Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Kartel112]

What is the hot fix going to do?

[Kaonis]

Beat the Masked Carnival last night and all I can say is, BLU is massively disappointing. I was not looking forward to it from the start, I saw the train wreck coming. But it still didn't help alleviate the disappointment.

People have already commented on the spells and how ass backwards it is that a job intended more for solo play can't solo a good half their kit. And how its just easier and less frustrating to get a 70 to carry you through the content rather then getting a party of BLU's to attempt it. I tried titan HM once last night in an 8 BLU party; I've never been so happy to get wife agro in my life. Attempting it with 8 BLUs was a freaking nightmare. But beyond the learning, I can't stress how bad the spells BLU does have are. If you don't try and push/get carried for higher level spells as you start up, then you're stuck with things like water cannon being your best damage spell for a solid 25-ish levels. The other early to learn spells are pretty worthless.
-Blood drain would be nice if it restored health, but it only gives you MP which I rarely have MP issues outside very long fights (because BLU damage isn't good).
-Bomb toss is kind of useful at least.
-Faze is just a bomb toss without the damage.
-Ice spikes last a laughably short 15 seconds for just 25 potency a hit.

I could go on, but I think the point is made. If you leveled BLU as intended and slowly acquired the spells available based on level of the mobs you'd have a terribly bad kit and rely on water cannon for all damage outside AoE for a solid 26-ish levels. Beyond the leveling experience BLU's spells are bad. So many spells are near clones of each other, just slightly different AoE shape/size with a possible secondary effect or combo-ish action. A lot of them seem to exist to be elemental copies of each other. Speaking of elements, they are useless outside a few fights in the masked carnival. They seemed to want to have BLU make use of elemental affinities, but it only applies to the mask carnival. And even then only a handful of fights utilize it. It's like they intended BLU to be a sort of elemental mage but only put in half the effort for it to be useful. Even then BLU is lacking a lot of elements, barring the primal ones, but those are an issue in and of themselves. In fact ignoring the primal spells means BLU has no wind elemental damage spells. It feels like they wanted an elemental system but didn't put in the effort to give the right sets of spells and content for it.

Over all the spells, the heart of the job, are very lack luster. Even at endgame and with all but 7 of them obtained I find myself only using a handful in content outside the masked carnival.

Speaking of the masked carnival, there's a number of things you could complain about, but my main gripe is the final fight. For all the theatrics and melodrama that seems to be behind BLU and the carnival, I was really disappointed that the final fight with Azulmagia was just boring. Same music as before, no Azulmagia shouting about defeating you, no special flair. It was just a long boring fight of dodge AoE's and slowly whittle down his health. And also the charybdis. That was the hardest part of the fight because the wind animation kept obscuring my screen making it hard to see the plethora of AoEs that will kill you.

In the end BLU feels like a lot of wasted potential, and conflicting or half-thought out design ideas. Limited jobs, as predicted, are a bad idea. Just make it usable in the other content like normal jobs.

[BillyKaplan]

In a random fit of more wasted potential, I just realized you have no spells from Good King Moggle Mog XII, may his splendid Pom remain ever bounciful, Kupo.

[Gemina]

First of all, it is a good thing that SE is trying something new; however, they did not make blue mage right.

As a solo job, 24 out of 49 spells are locked behind dungeons/trials. There is no way or extremely hard to solo them. Even if you can solo it with extremely long time, the spell is also locked behind rng drop. As a solo job, you cannot have fun by just playing solo is a mess.

Either make blue mage super broken to be able to solo everything, or make blue mage into a proper job.

Blue mage is not broken and is also restricted out of duty finder is terrible. You have to rely on other people with lv70 to carry you through defeats the purpose of the concept of solo job. Blue mage has so much potential, but current design is just a waste of time.

Change your mind?

How about the fact that you're still playing a preliminary version of BLU, leveled it to 50 in day, they're going to receive plenty of updates, 5.0 is on the horizon, and "waste of potential" is just another way of saying, "it sucks that I can't take this job into normal duties".

