Update / Revisit Your Blue Mage Thoughts (& Limited Jobs)

[SpanishInkwehsitor]

I hit 60 and took a look at the list of moves I’d need to be viable and….dungeons and raids. Dungeons and raids mainly only soloable if I’m maxed and get level 70 gear…

I think it’s very awesome that the class “designed for solo play” requires so much partying content, and gets locked out of Duty Finder to boot. More like the “you MUST have friends” class.

Maybe if they were allowed to go to Eureka so you can use the class to get that stuff cuz you missed the bus, that’d be something, but they limit this Limited Class WAY too much.

[Garnix]

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

[SpanishInkwehsitor]

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

Basic Instinct offers no additional protection, and it’s only damage buff is just reversing Mighty Guard’s downside. Go into an instance solo-synced, you’re screwed.

[VictorTheed]

I wonder what the future of limited jobs is cause I don't remember hearing anything about them during the info releases for EW we been getting.

[rofland]

I wonder what the future of limited jobs is cause I don't remember hearing anything about them during the info releases for EW we been getting.

Sprawl and bloat for jobs in general probably means there won't be any more limited jobs, and frankly I'd rather them focus on making BLU better than trying to shoehorn in another underdeveloped mess like the 1-50 BLU.

[Bright-Flower]

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

[Rowde]

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

What could be neat for beastmaster as a limited job is if monster breeding was also a thing.

I'm thinking in battle or in dungeons you could still have charm to grab whatever is nearby, but you'd also be able to summon say your "plant-type" or "lizard-type" or "critter-type" or w/e terminology. And you'd also have a capture command.

Outside of battle, perhaps in a new or revamped zone (the arena in Foundation comes to mind) you could breed monsters of the same type to boost stats and combine skills on the offspring to have better beasts to summon in battle.

[kaynide]

+1 against reworking Blu into a normal job. I like that it’s very gimmicky and basically revolves around figuring out how to best clear certain obstacles. And even then, I think once figured out the carnivale still has a small handful of battles that are really tricky and it feels good to be able to clear them. With proper gear and prep, none of it was that hard. (I cleared with ilvl 400 tomestone gear with crit or det materia; nothing fancy by any means).

If nothing else, the carnivale is a great resource for just learning mechanics. Or practicing dodging or personal reaction speed.

Even then it feels like the carnivale is just a training grounds for what else is possible; like these are guaranteed doable…but can you clear all of coil? Ex trials? That’s where a lot of fun comes in.

At first, I wanted more of an elemental wheel or loop of abilities instead of just spamming …but it works fine, and maybe that could be explored in future limited jobs.

On the topic of Beastmaster….personally, if I was developing it… I think I’d have it set where you can summon 3 critters at once (self contained light party), each with 3-5 abilities that you have to kinda of play off each other. In practice this would essentially be 3 different small hot bars with each having their own gCD. Different party builds to allow for maximum cheesing.

[Shougun]

Blue Mage is in a good place because it's allowed to do old extreme and savage content and some of this has a mount attached to it. I think the Stormblood ones should have a mount as well, but there are at least achievements for them.

It has a lot of other things you can have fun with, like soloing old content synced, the masked carnivale and being able to learn spells from locations other than the ones mentioned. It's been exciting just learning them from alternative locations than where everyone else got them, such as maps, open world bosses and higher level dungeons.

Before blue mage was released, I said there would be two possibilities- one of which I'd hate (and I did, blue mage at 1 to 50, especially before the double potency buffs and such, had me feeling very very annoyed and sometimes seeing the job in my job list was frustrating to the point I wish I could have removed it from my character. I still believe the 1 to 50 spells do not encapsulate the best ideas of what a limited could be but changes, and particularly 60 to 70 era spells have helped the overall experience). One it was going to be a party focused limited job that would die very rapidly and be absolutely annoying to self progress. The other would be that it might be considered solo king and would be viable to self progress, do the content that was designed for it, but also allow players to do content they might have otherwise been unable to do on their 'normal' job of choice.

Obviously when first released it wasn't received well, and as they made changes it has been received better. The closer we got to full solo potential I see the more people speak well of it. There were some who had fun in the group setting but look at that now.. it's very well super dead. The group concept can continue for short terms of fun but the job cannot stand on it's own under that premise. I'm glad they added basic instinct and I strongly believe each time they improve the ability for the job to do it's own thing, and occasionally have fun in a group as it's very very 'side thing'. The far better.

I know it's mostly player meta gaming but it feels like it's a bit too centered around bursty moonflute cycles and outside of that it feels -really- spammy.

I still think it's boring but at least you can get almost all the spells without having someone carry you.

In the current form I also REALLY dislike moonflute. That design would never fly under normal job situations, at least anymore, and it's just not even fun under a limited situation. It's not like it's removed because it was too much fun for warriors lol. It's just awful to sit there with your hands on your lap waiting.

Moonflute is super powerful, so I'd use it in a group setting but I actually don't use it when alone because I just dislike the spell so much even though I know the intention was to use it because of how big of a damage boost it offers for your burst spells. I very much want moonflute to change.

The spammy part too is not great, as you get more oGCD and more interestingly designed spells later it gets better but certainly 1 to 50 is less interesting than playing a normal job (which is my main critique that remains for blue mage. 1 to 50 is just not a really interesting time to be a blue mage).

1) There needs to be a better way to obtain the different stances. Make using the ability rotate them, let us mimic our chocobo in their stance, make some dummies we can mimic at the job NPC. Something other than what is. Trying to find that lone tank or healer sucks. Especially with the different glamours they can get.

2) Tanks need their abilities to be instant when tank specced. Plain as that. Especially defensive CD's.

3) Healers need to have their Rez CD removed when heal specced. Imagine if WHM/SCH/AST had a CD on their rez. Well, people might be forced to actually do mechanics then.

