BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[Jandor]

Yet they adressed this exact issue.

Source

And I agree with them. What's the incentive of having to hunt and only have a random chance of learning a skill that would at best the same damage as Fire II that is gained "free" ?

At best the same? Mind Blast is required for the level 20 quest and is 20 potency higher than Fire II, plus it causes Paralysis. It's just downright better than Fire II.

Ok, ok, I'm being pedantic there, I do honestly get your point, I just don't really agree.

For one thing, I found the open world gathering of skills pretty fun, it only became a tedious chore when I started to need skills from duties.
For another thing, open world skill gathering means BLU can take risks to get skills earlier than it normally would, which is a pretty big bonus tbf while leveling.

[Reynhart]

So why play one of the harder jobs instead of the easier ones? Because it's what you enjoy better and fits your personal preferences.

In case you didn't look at several DRK threads, that's basically one of the main complain about it, having to work harder for at best the same result as PLD or WAR.

Besides, you mistake more difficult to play with more difficult to build, when that's two completely different things, since BLU would also require a certain level of skill to play after you obtained all the spells. One option you could have is for BLU damage to only be tied to their level and not their stat. So, they'd have more work to do to earn their spells, but less work to do to gear themselves. Or, like FFXI, that equipping the spells would actually give you bonus stats.

You're already coming into this with the idea that "This can't work because I can't envision it working and don't agree with it therefore this option is invalid" so there's not even a point discussing it.

That's not what I said. You came with a "Do you want a different BLU ?" option and I replied "Sure, what BLU are you suggesting ?", to which you basicaly answered "I have no idea". Which is sad, when other people, like GucciSan, actually provided suggestions, which I found very interesting as a compromise. I even suggested myself how one skill could be tweaked to fit party play. That's discussing.

At best the same? Mind Blast is required for the level 20 quest and is 20 potency higher than Fire II, plus it causes Paralysis. It's just downright better than Fire II.

BLU doesn't have Astral Fire

For another thing, open world skill gathering means BLU can take risks to get skills earlier than it normally would, which is a pretty big bonus tbf while leveling.

But if BLU is just a regular job, nothing matters aside from level cap content, so having a skill earlier is not that big of a deal.

[Awful]

In case you didn't look at several DRK threads, that's basically one of the main complain about it, having to work harder for at best the same result as PLD or WAR.

Besides, you mistake more difficult to play with more difficult to build, when that's two completely different things, since BLU would also require a certain level of skill to play after you obtained all the spells. One option you could have is for BLU damage to only be tied to their level and not their stat. So,they'd have more work to do to earn their spells, but less work to do to gear themselves. Or, like FFXI, that equipping the spells would actually give you bonus stats.

Yes but at least DRK can play its role and is unrestricted and not gated behind RNG for its spells, yes it's clunky to play with the DA spam but it can in fact tank and do its job BLU cannot even if it works as hard it'll never be a good tank, it'll never be a good healer, and it'll always be a sub par DPS. Also at least DRK can use LB where it matters BLU can't even do that hindering it even more, people talk more about what DRK lost this xpac and how it plays more than its DPS because it feels really bad compared to HW it can easily take part in any kind of content it's only in raiding where you see DRK falling behind when PLD and WAR is superior.

[SabbaNoergi]

I definitely would love the job to be allowed into raids and duties. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the extra solo content but for it to be the ONLY thing to do, it just seems like something that’ll run its course. 5.0 is around the corner and I can’t imagine putting in ANY time into Blue Mage when I have a new expansion, gear, dungeons, etc. to enjoy.

It’s been mentioned several times that bosses are immune to a lot of status effects and it doesn’t really hit that hard. I would think it would be pretty cool if it wasn’t “limited” to a certain role. I really can’t remember too many of the attacks that some of the monsters have but what if depending on what spells you had equipped, that’s the role you would be. There could be a requirement that you must have an X number of these tanking or DPS or healing spells to be the respective role. I know that would bring some issues but it’s something different.

[Reynhart]

Yes but at least DRK can play its role and is unrestricted and not gated behind RNG for its spells, yes it's clunky to play with the DA spam but it can in fact tank and do its job BLU cannot even if it works as hard it'll never be a good tank, it'll never be a good healer, and it'll always be a sub par DPS.

