BLU as an "Unlimited" Job - Thoughts and Suggestions

[Acelyn]

seems to me the devs noticed that blue mage would need lots of maintenance to be a full job, i'd be all for it but feel the devs dont think the playerbase is "bright enough" to latch on so they released this gimpy locked away version

If blue mage was up to me it would be a complete job just a way more in-depth and personal one, it should be the jack of all trades choice, able to tank, heal or dps depending on its variant.

pretty much keep it so they need to go fight monsters of all types for abilities which would let them use whatever they want in the open world and be op as ever, then for duty content have it get detuned and have it setup so all of those myriad abilities have affinities towards dps/tank/healing so the player can form rotations based on them that would set their "variant" or what they would run that content as. I feel it should be a dps at its base with avg healer and tank stats when needed.

BUT unlike the other jobs that are locked in duty the blue mage should be able to switch if needed, lets say your tank goes down, the blu should be able to switch until the tank is back up or vice versa if a healer was incapacitated.

the issue with my idea is that it places work on players who want to play it and thats the plan, it would weed out those who dont wanna put in the work for it, it would be designed to protect other players, pretty much locking a blu mage out of group content until it's (1) found all of its abilities (2) built all 3 of its rotations, it would be a monster of a job to build and upkeep but I feel it would bring with it a big sense of accomplishment to those players that work with it.

overall I envision it as a solo monster, able to go out and lay waste to the world but when grouped together balance its open world freedom with the ability to be a clutch job that can cover for others when needed.

[Phoenicia]

I appreciate your work, but that sounds as boring as other normal Jobs.

much bettter than spamming 1000 needles, or Glower.

Worth a thousand words? Probably.

[Blueyes]

Off-Guard:
The increased damage dealt to a target affected by this skill is reduced from 50% down to 20% in order to allow base potencies to be increased.

I actually approve of the way Off-guard has been designed by SE and I'll explain why I say that. As it currently stands, Blue Mage has a heavy focus on AoE attacks which is likely a direct result of the many AoE attacks used by enemies. Increasing the potency of those spells could have the adverse effect of pushing its AoE damage through the roof which may be unhealthy for balance. What Off-guard does is it provides a way to increase BLU's single-target damage output while keeping its AoE damage in check.

That being said, I would actually choose to increase the damage gained from Off-guard even further. However, if Blue Mage is to remain dependent on Off-guard to contribute meaningful single-target damage, then its ease of use would need to be improved. Its recast timer should be no higher than 5 seconds so that it can be quickly applied to new priority targets. I also consider the cast time on Off-guard to be unnecessary. It should apply instantly.

I will admit that the need to rely on Off-guard doesn't feel great, but it strikes me as a necessity for balance as long as Blue Mage remains largely AoE-centric.

White Wind:
Now has a cooldown of 120 seconds. Also, as a result, it now has a minimum heal of 50% of your maximum health to improve consistency.

This is certainly something that could work, though it would need to be accompanied by a change to another spell. Having cleared all stages of the Masked Carnival, I have noticed how dependent Blue Mage is on White Wind to sustain themselves. If White Wind were changed so that it can only be cast once every 2 minutes, it could significantly harm BLU's solo capability.

But there is a solution: Blood Drain. It's already odd enough that the spell doesn't restore your HP when that's exactly how the action functions when used by enemies. It's how I always thought they should have handled healing for Blue Mage. Blood Drain as a cost-efficient self-heal and White Wind as a heal for the party.

Since Blood Drain would have to take the place of White Wind as BLU's primary method of self-sustain, its cure potency would have to be pretty decent. Around 800 potency would be needed to replicate similar effectiveness to White Wind based on comparisons to Cure II.

The only thing that I'm left to wonder is, if Blood Drain is made into a healing spell, should it retain the MP restoration? Normally, casting White Wind as a self-heal would be taxing on MP, but Blood Draw wouldn't have that problem when MP is restored at the same time. That would allow for infinite sustainability and that sounds like... too much.

But there is a solution. Currently, BLU's MP consumption ordinarily isn't high enough for Blood Draw to see regular use. (And with Blood Draw as a cost-efficient self-heal, MP consumption would be less than it is now.) So the way I see it, Blue Mage can afford to wait until later for its MP restoration spell. Specifically speaking, I can see that function being given to Magic Hammer which will likely be made accessible once the cap is raised to 60.

[Lambdafish]

What exactly is that core identity?

