A Blue Mage Beastiary

[Cariborne]

Shintashi, since you mentioned the Arcanist and all of their abilities, you should know that Square has admitted to they wouldn't do that again as it makes balancing hard for them to make Summoner strong in DPS without making Scholar have the same power with heals. Also, if you ever have an ability in the early levels that becomes useless later, that's bad design in an MMO, so your idea of using Abilities at the early point, and then getting the stronger versions later wouldn't really work with how everything in FF14 works. Having to switch your abilty load outs too, while may be fun for the Blue Mage wouldn't be fun for anyone who has to wait while they re-arrange the bars to make them work.

I love the idea of a Blue Mage, Quina and Quistis are two of my favourite characters and I loved Lore hunting in FF6. But with the MMO that FF14 is, a Blue Mage in that way wouldn't work. You shouldn't have to farm enemies to get the abilities you need, you shouldn't have to change your skills around before a fight happens as it's not fair to make others wait in a dungeon, you shouldn't be overloaded with abilities that won't have an effect on enemies or fall behind in power. If the game had elemental weaknesses, and negative status effects like poison and paralyze could be used on bosses, Blue Mage would have a place, but because the game doesn't follow that route right now it wouldn't work, and I honestly think it won't show up that way, if at all if it does.

[shintashi]

Ruin->Ruin II. When synced down, you have to switch back to Ruin
Wandering the world, through Dungeons, Fates, Hunts, etc., Blue Mage progress will sometimes be grindy, and is somewhat parallel to the Relic Zodiac quests or gathering classes.
Alternative to always Farmings enemies, Here's how it could work loosely based on "Eat" from FF9:
You Have Culinarians. They make food from ingredients. Some of the ingredients include Enemy components.
Grilled Dodo=Dodo Tenderloin=Wild/Fat dodo Enemy attacks
Mole Loaf=Mole Meat=Tuco-Tuco Enemy attacks
Blood Current Tart=Gelatin=Bat Wing=Bat/Kalong Enemy attacks

"Eat" could be a trait (like level 10 or 12) that modifies "Azure Lore" and treats eating food like a Desynthesis check. If you succeed, your Enemy skill for the related food increases. The character's Perception divided by 3 or 4 would approximate their "desynth level" vs. the food they ate, so a Perception of 420 would be about level 107.

[shintashi]

Enjoy the Grind...

When I started thinking about the messy aspect of the blue mage, I came to the conclusion the approach could be far less like the Ninja, and far more like the Fisher. My original goal was to mime the Crafters, because they have Crafting lists with 100-300 or so items on their lists. Despite having huge possible lists of items/fish, very few people craft/catch everything. But they are still formidable classes.

I mention the Ninja because when it came out, everybody wanted to play one, and they flooded the dungeons making it somewhat difficult for DPS classes to que. With Fisher, lots of people play the class, but they do so much later in the game, and the pressure is more relaxed. Fisher is a great class to compliment the Site seeing aspect of the Game, and Blue Mage can have that kind of mellow tempo. I wanted a class you didn't race to the finish line to complete. Blue Mage isn't about getting to the end game so you can start coil or zodiac weapon quests. Its much more wide open spaces/sand box.

[shintashi]

As to the notion that a person could be missing sufficient powers to work well in a team... well, every combat class experiences that to some degree. Poorly Armored Tanks, Mages wearing the wrong gear, Healers with the Wrong Stats, Spirit Bonding in Hard dungeons, and Pre-End game classes who forgot to complete their job quests and have missing powers. The Room for Error is larger on a Blue Mage, but it doesn't have to be as large as it might appear. Main Story quests and Class quests can have mandatory enemies, which means every blue mage will have at least a core list, probably +5-10 Abilities.

It can be scary at first to realize you might have to go learn better abilities, or at least face the harder version of a previous monster to get version II, III, or IV of a power, but it could parallel the growth of crafted items like Bone Staff->Decorated Bone Staff, or the gradual upgrades of Zodiac and Lucis items (or even the Allagan/Shroud upgrades). Different can be good.

[Cariborne]

You use Ruin more then you use Ruin II anyways. Ruin II is only used when you're moving around or if you need to apply the Blind buff. Requiring to eat to upgrade your moves is poor design, having to go out and grind to get the most of your abilities is poor design. They're cool ideas, yes, but they don't fit into an MMO anymore.

[Asheilin]

You use Ruin more then you use Ruin II anyways. Ruin II is only used when you're moving around or if you need to apply the Blind buff. Requiring to eat to upgrade your moves is poor design, having to go out and grind to get the most of your abilities is poor design. They're cool ideas, yes, but they don't fit into an MMO anymore.

The fact that people want them, means that they CAN fit in an MMO. As to abilities. there are 2-3 for EVERY class that are rarely used; Blue Mage is the exact same. Yes its an ultimate grind class, tracking down creatures -> Getting them to use the still -> actually learning the skill -> deciding if you are going to use said skill. In XIV, they wouldn't have nearly the list of abilities but each expansion would increase the number they can go out an learn by at least 10 if not 15/20, but it boils down to which abilities you enjoy, are useful, etc.

Things like Stoneskin were available as 3 different spells in XI; low potency, decent potency, medium party potency. Blunt damage, as example, had 12ish different abilities, all with different uses because of potancy or combo ability.

