Will Beastmaster appear in any Endwalker content patches?

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Thus, I see BLU remaining hedged out of Duty Finder...

Putting Duty Finder aside, it's for Square Enix's own rationale for why BLU isn't allow in Eureka that I don't see BLU being given free reign to go into current content via Party Finder. At least not from the beginning of an expansion. BLU right now is powerful as a DPS and flexible in its role (in the content it can access). To be frank, BLU's mediocre as a healer for actually healing, and kinda poor as a tank - but even having the ability to suddenly shift into those roles to save prog is incredibly powerful. I know this personally because BLU is my "in case of emergency, break glass" option for MINE runs progging sprouts through old content. Square Enix thus doesn't want to allow BLU into things like Baldesion Arsenal because it would be too strong.

I believe the same charge would rapidly be leveled at BLU if it could participate in current raid tiers - scaled up to max level, it's by far the most powerful and versatile DPS in the game. At 70 with an optimized spell loadout, BLU currently blows every other DPS out of the water. On top of having nearly every type of utility under the sun. There'd be outrage in the community if they just unleashed it, as is, on endgame.

Players can hardly stand having single digit deviations in rDPS between jobs, or powerful unique utility like Verraise (it's weighing down RDM DPS!) or NIN's old enmity kit (overcentralizing!). Do you really think they'd abide the existence of a job with the ability to literally change role mid-fight, or a move like White Wind that even DPS BLU can currently use at full strength, in an active raid tier? Maybe if BLU were a tank (badum-tish!), but its square is red.

So they'd need to restrict it in one of the ways mentioned above, with the most likely options being the ones that destroy BLU as it is (like a set kit). Or they'd have to nerf BLU, heavily. If such nerfs cannot be somehow constrained to max level only, then suddenly BLU's ability to clear BLU-log fights is at risk. Not to mentioned they'd need to retune the Carnivale fights too.

Basically, if BLU suddenly got a level cap increase to 90 today, I'd be very happy. That happiness would then be short lived as BLU crashes headlong into an environment it is not balanced for, with everyone's full attention on the mess, and the only way to resolve the situation either sees BLU limited again or losing its soul to become "Caster DPS #4." The best I can see for BLU is being raised to max level cap very late in an expansion's patch cycle (X.45 or later), and otherwise remaining a limited job. This would not satisfy people who want to main or raid on the job.

3/3

[Shurrikhan]

So, why don't I think BLU would work at max level? After all, the thing I use it most for is pretty close to regular content! Well, logistical limitations and knowing the playerbase, mostly.

I wasn't kidding with the Sastasha question before. If BLU is suddenly allowed to go into Duty Finder, what would be the result? Let me spin some predictions:

Of these, only your second prediction seems reasonable. A lower ability pool into which to assign skills (your Active Ability slots increasing with level and, of course, greying out additions past their level threshold when level-synced) would generally be the fairest way to handle lower-level content. This would not necessarily, however, require rapid revision of one's Active Ability deck at the start of each synced instance, even without the previous proposed pre-made (or, say, "last used") decks for the specific instance.

Such merely requires removing or toning down the contribution of vertical progression over the skills' acquisition levels when in lower-level content -- i.e., undo the factor that, through tuning, quickly make so many skills defunct even when the effect's type is still fitting. At that point, you include first within a given deck (or, your spell selection) whichever skills to which you least wish to lose access. Being able to make such a choice would still be enviable, but its results would not be overpowered, allowing one to continue to use the first n skills of their max level set even when synced down. (Though, one may wish to instead take advantage of the opportunity to use skills that have since grown inferior by way of tuning.)

Of course, I'd argue for that reason that some of the most codependent skills should be revised, but I'd have made that same suggestion regardless of BLU's being granted access to all content. Take Aetherial Mimicry, for instance. Rather than it massively increasing the potency (not just effect, but initial potency) of heals (say, Pom Cure's from 100 to 500 -- or, in effect, 600), I'd raise the base skill potency and instead have it decrease mana costs, since you might then have reason to use something like Pom Cure without having to first spend a slot on Aetherial Manipulation. (I'd also remove the DPS effect from Aetherial Manipulation, with the Tank and Healer effects instead sacrificing some portion of offensive throughput until toggled back off, as to make the skill a true investment in situational value rather than a mere obligatory slot.)