The core identity of BLU is collection, as would be the core of all "limited jobs". Beastmaster collects pets (think pokemon in the overworld) and puppetmaster (some sort of crafting mechanic to create mammets?). We aren't talking about combat, we are talking about the primary activity of the job, which is building up a library that can be used.

I have not actually disputed any of your complaints btw, I acknowledge that the actual spells of BLU aren't that interesting, and what the player can do with those spells is limited (I believe that squadrons and roulettes should be something that BLU should gain access to), but the idea of lumping BLU with all other jobs in terms of level cap and access to raids/pvp/deep dungeon does a disservice to the potential that the content has.

You don't want BLU in raids you just want... BLU in raids?

Uhh... Okay.

Reading this makes me dismiss a lot of what you have said, unfortunately, which is a shame because some of your ideas are good and resonate with my own opinions. Please read again what I said about BLU raiding. I don't want BLU to participate in traditional raiding, because the game mechanics there do not suit BLU. What I want is for limited jobs to have their own endgame, or "raid", which is currently the masked carnival (which I love, but also admit has some flaws, such as being exploitable and needing more longevity), where mechanics unique to limited jobs can be implemented, and we can get an endgame far broader than what the cookie cutter raids of normal jobs are able to provide. Once we have a second job, I feel that this idea can be expanded upon a lot more.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to think of ways to make elements mean something in places outside of the Masked Carnivale, so that for BLU, everywhere will feel like Masked Carnivale. Creating interactions between elements and skills that cause them in a way that will not only feel good to use, but also mean that people will be able to experiment with different skill setups rather than use the 1 skill that does X element damage to the target that's weak to X element. Or their current playstyle where they pick whatever 130 potency attack and spam that for days (Especially given how few people have the full slew of abilities for the rotation, because RNG on Primal skills being learned...)

I agree on principle that elemental skills should be expanded, but I am unsure as to how this could be achieved. The masked carnival works because it is a BLU only bubble where the game can work completely differently, whereas the rest of the game is shared between BLU and normal jobs.

Instead of being segregated to side content which would need the devs to divert resources to specifically in order to make sure these few jobs can get continual content while at the same time you KNOW that their primary focus will be with the content accessed by the majority of jobs.

While this is true for the most part, it is just a mentality that you have. You don't know the roadmap that the devs have for limited jobs, and they may be a direct response to the comments that the traditional formula is stale. It may be an attempt to create a parallel experience that provides something completely different. All we know from the devs end is that they said that other limited jobs are being planned, which tells us the scope of their vision. Think of it like crafting and gathering, are they just pieces of side content that the devs have to funnel resources into, or are they parallel experiences to the battle content that some players dedicate their entire game experience to?

Especially given how quick it would be to consume new content. Heck, a majority of the content for BLU already was completed in days for many people, getting to level 50 and learning most spells and completing the Masked Carnivale.

How much time will need to be spent by the Devs to create more content? How long will that content last? A month? A week? A day?

How long do dungeons and raids take to consume? What do you do once you have beaten them once? Again, I have acknowledged that BLU is a bit too limited, and does need some changes to give it more longevity, but that doesn't take away from the idea of a limited job at its core, only that BLU needs some QoL to give it more things to do (such as squadrons and older roulettes). The normal job system has had 6 years of QoL improvements, whereas BLU has had a single (arguably meant for testing the new system) patch. We don't know what the dev has planned for BLU in 5.0, and we don't know what they have planned for limited jobs in general. Maybe you are right and we get absolutely nothing and this is all that the devs planned for limited jobs, but I find it hard to believe that the devs would create an entirely new classification of job and not want to expand on that idea in the near future.

[Kalise]

The core identity of BLU is collection, as would be the core of all "limited jobs". Beastmaster collects pets (think pokemon in the overworld) and puppetmaster (some sort of crafting mechanic to create mammets?). We aren't talking about combat, we are talking about the primary activity of the job, which is building up a library that can be used.

I wanna put emphasis on that last part.

Yes, collecting is a key part of BLU. However, a primary reason FOR collecting is to actually USE the skills.

As such, they need to have content in which to use the skills in.
Content that is relevant and means something for them to use the skills in. Not something like current Masked Carnivale which doesn't need you to collect many of the skills in order to complete it. Not like if BLU was massively OP and could solo everything at level (The novelty would wear off pretty quickly).

but the idea of lumping BLU with all other jobs in terms of level cap and access to raids/pvp/deep dungeon does a disservice to the potential that the content has.