While XIV wouldn't have the Blue Mage's Skill Chaining capability which was difficult to master but alot of fun in party play, it could build a series of A, B, C type combos with varying abilities. All the abilities could have a Combo: none or "name" starter / "name" follows / "name" finisher.... just to make it clear for people but it only shows up after its been learned ie cant just farm combo abilities because you wont see it on the spell list until after you've acquired the spell.

A could include 7/8 potential abilities, B could include 10-12(some even ending the combo), C could include 4-5 per combo finisher and have multiple finishers; Bam! 30 abilities potentially right there of which you might only use 4 or 5.
Oh, look; combo G, H, I all include emnity abilities.
Oh, all J and K abilities have some type of healing potential/buffs.
+ sets of combos and you've got the Blue Mage function with a XIV flair.

ps. yes I realize the programing for the combo sets listed would be aweful; its still just a suggestion/speculation of how it could work

[Cariborne]

I think if Blue Mage could work in this type of MMO, it'd be great. But FF14 and FF11 are very, very different from eachother. Each Class/Job fills a very specific niche, and as a whole the Blue Mage has been a very versatile character in the other games. Always had support, damage, status effects and healing abilities. The pay off was you had to go out of your way to find the abilities, and I'd love for it to work in this game but a Blue Mage simply being a Blue Mage doesn't make sense to me in this MMO. Say a Beastmaster who could survive on its own for the most part, and then controlled a monster that brought the abilities you'd usually see on a Blue Mage, now that'd make sense for this MMO as you'd always know what the Beastmaster brought and the Monster Ally would just be a bonus. Much like a Hunter from World of Warcraft is, there's no surprises, no "why dont you have this ability."

[shintashi]

Combo Chains might be an alternative mechanism to setting up Higher Potency abilities that resemble each other. Basically, powers in FF14 have potency of around 80 to 9000, with Potency over 4-500 being limit Breaks. Typically, 300-3000 is end game non-limit Break Damage, and my last AOE Skyshard was around 3700, for a 1 bar LB. With "stacks" or "chains" the Potency of attacks might allow for Values closer to the 3000-5000 range in High level characters, but we still don't know the power scale of level 51-60 jobs.

My Mockup based Creature "recipes" on the 1-50+1-4 star scale, with the following concepts in mind:

• A Blue Mage could learn abilities up to ~5 levels higher than themselves, although they would be harder. Every -6th and -1st level they would unlock a new level range, like mining nodes.
• Some monsters would have better powers for their levels than others, making these enemies popular targets. This is especially true in Dungeons and Fates.
• 1 Star Enemy Powers: Similar to Level 55-60 Gear, Wanderer's Palace, Castrum Meridianum
• 2 Star Enemy Powers: Similar to Level 70-80 Gear, Pharos Sirius, Relic Reborn: Chimera/Hydra, Hard Primals, Labyrinth of Ancients
• 3 Star Enemy Powers: Similar to Level 90-100 Gear, Syrcus Tower, Hullbreaker Isle, Extreme Primals, Beginning Coil
• 4 Star Enemy Powers: Similar to Level 110+ Gear, World of Darkness, Urth's Fount Trial, End of Coil

The "why don't you have this ability" already exists in FF14. It appears in the form of Poor Gear/Materia/Quality Choices. A Tank with NQ Dragoon Gear in an end game dungeon is no less devastating to success of a party than a Blue Mage who only has bare minimum abilities.

[Cariborne]

Snip

I'd be impressed if I ever saw a NQ Tank wearing Dragoon gear in a dungeon because of gear restrictions. And there's a difference from having the bear minimum gear and lacking abilities entirely. People already get mad if you lack Blood for Blood, or Swifcast for Cross Classing, and those are just abilities to make checks easier. Imagine now if you didn't have Mighty Guard as a Blue Mage, or if you did, you haven't worked on skilling it up to be relevant. Why should someone be denied because they lack Cross Class skills, on top of the abilities they haven't learned in the wild yet. In an MMO that follows the standard rules like FFXIV, a Blue Mage as we know it in the games wont work. The closest thing I can see is a Beastmaster having the typical Blue Mage abilities.

[shintashi]

Caribone, I can tell you love the beastmaster class. You are correct, someone who walks into an End Game dungeon with No Good abilities as a Blue Mage deserves the Verbal lashing they get. However, it is also true that for many dungeons, a shoe string budget of abilities can pull a person through. My most common Black Mage cycle is probably 7 different abilities per dungeon, maybe 8. Healing Aurum Vale takes about 6-8 buttons.


We just have to make sure the basic quests and core leveling scheme of Blue Mage provides a similar 6-8 "reliable" abilities. I suggested an Eat/Devour Attack similar to a melee ranged version of Arcanist's Energy Drain. It would be a standard (2-3 sec), or nearly standard action (10-20 sec). I suggest having Traits that enhance some of the Blue Mage core abilities, such as when you learn A Blood Drain Enemy ability from a type of Bat (most Bats have it) your "eat" power can be tied to the Blood Drain, so that you basically get the following effects:
MP restore, MP drain, HP Restore, HP Drain, % Check for Learning Enemy Ability

if your main attack is automatically trying to incrementally learn target's powers, its almost impossible to have no abilities.

Because of the Main Story Quest, All Blue Mages would likely have a stock of default eat/learned abilities common to each other, with few variations. The real variations would come from those individual choices outside the main story quest, but I'd wager they could fill 10-20 abilities easily by the time they start the Heavensward story Arc.