Update / Revisit Your Blue Mage Thoughts (& Limited Jobs)

[Shougun]

I'll have my own thoughts below but wanted to go for the tl;dr point of the thread first- just update what you think about blue mage and if you want you can mention limited jobs in general. If you love it and want more post it, if you don't post that, whatever is your feeling.


Now onto my thoughts (which you can address or not, really can just post "blue mage / limited jobs rox" or "sux" and would be on topic to me). I just wanted to post my updated thoughts but also see other people's. Also I personally don't want to make my thoughts focused on full job / not, but wanted to be sure I was at least stating as a foreword that I still wish I could have played it normal (and technically I think "both normal and limited" would be potentially the most interesting).

As a future reference when I say 60-70 spells I'm referring to the spells added at the time the job was raised to 60 and raised to 70 (there are some skills that go sub 60 that were added at that time, I include them in this statement).

First note to me is the job ability design from 60 - 70 has been A LOT better. Far more interesting skills in and of themselves and I think also just overall better designed skills (smart design, cool mechanics self contained within the ability, powerful skills that are helpful / add value to your kit, etc). For example, Ultravibration- kills petrified and frozen enemies, on a cooldown. Short description but let's talk about it, first it has two different buffs it responds to, this means that there are multiple potential options NOW and in the FUTURE for this skill. That's amazing, it means you might come back to it or you might be able to make a different use out of the same skill as someone else. It's sort of future proofing. Contrast that to say "use Water blast, increases potency of Water cannon by 100". Honestly that's not awful but it's clearly strongly tied together, and I don't want to suggest that skill can't exist but.. going back to Ultravibration it gives the skill a special sense of longevity and options that I just think is good design choice for blue mage. Next what happens? It kills the enemy- WOW, awesome effect so it'll obviously feel pretty cool but wait do you remember the endless spam of thousand needle? Oh no this skill is going to be non-stop spam and damage the quality of play of the job-- wait no it also has a cooldown! So the skill is powerful, option and future proof, and doesn't damage the rest of your gameplay mechanics. As a final note the skill is also not chance based, so when you use it you get rewarded immediately- it's not spammy with a bunch of wiffing. Might point out how basic instinct also mentions "or when all party members are incapacitated" which adds even further use case to the skill rather than it being just a toggle for solo players, clever.

Missing is not fun imo, especially and particularly when you have solutions that could have been 'better or equal to' not missing a bunch in a row and knowing you'll do the action, say like missing 10 times and then instant killing or just using 9 skills to kill them, the later would have been far more fun, and ultimately I think 'fun' is the goal here.. so to me skills that miss by design should be analyzed again and again to see if it really needs to be that way and if nothing else can be done instead.

They've made updates to the lower level skills before, like potency boosts or new skills even, but my feedback as #1 would be along the lines of "please review older skills". Personally I think /most/ skills should be designed in such a way that they don't jump off the cliff at the next skill wave, or even sometimes jump off the cliff as soon as you obtain them (they're useless before you've even earned it), so basically not like linear progression. Of course making 200+ abilities way down the line would be quite hard. I use these games as an example a few times for this but think like Hades or Diablo 3. How each skill has its own value but then you see that value again in the future as you get certain combinations of events (new weapons, runes, boons, etc that cause suddenly that value to return again- it's not like you get "punch" at level 1 and then "double punch" at level 4 and so "punch" is now forever useless).

On the other side of that coin, particularly speaking early level skills, are abilities that just outshine everything else so much that you spam them over and over. Naturally Thousand Needles for the very early levels would be an example (which does stop being a problem, because.. 1,000 damage lol). If you change Thousand Needle suddenly as a pure nerf people would now be 'punished' for not leveling when it was OP, so I want any changes to be mindful that you don't really want to be making things feel like punishments. Sometimes a skill has an effect that is so OP that it gets nerfed in unfun ways, which I'm thinking of the % based skills like Death. Spamming death again and again and again until it 'works', or later when you get tail screw which can for a short time become your new "thousand needle".

Like for Death, at least imo, I think it would have been far more interesting to use if it was in the design style of Ultravibration. Perhaps death now just 'works' but it has a long cooldown that can get shortened by killing enemies (so in a dungeon you might get to use it up to two times), if it fails it can deal heavy damage and have a shorter cooldown. Similar concepts going to other % based spells, the solution doesn't always have to be cooldown + if doesn't work then add damage (but that is a solid function). A thought that might have decent implications is a generic blue mage debuff that can be used as part of other skills, say if you use petrify but they're immune then they gain a stacking blue mage debuff that you might be able to consume for some other powerful effect (this means you might have a build that is status effect based and it doesn't totally suck just because some monster is immune, like a boss- rather your failed debuffs translate into other mechanics).

Then there are skills that I just think can be helpful but are.. 'eeh...' feeling to use (I don't find them fun to use, even if they're useful). Say for example Moon Flute, Diamondback, or loom. Both Moon and Diamond have the issue of taking yourself out of the action, which is just generally a really bad feeling. Stuns in games always feel bad, no one likes getting stunned. It was even removed from warrior. Dragoon does have an animation lock period but that is exceptionally short, I think even if it goes to the theme of the skill that the 'punishment' for these two skills really should be re-addressed so they're just generally more 'fun' to play. I'm not arguing they're useless, they totally have use, but I believe they could just be a lot more 'fun' to use. Loom I believe just really shouldn't have a casting time, or perhaps gain some other benefit to use like perhaps it debuffs enemies you appear by or it shakes off a debuff from yourself. Movement skill + casting time, especially since you can't target massive distance away, makes the skill feel exceptionally niche use while also not feeling that awesome to use (like it does have a use, for example the particular fight in the carnival, but I don't think it feels interesting to use).

I noted overly spammy and or linear replacement skills but also wanted to note that most low level (sub 50) skills are also just generally not that interesting as a whole. But wanted to reiterate that I think 60-70 has done well having a lot of the skills be interesting and well designed. I generally don't think hyper strict rules are helpful but at least in guidelines for design it would be nice if nearly every skill could answer "is it fun to use on it's own?" "is it fun to use in relation to other skills?" "does the skill have value in the future?" "does the skill have value when I obtained it?". There are, imo, many skills that answer poorly to all four (particularly looking at the first wave of skills, the 50 ones, but of course filler skills in general apply)- you get it, the skill is useless, and you know the skill will continue to be useless, and even though it's useless maybe it would be fun to use..? but it's not. I think a skill that fails all 4 questions should then be reviewed, and maybe sometimes you need 'filler' skills but filler, for a job that is limited, should be the minority (or goal)- at all points of leveling. I would say when you get a complete level 70 kit that you will be filling yourself with skills that pass the vast majority if not all those questions, which is good, but I don't think it's a good thing that is what it takes (PF-exclusive skills, level 70 / level + unsync, etc). Most jobs, imo, are far more interesting than a level 50 blue mage even if you have all the level 50 skills (I mean level 50, not synced 50). A synced 50 blue mage with level 70 PF skills is going to be far more interesting than a level 50 anything (and that is of course due to two main reasons, A. blue mage get to keep their skills when syncing, so you just get a bigger kit to play with but also B the 60-70 spells are just generally pretty cool and so if you have those skills then you've got a pretty nice selection of interesting well designed skills). Level 70 blue mage with all skills is still pretty interesting even when you compare it to a level 70 normal job, and that's a good thing. Which is all to say because blue is limited the goal should be blue always being interesting because you've got very few to zero reasons why not to be that way.