Yes, but we're talking about a non limited BLU. BLU being limited means that it does not follow the same rules than other jobs. It's better at some things, worse at others, but since it lives in its own world, it doesn't really matter. IF BLU was not limited, he thus had to be balanced with other DPS, but then, giving it an additionnal burden compared to them is just not fair.

[Jandor]

BLU doesn't have Astral Fire

Fair, at level 18 with 1 stack that makes Fire II 112 potency I think.
3s cast time though vs 2.5s for Mind Blast, that's an extra Mind Blast every 15s.
But yeah, anyway, it's not quite clear cut Mind Blast is better, that's on me forgetting about how big the AF damage increase is again.

But if BLU is just a regular job, nothing matters aside from level cap content, so having a skill earlier is not that big of a deal.

Conversely, neither is having it later. It just means skill hunting is a cool unique thing the job has as part of its leveling.

[Shougun]

For me, there's still a problem with this poll, because you don't really say how you would implement the first solution.
It's easy to suggest an ideal answer, but if one can't do it, it's still an unrealistic poll.

So, my question is : How would you do a BLU that match at least all the criteria below :

• Have to hunt for spells
• Can hunt spells in mostly random order
• Is customizable to be versatile in content
• Have comparatively more powerful spells than other jobs to compensate for the additional work of hunting them
• Is balanced with every other job so that matchmaking and the meta are not overrun by BLUs

Two job stones, all blue mages start out with the unchained (wording is irrelevant lol - insert with your favorite word if you want, just we need to be consistent for the sake of this posts clarity). In the mode of unchained we'll be very familiar, you can't do DF but you can do pre-mades. There is no set skills, you can put up whatever you want (literally it's the job we have now).

There are gold highlighted abilities in the book with a little about "chained" level in the tooltip, you may also click a filter button to filter out all the non-gilded abilities (making it easy to manage). Once you learn the first level 1 through X (I'm imagining 10 or 20 level) gilded abilities you unlock a job quest that'll reward you a "chained" job stone, or in concept the reverse side of the job stone. Blue mage flips the jobstone like a coin, with a different aspect of the same theme.

While as chained you cannot use any non-gilded spell. All the gilded spells have two variants, for example level 5 death may look like this:

Unchained blue mage uses gilded-level 5 death: level 5 death has chance to inflict doom onto the enemy.
Chained blue mage: hallowed ground cooldown, any non-boss that would die from 2,000 potency critical will die (border of spell will twinkle like those 30% hp spells bard and other jobs have when the spell is going to work for sure). When cast on a boss or failed to kill a target the spell will deal 500 potency, increase incoming damage by 10% for a short while (impending doom debuff) and go on 90 second cooldown. So DF blue mage would feel very death mage, occasionally, on trash mobs (at the very slow frequency of Hallowedground) and on bosses they've got an oGCD nuke / debuff. For balance reasons raid and savage trash should probably be considered a boss, but that's up to SE.

So you may even see bad breath become gilded, meaning there is a balanced variant for DF. It is really nice to have this dual feature because that means a DF can use iconic blue mage spells in a balance manner without the "unchained" variant suffering from being balanced or losing iconic options (if chained blue mage needs tweaks SE doesn't touch the non-DF variant, they tweak the DF-variant only - unchained blue mage is as unbalanced as SE wants).

Customization I'd argue is not a cornerstone of blue mage, only learning spells. FFXI implemented kit options but in many games, even FFXI, you could learn or not learn many spells (which could be seen as a form of customization). Besides FFXI, which literally asked for a kit to be developed, blue mage may have had long spell lists that were learn-able but so did many other jobs (like frequently black mage's). I'm not quite sold that blue mage needs customization to be blue mage (although I did have fun in FFXI messing around with the passive buffs). Only thing that, imo, blue mage demands to be blue mage is learning spells from monsters. However, with the unchained and chained system you can technically have customization of the unchained variant (as we do now, meaning blue mage does technically have customization). I think the chained version (df) shouldn't have that feature unless SE wants to give us false choices (different colors of the same thing), or tolerate a lot of community hub bub lol (so personally I've never envisioned DF blue mage as customize-able).

