Alright, I Did It. [Blue mage Review]

[Kabooa]

I'm glad BLU has the majority or the low % learn in instanced content. Trying to learn with overworld mob was hell. Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

Because everyone else uses Duty Finder, and odds are, the Blue Mages have conscripted a level 70 friend to run them.

[Kalise]

Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

Because, for BLU, you have to specifically and personally put together a group that wants to farm the same dungeon/trial over and over and over until you get your 5% learn chance proc.

While, for the rest of the game, you just queue up whenever and get auto-matched, no fuss. You can spam the same dungeon as much as you want and you'll just keep getting new people matched with you, there's no need to find 3 other people who also want to just spam that one dungeon.

This isn't to mention the fact that most of BLU's actually decent skills are ones that are locked behind RNG in Dungeons. Ram's Breath and Glower are the core damaging skills for BLU. But in order to get them, you have to grind through the dungeons with just 1000 Needles. Which is not a particularly fun or engaging experience, spamming 1 skill for kind of mediocre damage (By that level, 38-50, 6s for 1000 damage is not very good. Let alone how frustrating it is to then have to move to avoid mechanics and restart your 6s cast...)

All this, when BLU was kept out of the normal systems and touted as a "Solo Experience".

[zuzu-bq]

I very much agree with most of the problems you presented there. And I come here to bring my own toughts on how BLU was implemented.

The Pros, what I love about it:
• The job is very fun, you can do so much and having most of the spells have the same potency was a great idea to let players have freedom to cast whatever they want in any order and still do similar amounts of damage.
• Populating the overworld was great, I haven't seen this many people running around maps outside of expansion launches since FATEs were relevant for EXP in ARR.
• A different job to play the game with and an incentive to do level 50 things sync'd for fun with new players.
• Going from solo drops of ATMAs and other specific things like Light on Eureka and many of the farming low chance gets to a party drop is amazing. It felt awful to abandon your friends or be abandoned on those other solo drop chances and now it all feels like a party acomplishment you can cherish your victory together and walk to the next spell of your checklist as a team.
• The future possibilities of new spells later on.

Conflicting toughts, they're mostly positive and my rants on what could be even better:
• A different concept of leveling worked really well until BLU hit the same wall the ARR which is around the 40ish until 50. The structure of BLU leveling is very well tought early on, many skills to gather at early levels of enemies so you can basically gain EXP while doing so and have fun experimenting the new ability while gaining EXP. But around the EXP wall of ARR level curve you basically get to hunt the Voices from Cutter's Cry at 38 and from there you've nothing new to go learn if you've been hunting spells (as you should) until 47's Aurum Vale. I was trying to avoid the famous Power Level strat that has been in the game since forever until I hit that wall honestly. While I had a great time leveling without it with friends, feeling like my only resort to reach AV's level was power leveling felt a bit like the purpose of BLU leveling was defeated for a brief while.
• Which leads me into my second point. The job was presented as a solo experience, which as the OP said is far from truth. Gathering with friends or even random players throught PF to level and catch new spells are the best ways to progress as a BLU mage. This isn't a game design issue, it is more of a presentation issue. They marketed the job wrongly in that, which can led intop pre-launch disappointment for those who wanted a multiplayer experience and a launch disappointment for those who expected more of a solo experience. At the end, the progression is a very fun multiplayer experience while the carnival is a very satisfying solo experience. The implementation on that was good, the presentation pre-launch bad.
• While I understand why BLU can't do Palace of the Dead (mostly on EXP gain and how they learn spells I'd assume). I'm very sad to see BLU can't do PvP either, which I'd assume to be because of EXP only. Would be fun to see what spells they'd pick for BLU PvP kit while shaking the game a bit with an entire new job. But I think to do so they'd have to chose to remove EXP from it. But about this all what I mean is that BLU seems a very fun job top play in these two sets of content which may sadly never happen for reasons I understand very well.
• Two suicide spells too early on can make players frustrated when they learn you can't learn spells when you die. Specially one of them, being Final Sting, having you to fight a Hornet that will most likely kill you with the spell you want to see and can't interrupt. While I haven't had issues with this myself, I've seen it lead to frustration for others.
• No Limit Break. Seriously, why? I can't even find a reason behind this one. Not a problem really, just weird.

