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

[Melichoir]

Yes, it would be what some static would do. Not all, like I said time and again we cannot control how they wanna do things. Yeah it’ll be a Heavensward savage raid all over again. But you’re looking at it without a job gauge to control its power. At this point in time there is nothing stopping players playing blue to use powerful skills. Hence why I suggested a concept of build a job gauge for it.

Most statics would do this, because this has been the trend we've seen already in SB and HW.

Yeah we have players who want to clear dungeons quickly, so to prevent that it would either better up the rewards in Duty roulette but even then DPS queues will be filled with all blue mages. No matter what you do there will always be the group of people having the mindset of let's clear this dungeon over with XXXX Class. Though I like to address again that Blue Mage doesn’t have a job gauge as of now. So we are still testing the waters on how it still can be implemented.

Most players want this. I run tank predominately and of the 2000+ dungeon/trial content, I can only think of a small handful of times when party members wanted to take time doing it. The most common thing is "Pull big and pull hard to get this done." and if I dont do it, someone in party will insist. So player tendency is generally get things done fast. BLUs with their skill sets will be where thats at. It seems you understand that BLU is gonna cause problems with how DF/PF work given their skill sets.

Well the other compromise of not nerfing would be to outright restrict it from Duty Finder so all DPS have a chance to pull their weight in the dungeon and people will stop complaining.

This would probably be the best direction to go to allow BLU have more content access, but Im sure you would agree that the immediate knee jerk reaction would be "It's not really a full class/BLU is being punished". It undermines what youre trying to do. It will still be limited.

If changes to the skill isn’t necessary then we could do what I have suggested in the document, if we wanna allow the use of monster skills as well as having a job gauge or rotation, then the best we can look at is how Blue Mage worked in FFXI.....If blue were to have a rotation it’ll be the reverse of a Red Mage. Where melee is the starter or Physical Blue Mage Spells and then a magical combo to follow it up.

Yes, this would be semi functional, where youd use a rotation to build up resources to use BLU skills. My immediate thought though is this seems a bit to thematically similar to RDM, even if its inversed. RMD Does the hybrid caster/melee thing, SMN has pets, and BLM is glass cannon magic man. Having blue use both melee/caster would kind of overlap with RDM in a thematic sense. This wouldnt be inherently bad but it would raise some quizzical eyebrows. The only issue then is role selection issues. How would this function for healer particularly.

Gate spells that are learned from the strongest foes that aren’t common like the primals or raid bosses and to unlock them in combat you have to fill up that gauge with your setup of your spells and combos. Learn to make your rotation as a Blue Mage cause with a variety of monster spells, you can make as many combos as you want. Making it a unique customizable job. Just somewhat similar to FFXI’s Blue Mage. Staying true to the idea of Blue Mage being a mage that uses monster skills with them having either having a revamp the type of weapons they can have so they can have a weapon skill. Maybe like a chain whip or a scimitar. The choice of it being a cane is somewhat unorthodox but I can understand because in FFXI Blue Mages can use clubs which are mainly meant for magical attack potency rather than melee. It doesn’t need to be a weapon skill they can combo it from a monster’s physical skill before going into a magic combo.

The issues then, since were talking about learned skills in a DF or PF environment, comes down a few things. For one, how many skills do you need to bring a BLU into a dungeon? You would have to enforce a minimum. Then it comes down to which skills can and cant be learned/used. For example, technically you can learn about any skill currently as long as you meet the basics of seeing the enemy die and tagging it and not being dead. Not impossible, but you could get mountain buster at lvl 10 with an undersized party. So having a BLU come into a low level dungeon via DF but having Mountain Buster (or similar) is a balance issue. Not game breaking, but annoying enough. The only current solution I can see that is viable is skills have a gauge cost, and the stronger skills eat more of the gauge. For example, you could learn Mountain buster at lvl 1, but if it takes 60 energy, and your gauge has a max of 30 at that level, there is no point in learning it other than getting it out of the way. In synced content, gauge would sync down to appropriate level to prevent certain skills. As for skills needed, a tier system would need to be implemented - you need 15 skills to queue for dungeons between lvl 15-20. 20 Skills for 20-30, 25 for 30-40...etc. This way you need a bare minimum of abilities so you cant go in without skills.

Beyond that youd need to set up skill into 4 categories: Defense(Tank), Restoration(Heals), Offense(DPS), and Neutral (all aspects). Remove aetherial mimicry from the game and provide stances instead that you learn as you level of. Each stance grants a bonus that would operate on +5% more damage, or +10% Defense/HP, etc, but in activating these stances, You lose access to all off categories save the neutral aspected stuff which can be used universally. If you do decide not to use any stance, you have access to the full kit but wont be able to use DF cause you cant fulfill a role.