If SE made a mistake, it was with relying on RNG once again to keep players busy with this content, and labeling it is a "solo" job when it requires grouping in order to obtain some of the skills. Facilitating the acquisition of skills through grouping is fine, but making it a requirement directly contrasts what they said the job would be pre-launch, and pretty messed up if you ask me.

Exploiting anything the devs oversaw is to not play the job as intended. I would take that into mind before reducing BLU potential to ashes.

[Liam_Harper]

I wouldn't mind at all if it was a dungeon/instance class at endgame, but the "get a lv70 to carry you through" gameplay isn't the slightest bit fun. Give Blu some decent skills, a rez and a toolkit instead of a harsly under-tuned tank stance, one heal and tons of the same aoe, and encourage us to group up with other blu's and see what crazy stuff we can pull off.

They could make it so all-Blu groups can absorb crystallized aether from bosses, that could be used as a currency to buy rare totems and a few Blu exclusive minions, a mount and such. Update it every so often and there we go. Better content than roll the dice 70 times afk against Shiva ex.

[Dyvid]

Maybe it would be better if they made into a legit DPS caster or hybrid that can switch roles depending on what skills they have equipped. The Masked carnival can be changed to a spelling event.

[ReiMakoto]

Maybe it would be better if they made into a legit DPS caster or hybrid that can switch roles depending on what skills they have equipped. The Masked carnival can be changed to a spelling event.

A support dps caster would make most sense with their current kit, as a tank BLU is about as useful as titan egi, and barely classes as a healer with wind and transfusion, its kit already makes sense as a support dps, (Low personal deeps, high utility and raid dps), so if we're so close why not just push that little put further, slap on some skill requirements and let it in the DF

[CorbinDallas]

Change your mind?

How about the fact that you're still playing a preliminary version of BLU, leveled it to 50 in day, they're going to receive plenty of updates, 5.0 is on the horizon, and "waste of potential" is just another way of saying, "it sucks that I can't take this job into normal duties".

This isn't a beta test, this isn't some "preview" of a job, this is what Blue Mage is and what it will continue to be, unless it receives a major overhaul, which doesnt sound likely based on what the devs have said about. So 5.0 is around the corner. We get BLU cap raised to 60 and a slew of new abilities, some new fights in the carnivale, then what? It will be in the exact same position as it is now, because that is what the devs have told us will happen.

I've completed the carnivale and have all but 4 abilities (primal drop rate sucks), I have essentially completed the content, and I can comfortably say that it was a massive waste of resources and time that should have been spent on other things. I wish that it could be remade into a fully fledged job in the near future, but I also don't have my head buried in the sand and know it won't happen. FF14 devs are stubborn. This is BLU, and it's here to stay.

While I'm at it, and this is directed at everyone, stop using "this is just a preview/beta, it can get better", because it isn't, it never was.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

No need to change your mind, you're right. BLU is a perfect example of missed potential. Why they decided to make their spells so incredibly weak and boring is just mind boggling. Everything is so weak to the point where everyone just uses 1000 needles for everything, and considering there's 48 other spells to mess around with yet none of them are any better, that's pathetic.

It's funny, because they certainly did good with making Pyros actions feel strong, fun to use and unique. Yet BLU have these incredibly boring, weak and redundant spells that are basically bloat to fluff up the job and make it seem like it has more than 2 good spells.

If this is way they're handling limited jobs, I really don't want to see another one.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Change your mind?

How about the fact that you're still playing a preliminary version of BLU, leveled it to 50 in day, they're going to receive plenty of updates, 5.0 is on the horizon, and "waste of potential" is just another way of saying, "it sucks that I can't take this job into normal duties".

I don't know why you're saying this. If anything, everyone should be encouraged to give their honest opinion on the job so that heading forward it isn't more of the same. In it's current iteration, BLU is a massive disappointment and that needs to reach the ears of SE before further changes are made.

Also are you referring to the EXP exploit with that last sentence? Because while I normally would agree you should play the job normally, the spells they give you as a BLU makes leveling so boring you'd rather just do this. I know I don't consider spamming 1000 needles all day as fun, and there's nothing else in the BLU kit that's as consistently strong so...