The ability to rotate stances would be nice. I personally would like them to go towards passive & active design spells though. By that I mean not a spell you set and then forget, like a stance, but that you might set and have reason to use as well. The easy example was just critical strike passive that every three hits you critical, if you press the button however your next attack will critical (passive isn't turned off), now you have a cool passive and a useful active all bundled together. Just having a spell take up a slot to take up a slot is a strong "meh"/10 for me lol. If anything perhaps mimicry because some sort of special ability that doesn't count to your 24/24 and has a job UI guage or something. Being able to toggle modes would be nice. Adding an active / passive relationship could be cool too. But yeah it's an obtuse design for the sake of being obtuse... Not crazy for that. I enjoy role play certainly but being painful reminds me of the worst of old school role play design, rather than like oh cool I can go down this secret path because I had a relationship with X this spell is more like "oh cool I miss half my attacks because I'm a cave dwelling race that can't see well in the sun".

I don't appreciate the cast time on most spells, I find that is unnecessary and counterproductive to more interesting gameplay so I'd agree there. Especially as some of the spells with cast times are made less worth it due to the cast time. Loom with cast time... HUGE thumbs down. Like HUGE. I frowned when I used that spell the first time. I even casted it near monsters and stuff just to hope there was a cool combo at least to make the cast time worth it. Nah.. lol.

There is some fore thought that some people might like with cast times and tanking, but I think that's not that fun. I suppose it could be left as "maybe blue tank isn't for you" but I still don't think it's that great given it means you have to know the attack is coming or have some crazy good spell speed.

Yeah I thought Angel Whisper would be an Auto-Life, and hence a cooldown was very well justified, imagine if you could self-destruct and then keep fighting. Oh my god so strong. But they made generally a super strong spell in FF history one of the worst raises in FF history. Fire Angon and Angel Whisper are two spells that I would say damn well near 'triggered' me into a tight spiral of frustration. They went against everything I felt they had suggested purpose of going limited was and just felt bad while disrespecting the source power. I can see how a tank with raise might want a cooldown if they were thinking we need a vague sense of balance (though again, it's a limited job.. stop thinking so hard on that, just make it fun, and stop thinking about the rest of the rules, otherwise don't make another limited job because it's massively wasted potential.. imo lol.).

It honestly still frustrates me to think about lol. Early blue mage had me upset about the game in a way I had never felt before (even housing), and I still see remnants of that design in the job (which I am hoping is purged without remorse), but I do like some of the more clever spells added recently and the leeway taken to make certain spells more exciting (like Supra captures the spirit but is clearly not the exact same, or Ultravibration is crazy strong, when fighting stuff not immune to instant ko at least, and has two ways to interact and yet is also not damaged by a spam addiction because of the cooldown).

BLU has the same problem as it always had: not enough useful content to do: Carnival is usually a oneshot thingy, BLU log is dead this late after release (good luck trying to get people for the 24 man) and the Savage raids are only for a tiny minority. Also the rewards for Alliance seals needs an update.

Yeah the blue log while a nice concept is destined to be dead content (all things die, by destined I mean it happens VERY rapidly and such has no life span similar to normal content you either get in right away, be circumstantially blessed (on call friends who do what you ask, good for you), or don't get to do it), which is why they should make solo the main thought and party the after thought at all times (after thought doesn't mean remove, just not a primary design objective at any point - if its meant to be focused on group content then it should be normal). Every spell, all content, should be made solo first. Because of what blue mage is (limited) it will /never/ be able to survive as a living content past the hot flavor of the moment. And even then, even when hot because of a new patch you wont have all that content becoming alive again. If you get lucky a huge streamer may awaken the content for a few weeks to a month but it will die again. There is no sustainability in the current design of blue and party associated content. Unless they want to go crazy and be like "100 current end game tomes per new player ran through blue log", in which case you'll welcome the bots but I guess you can revive this content.

I had suggested at the end of my second long wall of .. wallyness lol some ideas that may help. Adding a monster arena, beast tribe quests, current tomes (mostly tier 2, but could be some tier 1 at a similar rate to how beast tribes normally gave them), new canes, ability alchemy, etc to spend alliance tokens on.

I fully admit I used to be in the "stop wasting resources on this niche rubbish and scrap it" group (and probably for fair reason considering how much worse lv50 BLU was) but I'm happy to be wrong in the end. They took a great deal of feedback onboard and polished BLU into something that is actually a lot of fun to play. The 60-70 toolkit is night and day difference to the original 1-50 toolkit. The Primal skills are satisfying to use, Base Instinct is an amazing ability, there's enough useful variety to truly toolbox and the buffs to learn-rate of skills make it far more fun than back when you had to spam Shiva EX 120 times or synch it with no Raise or Mimicry.

I'm sort of undecided how I feel on certain aspects like Mimicry. On one hand it's less convenient to have to track down a healer or tank player to copy, but on the other-hand it has some of that old-school MMO charm where you had a little "tedious" prep work to get ready for battle, rather than having it all set for you. I won't mind too much if they change it though.

All that said, there's always room for improvement and I feel BLU has only just started getting interesting. A few for me would be:

-Making the weekly Carnival and Blue log more rewarding. This is a big one, hardly anyone is doing the Blue log and you need a full synched BLU group. The Carnival too is rather empty. With Hunt linkshells being a thing, Allied Seals just aren't that great a reward and grabbing an S rank here and there is far easier than getting a full group together and beating an EX trial synched. You only get 2-3 weekly target or Carnival bonuses and it should be something to look forward to.

-The Morbol Mount was a brilliant idea but needs to be expanded upon. Ideally there should be a mount for Stormblood EX/Savage too, then 2 more mounts for completing all dungeons/raids/trials on Normal mode, one up to Stormblood and one including. Sure it'd be quite easy, but the idea is to bring more players into trying out BLU and give them an initial goal. Combined with better Carnival/log rewards, you'd see more overall interest in the class, leading to more groups, leading to even further interest.