The Cons, what I hate about it, not many thiings but enough to have me pissed about it:
• Your bread and butter spell until you reach very close to max level is the one and only 1000 Needles, everything else is too weak or straight useless. While it was fun to toy around with it, having it to be the solution to everything got a bit stale and it already became a joke around twitter.
• FATEs don't give you extra EXP like world mobs do. Quite weird, specifically having FATE enemies not having the BLU multiplier on them, specially when some few spells can be learnt by FATE variations of some monsters.
• Having a small chance to learn a spell on some dungeon final bosses seems good on paper. But in practice, dungeons have long runs and the best way to do those and primal spells is to have someone undersize carry it for you. Seems like this defeats the purpose of going BLU and toying with the job to learn new spells. If the drop rate was higher people would feel more comfortable to do full BLU parties for those.
• While BLU's tanking abilities can ruin any regular run of content if a player is clueless or malicious enough, the job itself doesn't break ARR content (RDM's ridiculous potencies break ARR content more than BLU can do it really) so I can't see why it is gutted from random matching on the Duty Finder, specially it all being 4-year old dungeons, raids and trials.

In the end, the many good things of BLU outweight the bads for me. I had tons of fun and I can't wait for the next wave of new spells to learn. And in special, as a player that started during the 2.0 patch, going back to ARR zones and fights is a bliss. There is so much cool stuff on them that just gets ignored by many of us nowadays, myself included.

[Sylvain]

I'm glad BLU has the majority or the low % learn in instanced content. Trying to learn with overworld mob was hell. Since the majority of the game is instanced content, what's the problem with finding a group if the entire game is basicaly that?

The problem is that some spell just have ridiculously low %chance to be learned and most content can't be solo'd. Which IS a big problem for a job that is meant to be solo.
I should be able to solo (or easily duo at least) all the lv 50 dungeons with a BLU friend quick enough to make the farming fun.

This is currently not the case, we are simply too weak to do so and having 1 70 carry 3 BLU is the most effective way to learn spells. (which is dull for everyone)

Primordial also don't help, 5% chance is very very low.
Like, "on average" it will take 20 runs, that's a lot, and I feel sorry for those who'll run 50+ primordial

The main post review is, in my opinion, very good and actually quite neutral.
There was no "I wanted it to be X ways", it was a critic on what was advertised, a solo job with combo skills

It is a solo job (masked carnival) but the mean to acquire too many spells (half the book, required to complete the solo content) isn't solo. Grouping should be an option, and being carried by a lv 70 shouldn't be the best way to complete the book (nor to level)
There are spell combo, but most are weaker than spamming a stronger version. This could easily be adressed by simply buffing potency, but at the current moment, it's combo are weak thus uninteresting. (Boosting the combo potency could help BLU solo content)

Having a few spell locked behind group is fine, like the primordial spells. Heck, they could even promote BLU grouping by increasing the chance of acquiring a spell the more BLU there is in a party.
Like a stackable 5% per BLU in a party. See, this would be fine, because it wouldn't be half the book, and doing with other BLU would be better than doing it with 70's

The marking is also honest imo. 6/10
It could be better, definitely, but it's not also a total failure, I'm still having fun, I believe most people had some fun until they started seeing the glaring issue with what was posted.

It is important to give good (and neutral) feedback so the devs can adjust.

If everyone complain "you say it's solo but I have to party/be carried for half the book, that's not solo!" then they can adjust for the next tier (or simply update and boost BLU's spell potency)
If everyone complain that there are too many similar spells and combo aren't strong enough, they know it's something that needs to be adressed.