Unchained blue mage will have the OP spells yes, chained blue mage may have some gimmicks (like being able to delete a trash mob occasionally) but I would suggest blue mage would not have to do comparatively more work than other jobs. Blue mage levels significantly faster (and easier, solo even) but must learn their spells. The time they save leveling they use getting their spells. In this way I think the time cost of running blue mage becomes more balanced (perhaps not perfectly so, but better).

Blue mage would be balanced by the gilded chained spells, if blue mage overruns the meta it just means SE didn't balance blue mage's DF variant.

DF will check if you're chained or unchained (via what job you are), unchained blue mage's will never be able to enter DF. Chained blue mage will be allowed in under the same rules I suggest everyone else gets (leveling dungeons are lenient on missing spells, capstone dungeons are not (so 51-59, lenient, 60 not). You'll never see a blue mage in your EX party missing spells they should have, and better yet it wont happen on another other job too. (No classes, no missing job quests). Pre-made fun allowed of course, just speaking DF. Although, unchained variant shouldn't be allowed to do current end game content (so current tier savage raids are not ran by a bunch of unchained blue mages, but I think that'll have to be true even for SE's version whenever the level cap catches up).

As for RNG issues for some spells I believe the more times you see the spell it should add a buff that increases the chance to learn, a buff that doesn't fall off (except on log offs and extreme things like that). In this way blue mage also will not suffer some extreme "I can't level with you guys, I've got to run Shiva EX for the 800th time". Also important to make sure to balance unchained blue mage to be able to handle learning every gilded spell solo, no gilded spell should require someone else to carry you. However, you could for example go into a leveling dungeon as chained variant (DF) and learn your spell given that it's one of the spell level bracket DF rules will be lenient on (giving blue mage more freedom to learn spells).

Blue mage will have a special content which some people might go "unfair!" but I'd suggest blue mage is the best job for this to be a thing, and even better with an unchained / chained system. Because blue mage levels so easily and the carnival is very gear light content /anyone/ could take part in that content and not work on main-ing blue mage. You'd never need to grind out end game gear just to play the side content, and because this is a job switching game the level of "unfair" is relatively minimal. The people who didn't want to do the side content before will not do it now and the people who were doing it before will still do it now.

SE has to do more work, what say you about that? Yeah... I've got nothing for that, but I think it would be really neat to see them make "advanced jobs" - especially if it adds us weird side content on the same event. Say beastmaster adds a shepherding system, even people who don't want to main beastmaster would get to enjoy the side content and probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise. Puppetmaster giving us customizeable minions that can do tricks, etc.

[Alistaire]

You guys all understand BLU being kept from df has nothing to do with their dps potential right? For BLU to be allowed in duties regularly, they'd have to just flat out disallow certain spells, like White Wind, Mighty Guard and Diamondback. Would completely trivialize your healers' and tanks' contributions.


It's df, there are dps that do 10% of their dps'ing potential there all the time.

[MrKimper]

That's not what I said. You came with a "Do you want a different BLU ?" option and I replied "Sure, what BLU are you suggesting ?", to which you basicaly answered "I have no idea". Which is sad, when other people, like GucciSan, actually provided suggestions, which I found very interesting as a compromise. I even suggested myself how one skill could be tweaked to fit party play. That's discussing.

No that's you saying "I don't like this option unless you elaborate on it" to a poll that's mostly supposed to be a vague direction, then you saying the poll doesn't matter since it should have a concrete idea behind or else it's just making an empty promise. That's not discussing that's you having a negative opinion out of the gate when I already said you could attach whatever idea you could see to either choice. Which is why there are four of them, moving the goalpost is just moving the goal post.

[Awful]

Yes, but we're talking about a non limited BLU. BLU being limited means that it does not follow the same rules than other jobs. It's better at some things, worse at others, but since it lives in its own world, it doesn't really matter. IF BLU was not limited, he thus had to be balanced with other DPS, but then, giving it an additionnal burden compared to them is just not fair.

That's a fair point since DRK isn't limited however, I'm reviewing what we have not what we'll have if it's unlimited and I stand by it since BLU doesn't really have an identity, sure it's a DPS but it isn't so great since it is a burden as of this moment. Maybe in the future it'll change if it ever becomes unlimited but we'd have to see but as of right now it's not a good tank, not a good healer, and a subpar DPS where you'd be better off bringing other forms of DPS like a BLM and a WHM that would clear faster and better with the added benefit of having an LB vs have a BLU.