Please make Blue Mage a normal job

[ReiMakoto]

Speaking of spells: how exactly are the elemental spells exact copies of each other? Flamethrower isn't the same as Bomb Toss, Fire Angon or Eruption. Besides the elemental attached to it, they have their niche. Bomb Toss has a long range stun attached to it, Fire Angon is a fast, single target spell and Eruption is an off global cooldown, burst spell with a high potency.
Same goes with Plainscracker and Mountainbuster.

All of those spells work, just not on every target. Are you suggesting every death spell should work on any and all target? Or that status spells should pierce resistances? Eh...I'm not sold on that idea. I'm more in favor of adding more support and weird spells like Auto-Life and Angel's Snack and more attribute debuff spells like DEF down. The weirder, the better. This is likely to happen with almost 80 spells left to be released and most of the elemental-related spells seem to be covered (besides Wind, with Feather Rain being the only Wind spell).

Fire agnon is useless because it does the same job as mind blast worse. Bomb toss does the same job as flame thrower but with a semi useless stun and less damage, eruption is an ability and wasnt included in their comparison. The point is there is clearly an objectively best skill in a lot of these scenarios. What your pedantry failed to not is they were explicitly comparing the 130 potency skills in their comparison, in that there is a 130 potency skill of essentially the same effect for every element, so there is essentially no variety for these skills. If you were to take 1 100 potency gcd, 1 110 potency gcd, 1 120 potency gcd and 1 130 potency gcd out of all of the blu skills you would have narrowed down most of blues gcds into 4 choices. Literally for damaging gcds all you need to add there is bristle and song of torment and you have all the blu gcds necessary for optimum dps and then some. Freedom of choice my arse. And dont get me srarted on your "silly funtime" comment, id rather not sacrifice a job for some giggles thanks.

[Auryan]

Fire agnon is useless because it does the same job as mind blast worse. Bomb toss does the same job as flame thrower but with a semi useless stun and less damage, eruption is an ability and wasnt included in their comparison. The point is there is clearly an objectively best skill in a lot of these scenarios. What your pedantry failed to not is they were explicitly comparing the 130 potency skills in their comparison, in that there is a 130 potency skill of essentially the same effect for every element, so there is essentially no variety for these skills. If you were to take 1 100 potency gcd, 1 110 potency gcd, 1 120 potency gcd and 1 130 potency gcd out of all of the blu skills you would have narrowed down most of blues gcds into 4 choices. Literally for damaging gcds all you need to add there is bristle and song of torment and you have all the blu gcds necessary for optimum dps and then some. Freedom of choice my arse. And dont get me srarted on your "silly funtime" comment, id rather not sacrifice a job for some giggles thanks.

I wasn't commenting on whether or not if the spell was optimal or not. Rather contradicting the opinion that each of these elemental spells are exactly the same. They are not. The commenter that I was replying to was also conveniently ignoring the niche use of these spells in the Carnival. True, they are not mandatory or even necessary, but they have their uses, especially when you don't have the full list of spells. But sure, keep on harping on their uselessness. And more importantly, you don't have to use the "optimal" spells. I stick to what looks the nicest to pull off. It may not be ideal, but definitely feels less monotonous. Likely you don't care about that either.

My enjoyment of BLU is my opinion, and not an attack on you. A comment in favor of the current BLU isn't a personal assault, no matter how you paint it as. Sometimes people like things that you don't, how about that?
If you want, feel free to ignore my positive views on BLU. You seem to have easily dismissed the others anyway.

[Awha]

Is it really hard to see that people get enjoyment out of different things? For some the even if the choice is an aesthetic one it still is a form on variety and control that they may feel the game is lacking when it comes to jobs. While I do not agree it is not hard to understand why some may enjoy the current implementation. Now at the core only reason I enjoy BLU is because I am a sucker of collectibles, and while I am sure many looked up guides to see were you could find skills, I had a lot of fun with my friends trying to figure it out as a team. We also have had fun doing all content as a full blu group. Now in the end I do think it was a mistake to release this type of content under the banner of a job, but even though I feel they made a mistake from the start being as I enjoy what it has to offer and I wish for it to be expanded upon.

In the end both sides are being selfish which is fine, and SE dropped the ball with the whole job identity, and the language used regarding the slides. Granted, I never bought that it would be a pure solo experience, but I do understand why some saw it that way with the language that they used on the slides. My selfish reason for them not wanting them to do a complete rework is I simply do not have faith in SE to keep the aspects I like while trying to make it fit. It could be done, I just do not see the current combat team being able to complete such a task in a timely matter. If the rush a rework for BLU something will get lost in translation, if they were to do a rework I would rather they do it for patch 6.0 and just expand and build on the limited framework during 5.0. Thing is by that time who is to say people would even care or those impacted would still be playing. It is a tough spot for SE, and while I know it is selfish I enjoy current BLU, oddly enough not because of the job I do not care about job identity I enjoy the collectible aspect. I just do not see how it would make sense for them to have two different jobs under the same job.

[BubblyBoar]

How are both sides being selfish when one side says to keep BLU as mostly unsatisfying and the other wants something that makes both happy?

[KageTokage]

Many of BLU's skills are so similar that I don't lament how many are basically required to execute their rotation properly.

It does, however, make me question how the class is going to evolve as the level cap is increased as they don't have much space for more "required" skills. I imagine there will be a quite few skills that get outclassed and are replaced by better ones, as the same was true of XI's BLU.

Fire agnon is useless because it does the same job as mind blast worse.

Fire Angon is actually important because it's one of only two offensive skills that has a cast time of one second (The other being Sharpened Knife) and should be used whenever you need to avoid clipping from using OGCD skills.

