Why is no one talking about beastmaster?

[Seraphor]

My signature is mostly a joke however I certainly would say if they're investing high amounts in pvp it should probably be scaled back, they've tried to make it a thing for so long and it just doesn't stick. What I'll give PVP is at least is that theres organised days where you can queue for stuff like rival wings, and enough people take part in it casually that the queues pop relatively fast for experience in frontline. No such casual experience exists for BLU and in every trackable metric ive seen it falls well below even pvp.

Also more limited jobs is a tricky prospect to justify. More limited jobs on the same "limited job budget" will lead to cannibalisation of rescource, either BLU will get less or the new LJ will get less. We've already seen the vast difference in content between BLU update 1 and 2, with update 2 getting less spells (both numericall and in function) and less carnival, having to make content for another one alongside BLU is a gamble on rescources, and if they share content that will also lead to problems, as now BST has to be able to do the same stuff as BLU in order to share carnival stages so BSTs overall abilities will be "homogenised" with BLU's. I just can't see them adding in another limited job without the content cannibalising itself.

BLU should be scaled back though. It's growth format is purely cumulative, whereas regular jobs have a set 32 maximum skills, BLU has 80 and growing. It can't be sustained. BLU should be getting fewer spells with each update anyway, and eventually it'll cap out when it gets too big.
Where will LTD job development go from there? Into other LTD jobs.

Balancing Beastmaster with BLU content will be many times easier than balancing other content. BLU is already fairly unbalanced, with most of the difficulty coming from the innate difficulty in using and coordinating it's skills. Which is why gaining the Morbol mount can be both far easier or far harder than those same savages on regular jobs on ilvl, depending on your party.
It's more in line with Bozja and it's Lost Actions, which enable people to essentially become any role as their own job.
Balancing Beastaster with BLU should be no more complicated than balancing a Tank WHM with a Healer GNB in Bozja. And yes, I've seen WHMs tank the entirety of Castrum Lacus Litore.

[ReiMakoto]

BLU should be scaled back though. It's growth format is purely cumulative, whereas regular jobs have a set 32 maximum skills, BLU has 80 and growing. It can't be sustained. BLU should be getting fewer spells with each update anyway, and eventually it'll cap out when it gets too big.
Where will LTD job development go from there? Into other LTD jobs.

Balancing Beastmaster with BLU content will be many times easier than balancing other content. BLU is already fairly unbalanced, with most of the difficulty coming from the innate difficulty in using and coordinating it's skills. Which is why gaining the Morbol mount can be both far easier or far harder than those same savages on regular jobs on ilvl, depending on your party.
It's more in line with Bozja and it's Lost Actions, which enable people to essentially become any role as their own job.
Balancing Beastaster with BLU should be no more complicated than balancing a Tank WHM with a Healer GNB in Bozja. And yes, I've seen WHMs tank the entirety of Castrum Lacus Litore.

Saying 80 and growing is a bit disingenous when nearly half of those skills are 220 pot aoe or status ailment move but worse than this other status ailment move. My point has always been for limited jobs, that once they hit a critical mass they should "promote" as it were into normal jobs then we get a new LJ and repeat. After this level 70 update BLU will be "done" as it were, it already almost can't fit any more skills in its optimal dps setup, and unless new skills after straight up replace their current skills there'd be nowhere else to go. It makes more sense at that point to promote BLU to a normal job from level 70 onwards (keeping limited content as a minigame/side activity) using the optimal setup that has been already developed (and balanced) as an mDPS, then introduce the new limited job and focus solely on that from that point onwards. That way they are free to focus everything all on 1 job to keep the content from fighting itself

[ADVSS]

Saying 80 and growing is a bit disingenous when nearly half of those skills are 220 pot aoe or status ailment move but worse than this other status ailment move. My point has always been for limited jobs, that once they hit a critical mass they should "promote" as it were into normal jobs then we get a new LJ and repeat. After this level 70 update BLU will be "done" as it were, it already almost can't fit any more skills in its optimal dps setup, and unless new skills after straight up replace their current skills there'd be nowhere else to go. It makes more sense at that point to promote BLU to a normal job from level 70 onwards (keeping limited content as a minigame/side activity) using the optimal setup that has been already developed (and balanced) as an mDPS, then introduce the new limited job and focus solely on that from that point onwards. That way they are free to focus everything all on 1 job to keep the content from fighting itself

I have to agree with this, i dont really see a need for 120 spells on BLU, as theres very little variance in at least the majority from ARR levels, and some from HW areas. 220 pot aoe different color line, cone, or single target. We got less skills, sure, but they are incredibly more varied(gobskin, aetherial mimicry, angel whisper, exuviation, suroankana[absolutely staying on my bar[)