The final thing still ends up being that certain skills are just that detrimentally strong that they would have to be nerfed. I gave it thought regarding some of this, and the thing that would have to be done to mitigate against this would be debuff the boss twice, so that lets say you use Off Guard, the boss gets a buff or bonus that prevents the reapplication of it for 60 seconds. It isnt perfect but that would help fix atleast one spell. Beyond that, youd still have to figure out how final sting works among other things (create special resistances to it possibly where the boss actively mitigates against these kind of attacks as to make them not worth while overall, or make it a specialized execute that is only useable below 5% hp or something). The other way is just redesigning how final sting operates, where rather than killing you, it just reduces HP to 1 and has a looooong CD on it. But these are two examples that would need to be addressed, and if you want BLU to flex and be any role, there is a ton of work that needs to be done in regards to how tank and healer roles are.

And while the suggestions I provided might work, I want to remind you that these kind of things would require rebuilding the class from the ground up. This isnt something I think the Devs are interested in doing.

[Deceptus]

First and foremost they HAVE to do something about the many abilities that all basically do the same thing, but with a different element. How many 220 potency attacks are there? 8 or so?

Because those elements, as it stands now, are absolutely pointless in non-Masked Carnival content. Even in the Carnival, hitting the right element isn't that much of a buff.

[Melichoir]

First and foremost they HAVE to do something about the many abilities that all basically do the same thing, but with a different element. How many 220 potency attacks are there? 8 or so?

Because those elements, as it stands now, are absolutely pointless in non-Masked Carnival content. Even in the Carnival, hitting the right element isn't that much of a buff.

Almost all abilities do around 210-220 except for the specialty ones (Final Sting, Mountain Buster, etc). Even the AoE abilities do the same potency more or less. Theyre more useful with Condensed Libra, but as I mentioned before, you only need 3 different skills to maximize that effect. To make the spells worthwhile, They would have to have secondary effects or chaining effects.

[ReiMakoto]

BLU currently has a "best" dps setup they can do for raids. If they took that sort of set up, removed the aetheric mimicry buffs and remove (or heavily tweak) the instant death/ suicide moves and gave each spell leveling requirements you have a Job with a rotation just like any other. Current BLU's design is interesting, because a few arbitrarily strong skills, the lack of level sync and the casual powercreep of newer expansions is what pushes it into the "overpowered" category (as if you do not use these skills such as aetheric mimicry and the death skills, blus dps output is actually about right for a level 60 magical dps)

The real question is does BLU need to be this way? Short answer, no but the Devs want it to be this way.

Long Answer: From a historic perspective of BLU across the franchise it is rarely completely overpowered, and even in some of the games where its at its strongest it is usually outshone in the end game by other classes/abilities. They always had situationally powerful tools, like level 5 death, however so did all the other casters, like death, warp and tornado on the other casters. In most games they ended up being a powerful support dps, with the occasionally situationally powerful move.

As for identity, well, blue mage is the most flexible identity wise in the whole franchise. It has spanned from a traditional caster, to a sword weilding light armoured class, all the way to using cats to attack. And the way that the spells are learned changes on an installment by installment basis, with some games having you just use items to learn the skills, and others you need to eat your opponent.

As for the number of spells argument, blu actually doesnt need to learn all that many skills, usually in a game they only have a few more skills than a black mage, and in some cases even less.

HOWEVER

The current version of BLU is what the devs wanted to do. Does it have a gameplay identity of its own that could develop into a viable endgame job? Certainly. They are the only class in the game to have ogcds which have cast times, as well as having unique skill interactions not seen on other jobs, (bristle/whistle, Surpranaka, and moon flute to name a few). A magical dps rotation could surely be made out of these skills, that much is very much not up for debate.

The real question is should they do this, and what would they gain by doing it. As it says in my signature, not very many peoples seem to have engaged thoroughly in BLU in its current iteration, the morbol mount aquisition rate globally is woefully low, and ever if you were to go by cute justice minion aquistion, its still only 5% of the playerbase, and you dont even really need to play blu to get it, and this isnt even taking account the number of bought clears or people who even cleared just to sell the conten (on my server theres only like 30 people who have the morbol mount, and there are content sellers based on my server so thats not a good look for popularity). Personally, I find blu content to be pretty aweful, and as a lifelong blue mage fan I'm forever disapointed by what they did to my favourite job in the franchise, however other than the fact it has practically failed to engage the vast majority of the playerbase what would be the reason to have a an unlimited blue mage?

