Suggesting Ideas for Blue Mage with feedback & Removing Limited Job Status

[Colt47]

Competitive play is basically the only reason that BLU is not a main job. People who do savage and ultimate prioritize the best possible group layout one can have in order to clear content. If BLU punches above other jobs with fixed skills, than those that do savage content would all switch to BLU, the devs would have to power up the bosses to make them challenging, and then everyone else has to get to the level BLU is at. The inverse can happen as well where BLU ends up getting nerfed into the floor and now suddenly it's way more effort than it's worth to play BLU, as you do not get skills the same way as other jobs.

Then there is PvP where the versatility of BLU would outshine anything the other roles could accomplish, so everyone would end up playing BLU and it would be BLU vs BLU all day.

I think the biggest hurdle BLU has, however, is that it doesn't use rotations or any kind of finger dance. It's about making a decision on what move set to bring to a fight and if you do not have that move set than you have to find a way to get it. Then, once you get that move set the BLU character has a far easier time keeping DPS up or healing than other dedicated classes because of how it's moves are not about rotations. It's like having a simplified PVP hot bar in a non-pvp setting.

[ReiMakoto]

Competitive play is basically the only reason that BLU is not a main job. People who do savage and ultimate prioritize the best possible group layout one can have in order to clear content. If BLU punches above other jobs with fixed skills, than those that do savage content would all switch to BLU, the devs would have to power up the bosses to make them challenging, and then everyone else has to get to the level BLU is at. The inverse can happen as well where BLU ends up getting nerfed into the floor and now suddenly it's way more effort than it's worth to play BLU, as you do not get skills the same way as other jobs.

Then there is PvP where the versatility of BLU would outshine anything the other roles could accomplish, so everyone would end up playing BLU and it would be BLU vs BLU all day.

I think the biggest hurdle BLU has, however, is that it doesn't use rotations or any kind of finger dance. It's about making a decision on what move set to bring to a fight and if you do not have that move set than you have to find a way to get it. Then, once you get that move set the BLU character has a far easier time keeping DPS up or healing than other dedicated classes because of how it's moves are not about rotations. It's like having a simplified PVP hot bar in a non-pvp setting.

This is not correct.

1. Savage has limitations in place where if you do not pick a diverse party you are at a severe disadvantage, for every of the same job you take you get nerfed limit break generation for every repeat class you take, and if you dont take one of every type of role you get a severe party wide damage and health penalty.
2. PvP uses its own set of mechanics and skills to the base game,this isnt an argument
3. BLU absolutely has a rotation if you think it doesnt then you need to take another look at your skills. BLUs basic rotation is keeping up a bristled song of torment and then using filler, however every 30, 60, 90 and 2 mins you have a different burst window revolving around primal skills/ devour and magic hammer and off guard. It is about as involved a rotation as any other level 60 job, it just doesnt have a job gauge.

[SpiralMask]

I would also like to share that it is time for the Maiden's Rhapsody Event, go on and do the event and maybe try doing it as a Blue Mage ;3

far as i've found, BLU can accept and participate in but not actually complete/turn in those quests

[TeraTyrantShadic]

far as i've found, BLU can accept and participate in but not actually complete/turn in those quests

Yeah, so enjoy it as it will play FFXI battle theme ;3 Just like FFXI. Once a Blue Mage, always a Blue Mage! I am still playing FFXI to this day and improving my Blue Mage every step of the day with my Geomancer. I am getting off topic there, I said to participate as Blue Mage in these Fates to have fun with everyone.

[Shougun]

3. BLU absolutely has a rotation if you think it doesnt then you need to take another look at your skills. BLUs basic rotation is keeping up a bristled song of torment and then using filler, however every 30, 60, 90 and 2 mins you have a different burst window revolving around primal skills/ devour and magic hammer and off guard. It is about as involved a rotation as any other level 60 job, it just doesnt have a job gauge.

Blue mage's rotation is probably one of the factors that bothers me with the current vision of blue, outside of it not being how I'd like it (either solo lord for old content or normal or both) which is selfish, but of course I'd like it to be the way I'd like it.. would be silly to ask for it to be any other way lol (and unlike some content I've no interest for, like Ultimate, I feel less guilty being selfish since I had had an active interest in blue mage). Is that given their own system blue mage's rotation/systems, pretty much all of the interesting parts, are put behind group content. So in order to make your job interesting you've got to do group content, if you don't then your blue mage is stuck being the bad version, a version significantly (imo) less interesting than even normal jobs which imo really hurts the whole limited fun of it. Sure you'll get lots of spells but a poor shadow of mechanics, comparing it to itself through group content and to any other actual normal job.

While I feel you could lay out a factual claim to it (by making an in depth comparison), I'm just going to lean into my own emotional/subjective vibe that blue mage is less mechanically / game play interesting than normal jobs and at the cost of being limited which makes it hurt to feel that way- at least when you have the lessor non-group kitted version of blue (there is a rotation that grows when you get all the primal spells and such). Getting the good part of blue mage requires doing that group content, so definitely not a even slightly solo focused job (that dang slide that they first sold blue mage on haunts me lol), and imo.. in their own creation of blue mage I question if the structure of how blue mage was made and organized is really the best option even in their own vision of a group focused concept of a limited job. And of course I wish it wasn't what they did anyways, which makes it further frustrating that it happened the way it did (that I feel even at their own goal I'm not sure in blue mage's design). Frustrating in the like "le sigh" not like hate mail and threats which is not okay (also it's easier to destroy than create so I apologize if a dev ever feels my salt and it hurts, keyboard warrior'ing is much easier- I'm just trying to share my frustration in hopes to either see change or lack of similar events happening exact same way), so it's that first world annoyance and definitely not keeps me up at night annoyance lol. As a whole the game's imaginary subjective rating hasn't changed because of blue, though I feel it could have increased if blue mage was either solo lord or just a normal job as both would have added value to the game for me and in particular added value in a content that I was actively interested in.