Players can hardly stand having single digit deviations in rDPS between jobs, or powerful unique utility like Verraise (it's weighing down RDM DPS!) or NIN's old enmity kit (overcentralizing!).

Let's not conflate these issues. NIN Enmity skills was removed only when and because Enmity management was removed as a mechanic. It was pruned only once made defunct. Verraise, meanwhile, would appear to have cost RDM next to nothing, historically; rather, it simply entered both Stormblood and Shadowbringers undertuned before leaving those respective expansions neck-and-neck with BLM and SMN for rDPS barely over a percent behind SMN despite being considered the easier, more reliable, and more utility-packed job. Today, it leads over SMN and all physical Physical Ranged, for instance despite Verraise.

scaled up to max level, [BLU is] by far the most powerful and versatile DPS in the game.

How much of that power is consequent to how the abilities' work, though, rather than their tuning? BLU's heals, for instance, are tremendous mana-hogs, thereby curtailed in the same way as Verraise; all that maintains their value is that a BLU-Medica has so much more potency than a regular Medica, etc. Tune it a bit less absurdly or really tax that use, and you're fine. Arguably, Rez-capable casters jobs should probably follow suit in having situational spending options alternative to rezzes, as to still be capable of utility value without someone having already died.

____________

I'll go further, though. BLU's kit presently sucks without enemy weaknesses, and simply applying weaknesses across a given piece of content, while fun, could annoy some.

What you do instead then is offload a large portion of the impact those mechanics from the mobs' characteristics to the BLU's own mechanics. Saturate a target --> Lightning crit chance is increased and certain Ice spells can reduplicate a portion of the previous Water spell's potency. Etc., etc.

Such would allow for elemental kits to have relevance beyond whatever overlap they may have with "pick the top dozen potencies" (from which --apart from perhaps Cold Fog, Surpanakha, and Tingle being taken only for Triple-- they were largely pushed out in favor of unaspected and physical damage).

That leaves just skills like

• level-sensitive spells like Level 5 Petrify, which ought to simply be generalized with chance increasing via primers (gameplay and setup replacing simple mob-based lockouts),
• RNG BS spells like Death and Missile, which frankly shouldn't be a thing regardless (but could certainly fit as skills which are undertuned until the enemy is under X% health, and overtuned thereafter, still making it useful for %HP mob enrages in side-content without simply being able to reroll the fight until sufficiently lucky),
• skills that have incommensurately low opportunity cost in snap usage, like Diamondback (which probably ought to simply lock you into that state for a bit longer or cause damage loss for the remainder of the normal duration after being broken early),
• Typal Vulnerability debuffs like that of the Libras, which should instead affect the casting BLU only, as a buff,
• and perhaps rDPS-intensive skills like Off-Guard which can only ever be obligatory in 8-man and 24-man content or not worth taking in light party content, and should probably therefore instead become a physical/non-physical damage bonus toggle in pairing with Peculiar Light (2 buttons in one) or the like as to be more evenly competitive with other skills regardless of the content one does.

For none of those things would the suggested revisions detract from the identity of BLU unless that identity is literally just to have very wonky relative balance (the strength of one skill choice, despite being presented as if equal, being very different from another). On the contrary, it could greatly improve the available depths of its rotation and freedoms of skill choice precisely by giving it that increased balance that would ready it for full access to content. Put quite simply, the majority of the work is just replacing lazy design, where present, with actual internal balance.

[Rolder50]

No more limited jobs please and thank you. Waste of design time.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I'll go further, though. BLU's kit presently sucks without enemy weaknesses, and simply applying weaknesses across a given piece of content, while fun, could annoy some.

What you do instead then is offload a large portion of the impact those mechanics from the mobs' characteristics to the BLU's own mechanics. Saturate a target --> Lightning crit chance is increased and certain Ice spells can reduplicate a portion of the previous Water spell's potency. Etc., etc.