-Tank cd's should not all have a cast time. Boss tankbusters have a cast bar for a reason, to react with instant mitigation. BLU's cast time makes tank unnecessarily difficult. Loom should also be instant or have damage attached.

-Cold Fog should include dodge and evade to trigger or it has anti-synergy with Toad Oil which is an important ability. Phantom Flurry's tooltip should mention the first part ticks more often than normal DoT's. Base Instinct should persist on death and Mimicry should not be able to be clicked off or cancelled unless you have a valid target selected to replace your Mimicry with another one. It'd also be nice to have one or two instant GCD's, for example Rose of Destruction could be one, for weaving in abilities more smoothly outside of certain windows.

Rewards and content are definitely the main thing to address though. This patch actually brought in less with no mount and only a single carnival boss. Entice people in, so we have people to enjoy the class with and reasons to play it.

More to do with the tokens, or different token rewards would certainly be valuable! I had thought of a whole new type of blue mage progression potential with the tokens (ideas on first page, second post). Buying retainer tokens and teleports with them is okay but after you have 6k retainer tokens it's a bit old for sure . I can imagine perhaps other long term expensive content around tokens, like in another semi-unrelated thread talking about what to do with squadrons and trusts. Idea was to make trusts go to the ground and back up while squadrons move into their own sort of conquest content, then you might be able to use tokens to purchase things on that end.. Adding an entire new content for the purpose of blue is silly, but just a thought that you can put more things that are longer term purchases in there.

I hope if they add another mount that it is achievable solo, because the party side of the mount will die and then it's just a panel that's not going to be useful very quickly. Like hilarious good luck to do some of it past when it's hot. I understand people had fun when it was active, but that's a very short window of time and unless they add substantial long term reward it will do that every time. Like if you added 100 end game tomes for people who do it the first time.. I suppose that would work, but that is one heck of a bribe. The mount itself is a bribe I honestly thought was a bit cheap, since it was enough for a temporary wave but once you "got yours" it died off in a way sealing off the tunnel for most players (and so I hope they don't just do another mount and that's it, no other changes- I think that would be bad and hyper temporarily inflate the content).

Another on the tank CD haha, I do think tank CDs is weird too. It's not that fun of a 'feel' to have to bother with, I agree. Especially for those used to regular tanking lol.

Cold fog comment is interesting, I agree an inclusion of that circumstance would be nice. More informative tooltips is also nice, drives me crazy that you wont get to know what is 'shared cooldown' lol. I can imagine most people who don't read guides wouldn't know that there are groups of primal spells that don't share cooldowns. Agreed Basic Instinct shouldn't fall off, you may even say it stays on in satiations it can't work (it just.. doesn't apply the benefit, though I prefer to not have skills that are basically passives that just sit there - a passive active relationship is preferred imo).

Said it before blue mage was announced but unless they do some serious bribing this job will always be destined for personal content with exceptions of those who can summon people on demand (or have /a lot/ of time to wait for the right circumstance). Adding rewards is still a smart idea, I just don't think anyone should expect blue mage to be able to hold it's own unless it's insanely rewarding to the point you're like "oh wow... "WHY WOULDNT I DO BLUE MAGE?"" otherwise it should largely be designed with the idea you're going to do it on your own (and rewards shouldn't be stuffed into the party concept as it's the band-aid of a band-aid, it's not like normal content- it /wont/ hold unless it's a huge band-aid).

Bluwu and blucob please

I see no reason why not, just make sure the achievement is not the same. Do you get blue mage weapons? Could you get the other job weapons (that seems a bit cheesy for the other players who did it the normal way though)?

If there is one thing to appreciate about the BLU concept is that you get to know all kind of content, for better or worse, which you might normally not do, e. g. the trials in the Hidibrand substories, extremes (unless you like harder content or just enjoy all content the game offers) and all sort of optional dungeons. To be fair, it's still once-and-done deal, ignoring multiple runs if unsynced, but if you were not interested in the optional hard labeled dungeons before, there you go for BLU spells.

Otherwise? Leveling with 1k needes is painfully slow, yet without the safety buffer of Mighty Guard I'd feel too fragile early on (probably a "me" issue). I'd have appreciated if more dungeon/trial spells had overworld options like Aether Mimicry so that it would make solo synced dungeon runs maybe a bit less obnoxious, but that's just qol.

I feel that's the best thing Blue can offer in general, is it allows for a huge array of otherwise normally unsolo-able or annoying to do so. If you wanted to do the old content again 'but a bit differently this time' I think there are better ways than designing a whole job around that, especially since it's proven to rapidly die content.. I think, personally, is a waste. The rest of it will be hyper-temporal offerings and such that I don't think blue mage should be designed around them (like the blue log). If you're a streamer the blue log is probably like OH WOW SO GOOD, if you've done it when it was new or have a large group of friends that do what you do maybe as well, but otherwise.. it's not a content you'll get to readily enjoy (at least without great spurts of wait between, and dash of luck).

STRONG agree on the needle type content. 1 to 50 blue mage is not really that enjoyable. There is this short bit of WEEEE as you blow things off the map with 1k on a 250 hp monster, but the spam.. the lack of mechanically interesting concepts.. The fact that most of the better spells are locked off into instances you cannot solo until you get a number of spells later.. It's not a good period. And it's a period that some people got to skip because of powerleveling, but I didn't and I have to say it was very lack luster. I have quite a few spells now, some of it going back down unsync with a bad kit (until you get those other spells that you had to unsync overpower to get).. and so you can see more of the job come together later, but the progression and selection is entirely non-ideal and completely unnecessary imo. "But they captured the wonkiness' of blue, blue mage is painful early on".... Why would you purposefully capture the bad part that doesn't actually have a fun value? Especially when the job can't be normal, it's not like it needed the balance? Like I said above this is the old school role play that I don't think should be continued, I do like role play in general, but this is "I'm a cave dwelling race so outdoors I miss 95% of my attacks" ... it's just '..you could have represented role play, like the aspect of getting spells, without that issue- this is just purposefully obtuse without an exclusive benefit to role identity I say 'why???".

