Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Roda]

I stand by the opinion that BLU should've been a tank whose gimmick is based on counter attacks.

[Fyce]

As a solo job, 24 out of 49 spells are locked behind dungeons/trials. There is no way or extremely hard to solo them. Even if you can solo it with extremely long time, the spell is also locked behind rng drop. As a solo job, you cannot have fun by just playing solo is a mess.

Sorry to hear that you have trouble doing Tam Tara solo at level 50. Or that it's too hard to cast Doom on some bosses.

Would you like some tips?

[24spencer]

130 potency mage
too overpowered for normal play by the way

[wereotter]

Sorry to hear that you have trouble doing Tam Tara solo at level 50. Or that it's too hard to cast Doom on some bosses.

Would you like some tips?

Getting Doom requires that you reach level 50 AND progress the Blue Mage quest line enough to unlock the Masked Carnival AND beat 20 floors of it. Considering Mind Blast is a requirement to get that far, your snark fails. You can't cast Doom on bosses in order to learn Mind Blast.

[Fyce]

Getting Doom requires that you reach level 50 AND progress the Blue Mage quest line enough to unlock the Masked Carnival AND beat 20 floors of it. Considering Mind Blast is a requirement to get that far, your snark fails. You can't cast Doom on bosses in order to learn Mind Blast.

Oh, that's not what I meant, these were two independant statements. You don't actually need Doom to clear Tam Tara NM, a level 16 dungeon, while being at level 50 with your Blue Mage. If you think that I implyed that Doom was necessary to clear Tam Tara, that's wrong. This isn't what I intended to say.

And you, do you want tips to clear Tam Tara normal mode at level 50, without Doom? I can even help you know how to get to Aurum Vale's second boss, which is the hardest content the Blue Mage questline will require you to do... but can still be achieved solo.

[24spencer]

Oh, that's not what I meant, these were two independant statements. You don't actually need Doom to clear Tam Tara NM, a Level 18 dungeon, while being at level 50 with your Blue Mage. If you think that I implyed that Doom was necessary to clear Tam Tara, that's wrong. This isn't what I intended to say.

And you, do you want tips to clear Tam Tara normal mode at level 50, without Doom?

you can play semantics about the 1 or 2 spells that technically come from low level dungeons all you want, but it's pretty obvious to anyone that the comment was referring to the level 50 dungeons. don't be facetious.

[HyoMinPark]

Fine. It sucks ass and will never get better. I will join you in defeatism. Despite the fact that is was introduced at the tail end of an expansion, it is not preliminary, and this is BLU. That being said, by saying that BLU will receive future updates and changes I am not promising or even suggesting that BLU will be turned into a full-fledged job.

And BLU feels, quite-frankly, half-arsed as a result. Even the Masked Carnivale is lackluster. I did 10 of the floors in a half hour. There was very little skill involve in the ones I did: most were just (slow) burns. The one with the towers was an interesting one, but not hard. And I didn’t feel like the job particularly “shined” in this content either. I thought it was supposed to be BLU’s niche, but I felt a bit disappointed.

Stubborn? If they were stubborn your avatar wouldn't have that fancy BLU mage attire attached to it, would it? I can't fault the devs if those who are bitter about BLU being made a limited job continue to be so. If they're angry about the solo aspect they have my full sympathy.

Ultimately, the end result of your feelings towards BLU after maxing it out is exactly what I've predicted for everyone who won't find enjoyment with BLU outside of normal duties. I'd be more inclined to agree that it's the players who wasted time playing this content, when they know where the road ends as you have implicitly stated; not the devs using resources to bring about a job they initially said would never make it into the game.

All the “reasons” the developers gave for making BLU a limited job immediately fall apart early on in the leveling process.

“BLU can’t be a proper job because it’s too overpowered!”
— Potency-wise, BLU is very weak—especially with single-target. Up to level 40, you spam 1,000 Needles on anything and everything. Unless you’re pulling 3 or more mobs in a dungeon, there are no better options. Especially for solo. Things like Level 5 Petrify and Tail Screw have low success rates—Level 5 Petrify in and of itself has a ridiculous “can only work on mobs that have levels in multiples of 5” restriction attached to it. Most skills are just reskins of others, and more still are kind of just there for novelty’s sake. I don’t have issues with things having immunities to certain status effects or abilities, but I still can’t get over how useless Level 5 Petrify is—especially since combining it with Drill Cannon doesn’t result in an overpowered, broken OHKO. Just 420 potency as opposed to the default potency, and it removes the petrification debuff.

“BLU can’t be included in group content because then people would get mad they don’t have X skill!”
— BLU requires certain skills to even accept future job quests (two of which are locked behind duties!). Why couldn’t this be applied to it entering duties? And, honestly, most dungeons under level 50 are steamrolled anyways, so it wouldn’t matter too much if BLU didn’t have some of the more niche abilities. Require them to have at least a single-target (Water Cannon can fulfill this), perhaps a DoT (Bad Breath could work as a DoT only, since mobs do have diminishing returns on stuns, silences, and paralysis), a self-buff (Off-Guard or Bristle fulfills this—preferably Off-Guard, though because the fact that Bristle isn’t a proper oGCD kind of annoys me), and a decent AOE ability (Plaincracker is nice), and it would be just like any other job below 50, really.

