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

[Garnix]

I had a great time with it...for two days after each update...

Considering how it obviously has an intended rotation, I still think they could easily implement a standard loadout to make it fit in a standard party, while keeping some achievements locked to BLU parties. They could even adjust potency depending on the party composition, that would be fine too.
Maybe add a couple GCD filler skills so that we don't spam sonic boom too much, maybe a 1-2 combo.

I also think the level cap should have been lifted to 80 before the end of the expansion.

Basic instinct was a fantastic addition and I hope they add more skills to make BLU even stronger when playing solo.

[FatalFatalis]

I hope that at some point they let us do ultimates as BLU. And if they are afraid it will "ruin" the feeling of acomplishment from the people that cleared with regular jobs or whatever, just put different achievements if you do them as BLU, you could get a new title instead of the one for regular jobs (The Blue Legend for example).

[kaynide]

I actually really enjoy Blu and often being it on roulettes with my friends for cheese factor. The only thing I dislike is some of the carnival being too tight. None of it was too difficult, but once you figure out what to do and do it well, it shouldn’t drag on.

Like, probably Gogo is a good spot for a “hard” carnivale fight.most of it should be 1 or 2 gimmicks that once you figure out, you can stomp through it. (To be fair most are this way already)

A big offender for me was Red fraught and Blue… a lot of instant death and the fight just goes on and on unless you have a lot of OCD abilities. It feels like old school Titan where you just have to memorize the rotation.

The only other thing is I feel you should not need to do anything in a party, ever. Like you should be able to solo Garuda at 70 and get her ability relatively easy….as is the rng is really low and annoying. It should fully embrace being a “solo” job, or you should be able to just power through all related content with trust or squadron,

[SamsonBlacke]

BLU is great.

[RitsukoSonoda]

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

[kaynide]

BLU needs to be allowed to queue or be used in the open instance areas like Eureka and Bozja that has no party composition requirements.

Aside from that I feel like the BLU weapon is wasted potential. I feel like there should be more of them and each one with some kind of theme or a specific monster/enemy aesthetic and bonuses to specific spells or spell families since they chose not to put stats on them. This would make it feel more involved to me. One of the main things I liked from FFXI's BLU was that you acquired bonuses by having certain spells slotted together.

This would be fantastic. To be able to do Eureka and get certain skills etc from eureka bosses would be perfect. I absolutely hate having to “hey guys, sorry but can we run Sastasha hard to get ink blot?”

[Vyrerus]

Glad to see folks enjoying BLU. I've been an avid BLU soloist and player since the 70 update. I would likely have been even before, but I just didn't have the drive to play it as most of my friends didn't.


I love where it stands, because it has created its own communities that revolve around it, and it is an absurdly powerful job(it has an extremely high skill ceiling due to this). I know the first page is largely months old responses, but I see a lot of misunderstanding on the first page.

For instance, in your spell description/ideas list, Shougun, you ask where Silence is on Bad Breath because it doesn't apply a long term one... it does inflict Silence though. The player based interrupt kind, same as Flying Sardine, just not an instant cast.

Blood Drain restores 500 MP per cast, and it can be spammed. Even accounting for the 100 MP cost to cast, this actually means that if you take into account the natural 200MP per tic regen of MP in combat, you are getting 600MP every time you choose to cast it over anything else. This can and will quickly restore your MP, allowing you to chain even the most expensive spells back to back after Blood Drain use. It's insanely powerful and does not need to be improved.

A large part of the skill involved in BLU is that everything has a cast time. This actually makes Spell Speed pivotal for nearly all builds, with a Crit/Det build only edging out on DPS by 0.5% with less consistency. This makes BLU tanking and BLU healing more difficult than their normal counterparts, but it also means that when you take up those roles that you have to commit to those roles more than the actual jobs that are labelled with those roles. Keep in mind that BLU healers actually can have the other 7 people all act as Co-Healers whenever it's deemed necessary due to White Wind being Roleless for its incredible heal.
BLU tanking is very fun, because it's the least required role for the party, but this makes it be placed into the hands of a single person, at least if your group is rolling to skip hard mechanics. Because you have to cast your tank spells, which in the most serious of things is usually the near-invuln Diamondback, this makes your spell timing and cast speed more important than anyone else's in the party. A spell speed build usually allows you to beat a tank buster cast bar. The new tank spells only have niche use, but are very useful if they allow you to get away without Diamondbacking even once to save you MP.
Chelonian Gate is also an example of a spell designed for the expansion it comes from, as it is triggered easily by almost every Stormblood based tank buster, so that you can use its 1000 potency(half a Final Sting) attack every tank buster during the right moments. Best of all, you can hold its channel for a time even after Divine Cataract activates if you deem continuing the mitigation necessary.

In general play, for dungeons, the tank mimicry is unnecessary as Mighty Guard is roleless, and a Healer with Mighty Guard can effectively tank any dungeon boss and any dungeon pull(heck DPS can too, but white wind spam is less fun). The optimal way to do dungeons is a Healer BLU tank with 3 DPS BLUs staggering Ultravibration so that every pull is instantly killed, and so that bosses are met with full Moon Flute destruction.

