Did the devs lie to us? Either actually make BLU OP, or unlock it

[KaivaC]

For the longest time, I’ve taken a wait and see approach before BLU dropped – then when it did, I wanted to wait a week and give it a legitimate try before I gave it any real thoughts. Now that it has been a week and I have gotten it up to level 50, I think the problem with BLU is the dev team themselves. And here’s the problem with that – the devs insisted through the LL that BLU was supposed to be designed for solo content, but the literal only solo content is in the Masked Carnivale. Sure, players can unsync and run through some of the ARR solo dungeons, but for those level 50 instances, that just isn’t happening in a lot of cases. And what is bugging me the most is that the devs outright advertised this as being designed for solo.

In what way?!

You can’t farm primals solo – you’d need a party because your potencies are just far too low to be effective. A good chunk of the most interesting skills in your spellbook just flat out don’t work on the bosses. So how in the world is this designed for solo play, when literally all you guys have done was add in two minigames (gathering spells and the Masked Carnivale), but is otherwise unless even in the ARR endgame dungeons because your potencies are so low, even at ilvl 130?

You guys really say up there and insinuated that BLU would be this heavily OP job, thus restricted it from normal party comps – but there isn’t really a single thing OP about this job. 1000 Needles loses its effectiveness around the time you run through Cutter’s Cry, to the point where it’s just more effective to use other spells if you have them.

So I’ll add my voice to the chorus of other players with a caveat: since you clearly have a different definition of what overpowered means, Devs, maybe you should…oh I dunno, actually make the job OP like you advertised it to be for solo runs, or allow it to join duties like normal. From the information provided thus far, and from what is currently available, BLU is limited in the sense that it’s almost…useless. Even for just having fun runs, it’s like, what’s the point?

If you were so afraid of it being so OP, why in the world did you limit the potencies to the 100-130 range? Most players who are currently trying BLU have already fought the Hard Mode of all the primals when they were going through ARR – so why in the world could players not feasibly use our spells to challenge these primals solo? Rather than just hyping players up to having this amazing solo job that was supposed to be ‘too hard to balance’, you just gave us a huge mini-game that will require some party play – a direct opposite of what you guys had been preaching over the last couple months.

Either follow the hype that you’d clearly been preaching and actually make it OP – as in raising the potencies, allowing half our spells to actually work outside of the Carnivale, and making it feel like it’s this wholly amazing job that you got people excited for back at the fanfest – or quit lying about it being designed for solo play (Masked Carnivale does not exactly scream solo job) and make it available for the DF/MSQ up to whatever the stopgap level is (currently level 50).

I realize this may not be a popular opinion, and that’s fine, everybody has different opinions – I’m just here sharing my own.

[Wolf_Heartnet]

I am all for unlocking it as a full actual job along with others. This limited job bs needs to stop. Balance Blue as a lvl 70 job and be done with it. Masked Carnivale isn't even fun and plenty of people been wanting to main blue mage as a full job.

[XiXiQ]

I must confess I've given up on BLU, it's tedious and pointless. About the only thing you can solo is open world mobs, everything else is in dungeons you cannot use the DF to queue, and just like Eureka, getting any kind of party together is like pulling teeth (then add the ridiculous RNG just to put even more people off it). No levelling options at all to add some interest - no roulettes, no squadrons, no POTD, no nothing. Silly me, I had assumed the masked carnival would be for levelling this "solo" job, but no, it's just something they tagged on at the end. Learn the skills you need to solo in dungeons and primals you can't queue for? Talk about circular logic.

[Turnipsi]

Did we need a mrw thread for this, or would any of the previous ones currently on fromt page too be sufficient to discuss this? It does fragment the issue quite a bit. It's still not that balanced for group play and would be even more watered down to not oneshot especially low level stuff in DF/issue with having enough spells. This in my opinion.

[CorbinDallas]

I agree, but can't be bothered typing up yet another post about BLU, so have a lazily copy pasted quote from another thread.

Every reason as to why they claimed BLU shouldn't be allowed to play in DF content at level 70 has been proven false within a day, good job Square.

Overpowered abilities? I count one, White Wind is bonkers, and that's it. 1k Needles drops off drastically as mob hp increases, and most other abilities are complete garbage. Bosses are immune to the majority of BLU shenanigans like Petrify and Sticky Tongue, rendering Yoshi's "hurr L5 Death in O12S lul" comment completely moot.

