt most of the BLU damaging spells were lackluster while leveling. However getting some decent gear at lv 50 and started doing duties to get more pages filled I started seeing things like combo'd dragon voice reaching around 5K which is a bit nuts for an AoE at 50 if I remember what numbers looked like at that level on other jobs. That lackluster feeling while leveling may just be due to 1000 needles.

MP wise it feels like theres no need to worry unless you start spamming white wind. Passive regen seems to handle everything else so far.

IMO currently I wouldn't mind a few things in regards to BLU and maybe limited jobs in general for the future.

1. I get the idea lore wise but it still feels off to me to have a "weapon" that literally has no stats.

2. I'd actually like limited jobs to be at the same cap as other jobs but always start at lv 1. Exclude them from general DF and roulettes, however let them into certain things like solo instance MSQs, diadem and eureka.

3. I feel like a large amount of BLU's current offensive kit is going to be a bit moot later as it either has low potencies while applying status effects or is reliant on a status effect to combo. It will work on higher level "trash" mobs but boss/miniboss types later are probably going to be immune to a lot of it.

Yeah I saw the ram / dragon combo and the numbers had a bit of a "oh my, that's nice" but the problem imo was that "oh my" wasn't common enough, if Blue is locked out of duty then I think a lot of Blue Mage's kit should be looking like Ram/Dragon (of course not with the same exact mechanics though). Didn't feel like my stick was nearly as big as it should be for all the restrictions in play lol.

1. Even if you could overmeld intelligence materia onto it that'd be better than nothing lol. Feels quite "but y tho", I agree. Or you know they could add a mini-relic sort of quest so that you could add stats to it that way. I get that they didn't want to design 100 walking canes for blue mage but nothing feels off as you said .

2. Add squadron and trust system to that, and I agree. Blue Mage at least how I envisioned enjoying a limited blue mage would be a job that allows me to do any and all old content the most efficiently and hilariously, walking into Ultima EX instance and making a new broom out of that shiny armor. Eureka being another good example of letting players go in and enjoy content that might perish otherwise. I was hoping to see a chocobo buff that allows the treasure chests to be done solo via this sort of thread here, but I could also see blue mage being allowed into the content (it's not exactly dead yet either but I'd prefer to do it solo).

3. Absolutely, that's a main reason you see all the combos I made in the OP - many of which are not just potency buffs but also many combos have overlapping compontents such that there are multiple ways to use one ability, was hoping that it would lead to people trying different combos and each time they get a new spell people have to really think about their interactions. Do you want another fire spell because fire angon is going room wide insane for 25 seconds... or do you rebuild your whole kit for dots and take that new water spell that causes all dots to apply their damage at once?

I would rather spells just combo into one another rather than rely on a debuff that the enemy might be immune to or has had diminishing returns. I also don't like the Ram Voice > Dragon Voice cause it forces you to be right next to the mob then run away from the mob. You can't use petrification > drill cannons on bosses. You can do the Dropsy > High Voltage but it only increases your potency to like... 200... which I guess is still better than 130. I just think they need to make the spell combos more worth while, more of them, and less reliant on status effects. Also I don't see a reason for the Final Bosses to be immune to your spells if you can't only go in premades.

That's fair ram and dragon require funny movement, although I believe I didn't suggest any combo that relied on that part so you should be good from me lol. Good point on petrification on bosses! Actually reminded me that I need to buff the potency on high voltage in my list, thanks lol (130 is a bit .. "hokay, great now what?").

I think final bosses being immune would be fine if the rest of blue mage's kit was brought up to sufficent power levels. I mean I prefer that blue mage is a damage powerhouse, taking a solo title in any content that Blue Mage can enter, but if they don't want to do that then yeah I guess I agree I'm not sure anything needs to be immune to things like that. Besides perhaps scripts may break and boss AI becomes dead lol.

What I would like to make some spells more useful is for Off-Guard to trigger an elemental weakness on mobs. For example, using Off-Guard on Shiva would make Fire aspected damage more powerful or automatic Direct Hits, or something...Which would also help low-manning some instances with friends even if they're not Blue Mage themselves.

