blue mage roulettes? your thoughts

[Garnix]

I like the idea of roulettes for blue mages... but I do think it would be tricky for them to actually implement. While it's fine to go in as multiple heals/tanks since you can mimicry onto other players in the instance, others want you to have a set healer or a set tank, and with no one to target inside the instance, then you could just end up screwed (imagine trying to do TG Cid with no one on a dedicated healer mimicry. You'd die to the doom) And since the current duty finder system doesn't seem to be able to check buffs, I don't see a way they could mandate you be on certain mimicries if you queue in, especially if you're trying to do content as part of the roulette that's below level 60.

They could fix this if athereal mimicry just cycled you through roles rather than requiring a target... but you'd also have to sit and wait while people reset their skills and hotbars. And let's be honest, no one will do that.

Depends what kind of roulette. If it's a dungeon roulette, then you don't really need a tank or healer mimicry. You'd just need to play it a bit safe. As long as someone has might guard and white wind, it would be fine.
If it's a raid roulette, it would probably be another story...

[Shougun]

Blue Mage can even solo a lot of things now.

Part of that relies on some above average play, or very extended play, some of what I've seen reminds me of Red Mage solo in FFXI lol, and or having obtained certain spells already. Like I see people post "look I can do this dungeon solo" and I'm looking that they've a bunch of other harder to get spells first from PF, so.. kind of.

I do think if they boosted the basic instinct a bit more it would be much more manageable though. Like I suggested primal instinct later, perhaps level 50 or 60, that activates all the mimicry at once (even if you don't have mimicry, buff can just be primal mimicry- at that point with that you could probably then go get it lol). Since just having mimicry greatly improves your solo ability. Or perhaps add a learning bonus to basic instinct it so blue mage runs the roulette unsynced. . (and not have to do it 20 times for an instance, which is a bit soul crushing lol). I think keeping the sync concept but a boost would be better though.

Or perhaps by having instinct you unlock some new features to other spells, like Angel Whisper now applies to self as an auto raise (cooldown doesn't activate until the auto-raise triggers). Helping with some of those one shot mechanics. To not mess up the AI too much it'd probably have to raise you instantly without any pop-up though with a short invlun.

In general to the thread though, an actual DF-like roulette would be neat-- may help a lot for the non-extreme spells (extreme being content that requires people to have certain load outs). It's going to be a wild mess for the content that does need a load out though lol (unless they force something, but at that point that they're forcing you into loadouts it's getting awfully close to "why didn't you just make that a normal job then" :P).

[Disappoint]

Wish SE would just bring BLU up to the level cap with each expansion's X.5.5 patch. At that point it's just catch up and waiting for the next expansion, why not let BLU players have some fun in content that's still at least a little relevant?

[Raelsar]

An interesting idea... but I can think of a couple of twists on it.

Option #1 - Dedicated Blue Mage Roulettes
This is grouping BLUs with other BLUs to run content... which could be interesting, but may suffer from low participation. Still, it would probably make it easier for a lot of BLUs to join in and have some fun; along with making the acquisition of some spells a lot more reasonable.

Option #2 - Allowing Blue Mages into Roulettes
This is the riskier option... but could be worth the risk if handled well. The catch is how to implement this, simply because BLUs are like rolling the dice for what you'll get; you may end up with someone with a really bad set-up, or you may end up with someone who knows how to break the game as BLU. Luckily roulettes are restricted to normal-difficulty content, so the tuning may be lax enough to allow them entry. Just to throw out a few ideas:

• Limit of one BLU per party, in a DPS slot; this translates to 3 BLU for . This should keep the clearing of content possible in the event the BLU ends up being dead weight.
• Not allowed into current content... though the level restriction on BLU may suffice for that already. This also keeps them out of Mentor Roulette if I'm not mistaken.
• Disabling certain spells for lower level content... looking at 1k needles specifically here.
• Minimum number of spells equipped to access content, based on content level. So stuff like needing 10 spells for Satasha, 20 spells for level 50 content, and all 24 spells for 60+ content. No guarantee to be dead weight, but a minor safeguard.
• More for dungeons specifically, where BLU could have an outsize effect, but not partied with players who haven't cleared the content before. Mostly to keep the first-time experience "genuine". This one is probably flexible.

The hypothesis is that you may find yourself in the situation where the BLU has to be carried, nor having them instantly break the experience (especially for first-timers)... so it's just finding the right safeguards.

Still, that would be a lot of fun.

[Bsrking5]

I wish blue could use the roulette system. It would be fun, but I don't think SE has plans to ever add it and i wouldn't hold my breath it'll be added. It would really encourage more often playing as blue if it had a roulette. SE don't want to risk blues trolling with either lack of spells or overpowered spells.

[van_arn]

The simplest option is to do absolutely nothing now that blu has the ability to solo dungeons.

You can join/create a pf group for something specific or just go solo it yourself.

There’s simply no need for a roulette anymore on blu. Even things like leveling are vastly faster outside of the dungeon system for them.

[Theodric]

I'd definitely appreciate it for 24 man and 8 man content. It's a lot easier to find a group of Blue Mages for dungeons - or just clear them solo style - but when it comes to getting the log completion, finding people to tackle 8 man and 24 man content with is tough. A lot of people don't want to do it a second time once they've completed it themselves, too, so anybody who doesn't do such challenges immediately is often left stuck.

[wereotter]

Depends what kind of roulette. If it's a dungeon roulette, then you don't really need a tank or healer mimicry. You'd just need to play it a bit safe. As long as someone has might guard and white wind, it would be fine.
If it's a raid roulette, it would probably be another story...

That's why I specifically called out TG Cid, first mechanic of the fight is you have to be healed to 100% health from single digit. You can't do that with White Wind, you need an actual healer. Any of those charybdis style effects, really, you can't get out of just using White Wind. That's why I would say that there are a couple stumbling blocks they would need to address before a blue mage roulette would be viable.

I'm not sure how possible it would be with the code but it would be nice to have "load outs" for spell sets so you can have one a the ready. Then change Athereal Mimicry to a cycle and then be able to change sets on the fly.

They do already let you save spell loadouts in the spellbook... but you also can't load them while under a mimicry (I feel like if mimicry is in both spell sets, it really should let you swap them over)

So really the easiest way to fix that would be to save hotbars to a gear set. Then you can have a gear set saved for tank/healer/DPS depending on the roles you're comfortable playing, and just load that up in the instance (since you're not changing jobs, the game will let you load up a different gearset) and it could potentially just load up that set's hotbar along with it.

[Achantion]

I'm own for anything that makes BLU easier to use. I love playing it and loved collecting all the spells, but I hate having to create a damned PF for every group related thing I wanted to do.

BLU roulette would be great.

[Ashua]

I do not play a blue mage but I would be all for it being able to choose either a dps/tank/healer role and lock the other abilities out except the role-based abilities and somewhat normalize the class. I was actually hoping an expanded blue mage role would have been part of the expansion presentation.