A concerned Blue Mage, concerned about..certain..Blue Mage spells. improvement ideas.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Your aqua breath change for example will turn aqua breath into another song of torment with half the duration and to that I say no thanks, keeping song of torment up full time is annoying enough and you want to add a second one that we have to upkeep twice as much? Did you ever play BRD or SMN in ARR when their DoTs had different durations? It made them a rotational nightmare, not to mention you’d have to bristle both spells each time so you’d need to be 1 GCD ahead at all times.

If DoT duration is the only issue, I can just re-calculate my rebalance, to shift it to 30 second duration. I will update the entry with a new alternative...

I agree that a lot of old BLU spells could use a rework or an update based on how BLU has evolved, but having read through your suggestions the only one I can fully get on board with is loom.

A better question is why Loom was not as I suggest in the first place. >.>;
If you pay close attention to Flame Sergeant Dalvag, Baalzephon, Dantalion, and Phantom Knight, the moment when they use Loom, and you examine the Loom animation; there is no delay at all, they immediately phase to your position... There is no sign of a cast delay, as they cast Loom immediately, and there is no sign of a designate location delay, they immediately phase to your position.
Loom by all within reason evaluation, should be either similar to Dancer's En Avant, or Black Mage's Aetherial Manipulation, but to target a enemy instead of a ally.

[Cabalabob]

If DoT duration is the only issue, I can just re-calculate my rebalance, to shift it to 30 second duration. I will update the entry with a new alternative...

It’s more that you’re just adding another song of torment into the mix, it will be mandatory due to the high damage and will just be another DoT we have to manage. At best the total potency shouldn’t exceed 300 or even 250. Enough to be useful but not enough to be bristled. But the key issue is that if it’s more than 220 potency it will be mandatory in dps builds, if it’s 220 potency then it will be useless because it’s the same potency as a filler spell but can’t be spammed. While the latter isn’t ideal it’s better than having another spell you HAVE to use.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

It’s more that you’re just adding another song of torment into the mix, it will be mandatory due to the high damage and will just be another DoT we have to manage. At best the total potency shouldn’t exceed 300 or even 250. Enough to be useful but not enough to be bristled. But the key issue is that if it’s more than 220 potency it will be mandatory in dps builds, if it’s 220 potency then it will be useless because it’s the same potency as a filler spell but can’t be spammed. While the latter isn’t ideal it’s better than having another spell you HAVE to use.

A fair argument, and I see your point. You are correct, but I will still disagree, as it is a matter of play-style preference... I see Blue Mage with more DoTs as more fun, as I like to play around with DoTs and work around the challenge of maintaining them, if there are several. I would like it if Blue Mage also had "Electrocuted", "Burns", "Sludge", a proper "WindBurn", a proper "Poison", and even less well known DoTs like "Flesh Wound"; while I was quite disappointed that NightBloom is just Song of Torment upgraded, instead of a new DoT...
before you argue, I will add... Imagine if there was more than one "correct" way to play Blue Mage. So what if we have a meta of "Best Spells"? we may eventually have more than 24 "Best Spells", and then meta or not, it will not be possible to use "all of" the best meta spells... I would like to see Blue Mage have in-class diversity, complete different ways to play Blue Mage, with none of these various viable play-styles being a "wrong" one.

if a person does not like DoT management, then just do not play the DoT blue Mage style, or use Blue Mage DoTs, and play a different valid style of Blue Mage, for a example... albeit that Blue Mage has yet to reach the point where we have too many spells, to have a single viable meta... But I hope that it happens, and that Blue Mage becomes in-class diverse.