[Ceallach]

I didn't read the entire thread, but I would like to point out Aqua Breath into High Voltage is 260 potency overall and includes 30 seconds of paralysis. If you need the paralysis more than the damage, this is your combo over the Voices because the Dragon's Voice releases your victims from the deep freeze. In comparison, the Dragon's Voice only inflicts 9 seconds of paralysis, and then only 10% of the time.

[Astarotha]

ok, my 3 major issues with this being a limited job are thus

1. the utter and absolute lack of glam weps - id argue that a limited job NEEDS glam endgame far more than a standard job because glam farming is a great way to give players who have all the spells and are 50 something fun to grind toward to make up for what youre missing out on (like 75% of the game)

2. not enough variety for being a "solo" job - this could be balanced into a full job as is with a few tweaks, and it would be an awesome full job to have then because then their weak pot on most spells would be made up for by the massive amount of CC and spell combos they bring to the table (CONTRACTUAL BOSS IMMUNITY IS STILL A THING SO WHY IS LVL5 DEATH OR LVL5 PETRIFY A CONCERN WHEN ONLY LEVELx5 TRASH IS AFFECTED BY IT!!!) and the fact that many of their spells require movement to chain properly or their most powerful spells KILLS THEM is a pretty big tradeoff vs is a minute worth of reduced damage worth this one spell maybe wiping out this group of trash mobs, and 1000 needles is great... but the drawbacks of it being an unbuffable 6 second small radius blast means it gets outclassed very quickly by other dps who attack faster, can attack multiple mobs without sharing damage, and cumulatively can do way more than 1k in a sustained 6s barrage

3. dont call it solo and not party oriented if youre going to force people to party up for stuff. i love the aesthetic, i love the learning of abilities, i love the slot setup they have that allows blues to pick and choose their flavor of spells but keeps the bloat down at the same time, i think they have a great full job on their hands here but as a limited job its so limited it feels half finished. give it weapons that have int or buff water cannon to like 150/160, give it glam weapons for true endgame, decide on what EXACTLY limited jobs are ACTUALLY there for and then make sure you make this minigame the best damn minigame out there or youre going to turn blue into diadem blue.0, a flash in the pan that quickly dies

or you know, tweak it into a full job and let us main it, thats always an option and i bet it could be done with the way the class is currently set up too, i believe in yall

[Reneo]

Because everyone else uses Duty Finder, and odds are, the Blue Mages have conscripted a level 70 friend to run them.

This is true, at least from my experience. I had no interest in BLU and decided to dabble in it for a little bit before switching to a level 70 class to help my significant other get their abilities on the extreme primals and dungeons. We didn't need to group up with other people as I was able to keep him alive via Nocturnal Astrologian. It was also much faster in that regard too.

[Kreyd]

What I like about BLU is the whole presentation. It's emotes, animations, jobquests and overall look fit very well into the game.
Also the skill hunting is actually fun. Regardless if you look up on a guide where to find abilites, just follow other players or try it out yourself.

But what I fail to understand is, why this has to be a limited job at all?

The spells are either really weak, broken, situational, a variation of each other, or just there to compensate for this.

If BLU had decent potenties and combos, a weapon with stats, a job gauge, a LB, and skills like Bristle, White Wind and
Mighty Guard changed to ogcd's and party utility, it would be a totally viable magic dps job.


Also there is just no point in the "If the BLU didn't learn his skills he holds a party back!" argument. Sorry, but this is just plain stupid.
We all have seen Gladiators and Thaumaturgs in dungeons beyond level 30.
I've seen DRG's in lv 70 raids not using their jumps or Battle Litany.
What about new players in general? They may don't know there classes or the mechanics, cause wipes and hold me back.
Is it okay to lock them out too?
What if I go into a 24 man raid with BLM and only use BlizzardI the howl time, just because I feel like it?

That's not the games fault or responsibility. It's the players. It's our decision how good or bad we play.

I sometimes feel a bit, like Square is so afraid that we, or someone else, somehow could manage to ruin our gaming expirience, that they jump in and do it themself.

