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.
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). 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.
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- 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- 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, 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).
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).
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 early level 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, 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 interesting in it (but 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. Perhaps the primal instinct comes from cracking the mist (think like Fran on mist from FFXII as well)- more hp, damage, both mimicry, and mp regen. This can 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).
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. 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 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. 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's 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.
Continue reading...
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.
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). 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.
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- 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- 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, 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).
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).
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 early level 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, 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 interesting in it (but 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. Perhaps the primal instinct comes from cracking the mist (think like Fran on mist from FFXII as well)- more hp, damage, both mimicry, and mp regen. This can 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).
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. 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 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. 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's 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.
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