Like 1k needle was a huge power boost in the job, as we both agree, but they could have had it be this awesome strong spell ALONGSIDE other awesome spells and you get to weave and pick far more interesting moments than. Leveling experience from 1 to ram / dragon voice "111111111111111111 heal 11111111111" then "121212121212 heal" to a bit later "213 11212121212121 heal". Until finally you get a collection of spells that can flow together and you to enjoy the job to a tier that normal jobs had many many many levels ago already surpassed. To say another way, due to the design of how the job is, you're going to have a long period of time, even though you're a higher level, where the normal level lower leveled job would have been more interesting gameplay mechanically - only until obtaining some key spells does it suddenly go from "level 10 normal job" to onto the levels you'd expect from a job. As I did the vast majority of the spells I have on my own there was a long period of time where I was doing it because I wanted to provide feedback but honestly thought the construction of the job was not very good (and if I hadn't have really wanted to play blue before, and thus cared about the job, would have just stopped and said "meh I don't like the job, wont level it"). The job does get better, but the path there I don't think was particularly a good path (nor do I like all the dead bodies, dead spells that I deem useless or very uninteresting to use, is ideal- given it's a limited job I would hope to suffer analysis paralysis rather than "meh meh meh meh meh, clearly I need to use these set of skills to be considered good unless it's this one specific thing in the carnival').

I'm mostly hoping the class gets a secondary resource and more short cooldowns in its inevitable 6.x update so that the "filler" part of its rotation between burst windows is more interesting.

That could be quite cool. A random aside was canes you can earn that have special effects, and maybe each had a gimmick. Say using Ramuh's cane would sharge your cane with static, changing your cooldowns, casting speed, allowing discharge of energy for huge physical damage attacks, etc.

I had a great time with it...for two days after each update...

Considering how it obviously has an intended rotation, I still think they could easily implement a standard loadout to make it fit in a standard party, while keeping some achievements locked to BLU parties. They could even adjust potency depending on the party composition, that would be fine too.
Maybe add a couple GCD filler skills so that we don't spam sonic boom too much, maybe a 1-2 combo.

I also think the level cap should have been lifted to 80 before the end of the expansion.

Basic instinct was a fantastic addition and I hope they add more skills to make BLU even stronger when playing solo.

When I first saw blue, and there are rumors of this, I thought blue mage was a normal job that got thrust into limited due to time constraints / costs. It really looked like a lot of pieces were balanced for normal play (it used to have really low potency on everything too). There have been a hundred and one different ideas to make blue normal, many keeping the spell learning concept, I think it's still possible, but if it's to be limited I at least hope it earns it at each and every moment (they've made changes, like boosting potency, more interesting spells for the most part in 60 to 70 era, basic instinct, but the 1 to 50 spread is still relatively "meh").

I would love to see the job get level 80 gear just so I can have it compete with my normal jobs more consistently (instead of using say PLD for doing some old content solo I'd consistently choose blue). One idea to prevent some of the perhaps coding issues if you had a level 80 BLU (DF, etc) might be depending on number of spells you know your gear's ilvl is boosted up to the current maximum ilvl (such that your level 70 blue mage in most ways is a level 80 in power, but still has the level 70 restrictions for content).

Also strong agree, solo blue, strong imo, is the only future proof way of making blue. The group content can exist as an aside but it should not in any circumstance be the 'main' portion of consideration for such a job (limited).

I hope that at some point they let us do ultimates as BLU. And if they are afraid it will "ruin" the feeling of acomplishment from the people that cleared with regular jobs or whatever, just put different achievements if you do them as BLU, you could get a new title instead of the one for regular jobs (The Blue Legend for example).

Yeah think that is entirely reasonable. The change ot achievement is a good idea to reduce backlash for the pretty hard work the majority have to put into it (I know there is some paid piloting or whatever but the ones that did it the regular way.. good lord lol).

I actually really enjoy Blu and often being it on roulettes with my friends for cheese factor. The only thing I dislike is some of the carnival being too tight. None of it was too difficult, but once you figure out what to do and do it well, it shouldn’t drag on.

Like, probably Gogo is a good spot for a “hard” carnivale fight.most of it should be 1 or 2 gimmicks that once you figure out, you can stomp through it. (To be fair most are this way already)

A big offender for me was Red fraught and Blue… a lot of instant death and the fight just goes on and on unless you have a lot of OCD abilities. It feels like old school Titan where you just have to memorize the rotation.

The only other thing is I feel you should not need to do anything in a party, ever. Like you should be able to solo Garuda at 70 and get her ability relatively easy….as is the rng is really low and annoying. It should fully embrace being a “solo” job, or you should be able to just power through all related content with trust or squadron,

I like the idea of the carnival but the execution isn't entirely my tea. I get it. I don't think it should be removed or greatly re-imagined. Just... well I suggested the monster arena specifically because of that. I'd prefer some combat related challenges, maybe with some light less 'tight' puzzles, such that you can try different kits and just have fun as if you imagine trying different kits in diablo 3 or hades like games.

10,000% agreed for the party. Blue can have some fun in groups, and the whole mog tome thing is a great opportunity to put blue groups together, but the job SHOULD NOT be designed around party and I feel very strongly about that. It is just a non-maintainable relationship. People mention incentivizing it to reduce the issue but it cannot be done unless the bribery is insane. I mean they put a really cool mount into the system and it only temporarily did the job. Adding another one is going to just be another temporary fix. It wont last, and it's not like it lasts very long either. It doesn't even make it to the next patch.

BLU is great.

Glad you're enjoying the job. Purpose of the thread to discuss feels .

Any particular reason why you like it? Any changes from launch to now that stand out?

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

I feel Eureka blue (and deep dugeons) would be loads of fun, and also add a lot of things to do with blue (floor 200 blue would probably still be a bit challenging but far more do-able).

