BLU & RNG

[ClaireCreofas]

Until now, I never really had any complaints about BLU when it was first announced. So far I've been enjoying it for what it is for the most part, but I would never defend it against the vast majority of the common complaints about the class. But my complaint is more on the RNG aspect of getting some of these abilities.

I know the 4 star abilities should be more difficult to get than 3 star and below abilities, but oh my goodness, this is terrible.

For those of you that have been blessed by good graces and have earned your abilities quickly and easily, good for you that's awesome. But for most people, including myself, it's been taking an absolutely obnoxious amount of time to get some of these skills. Spending hours upon hours in ARR trials for pretty much nothing.

If the goal was to promote a sense of accomplishment upon earning these skills, then I feel the current expected method is not the right one. I'm at the point where, if I were to finally get these abilities, I'd just feel glad its over with instead of accomplished. Then I'd dread the next grind for the next skill.

I'm not basing this complaint around anything like lack of time or whatever. Mostly that it just feels like a waste of time. I want to play BLU, but I don't want to be forced to waste hours trying to get a single ability that i may not even use most of the time.

[Kurando]

I don't want to be forced to waste hours trying to get a single ability that i may not even use most of the time.

So just like primal mounts really, you can spend hours farming and RNG can screw you over every single time. It's very much the case when a Trial is quite new and the drop rate is low with no totem option available till a later patch.

The situation resonates with BLU and honestly, for all that we know once this job is older, the learn rate for BLU might even get increased or we may get alternative ways to learn the spells. I understand it's frustrating to spend hours, but the reward isn't something you need right now, it's not required to continue the game (just like mounts), and the content is still new so give it time, no one is forcing you to do anything.

[SWB]

What I hate is they said they wanted this to be the blue experience, yet I don't remember having to farm mobs for their spells with a percentage chance. You learned it if you ate the mob, used Lancet, used the item, or got hit, with a 100% success rate.

How is this true to blue mages identity? How is this supposed to be a solo job when we're required to spend hours farming a single spell at 50 in a party of blue mages?

[Kalise]

Yeah, the RNG is quite horrendous. Ironically, in the content that requires a party to do (Dungeons/Trials).

It is neither accurate to how it worked in previous games, nor does it promote that same feeling that makes people want to go back after finishing the game and learn all of the abilities.

Further to this, several of BLU's key spells are actually ones from these massively RNG Dungeons/Trials, in addition to some of their job quests (For example, I'm still stuck on the level 20 job quest, because I can't learn Mind Blast no matter how many times I seem to run through Tam-Tara)

Like, honestly, they really needed to pick one angle to go with on this. If they wanted to have RNG heavy skills to learn, make them pure fluff ones that no-one needs to be effective so you can at least play the job properly while you farm for them (Also, don't make them required for the job quests and make them solo friendly). If they wanted to put some in duties, don't make them RNG so you have to keep spamming this party content over and over.

Don't mix together all of the worst parts of forcing the content together. Making RNG heavy skills, required for the class to play optimally and to advance job quests, while putting them firmly inside group content so they're inaccesible to solo players or players who might start playing the game later when BLU hype has faded and no-one is putting together parties to go farm the required content (Notably EX trials... I mean, eventually all the dungeons, even the level 50 hard modes, will be soloable. The EX trials... Not so much, especially Titan)

[Kabooa]

A full synced party of Blue Mages should have 100% learn rate.

*mic drop*

[ReiMakoto]

The RNG is slightly stupid, honestly if they let BLU in DF (which they should) it should be near 100% because thats how it was traditionally, and I thought we wanted the True essense of BLU

[Palladiamors]

The RNG is slightly stupid, honestly if they let BLU in DF (which they should) it should be near 100% because thats how it was traditionally, and I thought we wanted the True essense of BLU

Letting Blue mages in Duty Finder would give them an actual end game, whereas right now the blue mage end game is farming for primal abilities. So much of the design of this job right now is kerfuffled.

[Hyala]

What I hate is they said they wanted this to be the blue experience, yet I don't remember having to farm mobs for their spells with a percentage chance. You learned it if you ate the mob, used Lancet, used the item, or got hit, with a 100% success rate.

How is this true to blue mages identity? How is this supposed to be a solo job when we're required to spend hours farming a single spell at 50 in a party of blue mages?

Not true, it was this way for Blue Mage in ffxi. You had to trigger a mob to use its ability and then it was an RNG chance of success

[zuzu-bq]

The bad RNG is only really a big issue for instanced Spells, specifically Trials. Basically encouraging players to get a carry with someone at the level cap instead of actually playing the new job. Since world enemies are usually abundant in a single map and respawn fast enough, while giving the BLU multiplied EXP too making the non spell learning kills to not be a complete waste.

A suggestion that has been growing in Twitter and The Balance's discussions I've seen is to gran a 100% chance for spells behind instanced content if the party was entirely made of Blue Mages (4 or 8 BLU) akin to the minimum ilv 100% chance of multiple Orchestrion drops. Would be a good solution to bypass the randomness, while keeping it a challenge and at the same time having players to actually play BLU.

In the end BLU is a mini-game in itself. It has a collection mini-game and a challenge hall. Which is fine, really. But when the best way by far to obtain part of that collection is by barely playing BLU itself, then that part of the mini-game needs a slight adjustment. Collecting Ultros and Typhon spells inside the Carnival itself was actually pretty cool. Trying to discover enemies with the spells you wanted that were easier to kill multiples of them in succession was rewarding in itself as well (like a Leve enemy that casts the Look or realizing you could do Turn 2 instead of Turn 1 for multiple chances of obtaining High Voltage).

[SWB]

Except ff11 was balanced because every other caster had to pay an arm and a leg to have all of their spells, whilst blue mage didn't have to spend anything but time (albeit a lot of it) where in 14 other jobs don't have to scrape their poclets for their abilities and won't end up in dungeons without their skills like in 11.

Therefore blue shouldn't be treated the same, and they shouldn't hold how the job was last done over every other iteration of it where the job was more about USING enemy skills to be a unique job, not in HOW YOU OBTAINED the spell, seeing as they're mostly different means of obtaining depending on the game.