Healers and Blu

[Sloprano]

Whilst I get people are disappointed with Blue Mage content, but it's this experience here in the dungeons I've got in PF that I've been enjoying and kind of makes me miss the experience I had healing back in 2.0.

Thank you Saefinn, based on your tales of Blu I decided to set aside time to level up and get some spells for it. And I'm very glad I did, as you said, this is as close to the fun I had in 2.0:

Have yet to go in as a healer, mostly tank, but it carries all the same: I've got choices, options, versatility. And it just busted every myth I had about limitations in the game and narrow game design that plague current iteration of Scholar: There really is no reason for why we couldn't have interesting debuffs, wide array of gcd spells both for restoring, damaging and support, pet hotbars and skills usable outside of combat. Sure, when tanking I can just spam Reflux and noone catches up to me, but at the same time I can choose not to be boring and use:
* Mimic a player for tank
* Mighty guard stance that actually sacrifices personal offence for personal defence.
* Eruption and Surpanakha while moving to grab mobs.
* Aqua breath and High Voltage for dot, aoe and paralysis.
* Bomb toss for stun
* Song of Torment for dot
* Bad Breath for every debuff imaginble
* Veil of the Whorl for counterattacks
* Devour for hp buff
* Toad oil for evasion buff
* Toad Tongue for grabbing ranged mobs
* White wind and Exuviation for support and cleasning (and a ton of emnity)
* Flying frenzy to jump all over the place
* Sardines for interuption and throwing fish at mobs.
And maybe many more I haven't checked out.

Doesn't matter that this was as tank, because I have the exact same availble if I had picked healer to mimic. This just blows current Pld iteration out of the water aswell in terms of tanking and is more reminiscent of 3.0. This is the kind of toolset jobs used have, and should have when leveling up and just have fun with.

Crux being: "Power and variety at your fingertips" is what I try to sum up 2.0 Scholar with and Blu is exactly that. Everything is on a gcd, and every gcd unique, what cooldowns there are short, like on one minute or less and you barely notice it for everything else you can do meanwhile. Spending time with it, talking to others about aquiring these spells, just seeing every debuff imaginable on mobs and everything available is just fun. I can chose not to just spam the same spell because I have options. As mentioned above aswell, when everything goes well I find I can look over and see which of the many different spells I want to use.

If anything Blue Mage raises even more questions how current iteration of Scholar even came to be. Here's hoping 2020 becomes the year of revelations and they look to Blu for inspiration cause I haven't looked this much forward to fighting a regular mob or dungeon pack as so much since end of Heavensward.

I'm glad I spent time with Blu mage and still have whole Carnival and half the spells to go. Might not even need a quarter of them, but it's so much more fullfilling grouping up, talking strats with people and having so many ways to fight than spending another roulette with Broil III. Now all Blu is missing is the pet hotbar and a Cleric stance.