Again, how?

How does BLU being able to participate in normal content suddenly prevent any additional content being made?

Things like your weird "Limited Job Raid"? Which, if you really want to push for it, why don't you make a thread where you discuss how to make it work in a way that wouldn't be absolute garbage because simply having elemental weaknesses will not function because it's likely that Beastmaster and Puppeteer won't have the option to go around collecting various elemental skills.

What stops them from expanding on the Masked Carnivale while BLU is able to do normal content? They'll still be getting new skills as they get new level caps (Or potentially even more frequently, because that's one of the things about BLU is they can get new skills within their existing level cap)

Please, detail exactly the ways in which BLU accessing normal content precludes ANY side content for them existing.

Is PotD not existing because all the main jobs are doing main jobs things and we can't have side content? Does the Gold Saucer not exist and get updates because main jobs are doing main jobs things? Do we not have HoH as an extension of PotD? Do Squadrons not get updated? Do we not get Exploratory Missions and updates to them?

There's plenty of side content that gets added even with the "Standard" raids/dungeons. Why is BLU being part of the "Standard" content suddenly mutually exclusive to side content?

Please read again what I said about BLU raiding. I don't want BLU to participate in traditional raiding, because the game mechanics there do not suit BLU. What I want is for limited jobs to have their own endgame, or "raid", which is currently the masked carnival (which I love, but also admit has some flaws, such as being exploitable and needing more longevity), where mechanics unique to limited jobs can be implemented, and we can get an endgame far broader than what the cookie cutter raids of normal jobs are able to provide. Once we have a second job, I feel that this idea can be expanded upon a lot more.

Again, explain why both cannot happen. Why BLU cannot both be allowed to play in traditional raiding and can have these "Limited Job" raids that are all as quirky as you like?

Not to mention, that BLU can be designed so that traditional raiding isn't so far from their mechanics. Though, I'm curious as to what you believe would be different. I mean, so far, the only thing that seems to be different between current raids and what I've seen about "Weird janky Limited Job Raids" is elemental weakness. But how much would that ACTUALLY impact things? It just means you change what colour skill you spam from a red one to a green one depending on the mob. You know, exactly like Eureka which has elemental weaknesses and you just swap your magia board to the one that counters the current NM boss you're fighting.

Like, at best I can think of maybe a boss like Ultima changing elements as we pull out all the different primals, but even then (Not only have we already beaten Ultima) but the situation just becomes you have to limit your spell choice so you have a fire, wind, water, earth etc spell on your action bar to spam. Hardly game changing mechanics.

I agree on principle that elemental skills should be expanded, but I am unsure as to how this could be achieved. The masked carnival works because it is a BLU only bubble where the game can work completely differently, whereas the rest of the game is shared between BLU and normal jobs.

Currently, BLU has no traits (Other than generic Maim and Mend). There could be traits implemented that further play off using elements, such as giving flat bonuses to certain elements used while an enemy has a particular element debuff on them, which isn't consumed as with the "Combo" skills (So you swap your filler spell depending on what the last element you used after your combo skills)

Not to mention, they COULD in fact, add in elemental weaknesses to enemies if they wished. Put it as the level 50+ job mechanic where they get a little HUD element that shows what element the targeted enemy is attuned to, similar to the Eureka Magia Board. Then, they have elemental weaknesses added in, but only for BLU so that RDM/BLM don't get screwed over by resistances to their main damage spells. Essentially expanding that "Little BLU bubble" across the entire game.

These are only 2 examples that I came up with.

Imagine how many more we could come up with, if instead of arguing about how BLU's mechanics clash with regular content we actually tried to come up with solutions until we find one that the majority of people seem to find satisfactory?

Since that's really getting under my skin at this point, all the people who are against BLU as a job that can access regular content are just trying to attack the very idea of BLU as a "Less Limited Job" rather than try and contribute to discussions of improving the job in ways that make sense for the fantasy and design of a Blue Mage that would not only benefit the class if it became less restricted but would also serve to improve gameplay and design of new content if the class remained heavily restricted.

Think of it like crafting and gathering, are they just pieces of side content that the devs have to funnel resources into, or are they parallel experiences to the battle content that some players dedicate their entire game experience to?

Well, I'd assume they have different teams (Or sub-team) working on Crafting and Battle content. Meanwhile, the suggestion is that there will be a further divide in battle content as both regular and limited jobs would both need battle content churned out.