Because of how it requires to grow, it makes the growth require friends, timing on hype/flavor of the patch, lots and lots of waiting for groups, or some sort of charity- else your blue mage will be the bad/extra boring version and I feel that's kinda.. not great of an attribute to have especially for a job that is held back because of it (is limited). Adding onto that I feel that kit building could be a lot more fun if they took off more shackles of balance and worked more into some sort of combos/interactions/underlying mechanics, even FFXI blue mage had a unique system of gaining powerful passives based on certain combinations of spells.

[Colt47]

The main reason they likely haven't made BLU a regular job is due to the gameplay loop for it. Every other Job in the game follows the same loop pattern: Level up, do job quest, get ability. Blue Mage isn't like that at all. Someone could level up to 60 but be missing all sorts of abilities because they have to go out and find monsters with the right abilities. So then they have to design quests that point a blue mage to the right location where the monster is found to get that ability. That may sound fine on paper, but it leads to situations where people have to camp spawn points just to get a monster ability. If they tried this the way they do other classes, through pocket instances related to the story, they'd have to do it for basically every monster ability the blue mage could earn.

[ReiMakoto]

The main reason they likely haven't made BLU a regular job is due to the gameplay loop for it. Every other Job in the game follows the same loop pattern: Level up, do job quest, get ability. Blue Mage isn't like that at all. Someone could level up to 60 but be missing all sorts of abilities because they have to go out and find monsters with the right abilities. So then they have to design quests that point a blue mage to the right location where the monster is found to get that ability. That may sound fine on paper, but it leads to situations where people have to camp spawn points just to get a monster ability. If they tried this the way they do other classes, through pocket instances related to the story, they'd have to do it for basically every monster ability the blue mage could earn.

You can already go through vast quantities of the game on normal jobs not doing job quests and missing tonnes of skills, why is it only a problem with blu?
Also you wouldnt need every monster skill, just enough to form your rotation, they could also use the system currently in place where you cant take the next job quest unless youve learnt x skill. Also totems exist, and instanced fights where you could learn multiple skills, its not as big as a problem as youre making out.

[Flay_wind]

You can already go through vast quantities of the game on normal jobs not doing job quests and missing tonnes of skills, why is it only a problem with blu?
Also you wouldnt need every monster skill, just enough to form your rotation, they could also use the system currently in place where you cant take the next job quest unless youve learnt x skill. Also totems exist, and instanced fights where you could learn multiple skills, its not as big as a problem as youre making out.

To add to this, they could restructure the skills needed for the BLU quests, so you are getting your essentials first. Also space the quest skills better and maybe add them every few levels instead of 10.
They could add Eruption as level 20 quest skill, since there's no reason not to get that asap. Also it's flat 300 potency AoE with no fall off, unlike many of BLUs skills.
Bristle for level 25 quest. Plaincracker for level 30, Bad Breath for level 35 quest. Instead of 1000 Needles they could definitely could make Ram's Voice + Dragon's Voice a requirement for the level 40 quest.
I am not sure how they would need to go for level 50 stuff, since there's a lot of really usefull stuff, maybe they could direct you better and indeed adds some totems.
There could be some more tutorials, like explaining why Bristle + Song of Torment is the right thing to do.

[TeraTyrantShadic]

To add to this, they could restructure the skills needed for the BLU quests, so you are getting your essentials first. Also space the quest skills better and maybe add them every few levels instead of 10.
They could add Eruption as level 20 quest skill, since there's no reason not to get that asap. Also it's flat 300 potency AoE with no fall off, unlike many of BLUs skills.
Bristle for level 25 quest. Plaincracker for level 30, Bad Breath for level 35 quest. Instead of 1000 Needles they could definitely could make Ram's Voice + Dragon's Voice a requirement for the level 40 quest.
I am not sure how they would need to go for level 50 stuff, since there's a lot of really usefull stuff, maybe they could direct you better and indeed adds some totems.
There could be some more tutorials, like explaining why Bristle + Song of Torment is the right thing to do.

This is a better system to be the introduction to playing Blue Mage, maybe create at least 5 to 9 quests in the introduction so that the players knows the different kind of damage, elemental, buff and debuff; in which the quests can teach them how to effectively use it. The Blue Mage job system can be based around having many different play styles as a Blue Mage. An example would be Condensed Libra Blue Mage, creating additional weakness to increase the enemy's damage intake by 5% with the right type of damage, they can even be built to make an enemy even weaker during boss fights. Another Would be OGCD weaving Blue Mage, like samurai but more or less using OGCD spells as a burst of damage and trying to use the spells while they are doing their GCD spells. There is Tank and Healer Blue Mage, but that has yet to be improved upon. If it were to be applied to the current Job system, I think Blue Mage can still have their unique identity without suffering from the current meta job system we have, just means they need to tweak a bit of the spells to fit into a combo.

[Mariel_Crystallie]

snip.

yeah I agree with the tutorial/introduction about elemental stuffs , I'll be honest that I really don't know about it even I already cleared all the carnival.