Also, I think it would be more interested to have BLU gain a little less Xp from the overworld, but also share this bonus to its whole party, so that, again, you could make some leveling in the overworld with friends that might not play BLU themselves.

And I don't understand why they're restricted from things that don't use matchmaking, like the MSQ or Eureka.

Interesting, would add more flow between the carnival and other parts of the game and I do like conceptual flow. Problem might be they stopped listing monsters with elements a long time ago, but if they didn't then that might work~

Imo the unbalanced version of blue mage should only be restricted to currently relevant content, and nothing else be locked away. So yeah I agree MSQ, Eureka, any and every dungeon should be enter-able besides content that SE doesn't want a blue mage casting doom in lol.

4 things i want with blus abilities:
1.Make primal abilities free no other caster/healer has mp costing ogcds why does blu there is no need for it the cd is enough >_>
2.More single target abilities why do we have only 2 that can do any sort of dmg
3. More ability interaction the basis is there i would love to see something like you put burn on target then a wind spell gets increased dmg or something that doules buff duration but also doubles negative buff duration as well etc
4. Buff potencies please should not be hitting like a complete wet noodle for content = to its level(mostly for 3rd bosses of dungeons/trials) also single target abilities inherently weaker potency than aoes is odd to say the least

I am having fun with blu something i am glad happened as i was getting increasingly worried closer to its release 2 and 4 are the most glaring to me that need something 1 and 3 are really personal wish list

Definitely more single target combos would be nice, I mean they don't have to be combos but I liked the idea of spells interacting enough that I'd love to see that.

And yeah there are a lot of wet noodles in the blue mage arsenal lol, too many imo. There should be no noodles! haha

It would be nice if Ice spikes actually lasted longer or it's debuff happened more often. Also the combos should feel like they actually do something. One of the problems this job had in XI was with the whole older spells becoming useless and only equipped so you could get a buff or like their sleeps where a monster might resist a dark based sleep. Maybe up the learning chance for the non open world spells so that even if you have blue mages that have the spell in the party but they're helping a late bloomer learn something that's needed for a job quest they don't have to repeat the fight or whatever an absurd amount of times.

Agree, hence the big list of combos haha . Interesting idea on the blue mage, that'd be nice. Personally I think they have the % rates a bit off, seems like dungeons are rarer than open world and I'd like that to flip. It could also be because dungeons take so long that it's just a feeling that's not true lol.

I'm not sure why we even need Off Guard anyway. It's basically a Heavy Thrust. Just remove it and work in the damage bonus it gives to the basic potency of all the other spells. One less ability you need to have on your hotbar.

I think it was for the sake of single target damage but casting too many prebuffs is not something I really love doing which is why I made some of the changes to bristle and toad oil lol. (Bristle having cooldown but lasting 5 spells (30%), and toad oil being a permanent passive when equipped with more interaction potential between other spells). Not crazy about: https://youtu.be/6dxICJHd518?t=27 haha

The fact that so many mobs are immune to so many of BLU's spells is ridiculously stupid. Same with "low chance of success". Why bring them or have those spell at that point?

Are the Dev's worried they'll be overpowered? Wasn't that the stated goal of BLU?

A party of BLU's should be able to wreck things. As it is right now, they're a gimped magic job.

I think part of it might be destroying the AI, like the boss just becomes broken and doesn't have code to fix itself lol. "Oh no I've been petrified, time to give up on life now" haha.

I very dislike low chance of success spells which is why I came up with the Faze combo, where in the spells are basically guaranteed but will be put on cooldown (not a 2 hour, just long enough to be happy to see it come back). I don't mind some bossing being immune to death mechanics but I'd like to see the rest of Blue Mage get a big powerhouse buff, rather than see doom work on all bosses I mean (although if they don't buff the rest of blue mage then I'd be less sad to see that happen lol).