So the tl;dr of the first major section is just reviewing skills and whenever you see the opportunity to "make them fun" and improve the gameplay of early blue mage as well this type of design will improve later blue mage since suddenly you might look back at an older skill and go "you know, I could actually use X in my kit!" even though you're a level 70 with all the skills (this can happen now, but it is pretty obvious which skills are going to be that candidate and which skills are doomed for dust- say unlike a Hades or Diablo 3 like set up where it might have been novel to tinker with when you first learned it and then novel again later because of some special situation). I understand some of them were more just sort of carnival filler as their purpose but when possible even take those to a new direction, move away from the idea of filler as much as possible. For example, and this leads into the next part, but Fire Angon doesn't do what the boss does and is rather just a generic non-fun to use skill that will act as filler until you get something far more interesting. Fire Angon could be improved and be an earlier level skill players get to play with that has weird interesting effects, so like the boss tosses multiple spears down in the fight that all radiate a fire damage dot. This multiple toss opportunity could be in a growing mp cost per cast, or a modifier to all fire spells (each fire angon active makes all fire spells cost more), or charge mechanic, and then the pulses get triggered by another activity - like if the pulses triggered by fire you might have non-fire elements help the ability recover charges faster.

The next part being just trying to add onto the four concepts previous with "equal to or better than" - better doesn't mean strictly potency wise (can be convenience, or general interesting effects / mechanics). So Fire Angon would certainly fail this as well, meanwhile you might example the later 60 - 70 spells as examples where they honestly became more complex than the original but that was a benefit (so they changed, but they changed for the better- made them more interesting rather than less). Pretty much anything % based is likely to fall into this group, as other spells already talked about (Fire Angon). Angel Whisper would fall into here in the sense of series but in this game it exists to obviously just be a simple raise. With Angel Whisper perhaps it might be if you have Basic Instinct active (which can only happen if you're the only one alive / solo) then you may use it to grant yourself auto-life which instantly returns you to full health or half health and a short invulnerability period when you fall below 1 (and perhaps goes on a longer cooldown than it already has). As an aside I think buffing Angel Whisper for normal play would be nice, for the vibe of the skill even if it's simply like revive target with weakness (as it does now) but with full life (or maybe revives target without weakness, half life) and keep the cooldown if you want (just something to make it not feel like 'a very bad raise' lol).

Third just wanting to push the solo-ability / smoothness a bit more. You can see many solo videos already, so this isn't a concept that is foreign to blue mage.

I've a few thoughts on both so starting with smoothness, currently due to basic instinct you can go through sync with a lot more content than you could have before and get 100% drop rate spells, which is pretty awesome. That smoothness kind of dies a lot in certain content because you don't have sustainability until you get later skills that pretty much rely on getting the earlier skills you can't obtain synced. You're not without options, you can cap your level and then unsync the content and do that a few times but I really don't think that should be the target goal because it means you have to go past many core skills that would be fun to use so you can then go back down to them (so you're having a substandard leveling experience). Smoothness therefore means looking at making the progression of skills be more exciting and requiring less RNGeus runs for abilities in instances (because instance RNGeus is the worst, open world is easy because you can just go next to next, but with instances it's just so many steps to repeat while you're not playing your job to a satisfying level because you're not getting the skills you need to do that).

Part of the potential fix to this would be making the earlier level skills more interesting, because then if you need to skip an instance until you can run it unsync then it's fine.. the job is still 'fun' (currently most interesting skills are in instances and there are not that many interesting skills in general from the open world which compounds the issue, simply making more skills fun and more valuable would alleviate that). Next concept might be adding mimicry to the carnival as that adds a huge amount of sustainability to your heals (in general getting sustain options a bit earlier, reducing white wind spam which can get old fast if that's your sole sustain), allowing players to learn that or like skills more readily would be a large change (you can unsync mimicry if you're having issues, but the delay in this skill is going to delay many other skills that need that boost in sustainability / quality play and therefore you delay the 'good experience' all together and that is not good). Like I said you could just cap and then unsync but I don't think that is particularly clever goal because it's saying "play for a longer period of time incomplete and not very interesting"- smoothness would be tweaking spells and spell placement so you get "learn interesting spells and play interesting ways the entire time" and that would be great. Another thought might be basic instinct may upgrade and have tank and healer mimicry (it already buffs damage so adding DD buff might be a bit redundant and even more OP, but you could if it ends up being 'fun'). I think the last would be neat to reduce the amount of heal spam you sometimes see, but obviously making overall it far more powerful solo (so.. I'd suggest trying it out just to see how it plays but it may be 'too much', I do think it would be nice for solo builds though as it opens up every skill since you would have both mimicry that affect skill outcomes and I think choice paralysis from having too many great choices is a great thing, rather than it being pretty obvious "not going to use that skill cause it'll be trash cause I'm not going to be tank mode").

I talked about pushing the solo-ability above already but wanted to add a few bits specific to it. I think because the power level squish we're going to get in 6.0 that it would be even better if they ensure and enshrine this idea as we read that a consequence to the squish is solo-ability isn't going to be as strong for our normal jobs (so rather than losing a feature, blue mage will be ensuring it steps into that place). If you have the whole kit it kind of does that already, of course with the above comment on smoothness and the known pain if you don't learn the skills in PF when it's "hot" (which is why I think it should be strong enough to solo all the content, in an enjoyable smooth growing way, or there needs to be a significant reward helping blue mages learn skills, in this way those players who used to do stuff solo can still do so- of course needing to use basic instinct). The other thought though to expand this idea and perhaps add some more value to the whole carnival and group run experience is maybe a new blue mage token / shop. The carnival challenges could reward this token which SE can put some of the different tokens into it (mgp, hunt, gp, tomes, etc), perhaps a pink frilly version of the morbol mount (massive amount of tokens), but more to my point there could also be incense you could burn / break in content that would send you super sayian. Like a stick of blue monster mist which causes you to go Howel monster mode / werewolf on a full moon (lore restricting where you can use it).

The purpose of the incense allowing players to circumvent the issue of the PF dying or just not being interested or welcome in it (like if you wanted to join but didn't have a skill they wanted you to have, or you didn't like PF but were still interested in the job), want to learn that skill but it's not possible to solo due to a skill you're missing? Crack some blue mist, get a huge boost (thinking it might open up the potential for alliance raids). Maybe it simply turns your basic instinct into primal instinct - imagery might be like Fran on mist from FFXII as well- more hp, damage, both mimicry, and mp regen. It also acts as a sort of casual get your story mode for players who might not be 'good' for whatever reason, can still enjoy it later (using this you can still 'sync' the content, helps with progression of skills if you weren't doing the order right or didn't want to go up and unsync). The token concept besides to encourage players to think about group as an option (but not ruin them if they can't or don't want to) also might prevent over farming as well since you'd have earn the token first, well it wouldn't prevent it entirely but it could slow it down (if one wished may have the incense cost like "x blue tokens + 1 beast trinket" and each beast tribe sells a trinket for a certain number of tokens- ensuring a pacing to it all). Or may consider tokens letting you gain upgrades to certain abilities, if SE was like "okay we'll review old skills but we don't want to make it too powerful right away", spend 15 tokens and earn an upgrade to Blood Drain that causes your next few attacks after the skill to heal you a % of damage dealt. Weekly challenge log, besides the carnival, could have something like playing with a group sync gets you x more tokens ( rewards at 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 or whatever - just to encourage group play as well). If mist mode / primal instinct super mode was a toggle skill rather than something you purchased (certainly more convenient) perhaps you reduce the reward to something akin to running a trust (you don't get all the chests when using trusts). Can add some other neat stuff perhaps like expensive treasure maps that have much higher chance at portals, or extra drop on non-raid / ex content when you use in the boss room of a dead boss (drop just for the user, so if you were hunting for glamour it would be quite helpful).

