BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[ChocoFeru]

What do you mean "not carnival only"?

I mean BLU's potential is at Carnival and nowhere else. We should get new places to play as BLU without destroying it's essence. Maybe improving the overworld to fit it or something else.

Besides, SMN identity is its own FFXIV version, and that's far more deserving to be Limited than BLU will ever be.

Sadly not. SMN is just a Warlock with a pet. I mean, it's fun to play, but it doesn't feel like a SMN at all.

Also, what's new about BLU? Apart from Learn mechanic, nothing.

Wrong. BLU spells have elements and damage types to affect different enemy weaknesses, and it has all kinds of Crowd Control skills to fit into different situations. It opens a new way to play a job instead of the generic combats where there are no weaknesses, you do the same rotation over and over again, Crowd Control skills such as stunn/silence/paralyze etc are deleted and so on.

I do the same thing as I always do, Masked Carnival is terrible and I'm stuck at level 50 without having the benefit to even run roulettes.

That's why we should fight for improvements instead of destroying a job. Carnival is not enough and we need more content to play as BLU, but we shouldn't destroy the job by converting it into a normal job.
Also, a reminder; you can do roulettes with lots of other jobs.

This'll always happen with a Limited job.

Unless we speak out and make them change stuff. I'm up for improvements, but I still think we shouldn't destroy the "Limited" Job idea.

[ReiMakoto]

Snip

So you want what? Eureka just for BLU? Cos the regular overworld is never going to be more interesting just for BLU. Also you're the only one talking about destroying BLU dude, what most of us want is just to have a balanced skillset for BLU as well to let them into content, the limited stuff can be kept for those who like it, but having a "Battle Set" of skills to use as a regular job as well. Also:

Everyone always talks about the "Essence" or "Identity" of BLU, however as a FF Job goes, BLU has always been one of the most flexible jobs that changes a lot, don't believe me, here we go:
FFV: Mage that learned, like RDM could use swords, got shields too, so became a middle armoured support mage
FFVI: Weak old man, very much a standard caster archetype with some weird conditions for some spells
FFVII: could literally work on any character as Enemy skill doesn't alter stats
FFVIII: Blue Magic was a limit break learned by using items
FFIX: Blue Magic was nearly all percentage based skills, and was learned by eating things
FFX: You had to use lancet to learn skills, and they were just bad (I don't like Kimari)
FFX-2: Gun mage????? Not played this one, but again pretty different
FFXI: Battle Mage, used Swords could perform multiple roles
FFTactics: Support mage that could learn some powerful damage skills
Bravely Default: Vampire, Learned monster skills alongside vampiric abilities, good debuffer and physical attacker
Bravely Second: Catmancer... That is all

Point being, Blue Mage has been radically different across all of its instalments, with the only cohesive identity being: It attacks with monster abilities. So I really don't get where everyones coming from with this preserving the jobs identity chat, because its identity is super malleable as it is.

[ChocoFeru]

So you want what? Eureka just for BLU? Cos the regular overworld is never going to be more interesting just for BLU. Also you're the only one talking about destroying BLU dude, what most of us want is just to have a balanced skillset for BLU as well to let them into content, the limited stuff can be kept for those who like it, but having a "Battle Set" of skills to use as a regular job as well. Also:

All I want is different content, I don't want a stagnant game. I think this game deserves new content to improve the experience.

BLU is a first step, let's see what we get in the future.

Everyone always talks about the "Essence" or "Identity" of BLU, however as a FF Job goes, BLU has always been one of the most flexible jobs that changes a lot, don't believe me, here we go:
FFV: Mage that learned, like RDM could use swords, got shields too, so became a middle armoured support mage
FFVI: Weak old man, very much a standard caster archetype with some weird conditions for some spells
FFVII: could literally work on any character as Enemy skill doesn't alter stats
FFVIII: Blue Magic was a limit break learned by using items
FFIX: Blue Magic was nearly all percentage based skills, and was learned by eating things
FFX: You had to use lancet to learn skills, and they were just bad (I don't like Kimari)
FFX-2: Gun mage????? Not played this one, but again pretty different
FFXI: Battle Mage, used Swords could perform multiple roles
FFTactics: Support mage that could learn some powerful damage skills
Bravely Default: Vampire, Learned monster skills alongside vampiric abilities, good debuffer and physical attacker
Bravely Second: Catmancer... That is all

Point being, Blue Mage has been radically different across all of its instalments, with the only cohesive identity being: It attacks with monster abilities. So I really don't get where everyones coming from with this preserving the jobs identity chat, because its identity is super malleable as it is.

