Blue Mage: Doom

[eldritchAvatar]

Doom is one of my favorite effects in the game to be honest, however the way it affects player characters is way more complicated in its variety than how it affects enemies. I'm beginning this thread to invite collaborative discussion on how to invite more variety to gameplay in battle systems. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it'll never happen, but even bad ideas can be improved upon or debated and refined.

Blue Mage ALREADY has a one-shot combo that works on groups of enemies that are fully resistant to doom, so don't tell me it's about balance, because people just crowd mobs up to use rams breath and ultravibration.

Much in the same way that Mortal Flame makes victory inevitable after an inherently finite amount of ticks. There must exist a state where doom could function in a balanced manner somewhere in between where it is right now and where Mortal Flame is currently.

Investigating the duration of the timer as a variable. Something where instead of needing to do damage the whole time you simply outlast them.When the goal switches from kill to "SURVIVE." surely there could be something to trade for that? The following points are merely suggestions.

If the debuff had to be periodically refreshed to preserve the effect from being dispelled before the countdown expires. Maybe including an expiration penalty of healing or locking out subsequent attempts?

Perhaps it has to be successful and stack multiple times in order to function? Something that can gradually extend along a similar graph as health?

Extended timers for tankier enemies? Or perhaps, revisiting an earlier idea, the number of stacks necessary for the effect to take place is proportional to current health percentage. An execute mechanic. That would make it so combat synergy can also include doom effects alongside regular dps.

Maybe it comes at the cost of a berserk mode? Enemy cast time reduction? Hidden or late AOE markers? Auto attack damage buff? This would make CC, heals, and kiting a focus within the current blue mage battle system. It would simultaneously make ordinary fights faster and more extreme. This could even be better expressed in a separate ability.

Maybe it can have a place in combat if enemies had more strategic maneuvering. Consider an enemy that repeatedly heals or regens itself in big chunks as it gets low. This would create a strategic niche for the doom effect to be advantageous without it being overtly necessary. Get it low enough for doom to work on it, and then keep it from healing to full or something. It would at the very least be an interesting masked carnival stage.

Any constructive thoughts are welcome. Please don't just hate on it without saying why.

[Post]

Hey, that sounds like a really fun idea honestly.

Alas, I don't think they really put that much thought or effort into BLU. It's miraculous that it is as fun as it is right now, even moreso that there's some variety to what spells a full team of them will bring to a fight because of certain actions that you don't want (or can't use) duplicates of.

I would point to evidence in spells like Ice Spikes, which for some reason they felt needed to not stack with Veil of the Whorl and Schiltron in BLU's most recent 'balance' patch, when it simply would have been more fun and creative to allow these effects to stack, and heck, perhaps even last for significantly longer for a BLU with Tank mimicry, enabling some more spell variety. Same goes for their new action combo with Peat Pelt and Deep Clean. In a world where a tank can already White Wind and Blood Drain themselves forever against most encounters, it wouldn't have been overpowered to give a tank a way to constantly stack up a 300 potency regen on themself indefinitely, but you cannot refresh the effect's duration, so the only way to make use of it would be to have 3 other players drop their damage output for a few casts to maintain a middling heal over time.

Not to say at least all of the variety of enemies with various elemental weaknesses as they exist in the carnival, yet those same enemy types out in the field have no such elemental strengths and weaknesses (only for BLU obviously, as jobs like BLM or NIN would otherwise unfairly struggle with this).

I'm saying I love the idea of a Doom that lasts a long time but eventually works, like how it worked in FF10 on some monsters, and I would love if their battle or job design team would feel compelled or empowered to put more creativity and try ideas like this, but it just doesn't seem likely knowing their history of battle design and especially BLU design.

They limited the extreme trials BLU could even enter this time around. They felt the limited job wasn't limited enough already, and cut down the share of duties it could participate in even further with its most recent update.