Silly Blue Mage Solos at 70

[Wilford111]

But the casuals told me that BLU sucks

Leveling BLU sucks. BLU at level 50 sucks.
It wasn't until recently (as far as I can tell) that people actually started to like the job.
I still want it to be an unrestricted class, personally.

[kaynide]

I had a blast doing Rathalos solo Blu. It’s very tricky at 70, but doable.

[Vyrerus]

Heh, I asked Liam if he had any zaney solos, and his response was, "Nah, but I know some folks who claimed to have soloed O11 normal after 200+ tries to get the right crit RNG on the Level Checker."

I find it hard to believe, but then again, someone did solo A8S by running it until crit RNG let them kill the robot that clones itself in phase 2 / getting no damage downs in later phases to kill it prior to Gavel.

A8S Solo by Deathlyhearts

[Shougun]

Leveling BLU sucks. BLU at level 50 sucks.
It wasn't until recently (as far as I can tell) that people actually started to like the job.
I still want it to be an unrestricted class, personally.

I've seen a lot of changes to blue, and I think strongly they are accounting for feedback, I believe there are a few more tweaks it needs but absolutely it seems like they're changing it into more of a content that honestly would have been far better received if they had released it at the state it is now vs was. Though there are a few more things as said that I do think they need to adjust. Unless you have people in flavor of the moment / month, or friends on your time schedule (lucky you), you're going to have to do a lot of this stuff solo, but frankly early level blue mage spells are just not super exciting even the OP ones.

Their later spell designs are pretty cool and I think if they took those design style / thoughts and brought it back down it would greatly help out the job. Say like 1k needle is clearly absolutely OP for a very long time, but what does that spell do to the gameplay? 111111111111111 heal 111111111111111. Meanwhile if you remove that skill the job just became very painful to level because most other things are not nearly like that in tier quality. Then your OP skill looses out but you've for many situations still pretty simple / non-very interesting kit, you can get the dungeon skills which tend to be more interesting but often you'll be faced with doing it unsynced which means leveling past interesting content with a bad kit so you can then use that bad kit overpowered to get a chance to earn small pieces of a better kit. Beyond that there are also things like long self silences, locks, or cast times on blink/movement skills, which take away a lot of the "woah" factor in using them (makes them feel quite balanced on a job I think many just see as an opportunity to goof off, which certainly when you get your full kit is pretty much what the job feels like). So taking a pass through all the lower level skills, combos, effects, punishments, going through and adjusting the early play with the assumption people are not going to get FOTM / have dedicated on demand help would be a huge benefit to the early perspective (if you do get help then obviously this stuff is less painful, like you see people talking about how it's not a big issue but they were power leveled and had 100% acquisition rate experience in a group).

It doesn't happen often, and to be honest the later spells do the opposite (which is great! many of the 60-70 spells are equally or just plain /more/ interesting than their source), but any skill that is clearly less interesting than the monster source should be revisited. Fire Angon, before all the buffs, changes, and better skills released at 60 - 70 had me particularly salty because it was like "you said you wanted to give it a classic feel, why in the world is this really cool boss spell sooo lame? Why???" lol. Angel Whisper isn't from a boss but is a bit sad to be relatively easy to call the worst raise in the game given that it usually has been a really neat spell in other FF games, I think they should try to add some extra effects. Maybe warden's paean effect on revival, and if you've basic instinct / are alone will apply instant self raise (instant meaning technically the game doesn't see that you died, as that would totally mess up boss mechanics, just that your hp hit 1 and then immediately bounced back up with maybe a very short invlun period).

On that concept of equal to or better of source another would be on the idea of % chance spells, something in the later part they clearly showed some more exciting ideas like Ultravibration, and I think it would be nice to represent that downwards as well. Miss miss miss miss miss miss, imo, is not really an ideal experience imo (as it's 'feel bad' for missing, and 'feel bad' for spamming the same button over and over). They don't all have to look the same but I believe changing those in unique ways would be valuable to the general feel but also the gameplay element itself (allowing those skills to fit into a greater rotation / structure vs "spam this till it works"). Of course there can be many ways that works, and theme to the skill might be more fun, some may have charges that trigger from uses certain elements, maybe long cooldowns that can be mitigated by certain actions, etc, etc.

I think this one is harder but some tweaks to the progression / stats of some elements to make self sustain less spammed at certain points in the job's identity- there were a few moments that was like "yeah I can solo this, but also I cast this spell WAY TOO MANY TIMES" lol. Watching some of the streams of content I don't have the abilities to do yet was like watching people solo in FFXI as Red Mage or something. Problem of course if you're too aggressive it would make blue mage literally impossible to kill in almost any situation, which would honestly take some fun away.

