Insane Difficulty: Blue Mage - Insane Difficulty

Since I was able to fix the bug that was causing Dragoon to be dysfunctional (and it's the same thing that prevented me from creating a functional Blue Mage), I can now make a Blue Mage. However, several skills that enemies use have obvious balance issues when placed on humans (due to access to gear, or just being a broken skill in general). Ideally, I want to fill 16 slots with learnable skills, including rare ones from specific enemies but nothing that's an obvious balance issue like Ignite. Also, should be interesting enough to warrant going through the effort to learn. Any ideas?

Skills currently in Blue Mage's Enemy skill:

White Wind - Same effect as every other FF game, faith based accuracy. Learn from Hyudra.

Quake - Large AOE/Slow/Top tier Earth Elemental damage, learn from Trent

Ghostly Touch - Protect/Shell/Haste/Innocent, learn from Ghost group

Roulette - Completely random status effect, learn from Uribo/Rogue

Death Sentence - Inflicts Death sentence (duh), learn from Ghoul/Flotiball

Lich - Large AOE Fractional, learn from Baatezu/couple other enemies

*Requiem - Holy damage, random hits (similar to Reis's Holy Bracelet in vanilla), learn from Ghost of Fury

Odd Soundwave - AOE Dispel, learn from Gelatin/Squidlarkin/Trent

Aqua Rake - Mid tier Water damage, learn from Squid group

Triple Flame - Up to 3 hits Fire damage, learn from Minitaurus/several other enemies

* = rare/hard to obtain

Throwing out some initial thoughts for giving them a diverse skillset:

-Square or Circle for stat drain

-Triple Flame for single target chance of high magic damage

-Trample from behemoths for melee damage. Not sure what kind of weapons they will get or how that would effect the damage.

-Life drain from succubus

-Some form of revival. Awaken from Apandas maybe? If they have to have an enemy use it on them to learn it might make it hard to learn.

-Personally I would never use Roulette. Would rather good and/or bad bracelet for status.

Not sure if giving them too diverse of a skill set might make them OP balance wise. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I've always liked the blue mages in FF games.

Knight class has their version of PA/MA drain moves, but maybe the monster skill wouldn't be a bad idea to get it in another class too.

Triple Flame isn't a bad idea.

Trample would do whatever the weapon does, as modified by attack up/Martial Arts.

The reason Life Drain was removed from player access is because of the outright absurd damage it does to ??? units that has no relevance to their stats, and the inability to attach an element to it like all other fractional moves. It was originally in Oracle class (like in vanilla), until I tested it in a boss fight and figured out that it doesn't accept an element.

Roulette is very unreliable, yes. Thought of it because it's in line with moves that end up on the Enemy Skill list in every FF (Same with Aqua Rake and White Wind). Bad Bracelet works with the Enemy Skill feel, though.

Ah yeah, scratch Life drain. Forgot about that.

Just looking at the lists of Blue Mage spells in other FF titles.

My suggestions:

• Bad Bracelet
  
• Sorcery
  
• MBarrier
  
• Self-Destruct
  
• Loss (100% Confusion)

Self-destruct was a blue mage skill in the FFT WOTL 1.3 hack, and it was so incredibly broken.

Bad Bracelet also seems like it would be OP with the movement and speed human units can have.

I'm not familiar enough with Emmy's mod to comment on the others.

Self destruct was not included due to humans potentially getting 9 speed + initial reraise + more hp than anything without ???'s or equipment. As Ludo said, Bad Bracelet might be a bit much on a high speed/move unit. Likewise with Mbarrier (though, that's likely less bad than the others due to being a much slower spell with a much higher MP cost in this mod).

Sorcery's probably not bad, but it's still one of those things I'd rather be a Chocobo/special unit thing for now.

Loss isn't 100% confusion in the mod, actually is just a special version of Confusion Song that a certain boss can use while silenced. It's actually lower accuracy than the regular Confusion.

I'll stick with the Blue Magic list I have for now.

I really feel Blue mage could use some reaction / suport / move, but i don know what...

Lets talk about skills, for me i think they need some rethink on certain things

White Wind
Yup, classical and great to have, not that i use too much,

Quake
I got and never used, because damage isnt that great, and too much to cast, algo soo many enimes don take / absorb earth

Ghostly Touch
BROKEN, i think Humans should not have this skill, because Bomb Shoes exist, and you can get those almost after you can have Ghostly touch, okay, it is Bomb Shoes fault that it cancels Innoocent, but still, is a really big buff, insta cast, it can help your Chemist being a super tank, and etc (BTW i only got this on chpt 3) + Plague is innocent imune

Roulette
On enemie hand = 4 times DEAD in a row... on my hand = defending.... never use... also, cant self cast.