Mentioned the Angel Whisper idea while using Basic Instinct (returns angel whisper to it's classic power vibe, when solo / last resort opportunity) but wanted to also suggest a skill I think a skill that'd be massively powerful and helpful in solo content, and perhaps not requiring SE to tweak as many fights, is the ability to drop markers. Would be neat if the skill had value in non-solo play too though. Maybe it's inspired by that Moth boss who makes clones of you, that way in group play perhaps it has some relationship to damage (as you couldn't have it dropping markers in group play and not just make the entire encounter cheese). Might also have something like charges when basic instinct is active (maybe a way to even accelerate cooldown, like every 200 potency of wind damage reduces the cooldown by X).

An aside thought, while I think just making each skill have some interest (answering those four questions positively basically) an idea I saw that I thought was neat was each spell learned potentially made you stronger- this might also go into the whole smoothness or solo-ability thing, might not need to go to level 70 to do a level 50 dungeon unsynced but rather just 'go learn the other spells near your level and come back' (and also means a complete blue log is a reward in power). Might not want to bind that to basic instinct though since if your group died and you suddenly became 100 item level over the content you'd destroy it lol. Another tangent thought- going off the token idea and the grabbing spells for power concept, and FF11, I did like the idea of spells making passives and that the passives may influence your job design- now perhaps it's not like FF11 where you have specific spells on to keep them equipped but it would be neat if perhaps you had spell alchemy or something and you might combine certain spells and spend a token to unlock new effects you could slot in almost like a witcher mutagen (in FF11 for example you could have dual wield by having certain blue magic spells equipped). Combine blood drain and some other skill and suddenly you've got a vampire passive which causes you get a small % of hp on all damage done. Pyromania skill which causes your fire spell effects to be bolstered, or whatever. You'd have to be careful they don't pull a Thousand Needle to the job (a combination is so strong that it ends up making the job more simple to the point of brain dead spam rather than more interesting), but it could be quite neat (think also like horadric cube storing legendary effects like in Diablo 3). I enjoy the concept in my head, and in other games that have that, but I'm not confident in the value passive would add to blue mage lol (so It's just a thought thrown out there, like the vampire thing could be neat, but you'd need more than a few passives to make it worth while / interesting mechanic of merit and you don't want any passives that cause implosion of the job design, like I said "no Thousand Needles").

Finally, I just think being able to do PotD / Eureka could be cool. Definitely want to create a new leaderboard just for blue though lol. Maybe use the tokens above for entry, if SE is worried people would farm Eureka too quickly and drop Eureka market board prices.



So anyway, 1/100the word count summary:

I think the newer spells are far more interesting, I wish the older spells felt similar, I believe in general the majority of spells should be able to pass a self and group test of value (interesting on their own, interesting in a setting that includes other skills- older skills and many of the generic filler don't do well here, however the newer ones tend to do well here and often show a sign of clever design that I think many older and filler skills are lacking), while being careful not to take the fun out of it (if it's too strong solo could be 1 skill boring, that is bad and with a full kit blue is certainly not in a bad place) but I would like to see the solo concept nudged a few more times due to the power squish that is coming in 6.0 and particularly the smoothness of that experience (rather than getting to level 70 to unsync content with a bunch of uninteresting skills you can largely sync the whole way up with interesting skills the entire time).

Like I said I was going to largely avoid the whole make it normal thing (though I would have liked that, and both via advanced being extra lovely), but I wanted to touch on the limited concept since I figured people would anyways. Personally I think the idea of some side content, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, but using iconic jobs to do it can be bad and or at least polarizing. A concept I've suggested before for the limited pool that I think would do well was perhaps a Magitek Operator (G-warrior, Xenogear, etc- limited job concept). I was really, really, really, disappointed when blue mage first came out. The recent 60 and 70 skills have me happier in the skill design department (but I do think the job still has room to improve), but in general when you're looking forward to SE figuring out a cool way something might work (like they did to red mage) and then something comes out like how blue mage did (level 50 blue). It was a very disappointing experience. With blue mage quickly gaining a lot of solo power (basic instinct being a MASSIVE boost to that), I think a few tweaks to smoothing out the job could be really nice for that solo aspect and if they went further, like making earlier skills generally more interesting and valuable as a whole it could be better for both solo and group blue mage players. You can never please everyone but I think it might help if they didn't call them the iconic name if they continue, or at least start them out in a more interesting position (if blue mage had the potency boost they did, release blue mage was awfully weak lol, and the quality of clever skills they had at level 60 - 70 at the level 1 - 50 I think it would have gone down far better in general- while 'normal' jobs need careful balance I think accidentally going too far when working with limited is FAR better than too little). An example of a name shift might be Sheperd instead of Beastmaster, but if they just started them out with far more pizazz, power, and interesting design it would help (if they were limited). Not sure what they'll do next and I don't really want to 'kill' the idea of limited (I really want to promote the idea of Advanced / both though), but I just hope if they do this again that they'll do it a bit more carefully (like I said when blue first came out, I was honestly really disappointed in the game as a whole- the whole game started to get painted negatively because I was really looking forward to the job and then I was like "I hate this job", while I still have wishes for the job even now as I listed above, the feelings are definitely different and I at least look at like level 60 - 70 skills, gameplay mechanics, and blue mages playing in videos and I think "that's pretty neat").

I would also like to say and thank, as I do believe and state in general, I feel SE listens to player feedback and while they might not change their entire vision / direction it seems apparent to me that if they can they do accommodate other players wishes. Of course we can't say for sure what is just coincidence and what's not, but I think they have evolved blue mage to player feedback (early on they slapped 100 potency onto most things, then the skill designs changed a lot, basic instinct, etc).

Super tangent but wanted to say looking forward to the fanfest, it's cool they've some digital stuff planned in and out of game. And I didn't get to say it before but their other new game looks interesting, movement is super fluid, and of course still interested in FFXVI.




If anyone scrolled to the bottom of my post to be like "I don't read long posts" (and didn't read the first sentence. . . lol), just post what you think about blue mage given all the updates so far. If you don't know what is different go check it out or ask people in the thread if there was any change that was interesting. Point of thread is to update / revisit your thoughts on blue mage and limited jobs in general if you want (I focused on blue mage, but that was my choice). Happy or constructive negative thoughts welcome, this isn't to be a thread to say only good things (or only bad things)- hopefully lol.

[Jeeqbit]

Blue Mage is in a good place because it's allowed to do old extreme and savage content and some of this has a mount attached to it. I think the Stormblood ones should have a mount as well, but there are at least achievements for them.

It has a lot of other things you can have fun with, like soloing old content synced, the masked carnivale and being able to learn spells from locations other than the ones mentioned. It's been exciting just learning them from alternative locations than where everyone else got them, such as maps, open world bosses and higher level dungeons.

[hobostew]

I know it's mostly player meta gaming but it feels like it's a bit too centered around bursty moonflute cycles and outside of that it feels -really- spammy.

I still think it's boring but at least you can get almost all the spells without having someone carry you.

[Deceptus]

1) There needs to be a better way to obtain the different stances. Make using the ability rotate them, let us mimic our chocobo in their stance, make some dummies we can mimic at the job NPC. Something other than what is. Trying to find that lone tank or healer sucks. Especially with the different glamours they can get.

2) Tanks need their abilities to be instant when tank specced. Plain as that. Especially defensive CD's.

3) Healers need to have their Rez CD removed when heal specced. Imagine if WHM/SCH/AST had a CD on their rez. Well, people might be forced to actually do mechanics then.

[TalithaSolarien]

BLU has the same problem as it always had: not enough useful content to do: Carnival is usually a oneshot thingy, BLU log is dead this late after release (good luck trying to get people for the 24 man) and the Savage raids are only for a tiny minority. Also the rewards for Alliance seals needs an update.

