Thank you SE for...

[Awful]

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!

I was being facetious by quoting yourself to show how ridiculous you keep clinging onto that slide over and over its getting rather tiresome, why not make something a little more constructive and talk about the class? I mean its no secret that we have here a class that there was a way to implement in XIV but SE took the other side and turned it into something that people are slowly realizing that its a waste of time, everyone knew it was side content but others who are white knight defenders (such as yourself) are claiming this is okay because it "saves the Blue Mage namesake" doesn't this only hinder it?

Why would a company want to spend time on a limited class, have it botched only to have more limited jobs spawn from this failure? People are worried now that Dancer is gonna be on the chopping block do we want to save Dancer or let it fall into a "limited job" where it can only run around punch, heal, kick in lvl 50 content for months and months and level it in a week? I find this appalling honestly.

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.

There's always a way to implement BLU into FFXIV the devs just didn't want to just to protect BLU as its iconic child from past games but I feel like people were cheated in the end when they found out just how utterly pointless it is at the end of the day when you gotta beg your friends "just one more time I swear it'll drop!" for another 30 runs of content we've ran for months, hours, before, Carnivale is new but it was so braindead easy. If this is what limited jobs are going to be its already failing at the head with BLU.

[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?

[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.

[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 was being facetious by quoting yourself to show how ridiculous you keep clinging onto that slide over and over its getting rather tiresome, why not make something a little more constructive and talk about the class?

You understand that it's exactly what I want to achieve, right? Stopping people from bringing that slide up as if it was a good argument for BLU to be a "solo job" in order to use actual proper arguments to hope for some improvements, instead of giving SE a free pass to answer us by saying "sorry, our slide wasn't clear enough".

I didn't start this:

That moment when your limited job wasn't designed for group play but requires it.

And it even came back:

Except they did. You can try to defend it all you want but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Now I get other kind of reference to "wrong advertisement", when the "advertisement" also "advertised" for party play (from yourself, Alexandre_Noireau):

The job was advertised as DESIGNED for SOLO. If you are requiered to party (and you are required to party), then either the advertising was wrong or the design is a failure.

So, please, do not say that I'm the one briging that up. I'm only answering people who do.
By the way, if you want any more proof that people are still bringing that "it's supposed to be a solo job because SE said it!" argument, there is a whole thread full of it.

-----

Boss Ultimate attacks (failed ones) go through Diamondback.

And that's it? BLU cannot survive to a wipe so it's not broken? That's your argument? Please...
It's not because Diamondback doesn't work on some failed mechanics leading to a wipe that it's not broken. You are taking a single exception and try to dismiss my argument with it. Ridiculous.

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.

That's absolutly not what I was refering to, but okay. It's not because BLU can't solo a Lv.50 dungeon that Mighty Guard isn't broken in group content. What kind of argument is that? That's not even an exception like the one above. That's just completly irrelevant.

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

If it has "low DPS" as you claim, then it's pretty much the least impacted by the Weakness status. Besides, nice job ignoring everything I said about that ability, the fact that it was "less broken than the rest", but still worth it as a dead DPS is better than a useless healer with no MP.
You attacked the weakest point of the list, and still managed to get it wrong.


... And where's the rest? Did you simply ignore every other point I made because you can't answer them? Because you didn't find any very specific exception or something completly unrelated to say about it? You understand that if you don't contradict every other point I made on that subject, then it does means that BLU is unbalanced, right?
So come on, you can do better than this... Maybe not, actually.