Which, if they do, then it's also again, possible for BLU to be able to participate in regular content with also having more limited job content too.

How long do dungeons and raids take to consume? What do you do once you have beaten them once?

They last however long it takes to get all the gear from, to farm tomestones from, until you get bored of fighting the same bosses again and again.

Once I've beaten them once, I do them again. Repeatedly. Since they're fun content. I do them in Roulettes. If I had a raid team I'd do raids frequently too, maybe bringing new people through them (As I did back when I was a Raid Leader in WoW)

This is to say nothing of if SE decide to have dungeons part of the Relic Weapons again, which might provide further longevity of the content due to farming to get those shiny glamours.

[Factoree]

A lot of people have expressed that it would really suck not to be able to pull off those crazy spells BLU is known for. At the same time, though, if a BLU can just use those all the time they sort of lose their impact or otherwise be seriously broken. With that in mind I had something of an idea for a mechanic that could help tie things together for a balanced version of BLU.

Indulge me by engaging in some class fantasy:
As a user of blue magic, you wield a highly unique set of spells. Cherry-picking the best from your foes and wielding them as your own source of strength, you chain them together in ways other mages wouldn’t dream of. By applying a Blue Mage's intuition and ingenuity, you combine those seemingly disparate pieces into an art, a sum greater than the whole of its parts. FFXIV's blue magic synergies foreshadow a much greater sense of cohesion between blue magic spells that only a master can see: applying the innovative spirit of the Spoken to the curious magicks of nature itself, you can engineer the abilities never meant for man and use them better than even the beasts you learned them from. Through clever modifications of the underlying aetheric manipulation, you can ignore the costs of inefficient spells, cast lengthy incantations in a flash, and shrug off the side effects of reckless magic.

To give the gist first, my idea is basically this: a Blue Mage can have access to an array of extra powerful Blue Magic without necessarily having it be practical to use all the time.

Put heavy costs on those spells (high MP costs, severe cast times, or drawback side effects ala Moon Flute or Overheat) while making them very powerful. Naturally it's going to be no fun if you don't get to mix those spells into your combat style, so we have a mechanic: try to get around the limitations of those spells. I envision this working by using other blue magic to build toward one of three metamagicks: Focus, Haste, or Wisdom. The Focus metamagick lowers the MP cost of your next blue magic spell by a large percentage. The Haste metamagick cuts cast times to a quarter (or some other fraction). Finally, the Wisdom metamagick prevents the “recoil” effects of spells from going off.

By utilizing the right blue magic in succession or pulling off spell combos, you can fish for certain metamagick procs and use them for those spells that, while strong, might not be the most efficient use of your resources otherwise. I’m hoping this could be a nice way to include powerful, memorable versions of such spells such as White Wind, Mighty Guard (if it functioned more like a defensive cooldown than a tank stance), Beta, Trine and so on without letting it become overbearingly powerful.

I also think this would be a neat sort of parallel to the Red Mage: where the Red Mage uses very measured, efficient spells to make the most of their own aether, the Blue Mage could embrace the quirks of nature’s magic and work around them.

[Kaitoo]

>Makes blue unique because its not allowed in currrent content
>People want blue because its unique
>Literarly ignoring that as a proper job it would be more of a turret/buff snooze job then Black

you cant make that shit up

Worth a thousand words? Probably.

accurate

[Factoree]

snip

Why would that have to be the case? None of the current casting jobs really play all that similarly at all in my experience, and I have all of them at 70.
They could make Blue Mage a casting DPS, but give it a bunch of fast-casting short range spells so it has to move around a lot.
They could make it use a heavily proc-based system like Bard where it always has to react to changing conditions.
They could even make Blue Mage into a full-on tank, if they so chose. It certainly has a decent amount of tools for it already, so many of the changes would just be stats.

Also, I think the image you quoted is sarcastic... all those Glowers represent the mechanically ideal way of playing BLU now. Why not make it more interactive and fun to play? The current system is unique in implementation, but the actual combat gameplay gets stale fast.

[Kaitoo]

.

So make Blue Mage something that has nothing to do with how it plays and is potrayed now
roger

[Factoree]

So make Blue Mage something that has nothing to do with how it plays and is potrayed now
roger

They've said they have over 120 spells currently planned. Do you really think that none of them could be adapted or tweaked towards any of those? I already see plenty of short-range area spells (any of the Breath spells for example) and spells that could be useful to tank. Mighty Guard, Sticky Tongue, The Look, Diamondback... the list goes on.