Silly Blue Mage Solos at 70

[Vyrerus]

So Blue Mage solos this, Blue Mage solos that. There was a really impressive Tsukuyomi normal solo at the start of the month by a Youtuber named Jalebait

I started in hard on BLU around then, unaware of it until I did it myself.

Been hooked on BLU solos ever since. From the lowliest Tam Tara Deepcroft up to the Father of Dragons. It's been a blast!

Anyone else having fun on BLU?

Alphascape 2.0 Solo

Alphascape 1.0 Solo

Suzaku

Edit: Playlist of Solo Learning/Leveling BLU Journey

[Kaurhz]

I'm eagerly awaiting for someone to try to start soloing the Extremes.

[Vyrerus]

I'm eagerly awaiting for someone to try to start soloing the Extremes.

Other than old Heavensward ones, and perhaps maaaybe Lakshmi, it won't really be possible due to the enrages. And then other mechanics that BLU can't stop, like Susano's lightning freeze/catching and breaking the sword.

[MPK]

But the casuals told me that BLU sucks

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

But the casuals told me that BLU sucks

I can't tell you how tired I am of the meme that Blue Mage is bad because you couldn't break the game over your knee at Level 20 when you had shitty gear and almost no spells beyond the support ones.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I can't tell you how tired I am of the meme that Blue Mage is bad because you couldn't break the game over your knee at Level 20 when you had shitty gear and almost no spells beyond the support ones.

It was pretty broken even then. With a little help you could get 1000 Needles at an extremely low level and then repetitively one shot stuff till about the mid 40s.

[Kacho_Nacho]

But the casuals told me that BLU sucks

A lot of individuals can't wrap their mind around what a "limited" job is. It's too bad, really.

I'm pretty sure all the caterwauling has killed any chance of there being any more limited jobs introduced in the future.

Personally, I'd love to see more.

[Wilford111]

But the casuals told me that BLU sucks

Leveling BLU sucks. BLU at level 50 sucks.
It wasn't until recently (as far as I can tell) that people actually started to like the job.
I still want it to be an unrestricted class, personally.

[Shougun]

Leveling BLU sucks. BLU at level 50 sucks.
It wasn't until recently (as far as I can tell) that people actually started to like the job.
I still want it to be an unrestricted class, personally.

I've seen a lot of changes to blue, and I think strongly they are accounting for feedback, I believe there are a few more tweaks it needs but absolutely it seems like they're changing it into more of a content that honestly would have been far better received if they had released it at the state it is now vs was. Though there are a few more things as said that I do think they need to adjust. Unless you have people in flavor of the moment / month, or friends on your time schedule (lucky you), you're going to have to do a lot of this stuff solo, but frankly early level blue mage spells are just not super exciting even the OP ones.

Their later spell designs are pretty cool and I think if they took those design style / thoughts and brought it back down it would greatly help out the job. Say like 1k needle is clearly absolutely OP for a very long time, but what does that spell do to the gameplay? 111111111111111 heal 111111111111111. Meanwhile if you remove that skill the job just became very painful to level because most other things are not nearly like that in tier quality. Then your OP skill looses out but you've for many situations still pretty simple / non-very interesting kit, you can get the dungeon skills which tend to be more interesting but often you'll be faced with doing it unsynced which means leveling past interesting content with a bad kit so you can then use that bad kit overpowered to get a chance to earn small pieces of a better kit. Beyond that there are also things like long self silences, locks, or cast times on blink/movement skills, which take away a lot of the "woah" factor in using them (makes them feel quite balanced on a job I think many just see as an opportunity to goof off, which certainly when you get your full kit is pretty much what the job feels like). So taking a pass through all the lower level skills, combos, effects, punishments, going through and adjusting the early play with the assumption people are not going to get FOTM / have dedicated on demand help would be a huge benefit to the early perspective (if you do get help then obviously this stuff is less painful, like you see people talking about how it's not a big issue but they were power leveled and had 100% acquisition rate experience in a group).

It doesn't happen often, and to be honest the later spells do the opposite (which is great! many of the 60-70 spells are equally or just plain /more/ interesting than their source), but any skill that is clearly less interesting than the monster source should be revisited. Fire Angon, before all the buffs, changes, and better skills released at 60 - 70 had me particularly salty because it was like "you said you wanted to give it a classic feel, why in the world is this really cool boss spell sooo lame? Why???" lol. Angel Whisper isn't from a boss but is a bit sad to be relatively easy to call the worst raise in the game given that it usually has been a really neat spell in other FF games, I think they should try to add some extra effects. Maybe warden's paean effect on revival, and if you've basic instinct / are alone will apply instant self raise (instant meaning technically the game doesn't see that you died, as that would totally mess up boss mechanics, just that your hp hit 1 and then immediately bounced back up with maybe a very short invlun period).

On that concept of equal to or better of source another would be on the idea of % chance spells, something in the later part they clearly showed some more exciting ideas like Ultravibration, and I think it would be nice to represent that downwards as well. Miss miss miss miss miss miss, imo, is not really an ideal experience imo (as it's 'feel bad' for missing, and 'feel bad' for spamming the same button over and over). They don't all have to look the same but I believe changing those in unique ways would be valuable to the general feel but also the gameplay element itself (allowing those skills to fit into a greater rotation / structure vs "spam this till it works"). Of course there can be many ways that works, and theme to the skill might be more fun, some may have charges that trigger from uses certain elements, maybe long cooldowns that can be mitigated by certain actions, etc, etc.

I think this one is harder but some tweaks to the progression / stats of some elements to make self sustain less spammed at certain points in the job's identity- there were a few moments that was like "yeah I can solo this, but also I cast this spell WAY TOO MANY TIMES" lol. Watching some of the streams of content I don't have the abilities to do yet was like watching people solo in FFXI as Red Mage or something. Problem of course if you're too aggressive it would make blue mage literally impossible to kill in almost any situation, which would honestly take some fun away.

Also want to note that major use of blue mage is what I said, before we had more details on blue mage, would be the best use of blue mage if it had to be limited... What people use it for is basically what was said it would be used for. Sure they've that one time group semi-hard raid stuff but that is one off, what fills it's use most seems to be the absolute rampaging of content both solo and in groups for things like mog stones.

I had a thread on it to see how people feel their perspective on the job changed/evolved or what they wanted to discuss, was a little sad not to see more of the vocal for and against fans for the job comment, though my comment basically came down to I think it's on the right tracks, more interesting spells exist, more enjoyable, tweaks that were appreciated, but if they're certain to keep it limited a few more tweaks and I think the job would be significantly more enjoyable in a far more consistent groupset of players (if you're part of the group that took advantage of FOTM or have friends on demand blue mage has always been a bit more forgiving; otherwise, I still think there are a few major pitfalls to the experience that are the type that are fixable/adjustable ones without having to do anything super radical).

Also surprised that deep dungeon blue leaderboard or eureka type stuff hasn't been allowed yet. I feel that would be pretty fun for a while.

[van_arn]

The real tragedy is this doesn’t award log credit.