Your Dream Job

[MirronTulaxia]

Eh, doing Blue Mage that way would be... not really super feasible. It isn't just about balance of the skills themselves (they're a huge hodgepodge so it would be a lot of work to actually create something resembling a normal job) but about how acquisition of the skills isn't reliable either. While I think they could just toss the job into Duty Finder as is it would cause a lot of problems.

I'd definitely like to see them do more with Maiming Gear though, it's kind of weird that Dragoons are the only ones who use it. But given Ninja and Scouting Gear it's just kind of the norm with Melee DPS to have things kind of oddly split up that way.

[SpiralMask]

Eh, doing Blue Mage that way would be... not really super feasible. It isn't just about balance of the skills themselves (they're a huge hodgepodge so it would be a lot of work to actually create something resembling a normal job) but about how acquisition of the skills isn't reliable either. While I think they could just toss the job into Duty Finder as is it would cause a lot of problems.

I'd definitely like to see them do more with Maiming Gear though, it's kind of weird that Dragoons are the only ones who use it. But given Ninja and Scouting Gear it's just kind of the norm with Melee DPS to have things kind of oddly split up that way.

acquisition could just as easily be tied to job quests (like literally everyone else), or make more use of BLU's already implemented "you must have X, Y and Z actions learned to do the next job quest" mechanic to enforce whatever 'mandatory' skills are required by level, or even have it as a check for the duty finder like with level, ilevel (and probably job crystal, c'mon people), etc. something, ANYTHING would be better than the current design of "i hope you have 3/7/23 people at gunpoint, or half your kit is barred to you forever--please feel free to kill yourself in any of the fire/physical/healing flavors we have given you, and enjoy the... extra weekly tomestones and nothing else". Skill-wise, a lot of the hodgepodge currently comes from the class using the removed-two-expansions-ago element system (which is why we have eight flavors of "220 potency cone aoe") and assortment of apply-three-times-and-they're-gone-forever status effects (if the enemy wasn't completely immune in the first place, making that a waste of hotbar space). The majority of them could be pared down or chosen from more iconic skills in ff14 (not everything needs to be historically accurate to the wider series, make them EORZEAN blue mages) and made more unique individually rather than the wide-but-shallow approach right now. it would also be incredibly easy to rationalize in the class' lore as "BLU's use monster aether, but as a human being there are sometimes unexpected side-effects(such as not applying vuln stacks/broken status/DoT every time an enemy is hit with it, or why it's potency is weaker/stronger than the base creature's)"

I'll stop ranting now.

and to be fair, me and friends were assuming DNC would get scouting gear so things were more evenly distributed back in ShB's announcement of it, but here we are.

[Jirah]

Gunner, already had my wish but they took away my bullets!!!

[MirronTulaxia]

If you tied it to job quests and levels then you're breaking a part of what makes Blue Mage what it is. And if the abilities are not legitimate enemy abilities (even the totems are pushing it to me) then it's also a big issue, which means completely reworking them from what enemies use isn't fitting the job either. So far the answers people have either hit balance really hard (just toss Blue Mages into there without changing things, maybe add some restrictions in terms of what they can use) or result in losing what makes the job what it is (that it uses legitimate monster magic).

And I really don't get why Ninja got its own special fancy armor category either. Personally feel they should rebalance the armor categories, but given how they make armor by piecemeal and such it's kind of irrelevant. Healer and Caster after all share armor just with recolors pretty often, same goes for Scouting and Aiming. I guess it matters for the sake of loot distribution, but I don't see any way to fit it when Melee DPS uses three different categories while the other four roles are all unified in the same armor.

[ReiMakoto]

If you tied it to job quests and levels then you're breaking a part of what makes Blue Mage what it is. And if the abilities are not legitimate enemy abilities (even the totems are pushing it to me) then it's also a big issue, which means completely reworking them from what enemies use isn't fitting the job either. So far the answers people have either hit balance really hard (just toss Blue Mages into there without changing things, maybe add some restrictions in terms of what they can use) or result in losing what makes the job what it is (that it uses legitimate monster magic).