We already kind of have the beginnings of that, though. Aqua Breath (water) into High Voltage (electric) or Northerlies (ice); Hydro Pull (water) into Ram's Voice (ice) into Ultravibration (sound?); Peripheral Synthesis to Mustard Bomb (fire)

Such would allow for elemental kits to have relevance beyond whatever overlap they may have with "pick the top dozen potencies" (from which --apart from perhaps Cold Fog, Surpanakha, and Tingle being taken only for Triple-- they were largely pushed out in favor of unaspected and physical damage).

I actually like the way BLU is presently designed, as it seems to have a loose "water spell" theme to it that no other job has. I don't see the point of making it an elementalist job like every other caster when this "water-status-combo" gimmick is fantastic and could be developed further.

[Shurrikhan]

We already kind of have the beginnings of that, though. Aqua Breath (water) into High Voltage (electric) or Northerlies (ice); Hydro Pull (water) into Ram's Voice (ice) into Ultravibration (sound?); Peripheral Synthesis to Mustard Bomb (fire)

Right; I would just want to take that a bit further and perhaps allow for a bit more 'combo' pathing.

(For once, actual combos in XIV, rather than the standard "let me make all but 1 GCD a trap for the next n GCDs" mechanic. I cannot explain how happy that makes me, even if it's still relatively shallow for now.)

I actually like the way BLU is presently designed, as it seems to have a loose "water spell" theme to it that no other job has. I don't see the point of making it an elementalist job like every other caster when this "water-status-combo" gimmick is fantastic and could be developed further.

I don't need it to be evenly spread across the elements (it should feel, at most, only as evenly spread as monster abilities are), and I'd certainly want to expand that beyond the traditional 6 elements (perhaps adding back 1.x's Sonic, Blood, Dark/Umbral, Light/Astral, etc.) in order to further dodge that "elementalist" descriptor, but I do think a greater portion of its kit should maintain relevance (especially, interactive relevance) outside of Carnival.

[Reinha]

3. BLU gets assigned a specific set of duties when level sync'd below maximum. Here we start to cut into BLU's flexibility of choice, badly. If it's duty-finder only, you suddenly have a job that plays completely different in duty finder versus party finder.

So what if it's different in Duty Finder? It's already different in the sense that it can't participate. Do you want no one to have the choice to join DF with a predetermined set of spells just because you prefer Party Finder?

[aveyond-dreams]

The selfishness which some fans of limited jobs display is extremely detrimental to the reputation of the system overall-they literally lose nothing by Blue Mage having the option to have a set of group-balanced spells for normal play with others in duty finder in addition to the job's other gimmicks. This is why I cannot support adding more jobs into the mix, it just doesn't make sense to limit things for problems that could be resolved within the design process.

Red Mage is still Red Mage even if I can't group-cast Cura and spam melee attacks in dungeons as opposed to the more caster-focused gameplay the job's flow is in FFXIV. A similar compromise could have absolutely been found for Blue Mage, but instead we know have to deal with a job that drains development resources in the name of 2-week long bursts of activity only to be promptly forgotten about until the next Moogle Event, whose rewards can easily be obtained through normal gameplay with other jobs.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

A lower ability pool into which to assign skills would generally be the fairest way to handle lower-level content...

This is a clever way to try and solve the problem. It still would take quite a bit of effort on the dev team's part to tune, but it's about the only way wrangle BLU into Duty Finder.

____________

I'd also remove the DPS effect from Aetherial Mimicry... as to make the skill a true investment in situational value rather than a mere obligatory slot.

Alternatively, a small number of BLU spells should be core parts of the kit once unlocked, and not count against spell slots. BLU currently uses 29 buttons including role actions, 3 short of the magic 32 for easy controller use.

____________

Let's not conflate these issues.