They can put out some decent numbers later but when considering doing content by yourself those numbers don't really seem big enough, often enough, and as many interesting decisions to make them happen (to make up for the lack of a party).

[Kaonis]

I've only gotten maybe half the spells of BLU so far, but I'm pretty disappointed with what I have.

Just a few spells I have issues with and I feel I can sufficiently comment on.

Blood Drain should restore HP. I've yet to have a situation where I need MP on BLU, maybe when I get more level 50 spells, but for an early level spell the MP gain is useless. And as a solo job BLU really needs some sort of self-heal. BLU in XI got Pollen at level 1 to help them survive, but we have no equivalent. Before White Wind I've found drain to be one of most useful spells for BLU.

Bristle is just dark arts. And it feels just as bad. I find myself not using it as much because I hate the constantly spamming of the ability between every spell. They should just make it into a buff that lasts longer or make it stronger but have a cool down. As it is its basically everything I hate with DRK dark arts spam on BLU.

They also should have added better single target damaging spells for the leveling experience if they didn't want people to just cheese it to 50. As it stands I couldn't imagine actually slow grinding to 50 with nothing more than water cannon or 1000 needles for soloing down mobs health.

[Shougun]

I've only gotten maybe half the spells of BLU so far, but I'm pretty disappointed with what I have.

Just a few spells I have issues with and I feel I can sufficiently comment on.

Blood Drain should restore HP. I've yet to have a situation where I need MP on BLU, maybe when I get more level 50 spells, but for an early level spell the MP gain is useless. And as a solo job BLU really needs some sort of self-heal. BLU in XI got Pollen at level 1 to help them survive, but we have no equivalent. Before White Wind I've found drain to be one of most useful spells for BLU.

Bristle is just dark arts. And it feels just as bad. I find myself not using it as much because I hate the constantly spamming of the ability between every spell. They should just make it into a buff that lasts longer or make it stronger but have a cool down. As it is its basically everything I hate with DRK dark arts spam on BLU.

They also should have added better single target damaging spells for the leveling experience if they didn't want people to just cheese it to 50. As it stands I couldn't imagine actually slow grinding to 50 with nothing more than water cannon or 1000 needles for soloing down mobs health.

Yeah blood drain is probably with loom in terms of the most unhelpful (loom can be nice in the carnival but beyond that is a very ... eh spell). My suggestion was to give it (blood drain) a cast speed buff when over 50% mp, just to speed up blue mage (and would definitely make it a useful spell lol, lower than 50% was a much larger return on mp). HP definitely makes conceptual sense but with some other changes I made in the list I actually thought a few more ways to get mp back might be helpful (a few changes I added are mana strong drains). I'm not against the hp idea just didn't touch upon it in the list because of other things that were suggested :3

Agreed bristle is not exciting. My suggestion was bristle has a cooldown but applies a boost to the next set of potency based spells (and is instant cast buff). Such that you weave it in once every now and then and due to how it works it'll encourage you to build a sort of free flowing rotation. Currently due to the cast time and % boost it's actually not worth casting on many spells, there are some notable exceptions though (like song of torment).

I actually grinded to 50, it wasn't that bad lol. 1k needled with some random people in northern thanalan . Although that brings me back to the "I wish the powerhouse feeling of 1k was better balanced across all abilities, it's nice feeling, but it'll die and I want to see more ability variance at the same time of it not "dying"".

[Deceptus]

I think part of it might be destroying the AI, like the boss just becomes broken and doesn't have code to fix itself lol. "Oh no I've been petrified, time to give up on life now" haha.

I very dislike low chance of success spells which is why I came up with the Faze combo, where in the spells are basically guaranteed but will be put on cooldown (not a 2 hour, just long enough to be happy to see it come back). I don't mind some bossing being immune to death mechanics but I'd like to see the rest of Blue Mage get a big powerhouse buff, rather than see doom work on all bosses I mean (although if they don't buff the rest of blue mage then I'd be less sad to see that happen lol).

They can put out some decent numbers later but when considering doing content by yourself those numbers don't really seem big enough, often enough, and as many interesting decisions to make them happen (to make up for the lack of a party).

