Full Blu Concepts

[jon041065]

I would like to see blu made into a full job or at least a second job crystal that separate the XIV version from the Carnival/FFV version. People keep saying we need to provide more concise feedback and ideas to the dev team instead of "crying" so let's have a place to collect concepts for how blu could work in the full game while being different than existing jobs. The concepts can be ranged caster or something else because this will be assuming that there will be different job crystals for the limited and full versions of the job.

DO NOT POST HERE UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THAT THE DEVS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MAKE LARGE CHANGES ANYTIME SOON. We would need to be patient!


Going to paste something from an earlier post I saw.

"They can use the elemental weakness as a mechanic, you use a fire element spell to grow up a debuff on the monster and consume it with a wind spell for additonal damage per exemple, force to rotate between different duality whith cooldown on the "stack consumer"..

Man, I love that idea. Made me think of what I hoped samurai would use a system sorta like skillchains on XI. That instead of combos, there would be the same initial starter, then like three mid combo moves, and then two finishers. The middle combo moves would be like the royal road effects and either boost, spread, or lengthen the effect of the skillchain. The finishers then would be the typical large finish or smaller finish with a DoT. The "lengthen" effect for the large finisher could be some debuff that you could consume like your fire -> wind idea. So you have to make choices in combat to do things like "I should combo a spread DoT" or "I need to consume my stacks on the target".

This could be turned into a version of melee blu.

Another way would be that they could do something similar from another game called Legend of Legaia 2. My idea would be that blu would have fire, wind, earth, and thunder aligned blue spells make up their core rotation. Yes, same as rdm but these could be "physical blue spells". They could function something closer to mudras in that you perform combos with them. Could work like a much expanded mudra system or have the job gauge track like the last 3 elements you have used. There could be 10+ combinations based on which elements and in which order they were used. Fire/earth/fire and earth/fire/earth could give you different results. Could go crazy and have 36 combinations if you made it that each element had its own cooldown so you wouldn't repeat the same element in a row. Have ocgds be things like bad breath and mighty guard and white wind as your group utility cooldowns.

As for how to make something like bad breath work I have an idea of my own then seen another that I really liked. Mine would be that bad breath applies the fire, water, poison, earth, miasma, and bleed DoTs that are already in the game. That would still give a pretty good feeling to the "bad breath applied a lot of status ailments" fantasy in my eyes. Someone else had the idea of bad breath being a DoT and applies the damage taken increase from trick attack. That would not only start to give some wiggle room in the meta and I think gives enough of the feeling of "using bad breath made my enemy weaker".


I also really liked this idea from reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...concept_pitch/

[Saefinn]

I applaud the constructive approach. I think there are many ways an alternative version of Blue Mage could be adapted, as I have theory crafted too since Yoshi P expressed the challenges of making a Blue Mage people would be happy with back in 2014. But I think there are some good ideas there. Plus I do kinda miss elemental weaknesses myself and it is a shame that Eureka ended up an unenjoyable experience.

I suppose it is a good way to appease both camps and not sacrifice anything from the existing Blue Mage, to have a non-limited version of Blue Mage could be made as suggested. They could do it without actually changing a lot. They introduce a set of Blue Mage skills required for it to meet the requirements for on content stuff and they can balance those skills. I mean in fairness, it would not be the first time that SE has restricted Blue Mage to have a specific set of skills for content for anybody who was there for Abyssea in FFXI, you had to have the trigger spells equipped to hit the triggers needed for Abyssea content and we rolled with it. Though I was a Scholar main then and was often asked "do you have a WHM instead?" or "Do you have a BLM instead?", so in fairness that system got its complaints, but not many from Blue Mages.

I think it could potentially also open doors for limited versions of other jobs, such as Summoner, keep those happy who complained that FFXIV Summoner is not a real Summoner. As the meme goes: "why not both?"

[Fadnog]

I think it would have been interesting if instead of being able to set 24 spells reduce it to 10 and then give BLU 14 core abilities that aren't necessarily blue magic.