[Liam_Harper]

I fully admit I used to be in the "stop wasting resources on this niche rubbish and scrap it" group (and probably for fair reason considering how much worse lv50 BLU was) but I'm happy to be wrong in the end. They took a great deal of feedback onboard and polished BLU into something that is actually a lot of fun to play. The 60-70 toolkit is night and day difference to the original 1-50 toolkit. The Primal skills are satisfying to use, Base Instinct is an amazing ability, there's enough useful variety to truly toolbox and the buffs to learn-rate of skills make it far more fun than back when you had to spam Shiva EX 120 times or synch it with no Raise or Mimicry.

I'm sort of undecided how I feel on certain aspects like Mimicry. On one hand it's less convenient to have to track down a healer or tank player to copy, but on the other-hand it has some of that old-school MMO charm where you had a little "tedious" prep work to get ready for battle, rather than having it all set for you. I won't mind too much if they change it though.

All that said, there's always room for improvement and I feel BLU has only just started getting interesting. A few for me would be:

-Making the weekly Carnival and Blue log more rewarding. This is a big one, hardly anyone is doing the Blue log and you need a full synched BLU group. The Carnival too is rather empty. With Hunt linkshells being a thing, Allied Seals just aren't that great a reward and grabbing an S rank here and there is far easier than getting a full group together and beating an EX trial synched. You only get 2-3 weekly target or Carnival bonuses and it should be something to look forward to.

-The Morbol Mount was a brilliant idea but needs to be expanded upon. Ideally there should be a mount for Stormblood EX/Savage too, then 2 more mounts for completing all dungeons/raids/trials on Normal mode, one up to Stormblood and one including. Sure it'd be quite easy, but the idea is to bring more players into trying out BLU and give them an initial goal. Combined with better Carnival/log rewards, you'd see more overall interest in the class, leading to more groups, leading to even further interest.

-Tank cd's should not all have a cast time. Boss tankbusters have a cast bar for a reason, to react with instant mitigation. BLU's cast time makes tank unnecessarily difficult. Loom should also be instant or have damage attached.

-Cold Fog should include dodge and evade to trigger or it has anti-synergy with Toad Oil which is an important ability. Phantom Flurry's tooltip should mention the first part ticks more often than normal DoT's. Base Instinct should persist on death and Mimicry should not be able to be clicked off or cancelled unless you have a valid target selected to replace your Mimicry with another one. It'd also be nice to have one or two instant GCD's, for example Rose of Destruction could be one, for weaving in abilities more smoothly outside of certain windows.

Rewards and content are definitely the main thing to address though. This patch actually brought in less with no mount and only a single carnival boss. Entice people in, so we have people to enjoy the class with and reasons to play it.

[MPK]

Bluwu and blucob please

[Mahoukenshi]

If there is one thing to appreciate about the BLU concept is that you get to know all kind of content, for better or worse, which you might normally not do, e. g. the trials in the Hidibrand substories, extremes (unless you like harder content or just enjoy all content the game offers) and all sort of optional dungeons. To be fair, it's still once-and-done deal, ignoring multiple runs if unsynced, but if you were not interested in the optional hard labeled dungeons before, there you go for BLU spells.

Otherwise? Leveling with 1k needes is painfully slow, yet without the safety buffer of Mighty Guard I'd feel too fragile early on (probably a "me" issue). I'd have appreciated if more dungeon/trial spells had overworld options like Aether Mimicry so that it would make solo synced dungeon runs maybe a bit less obnoxious, but that's just qol.

[Shougun]

tl;dr, same theme to thread if you don't want to read what I wrote it doesn't matter to be compliant to the thread theme- just update whatever the heck you think about blue mage with hopefully the idea that you tried it again. You may still think it's gold dust or a garbage fire, just hopefully you've attempted to check it again (not using old notions ideally).

Wanted to go over the level 1 to 50 spells since that was my major complaint, also wanted to hear more from people, both those who love and those who hate the job, specifically in the context of trying it post all these updates (not the initial experience impression, an updated impression which may be the same, worse, or better).

As stated above I feel the 1 to 50 spells cause a few issues and are in general relatively ... not great. Issues ranging from just not very exciting compared to the possibilities (or being less exciting than their monster counterpart), to their set and spam only X spell over and over to learn and instantly forget Y spell, to how they don't allow you to sustain yourself very well so you have to opt for leveling up with bad skills, with highly repetitive actions, so you can then come back around to get the better skills unsync with sometimes low drop rates (which means more bad skill gameplay, so you can slowly piece together some of the more interesting content, other jobs at similar levels far outpace Blue Mage in engaging mechanics until those later steps of acquiring the more interesting usually instance gated (a problem given how after FotM most people are going to have to go it solo) and later level more interesting (60-70) spells).

Given that this job is limited I believe there should be a strong goal to making the spells as fun as possible, then useful, and ideally but less important not immediately replace-able (if they can 'come back around' due to smart design that's awesome). All three being ideal, but at least hitting a few of them.
Something about making each spell seem like something you should use, and yet also have some sense of interaction so maybe certain themes of kits emerge (like oh this goes well with earth, this with that, etc). Random pre-aside note: please reveal which spells share cooldowns, at least when you have both (or more).

No. 1 - Water Cannon: It's the first spell, not surprising it'll be a bit bland.. That seems okay... though it would be cool if not, just because it's a limited job so that doesn't seem entirely necessary unlike a regular job where the first skill tends to be your ice breaker.

Perhaps some interaction with another skill later, or just more to do with itself. With itself might be as simple as water cannon adds a buff called pressure for X seconds after casting which grows for each unique non-water cannon spell cast. May cast water cannon again instantly and consume the buff with extra potency based on buff. Another more simple idea is repeat casts on the target cause dropsy debuff to build / duration reset (which can help play into other abilities later).

No. 2 - Flame Thrower: Disappointing, but that will be like all the other X potency AoE only spells is not great.

Idea that Flame Thrower is a channel spell that has a DoT, as you channel the DoT will stack causing it to reset duration and deal more damage per rapid application, the range of the spell growing, each application also consuming more mana than the last (there is a cap to stacks, the mana cost being fairly substantial at the end but the max channel only being like 5 seconds). There may be opportunity to mix with other fire enhancing spells, like a fire angon triggering blasts at each tick, or perhaps spells that reduce mana costs (or help retrieve lost mana).

No. 3 - Aqua Breath: Has interactions with some other spells, that's nice. Perhaps a special combo with Toad Oil that causes a few bubbles to have incredible surface tension and not pop right away. Which will then float to a nearby monster and after a few seconds pop for aoe damage and reapply dropsy. Secret combo if you cast bad breath through the bubble it'll go purple and have an enhanced DoT.

No. 4 - Flying Frenzy: Please make any and all move spells either far better in some way, or remove their cast time. Damage isn't great, there are some gimmick opportunities where you might want a target move skill but I think the 'feel' of the skill is right in the '....sure I guess' tier.

Idea, short stun (or other debuff in theme of being dazed, like slow), and when you're in combat and not the primary threat (enmity) holder of the target (or the target recently cast a spell on a specific player that was not you) the ability then becomes instant cast, enmity generator, and higher potency, like 100 at least. Short cooldown. Which keeps a theme to where you get it, I think (kill a baby the Zu goes crazy, here a monster goes after your ally).

No. 5 - Drill Cannons: Has combo which is neat, but the status effect is a bit annoying to get which makes the combo a bit meh (though the damage is huge). Maybe add / modify how petrify spell works, or add another interaction. Like Cement (Garlean learned), a cooldown spell, which inflicts heavy slow and gravity on a target and reduces the physical damage they deal substantially for a short period of time- the damage reduction portion being the debuff the spell focuses on and most monsters are not immune to (and the drills can apply their damage bonus combo to that too).

