Please make Blue Mage a normal job

[Physic]

If I may, I wanted to ask if you and ReiMakoto, have in mind a specfic plan for how BLU could be fixed or redesigned even.

I personally do have a general idea on how it could turn out, but I honestly don't mind as long as I can experience the story, do current content with other people and side content like potd or Eureka even, as BLU. As long as it's not a limited job.

And on a different note for ReiMakoto.

I think that limited jobs wouldn't be such a bad idea if they revisited what the system means. By becoming a "limited job for a limited time" kind of deal.

What I suggested earlier, for the "limited job" system to be a way to test classes that SE might have "trouble" with. IF for them it truly is a problem with balance (which I highly doubt and don't agree with) then using this system to playtest the various classes and letting the players report feedback so that they have a better understanding on what they could do better to make these jobs completely functional, following what the player wants, by releasing them as normal jobs at a later date, may be a good idea to catch 2 birds with 1 stone. Its function akin to a PTR but with classes in mind, in order to help polish a class that SE doesn't want to test themselves.

they arent doing it because its hard to balance, they are doing it because balancing it and making it fit in to a ffxiv framework kills the spirit, and entertainment of the job.


its jobs they either dont want to balance, or have mechanics that dont fit.



In the case of blue mage,

its skill aquisition,

its tank and healer abilities,

and its weird or powerful abilities, like death, tail screw, petrify, peculiar light self destruct, final sting, rams voice, diamondback, etc that would probably warp high end metas.


basically all i am saying is its not about testing, its about not wanting to make the job fit in to norms

[TaiyoShikasu]

The only ability that an argument can be made for is Peculiar Light which can be done either by giving it a longer cooldown since it has three times the potency of Contagion at nearly half the duration or lower it to be an eight second quasi AOE Contagion.

Literally nothing else matters because anyone running BLU in high end content won't use it.

[Awha]

Not sure if overall balance the primary reason behind the limited job concept or if it was class identity. Which I still do not understand why BLU was the job Yoshi-P made the choice to put their foot down for class identity. I think that is why many who are in favor of the limited job concept are against making it a standard job, not because it would not be possible to make an unique experience, but more so has to deal with the ridged framework the developers seem to feel each job has to fit neatly in. Pretty sure many would jump on the idea to take current BLU into any content and would gladly take minor adjustments to our skill set. Problem is the general idea of fitting neatly into a certain role would place a self imposed restriction on the creative aspect of jobs. The limited job concept allows for a less restrictive approach to class design.

Current BLU is far from perfect, but with time as we get more levels and hopefully the team feels more comfortable with type of abilities we can learn and the effects the come with could in theory lead to some interesting personalized encounters. Current BLU is having a hard time finding footing, but hardly any content is perfect out the gate. People may not like it now, but maybe with time it might evolve into something that you could enjoy. I do not think it is fair how some wish to kill the concept of limited jobs or BLU simply because the first foray into the concept did not have a lasting appeal and could have been handled better.

[Physic]

The only ability that an argument can be made for is Peculiar Light which can be done either by giving it a longer cooldown since it has three times the potency of Contagion at nearly half the duration or lower it to be an eight second quasi AOE Contagion.

Literally nothing else matters because anyone running BLU in high end content won't use it.

they matter for content. self destruct combo is large damage and can phase monsters easily. 4800 potency equivalence. diamondback can ignore killer skills. rams voice can freeze monsters. Also note, most boss summons are not immune to death, freeze, etc.


white wind can heal full HP of the raid, easily.



Also you are too focused on just high end raid balance, they also worry about dungeon/duty balance. And i can tell you many of their skills are extremely powerful in regular dungeons.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Dying is already a DPS loss, killing yourself is still a DPS loss even if you blow yourself because weakness is a thing. Diamondback is also a DPS loss and wouldn't see use outside of all BLU meme runs or solo play. Rams Voice is just a better Holy. Relying on RNG to burn adds is bad because for every unsuccessful cast is a GCD that could've gone towards something that actually does damage and unless the boss spawns two or more adds, it's better to use a not AOE skill.