I'm not arguing for the truth of these points, I'm pointing out that even slight or perceived deviations from role balance inspire ire. NIN's kit was the subject of controversy until the day enmity died. Calls for Verraise to be sacrificed resurfaced shortly after 6.08, when BLM widened the rDPS gap. Perhaps those jobs weren't the best examples, but I'd lose myself to the tangent if I dived into how healers were homogenized to WHM's baseline.

Furthermore, FF14's main job design team, who currently do not work on BLU iirc, have exhibited a trend towards homogenization. Especially when outliers are perceived to cause design or community issues. In that light, a DPS that can freely spec itself as a healer or tank hybrid directly contradicts their design goals. I don't agree with those design goals (e.g., I despise the state of healers), but they're a clear obstacle to BLU being raised out of limited status unharmed.

In short, BLU's unique flexibility being put in the firing line of public opinion and the actual job design team worries me. The convenient solution for the job devs re: an unlimited BLU will always be to just remove the create-a-kit that is the heart of current limited BLU. I do not trust them, after ShB, to do otherwise.

____________

How much of that power is consequent to how the abilities' work, though, rather than their tuning?

BLU's ability to granularly adjust its role, and bring an encounter-tailored kit, is a question of "how" that no degree of tuning will fully solve.

Tuning selfish-DPS BLU would be trivial. Tuning the in-between "create-a-job" hybrids is a nightmare that will repeat with every expansion of the BLU spellbook, especially if one can stance-dance mid-fight in a mixed party with aetherial mimicry. E.g., a hybrid DPS/healer that can scale its downtime vs healing kit as prog transforms into farm would be the perfect cohealer, barring hamfisted mechanics to enforce a standard 2/2/4 comp. Especially if healer-BLU were to get healing oGCDs (which I want to see, limited job or no).

[Gaethan_Tessula]

BLU's kit presently sucks without enemy weaknesses...

What you do instead then is offload a large portion of the impact those mechanics from the mobs' characteristics to the BLU's own mechanics.

I'm entirely up for improving BLU's rotation. Assuming there is room to fit it into available spell-slots, I certainly agree that rotating between elements via applying weaknesses from one type to another would be better gameplay between-burst than we have now.

As for the meme spells (e.g., lvl 5 Death), in a world with unlimited BLU, they could probably be safely consigned to be Carnivale only, or otherwise restricted somehow. Trying to give 128+ spells on one job unique niches in regular content is probably futile.

____________

On the contrary, it could greatly improve the available depths of its rotation and freedoms of skill choice precisely by giving it that increased balance that would ready it for full access to content. Put quite simply, the majority of the work is just replacing lazy design, where present, with actual internal balance.

In an ideal world, I'm sure it could, and I would enjoy that.

In this one, I just don't find it likely the devs would put in the needed effort and upkeep. Were BLU to become an unlimited job, they'd more likely raze BLU as-is to the ground. It's just easier to create a job that fits cleanly into the established design parameters, than to constantly struggle with one that doesn't (unless set it aside from the current endgame, which is what they've done). The flexibility that endears BLU to me is, in my opinion, safer as a limited job for which balance is no concern.

So what if it's different in Duty Finder? It's already different in the sense that it can't participate. Do you want no one to have the choice to join DF with a predetermined set of spells just because you prefer Party Finder?

That's a rather silly bias to presume I would have. But no, my actual reasons are:

1. BLU's current core identity is being able to granularly adjust its kit and role between instances (and, to a much lesser degree, in-instance). Developing a fixed kit for DF directly contradicts that core-identity. The devs would have to settle for picking one of BLU's sub-identities defined by the three extreme corners of its role selection: flute-burst, oGCD, and weakness-targeting DPS; ARR WHM, including Stoneskin II, but with more damage buttons; and a tank that uses actively cast mitigations, along with abilities that "reflect" damage back at the target (Chel' Gate, Veil of the Whorl, Cold Fog, etc.). Probably the DPS one exclusively since that's what BLU would queue as, unless they actually find a way for BLU to actually count as a healer or tank in terms of mechanics.