[Cabalabob]

A fair argument, and I see your point. You are correct, but I will still disagree, as it is a matter of play-style preference... I see Blue Mage with more DoTs as more fun, as I like to play around with DoTs and work around the challenge of maintaining them, if there are several. I would like it if Blue Mage also had "Electrocuted", "Burns", "Sludge", a proper "WindBurn", a proper "Poison", and even less well known DoTs like "Flesh Wound"; while I was quite disappointed that NightBloom is just Song of Torment upgraded, instead of a new DoT...
before you argue, I will add... Imagine if there was more than one "correct" way to play Blue Mage. So what if we have a meta of "Best Spells"? we may eventually have more than 24 "Best Spells", and then meta or not, it will not be possible to use "all of" the best meta spells... I would like to see Blue Mage have in-class diversity, complete different ways to play Blue Mage, with none of these various viable play-styles being a "wrong" one.

if a person does not like DoT management, then just do not play the DoT blue Mage style, or use Blue Mage DoTs, and play a different valid style of Blue Mage, for a example... albeit that Blue Mage has yet to reach the point where we have too many spells, to have a single viable meta... But I hope that it happens, and that Blue Mage becomes in-class diverse.

I can see what you’re going for and I had a similar idea back when BLU first arrived that we should have each element give a debuff that increases elemental weakness for another elemental spell (casting aqua breath would give a thunder resistance down so you cast high voltage which would give an Earth resistance down so you cast earthshaker and so on) so you could either equip a lot of damage spells to cycle elements or equip less damage spells for increased utility (mitigation/healing spells). It would just require a total rework of how all damage BLU spells work and at this point with all the new spells we have it might be too late for that.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

I can see what you’re going for and I had a similar idea back when BLU first arrived that we should have each element give a debuff that increases elemental weakness for another elemental spell (casting aqua breath would give a thunder resistance down so you cast high voltage which would give an Earth resistance down so you cast earthshaker and so on) so you could either equip a lot of damage spells to cycle elements or equip less damage spells for increased utility (mitigation/healing spells). It would just require a total rework of how all damage BLU spells work and at this point with all the new spells we have it might be too late for that.

to cycle through the elements is one idea of interest, yeh... My own idea was to split Blue Mage DPS into various styles. like instant damage versus DoTs, and also if Blue Mage could specialize into a certain element, to make DPS styles like to split Blue Mage into options like various -mancers, in this case being Aqua-, Cryo-, Levin-, Pyro-, Terra-, and Ventus-; as well as if Blue Mages could specialize into the "no-aspect" or physical damage spells.
Blue Mage has the potential to achieve real in-class diversity, if Squeenix would just allow the dev team to do it...

[Flay_wind]

to cycle through the elements is one idea of interest, yeh... My own idea was to split Blue Mage DPS into various styles. like instant damage versus DoTs, and also if Blue Mage could specialize into a certain element, to make DPS styles like to split Blue Mage into options like various -mancers, in this case being Aqua-, Cryo-, Levin-, Pyro-, Terra-, and Ventus-; as well as if Blue Mages could specialize into the "no-aspect" or physical damage spells.
Blue Mage has the potential to achieve real in-class diversity, if Squeenix would just allow the dev team to do it...

Good on paper, but then one style would likely be superior to others and everyone would just use that. Unless, it would require one other element to enable the strongest combo, which in turn just makes it a split into say a couple of pairs, or one "battery" player for the rest. Which is kinda sorta antifun as is, since that role already sorta exists in a tank role.
Overall i feel that it would create an unnecessary overcomplication and the current BLU is really fine as is.
You have your DoT upkeep, cooldown skills, like what more do you want? Combos for combo sake?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

that is kind of the whole point of to create balance, to kill off superiority...
There is no point in a debate over a pipe-dream that is never going to happen, though.

while for the sake of argument, I prefer complex. Blue Mage is too straight-forward "just use the best spells and forget the rest". In this sense, Blue Mage is exactly the same as every other subclass, all Blue Mages use the same exact spells and there is no diversity. What I desire is in-class diversity...
Yeh, the current Blue Mage is fine, but I am a selfish person, and fine is not good enough for me, as I want even better than fine...
But as I said, that is a pipe-dream that is never going to happen.

and why bother to ask me what more do I want? I did state what I want, in a clear manner, in my original post....at the moment, what I want as
a Blue Mage main, is just for the "worst" spells of my favorite subclass to be improved, so that they are no longer the "worst" spells.