The Core Abilities

• A 1- 2 - 3 combo using the cane for weaponskills.
• oGCDs that enhance your BLU spells ex. Efflux could increase potency of next BLU spell or Diffusion make the next self buff party-wide.
• Job quested BLU spells that could be the more essential spells. ex. a quick low potency ranged attack like Enpi or Throwing Daggers or a Quick Nock like skill.

Settable Blue Magics

• Physical blue magics that function as weaponskills that combo or branches off of the 1 - 2 - 3 combo.
• Magical spells that can be either powerful combo finishers (ex. Eruption) or more situational spells(ex. Bad Breath)
• Support magic which would be things like Mighty Guard or White Wind to things that do vuln up or physical damage down to the enemy.

Job Mechanic

The job mechanic could be something like as you execute combos and offensive spells you build up a gauge that, like WAR's Beast Gauge, allows you to use incredibly powerful spells or use abilities that grant you buffs at the cost of some or all of the gauge.

Other Notes

• The settable blue magic should be more for situational spells like things that augment the BLU's AoE DPS, single target DPS, utility, or even skills that allow the BLU to be more mobile. These can be spells that require having to go out to hunt and actively learn them from mobs.
• The core skills should be things more along the lines of a base line of what BLU should be able to do be default. These are spells that you can get from leveling up and job quests as these are the minimum requirement to be able to function in a party.

In this scenario I would see it being a mage that would be fighting at close range that uses both weaponskills for sustained DPS and spells for versatility or spike DPS. This is just my ideal imagining of how BLU would play and is only my opinion as, I'm sure, people will be pointing out the flaws in this design.

[AtraVeritas]

Interesting concept!

I've been putting together a list of potential blue magic, if anyone is interested to see it.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...skills-enemies

[SoleilAlphi]

there's like 10 threads about BLU right now... did you really have to clutter the forums with yet another thread about it instead of contributing to one of the many already existing threads?

[azura84]

[jon041065]

there's like 10 threads about BLU right now... did you really have to clutter the forums with yet another thread about it instead of contributing to one of the many already existing threads?

It's not really a complaint thread so why are you complaining? People kept telling us to quit "crying" and to give constructive feedback if we have a problem with how blu has been announced. I didn't see a place for the ideas people have for blu to work within 14.

[jon041065]

Duzzeno on reddit asked me to post the link to his idea here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nally_thought/

[Samasa]

While I don't have anything extensively thought out I do have some ideas particularly with respect to what was highlighted as constraints in the live letter. Frankly speaking, I found it bizarre that with RDM they were so proud that they were able to deliver the class fantasy within the rigid trinity system of XIV but it was not possible with BLU.

I get that the Lv. 5 Death banter was played up for humorous effect but I think getting hung up on it is a mistake. Even in FFV, where the spell debuted, there were only a few bosses that were even affected by it (Adamantoise and the last phase of Archeoaevis come to mind). It certainly could've been a finisher oGCD like Misery's End or Heartbreak that instantly killed an enemy under 5% HP or something and delivered a strong potency nuke instead if the target was immune to death and slap on a long cooldown. Then name it Lv. ? Death a la Quistis from FFVIII. That way not only do you get an iconic blue magic spell, it also functions within reason.

As for the not learning the right skills issue, they could tie in the leveling process with skill acquisition if they really wanted to keep learning skills as overworld content. Chocobo partners already can't level up properly past 10 without the help of thavnairian onions so why isn't it possible to simply not allow level progression until you've gone out in the field to learn your skills? To go further on this, there could be a select group of skills balanced for endgame combat content the level gates apply to and a bunch of other unbalanced stuff restricted to solo play.

I just think there's such a wealth of BLU spells and interpretations of BLU throughout the series' history. Surely there's enough to create a new, balanced job not restricted from a huge portion of combat content.

