it would be nice if leveling was less exploitable

[SoulEchelon]

Leveling Blue Mage from 1-30 is like the most fun you can have with the job, grinding spells at 50 is tedious and the carnivale is just solo guildhests.

This right here. I had a blast leveling until around 30-35 collecting spells as I go. Fighting much higher levels with my chocobo in order to learn their spells was fun too. But once you get to about the level range previously mentioned, it becomes a boring slog of spamming 1000 needles and being carried through dungeons/trials over and over to get a rare ability drop.

Basically, blue mage just loses its flair at mid level, and at that point is where people (like me) felt the need to power level. Usually I don't do that sort of thing. I love enjoying content without speeding through it. But I just couldn't. It got so boring and tedious. At the very least, my partner and I focused on lesser known areas and never intentionally stole other players' kills. I also helped other blue mages by switching to a tank class for awhile for mobs like Dalvag and such.

Now at level 50, the grind is even more abhorrent. I feel absolutely useless as a blue mage in these trials, because our damage output is piss poor. We get a few combos, but none of them work because they focus on certain debuffs that bosses are immune to, so the added potency doesn't activate. Can barely tank trial bosses either - their tank busters laugh at mighty guard. Best thing a blue mage can do is spam white wind all day while running around in circles while feeling terrible about being the weakest link in the team.

And to top it all off, the RNG for these abilities is absolutely insane. A full team of blue mages will barely survive most hard trials while taking a good 10+ minutes to defeat it (Why the hell do we not have LB's!?). The droprate for abilities from these bosses is so damn low, it can take hours just to get Ifrit's. Seems the best way to deal with it is to have one person switch classes and carry the team; typically a red mage. But that person doesn't get the drop IF it drops. So the cycle repeats again for this one poor soul that sacrificed their chance to succeed so everyone else does.

Then there's the EX primal abilities....oof. I don't think I'll be getting those.

[Penthea]

I had to move several times today because of players using the xp exploit deleting everything so fast. It didn't matter if I was there first, they took out everything around me, and tagged the respawns.

I don't usually mind competing for mobs, as this comes with mmorpgs and I'm well used to it...but in order to compete with these people I would also have to use the exploit and not experience blu the way it is meant to be. So I ended up teleporting a lot just so I could escape these people and actually get to play the class.

I really enjoy blu, I have two at lvl 50 now. But my fun was often diminished by those who cba to play to properly.

[Jijifli]

I really enjoy blu, I have two at lvl 50 now. But my fun was often diminished by those who cba to play to properly.

Can I ask how getting assistance with blu not playing it properly when at least half your skills are going to need you to get help from higher levels anyways?

[AnimaAnimus]

I was hoping for old school level parties. But its nothing more than solo needles spam. /sadface

[Anzaman]

I'm OK with people having 70's carry them through if they wish to skip it. But is it really necessary to hog whole maps mobs whilst doing so? I had parked myself in nice, quiet spot where I saw nobody else killing mobs for EXP.

Then all of sudden these 2 different Blue Mages with their personal EXP-slaves arrived and killed everything on map, including those couple mobs that I had been killing over and over, lovely breaking my EXP chain every time.

[Genz]

The concept of "leveling" has been a trainwreck for years, in many games : power level, level sync, jump potion, big and small exploits, etc.
Nobody seems to think about the motivation of having "leveling" in a game, from a game design point of view. It's just an automatism : "we make a RPG, so we need leveling".

So yeah, just don't worry too much about. FFXIV is just following the "trend".
(FFXIV actually has an answer to the lack of meaning in "leveling", with PvP : remove level altogether)

[Penthea]

Can I ask how getting assistance with blu not playing it properly when at least half your skills are going to need you to get help from higher levels anyways?

These people aren't getting assistance from someone else. They're using the exploit in which they switch classes to get the xp on blu even though a spell from a lvl 70 class killed the mob. These are solo players.

[Jijifli]

These people aren't getting assistance from someone else. They're using the exploit in which they switch classes to get the xp on blu even though a spell from a lvl 70 class killed the mob. These are solo players.

BLU was meant to be a solo class, right? So they're being solo.

That and maybe if they made actually leveling it more enjoyable and fun, instead of needle spam, that'd be great.

[LaurieB]

Having fun at other people's expense is not fun. I see them running around taking everything in sight, even if someone else has tagged it first and its obvious they are trying to get their spells as well. A rule is a babysitter. If people need babysitting in order to do basic things like "share", an exploit that is being used is actually being abused by bouncing donkey behinds because "we can", waving their I need a babysitter flags all over zones taking everything everywhere and thinking its fun. Fun shouldn't come at the expense of someone else, if it does, you need babysitting still. As an adult, you shouldn't need that and it reflects your character and baby like selfishness.

[Penthea]

BLU was meant to be a solo class, right? So they're being solo.

That and maybe if they made actually leveling it more enjoyable and fun, instead of needle spam, that'd be great.

Yes I'm sure the way you're supposed to lvl blu is by not playing it at all