Big fan of blue mage weapon doing something. I like the bonuses too, one idea suggested on the first page second of my posts was blue alchemy where you could use tokens earned in blue content and spells you learned to make perhaps morphs to spells (like runes in diablo) and or like passives to your job. Acorn bomb equipped into your blue soul stone, or whatever concept, you've immunity to sleep now, combo that with another skill and it's immunity to sleep and + 10% hp.. or maybe it morphs into half duration sleep and you heal 20% health when slept. I say the blue soul stone, and like ideas, because I'd prefer you can combo passive outside of combo'ing actual skills, only because I'm not sure blue mage 'limited' would get the attention needed to ensure you have that insane level of a web going on of balance and kit building lol... That would be some high level web building to do both.

This would be fantastic. To be able to do Eureka and get certain skills etc from eureka bosses would be perfect. I absolutely hate having to “hey guys, sorry but can we run Sastasha hard to get ink blot?”

At least you're lucky enough to do that lol. "Hey guys can you do this irrelevant content to help me get skills for a largely irrelevant content" fails pretty hard when given out to the general public. I've two people who are happy to do things together but beyond that anything that needs more than three is just like son of a chocobo, I guess that's impossible to achieve now thanks to how the content is designed. Of course you already said in an earlier post about the solo concept, which I am full power no stopping at go to collect 200 gil on board with lol.

Glad to see folks enjoying BLU. I've been an avid BLU soloist and player since the 70 update. I would likely have been even before, but I just didn't have the drive to play it as most of my friends didn't.


I love where it stands, because it has created its own communities that revolve around it, and it is an absurdly powerful job(it has an extremely high skill ceiling due to this). I know the first page is largely months old responses, but I see a lot of misunderstanding on the first page.

For instance, in your spell description/ideas list, Shougun, you ask where Silence is on Bad Breath because it doesn't apply a long term one... it does inflict Silence though. The player based interrupt kind, same as Flying Sardine, just not an instant cast.

Blood Drain restores 500 MP per cast, and it can be spammed. Even accounting for the 100 MP cost to cast, this actually means that if you take into account the natural 200MP per tic regen of MP in combat, you are getting 600MP every time you choose to cast it over anything else. This can and will quickly restore your MP, allowing you to chain even the most expensive spells back to back after Blood Drain use. It's insanely powerful and does not need to be improved.

A large part of the skill involved in BLU is that everything has a cast time. This actually makes Spell Speed pivotal for nearly all builds, with a Crit/Det build only edging out on DPS by 0.5% with less consistency. This makes BLU tanking and BLU healing more difficult than their normal counterparts, but it also means that when you take up those roles that you have to commit to those roles more than the actual jobs that are labelled with those roles. Keep in mind that BLU healers actually can have the other 7 people all act as Co-Healers whenever it's deemed necessary due to White Wind being Roleless for its incredible heal.
BLU tanking is very fun, because it's the least required role for the party, but this makes it be placed into the hands of a single person, at least if your group is rolling to skip hard mechanics. Because you have to cast your tank spells, which in the most serious of things is usually the near-invuln Diamondback, this makes your spell timing and cast speed more important than anyone else's in the party. A spell speed build usually allows you to beat a tank buster cast bar. The new tank spells only have niche use, but are very useful if they allow you to get away without Diamondbacking even once to save you MP.
Chelonian Gate is also an example of a spell designed for the expansion it comes from, as it is triggered easily by almost every Stormblood based tank buster, so that you can use its 1000 potency(half a Final Sting) attack every tank buster during the right moments. Best of all, you can hold its channel for a time even after Divine Cataract activates if you deem continuing the mitigation necessary.

In general play, for dungeons, the tank mimicry is unnecessary as Mighty Guard is roleless, and a Healer with Mighty Guard can effectively tank any dungeon boss and any dungeon pull(heck DPS can too, but white wind spam is less fun). The optimal way to do dungeons is a Healer BLU tank with 3 DPS BLUs staggering Ultravibration so that every pull is instantly killed, and so that bosses are met with full Moon Flute destruction.

In this way, BLU is not an intuitive job. There are very few players that could play any BLU role in a raid setting or any BLU role period to their fullest extent, let alone BLU to its fullest power. Calls for changes to how it works are generally from a non-BLU perspective. They want it to play more like Not-BLU jobs.

I also see a few folks saying the Omega raids should have a BLU mount. Well, the 50 raids didn't have one attached at first either. I assume it will follow the pattern that once we get level 80 BLU, it will get another variety of Morbol or other similar BLU-esque mount for completing both Omega and Eden Savage raids.

BLU raids are nuts, because of Moon Flute. BLU can skip some very complex mechanics, even in the Alexander Savage raids now, thanks to the Stormblood spells. This cuts the earlier fights to half their intended script or less. The end tier fights take much longer, but are still shorter. Without exception, the question of a BLU clear is never, "Can BLU do this fight?" it's, "How fast can BLU annihilate this fight?"

One thing I would like to see added to BLU achievements is a BLU solo achievement list. BLU Soloing is one of the easiest ways to become very good at the job, since everything rides on you alone. There's ultimately no incentive for it, though, because there is nothing gained other than endurance boasts.

I said it with the primal spells but I think we're at some odds on perspective. The spells clearly have a sense of balance, almost to the point I imagine Blue WAS a normal job that was then later decided to be not- I know you could use blood drain for 500 mp.. but it doesn't stop me from thinking "wow this spell sucks" (aka boring, doesn't feel fun to use, it's impact while there feels "balanced", and besides is mostly not needed as if you just use lucid dream smartly, in many situations, you don't need it). I, generally, think the 1 to 50 spells are not very interesting, and the job's spell design is consistently far more interesting post 60 (era of adding of spells, I know basic instinct is sub 50, but it was added during the later era). Yeah you can spam blood drain but the goal, imo, is not to be spamming anything too much, and making interactions whenever possible- white wind is OP spam 3 blood drain and cast another... but what a boring sequence for a job that's meant to be unbalanced (hence not invited to play with all the other jobs). It's also why I had suggested more costly spells and then more ways to make returns on mp, so you might build mana draining spells and then mana returning spells, or you might stick more balanced in which case magic hammer and lucid dream on cooldown is pretty much the only thing you need.

