Finished with BLU?

[KylePearlsand]

Okay, so here's a quick review from me.

49/49 spells
25/25 masked carnival trials
3/3 achievements

I honestly felt the carnival itself was rather shallow. Quite a few of the enemies were weak against wind so it was basically spam glower with the occasional feather rain. Those who weren't was basically spam the element they are weak against. A few trials at least stood out. The claws that reflected physical and magic damage made for an interesting situation of hitting one without hitting the other while still damaging the boss for example. Only 4 trials really stood out to me including that one out of the 25. The last achievement was a nice challenge but the other two could be cheesed easily with final sting or self destruct. Now to get to the elephant in the room. Whoever decided that BLU's burst should be locked behind RNG should get a good smack in the back of the head with a paper fan. Or stepped on by Yotsuyu, take your pick. That was probably one of the most painful grinds just behind the Atma quest of 2.1.

As a class, I see Bluemage as having potential that is being held back by the wall of being a limited class. Which is honestly a shame. If anything, I can see it's very underpowered apart from a few spells that is easily solved by some tweeks to the spell itself. Making White Wind only healing for half the user's HP or having a large cooldown for example. Funnily enough, a lack of a basic wind spell also makes Carnival a bit more annoying to complete in it's own right.

[Deceptistar]

I actually like the slow pace grind that comes with the FFXI feel.
I played both FFXI from promathia and FFXIV from alpha so its a nice change compared to the rapid leveling of the current ARR jobs.

[Oreos]

Got all my spells and completed the Carnival. Glad to see my favorite job in the series lasted a week.

[Alestorm]

Got it to 36, earned most of the open world abilities and got bored with it. Maybe pick it up down the line; but putting a solo piece of content through party content just to hope to get the ability without the ability to queue for it wasn't the best idea.

[whiteblade89]

Got it to 50, spent two hours grinding Titan for his spell, and then realized that it's not very fun to play a severely underpowered job in group content just for a slim-to-no chance of getting a spell. Seriously, I like the concept, but imo BLU should be a damn powerhouse. Why are our potencies so low for spells that are basically our version of "Fire 1"? It needs a buff, tbh. Otherwise I enjoyed the levelling and getting the overworld abilities. The dungeons and primal spells are a bit too painful to suffer through, imo.

[Myriads]

I completed it last evening when I finished up the Carnival.

I enjoyed the experience. But then I have some specific likes that this job fit into.

I was a soloist back in FF XI and spent most of my time quietly grinding exp by myself. It was something that I found let me relax at the end of a day, and dump any stress or worries that I had in my head via the basic repetition of pulling and killing mobs. I think I soloed 6 or 7 jobs to 99 in XI that way. So the leveling grind to 50 on XIV's Blue was refreshingly similar to me in feel as those old memories, and I think that I did it in two evenings of effort that couldn't be more then 7 or 8 hours on leveling. I found it relaxing. But then that is me. I could see easily how it wouldn't be the cup of tea of many modern players who have come to learn to level via speedy dungeon runs, and quest exp. But it was good for me.

Getting spells was positive experience for me also. Over world spells I did mostly myself. Dungeon spells were done with members of my FC with us switching off on being a 70 snowplow for runs. We all had a lot of fun doing things together, joking about stuff and sharing time together. That was nice and we fit the farming intro our evenings doing a few spells a night until we all had them. I have to say that I liked how the job brought my FC together, and even prompted a few folks that had been on breaks to pop back in and re-engage with the game.

The Primal spells were a different experience from the Dungeon ones. I decided to see how the PF groups worked for them, and picked up the 6 spells over 3 nights. The two that took the most work were Titan at 33 runs, and Shiva at 25 runs. The rest I saw in under 10. All of these were the 4/4 change after 5 runs style of groups, and while I heard of many people having issues with folks cut and running, I never did. My groups held together for both halves and often featured some 70's that were doing the heavy lifting because they just wanted to help. My Shiva group being a good example, where a Tank and Healer were our 70 duo with six Blues. Both off them were not at 50 Blue yet so could't even try for the spell, but wanted to help others. I saw a lot of examples of good community spirit and kindness that are the good side of playing games like this in those groups. Yes it was grind, but people joked, interacted, complained about the horrid weather many of us shared in real life, and had a decent time. I found that a really big plus.

It also helped that this was about in the game at the same time that most other content is played out. It was a solid distraction.

I plan to pay things forward by doing a few PF groups as a snowplow letting someone not have to flip on runs, and help some other Blues get spells. Running my FC folks in dungeons as they want and so forth. While I won't be on my Blue for that, I will be still there because of the Blue content, and I figure it should give me solid engagement with folks for a few more weeks.

I get why a lot of people are disappointed with the job. I can see how it was designed and plays can be a total turn off to others. It was a happy fit for my style and game wants, and even satisfied my desire to collect sets of things specifically (I love collecting the TT cards also) so it worked well for me.

I'm interested in seeing how SE advances it over time, and what it might hold.

[Ruf]

1hour + on Shiva to help a friend & no spell learned, not looking forward to my turn… I much prefer...take a wild guess.

[Deceptus]

Still need Shiva, Levi and Ink jet and they refuse to give them up.

Not having fun by any means. This is just tedious.

[Awful]

Still need Shiva, Levi and Ink jet and they refuse to give them up.

Not having fun by any means. This is just tedious.

Yeah Ink Jet and Levis are a myth I got Glass Dance after 55ish Shiva EXs over 2 days, was not very pleasant, as for Ink Jet I've ran Sastasha at least 13 times and nothing over 40 Levis, RNG isn't padding right?

[Rufalus]

You can put something on the shelf and not consider it a failure. We do the same thing with all kinds of content. Rush to get what we want from it, then move on to something else. Most of us will be back when they provide updates to Blu, won't we? Try out the next new spells, new carnival fights, increased level cap and see the job quests. For what it's worth I will continue using Blu at least a little every week for the weekly rewards. Poetics can buy materia VI now, and allied seals for aetheryte tickets or ventures.