Mobs being immune to sleep in later 50 dungeons (thanks speed runners) sucks too.

Bristle is just dark arts. And it feels just as bad. I find myself not using it as much because I hate the constantly spamming of the ability between every spell. They should just make it into a buff that lasts longer or make it stronger but have a cool down. As it is its basically everything I hate with DRK dark arts spam on BLU.
.

Bristle is bad because at 50% increase, you might as well just cast two spells instead of bristle. It's more damage without bristle.

Yeah blood drain is probably with loom in terms of the most unhelpful (loom can be nice in the carnival but beyond that is a very ... eh spell).

Throw Mind Blast in there as well.

[ReiMakoto]

Mobs being immune to sleep in later 50 dungeons (thanks speed runners) sucks too.



Bristle is bad because at 50% increase, you might as well just cast two spells instead of bristle. It's more damage without bristle.



Throw Mind Blast in there as well.

Bristle does have some good uses though, for example, bristle+ song of torment is a dps gain, and you can use bristle in the down time of a fight when a boss is untargetable for just free damage

[Metalwrath]

Water cannon and glower are both manditory for progressing in blue mage story.Obviously you get given water cannon for free at start and other you need to get in dungeon.We have water then thunder.Glower should proc after casting water cannon with some kind of bonus.

Also another other idea would be to give blue mage a spell that buffs a random element affinity with damage increase.

White wind i have mixed feelings about.It's good when you have high hp but garbage when you're hp is low and doesnt offer much survivability or a way to get your hp back up.We need some kind of seperate regen spell maybe on the job to counter balance this.
Also for the high mana cost of whitewind it should get a % chance to remove a negative debuff.I say % chance because it would be OP if it was guranteed and you could remove it off everyone in one cast.

[HiroesX81]

Ive been enjoying leveling BLU but more than that figuring out alternate methods of getting the skills. Will say that I hope when the cap increases we get more diversity on which mobs teach us what. HW areas are really big so would be good to utilize them as such! I will say I hope that even tho I enjoy the exp boost I would like it to not be as strong in the next 10 levels? like juuust a tiny little miniscule bit!

I also think some of the earlier skills need a potency buff. Being reliant on only 1 spell ( You all know which one I mean ) for most of the leveling til 40 is kind of a drag imo. Water Cannon and some of the other ones become useless very early and id like to be able to use them more. That being said I cant wait for the next update. Want to learn more spells and the lore behind each has been excellent

[Burningskull]

snip

The problem with Off Guard being fore single target damage is that almost every one of your spells is AoE. Sure it's good on bosses. But that's about the only thing good on bosses.

[RitsukoSonoda]

A random thought that came to mind.

BLU essentially has access to every element since spells come from enemies.

Maybe for BLU revive the elemental wheel from FFXI with updates to existing spells or the addition of new ones that would allow possibly a perpetual combo wheel of sorts rotating spells based on element they are classified under?

Granted mostly elemental resistances and mechanics were pretty much phased out to simplify the game as a whole but they could still have a niche for specific jobs like BLU to add depth to the gameplay.

[Shougun]

Water cannon and glower are both manditory for progressing in blue mage story.Obviously you get given water cannon for free at start and other you need to get in dungeon.We have water then thunder.Glower should proc after casting water cannon with some kind of bonus.

Also another other idea would be to give blue mage a spell that buffs a random element affinity with damage increase.

White wind i have mixed feelings about.It's good when you have high hp but garbage when you're hp is low and doesnt offer much survivability or a way to get your hp back up.We need some kind of seperate regen spell maybe on the job to counter balance this.
Also for the high mana cost of whitewind it should get a % chance to remove a negative debuff.I say % chance because it would be OP if it was guranteed and you could remove it off everyone in one cast.

A glower water cannon combo sounds neat, do you have a specific interaction in mind or just like a potency bonus?