They might have no skills going into DF, yet you make specific abilities mandatory for the job quests? So you're saying you could lock job quests behind having a specific set of core abilities that are actually balanced around party play, and then open up the relevant DF options upon completion of job quest milestones? You can have that one for free SE. You're welcome.

They're designed as a solo experience, yet it's mandatory to go into instanced content with other players to learn certain abilities. That one is just ass backwards, and I highly doubt an i130 level 50 BLU is gonna be able to solo Shiva Extreme to gain her bow skill, let alone kill her before she enrages considering how garbage most skills are.

It's a complete mess, frankly. They've done it yet again, said one thing but done another. Either make it broken OP as you claimed and keep it limited, or balance it around party play and offer it as a complete job. Not this weird hybrid of garbage ass skills where 50% of them come from instances that you're probably not going to be able to effectively solo, despite that being the entire point of the job.

[BillyKaplan]

The core of the conflict isn't so much in BLU's own performance, but the acquisition of its spells, Otherwise it being a wet noodle that doesn't play well with others wouldn't have been such an issue.

"BLU is not designed for party play" and "BLU was designed for solo play" - these statements are true if you keep in mind that it was designed for the Masked Carnivale. They made absolutely no effort to make sure that it plays well in party content because that's not what you're supposed to play on BLU. And to an extent, this would've been fine, but if you want to complete the BLU experience in its entirety, that involves getting all of its spells. At the absolute least we're talking about two extreme ARR Primals. Where even if you run it unsynced, the BLU in question might just not be able to survive through it to even have a chance at the skill. And that's besides the fact that while not designed for party play, BLU is forced to party up constantly for more than half its kit, be it dungeons or trials. And I mean you can 4-BLU dungeons and hope you get the spell at the end, but as we all know that BLU was not designed for party play, many players decided to opt out of that, rightly so, and so the 2-2/4-4 solutions were made.
Which at this point I'd legit say is how the devs intended it to happen. Which only makes this entire thing seem all the more lazy and insulting to the playerbase.

They should've invested more in the Masked Carnivale and locked all those skills behind it. I wouldn't have even minded it that much if the spells were locked behind frigging Carnivale Lockboxes if only because it meant I could farm them myself, as befitting a a job designed for solo play that doesn't fit parties.

But the Carnivale has a very limited lifespan in the first place, that's part of why they slapped weekly bonuses on it, to get people coming back, but even that won't last once everyone has their ARR mount speed upgrades.

Oh, and their "Level 5 Death on Omega" example? None of those skills work on trial/raid bosses or even dungeon end-bosses, so can we please stop pretending BLU was ever designed to run around as an avatar of death and destruction?

Inb4 that's the one boss that won't be immune to Level 5 Death just so Yoshi-P won't have to go back on the example he gave.

[Sieben79]

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

[Whanext]

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

The thing is that it needs to be overpowered if it stays as solo job

[KaivaC]

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

That kind of is the point of this thread. Outside of the Carnivale, there's not really much of a purpose for a job that had been touted as 'designed for solo'. That's my whole disconnect with it. It's woefully underpowered for a solo job, when even after you collect all the spells, you STILL can't really do much of the lvl 50 content as this so-called solo job by yourself. It needs to be overpowered as it is right now, otherwise what exactly is the point after you collect your spells? If you can't go into the DF, if you can't do MSQ, if you can't even take it into PoTD, then there's literally no point to the job after you have your spells and finished off the Masked Carnivale. You can't even meld anything on the artifact gear.

I'm bothered that this limited job is restricted from even being fun once you get your spells and finish the Carnivale. Repeating an entire dungeon run for one spell that has a limited chance of even learning for the 20th time, while being limited by your own very low potencies and spells that don't even work on the boss is not fun when you have to do it past the third time (hello Mind Blast, Glower). At the very least if it was overpowered, you'd have a realistic chance of actually going into almost all Level 50 instances using your own strats and spells to get through it without needing the requirement of a level 70 or other party members.

So now we wrap up to my original point: the devs hyped up something that just wasn't true and/or over-exaggerated to the point that it was insulting upon release. As it is right now, there's no reason at all why BLU should have been restricted as is. It's far too weak to really 'too strong' as was insinuated multiple times by the devs.

[BillyKaplan]

To be fair, the kind of OP Yoshi-P was talking about is more the "I can immediately kill the boss with this single skill" aspect, not necessarily that BLU is the king of parsers.
But that fell flat the second they did what we all knew they'd do and put invuls to those effects on any enemy worth anything, including things as flimsy as overworld B ranks