A Blue Mage Beastiary

[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.

[Jonnycbad]

There would only be a few spells though considering how crazy their hotbar would be if they had the same number of spells as in XI. You'd have to learn them from leveling or through quests, or otherwise have basically nothing to work with. Perhaps a trade off could be that BLU could equip any class equipment(anything LNC,GLA,MAU,PUG,THM,CON,ARC,ROG, etc) but nothing job specific(nothing that's DRG MNK PLD etc only i.e AF armor). So you could have a full heavy armor BLU with dagger or something. This would allow BLU to be flexible in combat at low levels before they learn many spells, the trade off to being able to equip all this is perhaps reduced stats in the opposing type, so if you equip heavy armor, you get bonuses to HP and VIT but you get reductions in INT and MND, so depending on what you equip different spell types will vary in potency(some spells might be based on STR/DEX, magical spells based on MND/INT, as BLU has always been kind of a combat mage).

[shintashi]

Jonnycbad - One of the solutions I came up with to avoid Hotbar Flooding was to basically double/quadruple the "Additional" Actions from 10/5 to 20, but also lower the total number of core job/class Actions to 8. See, almost all jobs have exactly 28 actions by the time they hit level 50, so If BLU has 8+20, they meet that criteria. An expansion for BLU above level 50 could likewise have more additional actions. For example, if 60th level heavensward classes have 33 actions (5 more than normal) then BLU might have 8 core +25 additional slots to fill.

The remaining group of Actions remain dormant, like unassigned Crafting Actions.

Additionally, your idea on the Gear Slots I mostly agree with. I suggested a wide birth of weapon choices, and even noted Gatherer gear might work. We could even trade out jewelry or offhand slots for additional Traits that add Monster style bonuses to defense or stats.

[Wintersandman]

You could always macro abilities so that one gets used if the other is on cooldown.

[m3eansean]

I hate to be a wet blanket, I really like BLU in other games. But the way this game works, they can't have a viable class that learns skills from enemies. They are super over the top about balancing. BLU if it were here, would had a very pre-set amount of skills (no more than the other classes due to balance) and they would perhaps have names of skills similar to beasts in game, but that's about it.

I wouldn't get my hopes up on seeing the ability to "learn" really cool skills from extreme endgame encounters, just wouldn't balance at all and be a huge detriment to the party when certain BLU's wouldn't have X OP skill.

If the BLU was in this game, I feel it would be much like SMN in the sense that it is NOT what everyone expects it to be. Just another DPS rotation with some flavor on the skills to make them appear like skills of some beasts in the game. I don't see the swapping in and out of multiple skills working at all and it would be a huge diversion from the path this game has taken.

[KikoriL]

I personally picture it as a temporary copy of the different tiers of attacks monsters give. Trigger an effect that "learns" what's hitting you, save the blow's details for use by filling in the variables of X for Potency, Y for Aspect, Z for damage type. Random examples...
Off-GCD melee attack slots for: Something like, as posted earlier, Fleece Butt. 140 potency, no aspect, Blunt damage type. Withheld for 60 seconds or until a new skill is learned.
Standard cast spells for: Something like a Sahagin's Hydroball. 165 potency, Water aspect, Magic damage type, additional effect of (I think) silence. Withheld for 60 seconds or until a new spell is learned.
Ultimate spell slot for: Something like Heavensfall. 350 potency, no aspect, magic damage type, additional effect of knockback from the aoe's center. Withheld for 60 seconds, until a new spell is learned, or the spell is used once.