They had different styles, yet almost all of them had something in common; the way they learn the skills, and how the weaknesses affected in combat.

Also this quite supports my point. If BLU was so different on other Final Fantasy series, why shouldn't we accept FFXIV's BLU being different? Why should we turn it into a generic role?

Jobs broken already, people are barely queuing for the content anymore so skills are way harder to get. FFXIV is heavily instance based, which means that less and less reason to go overworld unless you're a gatherer or doing maps or FATEs. That's not good design to have BLU be strictly overworld (why would you limit yourself to the overworld, where nothing happens? And why only cater to one job having to be relegated to it? Eureka everywhere?)

Improving the overworld to fit new content, instead of leaving the overworld like what it is right now; easy and meaningless. And comparing a better overworld with Eureka is a mistake. Eureka is a separated system that works for it's purpose. Improving overworld doesn't necessarily means copying Eureka. Maybe the first step can be putting higher level mobs on some maps, or hard-to-access zones that needs people to open the way to access certain content (a boss? a treasure hunt? there are plenty of ideas)

The overworld right now feels meaningless once you get the flying mount, and basing the MMO in "duty-only" content is good for casual playing, but it would be cool to do something relevant in the overworld. This is a MMORPG and not a DutyRPG afterall.

Well despite having reasons why SMN was allowed to be a full job shows they know how to adapt and how SMN is embracing more and more of its SMN side with Bahamut. Why can't BLU be a full job?

The question is, Why can't BLU be BLU? Why should we refuse to keep all the skills and limit BLU to have only around 24 skills? Also lore-wise it wouldn't make any sense for now.

The fun thing about BLU is that you can do your own builds and play different. At level 50 it feels like a weak job, but I guess once we git level 60 and 70 we will get more important skills.
What we should fight for righ now is to improve BLU and ask for more relevant content instead of the Carnival-only mentality they have right now.

Also, we have different jobs in FFXIV. We have battle jobs, gatherer jobs and crafter jobs. Why can't we have a different ramification? Should we ask SE to change Miner to a combat class with it's own rotation and stuff? Wouldn't make any sense, right?

About SMN, it's improving on every expansion, but it doesn't feel like a SMN yet.

The elemental weaknesses are more inconsiquential than in Eureka even. It only applies in Masked Carnival which is already easy and you can get by ignoring it and spamming non-aspected attacks. Bosses are immune to most of the cc, bosses inside carnival too, including our most broken tools. Why is our solo content still limited? Cc is being less and less relevant as the game goes on as SE is moving to a more streamlined system.

If you want to exploit weaknesses, maybe Black Mage should be Limited too? I mean, spamming Fire on Ifrit, that's immersion breaking and against FF tradition, should we limit that?

The point is that there's no need to change the combat system. The point is to have different content. Should we limit BLU skills and convert all of them to unaspected damage?

And the old you have other jobs, you don't need this one. Wrong. I want to play this job. What about new races, we already have 6, guess we don't need Viera then.

No Gunbreaker then. Should of stuck with all the old 1.0 jobs as we clearly don't need those to be added, as they're all just "other jobs".

You can play BLU any time you want, I think. But you can't do actual duty content as BLU just like you can't raid with a Miner.

Btw we'll have more content as BLU if we were a full job, then we wouldn't need have lazy/spiteful production for content that couldn't last even a week.

We would have exactly the same content, nothing new. Just a mage with new flashy skills doing the same than the rest of casters. And yes, BLU content needs to improve, I'm up for that.

