So...About Blue Mage

[technole]

Mighty Guard+ Diamondback is only good within the context of BLU raiding, if you were to have blu as a normal job you would never want to use that over an actual tank. Also "Many different play styles" is a massive reach, you have the BLU rotation and you occasionaly use a different filler (i.e. revenge blast), fundamentally you only have one playstyle of your primal burst+ filler.

Cause that's where the direction is with Blue Mage, it isn't ever going to be normal. These skills were all designed for party and raiding content.

The beauty and difficulty of doing them on blue mage is because the game sees a party of them as all red DPS, and that means any mechanic that was once role-aligned is randomized. Like any party member could get the O4S earthshakers, versus the healers only with a normal comp. Or you can get any gavel mechanic in A8S. This also opens up interpretation of what skills could be best slotted for the instance.

There is different play style because each of the raids you do bring different skills, as you don't take the exact same skills in each one. Like who wants to be the 'DPS tank' to take a swap, buster they need Frog Legs, not everyone does Or one of the DPS mimics has another heal skill in-case the healer gets involved in a mechanic. You need someone with the fish in A8S, or if you go in using Eureka best-in-slot gear you probably need one of the HP raising skills to survive certain mechanics.

[ReiMakoto]

Cause that's where the direction is with Blue Mage, it isn't ever going to be normal. These skills were all designed for party and raiding content.

The beauty and difficulty of doing them on blue mage is because the game sees a party of them as all red DPS, and that means any mechanic that was once role-aligned is randomized. Like any party member could get the O4S earthshakers, versus the healers only with a normal comp. Or you can get any gavel mechanic in A8S. This also opens up interpretation of what skills could be best slotted for the instance.

There is different play style because each of the raids you do bring different skills, as you don't take the exact same skills in each one. Like who wants to be the 'DPS tank' to take a swap, buster they need Frog Legs, not everyone does Or one of the DPS mimics has another heal skill in-case the healer gets involved in a mechanic. You need someone with the fish in A8S, or if you go in using Eureka best-in-slot gear you probably need one of the HP raising skills to survive certain mechanics.

Taking different skills =/= having a different playstyle. All of these skills do not change blu's playstlye, you still burst at your 1/2 min window and filler inbetween, all these skills are doing are adding a situational button, it's like saying having your lost actions (not essences) in bozja changes your playstyle, they don't, they are just momentary diversions from your fundamental kit, which we have mentioned before in the case of BLU has all the workings of a normal job. Like thats literally it though as well, blu is essentially a caster dps that has access to "lost actions/essenses" as part of their kit, give ANY job access to their lost actions from bozja and they'd be able to do what blu does, instant kills and all, they even have thier own version of diamondback and BETTER versions of skills like white wind/frog legs. It boggles the mind how people can't see that BLU's rotation currently is anything other than just another caster rotation with lost actions spiced in, and if we were to give that rotation to people as a normal job nobody loses anything.

[Azuri]

Taking different skills =/= having a different playstyle. All of these skills do not change blu's playstlye, you still burst at your 1/2 min window and filler inbetween, all these skills are doing are adding a situational button, it's like saying having your lost actions (not essences) in bozja changes your playstyle, they don't, they are just momentary diversions from your fundamental kit, which we have mentioned before in the case of BLU has all the workings of a normal job. Like thats literally it though as well, blu is essentially a caster dps that has access to "lost actions/essenses" as part of their kit, give ANY job access to their lost actions from bozja and they'd be able to do what blu does, instant kills and all, they even have thier own version of diamondback and BETTER versions of skills like white wind/frog legs. It boggles the mind how people can't see that BLU's rotation currently is anything other than just another caster rotation with lost actions spiced in, and if we were to give that rotation to people as a normal job nobody loses anything.

It's almost a normal caster rotation. But there is a glaring issue - Moon Flute. That mechanic simply has to go otherwise BLU will become the old SAM on steroids, feeding every raid buff with ungodly burst numbers.

[ReiMakoto]

It's almost a normal caster rotation. But there is a glaring issue - Moon Flute. That mechanic simply has to go otherwise BLU will become the old SAM on steroids, feeding every raid buff with ungodly burst numbers.

Very true, and as much as i like moonflute as a concept i wouldnt mind giving it up or having a weaker version of it for the sake of balance on a normal job blu, as it does seem to be the only sticking point of its rotation, they would have to compensate elswhere though, as blus damage output without moonflute isnt all that.

Edit: a decent change could be "the next 5 spells cast have the effect of bristle/whistle applied to them and are instant cast" then shorten the lockout time to 10s, that way moonflute helps set up triple trident and matra under buffs

[Raikai]

Very true, and as much as i like moonflute as a concept i wouldnt mind giving it up or having a weaker version of it for the sake of balance on a normal job blu, as it does seem to be the only sticking point of its rotation, they would have to compensate elswhere though, as blus damage output without moonflute isnt all that.

Edit: a decent change could be "the next 5 spells cast have the effect of bristle/whistle applied to them and are instant cast" then shorten the lockout time to 10s, that way moonflute helps set up triple trident and matra under buffs

Honestly I would love a Moon Flute redesign just as the job is today.

I feel it's a bad design to force a character to just... run around doing nothing for 15s after a period of burst. Reminds me of old MCH overheat, except that there you could at least do something as opposed to goof around.

They could nerf MF's potency for say, 15-20% and let you play normally but just at a 15-20% for those 15s.