In this way, BLU is not an intuitive job. There are very few players that could play any BLU role in a raid setting or any BLU role period to their fullest extent, let alone BLU to its fullest power. Calls for changes to how it works are generally from a non-BLU perspective. They want it to play more like Not-BLU jobs.

I also see a few folks saying the Omega raids should have a BLU mount. Well, the 50 raids didn't have one attached at first either. I assume it will follow the pattern that once we get level 80 BLU, it will get another variety of Morbol or other similar BLU-esque mount for completing both Omega and Eden Savage raids.

BLU raids are nuts, because of Moon Flute. BLU can skip some very complex mechanics, even in the Alexander Savage raids now, thanks to the Stormblood spells. This cuts the earlier fights to half their intended script or less. The end tier fights take much longer, but are still shorter. Without exception, the question of a BLU clear is never, "Can BLU do this fight?" it's, "How fast can BLU annihilate this fight?"

One thing I would like to see added to BLU achievements is a BLU solo achievement list. BLU Soloing is one of the easiest ways to become very good at the job, since everything rides on you alone. There's ultimately no incentive for it, though, because there is nothing gained other than endurance boasts.

[JanVanding]

I have pretty much 3 asks for the BLU.

1. Let BLU go to Eureka, given how strong BLUs are in Overworld style content and their use of all elements, they would not need the element wheel but would need to use the right element spells and they would be unable to use lost actions. It just breathes a bit of life into an area that is effectively dying content outside the few really devout groups and gives BLU a new area to play around in while utilizing more of their flexibility.

2. Overhaul some of the filler spells, badly. There's a reason Electrogenesis and Sonic Boom are the most widely used fillers and that's because they feel good to use (Electrogenesis is a targetted AoE from target with the initial hit being full damage on the target, Sonic Boom is an exceptionally fast windup making it good for movement) some of the fillers are just plain bad or gimmicky to the point they aren't useful. The Look is a good example as are the Knights Tours which are completely unusable on bosses due to the bind gimmick.

3. A Blulette option. The BLU log is a step in the right direction but people feel less incentive beyond the initial buzz and that's something that could be fixed by adding a daily BLUlette. I can typically find a BLU party for spells, but finding ones that actually want to clear content outside a spell drops off the final dungeon boss is few and far between.

[Momo_Kozuki]

My wish list for BLU:
-BLU-only Duty Finder and daily Roulette: perhaps require players to have certain skills first. I recommend to require them to have at least: White Wind, Aetherical Mimicry and Diamond Back. With duty finder for BLU only, you will also help other BLU to get spells and fill up logs.
-Aetherical Mimicry: Make it works like Monk's Form Shift: first use = DPS stance, second use = heal stance, third use = tank stance, the come back to DPS stance from tank stance. You can change role freely in dungeon, but not in-combat, similar to AST's stances. Less the hassle to stalk other players to get their roles.
-Limit break: work differently depend on your stance. DPS = single-target Limit break. Heal = Heal + Rez (LB3). Tank = super defense.
-Relic grind: BLU can pretty much do everything for Zodiac and Anima grind. You don't even need them to go into Eureka and Bojza to get relic materials, as other classes can farm it for them. For Eureka, put a NPC outside for weapon barter should be enough.

[Saidosha]

While I'm not going to go into a spell by spell diagnosis, I do agree the 1-50 kit needs some revisions, in part to better prepare the player for undertaking specific roles within the trinity. Healing sticks out here with White Wind being an MP hungry spell, but conditional in what it restores and oftemtimes overkill. Mog Pom should most definitely be locked to King Mog and should arguably be a bit more useful without Mimicry. Tying Angel Whisper to Carnivale clears was also a bad move.

Mechanically, though, I'd ask for multi-stage Carnivale fights to restart at whatever stage you were on if you died. As another poster pointed out, a lot of these are just pure "do the dance" slogs once you figure out the gimmick, but needing 2-3m every time to get to the 2nd+ part just to wipe again because you didn't figure it out yet, bad luck, etc., makes the experience more of headache than it should've been. Otherwise, I'm fine with the Carnivale largely being one and done because I don't want another set of yet more compulsory daily/weekly tasks, especially if that translates to BLU-specific rewards/power.

Otherwise, I'd say spell sets solved one of my older gripes and the general nerf to suicide strats tied into that. Not a whole lot can be done about the post-patch popularity and eventual wane, as that's a factor of all content. Adding what BLU can access is the otherwise sensible alternative and I think Eureka and eventually Bozja is a good idea for multiple reasons people already covered. I think at this point, the only real "new" thing they could do is reward a new type of crystal based on whatever mimicked role you cleared a duty as. This can then be used on other jobs to give them a little bit of EXP as a little bonus for participating in BLU things once you have your spells/mounts/etc.