P.S I think you want FFXIV to be more like FFXI than FFXIV

Yes and no.

Yes: I wish the overworld was meaningful and dangerous.
No: FFXI had a lot of time-consuming stuff, just like 1.0 had (and that's why it sucked). I love how accessible FFXIV's content is and how it adapts lots of play styles.

We can get the good stuff and leave the bad behind.eric role?

[ReiMakoto]

All I want is different content, I don't want a stagnant game. I think this game deserves new content to improve the experience.

BLU is a first step, let's see what we get in the future.



They had different styles, yet almost all of them had something in common; the way they learn the skills, and how the weaknesses affected in combat.

Also this quite supports my point. If BLU was so different on other Final Fantasy series, why shouldn't we accept FFXIV's BLU being different? Why should we turn it into a generic role?

So you're not right here either, the way they learned was also different in every game. What was common amongst all of them was that they used ENEMY skills, not the how. As to why it should be a "generic" role, thats because there's no reason why it shouldn't. You can keep the limited crap content for the people who like it, and also get a Job people can use. Because people like me who've wanted this job for years now can't play it in the content that I play the game for. Also why do you support the Devs in the implement now patch later mindset. Implementing bad content now doesn't justify the content if its patched to be good later.
I will agree with you that the game does need new content, there's just no excuse to making that new content A) Bad. B) Withholding an Iconic Job C) mutually exclusive to also getting "generic" stuff. People seem to get this misconception about the folk that want BLU to be a normal job don't want new things and just screech, its not that we don't want new things, its that we want new things that are actually worth the effort, not a halfbaked proof of concept which clearly could have a normal and limited side, but has just been chosen not to. It's like when diadem was released... twice... people said "Oh just wait a while, think of what it could be!". Yeah look how that turned out. I don't want BLU to suffer the same, because its my Fav FF job, and its been done dirty

[Berethos]

You can keep the limited crap content for the people who like it, and also get a Job people can use.

129 abilities to choose from. That is (minimum) what we're coming up to with BLU.

Convince me that a balanced version using just 25ish (average for most jobs) of those, with a rotation and mechanic of its own that doesn't rely on tilted synergies or choosing which abilities to take or not take (it has to have a reason its fun inside of that balanced "for duty roulette" environment, after all), is actually possible...on top of creating challenges for the version that can choose abilities and does have access to tilted synergies...while also developing two other new jobs and reworking the others to varying degrees.

I think you've underestimated the work needed for both approaches to be done, but hey, I'm open to convincing arguments here.

I doubt they'll address Blue Mage until after the expansion hype train has finished, unless Blue Mage was already to be addressed in that train. Like they may have some big update news to Blue Mage that was already planned. I'm sure afterwards, it might be possible to be mentioned though.

Well we've known that they have something like 78 more skills waiting in the wings since the job was originally going to be launched with 4.4 and they've had time to prep some work for it ahead of time.

[ReiMakoto]

129 abilities to choose from. That is (minimum) what we're coming up to with BLU.

Convince me that a balanced version using just 25ish (average for most jobs) of those, with a rotation and mechanic of its own that doesn't rely on tilted synergies or choosing which abilities to take or not take (it has to have a reason its fun inside of that balanced "for duty roulette" environment, after all), is actually possible...on top of creating challenges for the version that can choose abilities and does have access to tilted synergies...while also developing two other new jobs and reworking the others to varying degrees.

Okay. First a balanced duty set that you must equip to go into the df doesnt need to have the same 24 restriction, it could use as many as needed but i digress I can make an argument even with just 24. To make a balanced rotation out of the 50 skills we currently have we only need to take 14 ish skills. assuming going forward we will get a lot more of what we have already: repeat skills (130 potency aoes say high and they arnt the only repeats, wouldnt put it past them to do something similar but with a single target skill, so 1 for each element), joke moves like sardine, and moves that would be useless/ very niche in a high end setting (self destruct, the deaths/ percentage skills). Not to mention as we reach higher levels we could get spells that just straight up replace skills we have already in the balanced stuff, like something better than mind blast for weaving, or a more powerful spammable aoe or dot like other classes get replacements.

