BLU clone spells

[wereotter]

Sharpened Knife is a melee range cast spell. Not only is this a heavy inconvenience to use, but being in melee exposes you to more danger than being at ranged. Melee are balanced around this by having few if any animation locks, let alone cast time actions. The moment you lose one sharpened knife cast due to a movement constraint, you lost the whole 2 potency bonus you got instead of using Glower, let alone if there is more than one target.

I agree that they have failed to follow up on interesting spell interactions, but I disagree on the basis. There are currently no worthwhile spell combos aside from one, if you can call it that, that can be used on bosses who are immune to CC effects (Which is most of them), and the spell combos that do work are clunky, require low chance spells to land first, or simply are less effective than just spamming Glower.

For a job they can safely test mechanics on free from any sort of worry about upsetting the Balance discord, they have done nothing with Blue Mage, and that is the biggest sin I can point to on it.

I give up with you. Spam glower isn’t the most effective and is probably the most boring way to play this job. But that aside, it’s also not my point.

[Kalise]

I give up with you. Spam glower isn’t the most effective and is probably the most boring way to play this job. But that aside, it’s also not my point.

As the class currently stands, Glower Spam is the most effective filler.

It has good range, it hits multiple targets, it's 130 potency and it's magical so benefits from Peculiar Light.

Trying to swap to a physical skill, currently means trading off to a 120 potency skill (Drill Cannon or Sharpened Knife), your ability to capitalize on Peculiar Light (Also, Contagion if a SMN is using it) as well as the range if using Sharpened Knife.

With the upside being able to capitalize on DRG's 5% Piercing debuff, WAR/NIN/SAM's 10% Slashing debuff or MNK/RDM 5% physical buffs.

Though, this is limited in how useful it is.

Since, a vast majority of BLU's potency comes from the way that their potency is amp'd in 2 different ways. First, is the 50% boost they get from Maim and Mend V second is the 50% boost of this already boosted potency by the Off-Guard debuff.

So, it's not 120 Potency vs 130 Potency. It's actually (120*1.5)*1.5 Potency vs (130*1.5)*1.5 Potency. Which is 270 vs 292.5.

Meaning that they just stack with Off-Guard and merely serve as a total of 55%/60% damage increase then you'd end up with 279 Potency for Drill Cannon and 288 Potency for Sharpened Knife. Both are inferior to Glower.

Basically, while there exists the theory of some interesting applications, the actuality is that because of the horrible balance decisions, in addition the BLU's access to Peculiar Light, it's just not worth it to do anything except spam whichever flavour of 130 Potency Magic skill as your filler.