Well, assuming that the limited content stayed too, you essentially get to have an over half finished Job, and side content, two birds with one stone. Yoshi P has been saying its becoming more and more difficult to make new jobs as time goes on, and that they struggle to get 2 new jobs per expansion now, and we can see this with how much GNB and DNC are missing compared to other jobs added in newer expansion. Having an Unlimited "duty set" blue mage as a new expansion job largely cuts down on most of the work required to add a new job, as the animation and rotational framework of BLU is already completed from the limited side, so its a lot less work for SE to balance this version of BLU. Obviously, I just want this because I want to main blu and dislike the content blu can currently do, however in is undenyable that having a best of bothworlds approach with an unlimited blue is not only possible, but would also be less rescources for square than creating a new job from scratch.
Even though I dislike BLUs current content I would never want to take it away from the very small amount of people who do do it. Its already two different teams that work on regular jobs and limited anyway, so a best of both worlds approach would not add too much workload to either team.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[ReiMakoto]

First and foremost they HAVE to do something about the many abilities that all basically do the same thing, but with a different element. How many 220 potency attacks are there? 8 or so?

Because those elements, as it stands now, are absolutely pointless in non-Masked Carnival content. Even in the Carnival, hitting the right element isn't that much of a buff.

8 is an underestimate, around the half of blues spells are 200-220 potency attacks that just vary in cast time, element and status.

Edit: this isn't also include the repeat primal skills (eruption=feather rain, shock strike= mountain buster) and repeat status skills (chirp=acorn bomb, and northerlies=rams voice the only difference is one takes 2 gcds but applies a longer freeze, thrilling diversity)

[SpiralMask]

The issues then, since were talking about learned skills in a DF or PF environment, comes down a few things. For one, how many skills do you need to bring a BLU into a dungeon? You would have to enforce a minimum. Then it comes down to which skills can and cant be learned/used. For example, technically you can learn about any skill currently as long as you meet the basics of seeing the enemy die and tagging it and not being dead. Not impossible, but you could get mountain buster at lvl 10 with an undersized party. So having a BLU come into a low level dungeon via DF but having Mountain Buster (or similar) is a balance issue. Not game breaking, but annoying enough.

just wanna point out that dancers get a quick 1k potency aoe on a short cooldown staggeringly early and that content at those levels is absolutely unprepared for already, but the guage and having skills spend based on their power is a great idea for both the resource-management and power-balance side.

and the idea for a timed enemy buff preventing status re-application is a much more forgiving way to handle the current resistances system and their debuff list (you get three uses of that status effect and then it's a dead skill on your hotbar the rest of the fight). if BLU statuses were able to bypass base resistance but only on a timer that'd be a nice QoL--a quick and dirty alternative might be something like SCH's emergency tactics, being a ~20s cooldown that would let your next spell bypass enemy resistances (but not immunity).

[ReiMakoto]

just wanna point out that dancers get a quick 1k potency aoe on a short cooldown staggeringly early and that content at those levels is absolutely unprepared for already, but the guage and having skills spend based on their power is a great idea for both the resource-management and power-balance side.

^ This, all older content is broken due to the power creep of newer jobs. DNC is a blender at lower levels because it has both standard step, and very powerful aoe combo from level 15. When stormblood launched rdm had Verthunder/aero at level 15 also with the same strength they had at level 70. This can be seen across all jobs, theres a reason why arr content is stomped so easily these days and most players have never seen even half of the mechanics these dungeons have to offer. Ultimately as well, BLU could have level requirements attached to their spells when in duty finder content, so even if learned earlier you cant use the spell if youre sync'd below a certain level, as most spells have a dungeon/trial source as well as an overworld, the level requirement for the spell could be just made to be the lowest level mob that can cast that spell as a quick and dirty blanket fix (you'd still have eruption at low level, but also again, see dancer)

[Deceptus]

TL : DR BLU as it is currently designed is a half-assed mess that the developers don't seem to know what to do with.

I think the worst thing IMHO about BLU is simply how contradictory the developers have been about it. It's like it's simply another aspect of FFXIV they simply don't understand despite being in charge of developing it.