You may think blue tank is interesting but I think the casting times just makes it annoying to play, I wouldn't necessarily say that means it has to change.. just that I don't simply agree that makes it fun (disagree actually). Diamondback, and other self stun spells are also exceptionally annoying and unfun to deal with (imo).

Bad breath just to be clear does not inflict silence lol. Edit: another pointed out where we might be misunderstanding, I am not saying 1 second silence I'm saying multiple seconds of silence which is not interject. I'm glad you like the job but bad breath inflicts silence like the sun is 'kind of warm'. It does interrupt, yeah- and in that section of bad breath I didn't say it needed it I just noticed they cut a few classics out of the list. I noticed this both in the shortened debuff list (when applying) and also by the fact that monsters are slapping me with spells while they've been bad breath (and I know from experience in a classic setting you'd not be doing that at all lol). It's not important it has it, I just wanted to note I noticed the list wasn't as classic as normally I'd see it. Not a big deal on that spell (as I comment). But please don't say it's the same, that's just misleading (imo, misleading as functionally not just visually it's not the same- when you're getting pelted by blizzard from a frost elemental you know there is no silence, it's not the same and while it's really not important I don't think it's fair or accurate to suggest it is, they're two different types of enfeebles, like saying paralyze and petrify are the same).

I think 60 to 70 has had a lot more interesting ideas but I still roughly speaking look at 1 to 50 with a strong shade of negativity. To the point if we had back tracked 60 to 70 (erased it with a snap) I would immediately go from "I hope they continue with the more interesting designs, remix old stuff, continue supporting solo" right back to a very salty very grumpy- "blue was a mistake, and as someone who before 2.0 was even out had wanted to play blue direly.. actively have negative feelings about the existence of the job".

So like I said clearly we'll be having some different thoughts, because while I think some of the evolution over time has been nice I still look at the early part and decisions that appear akin to that early style design and think.. obviously not agreeable thoughts lol.

I have seen some of the solo stuff in your thread, which you are welcome to link, shows some cool things and shows some spammy things that I still think should be gone (not spammy because you did it wrong, spammy because why I don't like spam). Like I remember playing Paladin long ago as I liked the theme but had long been asking to knock the flash spam off, the job evolved and it was amazing, the new spells are also cool but they added the short holy spirit / atonement spam and I wasn't super excited about that. I still largely like the evolution of the job but the spam section of Paladin is my least favorite part of playing the job (but I still very much like the job as a whole). I don't like spam... leveling blue mage was therefore a painful experience lol. I get some jobs are going to play different because it's good to have variety but I don't see a good argument on why you'd want a job with a huge variety of spells to be like that, seems entirely counter to what I think you'd want (you'd want to relish in the huge variety by having low spam and high paralysis of decisions because everything is awesome). As I described a few times for blue, thinking like a Hades (game), Diablo 3, etc, etc type game where you get choice after choice that just explodes into high diversity head scratching fun (where even when you're wrong it's still fun)- I think that is a great goal for Blue Mage (and may be some elements of that here now, especially as it has evolved, but 1 to 50 felt dully obvious on what I should do and very spammy at the same time).

I have pretty much 3 asks for the BLU.

1. Let BLU go to Eureka, given how strong BLUs are in Overworld style content and their use of all elements, they would not need the element wheel but would need to use the right element spells and they would be unable to use lost actions. It just breathes a bit of life into an area that is effectively dying content outside the few really devout groups and gives BLU a new area to play around in while utilizing more of their flexibility.

2. Overhaul some of the filler spells, badly. There's a reason Electrogenesis and Sonic Boom are the most widely used fillers and that's because they feel good to use (Electrogenesis is a targetted AoE from target with the initial hit being full damage on the target, Sonic Boom is an exceptionally fast windup making it good for movement) some of the fillers are just plain bad or gimmicky to the point they aren't useful. The Look is a good example as are the Knights Tours which are completely unusable on bosses due to the bind gimmick.

3. A Blulette option. The BLU log is a step in the right direction but people feel less incentive beyond the initial buzz and that's something that could be fixed by adding a daily BLUlette. I can typically find a BLU party for spells, but finding ones that actually want to clear content outside a spell drops off the final dungeon boss is few and far between.

1 and 2 are a very strong yes, definitely! I still don't think you'll ever, no matter what you try, get something like 3 on an actual active treadmill unless you add incredible encouragement. Like a BLUette that gives you a range of end game tomes might do it, based on how long the content is, might do it. Yet a major issue, that SE knows and so I don't see why they think the idea is suddenly good when they already know it's a problem, is you'll probably get some really awfully spell spec'd blue mages... so you'll do BLUette quite a few times for a while and then start to get group after group of mages that can't get the task done even though it should be easy simply because they're coming basically naked. It's negative to say I suppose but I sincerely doubt the ability for any content to consistently make a blue group a viable concept for longer than flashes in a pan.

My wish list for BLU:
-BLU-only Duty Finder and daily Roulette: perhaps require players to have certain skills first. I recommend to require them to have at least: White Wind, Aetherical Mimicry and Diamond Back. With duty finder for BLU only, you will also help other BLU to get spells and fill up logs.
-Aetherical Mimicry: Make it works like Monk's Form Shift: first use = DPS stance, second use = heal stance, third use = tank stance, the come back to DPS stance from tank stance. You can change role freely in dungeon, but not in-combat, similar to AST's stances. Less the hassle to stalk other players to get their roles.
-Limit break: work differently depend on your stance. DPS = single-target Limit break. Heal = Heal + Rez (LB3). Tank = super defense.
-Relic grind: BLU can pretty much do everything for Zodiac and Anima grind. You don't even need them to go into Eureka and Bojza to get relic materials, as other classes can farm it for them. For Eureka, put a NPC outside for weapon barter should be enough.