“BLU is supposed to be a solo job!”
— The most efficient way to get half of your toolkit is to have a level 70 spam the dungeon/trial with you. You can maybe do some of the content solo, but good luck getting through the extreme primals for their skills on your own (as far as I’m aware, they aren’t affected by things like Missle—though ADS is in T1/T2, if I remember correctly). Even with other BLUs, this is ineffective, since their sustain is poor, their single target is poor (1,000 Needles does less at that level than a Water Cannon under Off-Guard+Peculiar Light), and they can’t Raise any BLU that dies in combat (or Esuna things outside of taking off a single DoT with Erase every 90 seconds). And their tank stances gives a whole new definition to DPS penalty, so if you wanted to try and solo something in Mighty Guard, it will take even longer. Honestly, I was hoping I could go in with a friend and duo things with a fair amount of efficiency and brokenness. But I was disappointed.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that BLU can’t utilize the Squadrons — which are solo content — and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if, when it is allowed to hit level 60, if it cannot participate in PotD — which has achievements locked behind solo completion. Heck, it can’t even do the MSQ — this game’s biggest solo content. Is it going to be locked out of future MSQ when its cap is raised to 60? 70? How about 80? At least, currently, the restrictions on Diadem and Eureka make sense (they are level 60 and level 70 content, respectfully), but will BLU continue to be restricted when their level cap is raised?
Oh, right. It can’t do Hall of the Novice, either.


I think the developers could have tried a bit harder, to be honest. I wouldn’t have an issue with it being excluded from “normal duties” if it was as truly broken as they kept claiming it would be—the idea of me wrecking things as a level 50 BLU sounds fun; not going to lie. As it stands now, however, BLU is side-content that I play for an hour or two a night when my friends are online and we can derp around—though I’m not sure how long that will last once we obtain the skills and all complete the Carnivale. It doesn’t feel like it has much staying power for me. I’m hoping future updates will give it more potential, but I have concerns over the developers just treating it as a mini-game with miniscule updates every 6 months or so. I don’t know what update schedule they have planned, though, so I hope that I am wrong and that BLU doesn’t fade into obscurity.

Oh, that's not what I meant, these were two independant statements. You don't actually need Doom to clear Tam Tara NM, a level 16 dungeon, while being at level 50 with your Blue Mage. If you think that I implyed that Doom was necessary to clear Tam Tara, that's wrong. This isn't what I intended to say.

And you, do you want tips to clear Tam Tara normal mode at level 50, without Doom? I can even help you know how to get to Aurum Vale's second boss, which is the hardest content the Blue Mage questline will require you to do... but can still be achieved solo.

Why must you wait until you’re level 50, though? Why couldn’t you have the broken ability to solo Tam-Tara at level? What’s the point of doing it solo at level 50 when you could just go in at level 16 with a level 70 and steamroll? That’s my thought-process on it, anyways.

And this doesn’t even address having to get the skills locked behind the level 50 dungeons, the ARR Extremes, Coil, and Hildebrand’s Trials.

[geekgirl101]

I'm 48/49 spells, the 49th being a masquerade spell for 20 wins. It took hours to get some of the spells and multiple runs of trials and hard mode dungeons with level 70's carrying us because there is no sane way of doing this properly as a blu party. But that's to be expected. In FFXI quite a number of blu spells were locked behind battles that were not soloable and later on as the content progressed you couldn't find anyone willing to take you through some of the instanced battles without paying them gil because of the difficulty and number of people involved. I don't mind that in FFXIV you have to work harder for the 4 star spells, but in comparison to FFXI it's super easy to both level and learn them and it's not even been a week and already people are complaining at only having half the spells.

That said though blu was to, and I quote, "provide a unique solo gameplay experience in which players will learn monster actions and advance through blue mage-specific content". This gives the impression that blue mages are supposed to be able to solo everything to learn monster actions, but we've already determined that is not possible. The only unique solo gameplay experience is the masked carnivale.

[MrKimper]

Oh, that's not what I meant, these were two independant statements. You don't actually need Doom to clear Tam Tara NM, a level 16 dungeon, while being at level 50 with your Blue Mage. If you think that I implyed that Doom was necessary to clear Tam Tara, that's wrong. This isn't what I intended to say.

And you, do you want tips to clear Tam Tara normal mode at level 50, without Doom? I can even help you know how to get to Aurum Vale's second boss, which is the hardest content the Blue Mage questline will require you to do... but can still be achieved solo.

No thanks, I'll just have my much more useful level 70 friend one shot the mobs with their basic GCD skill that takes absolutely no effort while I hang in the back and spam some fish.

Works like a charm.

[Kaonis]

you can play semantics about the 1 or 2 spells that technically come from low level dungeons all you want, but it's pretty obvious to anyone that the comment was referring to the level 50 dungeons. don't be facetious.

Fyce seems to just be a troll. That or they are truly unable to grasp logic. Either way I've basically ignored them on all these threads of late.