Thank you SE for...

[Fyce]

Ok, but I fail to see how this job is designed more for solo than any other class....aside from having solo content designed for it...which you could argue is just expanded content similar to job quests... I think other classes are better at soloing... like summoner.

This job can EXP solo better than any other job. This job has better tools to do undersized content in solo than any other job (at the same level), even SMN. This job as strictly solo content specially designed for it... that you put "aside" for some reasons, arguing that it's just glorified job quests.

If you don't see why it's true to say that this job can mostly be enjoyed solo, I really don't know what else to tell you.

It kind of does when "designed for solo" is coupled with "not suited for parties". Given these two statements together makes forcing BLUs into party content to be a curious decision at best, and a mistake born out of laziness to make proper content for the class at worst.

It is "designed for solo play", as most of the job can be enjoyed solo. It is also "not suited for parties" (implying "regular parties") as the balance of the job is completly off.
If it was supposed to be a solo job exclusively, they wouldn't mention party play in the following slides. Stop cherry picking stuff while ignoring everything else that was said.

Also, if this slide is such a problem, what you'll get is SE saying "sorry it wasn't clear enough, but we didn't mean that the job was exclusively solo". And that would achieves nothing, good job.

The least they can take is fair criticism at their design choices.

Yes, and saying "this powerpoint slide was wrong", is not "fair criticism" of the job, and will achieve nothing. Asking for the job to be more "solo friendly" simply because a powerpoint slide mentionned solo play is ridiculous. That's what I'm saying.

And since you label myself as a white knight, when I'm actually not defending SE at all -I'm doing the opposite, in fact, but people are too stubborn to see it-, allows me to label you as a hater without much consideration either.

And some dense people think that "By forming parties that are pre-formed" it can take part in any kind of meaningful content which means the only content that's "solo exclusive content" is the boring Carnivale or twiddling your thumbs (which is what all BLU can do in terms of endgame content) while your lvl 70 friends solo 50 Primal fights for you, a sentence that wasn't in the powerpoint slide but sold to us as a solo class.

Impressive argumentation.

Oh no, a powerpoint slide was sold to you and didn't convey the actual design of the job correctly?!?!? That's terrible!!1!! Quick, SE, say you are sorry for making that slide!

[Alexandre_Noireau]

"sorry it wasn't clear enough, but we didn't mean that the job was exclusively solo".

Sorry it wasn't clear enough, but we didn't mean that the job was exclusive solo, you will NEED to play it with parties, and the class will be absolute awful on those enviroments, and their progression is infested with RNG that obviously the whole community loves and always have a crave for more, and then after you get through the awful skill progression RNG based system, you can finally play it solo in this amazing instance that is like guildhests but are called "Carnival", which are totally NOT guildhests, just like eureka notorious monsters are totally not FATEs.

Believe me, the slide is the least of the problems here.

[Fyce]

Believe me, the slide is the least of the problems here.

Given how much people cry about a powerpoint slide, I'm afraid it's to be a big issue for quite a lot of people.

Also, I didn't not argue against one single thing of what you said just above. So I'm not going to answer it as it has nothing to do with my point (which is why I didn't include it in my quote). I'm not discussing the actual design of the job. I'm saying that people crying over a slide are doing themselves a disservice.
If only people would understand my point, it'd be quite welcome after 4 or 5 pages of me repeating myself and people continuing to answer me about stuff I never talked about.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Given how much people cry about a powerpoint slide, I'm afraid it's to be a big issue for quite a lot of people.

Also, I didn't not argue against one single thing of what you said just above. So I'm not going to answer it as it has nothing to do with my point (which is why I didn't include it in my quote). I'm not discussing the actual design of the job. I'm saying that people crying over a slide are doing themselves a disservice.

You are the only one bringing that slide over and over when all this time i've been redirecting the argumentation to the class implementation.
I'd say you are the one losing it over the slide, that, or you are using the slide as a straw man.

I'll say it now, the slide is meaningless, move on to the job implementation.

[Fyce]

You are the only one bringing that slide over and over when all this time i've been redirecting the argumentation to the class implementation.
I'd say you are the one losing it over the slide, that, or you are using the slide as a straw man.

