Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Shougun]

well he talk about fact tho , that's the current problem BLU have. You want the achievement? you need farm the skills . How to farm skills? you need use full BLU party to do it. old skills below 50 yeah sure it will be easier using undersize , but 60 dungeon skills? nayyy... the content it's self its quite hard if you do it (A4S A8S A12S - full BLU) which cause most of casual/midcore raider not really have interest with it and it has ZERO replayabilty , which to someone already clear those will have no interest at all to do it again. Why would SE keep making a content like this that will dead super fast while they can just make BLU to proper job that we can use for anything? it's clearly just waste of resource right now.

Originally I thought they were going to make blue mage 'the job' that you go to to absolutely wreck old content that was not active anymore (so solo), such that players could do content that is normally not possible solo. Especially when they were talking about giving stuff full power. I believe this would have added far more longterm value to a larger audience with blue mage than temporarily active during a hot patch for a niche group of people until people get theirs's and the content dies (meanwhile getting yours is intricately tied to people, making it a pain).

While I still had wanted to play it normal I was warming up to the idea of an absolutely insane blue mage designed for maximum fun and solo content (before the job released). Unfortunately it became clear that SE put PF first, that was their lodestone, their north star, everything else secondary. I know some people claim 'true blue' but it's only partially true blue, they hold the job back for PF and design to it's concept- it's fair to argue it would be have to be held back more for normal (death in theme can exist but it can never work at full power on any boss in a "df" setting, obviously), but that they released blue in full spirit as their primary goal I would call false, especially if you claim it was designed primarily for solo play. PF was their intent, you'd have never received such a terrible angel whisper otherwise, or the spells that require party to obtain.

I think that is part of what drives the salt so strong on this issue- I think I would have cared a lot less if they had communicated more accurately calling it designed for solo play and then intrinsically applying your best and most interesting spells to exclusively party content, calling not to be balanced to party content so they can give it the full experience but then balancing stuff to party content, saying they don't want to require people spells so they did it solo but then making content where you will need spells (sometimes by the game itself), it feels very much like a "don't look at what I did, just hear my words and believe". I don't think SE is evil but it felt bad to watch things feel like lies, meanwhile the job you had been wanting to play for years and years becomes something you've never wanted to play and think is actually not that well made (like if you actually evaluate the mechanics, in many situations things are very ".... that's it?" - right for the next 40 levels we spam one spell, cooooooooo..l.... not even 2.0 paladin was this simple). So much oof.

Also I strongly believe if they were going to go crazy that they would have had a lot more gameplay 'fun' / value if they took some mechanic liberty with the skills to create more interesting inner workings. They do this a bit later in the job, with the party exclusive skills but far too much of the job is pretty boring mechanics and especially given the situation that you have to do party content (for the primarily solo focused job? lol) to get interesting mechanics. If someone is going to claim but but not blue mage then, I would point at all our other jobs where like Black Mage's thunder is a cool proc based system, it would be far more boring if each spell was simply a potency and and elemental damage type. Here, for many of blue mage's spells, they got the most boring mechanical treatment and I feel that's a shame. Or they come with awful use vibes, nothing more fun than having to watch a self stun for many seconds.

I mean to be honest the reasons why I went from warming up to god blue ('actually' solo designed blue) have evaporated in place of PF blue because mechanically I believe a normal blue mage would have been way more interesting. Without party finder spells blue mage is absolutely more mechanically boring than any of our jobs, with PF it's pretty close to our normal jobs (with some wonky balance of course). If they had given blue mage the full financial support to build a mechanically interesting rotation I feel it would have been more fun to actually go through the motions, or alternatively if they had design blue mage more like a wild card game / diablo 3 affix jungle (where spells intermix on multiple levels, rather than the fairly basic way they interact at this time - and many of them can't due to immunities they added for balance).

