Thread: Blue mage at patch 4.5

Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Yeah im alright with how they're going to go about Blue Mage, think people just are way.... overacting to things. We're still getting 2 actual new full jobs for the expac,

3 jobs would have been better, but that's OK. Let's settle for less when we could have had more!

blue mage is just an extra thing devs did because so many people kept asking for it, and from the looks of things its going to be pretty damn close to how an FF Blue Mage should work.

The ONLY identity for blue mage that's been consistent is that it learns abilities from monsters, then uses them on their own. They have never had a full carnival sidestory, and they've never been excluded from participating in the game itself. You can bring Quistis or Quina or Kimarhi with you the whole game.

If they were to make Blue Mage a full on job it would definitely have to lose a lot of its essence as a blue mage to stay balanced with the other jobs and work with the newest content.

It would likely take less work to do that than to do the Carnivale and balancing that. The difference is BLU in relevant content is a better long-term option than being relegated to content that'll last, at most, about 6 months (and only because people will be bored as hell with nothing new coming after 4.5.)

Originally Posted by Hanayumi

There is a lot.... of work that go into making a full on job, but the main idea is "Balance."

The Carnivale will be balanced as well -- unless you're implying it won't be, in which case it sounds like preeeeeetty dumb content if you can just spam Goblin Punch all the way through. Heck having 49 friggin' skills (seriously why so many? That's ridiculous and impossible to balance around even in solo play) wasn't necessary, make it like 30-ish. You know with 49 they're going to be reeeeeally stretching on what we can get that's cool or that's going to overlap extremely hard.

Blue Mage would pretty much have to settle down to a role, caster dps, for obvious reasons like stats, gear, required skills for roles. Would also need to progress well with other jobs as it levels, wouldnt be able to obtain all possible skills right from the start, just the usual couple skills every few levels,

That's how they're going to work anyway. You're not going to have all 49 at level 1. You literally can't enter the Shiva fight until 50 anyway, so what's so bad about more skills becoming available to learn from monsters as you level?

monsters would pretty much have to be only the open world as you cant really lock out skills in like dungeons or primal fight unless it solo instance... I mean slowly and slowly you start losing out on a real blue mage and instead start getting a regular caster with a blue mage gimmick...

It's quite likely that yes, you wouldn't be able to use the current expansion's boss's abilities. Even if BLU was out now, they most likely couldn't use Ukehi from Susano or Byakko's roar or Omega's Delta Attack... but you know what? Under the current system they can't do these anyway because they literally can't go into that content. Maybe when Shadowbringers comes out and the level cap is raised, BLU could go back and learn those new skills (plus some others, plus some from Shadowbringer's open world) as their 71-80 skills. Then yeah, at 80 no more new skills until the expansion launches unless SE decides to actually break the mold and add some mid-expansion. Heck that wouldn't even be the first time a job has received a new ability in a patch.

Edit - And yeah, I know I said above more is better, but 3 jobs is better for the longevity of the game than 49 skills (and only by level 50!) and is going to be easier to balance. Unless the point of BLU is to be unbalanced, which is really, really dumb.

Originally Posted by Powercow

3 jobs would have been better, but that's OK. Let's settle for less when we could have had more!

The BLU they introduced doesn't need anyway near the same amount of balance regular jobs do. It uses already existing animations/skills. Being limited to Lv.50 drastically reduce the concerns about how this job would play in up-to-date content. Therefore, the amount of work needed to make BLU as it is now is very likely much less than trying to shoehorn it into the usual mould. This means that there's absolutly no evidence to say that we could've had BLU as a third "regular job" if it wasn't made the way it is today. Besides, implying that getting only 2 jobs instead of 3 is "getting less" is completly putting aside all the content provided for BLU. We are not getting less content. We are getting different content.

Originally Posted by Powercow

The ONLY identity for blue mage that's been consistent is that it learns abilities from monsters, then uses them on their own. They have never had a full carnival sidestory, and they've never been excluded from participating in the game itself. You can bring Quistis or Quina or Kimarhi with you the whole game.

That is an incomplete description of what a Blue Mage is about, and doesn't take into account all of the very weird and situational skills they could use.
Aqua Breath is useful on enemies weak to water. That's why you learned that skill, and why you'd choose to use it. Making it a skill that "deals magic damage" -like every other magic spell in this game ultimatly is (Aka. "Fire" doesn't deal "Fire" damage)- would completly defeat the point of the BLU having an arsenal of situational skills that you have to use correctly.

Originally Posted by Powercow

It would likely take less work to do that than to do the Carnivale and balancing that. The difference is BLU in relevant content is a better long-term option than being relegated to content that'll last, at most, about 6 months (and only because people will be bored as hell with nothing new coming after 4.5.)

See the first paragraph regarding "balance".
As for the content limited in time, FFXIV is absolutly full of it. There's a metric ton of content that people aren't doing today, but that was fun to do when it came out. Besides, they said that they would increase BLU level cap with time, meaning that new content would be regularly added for it. Saying "it'll only last 6 month" out of the blue without any argument/evidence to prove that claim holds no ground.

I posted this in another thread but I feel like it summed up my feelings perfectly:
Imagine for a moment that bard did not exist. Then in 4.5 bard was released as a limited job, it can only use the perform action and by learning different songs in perform you apply various buffs and damage, because for some arbitrary reason bard is special and must stay true to its source material, but this is hard to balance because people might be bad at music, so its locked out the df and locked at level 50. If bard was your favourite class this would be a kick in the teeth, why couldnt bard say, use a bow, or have songs set to abilities to make it fit in with the other classes, why does bard need to be this red headed step child. This what BLU fans are currently feeling.