1) They want BLU to be these extremely strong limited job yet make virtually everything immune to it's most powerful spells. When those spells DO work, it's an amazingly fun experience. Hitting a combo and laying waste to mobs? Insanely fun. Problem is, it's essentially repeated in various forms in the Blu kit. Ram's Voice / Dragon voice, Aqua Breath / Northerlies , Aquabreath / High Voltage, Petrify / Drill Cannons, White Knight's Tour / Black Knight's Tour. All essentially the same effects. Debuff a mob, deal high damage.

Remember when we figured out you could 1 shot FATES with it? The Holy Sh!t moment? That was then patched out later, because damn having fun right?

Hell the start of combos are there, they just need fleshed out.

Imagine, Aquabreath > Northerlies > then Glass Dance to shatter them for super high damage. 1, 2, 3.

2) They want BLU to be solo style content and then require you to group up for it's strongest spells or it's other content?

3) Ok, so now they want you to group for content but other than DPS, the other two roles aren't fleshed out at all. Healing is essentially spam your heal on the tank who gets hit massively BECAUSE THEIR BASE ARMOR TYPE IS CLOTH. Mighty Guard's 40% damage reduction doesn't help much when it reduces your damage by 70%. When their version of "mitigation" is essentially Diamondback, something is wrong. They have to result to using White Wind to generate aggro because of that 70% damage penalty (making their one aggro generating ability, The Look, do a pitiful 39 potency per hit)

Remember when tanks actually had tank stances that lowered their damage output? Yeah me too, and then SE removed that damage penalty because the player base didn't want it but then they slapped a WORSE penalty on BLUs.

I could go on and on, but I re-iterate: BLU as it is currently designed is a half-assed mess that the developers don't seem to know what to do with.

BLU could have level requirements attached to their spells when in duty finder content, so even if learned earlier you cant use the spell if youre sync'd below a certain level, as most spells have a dungeon/trial source as well as an overworld, the level requirement for the spell could be just made to be the lowest level mob that can cast that spell as a quick and dirty blanket fix (you'd still have eruption at low level, but also again, see dancer)

All they would have had to do is make acquiring 4-5 mob skill as part every step of the job quests and make those mandatory if you want to participate in DF activity.

[ReiMakoto]

All they would have had to do is make acquiring 4-5 mob skill as part every step of the job quests and make those mandatory if you want to participate in DF activity.

Theres something I find incredibly ironic about the fact that most BLU job quests already make you go and learn a spell and bar your progression through the limited job content if you don't do that because the game can check what spells you have/ haven't learned, yet people say it wouldn't be Blue Mage if you had to go and learn a spell every job quest for it to access the duty finder, and there would be apparantly no way of knowing what spells the blu has :/

[Melichoir]

just wanna point out that dancers get a quick 1k potency aoe on a short cooldown staggeringly early and that content....

This is kinda moot because 1k potency on a dancer doesnt translate into 1k potency on another class. Potency translation issues vary a little bit. I forget which tank it was, but it has something like a 500 Potency attack that does more damage than an 800 potency attack on another tank...I think its a tank. Anyways, the issue isnt having mountain buster at lvl one. Its having Mountain buster, Eruption, Glass Dance, Shock Strike, etc at low levels - all instant cast, all high damage aoes. All with ok CDs. This doesnt even talk about casted abilities like Rams Voice - 220 potency aoe for BLU that is an issue considering their single target abilities do the same potency. To put this in perspective, this would be like taking Fire I on BLM and turning it into an AoE without any drawbacks.

Also resistances are a bit finicky. Im aware of the negative returns (more you use it, less time stunned till immune) but no, it does not become dead for the rest of the fight. The resistance the enemy gets will wear off over time on most mobs so long as you dont keep spamming stun or something. Yeah, having the ability to actually hit enemies with debuffs but they gain resistances to said debuffs so you cant have 4 of the same class keep spamming it would help, especially with abilities like Off Guard. But it then runs into how powerful those debuffs are. To strong and then said class becomes mandatory at higher raid content. You see a version of this concept with BLU already in raids - Moon Flute and Final Sting are must have. Dont bother coming if you dont have them. Opening up BLU to raid content means that this kind of stuff will have to be tweaked. An in depth gauge management system would help but I dunno if that will solve all the problems.

All they would have had to do is make acquiring 4-5 mob skill as part every step of the job quests and make those mandatory if you want to participate in DF activity.

Still think an Energy system might be better. Allowing players to learn skills as they see fit in a soft sense should be fine, but again, if you need 50 blue energy to use mountain buster and when youre synced to lvl 16 dungeon, you only have 30, you wont be able to cast it even though you have it as a skill.