I Thought BLU Was Made For Solo Players

[Atelier-Bagur]

Although I agree that the tome cap limit is very low and doesn't accompany well the structure of gearing BiS with savage.

Out of legit curiosity, why does it matter to get fast high IL if virtually there's no use for it unless you actually do high-end content (ultimate and criterion savage)? It's not like having high IL is a must to complete all the available endgame content outside of ultimates (you can complete savage with a crafted pentamelded set anyways).

Ive actually stated this counter argument and I feel it still holds true; however the nature of MMOs is always to get the best gear (people will always want to be more efficient) and the slow progression of obtaining these items goes against the core principle of FFXIV's All-in-One system.

I dont think asking for extra avenues to get savage level gear is bad. People are still going to have that retention to get BiS in this game but the process of doing that shouldnt be this extremely bad. Realistically you should be able to at least get 3 pieces of BiS gear weekly to fit the 3 roles; Tank, Healer, DPS and this can be done by spreading the content via raids, quests or heck even expert level crafts like in WoW.

[Deccado]

I find it funny at this point. WoW, the hardcore raid-only MMO, is now giving you the ability to get endgame raid-level gear from just casually playing the game and plans to expand this to even more solo content with Delves in the next expansion.
While XIV has suddenly become the "raid or bust" MMO when it comes to gearing your character.

Though it was never really a raid focused end game compared to other games, they did something similar in SWTOR some years back; you could get the BIS gear by raiding as you normally would, or through a semi-random grind that included pretty much any content you wanted to play.

As you can imagine, some were very vocal that you cant do that in an an MMO for myriad reasons, but at the end of the day, the raiders continued to raid and got the shiny new gear first, and anyone else who was interested in it just ground away and got it further down the line. It actually worked out pretty well IMO, unlike... well, a lot of the other things they did.

[Jargal]

Where have they claimed BLU to be a full solo content? As far as I'm aware there was no such claims nowhere in the game or outside (correct me if I'm wrong and provide evidence of this claim). Also, Blue Mage raiding is imo one of the best contents in the game! If anything I wanted Ultimates to be doable as blues also.

Also, this is an MMO, I really don't understand how people want or expect everything to be soloable in a MMORPG, Final Fantasy franchise has other 14 fully single player games, go play those if you don't want to play a multiplayer cooperative game.

EDIT: Not just expecting every content to be solo, but to also say "can't believe they are rewarding people for learning and clearing hard content as a Blue Mage" is such a delusional take for me

[Canadane]

You don't need a static, I used Party Finder for the majority of my BLU raid clears.
I love BLU and I like the concept of limited jobs. It makes older savage fights a LOT more enjoyable. I hope you find the enjoyment in it as well.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeah I can see that, a sense of character progression alone can be a motivator, but I can argue the same over getting BiS on savages and I just don't know how you would go about it without pissing off the balance of effort x reward, because in the end, doing savage only allows players to get better IL faster, since on odd patches, they add the possibility for anyone to upgrade their tome gears by exchanging alliance and nuts for the upgrades, if only the tome cap limit was higher everyone would get a high IL gear in a considerable speed.

Edit: after some thought I believe the best course of action on this would be making savage gear being the only kind of set that has visual effects (remove them from the normal set), to compensate, make it so the normal set could be dyable, and the savage set could be dyable + you can dye/chage color of the effects emanating from the set, that in a sense would be the fair way to reward a player that goes through a harder piece of content and not feel robbed of going the hard way for gearing up.

Yeah I dont think even hardcore raiders care so much about the exclusivity. Sure the ideal is that the hardest fights should give the best gear and that emphasis should heavily be skewed towards that but many feel frustrated about the slow gearing process and many are getting sick and tired of dealing with 8 man statics.

Criterion is an easy solution to introduce that avenue to get BiS savage gear since its just as hard (or at least Criterion Savage) and its less stress having to deal with less people in a week.

[Jargal]

Yeah I dont think even hardcore raiders care so much about the exclusivity. Sure the ideal is that the hardest fights should give the best gear and that emphasis should heavily be skewed towards that but many feel frustrated about the slow gearing process and many are getting sick and tired of dealing with 8 man statics.

Criterion is an easy solution to introduce that avenue to get BiS savage gear since its just as hard (or at least Criterion Savage) and its less stress having to deal with less people in a week.

Criterion Savage is as hard as the savage tier, it definetly isn't the place to gear up.

As for rewards, not all raiders care about the exclusivity of the visual piece (certainly I don't since I haven't used a single gear from the tier as glam), but at the same time the prestige is what makes the reward sweeter for a lot of folks and I think if only the savage has visual effects would add more prestige to these pieces to compensate for going the hard way to gear up.

[Cabalabob]

BLUs design pivoted with the level 60 update. At level 50 BLU was simply too weak. You couldn’t solo anything higher than a level 30 dungeon. A lot of the spells that have made BLU a good solo job now didn’t exist back then, basic instinct, aetherial mimicry, Pom cure, gobskin, all abilities that came with the 60 update. At level 50 BLU was basically a weaker BLM that had access to diamondback and white wind.

People had to group up to learn higher level spells like the primal spells and obviously you tried to go with as many BLUs as possible so you didn’t have to run it multiple times. But this lead to another problem. BLU didn’t have the tools to specialise into roles. No provoke, no raise spell (which mattered because dead BLUs don’t learn the spell), no cure spell other than white wind, no mitigation other than diamondback (both spells with an unsustainable mp cost).

So with the 60 update they took the feedback from the way people were playing the job and redesigned it into a job that could specialise into roles and could build parties of BLUs. But since then it has gained a lot of the tools to be a decent solo job, I’ve personally soloed every spell since the 70 update and seen people soloing savage content unsynced. But the damage is done, the mark left on the job from the 50 era is there and now SE thinks people want to group up as BLUs so they are making content to cater to that.

[ThaCa]

They should let BLU queue up for anything their level cap allows. Would make doing some Roulettes more fun.

[MonsutaMan]

Eh....just want cross class glamour so I can rock female BLU armor and never have to touch the job again......

[Renathras]

I’ll admit, i’m late to the party on this, but it just now hit me. I started getting into BLU and I really enjoy it. It’s been something fun I can work on outside of the usual grind for gear and progression through raiding. However, it was a huge letdown when I realized that most of the titles and even a mount are all locked behind completing some of the hardest content the game has to offer. I never got into savage raiding because I just never had the time to commit to being in a static. But to get all the good BLU achievements, you pretty much need one. It feels contradicting to what the whole “solo content” that BLU was pitched as. Sadly I don’t think ill ever be able to do it.

I think it WAS supposed to be...but then they decided to give them more big flashy cool spells (like from Primals) and those...required groups. So it's been group content ever since. Sadly. Since I liked the idea of a Job designed for solo stuff.

For example, the most solo-y content in the game, solo runs of Deep Dungeons, BLU isn't even allowed to do.