I'll say it now, the slide is meaningless, move on to the job implementation.

I bring it on because people mention it all the time to somehow use it as a reason why would SE change the job. Did you not understand why the very first sentence of my initial post was "Gosh, this argument again..."?
And my whole point is, again for the bazillion time, no, SE will not change the job because a bunch of people misinterpreted a badly made powerpoint slide. So people should stop using that dumb argument. That's all I'm saying. Any other topic is irrelevant to what I say.

Can you tell me what part of its kit makes its balance way off, because to me it looks like a fairly balanced support dps, with low personal dps made up for by the high power buff of peculiar light, with the self destructing skills being probably the only point of contention, which really arn't worth it most of the time anyway. And before you argue white wind, even in its current state I personally don't see it as unbalanced, as its a dps loss to use and is only effective when you have health and you can't spam it lest you run out of mana.

It's funny how you have to dismiss exactly everything that makes BLU a problem in order to ask me that question. I hope you can forgive me because I'm going to ignore your argumentation method of trying to strip me from anything I could use before I even gave you my answer.

- You can kill yourself doing extremely high damage. Why do you automatically assume that it's not "worth it most of the time"? This would have been abused in any AoE situation and used all the time during long downtime periods when the BLU can recover from its weakness. It would be used to cheese any kind of DPS check and even bypass some phases all the time. FFXIV's battle content is definitly not made to support this kind of on-demand skills.
- You have a personal tank LB3 (even better than a tank LB3). Any kind of mechanic coming? Who cares! Just use one GDC! Problem solved! Tank tethers? Pffft, joke! Shared tank buster? Just let me join the fun! Not imbalanced at all.
- You can heal yourself and other people to full in a blink. I don't really care if you don't think that White Wind isn't an issue. A DPS job being able to bypass a raid damage mechanic with Diamondback and then heal everyone to full in one skill is broken. It is. It objectively is.
- You can insta-kill almost any trash mob and even some bosses. Yeah, sure, they could make everything immune, or drastically change the skills. But the point is: these skills are currently broken. If anyone argue that the skills have to be changed would just prove my point.
- You are able to withstand a lot of damage from any mechanic thanks to Mighty Guard. Similar to Diamondback, but with more flexibility at the cost of less protection. It still allows healers to shield the BLU in order for him to be able to easily White Wind the mechanic.
- You can give anyone in the group 100% HP and MP at the cost of some DPS. A healer died and is in need of MP? No problem! Better have a dead DPS than a healer. It's probably less broken than the rest, but having a single target full HP&MP is still not really something you see every day on a Caster DPS.
- You have extremely potent group buff. Yes, Peculiar Light is completly overpowered. AoE +30% magic damage for 10s on a 60s cooldown is ridiculously high for group DPS. And you seem to say that it's only to make up for BLU's low DPS? I think you don't really understand how much of a gain that is. You'd see BLM/SMN/RDM/BLU comp all day just because of that. Besides, BLU's DPS isn't as low as you seem to imply.
- You can have an on-demand -10% damage. Yeah, that's huge. Even if Bad Breath is a DPS loss because of its low damage DoT, it still does damage ontop of the damage reduction, so it's really worth it.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

That's all I'm saying. Any other topic is irrelevant to what I say.

Ok then.
There must be another ppt slide in the internet that might need your defense. Go, ppt slide knight. Do not let any ppt slide to be wrongfully misterpreted.

-----

So yeah, i'm still waiting on someone to explain me how this design fits in the game structure, as it stands, is just a convoluted mess of an implementation. Who gave the greenlight to this. Who sat in a board, and agreed, that this job was the proper implementation of a class in this game. This sounds a lot like Pagos. "We knew it was not what was demanded, but we were too far in development to apply any feedback."

This is why the game so badly needs test servers. And testers not contracted by Square-Enix, that give them information that is not necessarily what they want to hear, which i believe is happening in their inside testing. Someone is obviously greenlighting stuff that is either unfinished, not properly tested and has not be checked against playerbase feedback, which they also do not seem to have any main "information" compilation methods, aside simple numbers of players doing X. That's not good enough of a measure. That something is popular, doesn't mean is good.

[MrKimper]

Snib.

