I see a lot of people say BLU is a "solo job", and I kinda feel that's not accurate. It's a job that CAN solo to level, but so can any class via FATEs really. What it *is* is a call back to an earlier era of MMOs, where one formed xp parties to grind on open world mobs and classes had more customization options with less of a defined role.

The lack of a DF may be what led to this assumption, but BLU has never been a solo job, not since day 1. Even barring the primal spells that were the original endgame for it, you were required to do two dungeons to finish your class quests. That's not a solo thing. However, the lack of a DF is vital to the "feel" of BLU in my opinion. For starters, back in that era making parties was something you did manually, and socially recruiting people was an aspect of the game. So, it's PF life by design. Even barring that, BLU prides itself on the customization options: You have an array of spells and a choice in what spells to set, or even which ones to obtain period (Minus what the class quests demand). BLU isn't necessarily designed to be balanced, and even disregarding the powerful options it has, there is that risk of getting a BLU in duty finder who lacks vital spells. This keeps other players from being forced to party with a class that requires extra work (and thus may have players who don't put in the effort), and also pushes BLU players towards a format where if they want to go for a tank or healer build they can do so. One could argue that BLU could simply set which role they queue as, but then you'd have people queuing as healer with White Wind as their sole healing spell and no raise.

It *is* group content, and the parties I've done with BLU have honestly been pretty fun. I leveled through heavensward with a friend, finding camps in the open world where we could gather plenty of monsters and burning them down. It honestly kinda felt like I was back in 1.0, but in a good way. Memories of camps at the antling caves, Natalan, and Nophica's Wells. I've also been doing the BLU log with a few friends I do savage with. Doing content with only BLUs feels different, like the safety net's been removed. A bigger reliance on statuses, the oddities of tanking and healing on it, it feels less like I'm going in with all the tools I need to succeed and more like I'm trying to force a success out of something that should not be in a way I haven't felt like since the 2.0 launch where people were doing pure arcanist parties to handle the excess number of players leveling it. The BLU log may just be a checklist, but I appreciate that it's there to nudge players to try this.

So, yeah. It's kinda jank, but the jank is by design and I really can't see them emulating the feel they're going for without keeping it. That said, I would appreciate more combos that work on bosses, since a lot of our DPS rotations are essentially "Spam a 220 potency spell", but I can also see why they don't let things like stun, deep freeze, and instant death apply to bosses (Though, I have found most of the 1st and 2nd bosses in dungeons are not immune to instant death). Give us better and more varied counter spells like ice spikes and defensive options for tanks, maybe use this as a place to have some really oddball healing spells like something akin to drain samba in FFXI, maybe bring back some of the old 1.0 spells that got cut like Sacrifice (a decent heal+regen that had an HP cost in the spell).