A concerned Blue Mage, concerned about..certain..Blue Mage spells. improvement ideas.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Blood Drain is almost essential in some savage fights for tanks and occasionally healers, given just how demanding damage can be and a heavy leaning on quick heals / Diamondback uses.

Bad Breath, again, is an essential mitigation against some of the larger tank busters or AoEs - Alexander's 2x Mega Holy in A12S, for example, can be tolerated with Gobskin+full health but boy do you need to heal quickly through the back-to-back major damage, and Bad Breath eases the healing burden notably.

I did say that neither of those are bad spells... at the start, I mention "and also 3 spells that I simply would love to see improved.", where Blood Drain and Bad Breath are 2 of those 3 spells. It is more of a selfish interest in improvement, than a necessary change.

Shock Strike is already pretty great at only a 60s cooldown and fairly high potency. I don't think it needs improvements.

As I said in the entries, I only put in a entry for Shock Strike, because of my interest to improve Mountain Buster, but my desire is to make a balance between these two, as many Blue Mages consider Mountain Buster to be "Inferior", while as I also said in the entries, I do not want to break the balance the other way, and no Blue Mage use Shock Strike just because Mountain Buster became "superior".

Cactguard is again, another fantastic mitigation, this time for your off-tank to use in order to reduce a chunk of tank buster damage on our squishy, low-HP tanks. Even if they're coming as a non-tank role because you don't need an OT, it's still an extra bit of mitigation for when you're trying to lean a bit more on Chelonian Gate/Dragon Force for defenses as opposed to burning MP on Diamondback. This one is a bit more niche, but boy has it helped in things like T13 where Bahamut is just slapping you with tank busters and instant autos rather rapidly.

I hope that you are not serious, as that non-Tank mimicry 5% damage reduction is worse than even Monk's mitigation, and you yourself just mentioned the spell slots issue right after. Some people do argue that the Tank mimicry 15% damage reduction is worth it, but two Blue Mage tanks is also usually disapproved of in the Blue Mage community.
I do not exaggerate when I say that spell needs improvement, as CactGuard really does need to change, even if only a minor improvement.

Rose of Destruction is fine as it is, and it competing with Chelonian means nothing if you're not a tank.

That was not the point of that entry... I was just sharing a selfish idea of a improvement that I would like to see, as I would like for The Rose of Destruction to be even better, while the mention of Chelonian Gate was just to point out that my idea would not break the balance, as those two have a solid DPS/Tank split... I will fix the entry to better express what my point and thoughts are.

While I get your goal here, remember that BLU is a job with more than 100 abilities and only 20 slots to fill in. There will always be "superior" or "better" spells, and then those that are more niche. Communities will always, 100% gravitate towards the best setups for the situation, and the only way to make "every ability applicable" would be to make them all relatively identical, at which point all you're doing is reskinning the same ability over and over.

...Did you actually read through what all I said, or only skim through and miss most of it. I did say "Some of my ideas are indeed "irrelevant" changes to "irrelevant" spells, with the main point of sharing my idea of the improvement.. just being that it could be done, and I would like the improvement, despite being for the most part "irrelevant"."

The main purpose of my post was to share ideas that I have had, while to invite other Blue Mage to share their own ideas. Criticism is fine, and can even be use-full for to improve my ideas, but I feel more like you are just blowing off some of my ideas as invalid, rather than to offer constructive criticism, nor do you offer any ideas of your own.
And no-where in my post did I say aught that would denote "the only way to make "every ability applicable" would be to make them all relatively identical, at which point all you're doing is reskinning the same ability over and over.", as no one in their correct mind would want a thing as disgusting as that, so I am a little sad that was your conclusion.
all that I said was "I just would love to see some of our "worst" spells made better, with no regard to relevant or irrelevant." I never said to do the complete opposite of one of the parts of Blue Mage, that I like the most about Blue Mage, being in-class diversity... all of the spells all the same would make it the absolute worst subclass of all subclasses.

but that aside, I will also acknowledge your opinions, as I did invite any whom to share their opinions, so I apologize if my response comes to offend.
My intent was just to share some of my own ideas, relevant or not relevant, and I would like to see other Blue Mages share their own ideas, relevant or not relevant.