Can you show me actual video captures of people one shotting bosses with a base self-destruct that isn't moon flute/bristle/off-guard boosted?

[Burningskull]

It's not just a powerpoint slide. SE literally went out of their way to say that BLU was not intended for parties. Repeatedly saying it over and over during the live letter. Also "progression" of a job does mean how it levels. You get more exp when you kill overworld mobs than regular jobs do. (happy face icon) You get literally the same amount of exp from dungeon mobs as regular jobs would. (normal face icon) And you can't do the roulettes for the bonus exp you get like normal jobs can cause you are locked out. (hence the sad face icon)

That is how the BLU job "progresses," how it "levels."

They then went and said, "oh but wait, if you "party" with other BLUs you have a better chance of getting the spell since the game doesn't roll for each BLU in the party, it just rolls once for the whole party of BLUs." Meaning the more BLUs you have in the party the more BLUs will get the spell, thus making more BLUs with the spell in the game faster. The bad thing is outside of some Dungeons, a party of BLUs have a really hard time bringing down Hard Mode Primals. It doesn't have a battle raise so any BLU that dies is screwed if the skill drops, and It can hardly take a hit even with Mighty Guard. Leaving one or two BLUs to spam White Wind to try and keep the BLU tank alive. Thus it's not designed for party play. Since you can't take a hit tho it's also not designed for solo play in Dungeons and Trials unless you are vastly over leveled than them. Even some things in the carnival hit like a truck and it comes down to can you do the fight without taking a single hit or realizing you can stun or silence things that you can't avoid.

[Deceptus]

- You have a personal tank LB3 (even better than a tank LB3). Any kind of mechanic coming? Who cares! Just use one GDC! Problem solved! Tank tethers? Pffft, joke! Shared tank buster? Just let me join the fun! Not imbalanced at all.
- You can heal yourself and other people to full in a blink. I don't really care if you don't think that White Wind isn't an issue. A DPS job being able to bypass a raid damage mechanic with Diamondback and then heal everyone to full in one skill is broken. It is. It objectively is.

Boss Ultimate attacks (failed ones) go through Diamondback.

- You are able to withstand a lot of damage from any mechanic thanks to Mighty Guard. Similar to Diamondback, but with more flexibility at the cost of less protection. It still allows healers to shield the BLU in order for him to be able to easily White Wind the mechanic.

Go attempt to tank an lvl 50 EX dungeon with Mighty guard and see how fast you melt. I'll wait, because you'll be back really soon. 40% reduced damage doesn't mean much when you're taking so much due to wearing cloth.

- You can give anyone in the group 100% HP and MP at the cost of some DPS. A healer died and is in need of MP? No problem! Better have a dead DPS than a healer. It's probably less broken than the rest, but having a single target full HP&MP is still not really something you see every day on a Caster DPS.

"Some DPS" yeah, 25%. . . that's a lot. Especially when BLU has low personal dps to start.

It's like if idk WoW for example, we'll use this since it's a big MMO as well, they introduced Death Knight, the first hero class in WoW in the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion (WOTLK), its similar in a way that DK was an agent of the Scourge, an entity of evil but they changed it into an actual class. You could now use your favorite Scourge minions in battle, you could tank and be great at it and here's the thing it was really strong at the start, not to mention it wasn't gated by just doing lvl 60 content 2 expansions ago like Blue Mage. I know they're different games but still, there's always ways to make a class be able to function in an MMO.

Pretty much this. No one would be having issues if BLU was strong, but they're simply not. It would have been better to start strong then reign them in instead of starting weak and have players be disappointed.

[Valdegarde]

No one would be having issues if BLU was strong, but they're simply not.

Mm, I still very much vastly prefer Blue Mage to be an actually viable main job alongside the rest of the cast, so if Blue Mage was extra strong but even more extra limited I'd still have an issue. However as it stands, it is not really operating under any definition of solo job, limited job, main job, anything besides maybe mount/atma-rate-sightseeing-log-job that can do some guildhests. Anyone notice that none of the Masked Carnivale stages are even remotely as complex as Ward Up or Annoy the Void either? So even saying it has unique guildhest-like instances is kind of an insult to guildhests.