[ReiMakoto]

Snip of your list from earlier

Taking point by point

-Yes you do an LB 2 worth of potency, over the course of a fight, thats still a dps loss, I'm not automatically assuming its just how it works, even assuming you are raised instantly, those 2 mins of weakness will kneecap you severely, yes you mention phase transitions, phase transition mechanics exist on other jobs as well, just not as powerful as this one. Also There is nothing anywhere which is saying they needed these kill yourself abilities to be blue mages, that was a dev choice
-Im assuming you're talking about diamondback here, yeah 1 gcd, with a huge mana cost, and a huge dps loss, where you can't move. Yeah I can see your point, you could use it to cheese some mechanics, But other classes also do things to cheese mechanics all the time, it wouldn't be a BLU exclusive thing. Edit cos why not: You bring up specifically tank tethers, taking this raid tier as example why the hell would you want blu specifically to do this mechanic with diamondback in the first place, take chaos for example, taking the orbs, why would want your dps doing nothing to take an orb that a tank just brushes off and keeps dpsing through, or in the case of the tornado orbs, we just get a paladin to hallowed and take 2 of them, losing nothing, cheesing the mechanic. You already use bard to "cheese" the tether in omega as well (not to mention the hp down would hit regardless), and i doubt blu could take the multiple missles in panto 2 using diamondback. Just going through my memory of encounters in this game, I can't see a reason you would want a BLU to cheese a tank specific mechanic of that nature, over just getting a tank to do it.
-I would need to be on full health the heal everyone to full, assuming there is a mechanic that requires party healing, everyone has taken damage, at which point the healers will already be healing everyone up, with more effecient/ quicker heals, getting BLU to full for the blu to then heal everyone is just roundabout
-These skills don't work on any boss worth a damn, and the percentage likelyhood of hitting means that its often just better to kill trash than wait for it to proc, they are not broken
-Mighty Guard is just bad, you still take a fair amount of damage, and again mighty guard and white wind, cool, how much dps are you losing by doing these combo's, how much mana? On a class such as BLU where its personal dps is so low, can it afford to be wasting its mana and gcds away to pull off these roundabout tactics, which are just less efficient than the healer, you know, healing?
-Transfusion is pretty balanced, if you're in a situation where offing yourself to prolong the healer is necessary, you're probably not meeting the dps check anyway you know?
-Blu's dps is hella low, I've seen it myself 400-500 on a good day, thats abysmal for a level 50 dps. And yes peculiar light is probably too strong, but you know, it wouldn't be the first time square fiddled with vuln percentages.
-On demand -10%, cool. In most fights, reprisal or dismantle or addle can be up for nearly all aoes anyway, having bad breath be on demand does make it strong, but by no means broken, as you lose dps by doing it, and as mentioned, its dps is low to start with, can it really afford to lose more and still meet enrages.

In conclusion, its not totally balanced, I'll grant you that, but its still so very nearly there it would seem almost trivial to balance for DF if these were overall a bad thing. To take this list (despite me thinking they arn't too bad anyway) to balance this, Jack up the mana cost on white wind, give diamondback a cd, lower the potency on self destructs and peculiar light, ez.

[Fawkes]

And that's it? BLU cannot survive to a wipe so it's not broken? That's your argument? Please...
It's not because Diamondback doesn't work on some failed mechanics leading to a wipe that it's not broken. You are taking a single exception and try to dismiss my argument with it. Ridiculous.

I pulled hate on Ifrit so I threw up Diamondback and Ifrit just slapped me out of it.

[Fyce]

-Yes you do an LB 2 worth of potency, over the course of a fight, thats still a dps loss, I'm not automatically assuming its just how it works, even assuming you are raised instantly, those 2 mins of weakness will kneecap you severely, yes you mention phase transitions, phase transition mechanics exist on other jobs as well, just not as powerful as this one. Also There is nothing anywhere which is saying they needed these kill yourself abilities to be blue mages, that was a dev choice

To have a DPS loss after a Self-Destruct, you'd need to do around 800 DPS. This is not what any level 50 in ARR was able to do. Very far from it. So it is still a DPS gain. Even more so in AoE situations. And still the biggest on-demand burst damage in the entire game by a ridiculous amount (excluding LB, which aren't on-demand).

-Im assuming you're talking about diamondback here, yeah 1 gcd, with a huge mana cost, and a huge dps loss, where you can't move. Yeah I can see your point, you could use it to cheese some mechanics, But other classes also do things to cheese mechanics all the time, it wouldn't be a BLU exclusive thing.