I somehow think that BLU having to play the "diet coke" version of itself to use DF would continue to cause displeasure in the playerbase. Furthermore, locked-kits in DF would have a knockon of making it harder to balance BLU for current content; e.g., if the devs balance around their DF BLU, then PF BLU could be too strong. This would be especially problematic on JP servers, where DF is actually used for harder content.

2. Making the two distinct, and the DF set likely suboptimal, creates a perverse incentive for players to not use Duty Finder. I've already seen some people complain that BLU as is made it harder to participate in the moogle-tome events as other classes, since so many went to BLU-burn parties in Party Finder. Permanently instituting this problem via having unequal DF and PF BLU as full jobs seems like something SE would want to avoid, as Duty Finder is the primary means by which new players progress through the game.

____________

Overall, I think people are underestimating how much extra work it would be to adapt BLU's current flexibility and logistical considerations (e.g., needing to create several different spell-loadouts and hotbar configurations) into coherence with the rest of the game's design. Especially when the alternatives are the present "balance? who cares, it's side content" or ripping out the customization to create a curated kit a-la any other job (where some people gain caster DPS #4, and everyone who enjoys BLU as it is now loses everything).

Could it hypothetically be done? Yes.

Would I like for it to be done? Yes.

Do I trust that Square Enix Business Division 5 has the will or capability to pull it off? No. If healer design ever gets better, maybe I'll change my mind.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not arguing for the truth of these points, I'm pointing out that even slight or perceived deviations from role balance inspire ire. NIN's kit was the subject of controversy until the day enmity died. Calls for Verraise to be sacrificed resurfaced shortly after 6.08, when BLM widened the rDPS gap. Perhaps those jobs weren't the best examples, but I'd lose myself to the tangent if I dived into how healers were homogenized to WHM's baseline.

These are not issues that would have noticeable implication upon BLU, though, beyond "don't be overpowered" and "don't be underpowered." NIN's having a huge amount of rDPS-saving utility (in the form of enmity transfer skills) was infamous only because NIN was already a top-rDPS job even without accounting for that value, making it significantly overpowered. RDM gets calls for Verraise to be sacrificed pretty much only when certain echo chambers get loud enough that everyone forgets its past strength (held despite having Verraise) and that RDM had consistently fallen short of developer-expected rDPS at the beginning of expansions (only to then be tuned up in compensation).

More than a case for homogenizing jobs because the community 'just can't handle actual job diversity', that's a case for... balancing jobs.

BLU's ability to granularly adjust its role, and bring an encounter-tailored kit, is a question of "how" that no degree of tuning will fully solve.

Tuning selfish-DPS BLU would be trivial. Tuning the in-between "create-a-job" hybrids is a nightmare that will repeat with every expansion of the BLU spellbook, especially if one can stance-dance mid-fight in a mixed party with aetherial mimicry. E.g., a hybrid DPS/healer that can scale its downtime vs healing kit as prog transforms into farm would be the perfect cohealer, barring hamfisted mechanics to enforce a standard 2/2/4 comp. Especially if healer-BLU were to get healing oGCDs (which I want to see, limited job or no).

Personally, I think that's a step I think we should learn how to take regardless, as I'd rather see greater at-cost (not merely free but on overlong CDs) versatility across jobs. Might that oblige mechanics able to make use of those things, such as having more blocking-line (rather than merely soak) mechanics that'd want DPS mitigation, or the like? Yeah, probably. But, I'd like to see that regardless.

Trying to give 128+ spells on one job unique niches in regular content is probably futile.

I imagine they'd function more or less in blocks (or 'combos'), with some being tighter than others. I'm okay with some degree of codependence within said blocks, to be honest; I just don't want any obligatory (let alone obligatory and uninteresting) skills.

In an ideal world, I'm sure it could, and I would enjoy that.

In this one, I just don't find it likely the devs would put in the needed effort and upkeep.

That's not a matter of what 'world' it lies in. Shit like Level 5 Death/Petrify, etc., or skills undertuned out of usefulness in the name of obliging further skill acquisition is just plain lazy design. It doesn't surprise me that a minigame-first-job-second experience would have that, but BLU should be a job, not a minigame. That effort is the difference between the two.