BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[BillyKaplan]

All this talk of elemental affinities reminds me of the first time I ran Castrum Abania. I ran BLM, and I ran it blind. And then I hover my mouse over the boss buff to read that it has resistences to either lightning, fire, or ice.
You can imagine my panic until I realized all buffs are relevant to the encounter itself and no, SE didn't suddenly decide to screw BLMs over...

[Raikai]

Okay, I've reached 50 with BLU and completed all of the solo spellbook entries and some instance entries as well. Cleared Masked Carnivale too, so here's my input:

1) BLU "endgame" content is as limited as the class' description:
It took me roughly 1 hour to beat all of the Masked Carnivale - the only fight which required me to look for external strategies was the Miss Typhon one. The only replayability in this is going back to defeat the encounters every week for the rewards. Other than that, there's nothing else to do as a Blue Mage in the game. Even if you're set into completing the spellbook, eventually it will be completed, but you don't really need the 5 star spells to beat the Masked Carnivale anyway.

What then? They really need to think about more stuff to do as a BLU. Maybe enable PotD, but for solo blue mages? Why not let us sync to level 70 for Eureka? It seems like a good call for them too, we could even use the elemental weaknesses there as well.

2) BLU is - not - a solo oriented job as advertised:
The soloing capabilities, yes, are bigger than other jobs at lv50, but HALF of the spellbook requires a group. There's no way to solo the level 50 dungeons. Okay, I'd get that the 5 star, primal spells, would require a party but that's just 5 spells. What about the others? Plus on top of that, there's the awful RNG... It's very disheartening to spend 40min with a 4 BLU group running dungeons to defeat the last boss and leave empty handed, especially when it's just a spell that is just for completion sake. I mean, who uses that ability granted by Zu in Pharos Sirius?


In the end, I'm also on the team that, with the use of specific - required to queue - spells, BLU could fill the dps-support niche together with MCH and BRD as a regular job, but realistically I don't think they'll change their mind on how the job plays.

Saying that, I really, honestly, wish that they improve the BLU experience at 5.0 launch to:

a) Have more relevant content to do at its level cap.
b) More reliable ways to obtain the 4 and 5 star spells. A bit less of RNG.
c) Don't want it to be a duty finder job? Fine, let us properly solo its "endgame" content by the use of strategies and different spells.

[Mansion]

So I owe a formal apology to the Blue Salt that has been around since November FanFest.

Now I'm level 50, I did a good bunch of the Masked Carnival and only have a few skills to get on primals.

For me:
It's not fun to level up from 1 to 50 through mob grinding, even with the exploit.
It's not fun to form parties for a dungeon otherwise closed to BLU to get a skill (for solo content)
It's not fun to have 49 skills when almost 50% of them are either useless, one time use or a copy of another skill.
It's not fun to go through stages of the solo instance when it all comes down to roughly the same content : figuring which spell is mandatory to get through.
It's not fun to lock skills behind absurd RNG (100 Ramuh runs made it clear for me)

I think I'd rather have had a watered down blue mage to fit the FFXIV system, or no blue mage at all.

And a practical question:
Why can BLU job quests be locked behind the obtention of a skill, but DF can't be locked in the same way to prevent BLU to queue there, as it was Yoshi P's concern?

[ReiMakoto]

I stole this from reddit, but I feel this is relevant

[BillyKaplan]

Why can BLU job quests be locked behind the obtention of a skill, but DF can't be locked in the same way to prevent BLU to queue there, as it was Yoshi P's concern?

I think just because you have it unlocked, doesn't mean you'll have it equipped on your hotbar. Or some weak justification like that.
But that leads us, once again, to the double standard regarding BLU. Because there's no guarantee that anyone else has their on-level skills, given that 30-60 + 70 job skills are locked behind quests people might not do. And just because they have them, doesn't mean they'll use them, either.

A BLU player will not be better or worse than they are on other classes, is what it boils down to.

[Crushnight]

I mean, who uses that ability granted by Zu in Pharos Sirius?

not going to argue any points just going to point out i do use flying frenzy as a cap closer especially at beginnings of fights for peculiar light it is very much a personal preference to use it as i also love going me blu me smash :P

[ChocoFeru]

I stole this from reddit, but I feel this is relevant

Welp that's right. That's the only viable "rotation" for blu outside Carnival, since monsters doesn't have any weakness or special mechanic, all you can do is spamm the same over and over again.
Similar to the rest of classes wich all you do is repeat the same rotation, no matter wich boss you're facing; always the same.

Is it really too much to ask for new content? >_> I admit BLU content is quite boring now, and obtaining skills from EX content can be a pain, but it's a first step to new possibilities. Let's give it a chance and find new ways to improve it instead of erasing it from this new equation.

[BillyKaplan]

I admit BLU content is quite boring now, and obtaining skills from EX content can be a pain

Put that quote on my gravestone.
Sadly, I doubt BLU will be the renaissance you hope for. Anything more you want them to do with the class would require changing the eco-system all the other jobs live in. Judging by what we know about ShB, it won't happen in 5.0 as 5.0 is a lot more of the same. So within that context, what we can expect for BLU is more spells as its level cap increases, and opens more party content for it to run, more job quests, some more stages of the Masked Carnivale you'll have to use those new spells in, and potentially better synergy into parties while keeping the original skills locked for the Masked Carnivale like they do for PvP skill swaps.
But if they do that last one what's the point of keeping it locked in the first place, which makes me think they won't do it, if only out of pride.

[Raikai]

Agree with this dude

It's not fun to level up from 1 to 50 through mob grinding, even with the exploit. Agree. One big culprit is how - weak - the job felt, and who likes to spam 6s cast time 1k needles anyways?
It's not fun to form parties for a dungeon otherwise closed to BLU to get a skill (for solo content) One thing that they could improve was to dramatically increase the learning % if your party was full BLU. At least it would be a bit less boring yet more rewarding.
It's not fun to have 49 skills when almost 50% of them are either useless, one time use or a copy of another skill. Totally agree on this one. I get that we need at least one damaging spell of every elemental school for the Masked Carnivale, but there's a lot of redundant spells indeed.
It's not fun to go through stages of the solo instance when it all comes down to roughly the same content : figuring which spell is mandatory to get through. Yep, here it comes to what a BLU can do in its endgame. After you know what to do, you can complete the Masked Carnivale weekly in about 40min with the basic spellkit. Then what else to do? You don't even need to leave Ul'dah for that matter.
It's not fun to lock skills behind absurd RNG (100 Ramuh runs made it clear for me) This currently is the most un-fun part of the job by far. If at least the EX versions had dramatically increased chances, but not even that.

[Mansion]

I think just because you have it unlocked, doesn't mean you'll have it equipped on your hotbar. Or some weak justification like that.
But that leads us, once again, to the double standard regarding BLU. Because there's no guarantee that anyone else has their on-level skills, given that 30-60 + 70 job skills are locked behind quests people might not do. And just because they have them, doesn't mean they'll use them, either.

A BLU player will not be better or worse than they are on other classes, is what it boils down to.

I'd go with a system with mandatory skills (basically build a rotation of 6 elemental spells that build combos, one or two DoTs, Debuffs and you're set), and then as we can change our Role skill actions between each pull, we could just equip spells for a precise trash pull or a boss.