No job, except for tanks (specifically PLD, because the other ones need a lot of ressources to be spent) is able to basically take a shared raid damage solo by simply pressing one GCD. None. And for good reasons.
This skill, in combination with White Wind, allows the Blue Mage to take almost nothing on raid damage mechanics and heal the raid back up himself. It is a personal DPS loss, but you make the rest of your party ignore the mechanic completly, especially healers, who can keep DPSing.
It is definitly not a tool that fit in the Caster DPS role.

-I would need to be on full health the heal everyone to full, assuming there is a mechanic that requires party healing, everyone has taken damage, at which point the healers will already be healing everyone up, with more effecient/ quicker heals, getting BLU to full for the blu to then heal everyone is just roundabout

You spending one or two GCDs to heal your group to full instead of two 130 potency spells is definitly not a waste. If you combine that with Diamonback, you pretty much have a group wide Benediction on a GCD. Tell me where does that fit in a Caster DPS role?

-These skills don't work on any boss worth a damn, and the percentage likelyhood of hitting means that its often just better to kill trash than wait for it to proc, they are not broken

Who are you to define what's "worth a damn"? These skills are broken on trash mobs, some boss' adds, and even some bosses. You asked me what made Blue Mage unbalanced. You didn't ask me to justify it on cherry picked content (besides, Blue Mage can currently solo T2. Is T2, a proper raid fight in the BcoB "not worth a damn"?). If you can kill Ramuh's adds in two or three GCDs while being level synced, it's broken. Period. And if you can one-shot some bosses that new players might see for the first time, that's even worse. You not caring for the experience of new players or some content is completly irrelevant to the point.
Insta-killing stuff is broken. If you don't think that's the case, then let's just give Doom, Missile and Tail Screw-like effects to every job. Let's see how's that balanced then.

-Mighty Guard is just bad, you still take a fair amount of damage, and again mighty guard and white wind, cool, how much dps are you losing by doing these combo's, how much mana? On a class such as BLU where its personal dps is so low, can it afford to be wasting its mana and gcds away to pull off these roundabout tactics, which are just less efficient than the healer, you know, healing?

It's low DPS jobs that can get away with doing stuff like this the most... because they don't lose much, by definition. And you are ignoring every mechanics where you simply can't DPS. Omega M/F slides? Just pop Mighty Guard, have a healer's shield just to be sure, take 40% less damage than any other DPS, and then heal the party up to full before the bosses are even targetable again in one single GCD.
This is not what a caster DPS should be able to do.

-Transfusion is pretty balanced, if you're in a situation where offing yourself to prolong the healer is necessary, you're probably not meeting the dps check anyway you know?

Depends on the content. Don't cherry pick it.

-Blu's dps is hella low, I've seen it myself 400-500 on a good day, thats abysmal for a level 50 dps. And yes peculiar light is probably too strong, but you know, it wouldn't be the first time square fiddled with vuln percentages.

500 DPS is abysmal for a level 50 DPS? Abysmal?! I don't know what kind of nostalgia glasses you are using, but they aren't as good as you think.
If BLU wasn't limited and had been released during ARR, it'd pretty much be the only job allowed by the community as DPS. 8-man Parties with 4 BLUs would be legion with these numbers, which would mean 40s/60s uptime on Peculiar Light for all BLUs and both healers (if you even need healers at that point).

-On demand -10%, cool. In most fights, reprisal or dismantle or addle can be up for nearly all aoes anyway, having bad breath be on demand does make it strong, but by no means broken, as you lose dps by doing it, and as mentioned, its dps is low to start with, can it really afford to lose more and still meet enrages.

Of course, if BLU only had Bad Breath as a "strong skill" it'd probably be fine. But this is just the cherry ontop of everything else.

I pulled hate on Ifrit so I threw up Diamondback and Ifrit just slapped me out of it.

Congratulations, you managed to find one very vague exception.

[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.

[MrBig]

I wanted to write down anything to clear my mind but everything was already said.