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

[Whanext]

Yes, that's a bad design, because people are just rushing them with a lv70 (like I did). I could do it with a full party of BLU, but still it would take too much effort.



Solo play = Carnival. All we can "solo" right now is anything from the lv50 overworld and Carnival.

And yes, if BLU was lv70 it would break the content, like spamming Doom to a lv70 FATE or using Missile/Doom to clear super fast a dungeon. Not to mention that he will have Level5 Death at lv60. And no, they didn't imply you could solo an entire dungeon or a Primal EX, not at least at it's current state.

BLU is a long-term job and it's not fully "unlocked", because he's capped at lv50.
There's lot of room for improvement yet, but I like the idea and I hope some day it will catch up the res ob job's level.

This can be easily fixed by making bosses immune to doom/missile, and Dev already did that. Doom and missile do not work on most of the bosses. This is just some convenient excuses for the lazy work, and it already does not stand with itself.

[Arrius]

The text says “Not Suitable for Party Content” — it says nothing about forming parties or joining parties, just that they aren’t suitable for party content.

But they were straight locked out of the matchmaking Duty content but still could make their own parties and tackle dungeons, of they could've just simply mentioned that beforehand and saved everyone the guessing back then.

There are several different inferences that can be made about the statement: the one I personally made was that it would be unable to fit into the regular party content due to being difficult to balance. In other words, I interpreted it as the job would actually be a bit overpowered, but it ends up being the opposite. Adding to the advertisement of it being a Solo Job, I also inferred it would have decent soloing capabilities outside of just the Masked Carnivale and overworld mobs, but its solo sustain for content near or at its level is fairly weak.

I think of the game balance as a rough line, where the Blue Mage is making sharp jumps up and down due to certain spells. And those 'sharp jumps' cannot be 'smoothed out' as that would endanger the integrity of the job, as the mmo's of this time and age are much simpler in terms to gameplay, complexity and depth. Just look at XI and the roster of spells they got over there.

As for the solo aspect, I would've gone with 'Designed for Solo-Oriented play' and soften the argument instead of taking a hard stance of 'Designed for Solo play'.
Just me, tho.

[HyoMinPark]

Yes, that's a bad design, because people are just rushing them with a lv70 (like I did). I could do it with a full party of BLU, but still it would take too much effort.

Honestly, that’s a huge problem. I have no problem partying up with other BLUs, but BLU has poor maintenance/sustain that it just doesn’t make it feasible. Especially not in Extreme primals. And with no Raise, if one BLU dies and the skill just happens to drop for the party, well, sucks for that guy basically. I would have still preferred a version where BLUs could easily solo things like the dungeons, and only have to group up for the “harder stuff”, like Extremes—and, again, make all BLUs feasible; not 1 70, 1~7 BLUs.
Though a broken BLU would have been amazing. And no, I don’t mean “Just Doom the boss XD” broken BLU—just one that actually had some pretty high single-target damage.

Solo play = Carnival. All we can "solo" right now is anything from the lv50 overworld and Carnival.

This seems pretty sad to me. It’s basically the same as other jobs: other level 70 jobs can solo level 70 overworld and Heaven on High. Nothing really different except for some of the Masked Carnivale floors have a sort of puzzle to them (like the floor with the two towers and the slimes).

And yes, if BLU was lv70 it would break the content, like spamming Doom to a lv70 FATE or using Missile/Doom to clear super fast a dungeon. Not to mention that he will have Level5 Death at lv60. And no, they didn't imply you could solo an entire dungeon or a Primal EX, not at least at it's current state.

To be fair, they’d probably make EX bosses immune to Death. Most bosses should be, in my opinion.

[Jandor]

You're ignoring the last sentence.

"While blue mages can learn abilities while in parties, the Masked Carnivale can only be accessed by solo blue mages."

Can learn abilities in parties, can, not 'must be in a party to learn some abilities'.

That previous slide was followed by this one.



All this combined gives a very strong impression that BLU isn't really meant for instanced party content.

In SE world though this is apparently how you explain that instanced party content is actually pretty vital to BLU progression.

[MagiusNecros]

Can a BLU solo Shiva EX?

[Evogolist]

I think of the game balance as a rough line, where the Blue Mage is making sharp jumps up and down due to certain spells. And those 'sharp jumps' cannot be 'smoothed out' as that would endanger the integrity of the job, as the mmo's of this time and age are much simpler in terms to gameplay, complexity and depth. Just look at XI and the roster of spells they got over there.

At first I was very optimistic about blu, I understood why it was limited and didn't challenge their theory.

The thing is, the framework for it to play normally like the other jobs and not compromise the integrity of blu is already there. The lvl 20 job quest as well as the lvl 50 job quests require you to venture out and learn their required spells in order to progress further. Spells like Bomb Toss, Sticky Tongue, and Faze that allow you stun a enemy will allow Sharpened Knife to do more dmg. The same goes for the Ram's Voice, Dragon's Voice combo. So again the framework is there.

There's absolutely nothing stopping them from requiring players to go out and learn a spell or any number of certain spells every 5-10 lvls to complete a job quest and make blu a normal job. As for balance wise and the infamous lvl 5 death example they gave, again...the framework is there. Tail Screw barely works, Lvl 5 Petrify will barely land. Hell, even spells such as Bad Breath, Mind Blast and other status inflicting spells stop landing after a while and start being resisted, not to mention the bosses and mobs that resist from the start. So in the end Blu just feels rushed and lazy.

If anything, it feels like info on blu started leaking from data miners and Yoshi and the dev team pushed the panic button and we got blu sooner than we should have.

[MariaArvana]

Can a BLU solo Shiva EX?

Unless diamondback works on it, Shiva's sword mechanic would one-hit kill BLU no matter what, since it does 18000 damage split between all targets hit. I doubt BLU would make the dps check of the fight though even if they could survive; they'd be spending way too many GCDs casting white wind considering Shiva's autos can hit for 3-5k depending on vuln stacks.

[MagiusNecros]

Unless diamondback works on it, Shiva's sword mechanic would one-hit kill BLU no matter what, since it does 18000 damage split between all targets hit. I doubt BLU would make the dps check of the fight though even if they could survive; they'd be spending way too many GCDs casting white wind considering Shiva's autos can hit for 3-5k depending on vuln stacks.

And BLU's barely have above 5k HP. So yeah it can't solo. It needs a party for those skills.

BLU is less a solo job then it is a job class with class specific content aka Masked Carnivale.

Sad thing is once you learn all the dungeon skills you have little incentive to run as a BLU because you can't even get Tomestones off of it I believe.

And since most players I know only run roulettes, BLU is locked out of any fun to be had.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

The real potential lost would've been if it was a standard job. This is letting you play as a actual BLU not a watered down one that's conformed and balanced around the three role system.

[RadicalPesto]

The real potential lost would've been if it was a standard job. This is letting you play as a actual BLU not a watered down one that's conformed and balanced around the three role system.

"Watered down" BLU would at least not have the same 130 potency elemental nuke copypasted five times in its spell list, or multiple crowd control skills that do the same thing, or be flooded with filler spells, or require to be carried in any content it tries to join. I'd happily take a watered down blue mage over a glorified gold saucer attraction that doesn't even give MGP.