Adding requirements to the blue duty may help a lot with the quality you receive, though those few would still give you high chance for some very low damage options lol. . IF you did it in ranks (easy blue, hard blue), then you might increase the requirement further to help. Such that easy blue is more whatever and hard blue is like "have at least X rarity skills".

The request for mimicry is pretty common, not just in this thread but I have seen it quite a bit. Different limit breaks could be neat

Do you see relic as an opportunity for glamour or were you looking for stats?

While I'm not going to go into a spell by spell diagnosis, I do agree the 1-50 kit needs some revisions, in part to better prepare the player for undertaking specific roles within the trinity. Healing sticks out here with White Wind being an MP hungry spell, but conditional in what it restores and oftemtimes overkill. Mog Pom should most definitely be locked to King Mog and should arguably be a bit more useful without Mimicry. Tying Angel Whisper to Carnivale clears was also a bad move.

Mechanically, though, I'd ask for multi-stage Carnivale fights to restart at whatever stage you were on if you died. As another poster pointed out, a lot of these are just pure "do the dance" slogs once you figure out the gimmick, but needing 2-3m every time to get to the 2nd+ part just to wipe again because you didn't figure it out yet, bad luck, etc., makes the experience more of headache than it should've been. Otherwise, I'm fine with the Carnivale largely being one and done because I don't want another set of yet more compulsory daily/weekly tasks, especially if that translates to BLU-specific rewards/power.

Otherwise, I'd say spell sets solved one of my older gripes and the general nerf to suicide strats tied into that. Not a whole lot can be done about the post-patch popularity and eventual wane, as that's a factor of all content. Adding what BLU can access is the otherwise sensible alternative and I think Eureka and eventually Bozja is a good idea for multiple reasons people already covered. I think at this point, the only real "new" thing they could do is reward a new type of crystal based on whatever mimicked role you cleared a duty as. This can then be used on other jobs to give them a little bit of EXP as a little bonus for participating in BLU things once you have your spells/mounts/etc.

Obviously went a bit crazy going spell by spell, and not so crazy to think they'd change them all, but I would love for them to reduce "useless" / "feels bad to use" spells and I agree help with the acquisition of certain spells to smooth out the player experience (such that you can do your group content if you wanted but also so you don't feel you have to go to cap level just so you can then go back down unsync to get that one spell that was very important to your next power peak you couldn't get simply because no group was available to do it).

I love the Circus fights to be started on their stage, some stages are super easy and then you haven't figured the puzzle yet (which you could easily look up online but you didn't want to).. so then you waste your time on the first stage a few times (even though it's easy it may take a pretty second)... then you just look it up because you're like "nah, don't want to bother wasting my time anymore" and find out the puzzle piece that makes the content become super easy (since it's a puzzle once you have the key it unfolds).

For the last one is it like a dragon scroll (grants EXP straight up) or more like rested exp you can stock?

I hit 60 and took a look at the list of moves I’d need to be viable and….dungeons and raids. Dungeons and raids mainly only soloable if I’m maxed and get level 70 gear…

I think it’s very awesome that the class “designed for solo play” requires so much partying content, and gets locked out of Duty Finder to boot. More like the “you MUST have friends” class.

Maybe if they were allowed to go to Eureka so you can use the class to get that stuff cuz you missed the bus, that’d be something, but they limit this Limited Class WAY too much.

That was a huge, imo, poor wording / miscommunication that has definitely shaded the entire experience for many players. I strongly believe designed for solo play is the right decision, but they obviously didn't do that initially and have recently actually made it more of a thing. Another one that really got me, like actually annoyed and didn't want to play the game a few times, was the whole making it limited so it could have classic spells but then doing things like the worst Angel Whisper in the history of FF or nerfing certain spells from their monster counterpart so they're balanced for group play.. It may have not seemed like I was restrained at all lol.. but it was quite a few times where I just walked away from the keyboard to prevent myself from saying my emotions in a far meaner way of the nicest being "I think you lied" (which I don't feel SE would do.. I don't think they're malicious, but I still personally think it was if not a lie on the very verge of it- I feel a lot of good changes have happened but there is still a negative wall that sits behind some of the better feelings I have for the job).

To be honest I didn't even want 1:1 spells like if you said "death works just like the boss, unless you esuna it you die" I'd be like.. that's too strong, that's just not fun. I rather want them to purposefully make everything have the 'flair' of the spell but always designed to just be exciting and earn the title of being limited (so many things shouldn't matter if you're going to purposefully wall a job off from current content, and new problems like groups are going to be seldom.. the design should greatly both respect the consequence and also lavish in the opportunity of that situation then.. else if it's only 20 tweaks from being normal .. kind of a... "why?" otherwise.. though I do think, and why I like them, the 60 to 70 era tended to do that). Like the other poster who said blood drain is a good spell, sure 500 mp can be valuable in situations but it doesn't feel fun.. it's not exciting to use.. and generally it is honestly not that useful if you can just manage your mp proper in other ways (like using lucid on cooldown).

People keep saying it was designed for solo play, but looking at the slides again, they clearly say you need to team up.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tional-Post%29

I think something got lost in translation. I think the focus was on solo content, which is the carnival (and which they kinda abandoned to be honest).

Although, the solo play was HUGELY improved with basic instinct, which is a skill you can get by playing solo.
And they will probably add more later.

