Likes and Dislikes of Blue Mage

[Theskymarble]

Before 5.1 I wanted Blue Mage to be a real job since its one of my favorite jobs in FF but had Problems with it in 14 aside a couple aspects. What I liked about it before the patch were these.

Likes

Going around on the overworld to find spells was fun.
Some of the spells were cool.

Dislikes
Once you got all the overworld spells it was just boring to level.
A lot of the skills sucked
The carnival wasn't great and frustrating.
Element system in carnival sucks.
Trying to learn spells before wasn't 100% if you were synced so you had scenarios like me spending 6-8 hours trying to get ramuh skill.

By the end of it I was fed up and was mad that BLU ended up like this. However with 5.15 these feelings have changed.

Grouping up with other BLU in content for the BLU log and learning new skills is really fun. With Aetherial Mimicry the BLU can establish roles like tanking and healing and that helps a ton. The new skills are good and there some cool ones introduced things like Avail and Launcher. I don't like how the Morbol mount is a reward for clearing T5 T9 and T13 as well as A4S A8S and A12S. The morbol for all that doesn't feel that much worth and it should've been carnival and maybe something like a Brute Justice mount for the savages. The best change for BLU is making the learn rate 100% when synced and that cuts down on the grind and overall makes the experience better. Now for likes and dislikes.

Likes
Its still fun to go around on the overworld and learning skills
Group Content with BLU is really fun and is easily one of the best parts
More interesting spells make builds more important
The augment system helps a lot and makes roles for the BLU better
The increase in damage helps with one of the issues with BLU
Learn rates being 100% when synced cut down the grind

Dislikes

The carnival still sucks
The morbol mount being locked behind the savages sucks
The augment system needs more work
Tanking needs more skills that get augmented
Final sting and Self-Destruct being a 10 minute cooldown sucks
It still sucks to level up once you get all your skills from the overworld.

I think BLU has improved a lot and if they continue to work on it like this I believe it would be a great side thing to do. Letting BLU choose roles for content and having content to do that wasn't the carnival was a great change from what was before. I know people still want it to be a solo job but I think this direction is way better.

So what do you guys like and dislike about Blue Mage?

[Silver-Strider]

Likes:
Feels much more engaging to play.
BLU Log makes learning any group spell much more tolerable, especially coupled with the 100% learn chance.
Healing as a BLU is much more enjoyable now.

Dislikes:
5 Minute Rez
BLU Tank is still lacking, especially in terms of mitigation. Cast times on the few mitigation tools they do have also doesn't help.
Too much of the same copy/paste spells with different affinities.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Likes
- Much more engaging and fun to play.
- The new Healer options make the Carnivale a lot more tolerable.
- Obtaining new spells is quick/easy and requires no Extreme Trials.
- More spells where you get to destroy monsters with ICBMs.
- Compared to 4.5, dealing with dungeon trash is quick and painless now, making runs a lot faster.

Dislikes
- Still no Limit Break. (Seriously, where is my Grand Delta LB3?)
- Too many recolored spells (220 potency that decreases in damage the more enemies are in it).
- Masked Carnivale is still "Bring this one particular spell or you instantly die.", with no way to intuit what you need a good deal of the time until you get killed.
- Stage 29 of the Masked Carnivale.
- Raise spell is gated behind completion of all of the Masked Carnivale stages.
- Raise spell has a five minute long cooldown.
- Angel Whisper is the same as every other Raise only with more drawbacks rather than a Full Life spell that warrants the harsh limitations.
- There's no way to assign roles to BLU PF parties, leading to instances where you can never see if anyone has brought a Tank or Aetherial Mimicry until it's too late.
- Tanks have no defensive cooldowns or Shield Lob variant. The Look also has a cast time, making it even slower for them to establish enmity if there's an add phase like Garuda EX's Suparna and Chirada.

[ReiMakoto]

Likes

-Defined dps Rotation
-They have more necessary tools to sub in other role
-Healer BLU is an interesting inversion of normal healer, gcd heals with ogcd damage

Dislikes
-With how defined the rotation is, theres no reason to not have an unlocked blu using a slightly expanded on version of this rotation
-Tank BLU is miserable
-Mimicry is really jank
-Its still a limited job

[Kazrah]

Likes
Access to more off-global spells allows for more fluid and mobile gameplay.
It still hearkens to what it felt like to play back in the days of ARR and HW without the tribulations of them.
Blue Mage log offers more incentive to do content as a Blue Mage while (mostly) eliminating the issue of RNG.
Mimicry for roles improves group gameplay and keeps it from being absolute chaos.
The job still provides an idea of how it would feel if FFXIV had a public test server, giving players mechanics we'd otherwise never get the chance to implement.

Dislikes (and possible solutions)
Mimicry would feel better as either a cycle option or just have individual command buttons for it (with the tank one being baked into Mighty Guard).
Allow a ranged spell like Sticky Tongue to be instant-cast and generate increased enmity (which would solve the lack of a ranged quick-grab tank spell).
There is no "git gud" response as to why Angel Whisper is a five-minute cooldown.
Masked Carnivale still feels like an overall waste of resources.
Lack of a duty roulette exclusive to Limited Jobs (which would also allow more acceptance for future Limited Jobs).
People whining about it being a Limited Job when they have no idea of how devs can utilize data drawn from us playing with what is effectively a skeleton that could lead to better jobs in the future.

[Bacent]

It only took me 30 min in helping my fiance out to level him from 50 to 60 in Azys Lla. Getting 120k+ EXP on the best part of a chain (Without exp resting bonus) is crazy. The EXP gain isn't anything bad.

The carnivale still feels like hell personally. So many times I knock something back only for it to GO THE WRONG WAY.

[jon041065]

Likes:
Some of the new spells are what I thought a real job version of blu would get
Fun getting to play more group content as blu


Dislikes:
Still limited despite it feeling so close to being a real job at lvl 50 and even more so now

[Archangelus]

Likes:
- The new update made it so it's not boring to play.
- It no longer does potato DPS.
- A few of the new skills are a mix of aesthetically really cool, and mechanically fun, such as J Kick and Ravana's skill.

Dislikes:
- Masked Carnivale is still garbage, which saddens me greatly
- I hope you like 220 potency AoEs of varying shapes and meaningless elements/status effects!
- Aetherial Mimicry is a cool idea, but it's just a joke:
- Tank Mimicry is basically worthless, and a useless meme.
- That DPS Mimicry exists and on top of that is just a substat buff.
- The spells that are supposed to make Blue Mage into other roles are just all pretty awful and worthless if you're not in the corresponding Mimicry stance. Tank Blu suffers the most from this, since Cactguard provides no benefit to the caster themselves, but gains more reduction for the other person in tank stance and....that's it.
- Frog Legs makes me , I can't imagine trying to do an "all BLU" Bismark EX
- Angel Whisper
- Remember that time they used Level 5 Death to explain why it needed to be a limited job? Yeah, neither do they, apparently.
- The fact that it's still a limited job and 2 expansions behind and it's almost a year after it was released.
- The fact that is does indeed play much better, but will still never be a real job despite not having anything at all about it that warrants being limited at this point.

[Jkap_Goat]

Like- how versatile Blue mage is, enjoying the carnival challenges, learning spells in the world and dungeons.

Dislike- spells don't set after you save the set actions and load another set ( for example loading set 2 from set 1)

You have to manually reput you missing actions

[purgatori]

Likes: Glamour & fun spell animations.
Dislikes: Requires PF/statics for unlocking some spells. No deep dungeons or squadrons.