[Flana]

I see nothing good coming from posting this but whatever. I spent like 2 hours letting trash auto me for attack names I might as well post it somewhere. As I've said elsewhere, BLU is not a job I really cared about, this was just a thought experiment to keep me sane while grinding epic seven.

This is a very quick mockup I did for Blue Mage to fit it into the role of tank and allow it to still learn monster skills in a way to satisfy the "blu fantasy." The only skills you get are two at level 1, and you acquire no skills from leveling up. Every 5 levels a job quest will pit you against a specific enemy or situation to provide you with a basic skeleton of a tank job, up until level 50. After that you're on your own.

At no point do you need to do these quests to learn from mobs in the wild. You can do that at level one, right from the get go. The job quests are only to provide a very basic skeleton so that any BLU at or above level 50 can preform the role of tank with no issues. You could lock matchmaking and roulettes from BLU until they finish the level 50 job quest, but after that it should be understood they have the tools to do their job.

If you really want to get pedantic you get no skills at the start, and in the cutscene to become BLU the crystal casts Memory/Learn/Whatever on you and your trainer immediately punches you in the face before it fades off. Now you know the skills at level one.

I'm only going to post the 1-30 skill mock up and my thoughts on it to save space. You can see the entire thing on this google doc.

Level 1:

Goblin Punch: Punches an enemy.
Monster Memory: If you are hit by an ability over the next X seconds, that ability will be memorized for the duration of combat. If you are hit by the same ability again, damage will be reduced by Y%. After combat, if applicable, the ability will be learned and available to use. Reactivating Monster Memory will clear the memorized ability.

Level 5:

Hammerbeak: Combo action with Goblin Punch. Combo effect: Increased Enmity.

Level 10:

Body Slam: AoE centered around the caster. Low damage, high enmity modifier.

Level 15:

Beetle Rush: Combo action with Hammerbeak. Combo effect: Increased Enmity.

Level 20:

Screwdriver: Combo action with Goblin Punch. Combo effect: Increased potency and damage changed to Water aspected.

Level 25:

Bad Breath: Attacks all enemies in a cone in front of the caster. Applies Blind, Paralysis, Silence, Slow, Heavy, Damage Down, and Poison. Bosses may resist all debuffs except Poison.

Level 30:

Iron Justice: Combo action with Screwdriver. Combo effect: Increased damage. Additional Combo Effect: Attack changes from single target to a cleave.
King’s Will: Increases all enmity gained by X% for Y seconds. Z Seconds cooldown. OGCD.


My Reasoning:

Like I said before, the idea was to provide a very basic framework for other skills to build off of them from over world mobs. If you didn't take the time to go pokemon hunting, you can still perform the absolute minimum expected of you in a party and function as a tank. This is no different from getting a DRK now that only runs through spamming Unleash and Power Slash combos.

Some of the addition skills I had were things like Tortoise Stomp being a combo from Body Slam, letting you deal more damage if you went out and got them. Or Realm Shaker being an aoe that either Heavies or Knockbacks like the diremites do so that you can use it in the Carnival to deal with mobs that chase you or something.

There was also things like Deadly Thrust being a straight upgrade to Iron Justice, since it also poisons enemies when hit. But, again, if you don't have it, you still aren't useless as long as you did the job quest and learned the skill from the monster in there.

There are still dozens and dozens of moves you could learn, and they could be anything. Learn 6 different elemental breath AoEs. You might only need one for raid but they could all be useful in niche situations in the Carnivale. Learn Soar from Zurvan and meme trash to death. Do whatever. Make the carnivale an unbalanced freakshow, we could all have fun being Overpowered in that. Or underpowered if you want a challenge. It's on you.

Give things a cast bar or make them weaponskills. Whatever floats your boat.

I also tried to make a tank without needing a tank stance, and you could use basic abilities or coordinate with your second tank in raids to manage aggro, but on reflection that would make them extraordinarily squishy in dungeons where trash pulls result in constant damage. Maybe someone else can solve that problem. Maybe it isn't a problem. I don't know, haven't played it. Only concepted it. Do as you will with it.