SE, the concept of "Limited Jobs" is a really bad idea, turn back now

[Burningskull]

NA forums are bogged down with "one side or the other" suggestions for limited jobs. I think there are a couple minor changes that could address the majority of grievances. Using BLU as an example:

Positives:

• EXP curve is perfect. Leveling via mobs was quick and the revival of players in older zones is a plus.

• Skill learning feels like blue mage. Outside of primal skill RNG (NA/JPN forums both complaining about this), all other skills felt like they were fairly earned. Once you obtained a skill it felt exciting to finally have it. You felt like a blue mage.

• Art direction. Classic FF look with exact enemy skill animations.

• Masked Carnivale. Using blue magic on enemies was refreshing. I wanted more!

• Build-a-mage feel. I can choose skills based on their aesthetic value b/c of their similarity. An underrated feature of the class and makes it feel that it truly my blue mage.

Negatives:

• No main weapon substats. INT scaling could be buffed slightly. Contradictory to have substats on all your clothing from the final quest line, but none on the main weapon.

• No primal weapons. Understandable, in regards to time being allotted to the dev/design teams. Would give limited jobs more incentive to farm primals, as they would also drop items needed to craft these glamours.

• Retention. Just beat the MC! Just got my primal spells! ...where can I use them?

• No Duty Finder. We can already unsync this content. Blue mages may not have all their skills, but any job may not have all of their skills. They may not have relevant gear. They may not have a job stone. These are self-policing issues the community can handle. Better yet, impose leveling restrictions on the job itself if they don't learn skills i.e. 5 skills = can level to lv. 15, 10 skills = can level to lv. 30, etc. Imposing a restriction on how far you can level the job is better than imposing a restriction on accessible content

Overall, I praise the FFXIV team for their hard work in creating BLU. I feel that a lot of care went into many parts of BLU's design.

In regards to end-game content, I'm 50/50 on seeing limited jobs opened to it. As it stands already with just BLU, you have:

• On demand Reprisal with no CD (Bad Breath)
• 60s CD magic Trick Attack that is 3x as effective (Peculiar Light)
• 90% damage mitigation with no CD (Diamondback)
• AOE healing (White Wind)
• 1-HP hit (Tail Screw)

...and we're just lv. 50. We scream "imbalance" over single-digit percentage point differences in dps and b/c of that, i doubt SE will open limited jobs to this. That being said, I do believe SE should allow limited jobs overall into more content. Please give us more opportunities to have fun with limited jobs!

Tail Screw doesn't always hit and doesn't work on all bosses or trial bosses. If it did I would say fine, BLU doesn't need to be in DF. But since they don't I think the job is perfectly fine for DF. Add that that if you are casting White Wind when you have a healer in the group you are loosing DPS, which BLU already has a slight problem with. On Blue mage with just Off-Guard I deal anywhere from 600 - 900 damage on Glower. But with a Combo on SAM when synced at level 50 I do 400- 500 with the first party of a combo and then 1k - 1100 with the final combo. Maybe these things even out over time in a fight I guess. BLU damage just seems a little low to me.

[ReiMakoto]

Tail Screw doesn't always hit and doesn't work on all bosses or trial bosses. If it did I would say fine, BLU doesn't need to be in DF. But since they don't I think the job is perfectly fine for DF. Add that that if you are casting White Wind when you have a healer in the group you are loosing DPS, which BLU already has a slight problem with. On Blue mage with just Off-Guard I deal anywhere from 600 - 900 damage on Glower. But with a Combo on SAM when synced at level 50 I do 400- 500 with the first party of a combo and then 1k - 1100 with the final combo. Maybe these things even out over time in a fight I guess. BLU damage just seems a little low to me.

I know mentioning parser's is illegal, but from undisclosed sources I can tell you their dps is straight up subpar for a level 50 class, but their rdps is fantastic through peculiar light.

[Blueyes]

Tail Screw doesn't always hit and doesn't work on all bosses or trial bosses. If it did I would say fine, BLU doesn't need to be in DF.

Personally, I wouldn't even call that enough to keep Blue Mage out of the Duty Finder. Reason being, if spells like Tail Screw worked consistently against bosses, one of two things would happen. Either Blue Mage won't ever be allowed to reach max level or max level bosses would resist spells like Tail Screw. And well... that second point addresses the problem already. I just don't see SE allowing spells like that to work against bosses in current content. And once you take that away, we're left with a job that isn't much more special than any other while still allowing it to mess around with the older content it would ordinarily be limited to.

And if SE is worried about Tail Screw causing problems in Roulette, which can throw players into older content, they can choose to have those spells work unsynced where bosses are 10 or more levels lower than your own. There. No problems caused in either Roulette or endgame while still providing a means for players to solo older content.

The way I see it, there's always a solution. Always.

[Shurrikhan]

Personally, I wouldn't even call that enough to keep Blue Mage out of the Duty Finder. Reason being, if spells like Tail Screw worked consistently against bosses, one of two things would happen. Either Blue Mage won't ever be allowed to reach max level or max level bosses would resist spells like Tail Screw. And well... that second point addresses the problem already. I just don't see SE allowing spells like that to work against bosses in current content. And once you take that away, we're left with a job that isn't much more special than any other while still allowing it to mess around with the older content it would ordinarily be limited to.

And if SE is worried about Tail Screw causing problems in Roulette, which can throw players into older content, they can choose to have those spells work unsynced where bosses are 10 or more levels lower than your own. There. No problems caused in either Roulette or endgame while still providing a means for players to solo older content.

The way I see it, there's always a solution. Always.

This. Gimmicks to balance gimmick skills, or actual balance to balance actual skills. Tail Screw and its like can survive either way. I don't think that gimmick will ever be at all fun, but it is technically possible to integrate even mostly just as it is now.

I'd much, much rather see it act as a job gauge-spending (if BLU actually were to have one and it were awesome) finisher from a slew of water-rotation skills that synergize towards hellishly nuking something in the likeness of a BLU-variant LB, but either can work.