[Rosenoire]

Also there is just no point in the "If the BLU didn't learn his skills he holds a party back!" argument. Sorry, but this is just plain stupid.
We all have seen Gladiators and Thaumaturgs in dungeons beyond level 30.
I've seen DRG's in lv 70 raids not using their jumps or Battle Litany.
What about new players in general? They may don't know there classes or the mechanics, cause wipes and hold me back.
Is it okay to lock them out too?
What if I go into a 24 man raid with BLM and only use BlizzardI the howl time, just because I feel like it?

That's not the games fault or responsibility. It's the players. It's our decision how good or bad we play.

I sometimes feel a bit, like Square is so afraid that we, or someone else, somehow could manage to ruin our gaming expirience, that they jump in and do it themself.

For me, the issue is that if I go into Royal Menagerie as a DRK and didn't bother to do my level 70 job quest to get TBN, that's my fault.

If I try to queue as a BLU without a skill that I spent an hour spamming a dungeon for and getting screwed by RNG, that's...not necessarily my fault.

As long as there is an RNG element to learning the class abilities, you'll run into the issue where people are playing the game as designed (i.e., not trying to be cute and not equipping job stones or playing "ice mages") but still don't have the abilities that the game and other players expect you to have. So you take away the RNG and have Blue Mages learn all of their class skills from a trainer. So...what makes them different from any other mage class in the game?

Yes, RDM was changed. I main RDM, and I mostly like it, but I kind of miss the support aspect to the class. That's not possible, because FFXIV sticks to the holy trinity, so there's no real primarily support class. It seems like many of the people who wanted BLU want both the iconic aspects of the job--learning magic from monsters--but also want it to fit exactly into the existing model for leveling jobs and learning skills so that it's not excluded from current content. I'm not sure it's possible to make both work.

[Kalise]

It seems like many of the people who wanted BLU want both the iconic aspects of the job--learning magic from monsters--but also want it to fit exactly into the existing model for leveling jobs and learning skills so that it's not excluded from current content. I'm not sure it's possible to make both work.

To be honest, it's not all that impossible to make BLU work while still keeping its unique learning system intact.

I mean, the main issue with the current set up, is that a vast majority of BLU's actually good skills are tied behind low learn chances on Dungeons/Trials that aren't super simple to farm (I.e. Such as getting to level 70 and then just soloing dungeons like Pharos Sirius to get skills that are nice boosts). Meaning that the job feels bad and incomplete until you manage to luck out in this content that is well... Still party content so you still kind of want to be functional when you're farming it anyway...

So, the easiest solution, would be to have similar skills attainable through much less annoying means. Farming overworld mobs for learning spells is not so arduous, since, not only is it much more available, it can easily be done solo and isn't predicated on doing group content where you then have to deal with people expecting you to have skills X, Y or Z. Or at worst, being given the basic skills (Such as your damn filler skill, which currently is only obtained from dungeons or level 50 mobs) directly through the totems.

In addition, you can also adjust the job quests so instead of asking you to get useless skills like Blood Drain and Mind Blast (From a dungeon no less...) it asked you to get you know, the skills you'd be relying on such as 1000 Needles, Bad Breath or whatever new not garbage skills they implement that can be learned from the overworld.

See, the learning system for BLU isn't inherently as obtuse as it currently exists, no, it has been INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED that way. It was a conscious decision to put all the good spells locked away behind low % learn chance Dungeon/EX Trial kills, to make 90% of the total skills to be worthless trash, to have the core skills not be the ones you get from all the totems (You get 2 of them, but not all of them).

I don't know why they decided to do this, I can only assume they wanted to be like "SEE we TOLD you you wouldn't like how we'd HAVE to implement BLU!" but even then, that's still an asinine decision, when they could have just implemented it properly and gained a lot of popularity for the job where heck, much of their work is already done (Animations and names for skills already exist. Mechanics of skills already exist. They just have to add Blue Magic FX to them, and do some number adjusting and voila, they have a brand new Blue Magic spell)