[LineageRazor]

I have to agree with this, i dont really see a need for 120 spells on BLU, as theres very little variance in at least the majority from ARR levels, and some from HW areas. 220 pot aoe different color line, cone, or single target. We got less skills, sure, but they are incredibly more varied(gobskin, aetherial mimicry, angel whisper, exuviation, suroankana[absolutely staying on my bar[)

Indeed - the only other implementation of Blue Mage with such a wide variety of spells was FFXI's Blue Mage. While that job was fun and interesting, I really don't think the paradigm translated well to FFXIV. For that matter, the spell overload wasn't very useful even in FFXI; there were tons of spells that were flat-out useless, and the only reason you'd ever equip them was to acquire certain job traits (a mechanic that is NOT present in FFXIV).

I'd rather have twenty or so useful spells than 120 mostly-trash spells.

Also, because I always feel the need to say it: "chance to learn" can die in a fire. Seriously. One and done, please - "chance to learn" wasn't fun in FFXI, and it's even less fun here.

[Shougun]

Indeed - the only other implementation of Blue Mage with such a wide variety of spells was FFXI's Blue Mage. While that job was fun and interesting, I really don't think the paradigm translated well to FFXIV. For that matter, the spell overload wasn't very useful even in FFXI; there were tons of spells that were flat-out useless, and the only reason you'd ever equip them was to acquire certain job traits (a mechanic that is NOT present in FFXIV).

I'd rather have twenty or so useful spells than 120 mostly-trash spells.

Also, because I always feel the need to say it: "chance to learn" can die in a fire. Seriously. One and done, please - "chance to learn" wasn't fun in FFXI, and it's even less fun here.

I have to agree with this, i dont really see a need for 120 spells on BLU, as theres very little variance in at least the majority from ARR levels, and some from HW areas. 220 pot aoe different color line, cone, or single target. We got less skills, sure, but they are incredibly more varied(gobskin, aetherial mimicry, angel whisper, exuviation, suroankana[absolutely staying on my bar[)

I think this is the biggest failure (yes my imo) of limited blue mage. If they took it out of DF for balance then how awesome would it be to have a huge list of spells that make you cry that you have to remove one, how awesome if each skill had the potential to interact with another in a novel and exciting way that you're sitting there stroking the chin trying to figure out how to build the build that'll be the most fun and or broken.

Currently there is no reason to stroke anything and I know you kind of like mimicry (or at least I thought you said it was cool before) but I think it should go and is bad for the overall health of the job.. Mimicry makes the chin stroking even worse, it's very obvious which skills you should pick when you're forced into a role so heavy handed as that skill is (and also makes the devs design towards the existence of such a heavy skill). Yes the buff it provides is helpful and a big boost to whatever task you need to do but that buff could have been provided in far more interesting ways that don't damage the actual value of build thought. Also the skill is a direct middle finger to the whole primarily designed for solo play thing but to be honest that's true for most of the job lol. It certainly makes balancing PF content easier, so I can see why it exists for that but it makes a big 'why' for in general and I believe the job could have used other better solutions instead. I can also understand if people think the gimmick is kind of unique but again general concept I don't think the spell is good for the health of build diversity and skill creation and they could use other options to better that- can change the spell up so it still does something interesting but doesn't force people into a role like it does currently, like maybe based on the monster type you target you get an interesting buff / spell disposition (so you'd use it in combat as a temporary buff and cast it on a target that'll grant you the situational buff that makes the most sense, or it might act as a simulacrum minion tool so blue mage even has a pet ability which could be cool).

Before I was using Diablo 3 as an example but as I'm playing Hades right now and I feel that might be something more people are aware of now so using that as an example-

You have a situation where you'd pick up an upgrade that makes your spear attack rapidly in a row, then you get an upgrade that deflects attacks back from your basic attack, then you find an upgrade that makes your spear hit in a fork pattern so it has a big AoE - suddenly the deflect with the rapid with the aoe... it's freaking amazing of course but each one by itself was also very useful and there were many other combos. Like you might have knockback deal damage, then your dash gains knockback, and the combo is huge.

For the claim of making blue be OP the situation for that was there, they could have had many many useful spells but instead they built majority useless and then very clear builds where there is no reason to think about it. Especially with mimic the thought goes down, the builds are clear- and of course you've to do PF to get those good skills.

