The Big Blue Feedback Thread

[AceofRains]

I’d like to start of with saying that I am exceptionally enjoying Blue Mage. Almost everyone I have partied with on my spell collection journey has said they are having a lot of fun. I have completed all of my spell hunting and Masked Carnivale. All that’s left really is to complete my log and Best in Slot my gear. I’m more and more hopeful that Blue Mage will make its way into normal content. I’m envisioning Blue Mage as the perfect “All-Rounder”.

12/5/2020 EDIT

I will reiterate that I am very much still enjoying Blue Mage and hope to see many quality of life improvements with the 5.45 update. There is much that still frustrates me about the job, and after gaining much more experience with it by a near completed Blue Mage Log, I have many criticisms, both of Blue Mage, and it's comparison to the non-limited jobs. In many cases, my opinion on certain abilities has changed as I have toyed around with my set-ups for all roles to a point of min-maxing with or without instant death spells.

JOB GAUGE
First of all, I would appreciate one important piece: A Job gauge that I call, “The Libra Gauge”. The Gauge is not a resource bar like other jobs. It is simply available at level 1, or perhaps as a reward at level 70- and allows Blue Mages to see the “resistances”, both built up and immune by your current target.

LEVEL SYNC
I cannot stress enough how much I wish Blue Mage can be a normal job. One of the things that makes it exceptionally too powerful for the duty finder is the fact that Blue Mage has ALL of its spell slots from level 1. As a call back to FFXI's Blue Mage, I think it would be appropriate to portion out spell slots per level. This will push players to "Best in Slot" their spells, similar to how the old cross class skills system encouraged you to slot the best spell for the earliest level. This would also force players to think how early they want access to certain actions. You wont necessarily see someone take Level 5 Death into Satasha if they only had about 5-7 slots accessible. Logic would push you to take the actions that are most important to your role (and mimicry as well if you're not queuing dps.)

MIMICRY
-Aetherial Mimicry must be available by Whalaquee totem. 60 is too late to gain such an important ability, however the option learn in dugeon is acceptable. A Whalaquee Totem should become available after level 50. Some of the sync’s learning content could go a lot smoother. While its great that this ability is available in a dungeon, its too important to wait. Too many people running level 50 content that didn't have it yet made it all the more difficult to succeed. My opinion on this has not changed since my original post.

-Role icons should be changed instead of simply giving a status effect. For starters, there are many times in content where a boss will specifically target those of a certain role. Because Mimicry does not actually change the role, a Blue Mage will be hit at random. This can lead to some unpredictable circumstances that may cause a death even if you did everything right. However, I'm not sure if changing role like this should give access to role abilities, or keep the Mage role abilities. I quite like the idea that, despite changing role, Blue Mage continues to be a Mage. I like that instead of having a bunch of direct damage mitigation cooldowns, I have to think about when to Diamondback an incoming tank buster. When compared to other tanks, it makes me think that main game tanks have TOO MUCH mitiagtion- and rather that mitigation should be spread to other jobs.

-Aetherial Mimicry itself is uncomfortable to have on the Hotbar for danger of deactivating during a fight. Once it’s gone you can’t get it back. My suggestion is that once you are in an instance, it CANNOT be removed.

STATUS EFFECTS & CROWD CONTROL
Playing as much Blue Mage as I have made something abundantly clear to me. Main jobs are severlely lacking in CC options. Far starters- Sleep is useless everywhere it exists. My suggested change is that the action that awakens a target should always be a Critical Direct Hit. Blue Mage's Freeze and Petrify are very powerful options. However, I'm also frustrated by their application on Blue Mage in the first place. When playing tank BLU, it can be very frustrating when a party member freezes your wave as you're trying to pull and position. I believe that Freeze and Petrify should be adjusted to severely reduce damage to a target that is under that condition. This way, Freeze and Petrify become more situational to protect a tank who is getting hit too hard. Perhaps even other jobs should have access to some the spells that make Blue Mage "too powerful for the duty finder". Paladin and Monk could have its own Raises, Ninja could have a Mijin Gakure, or Dragoon it's own Final Sting, Black Mage could have Death and actual Freeze. Paladin and Dark Knight should get their Blinds back. Status effects and CC make for a more creative experiance to me. CC has been severely lacking throughout Shadowbringers, with all of ironically being present on Blue Mage.

SELF SACRIFICE
-Angel Whisper should be self targetable for the effect of Re-Raise. This will allow healers to take better advantage of Transfusion, and for DPS to take advantage of Final Sting and Self-Destruct more efficiently.

INSTANT DEATH
-Keep dungeon mobs immune to instant death. Keep all dungeon BOSSES immune to instant death. Dungeon trash is just that- trash. Be it on a normal job or Blue Mage, we always take the path of least resistance to get the job done. Despite Blue Mage having access to instant death spells, it is not necessarily getting dungeons done any faster than a normal group. The normal strategy for the non limited jobs is to take all the mobs and AoE them down. This goes much faster some times for normal play despite the existence of instant death on Blue Mage. It's a little frustrating that Blue Mage is considered to trivialize dungeon runs, when the fact of the matter is, Tanks will group the mobs and they get AoE'd to death. There is functionally no difference in triviality when it comes to trash mobs.

CONCLUSION
Overall I think Blue Mage is on its way to being in a great spot. My opinion has not changed on that. I'm very excited to see it catch up to the jobs. Though I have my gripes about not being able to do main content, Blue Mage is undeniably a fun job to play. So fun infact, that I'd rather be playing it in the main content with other jobs. With that, I welcome what is to come in patch 5.45, will enjoy it for what it is, and keep calling upon the developers to make it a real job by next expansion.