Death Sentence
This skill could be used for eassy strategy, abuseing program AI, bot asside from that, u need to have defenses for it or u get too, Muramasa é better.

Lich
It can be useful, but so many enemies imune to dark, that makes it lose it shine...

Requiem
Really strong skill, i liked it, really, tehre are so many places where you can panel 2, or even one square !

Odd Soundwave
Really usefull, but i dont know if Im just unlucky, or if there are bosses that have protection against dispel...

Aqua Rake
God for finishing off some enemies, not that many enemies have Water cancel or absorb

Triple Flame
If fire wasnt an element so common on enemies defenses...., nah, kidding, this one is really good



If i was going to remove something, would be Quake and Roulette (and depending, Ghoustly Touch )

Lets see what we have right now with te set as it is

1 cure
1 Dispel
4 damage skills ( Fire, Water, Holy, Earth)
1 DEMI
1 Debuff (DS)
1 BUFF Haste+Wall+Innocent
1 ROULLETE

What is out these right now

Neutral MA Damage
Neutral PA Damage
Debuffs
Drain skills
Buff ( ReRaise)
Revive


My sugestions:

For Neutral damage:

- Lifebreak -> its one neutral damage that ignores defenses, and need you t have high MAX HP to make it does really high damage

- Diference -> another one that will realy help, but is one a ignore defense and it Dark (so it wont be broken... )

- Hyper Beam -> cuz that remember me of my dragonite on pokemon, also one magical non element damage with dont act, also, its not that strong, if im not wrogn, it has (PA+20)/2 *MA formula, so it would need really high PA + MA to it be great, but still the Dont act chance could be useful

- Magnet Bomb -> Neutral damage that is affect only by defenses, no reaction ( yup, need more of those ) aparently same formula as above

- Grudge -> Its kinda "lets try put some stats with reaaaly low chance", and maybe a chance for high damage

- Shake Off -> Physical + Drain + Dont Act

- Destroy -> Area Physical

- Dispose -> Longe range Physical that ignores Reaction (from what i remember huan dont have many skills that ignore reaction)



Elemental Damage

- Icicle Spear -> Another Multi chante to ilence, and need at least 3 hit for a really good damage

- Wave Cannon -> Fast Lighting damage with chance for confusion + hit itself


Debuff

- Blaster -> really low damage with charm + Haste


Cure

- Spirit of Life -> Low cure with chance to remedy, right now Blue mage have a cure, but cant get rid off debuff, this is to give this class a chance


Buff

- Leaf Barrier -> Giving itself Reflect could be good against mage, as it would hurt some of your team magic buff, whenever youre planing to use this one you would need to think about your team composition.

- Wings -> Really, Ghostly Touch is really strong buff, this one is lil more balanced, Regen shall help tanks and dealing with weak counter, Float is one way to negate Earth and Haste is... Haste...


Also, there was one skill that i think you could put on your mod, CLEANSE, that would take off ALL buffs and Debuff from target, including DS, only hitting one person, i tought of it to give as a hidden skill for Priest, but could be on Blue mage to


What thing should not enter (IMHO):

M Barrier / Quiver Dance: those 2 buff are really strong, as noticed already, heavy buff and debuff on someone with high speed is really broken, BUT, i think that maybe Good Bracelet, or one skill like it could be some of use.

A lot of these skills you mentioned fall under "absolutely fucking no" because they'd be severely broken if separated from the monsters that use them, or because I don't want humans to overshadow the monsters that use them.

Short list of skills that'll never be in this class:

Lifebreak, self destruct, difference, or anything else that completely ignores defenses.

Magnet Bomb, Shake Off, or anything else that's instant and exclusive to a kinda slow monster, that would turn into a balance nightmare if given access to an 8-9 speed human.

Revival of any kind since you can't actually learn these blue mage style.

Things that ignore reactions - again, rare and exclusive to mostly slow monsters for a reason.