All that being said it is very possible that outta all the skills we end up with there can be a balanced set as:

TLDR: Repeat skill of all forms, possibility of direct upgrade skills, meme abilities for the lols, and stuff that won't work on bosses/ are very impractical mean a set of 24 hand picked by the devs could be achieved.

Edit, where are you getting 129 from btw, i always see it quoted around 100 total skills.

[Berethos]

Okay. First a balanced duty set that you must equip to go into the df doesnt need to have the same 24 restriction, it could use as many as needed but i digress I can make an argument even with just 24. To make a balanced rotation out of the 50 skills we currently have we only need to take 14 ish skills. assuming going forward we will get a lot more of what we have already: repeat skills (130 potency aoes say high and they arnt the only repeats, wouldnt put it past them to do something similar but with a single target skill, so 1 for each element), joke moves like sardine, and moves that would be useless/ very niche in a high end setting (self destruct, the deaths/ percentage skills). Not to mention as we reach higher levels we could get spells that just straight up replace skills we have already in the balanced stuff, like something better than mind blast for weaving, or a more powerful spammable aoe or dot like other classes get replacements.

All that being said it is very possible that outta all the skills we end up with there can be a balanced set as:

TLDR: Repeat skill of all forms, possibility of direct upgrade skills, meme abilities for the lols, and stuff that won't work on bosses/ are very impractical mean a set of 24 hand picked by the devs could be achieved.

Edit, where are you getting 129 from btw, i always see it quoted around 100 total skills.

All you've done is chosen the skills that would likely show up in a rotation balanced for group play.
That's maybe 1/3 of what you'd need to do - you'd also need a mechanic around which those abilities play, since the tilted and OP synergies aren't an option, and choosing different visuals for identical abilities is not a mechanic to build a job around. What's the mechanic for the job, the way Umbral Ice/Astral Fire is for BLM, or balancing Black/White mana is for RDM, or building toward DWT and Bahamut is for SMN?

You'd also need to figure out what the collection of abilities for the set rotation is going to look like when the next set show up (the 120+ is from the Famitsu interview article done in December, where he mentions they have "about 128 developed and they are planning on adding them in order in the future."), since the job will be getting significantly abilities than other jobs, and preventing later (particularly popular) abilities from being used in the rotation just because they showed up later wouldn't go over very well.

You also haven't explained how you'd fit doing that and keeping the non-DF version that has access to all spells up to date with new content for it to challenge.

As I said - you've underestimated the amount of development time that would likely be required to make it work (for what would be, in the end, minimal gain).

[Shougun]

Well we've known that they have something like 78 more skills waiting in the wings since the job was originally going to be launched with 4.4 and they've had time to prep some work for it ahead of time.

Oh yeah, sorry what I meant to be different wording/clearer is that they will not address Blue Mage again unless they had already intended to address Blue Mage.. or least until the hype train is done. Also they may decide to not address Blue Mage when they had planned to if what they were to announce doesn't touch a upon a single element of what fans had issue with.

Lets say for example they've got a bunch of similarly balanced spells to add and were going to show them off, nothing really mixing it up - more different colors of the same attacks.. probably would just cause a lot more issues than hype. However, if they had a bunch of OP spells to show off maybe they still would. And if they didn't have something planned before I find it unlikely they would now unless they somehow addressed at least come criticism they received (which would be a really fast turn around rate, given that they're also on the eve of an expansion drop).

Or finally.. Unless Blue Mage related content is released from SE in the meantime or until the expansion is out, I'm not sure if keeping this thread active will do anything except maybe get it locked for being bumped too many times. A few bumps seems to not be an issue but too many bumps and I've seen stuff get locked lol. I'm not telling people what to do, just thinking it wont have any effect on the dev team until they've got a chance to breath in something other than Shadowbringers. I'm saying that as well as someone who does hope for changes in blue mage, not trying to sweep the thread away.. just suggesting the best action on blue mage is probably in a few months and not really right now (especially as I'm sure they've seen/heard what people believe the issues are with the job/concept now).