In diablo you had many situations like this as well with the legendary items, suddenly a useful skill because of a legendary that adds tracking becomes O_O useful. Then another legendary comes around and blows your mind again, yet each affix was almost always valuable on it's own and even if it wasn't valuable yet you figured in the future you could do something cool with it. The vast majority of blue is filler, and the stuff that isn't filler is just straight forward building.

To bring it around to Blue Mage specifically say for example water cannon has a mechanic that every spell cast, that is not water cannon (as this spells consumes it), builds pressure - which acts by adding a water element buff that stacks, dealing more with each stack. Meanwhile Levithan's whirl increases duration for every non-consecutive water spell cast, after 30 seconds active it upgrades some effect and you gain maximum pressure by 5 (up to 10) for the next spell. Someone might see supra (charge primal ability) and think of doing pressure dumps, but the spells don't demand they work together, and there would be other combinations as well (other spells interacting with elements, some specific some general). Or Fire Angon behaves like it should where it throws a fire spear that remains at the position for a duration and explodes over time inflicting a debuff- the ability can build charges by using non-fire based spells (recharges to 1 charge on cooldown, the rest are gained through the mechanic mentioned), flamethrower acts as a channeling multi-attack so it will trigger the explosion on fire angon's spear multiple times when used. An obvious example would be using Angel Whisper to allow you to self destruct on occasion with perhaps the only downside being the weakness and or fact you can't use the auto-life on a mechanic where the boss killed you since you put it on cooldown (which SHOULD give you auto-life, or at least be a good heal and cleanse too, not the worst raise in our game as it is).

On top of those basic concepts of working together without it being explicit like dragon and rams voice are (which are also designed in such a way that if an enemy is immune to the debuff the combos fails, which I find a bit sad), there would also be some nice potential for other sorts of builds. For example in FFXI when you combined certain spells you gained powerful passives to your job, personally I think rather than forced a passive like FFXI here it should be as you earn abilities unlock new passives (this makes every ability even more important and awesome). These things can be special HUD pieces too, for example water cannon might build to 3 charges by default and consume all but by using the special hydromage passive your staff becomes a job gauge hud where the water fills the staff (like a red mage element UI but inside a staff), now you can store more pressure and instead of consuming it all in one cast it consumes 2 charges. No spell should be designed to mandate a passive (so water cannon clearly works without it), but you could have certain passives dislike each other like you might fill your staff with fire instead and it would do something different and you couldn't have both elements inside your staff (can't have hydro and pyro mage passives active at the same time). Yet if you unlocked both passives and find another specific skill you might find a variant that allows your staff to contain two elements but to half the capacity on each, perhaps it might even be like in FFXI where it's dual wielding - so you get two elements because you've equipped two staffs (pulling a Gandolf lol). There are many other things that could be added, some of them being general others being even perhaps ability specific permutations. Say for example you might get a passive called elemental momentum which causes you to deal damage in area around you whenever you use a movement ability (damage based on your current highest element). Another might be lingering effects which says any elemental spell leaves an effect based on the element used (burn, rasp, etc, but tweak each one do be a bit unique and not generic dot of x color), the dots can stack up to 5 and casting a different element will refresh a random dot of not that element (so if you had 5 fire and nothing else casting anything but fire would refresh the duration of fire). Meanwhile another ability might be a bit like SMN bane so you could spread these effects, so someone might consider making an aoe multi-elemental build.

Keep in mind like the element water would effect other spells, so while you were thinking about water cannon gaining more damage from the pressure mechanic it could also be doing something else entirely unique / interactive. Just like in say Hades where you get a automatic aoe attack to your string of single targets (from an upgrade), then you get another upgrade that deals damage over time on your basic which becomes an amazing combo, and then later you get an effect that causes those afflicted with the damage debuff to become exposed so you deal more damage to their backs, then later you gain a spell effect that makes any back attack related effect also effect your spell, these mechanics working on their own and with others in interesting ways. No skill ever exists in a vacuum in terms of usefulness, yet each skill in a vacuum is not considered useless.

So like water you'd also then have interesting concepts like freeze, bubbles, and shock. A monster may be immune to certain aspects of an effect but there these effects exist to interact with style to other spells (so the monster will still hold the debuff even if part of it is ignored). These other spells not saying "I need EXACTLY this other skill to work" but saying like "when the poison hits a bubble it does X", Garuda's feathers pop bubbles for extra potency, etc, etc. Doesn't matter the source the job is designed to smoothly socket into itself in a fascinating number of ways, many might be unexpected. Because it's 'limited' and 'designed primarily for solo play' this is a good thing. If they want to balance the job then.. hey I have this idea called "allowed for normal content" then lol.