For the elemental wheel its funny because someone else I'm responding to in this post has mentioned that and as well Reynhart did, so it's definitely a theme on a few people's minds. My concern is if they stopped asigning elements to monsters long ago, in which case the data might not be there (could be added ofc), but if it's already there then it could be well worth a look into a wheel bonus/mechanic of some sort for non-carnival content~

I agree there should be something else for surviability beyond casting whitewind early enough for it to be helpful. I had a thought of a shark skill and that fish toss skill combo'ing for a decent potency self heal, but that's honestly not even available yet (till the shark skill is added lol). Obviously we have the bat drain skill, might have something in that as well. Something besides white wind would be nice though, agreed.

We do need a debuff skill as well, white wind might work but you'd have to imagine that any party with more than one blue is basically debuff free then lol (white wind being aoe skill). I was aiming for loom to be an instant cast spell that removes two own debuffs, just as a sort of you teleported while shaking off some negative energies in the void sort of skill but I can imagine there might be a few options to remove debuffs as we move forward (there is none however right now, that should probably be fixed yeah?).

Ive been enjoying leveling BLU but more than that figuring out alternate methods of getting the skills. Will say that I hope when the cap increases we get more diversity on which mobs teach us what. HW areas are really big so would be good to utilize them as such! I will say I hope that even tho I enjoy the exp boost I would like it to not be as strong in the next 10 levels? like juuust a tiny little miniscule bit!

I also think some of the earlier skills need a potency buff. Being reliant on only 1 spell ( You all know which one I mean ) for most of the leveling til 40 is kind of a drag imo. Water Cannon and some of the other ones become useless very early and id like to be able to use them more. That being said I cant wait for the next update. Want to learn more spells and the lore behind each has been excellent

Interesting desire to lower exp gain haha, didn't expect to see that. With the current potency balance I'd prefer it didn't take longer, but if they made other skills stronger so kills not relying on "that one skill" then I'd be okay with it~ As for diversity I think that's just a matter of time but of course we should definitely travel all over .

10000% on the potency buff though, that one spell is actually a fun part of the job until you get sick of casting only one spell - then it's like "I wish the rest of my kit justified all these restrictions, cause that'd be kind of cool". Yes of course there are some silly numbers of debuff skills, justifying some of the restrictions- but it's not like that helps you kill stuff much faster. There were many occasions as leveling I was thinking "this would be so much faster on a normal job, even if it was synced too". Which imo I shouldn't ever feel that with Blue Mage. That's why I suggested the building/mounting pressure idea for water cannon (boosts the potency quite a bit, also even more when combo'd with the levithan skill).

The problem with Off Guard being fore single target damage is that almost every one of your spells is AoE. Sure it's good on bosses. But that's about the only thing good on bosses.

Hmm, what if off-guard rewarded you with a 50% faster cast rate (for the next spell) when a spell hits that debuffed target and reduced the cooldown of all standard spells GCD like the MCH rapid fire mechanic. Single target and aoe alike would be rewarded then. Better than gaining 50% damage on a low potency aoe at least lol. Also could make certain longer spells become weirdly viable, or if there were unique rapid fire combos normally hard to pull off - perhaps adding some diversity options as we get more spells. Modify the cooldown so it isn't always up either, making when to use it more of a thought .

A random thought that came to mind.

BLU essentially has access to every element since spells come from enemies.

Maybe for BLU revive the elemental wheel from FFXI with updates to existing spells or the addition of new ones that would allow possibly a perpetual combo wheel of sorts rotating spells based on element they are classified under?

Granted mostly elemental resistances and mechanics were pretty much phased out to simplify the game as a whole but they could still have a niche for specific jobs like BLU to add depth to the gameplay.

Third time I've seen the suggestion now haha . The good and bad of course of a system like this is you'd need to change spells out more often to be optimal, good to increase diverse spell usage and bad if you had a kit you loved but it's useless against a monster due to element. Certainly taking that element... of elements from carnival and bringing it through tothe rest of the content would add some harmony to the concept of the job but I also agree your concern might be an issue with it (may, may not? lol).