Also want to note that major use of blue mage is what I said, before we had more details on blue mage, would be the best use of blue mage if it had to be limited... What people use it for is basically what was said it would be used for. Sure they've that one time group semi-hard raid stuff but that is one off, what fills it's use most seems to be the absolute rampaging of content both solo and in groups for things like mog stones.

I had a thread on it to see how people feel their perspective on the job changed/evolved or what they wanted to discuss, was a little sad not to see more of the vocal for and against fans for the job comment, though my comment basically came down to I think it's on the right tracks, more interesting spells exist, more enjoyable, tweaks that were appreciated, but if they're certain to keep it limited a few more tweaks and I think the job would be significantly more enjoyable in a far more consistent groupset of players (if you're part of the group that took advantage of FOTM or have friends on demand blue mage has always been a bit more forgiving; otherwise, I still think there are a few major pitfalls to the experience that are the type that are fixable/adjustable ones without having to do anything super radical).

Also surprised that deep dungeon blue leaderboard or eureka type stuff hasn't been allowed yet. I feel that would be pretty fun for a while.

[Titania40]

In all fairness, Blue Magic in FF games does tend to both be ridiculously powerful and absolutely horrible at the same time. On the one hand, you can get access to some of the nastier abilities monsters use. On the other hand, it often requires you to deal with one or more of the following:

1. Get hit by the ability and survive the fight just for a random chance to learn the ability
2. Have the blue mage leave the party for a random length of time while they learn the ability (I'm looking at you Gau!)
3. Give up all control over the blue mage while they are using the ability (Gau, Gogo, and Mog from FFVI spring to mind off the top of my head for this)
4. It's only usable as a Limit Break, and there's so many better ones (as well as characters better suited for that char's main role in the party)

To make matters worse, the blue mage is often the worst party member of an ensemble cast in Final Fantasy games despite their potential power. Or maybe it's done as a way to balance their potential power. Either way, for decades the Blue Mage has been regarded as bad. And unlike red mages, the blue mage doesn't even have versatility as a claim to fame.

[Vyrerus]

In all fairness, Blue Magic in FF games does tend to both be ridiculously powerful and absolutely horrible at the same time. On the one hand, you can get access to some of the nastier abilities monsters use. On the other hand, it often requires you to deal with one or more of the following:

1. Get hit by the ability and survive the fight just for a random chance to learn the ability
2. Have the blue mage leave the party for a random length of time while they learn the ability (I'm looking at you Gau!)
3. Give up all control over the blue mage while they are using the ability (Gau, Gogo, and Mog from FFVI spring to mind off the top of my head for this)
4. It's only usable as a Limit Break, and there's so many better ones (as well as characters better suited for that char's main role in the party)

To make matters worse, the blue mage is often the worst party member of an ensemble cast in Final Fantasy games despite their potential power. Or maybe it's done as a way to balance their potential power. Either way, for decades the Blue Mage has been regarded as bad. And unlike red mages, the blue mage doesn't even have versatility as a claim to fame.

BLU has always been a meta job. If you know the game inside and out, then you know BLU and all of its spells. Which ones are good, which ones are bad, and which ones break the game. Which ones that break the game that you can get early etc. Like Death Claw.

In its first appearance, BLU with the right spells was one of the most obscene jobs in the game, and you could set Learning Blue Magic as a skill on any other job, so if you didn't have good spells/equipment for it, then you could learn the spells on a job that did.

Once BLU gets a few of its good spells it's basically a superhero, one shoting bosses and random enemies alike.

In FFVI the BLU is Strago. Gau is a unique but similar concept, but ultimately isn't a Blue Mage. Lore is the BLU command. Again, it requires meta knowledge, stuff you could only have with a guide or with many previous playthroughs where you write stuff down. Mog is a Geomancer. Gogo is a Mime. Neither of those are BLU.

BLUs are usually never strong without their magic, an exception being BLU in FFXI where it was absurdly powerful in every stage of its life, with an A- in swords, allowing it to dual wield them at a high proficiency and rack up weapon damage in league with physical only jobs.

No matter the iteration, BLU was a highly versatile boss destroying god. You could do nutso stuff with it, like have Galuf never fall to 0 HP when he fights Exdeath.

It's basically the definition of a growth type job. Starts out small, weird, and wimpy. Grows into large and in charge but still weird. It has the ultimate versatility and destructive capability, provided you have the knowledge of the game to make it work.