No. 6. - High Voltage: Neat - but just that dropsy comes from one spell so far, might be nice to see another. Mention else where but may play with the idea of polarity and lightning spells (like each element may have a general gimmick concept, blizzard seems to be friends with mp and frozen, lightning with paralyze and magnetism, etc, etc). May come back to this skill. .

No. 7 - Loom: Feels not good to use, I know there is the circus that needs this spell. Still... I think right away removing the cast time and extending the range would be nice. Though I know the lore says short distances... In the case of not touching lore-- Another then might be keeping instant cast, now has 2 charges, when you loom near an enemy it causes them to be startled, or terrified if we're going for a rhyme scheme lol, (debuff) taking 3% more damage and applies an AoE interject. Second cast on a startled enemy will petrify them for a short period of time (enough to get a single cast off). Cooldown for loom is moderate (like 30 seconds to a minute). Might also give extra inspiration to the movement skill without changing the range by adding a short movement speed bonus, or maybe short ninja invisibility (at no move speed cost).

No. 8 - Final Sting: I'm okay with the changes, though I do think fixing up Angel Whisper (at least when under the solo/alone bonus effects of Basic Instinct or something like that) so you can auto raise yourself would be nice.

No. 9 - Song Of Torment: Perhaps an interaction with sleep such that it doesn't cause sleeping enemies to waken. Or alternatively if cast on sleeping enemies the debuff turns sleep debuff into Night Terror which lasts a short period of time but enemies will not waken from taking damage and take increased magic damage. Night Terror enemies will become immune to sleep right away (don't want to go back to sleep, they scared lol). Paralysis can be used to extend night terror slightly.

No. 10 - Glower: Just a super fun animation, the spell effect is close to generic, but the paralysis is a nice extra touch. More mechanics to deal with paralysis would be nice, but the animation is so much fun you sometimes forget it's rather generic spell. Maybe as simple if paralysis is applied then it deals extra potency (meaning you don't glower over and over, same as the boss doesn't spam the skill on one player in the boss fight).

No. 11 - Plaincracker: Generic spell. Perhaps if you stay stationary after casting plaincracker will trigger a secondary cast (not by the player), which damages in a larger radius (similar to some of the boss mechanics we see). While stationary after casting can be a count down buff, and if you cast plaincracker again while the countdown buff is active the cost is doubled (allowing you to echo many plaincrackers at a high price, or a more simple balance mechanic is a short cooldown). Increased damage to movement impaired enemies.

No. 12 - Bristle: Obviously useful skill, though I wish it was an instant cast. Both semi-annoying but also interesting is the % bonus and casting time plays into the balance of other spells (such that you don't want to use it on some skills but you do on others). Probably don't want the exact mechanic on whistle and bristle, but might consider a buff to damage spell that is similar to red mage's acceleration (50% extra damage on the next three casts, cooldown). It's a bit dark arts (with the added aspect that breaking point due to cast time). I don't really like the wording though since it's not super clear on what it does or doesn't apply to, I met a few people that assumed the 50% applies to all your spells.. but it does not.

No. 13 - White Wind: Classic skill, very strong, has high mana cost.. it honestly seems fine. Though perhaps getting a not crazy cost healing spell sooner in the levels would be nice. It can be painful to rely on this one for so long.

No. 14 - Level 5 Petrify: Please do something about the chance base spell ideas. I'd much rather see a larger cooldown or mana cost than wiff a bunch of spells. It's not fun to miss... and it's also not fun to spam the same spell that misses. One concept for these type of chance based spells is to turn them into sure things with cooldowns and when an effect fails (because immune) you can have it do something else like damage. So like level 5 petrify petrifies in a cone, decent to long cooldown, any enemy immune takes 400 damage instead.

No. 15 - Sharpened Knife: The extra damage on stun mechanics isn't bad. Would be neat if there was some incorporation of hatred like concepts, or maybe Rancor (Karma) is another new spell to add to the game. Then you could have an extra combo mechanic with that.

No. 16 - Ice Spikes: Will be a theme for skills that are self buff like this but I think leading towards making them different entirely or have a component of passive and active. For example a skill critical every 10 attacks (as a passive), but if you use the ability the next attack will be a critical and then that goes on cooldown (making it more fun to slot). Better than set it forget it or think of the reasons why stoneskin and like abilities were removed from the game original, there is more fun potential if they're not simple cast and wait and then recast and wait again. Especially since this skill is kind of forgettable as it is (is a semi-fancy arm's length I suppose but eh). So here you'd have cast ice spikes which causes you to gain a 1 min buff like what the skill does currently already, and then the skill changes to another skill called snow flurry (instant cast, oGCD) or something that causes the duration of the shield to reset and restores some mp. The cooldown being semi-long but each time you're struck the cooldown lowers.

No. 17 - Blood Drain: Please change, feels bad. (low damage, low mp gain, using lucid dream smartly should keep you well off). One idea might be Vampiric Hunger buff after use which causes physical attacks to drain HP and magical attacks to drain MP. Or after you cast you gain hunger buff which causes attacks to drain mp and replaces blood drain with satiate skill which causes damage based on amount of mp recovered (and removes the hunger buff, using lucid dream during this would increase Sasisate's damage as would magic hammer and other mp recovering skills).

No. 18 - Acorn Bomb: If you need sleep, which would be a niche scenario, then it's strong but otherwise not. . . I wish it had something else so it would be valued more consistently, but 30 seconds is a really long time at least. Simply having some things play with sleep would help, like the torment song above maybe? There are other things you could have, like loom might interact with sleeping enemies. Just to maybe suggest something less vague.. Acorn bomb inflicts the sleep as is, but when striking an enemy already inflicted with sleep causes each monster to drop an acorn bomb at their feet dealing 100 potency aoe (not waking them up) and becoming immune/resistant to sleep (doesn't remove sleep but they cant be 'reslept' anymore). May need short cooldown, or I suppose change the wont awaken a slept enemy to high chance not to (just a balance system to prevent acorn bomb spam).

No. 19 - Bomb Toss: Early on the 3 second stun is nice (until you get thousand needle lol), but perhaps something to spice it up. Remove cast time but add that to fuse time (bomb drops but takes a second to explode). Short cooldown. If one wanted to go crazier- there are loads of different bombs in the game, you may have combo opportunities there. If you wanted to grant certain vibes, like using missile adds a charge to bomb toss, or barrage causes the next bomb toss within 3 seconds to split into multiple small bombs. That one huge bomb mechanic a few bosses use, could be during the fuse time if you cast a fire spell the bomb gets larger. Ice spells cause the fuse time to gain 3 seconds.

No. 20 - Off Guard: Free 5% is nice but obviously a quite simple spell (I guess 'some' simple isn't bad, but given this is a limited job it's not really important to have that concept and being free of normal job limitations, I thought, was a main reason to make blue limited in the first place). Maybe whenever you dodge, parry, block, or otherwise immobilize the monster off guard cooldown reduces, or the duration of the spell increases? Also maybe a thought on scale like if you know 0-20 spells it's 5%, 21-80 is 10%, 81+ is 15% (alternate thought on scaling that fits in theme with 'off-guard' is X number of debuffs increases your bonus %, like casting bad breath would certainly throw an enemy off guard).

No. 21 - Self-Destruct: Same though as final sting. It's neat gimmick, obviously strong. I like that there is the toad oil combo.

No. 22 - Transfusion: O_O.. Obviously full mp / hp is nice but the cost is quite extreme. I think perhaps it would be more enjoyable by simply changing it to "uses own mp and hp to restore the target mp and hp" (if they are missing 1k, you will use 1k of your own health up to 1 hp remaining). Doesn't cause brush with death anymore. Having this skill equipped increases healing received by 25% and adds extra mp regen (passively). May cast on self to shield for current amount of hp for 10 seconds, after shield falls off 75% of the amount shielded will drain from your hp pool over 10 seconds (paying back your loan lol). Add cooldown (since brush with death mechanic isn't there anymore).