I also believe you could have mixed some of the PF into that progression (of limited side)- though I clearly think it silly to make blue mage specifically a PF job (as many people point out this has huge repercussions when the content dies so quickly, but I can see ways of not removing some of the PF experience and value), like if each spell increased your spell power of the job (blue no longer using ilvl), if you wanted to run into content faster and avoid collecting everything you'd get a group but if you collected every spell (in order of their difficulty) you'd get stronger and stronger to such a point you could readily solo things. Like if you beelined to the best spells you'd need to use a group but if you got all the spells your level 50 blue mage could do the level 50 savage solo reasonably (at least with a decent kit of spells). There would also be voluntary reduction in your spell level which would grant you bonus to drop rates of items, like if you were spell level 400 you could cut 50% to gain 50% more items and 20% rarity increase. This would further again make PF not a useless concept but allow blue mage to 'actually' be a solo job. Allowing you to see all that old content you'd not be able to see reasonably otherwise (although I still think ultimate should be held off exclusively as a trophy, like maybe you can do the fight but you'd not get the achievement).

Technically I'm not really even against PF limited job concept, I just think choosing blue mage for that was a bad idea. If you wanted to have nuts blue mage it should have been 'actually' solo designed (not mostly PF, with less solo value than any current job in the game has - our normal jobs have more solo design and value than blue except for like the 5 FATE bosses not immune to doom already, and many players want that to change too lol), if you wanted to balance it it should have been normal, if you wanted both you could have done both.

In order of happiness I'd probably have Normal Blue + God Blue (limited side content that is approachable for everyone and designed for solo play), Normal Blue + Limited Blue (blue as is), Normal Blue, God Blue (solo play blue), any other sort of limited job instead of blue (saving it for another time), and I guess if I have to list it 'limited blue' (I don't like straight out removing content but I've a negative image of the job, such that it occasionally sours my mood when I look at the job list- as I've enjoyed leveling every other job in the game but feel blue mage was not delivered very well for multiple reasons ranging from gameplay to communication). In general I think any job that is quite known should be both (advanced job) or using a different name to avoid hitting the fans who had really wanted to main that job, like making Beast Master both or calling it shepherd instead for limited. A job that I think would have worked really well under PF focus limited content would have been a magitek pilot, you would have avoided a lot of trinity, added a lot of freedom to spells and encourage a new style of gameplay, and due to how you visualize progression to mechs it would be easy to have the window of progression evolve smoothly along with PF and avoid such problems that blue mage has (progression can neatly mix linear and horizontal as well as a previous patch softening, making getting up with the PF smooth and joining at random times reasonable rather than).

[ADVSS]

Originally I thought they were going to make blue mage 'the job' that you go to to absolutely wreck old content that was not active anymore (so solo), such that players could do content that is normally not possible solo. Especially when they were talking about giving stuff full power. I believe this would have added far more longterm value to a larger audience with blue mage than temporarily active during a hot patch for a niche group of people until people get theirs's and the content dies (meanwhile getting yours is intricately tied to people, making it a pain).
snip snip snip snip

For real 1000 needles wins the award for biggest trap spell in all of eorzea. It isnt till you get to nearly 50 before you realize how underpowered BLU really is, and that 1000 needles is a very bad trap spell, that gave you this false sense of gonna be a good time, to "wow, without proper scaling this ability sucks. and also...most of the abilities are low potency what gives?!"

[Raikai]

magitek pilot

:O

I never realized I wanted this to be a limited job so badly! And it resonates so much with the most recent lore. It could be a job exploring Garlond Ironworks as their lore focus.

But yeah, the problem on BLU really is the execution. I'm not even mad at it not being a "main job", and like you I was pretty hyped because of the potential. Yet the execution was pretty bad. And still is, and I'm crossing my fingers for good stuff in the next live letter regarding the systems around the job.

Even Beastmaster fits into the "alternative gameplay" concept like a glove, as in pokemon-style content, but... It would all come down to the execution.

[ADVSS]

:O

I never realized I wanted this to be a limited job so badly! And it resonates so much with the most recent lore. It could be a job exploring Garlond Ironworks as their lore focus.

But yeah, the problem on BLU really is the execution. I'm not even mad at it not being a "main job", and like you I was pretty hyped because of the potential. Yet the execution was pretty bad. And still is, and I'm crossing my fingers for good stuff in the next live letter regarding the systems around the job.

