Will Beastmaster appear in any Endwalker content patches?

[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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

[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.