No. 23 - Faze: 6 second cone stun isn't horrific, and there is a stun related mechanic with sharpened knife. Just a bit basic, especially once you get skills that can 10 or 20 second stun like with the frozen mechanic lol. One thought then is when fazed using earth element spells causes them to become dazed (fazed and dazed! lol). Dazed perhaps acting like pacification (or another type of stun, longer duration than stun), dazed will be removed by the next spell but cause that next spell to deal double damage (as daze does in some other FF games, daze debuff will naturally need a resistance mechanic).

No. 24 - Flying Sardine: The fast cast interject is obviously quite helpful. Useless for damage but interject on demand is cool. Only comment that I think if the spell worked with another shark related skill (like in the Stormblood dungeon, or the Void Ark sting ray boss). Using flying sardine to chum the waters for some neat interaction. But yeah, interject for days is helpful.

No. 25 - Snort: There is a fun nature of tossing an enemy around but the actual usefulness is limited to some very niche scenarios. Could copy the mechanic from the circus where you can fast cast or something afterwards (the boss casts fireball quickly after snoring). So here you'd get a buff called cleared sinus (even though technically the lore of the spell says you don't use your nose, maybe cleared passages to be more vague and lore friendly lol). AST lightspeed like effect for a short duration (spell time cutdown). Another might be it turns the monster around and causes them to be immobilized for a few seconds (which means mage monsters couldn't act).

No. 26 - 4-Tonze Weight: 30 second aoe 40% slow, not useless when you're trying to keep distance. Might suggest a skill that floats enemies or something later but counter idea here is maybe just in general earth spells deal more damage against those who have gravity (or it could be specifically this skill, weighted down debuff which causes increased earth potency and reduced chance to miss).

No. 27 - The Look: Those eye effect spells look cool.. The effect is obviously useful if you're a tank. Maybe monsters that look at you during the effect get a debuff that gives them reduced healing (just like 5%, vaguely similar to how the dragon has that other disease spell) and also makes your next few spells have increased enmity.

No. 28 - Bad Breath: Just seeing all the status effects is fun. The spell is useful for a bit but, I do feel a few status are missing. Maybe my mind is just used to the classical ability which destroys your screen lol, for example where is silence (and others). Not that it really needs it, just seems like a few are missing. Maybe some thought on it comboing with another skill to make you want to still cast it later when you can do big damage (a small DoT and some debuffs isn't that helpful when you can kill the monster quite quickly), but it's one of those classic spells that is fun to use. Maybe Toad Oil can be used to increase the duration of some of the debuffs. Another ideas which might make this spell useful (without changes to it) is a new spell which causes an enemy to take damage for each unique debuff that falls off (and if the damage is quite a bit the balance factor could be each debuff that falls off the enemy becomes immune to).

Parasitic Terminus 150 potency for each unique debuff that either fails to apply or wears off, monster becomes immune to that debuff in either case for 20 seconds after Parasitic Terminus ends (maybe a 20 second lasting spell with a decent cooldown).
I could see badder breath (ShB marbolo) added, with perhaps more effects for a longer duration but has a cooldown (bad breath is spammable, badder breath is not).

No. 29 - Diamondback: Please avoid any abilities that remove complete control of anything (no self stuns, at least "complete" self stuns / pacifications). Complete self stun meaning you can't take any action, incomplete might be you can take some actions. So here Diamonback perhaps prevents you from using offensive spells and moving (but you can use loom, and maybe heals, etc). If you jump you'll remove diamondback (and the effect can also be canceled from the buff bar, like right click your chocobo mount buff). More interactively though- Diamondback becomes ricochet while the buff is in effect, which starts with no charges and doesn't have a recharge timer; however, for every 5% of your hp damaged during this the ability gains 1 charge (the ability randomly targets nearby enemies and does decent potency damage).
But really please strongly reconsider this 'pure'-self stun / pacificiation mechanic, it's really really not fun. At all. At least add some wiggle room / activities within it.

No. 30 - Mighty Guard: Obviously basic instinct can make this spell really friendly but I'm surprised the tank stance came back seeing as it was removed, and generally a well liked move to do that. Again like above on the idea of passive / active and not pure set it and forget it. One idea is while Mighty Guard is active, and in combat, every 5000 mp used Mighty Guard changes to S. Mighty Guard (taking a tip from FFX lol)- here you gain an instant self target only dual regen (heals hp, is also a regen shield- 100-150 potency). An idea I think might have more mechanical issue, though I potentially like, is that while in combat with the buff active you can cast mighty guard again to add hp regen, increased defense, decreased damage reduction, but you loose mp per tick while it's active (making maybe some of the mp regen spells more attractive than they already are). Problem of course being canceling the spell becomes a bit harder since you'd have to cast it twice to cancel (or right click the buff), like cast to go mighty guard, cast again to go super mighty, and cast AGAIN to lose it... that's just a pain in the bum lol (but I do like the idea of a mighty guard like effect with the consequence of mp management, perhaps that could be a different spell that shares effects- like a new mighty guard that doesn't reduce damage and is like 30% less damage, but spells cost 20% more or something). Anyway, some thought into an idea that might avoid simple toggle spells (at least when possible, and it's more fun).

No. 31 - Sticky Tongue: Fun to use because "get over here!" is just plain fun. The stun itself isn't bad either. Leaving it alone would keep it relatively simple, but at least yanking people around can be helpful and is fun. Just for the sake of adding more .. because it's not meant to be balanced here's an idea though (not really needed)- Toal Oil causes Sticky Tongue to become AoE. Sticky Tongue when cast on enemies closer than 5yd (or some short distance) will remove one positive buff on the target and heal you 50 potency (toad oil effect still works).

No. 32- Toad Oil: The evasion is pretty powerful in some situations, and the buff effect on certain spells is nice and I encourage that further. But in the theme of not having basically set it and forget it like spells, going passive and active. Toad oil while equipped perpetually increase your evasion by 15% (passively). When cast toad oil increases your evasion by another 10% and increases the duration of your next buff / debuff spell and the potency / effect of fire spells (has cooldown, is instant cast).

No. 33 - Ram's Voice: The debuff is insanely easy to use and insanely powerful. The damage is a bonus. Might be cool if there was a radius water spell that left an effect on the ground (let's say toxic sludge or something), and then if you cast ram's voice afterwards it causes the ice to stay rather than vanish leaving a strong slowing frigid zone. But anyway, rams voice is hyper useful... looks cool. Just making some thoughts to ensure people want to weave spells in (easier said for oGCD type stuff).

No. 34 - Dragon's Voice: Big aoe, nice damage. A handy combo spell to this might be an aoe knock-back (circular, we don't have one that goes around yourself in a circle), because it needs to be between ram's voice and dragon's voice a fast cast speed would be important. Then you could freeze, knock out to the perfect distance, hit them with dragon, and then perhaps use the draw in effect. The shape is certainly a bit awkward when not dealing with stationary enemies though.

A new mechanic you might add to a number of lightning and unaspected / physical spells is polarized. So like by being hit by blue mage's lightning they become polarized and you could push them out, draw them in, send them to a polarized totem etc. Then in this idea like how the Chimera boss has a heat seeking orb, you could have an orb spell that you drop which goes to the nearest target and priority nearest polarized target for additional damage (but other lightning spells might also apply this concept). Anyway both ram and dragon are fairly fun to play with even if they do become too much bread and butter during leveling for a while, I think to help with that over buttering is just making the other skills around this time more exciting.. but at least I think they could be left alone and still have a lot of fun value.