Even Beastmaster fits into the "alternative gameplay" concept like a glove, as in pokemon-style content, but... It would all come down to the execution.

I can see it now, youve got the carnival with BLU and they give you the circus with BST. Give em a whip and a chair as an offhand. We get it SE, nice one, Honestly can see the instances now, where bears and lions get released and into the ring, and you have to use Charm skills to keep them from murderizing you.

[JiSH]

Technically I'm not really even against PF limited job concept, I just think choosing blue mage for that was a bad idea. If you wanted to have nuts blue mage it should have been 'actually' solo designed (not mostly PF, with less solo value than any current job in the game has - our normal jobs have more solo design and value than blue except for like the 5 FATE bosses not immune to doom already, and many players want that to change too lol), if you wanted to balance it it should have been normal, if you wanted both you could have done both.

the PF concept is "not that bad" but i think it's still bad, late starters, especially now that we're gonna get level 70 and more skills probably will get added, gets it the worst just like eureka, BLU skills relies on having a full party to get a guaranteed skill learn is the worst part cause now you either have to beg people for help. or open pf and wait until people gets in or go solo with abyssmal learning rate, both which are basically gamble.

they really could've just made two "versions" of BLU, cause i'm not gonna sink so much time in a side content, as it stand, it's too "limited" in a way.

[Alysella]

Blue mage job concept itself is not bad. It's just you need blue mage friends to actually play most of the contents. With new level 70 cap incoming, old contents for blue are mostly dead and you will be sitting for hours in pf just to wait for the slot to fill up. They should do something about this. Maybe adding some dailies and weeklies incentive to make people to at least try the job.

[Raikai]

Blue mage job concept itself is not bad. It's just you need blue mage friends to actually play most of the contents. With new level 70 cap incoming, old contents for blue are mostly dead and you will be sitting for hours in pf just to wait for the slot to fill up. They should do something about this. Maybe adding some dailies and weeklies incentive to make people to at least try the job.

They also can just add the queue function to the Blue Log, on top of the party finder option.
But above that, if they add a button to join a Daily Random Roulette there, with decent completion rewards, they will surely inject more people running BLU dungeon parties, thus making a bit easier for those queueing for specific places.
Also adding a Blue Mage instance completion to Wondrous Tails would give a bit more incentive for people to run them.

In this Daily dungeon queue, the Silver star target and the gold star target, they all should also reward some Allegory tomes instead of Allied Seals.

[TeraTyrantShadic]

They also can just add the queue function to the Blue Log, on top of the party finder option.
But above that, if they add a button to join a Daily Random Roulette there, with decent completion rewards, they will surely inject more people running BLU dungeon parties, thus making a bit easier for those queueing for specific places.
Also adding a Blue Mage instance completion to Wondrous Tails would give a bit more incentive for people to run them.

In this Daily dungeon queue, the Silver star target and the gold star target, they all should also reward some Allegory tomes instead of Allied Seals.

Blue Mage Log is an All Blue Mage Party and again I am going to have to point this out. Not everyone will put in the effort to obtain the spells necessary for each role unless they are well informed about it and most of the time they would skip to level 60 with power leveling. So either adding it as a Blue Mage or Limited Job only queue would be a disaster if anything.

[JiSH]

Blue Mage Log is an All Blue Mage Party and again I am going to have to point this out. Not everyone will put in the effort to obtain the spells necessary for each role unless they are well informed about it and most of the time they would skip to level 60 with power leveling. So either adding it as a Blue Mage or Limited Job only queue would be a disaster if anything.

Yep, especially with how meticulous skill learning is, most people won't have the "required" skills to properly run a duty unless they really put time and effort into it. Not only that sometimes people doesn't even know what their skills does, they just collect it, this is one of the biggest weakness with how current BLU is designed as a side content, people really doesn't care too much about them.

[Alysella]

Blue mage spells keep increasing from time to time. They can't do the basic class quest for tutorial like other normal classes. The spells are mostly reused assets from old contents. Basically they are making blue mage from scraps of stuffs. Class specific gauge for blue mage might be nice to have so it has its own uniqueness and not just spells collector.