Class Concept -- Blue Mage

These are just my musings on how I would like to see a Blue Mage could be implemented in FFXIV. Inspiration was taken from the FFXI class storyline. I tried to avoid specifics of Traits/Spells/etc to leave these up to SE, but I feel like the mechanics are sound. It will be split into multiple posts.


Blue Mage

Employing the legendary arts of the Near East, these formidable fighter-mages employ elegantly curved blades for close combat, while decimating their enemies with fell magic mastered from their opponents.

Blue Mage is a Disciple of War class that specializes in dual wielded Curved Blades and Blue Magic. The Blue Mage is a physical, melee class that relies on strength to slay their enemies with spell and blade. Blue Mage is a DPS that wears leather and cloth armor. The most important stat for Blue Mage is strength, which increases melee damage.

Blue Mage focuses on using weapon skills to build up stacks of Bestial Corruption. Upon reaching maximum stacks, the Blue Mage can release The Beast Within to unleash deadly Blue Magic to slay their foes.

The Blue Mage will receive cross-class abilities from Rogue and Thaumaturge.

Class Mechanics

Bestial Corruption - Upon using a Weapon Skill, the Blue Mage acquires 1 stack of Bestial Corruption. Bestial Corruption increases the TP cost of your Weapon Skills by 5% and increases magic damage dealt by Blue Magic by 5%. Upon reaching 10 stacks, the Blue Mage unleashes The Beast Within. Bestial Corruption stacks last 20 seconds. The duration is refreshed each time a stack is added.

The Beast Within - Upon reaching 10 stacks of Bestial Corruption, The Beast Within triggers. The Beast Within is a buff that increases Blue Magic damage dealt by an additional 50% and grants Burst Affinity. During Beast Within, no more Bestial Corruption stacks can be gained. The Beast Within lasts 30 seconds and granted Sated upon expiring.

Sated - The Beast Within is sated upon expiring, increasing MP regen for 15 seconds. You cannot enter Beast Within or gain Bestial Corruption stacks during Sated.

Burst Affinity - Burst Affinity activates the secondary effect of certain Blue Magic spells, allowing them to be used in a three-chain combo while under the effects of The Beast Within. An example of such would be something like: Savage Blade -> Expiacion (Combo: +damage; +Magic Damage Taken) -> Charged Whisker (Add. Eff: Paralysis).

Blue Magic - Unlike the Aetherial Magic practiced by Thaumaturges and Arcanists that draw from the aetherial well within, Blue Mages forcefully draw upon the wells of aether within their foes. By slaying beasts and beastmen alike, the Blue Mage captures this essence and takes a fragment of their foe into him/herself. By absorbing this essence, the Blue Mage can draw upon the shared knowledge of his foes, granting unto him their abilities. (Bomb Toss, Charged Whisker, Acid Spray, etc etc etc)

Playstyle

Blue Mage's playstyle is a unique mix of swordplay and spellcraft. Baseline, Blue Magic spells (excluding utility ones, i.e. Dream Flower) are instant cast but with poor DMG/MP ratio. By ramping up damage via Bestial Corruption and Beast Within, these spells become more and more DMG/MP efficient. This creates a playstyle where the BLU must learn to weave their spells and weaponskills together, rather than just doing melee damage or just trying to be a spellcaster.

Unleashing your magic during Beast Within phases allows you to maximize your damage and unleash a strong mix of physical and magic burst damage. The BLU also has a moderately sized MP pool to help further prevent magic-only use.

For the purpose of playstyle, BLU spells will be treated essentially as magic-damage weaponskills (a la Mudras). Strength will increase magic damage dealt.

You can exceed the 1000 character limit by editing and pasting in the other posts. >w>
Interesting iteration of the class. ;D

Doesn't sound that good to be honest. How is their base damage? is it comparable with other DPS jobs or weaker? Weaker then they are only good during damage up time. Thus good in long fights, useless in shorter fights. Comparable then sounds way OP.

People need to forget the FFXI iteration of BLU as it would not work in FFXIV. Only way I can see it fitting is with job quests, each job quests sends you off to fight a quest mob and you get rewarded an ability or spell that the mob used. Not like FFXI where you learnt as you killed mobs.

Simple fact is, players cannot see the whole picture and "design" jobs with their own bias. Also if BLU does get added, do not expect it to be the same as FFXI, different combat system totally. None of the jobs in FFXIV are the same as XI because of that, not to mention FFXI jobs where totally not balanced like FFXIV jobs are.

Blue Mage is most likely not gonna happen anytime in the near future. The design and playstyle that the Blue Mage would require to make it even close to the uniqueness of the class would be too complex for 90% of the playerbase, which means they probably don't have much intention of trying to add it to the game.

To go with what Sapphic said, 10 stacks of Corruption might just be too much, especially if Blue Magic is their main focus for DPS. I would recommending having Corruption stacks being a cost for using Blue Magic instead of just gating them behind 10, like one skill could use 1 Corruption, while another would use several.

BLU was one of my favorite jobs in XI and of course I would not mind to see SE try to implement it in XIV. I am not sure I will like the result though because just like Sapphic said this is a different game. Honestly I don't think BLU fits with XIV because it is just not a game that wants you to adventure and be in the world and it does not promote any variation/flexibility in gameplay. XIV is a hub based instance game with a very rigid trinity system set for the jobs and it just restricts BLU in a way that just makes me question how good a XIV iteration of BLU would work. Unfortunately.

a blue mage is just too difficult to implement unless they converted it into 3 jobs