Mbarrier, Quiver Dance - Supposed to be exclusive to the stuff that has it, to give you a reason to use those characters.

~~~

Ghostly touch is kinda good, but requires characters that don't care about Innocent to use. It's borderline, but would rather keep this than give humans Wings, since it has a few drawbacks to use, whereas Wings does not.

Quake is meant to be slow but powerful, requiring party setup to properly use. Earth Clothes or Float to negate, plus Earth elemental/floating monsters. I can see it as being limited use though because of its drawbacks.

Cleanse - not a completely terrible idea, but it's something I'd rather make exclusive to a monster if I use it.

Emmy, on 08 February 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

Wait ? Self Destruct ignre defenses ???Why my bomb was doing less damage for phys resistance monsters???

And i see about Humans overshadowing monster.

I'm not sure what to do per the 7 kitties who like to eat The best thing I can think of is putting Blue in a room alone to eat. Would that be possible?

The actual formula for self destruct is Max HP - Current HP, capped at 999. This formula ignores every part of the defense, attack up, etc routines. So if you have a bomb with max hp 800, and it has 300 hp current, self destruct will do 500 damage. On a boss, it'll do 999 damage without killing the boss as long as it has >999 hp current. You might have been exploding with different amount of hp, that's the only thing I can think of that could affect that.

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I have no clue what you're talking about.

Uh oh, bot approaches!

something i was curious about in regards to blue mage...... is it possible for a blue mage to learn a monster skill from a monster that has crystallized? and if not is there any way that could be implimented? (btw, just unlocked blue mage and mediator and all thats left for ramza to unlock class wise is i "think" mime)

If my memory does not fail me, I believe Kain found a Wizard of sorts in Germinas Peak that had Requiem (Blue Magic spell) once you obtained his crystal. I remember Emmy saying that wasn't really intended, though. Might've been my imagination.

I'm guessing Blue Mage spells are intended to be learned on hit, rather than obtaining them from crystals, especially since it only goes for human crystals...

That being said, it sounds rather interesting to implement that (only Emmy could say if it's feasible or not), but I'm not sure, it sounds like it defeats the purpose of learning on hit. That's just my opinion, though.

I got curious: do any of the monsters with Requiem (I'm almost sure there weren't that many, besides THAT boss) actually drop a crystal, Emmy?

You can find THAT boss in random encounters, which are significantly easier to beat at, say 900 hp and randomized br/fa a piece than 9000 hp and [redacted] br/fa. Blue mage crystals in random isn't fully intended, but not something I cared about enough that I'd remove it upon someone finding it. Basically, if I care enough about something being bugged/stupid, I'll patch it out on a later date. It can happen in later randoms where humans have more skills learned, such as Germinas Peak. The crystal is obtainable late enough in the game that a player could have gotten the skill "legitimately" by then, so idc. Even if you don't learn via crystal, it is much easier to learn from a human blue mage/with blue magic than THAT boss/his avatars, due to their higher than typical human MA. ^_^

The main purpose for learning on hit is to gate abilities, creating a sense of advancement that wouldn't exist in a system where someone can be crazy enough to grind for Bard in ch 1 if they desire. The other purpose is to replace classes whose skillset is IMO too douchey to give to the AI/therefore has no place in player hands (Calculator), in favor of a skillset that serves a purpose but isn't absurd. Any ability I don't want people to use in ch 1, I don't make it possible to obtain there. Blue mage is mostly a flavor based replacement for Calculator. Just removing the class (which is what I did in early dev, before I learned how to replace a heavily hardcoded class's abilities) is a waste of space. 1.3's solution of Sage, which casts "boss magic," does not suit my mod flavor-wise, since there's no unifying skillset that any group of bosses learn; and ??? stats are relatively common in the mod and extremely varied in encounter type. Blue Mage makes sense flavor-wise, since in a game where Ramza/Agrias spend a lot of time around monsters, you'd think they could learn some skills from them; but not immediately (hence the unlock requirements).

And you're right, Requiem is a fairly low distribution skill. Crystalization of a monster with "monster" gender will produce a crystal that only restores HP/MP, so crystalizing one of THAT boss's avatars won't help you. Crystalizing something with Blue Mage unlocked does though. I wanted to have one skill that was fairly hard to learn, to give the player the desire to seek it out though; but not something so necessary as to feel like a requirement for the class to be useful.

speaking on the subject of skills, i was in lionel gates for a story mission and the geomancers got killed by my hydra and thunder dragon but i couldnt reach their crystals as they were on top of the locked gate and seeing as i didnt have ignore height at my disposal aside from flyers (i dont think i taught ramza anything much for jump boosting and even spring shoes didnt help) and wanted to ask, why is it that the monsters cant activate that gate? i can see the monsters that have no hands/feet or ghost based monsters not being able to but anything that does have arms/feet?

Huh, I was always under the impression that Ramza was the one to open the gate. Never really thought about this.

Laith, on 04 September 2016 - 03:35 PM, said:

yea it sucks not having ramza not be able to get behind the gate, i missed out on some geomancer skills and who knows what else

also that love bird in there...... wasnt as annoying of a ??? monster as i thought it woulda been, in fact it seemed a bit easier to handle than the others ive seen so far