Not to mention it's a target-centered AoE vs. a proximity AoE that causes paralysis, so its applications really aren't the same at all.

[Awha]

How are both sides being selfish when one side says to keep BLU as mostly unsatisfying and the other wants something that makes both happy?

I have said in an ideal world SE would be able to make everyone happy regarding BLU, we do not live in said ideal world. SE has a l limited amount of time and resources something has to given for a full rework to happen. It is the sad reality that we live in.

People may enjoy the current iteration of BLU for exactly what it is. Now we really have to ask would SE be able to make BLU something both sides would enjoy? I doubt it. Do not get me wrong I am sure it is possible but under the current leadership I do not see that as a possibility since if it was how come they did not just do so from the start?

In the end I highly doubt they expected BLU to be some long form content and based on the amount of people that were engaged at the start they probably view it as a success. Though that is purely speculation and maybe their data suggests otherwise but I do not think they will ever be able to everyone happy. Personally if the job still had the learning and overworld leveling aspect and full control over what we could pick in premade groups I would be fine since those are the aspects I enjoy. Though I view this simply as side content akin to an elaborate mini game.

If I had faith in SE being able to combine the current aspects I enjoy with it being a full job I would be 1000% down for a rework since that would simply mean more options. I just do not have faith in them reworking it and I fear they would break the few aspects I and maybe many others enjoy.

For me a rework is meant to fix something broken for me the content itself is not broken. Though I will admit tying it to a job and using class identity was a poor excuse but despite it being such I have had some of great fun and wish to see the concept expanded upon. Sure I wish they could expand upon both aspects I just do not see that as a possibility if it was I see no reason for them to not have done so from the start. So If I had to choose I would pick expand on the limited aspect.

[TaiyoShikasu]

A honestly a big improvement would just be letting BLU use the Duty Finder.

Primal skills will still be a hassle to get, but at least you'll get poetics with every Leviathan HM attempt.

[ReiMakoto]

Fire Angon is actually important because it's one of only two offensive skills that has a cast time of one second (The other being Sharpened Knife) and should be used whenever you need to avoid clipping from using OGCD skills.

Not to mention it's a target-centered AoE vs. a proximity AoE that causes paralysis, so its applications really aren't the same at all.

My bad, i had it in my head that mind blast also had a 1 second cast time, so yeah fire agnon is the second best weaving tool. All other points still stand about abilities though, you still only need 1 of each kind out of the mass of BLU abilities to be optimal rendering the other abilities of same potency/cast time pointless

[Physic]

How are both sides being selfish when one side says to keep BLU as mostly unsatisfying and the other wants something that makes both happy?

no side wants something that makes both sides happy. Making blu into a class that fits easily into a dps raid framework requires them to remove or nerf most of the skills, change the overall design philosophy.


there are some things people dont realize about the uniformity of normal class design.


Every class has a fairly similar amount of skills
Every class will prune skills that are too similar
Every class must fit into 1 of 3 roles and be incompetent at the other two roles
Every class needs to have a similar power level within its role
Every class must be expected to have many of its role defining abilities based primarily on its level.



you cannot make blue fit into this framework without some major reworks, prune most of its skills, change its aquisition method, removing or nerfing its cross role style.


And before you say, they could have both, no that is not likely, the game design likes to unify things and have purity of purpose and uniform design frameworks for its normal jobs. They wont want skills to operate differently in duty finder,and differently outside of duty finder. They are not going to balance, design and maintain 2 different things for blue

[Physic]

I play it as a DPS because it is a DPS. One heal does not make a healer, else PLD and RDM would be healers as well. Neither does pulling aggro and able to take the heat for a few moments make you a tank, else RDM, SMN, and WHM would be tanks too.

Also, variety doesn't matter if most of them don't work. This isn't even bringing the 1:1 skill copies like Plainscracker and Flame Thrower.

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As an extra thought not directed specifically at you but as a general statement, being able to clear content as 4 BLU or even 24 BLU isn't that indicative of the job being OP as people are always doing those kinds of challenges as other jobs as well. BLUs solo ability is completely reliant on White Wind and it is funny to see the moment that other jobs get a self-heal, they too can do gimmicky challenges like 8 Tank Alex Savage or 24 RDM Ridorana Lighthouse.

blue is better at the one job team, because blue is built with the ability to manage itself, whereas other jobs are built to need other roles to do survive.


you are comparing, blues pure tankability, and pure heals with pure tanks and pure heals, but thats not the framework blu operates in, or is designed in. Is blu tankiness and variety of weird abilities enough to take on bosses with other jobs of that type?


yes. and thats one of things that makes blue very unique. Its not designed such that 1 blue replaces a whm, but 2-3 blues? yeah. Its not designed to be a pure tank, but various blues handling hate as it comes and doing different things as the team needs in the fight? yeah. When me and 2 other firends were 3 manning level 50 dungeons on blue, one was not tanking the whole time, or healing the whole time, we were using whatever abilities we needed at the time. Switching on and off defense based on need, white winding when a firend was in danger, stunning or silencing big skills. Tail screweing mini bosses


It was fun, it was a different grouping paradigm, and its something other classes will not be doing in that way because of the purity of their role designs.





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and as for the reskins, have you ever conceived that this is only phase 1 of blue, as yoshida said, the welcome to blue phase, and they may get access to more skills and abilities that make using various elements or weaknesses more important.


a skill design like observe: allow blue to take advantage of monsters hidden weakness. would basically make the great variety of its skills incredibly useful. Unlocking stun weakness on 1 monster, or fire weakness on another.