No. 35 - Missile: Well obviously powerful when it works. I just really dislike the chance based spells. Turning every chance based spell into the same type of "now it's guaranteed but has cooldown" concept might get boring fast, so here is a different take on the concept. Now it's chance based, like before, but repeat casts in short duration increase the mana cost (stacking) and increase the chance (stacking). So you could miss, cast again, take like 150% mp, be very likely, maybe miss, cast one more time and it is just guaranteed to go off but costs like 250% mp. The cost doesn't reset for a decent duration, like 30 seconds or something. So if you cast again it would be some crazy 450% mp and still guaranteed I suppose, and again it's basically all your mp. Something I do would like to see consistent though is a visual sort of shield and or sound effect for immune monsters though, even if you miss, so you can hear and or see that feedback right away (oh, it missed, but oh also it's just not possible on this enemy- apply that to most if not all things, like if cast silence or something, of course the sound shouldn't be annoying or the visual, because you might see it quite a bit).

No. 36 - 1,000 Needles: . . . . . spam spam spam spam spam. Obviously CRAZY useful at early levels, but so useful it's all you cast pretty much. Nerfing this without making more exciting, and frankly more powerful (early level), skills would be bad though. Maybe when you have this spell equipped every 1,000 potency you do in damage the spell becomes free, but until then it costs a lot. Like if you had 500 potency built up the spell would cost 3000mp, 0 - 5000 mp, 500 - 3000, 750 - 2000, 1000 - free. Or just add a cooldown or something. But again if you nerfed this spell without adding other exciting, easily accessible spells that are stronger, this would seriously hurt the joy and speed of leveling blue mage up early levels. It's novel the first time but it gets really tedious and unfortunate later, as you get all these spells that are in comparison (and in general, if we're talking the early 1 to 50 open world spells) relatively meaningless with little value to fun or gameplay (which is why I bothered tossing ideas for 1 to 50, since I think the 1 to 50 blue mage is a.. not good.. period for the job).

No. 37 - Ink Jet: Compared to some other debuffs blind isn't that great, though it occasionally may be useful in some cases, especially when you add evasion to that lol. Might be difficult to code but a cool effect might be blinded monsters occasionally see an image of you that is offset from your position and they target that with anything from physical attacks to actual spell and aoe mechanics. So you might see a monster cast fireball off your position a bit, not even targeting you but something next to you. The lore says it's an improved water cannon, so might add parallels to that, like Ink Jet uses the same building pressure mechanic as water jet (something would be nice since ink jet blind will general have trouble comparing to the amazing stun of a ram voice, and for the most part when used on bosses a lot of this stuff is going to be immuned).

No. 38 - Fire Angon: Probably one of the skills that 'triggered' me early on with blue mage. If we're going limited there should be a goal to make spells equally or more cool than their originals, else if you were going to go balanced then it could have just been a normal job. Fire Angon failed that, because it was a cool spell that became super generic. Of course sometimes the boss variant might not make any sense or a slight nerf makes the spell more fun (because of a gimmick mechanic, say the Thok Ast Supra spell is different but still very cool and fits in theme). I've already suggested a lot of fire stuff so.. one might want to think of other elements lol (to ensure they've got fun things to goof with), but just because it's clearly a fire spell here's an idea. Fire Angon has a charge that recovers with non-fire spells (or is at least accelerated that way), each fire spear you put down deals damage in that area and has a short timer and will radiate AoE damage when you cast a physical or fire spell.

No. 39 - Moon Flute: Please remove the pure-self stun concept!! It's not fun to self stun yourself. When Warrior didn't have to mouth wide open beg like a baby bird for esuna when coming off berserk that was way better. Please don't go back to stunning yourself. Not being able to play, even if it's a trade off mechanic, is just not fun (imo). You could have something like making the waxing and waning relate umbral and astral elements (stereotypically speaking, I know you can aspect them to either) then you want a wide range of elemental spells (maybe even it's like for each unique elemental spell you cast, during the proper phase of umbral / astral, you gain 100 potency and once the flute is over it'll deal the total potency), you might have it so offensive is allowed in one phase and defense in another. Maybe it's something crazy like during waxing you deal increased damage (and maybe increased mana cost) and during waning 9 spells are selected randomly (the rest are locked out until waning is up) and you can cast 3 of them for free (no repeat casts, order up to you, cooldown is reset, temporarily, on those selected, being returned to their cooldown timer they were before waning began whether used or not - if wanting to be extra nice remove waning once the three spells are used).

Another thought to remove the self stun but keep some of the sense of sacrifice is it increases the damage you receive during the waning phase. Some people like the crazy huge final sting / self destruct damage they can achieve with this skill but just that self stun is ... big, real big, frowny face.

No. 40 - Tail Screw: Chance based spell, please consider a different application. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Is not fun, and ultimately you just think why didn't I just kill them the normal way, what a waste of my time to cast (so not only is it not fun but it is the opposite of fun since it adds regret / annoyance). Because this is to 1 hp the missile idea of mp increase in cost / chance might work but I think the balance would be all sorts of off and encourage it to be used in a less ideal way (people might just accept the mp cost and sit around and wait for mp to come back or something bad like that). So a cooldown or a different mechanic might be good.Cool spell, just don't want people to repeat the 1k needle spam again (a job with hundreds of abilities and people only cast one spell over and over because it is either the most effective or seems to promise it would be).

No. 41- Mind Blast: Love the lore description. Might add some combos to other mind game like spells, sleep, loom, song of torment, etc. Create a sort of Mindflayer / lovecraft blue mage if a player desired (a build that actually makes sense, not "look ma I put all these spells that don't work well together together" lol). Adding more interactions with the debuff could add value here, since the debuff is just okay as it is (and there are better debuffs outside of niche situations). An extra idea maybe here is when an enemy has a debuff Mind Blast causes dots to tick (doesn't change the duration of the debuff) but reduces the time paralyze, blind, or sleep (which ever is greater), enemies that are slept have an increased chance to remain asleep, those awoken by mind blast take twice as many ticks. Mind blasted enemies deal less magical damage for a short time. Just for the overt sake of a lovecraft combo idea, Mind Blast on an enemy that has been blinded will make that debuff turn into Eldritch Hallucinations which makes blind permanent (or until leaving combat) and causes water, and ice theme spells to deal more damage (as well as continue to blind the enemy).

No. 42 - Doom: Again chance spell. Perhaps here when cast on a monster immune to doom it'll do significant damage and go on cooldown (maybe increase their damage taken for a short time). If the spell succedes the spell goes on an even longer cooldown. Thus the spell is helpful against bosses that are immune to death.

No. 43 - Peculiar Light: Just by lore I'd love to see mighty guard on interact by adding increased enmity from afflicted monsters. Beyond that like off-guard it's rather basic.. Just for the heck of spicing things up. Perhaps here debuffs that are applied WHILE peculiar light is active last 3 more seconds. Debuffs from water, ice, and unaspected spells last 6 more seconds (may say umbral related spells).

Primal spells: I do like how each primal spell has a use case, there was some thought put into that style of design, they are fairly balanced between all of them and in the idea of balance they're interesting to read.. yet also for a 'limited' job it feels bland still. If this was a normal job I would think it's more expected (since they'd need to be more balanced then). I don't hate them, probably because the rest of the 1 to 50 are really basic and these have good oomph and are oGCD... but compare them to later primal spells and the potential of wacky-doodle that blue mage could get up to and then feel really close to a normal spell a job would get at level 50 (not horrible but not really "that's a limited job spell that is")

No. 44 - Feather Rain: Summons one plume per 2 enemies which will run to the enemy and explode after a short period of time, the third plume will be a spiny plume.

No. 45 - Eruption: Has a concentric circle of a smaller radius, enemies hit within that smaller radius circle will be locked on by a subsequent two eruptions (not each, just total those hit in the center two will be chosen randomly at offset time for the following two eruptions, the repeat eruptions should probably deal a bit less damage).