White Wind does literally no such thing and as I've said before, its effectiveness is mitigated by any raid wide damage and straight up invalidated by anything that brings people down to critical, something no healer has to worry about.

Jobs are made with the ability to clear endgame content in mind. For you, that probably extends to just Expert Roulette and as I've said before dungeons are the most casual content the game has to offer besides AFKing in Limsa and ERP, who cares? Let a job be absolutely king of dungeons, BLM and SMN already do that already, nothing wrong with a third job.

[Valdegarde]

If I may, I wanted to ask if you and ReiMakoto, have in mind a specfic plan for how BLU could be fixed or redesigned even.

I've mentioned my ideas before in prior topics closer to Blue Mage's release, I've taken quite a mental break from FFXIV overall (along with my literal break) so it's not as close to recall as before, but my thoughts were basically this:
-Isolate "problem" skills from ones that are integral to the job and are already perfectly balanced (example being Ram's Voice for the former, Off-Guard/Bristle for the latter)
-Allow these "problem" skills into unsynced and overworld content, as well as the Masked Carnivale where they can be appropriately abusable, but disallow them in queued stuff.
-Adjust the very few integral skills that might be a little oddly tuned for parties, such as White Wind and Peculiar Light. I read a cool idea that White Wind could be divided by number of players affected, and Peculiar Light need only be an Embolden type disparity where the 30% is for the Blue Mage only, other party members get 10~15% vulnerability up. Not really...drastic adjustments at all. Most of the kit really seems like it was intended to be a fully usable job recently before some executive order befell the Blue Mage team.

Ta~da. Blue Mage retains its unique spell learning mechanic and solo leveling experience, while it ends up having a ton of abusable bag of tricks type spells one can use to circumvent FATEs and old content crap as well as unique stuff for...whatever puzzles they design for the Masked Carnivale (Loom?). The spells that are still appropriately balanced will not go to waste however and will allow Blue Mage to feel like a full experience that can be used alongside the rest of the game. And right now, that's actually more abilities than not, by far. I imagine in the future when it hits max level this list could look more like half/half, with Blue Mages having 3x the amount of "party"-able skills as other jobs. This means that it can freely choose the kinds of ranges/cast times per fight of certain potencies and things to fit into Peculiar Light windows or whatever other bursty mechanical lynchpin skills they get. Oh boy...almost like...a fun unique caster playstyle? (Irony here is the "limited" aspect of the job actually hampers this creative part, Blue Mages COULD have the ability to differ their loadout per fight, but right now it's just picking the dumbest abusable thing to spam in crap that doesn't matter one bit)

Still technically a "limited" job, no? In this case though, the limitations are a nuance that players need be aware of before they decide to make it their full time class, but they can still experience (most) of the game with it. Any other worries and considerations, like if players will accept newbie, undeveloped Blue Mages is a matter of player trust that we should be letting the community work out instead of placing arbitrary restrictions such that the opportunity never arises. Another one off the top of my head that Yoshi P seemed worried about for some reason is World Firsts for Blue Mages after a level cap increase...which I frankly don't understand, but treating it as a legitimate concern for the sake of argument, one should consider Blue Mage's spell learning mechanic to BE their solo/limited/leveling experience, since they level so quickly normally in the overworld. While other jobs grind out dungeons and do their quests, Blue Mages have to concern themselves with learning the right spells, which would be ideally...a less BS process in the future than the Atma Primal ones that have been unanimously panned in learning implementation.

Everybody bloody wins and it boggles my mind that people don't consider this an ideal route and are digging in their heels to stay with something practically unusable.

