Could Blue Mage do more in the future?

[Cabalabob]

As I mentioned I like to think it could be a debuff caster what about something like this:

Condensed Libra Gauge – Looks like the Blue Spellbook (but blank) and has six empty slots in a circle and one in the middle. Keeps track of what aether charges you have accumulated.


Umbral Attenuation – increases water, ice and earth damage taken by 1% per stack. Foes can only have a maximum of 3 stacks.

Astral Attenuation – increases lightning, wind and fire damage taken by 1% per stack. Foes can only have a maximum of 3 stacks.

Physical Attenuation – increases Physical damage taken by 1% per stack. Foes can only have a maximum of 3 stacks.

Matra Magic – Level 50 – potency 100 – Consumes Condensed aether to deal unaspected damage to a single target up to the number of Condensed aether stacks.

This was fun and I felt like sharing. ^^

You share away, have fun with it if it makes you happy, all I’m trying to do is set you some realistic expectations that nothing will likely come of it.

As for your idea:
Your attenuations would need to be a little more generic for regular content particularly the Elements one since those aren’t really a thing for most jobs, for example, outside of RDM, earth and wind only really exist on WHM and they have all but been replaced by holy spells like glare and dia at this point and basically no one uses water except NIN if you count suiton. Thunder and ice are a small part of BLM’s rotation while fire is a huge part so there’s a big imbalance there. Meanwhile the physical one would be hugely desirable for melees because it’s generic enough to just be any physical damage, so you’d probably end up spamming the physical one and we’ve seen with previous jobs that this can go badly for balance (DRG + ranged stacking for piercing debuff).

You’d be better off with something like one attenuation increases physical damage, one increases magical damage which unlocks the third one that increases both.

[ForsakenRoe]

First off, BLU doesn’t have any innate abilities, it learns absolutely everything from monsters. Imagine a BLU joining your DF run having learned NO SPELLS. Are there ways around this? Yes. Would they require significant work on SE part? Yes. Will they put in that work? Probably not.

Second, BLU is actually really weak. Sure it can do crazy stuff but that’s because it has so much utility like white wind and diamondback. Take those away and what’s left? A really mediocre dps. Like 1k dps behind a BLM of the same level kind of mediocre.

And most importantly, it would just be really boring… BLU has no job mechanics or interesting attacks. You’d have 1 dps spell that you spam, a DoT and some oGCDs. Basically a healer without the healing.

There are ways to implement a BLU that is not limited, while still respecting the 'identity' of BLU. For example, this solves problem 1, that of 'what if someone join and not learn any skill???' Also, you can have people joining your stuff as base classes. Like, I could go grief and sign up for Mt Gulg as a GLD and be missing most of my defensives. Or a CNJ and have to rely on just Cure2 and Medica. It's not exactly a strong defense

2: It's actually really strong. Yes most of it's damage is concentrated into a burst window, but that means downtimes favor it moreso than any other class. Doesn't include the possibility that stuff could be buffed/nerfed to accomodate it's un-limiting. In fact, I know a guy who did a lot of BLU theorycrafting, who says that 70 BLU is actually insanely well balanced vs the DPS checks of the SB raids, and the only two skills that are 'problematic' balancewise are Aetherial Mimicry (just have it consider you to always be DPS Mimic, balance around that) and I believe Basic Instinct. Personally though I'd just take an extra few hours to go through and redo the potencies to suit an actual rotation/gameplay loop that isn't 'spam this 220p filler'

3: That's why I suggested a 'job mechanic', making it so you have more than 'one dps spell that you spam, a dot and some ogcds'. You also shouldn't be so reductive. At it's core, BRD is also 'a dps spell (Burst Shot), a DOT (Iron Jaws refreshing), and some OGCDs (the other crap).

The problem is that SE does not want to implement said ideas, be it because of dev time, 'it doesn't match our vision of what we want BLU to be', or they have some info we don't that says that the current design is actually the best thing since sliced bread and we're just too stupid to understand how genius it is to have a job in the game that cannot do the endgame content or story

[fulminating]

or they have some info we don't that says that the current design is actually the best thing since sliced bread and we're just too stupid to understand how genius it is to have a job in the game that cannot do the endgame content or story

You say that, but having a solitary egg in a different basket has at least allowed one job to remain fun