These just scratching the surface of interactions. I've only mentioned a small handful- there are many more. Now not every spell needs a paragraph but like I mentioned you'd have a useful skill that could suddenly turn on it's head in a good way, like loom goes from movement to explosive damage (with elemental momentum passive, as loom is a movement skill, but you could have another movement skill too, you might find yourself creating a hyper mobile blue mage build where you damage things via moving).

Because the balance is no longer concerned about party content at all you, like in diablo, can have many many 'fun' builds, and of course some specific ones might deal more damage but that's not important anymore, unlike blue currently which doesn't have really any build diversity besides the forced trinity and because it is balanced to PF content SE can't make crazy combos. While you might be able to solo most stuff with a fun build you may need to build extreme for some sort of hardcore challenge carnival content (like diablo, you can beat the game with pretty much anything, but if you go 900 rifts deep you need to polish your build to a fine point - yet the whole time you had fun interactions and mechanics that you were thinking about). So sometimes when people hear me thinking of solo god they think blue mage casting death on everything and it just working, but I find that silly and boring- so like death mechanics would have their own balance such that they're far more fun to use (less things ignore it, no missing, but you can't spam it everywhere, and if it doesn't work then the result wouldn't be so disappointing). Then there would be mechanics like I talked about before where you could optionally reduce your power levels to increase rewards (rewards are not reduced going solo, but they can be increased if you go 'weaker') or if you didn't collect everything, like if you wanted to do X content earlier than your spell list of 15 allowed you could group up (meanwhile a spell list of 120 blue mage would look like Goku after the 15 episodes of kicking his butt kicked, full power and amazing looking). Naturally this wouldn't work on the latest content, so the rule would be like everything previous to the expansion you're on (unless it's ARR in which case it just takes you having to beat it, since nothing is previous to ARR).

Also want to make special note of bad 'feel' skills in design, like losing your ability to play due to self stuns, stun locking the enemy such that you don't have to use your brain anymore, missing, entire spells failing their combo concept due to immunity, and casting times on things that really shouldn't have it. For stuns the general thing is it either feels like a prison or it means you don't need to think anymore, so stuns should be used exceptionally careful and honestly pretty much never inflicted on self. Missing and therefore having to spam a skill is just in general a bad feeling, I would much rather see skills have their design be around the idea they work but have restrictions on spam. Enemies ruining cool interactions due to debuff immunity of course feeling bad since the combos are some of the more fun, and without them working again the builds in this game suffer as they become even more straight forward (so like blue mage debuffs may be designed so they still apply but part of the debuff may be ignored depending on mob, but the interactions blue makes with that debuff remain safe). Casting time of certain things, which they improve later, should be considered- like casting time on loom was like 'oof.. really?'. Not everything needs it and it should all be designed for the feel that is smooth and adds mechanical interest.

Naturally I wanted to main the job but sometimes I diverge slightly from some people in that I think I could have been excited to see blue in a limited state, I think some people would never be okay with that, but this current state of blue as limited seems like a huge missed potential both as limited and as a normal job (and what actually exists, imo, is not that well designed either so it's not just missed potential but "..this isn't 'that great'", as people point out the issues with being bound to PF to evolve, or there is this entire stretch of leveling that is literally 1 button spam for best results). On top of that their communication both what existed and then the lack of it- so hopefully I expelled why I'm so salty or strongly believe this permutation of limited blue is very much "I don't want to see this content again- you can make it again of course, its your game, but I will be opposite of excited and especially if you sacrifice other content to complete this task then our relationship is going to strain" lol. Currently I don't see blue taking loads of resources (and is a small part of the game), but if they were like "we decided no new jobs this expansion but we are adding 4 more limited jobs /just/ like blue mage" . . . . if the rest of the content is not absolutely stellar then that could definitely be the point where I just go "okay I'm done, this content I felt was not only not fun but actually I felt was 'bad' and you want to make it a priority, which means we're definitely not on the same page anymore, I wish you success and luck but this vision is not a vision I want to be part of". To be clear that wasn't a threat to change blue, I absolutely want to see blue changed either to be normal (leave limited as it is) or to see limited fundamentally changed in philosophy (so it's actually primarily designed for solo and not just some words), but not going to quit simply because blue is a job I had really wanted and now think is not good content (but would really consider it if they determined PF exclusive jobs, the actual philosophy and design style of our current blue mage, was the new hot thing to do over 'not that' content lol, cause as I said I find it not interestingly made or worth the effort and takes up cool ideas at the same time).