And I really don't get why Ninja got its own special fancy armor category either. Personally feel they should rebalance the armor categories, but given how they make armor by piecemeal and such it's kind of irrelevant. Healer and Caster after all share armor just with recolors pretty often, same goes for Scouting and Aiming. I guess it matters for the sake of loot distribution, but I don't see any way to fit it when Melee DPS uses three different categories while the other four roles are all unified in the same armor.

Blue already breaks that stuff itself, the spells we currently learn as blu function differently to the spells that the actual monsters cast (see chirp for example or devour, there a fair few that are different). Blu is the most flexible job in the final fantasy franchise, and has had vastly different identities depending on which game it is in, wether that means learning spells from items and not monsters like ff8, or using cats and catfood to cast the magic like in bravely second, or eating monsters to gain skills like in ff9. There is many ways that it could have been done in ffxiv, the problem was they were too tunnel visioned into how it was in FFXI. Much like how there is a different blu identity for most games its in, ffxiv blu could have had its own identity and learning technique as well, and it would be just as consistent as long as the skills used were monster abilities, and it could have been a regular job. They've made it into it own side content now, and if they actually add something fun to do on it then that'll be great, but hiding behind lore and identity is a flimsy shield when it doesnt hold up to any sort of scruitiny.

Who knows what the future will bring for BLU, I for one hope we get a best of both worlds approach with an "endgame blu" and a "limited blu" so both sides are happy, however who know, all I do know is they'll have to do something to engage people, if current morbol mount aquisition rates are anything to go by, only 0.01% of the playerbase have engaged with blu, and most of that is from japan, if you go off of cute justice its 5%, but thats a minion you can get without even doing anything on blu except get it to 60 which takes like 20 mins from 50.

[Billythepancake]

SCH before SE decided they hated healers.

[Jirah]

SCH before SE decided they hated healers.

So...why is SCH inferior to 4.0 SCH?

[Billythepancake]

So...why is SCH inferior to 4.0 SCH?

In terms of doing it's job? it's fine. In terms of things to do, it's waaaaaaay more boring and clunky. Fairy is a joke, does almost no healing, have to weave in abilities just to either have a massive delay at best, or have her outright not use them at worst. During the vast amount of downtime you're given as a healer, all you do is spam broil and refresh a single dot once every 30 seconds, once in awhile you may weave in an energy drain. That's the TL;DR version, and not in a big mood to go on a giant rant right now, can contact me on discord if you want to know more

[Gojin]

necromancer

[MirronTulaxia]

Blue already breaks that stuff itself, the spells we currently learn as blu function differently to the spells that the actual monsters cast (see chirp for example or devour, there a fair few that are different). Blu is the most flexible job in the final fantasy franchise, and has had vastly different identities depending on which game it is in, wether that means learning spells from items and not monsters like ff8, or using cats and catfood to cast the magic like in bravely second, or eating monsters to gain skills like in ff9. There is many ways that it could have been done in ffxiv, the problem was they were too tunnel visioned into how it was in FFXI. Much like how there is a different blu identity for most games its in, ffxiv blu could have had its own identity and learning technique as well, and it would be just as consistent as long as the skills used were monster abilities, and it could have been a regular job. They've made it into it own side content now, and if they actually add something fun to do on it then that'll be great, but hiding behind lore and identity is a flimsy shield when it doesnt hold up to any sort of scruitiny.

Who knows what the future will bring for BLU, I for one hope we get a best of both worlds approach with an "endgame blu" and a "limited blu" so both sides are happy, however who know, all I do know is they'll have to do something to engage people, if current morbol mount aquisition rates are anything to go by, only 0.01% of the playerbase have engaged with blu, and most of that is from japan, if you go off of cute justice its 5%, but thats a minion you can get without even doing anything on blu except get it to 60 which takes like 20 mins from 50.

Blue Mages have had a pretty consistent identity. “Abilities monsters use, learned in a way different from other categories”. While the second varies from game to game it is consistent in that it is unique.