No. 46 - Mountain Buster: Extra damage against those inflicted with gravity. If wanting to add more might be mountain buster changes to stomp with 1 charge for every two enemies hit with mountain buster.

No. 47 - Shock Strike: Extra damage against those inflicted with dropsy, the 'extra' might be thunderspark is randomly assigned to half the enemies hit.

No. 48 - Glass Dance: Just take the thousand needle mechanic here, increase the damage though. Just like in the actual Shiva fight, spreading the damage to all those hit (so a lot more when it's one target).

No. 49 - Veil of the Whorl: If you had a huge pack nice I suppose but it's hard to feel it as it is. One idea might be while active your magic defense is increased slightly, water spells apply dropsy, wind spells automatically trigger a draw in effect which causes veil to tick for damage (losing a tick worth of duration on the spell, and of course monsters to get pulled in closer to you).

Just some ideas to maybe kick start some change to some of the spells. Not a list of "if this isn't added Imma be maaaaadddd" lol. Though I do really want to see 1 to 50 get a remix, I think there are some ideas here and there but the job shines with the design shift (imo) of the 60 to 70 era spells and I'd like to see that more liberal "for the fun of it" kick back into earlier stuff that felt far more balanced as if blue mage was going to be a normal job (which some people suspect but that is aside the point, if blue mage is going to be limited then make it scream consistently in nearly every spell why it was that way, a cacophony of shouting and shrugging at the standard requirement of balance and just doing whatever is fun because it's 'fun'). Obviously fun is a bit subjective, some problems with that lol, but I don't think spamming 1 skill over and over for 30 levels is particularly a shining example of potential fun (or letting someone else create big groups while they power level you, which I did not do, but I don't count that as fair assessment of the experience of leveling the job then - that's an abnormal way which is fine to do but shouldn't be what the job is built around "I assume you'll be power leveled so no bigge" no.. lol).

Random aside 1: Add a libra skill early on that boosts the chance of learning a skill from a monster (a little for outdoors, a lot for instances) afflicted with libra and reveals an elemental weakness (if that's not possible just reveal one randomly, and increase the damage to that element by a decent amount). Non-stacking.

Then condensed-libra (already a skill) can become a stacking but longer cooldown spell, each time you cast it on an the same enemy (name) you gain a stacking buff that increases your damage slightly (not nearly as much as libra, but this skill is applied to you so it stacks and doesn't fall off when the target dies) and your learn chance of any spells coming from that specific monster (again a little outdoors, more instances, casting on a different enemy causes the stack to reset, logging out naturally the same thing).

Random aside 2: Please make basic instinct's buff not removed when in the open world. Annoying to have to keep re-applying the spell. Although I've not done that No. # spell in the list the idea of passive active might apply here. Such that if you have basic instinct while solo, or all players but self are dead, in content designed for multiple players, you automatically gain 100% damage and the speed buff. However, if you cast basic instinct regardless of your group status you'll gain 5% damage and defense buff, increased to 15% when your hp is below 35%. Meaning if it's on your bar the buff is always there even if the clause of the buff isn't met (so it isn't applied), and then there is an interactive competent so you get a passive and an active skill bundled together.


Some content ideas to maybe go along with more blue, besides the obvious allow blue to Deep Dungeon (with their own leaderboard, and perhaps their own solo achievement as not to ruin the necromancer title... though removing some randomness to the necromancer title itself would be nice lol). Then Eureka (which may need to be personal queue only, though I understand making a whole zone for one player is probably.... costly).

Then we might have Beastmen getting new beast tribe quests that use the daily tokens (and sync), new spells to learn with them, the monsters synced and designed a bit towards blue in mind (not super puzzle like the Circus but with the idea that blue mage is doing this vs a normal job). The tokens of tribes can be used to perhaps unlock rewards / certain concepts. New monster arena, like FFX, can use some FFX akin mechanics for it too (out hunting for monster parts), these fights being more combat focused than puzzle (circus can continue to be a puzzle, while like Diablo the monster arena is designed more generally to be challenging but not "oh you didn't take this ONE spell? You're ruined - which happens fairly often in the circus"). The beast tribe daily quest tokens being part of this could be used as a means to justify rewarding current tier tomes (since they can do that already, and this way adds extra value to blue for those who like that)/ Monster Arena could also repurpose a lot of the NM / HNM hunt monsters in a burning circle like concept.

Far more crazy idea but a thought might be ability alchemy, thinking like Witcher and Mutagen or Diablo 3 runes or Hades Boons like stuff. So you might be able to unlock changes to blue skills, upgrades to blue skills and your blue in general, via completing this content (like both the circus and monster arena might award blue tokens). Upgrading spell example might be by unlocking a trait to Basic instinct you can choose that or Primal Instinct which default adds primal mimicry (the effect of healer and tank mimicry, cannot be combined with the standard aetherial mimicry). A little bit like Crisis levels in FFVIII and how it affects blue magic, except here you're adding merit / traits. Rather than some non-turn-off-able concept think more Diablo 3 with runes. So you unlock the primal trait to basic instinct and you can choose to use that modification when you select the spell or you can choose not to (and there may be other modifications). Just going off the deep end then might be each spell unlocks passives, akin to how FFXI worked, but you get a 'sphere grid / materia grid (like FFVII weapons but far more complicated)', maybe think Path of Exile item slots, and you can combine these abilities spheres on your grid to create big passive bonuses and unique effects to your character (the grid getting bigger as you level up and maybe do some unlock content). So you'd go from single slotting acorn bomb for immunity to sleep and some extra hp to comboing a bunch of skills together to gain ribbon, lich, fast cast on every third spell, dual cane wielder, etc (inspired by PoE / FFXI's blue mage). Those slots to be clear not determining your abilities, just a whole new wild way of empowering blue and changing how you play it.

Canes might be a place for that type of customization as well, like Ramuh's cane may add a chance to randomly strike a currently aggro'd monster on magical casts, and adds a job UI of your cane becoming a sort of tesla coil for electricity which can impact other mechanics (even if simple like discharge half your electricity on physical attacks for big damage, but the more charge you have the quicker your spells cast / recover). Each cane could mix up the blue mage bag of tricks in weird and game changing ways, and you can use glamour if you liked the look of one and the effect of another. Canes could be bringing the primal's crafting material, a special crafted cane which can be bought for a lot of alliance tokens (and sold on the MB), and then completing some challenge fights in the monster arena. Or whatever content SE thinks of that is hopefully not exclusively grindy lol (either isn't grind or has ways to be less, like if you didn't have a lot of tokens from blue mage content / whatever, you could simply just buy the base cane).

A general modification might be an upgrade that increases your power level based on the number of spells you know, increasing your ilvl up to the current end game ilvl (but not your actual level - the stat distribution can be based on your current equipment, as if they were synced upwards).

Although that all could just as well be 'more new spells' instead of changing and morphing current spells. (I do like the # of spells known increases your ilvl up to current maximum, and primal instinct though, even if not tied into those more crazy side suggestions, I think both would be nice to have, damage is already pretty good currently, but sustain can be a bit too much FFXI RDM doing solo lol).

tl;dr, same theme to thread if you don't want to read what I wrote it doesn't matter to be compliant to the thread theme- just update whatever the heck you think about blue mage with hopefully the idea that you tried it again. You may still think it's gold dust or a garbage fire, just hopefully you've attempted to check it again (not using old notions ideally). Like, dislike, no change, are all not wrong answers.

[KageTokage]

I'm mostly hoping the class gets a secondary resource and more short cooldowns in its inevitable 6.x update so that the "filler" part of its rotation between burst windows is more interesting.