P.S. I don't personally see how this ends up being such an impossible drain on resources that we shouldn't even bother bringing it up. That argument makes no sense to me. It's some flag stuff and skill adjustments not unlike you might see in a hotfix. I get that wanting it to be 80 with the rest of the jobs like now-ish would be a bit of a tall order, but lets help it get there in the future appropriately so it's an awesome growth for the job instead of resigning to the worst. Also give Blue Mage a damn limit break. And Squadron stuff.

[ReiMakoto]

If I may, I wanted to ask if you and ReiMakoto, have in mind a specfic plan for how BLU could be fixed or redesigned even.

So my plan to fix BLU is simple, the duty set.

When you reach level 50 you unlock a job quest to unlock the "Duty Set", which you can undertake if you learn a set of pre-requisite skills. All skills in this list would have 100% learn rate.

Upon completing the quest the "Duty Set" is selectable from the BLU spellbook, which is a set of abilities picked by the devs as the balanced set of abilities, and are all arranged with level requirements as to allow BLU not to be too OP when sync'd. I already know what skills I'd include in the level 50 list, basically none of the gimmick skills.

From the point on where the "Duty Set" is unlocked, BLU is allowed to level past 50 up to current cap, and every 2 levels theres a new ability in the "Duty Set" which you would have to go and learn (with 100% learn rate) or a new trait. When BLU is unlocked, I'd have them raise the level cap to current maximum and add all the duty set abilities needed for these levels. Then later they can go back and add more limited abilities as part of their content cycle with more masked carnival.

This would lead to cases where say you'd have a level 66 BLU in your party who hadn't learned their level 62 skill. I say thats fine, people in the DF are usually bad anyway, so if someone isn't bothered to go learn their skills, they're unlikely to be contributing that much to the party anyway.

This Way people who like limited jobs (for whatever reason) keep their silly limited class that can run and get carried through old content like now, and do masked carnival, and those of us who want BLU as a class to main get that, and keep "Blu's Identity"

Now for some wild wishes and such

Make BLU revolve around Rapid 1 sec cast gcds and ogcd's in single target, I think it would be engaging and different

Make their Job gauge the "Doom Gauge" I pitched a few pages back:

Call it something like the "Doom Gauge" or something, and have it fill up every time you cast a spell. Change all of the rng skills (Doom, Tail Screw, Missle) to OGCDs with cast times that cost "Doom Gauge" to cast, with Tail Screw and Doom with CD as well. Then Make is so when you cast these skills and they fail they do potency instead, Missle doing the weakest potency at the weakest doom gauge cost and no CD, and have Tail Screw and Doom share a cooldown, with Tailscrew doing a fixed potency (250 or something if it fails) and have Doom have a scaling potency based on the health remaining on the enemy, (I.E when the boss is 50% or lower it'll be better to use doom over screw). That way you keep the chance of these skills working on enemies in dungeons that are weak to them, but you naturally nerf the frequency at which it happens, so it just becomes a cool moment if it does happen. Doom would also add some synergy in the BLU kit as it would get buffed by bristle if the enemy was on low enough health.

Add another job gauge around elemental weaknesses. My idea was casting single target skills of a certain element has a chance to "stick" that element to an enemy, then using an AOE skill "exploits" that element. For example casting water cannon has the chance to "stick" water to the enemy, then using shock strike exploits that water, dealing more damage and resetting the weakness

[Physic]

Dying is already a DPS loss, killing yourself is still a DPS loss even if you blow yourself because weakness is a thing. Diamondback is also a DPS loss and wouldn't see use outside of all BLU meme runs or solo play. Rams Voice is just a better Holy. Relying on RNG to burn adds is bad because for every unsuccessful cast is a GCD that could've gone towards something that actually does damage and unless the boss spawns two or more adds, it's better to use a not AOE skill.

White Wind does literally no such thing and as I've said before, its effectiveness is mitigated by any raid wide damage and straight up invalidated by anything that brings people down to critical, something no healer has to worry about.