I think the slide was just poorly presented, I do imagine it was meant to be 'we've got loads of this solo content, but also some group content'. Which could have been said a lot of different ways to more accurately portray the intent lol. Though as said throughout above, and immediately after the slide, I think group play is a flash in the pan concept that unless you take extreme measures should not be in any situation a major consideration of the job. As in the job should, and always be, "primarily designed for solo". Such that progression of the job is under the pretense you will be doing it solo. There can still be group content, but that's far less achieve-able outside of patch, streamer, or one of the lucky ones that either gets to play long hours or have the proper number of friends on call. For everyone else you're going to have to get lucky (PF has the spell you've been needing, or you've been sitting on your hands for weeks because no one wants to do the raid you need for your log). This isn't like current content that can hold demand for much longer (all things naturally die, and the normal progress for all things that naturally die is they're lessened so you can "un-death" them, yet here blue mage is like two weeks in until the next streamer or patch slaps the job).

Basic Instinct offers no additional protection, and it’s only damage buff is just reversing Mighty Guard’s downside. Go into an instance solo-synced, you’re screwed.

I do think tweaks would be helpful to improve that. Such as just having more interesting spells sooner so you don't have to do that as much (unsync), could help - suggesting spells sooner than can act as sustain in conjunction to white wind (which is obviously situationally crazy op). Another was the libra ideas on the second post which could help increase your learn chance (condensed libra allowing you to stack each time, so repeat slowly go up to assured thing, while libra basic just being a higher chance).

Certainly survivability 'enjoyment', imo, could be improved. By that I picture the solo content in FFXI where, at least back when I played, you'd have players spend 30 minutes (in FFXI) to solo a content with a huge amount of their spells being repeats (high spam). That, imo, is not the ideal example of any sort of gameplay. I think it's cool players could stretch their skills to that level, especially given how FFXI was designed, but when you're purposefully designing solo play you'd want to ensure a higher variety of thoughts and actions. I don't think "spam white wind until you get pom on healer mimicry" is the pinnacle of sustain decisions. Of course diamondback well timed can reduce damage by a huge amount, but using that skill too is just like ... UugghH.. No..... What do you mean I can't cancel this thing? Who thought of that, FFXI 1.0 Tanaka edition called and said to stop torturing me. . lol. Stuns are not fun @_@.

[Shougun]

I definitely get why fans of BLU would have rather it been molded into a regular job instead of added as limited. Personally though I think it's interesting as side content and think it's fine to have such side content that doesn't just feed into the usual endgame loot treadmill.

A second limited job IMO would need:

A. An identity that would be significantly watered down if it was put into the standard job mold, like how there's no way they would have ever added blue mage's spell collection mechanic to a full job, even if quest lore said you learned spells from monsters. They just would not make a standard job have to jump through those hoops it goes against the game's general design philosophy too much.

B. Said identity needs to be distinct enough from BLU to justify existing as a separate piece of side content. For example, you could make beastmaster. but if beastmaster is just 'collect the different monsters and use a good combination of them in carnival like solo instances' then how does it feel distinct from blue mage? If it's another 'collectathon' job it needs to function differently somehow to be distinct, or it needs to be something other than a collectathon job while still being unique enough to not fit as a standard job.

I had REALLY wanted to play blue mage main, from a long time ago (I assume not the first but I had asked for it all the way in 1.0), so the whole beginning experience of blue mage was a sick to the stomach, in a first world way lol, experience.. Just like .. my first most accurately described feeling when blue was launched might be something like "Damn it man. I hate this thing. I'm so... at a loss for what to do, I had wanted this so bad but now I don't want it at all". (A word I dont think I've ever used on any other content in the game, even housing I tend to be nicer on - as many things made sense about what happened even if non-desirable, like how it was made for FC only first, and the game was not really that popular when made available).

But they have had made a number of changes, 60 to 70 tending to have a far more inspired attitude to spell design, and obviously the insanely helpful basic instinct. I still have some misgivings about the whole experience (1 to 50 being the focus, hence my posts in this thread), but at least "tastes" better rather than before (locking everyone up and dropping the entire sun of primal spells on an enemy is fun), and want to hope in the end they can go farther from what was initially released (remix 1 to 50 experience, continue to empower and put solo as the front runner, without making it 1 shot super-derp, etc). I think if blue mage was primarily designed for solo play and optionally and as an aside for group play it would be in a much better boat all together (which it is not currently though solo has gone from mostly aside to much closer to equal share since Basic Instinct was added).

I actually don't think A is that important, given there are a number of FF blue mages with reasonable size lists (around the same size of other mages) to such the main idea is using monster spells not learning a huge list (though I do think, if they wanted to be crazy, they 'could' make players normal and still learn the spells, though you're right that is very abnormal). People reference how insane some blue spells are but I think often forget how insane most jobs are, Summoner has many counterpart effects to blue mage from the auto life to the full death, each job tended to have something totally broken. It is true blue mage tended to get broken things at a weird pacing in the game, but in the end all jobs were borked (nearly every insane thing you might say about Blue at least one other job would have at the end of the game, life, death, reflect, huge damage, etc).

Big agree on B though. A reskin of blue would probably, especially if they reskin 1 to 50 experience, lead to another negatively received job.

Beastmaster is suggested quite a bit because obviously pet jobs in this game seems to be a nono lol, but I like to suggest magitek pilot (operator) here. As I think a G-warrior-esq job like that would probably fit relatively well in the limited area (makes sense it'd be limited). I also like it since it's not really a job to expect. Some people have said they want to main beastmaster, if beastmaster doesn't come out more polished than blue mage did, they might experience quite the upset then.. Meanwhile who was expecting magitek warrior job? 1 person? 0? lol. You've a lot of leeway, a basis of idea in the game already, and it would offer substantial opportunity for different gameplay design and growth. Beastmaster, in another game, I imagine could be a normal job and so people might look at it that way (I mean in this game we just have a lot of issues with pets so that's why I say that)- so some people might be hoping they get Hunter WoW in Beastmaster FFXIV but then find they can only do a select few things with it.

I like the idea of breeding for beastmaster as it might also open it up for a more diverse, and different, set of content beyond just the combat. To be honest then it might find itself a content home with Island Sanctuaries. Though I kind of encourage they call it shepherd just to reduce the "I wanted to main that" impact for those players.