Jobs are made with the ability to clear endgame content in mind. For you, that probably extends to just Expert Roulette and as I've said before dungeons are the most casual content the game has to offer besides AFKing in Limsa and ERP, who cares? Let a job be absolutely king of dungeons, BLM and SMN already do that already, nothing wrong with a third job.

blowing yourself up is not a dps loss depending when you blow yourself up. you can blow yourself up at the beginning and return before the 10 second entry time, and at the end. Also diamondback is not dps loss if its in times when you couldnt do dps, like many large damage phases. Also, blu mage is not like other classes that just focus on dps.


and as much as you personally may not care what happens in dungeons and outside of 8 man savage raids, you can bet that ffxiv developers care, keep in mind savage raids are only done by a small part of the community. Game balance and class design are never going to ignore all the other group content in the game.

[Anesteria]

Thank you Rei and Valdegarde for your suggestions, I think they're both good.

In regards to the first part Valdegarde, while playing I got a similar feeling too regarding the available skills. The skills themselves are not as outrageous as some paint them to be, and BLU does not need to be reworked from the ground up to be made into a full job at all.
So if it really came down to a last minute change, which I wouldn't be surprised about, what they're telling us then indeed becomes very... sketchy. But this is also why I intended to still bring attention to BLU and for pushing a revision on the class. I don't think that they could call the current BLU a success if people played it for 1 week and never touched it again, I would honestly fail to see how that is a success IF they were sincere. Whether people liked the bit or not, it was still something that the vast majority eventually ignored completely, as it seems to be the case since I barely saw ANY BLU around and people reporting their experience.

Another reason why I postulated that this might just be their way of attempting to understand the reaction from people to see what they can do next. Thus, demonstrating my discontent.

And yes, I agree that being a more "flexible" DPS would definitely be something that actually DOES add another layer of depth to BLU, instead of detracting from it. Even in other MMOs changing skills through various means, is something classes with or without a trinity system can do successfully.

When it comes to both of your visions in regards to the segregation of the "limited" experience and the rest of the game, it definitely is conceptually possible. GW2 does it by having a distinct set of traits and effects on the abilities depending on whether you're playing in PvE, PvP or WvW. I can definitely see BLU benefit from this to please both crowds. Though I still have my reservations on the "limited job" system as is.

So I think the Duty Set is a pretty good idea, and one that they can definitely implement even "now". What I mean is that they've given us a 1-50 experience that seems to be the basis for what's to come, which means that they're still in time to make changes with a 1 year time frame, willing be.
When it comes to OHKO spells, they've always been quite the pickle unless they stop being OHKO spells. While it may work to build a gauge around that, I think SE would much rather exclude them from the non-limited content.

Nevertheless, they're both reasonable and yeah I have to admit that it would be a way to make everyone happy. If SE did change the system the way it worked as you have detailed, I would be fine with it.

If SE announced that this is where they'd be going, so that we'd finally be allowed to play BLU freely...

I would pre-order Shadowbringers the moment I finished reading the announcement and stay subbed until the changes went through in 5.x. But as it stands unfortunately there is no such announcement. D:

[TaiyoShikasu]

blowing yourself up is not a dps loss depending when you blow yourself up. you can blow yourself up at the beginning and return before the 10 second entry time, and at the end. Also diamondback is not dps loss if its in times when you couldnt do dps, like many large damage phases. Also, blu mage is not like other classes that just focus on dps.


and as much as you personally may not care what happens in dungeons and outside of 8 man savage raids, you can bet that ffxiv developers care, keep in mind savage raids are only done by a small part of the community. Game balance and class design are never going to ignore all the other group content in the game.

Blowing yourseld up at the start of an encounter means you get weakness when you're rez'd and also miss out on getting in as much damage as possible during the time raid buffs go out at the start.

If the boss is about to go untargetable, it's better to use Moon Flute, burst hard and then ignore the debuff during the time the boss is untargetable as opposed to boss is about to go untargetable, better cast this five second non-damaging spell and then stand in one place for ten seconds.

This reads like something someone who never did a normal mode raid would say.