blue mage

I have been debating whether the blue mage should be a tank or dps. To me tank seems like the most logical choice. Most tanks have their own little nitch. The blue mage will use blue magic to damage and inflict debuffs on enemy, with "Bad Breath" being one of the most powerful skills. Perhaps learning a healing skill like white wind.
I can see the blue mage going out during their job quest and slaying beast to gain new abilities. Slaying coeurl to learn how to paralyze. Facing a Fenrir to learn frost breath to freeze weak enemies. Going into instances to kill weaker versions of Behemoth class fate bosses. Many people think that a Blue Mage should get a sword of some kind. I, on the other hand, think that we need a little variety. At first I thought of a whip, a call back to Quistis from ff8. But now I think a crescent blade would work best. I got this idea after seeing the Azure Witch in Mobious FF. I can even see the Azure Witch being a main part of the job quest.

Good luck because you are in for a long wait for blu to be implemented along with Dancer it would seem :(
I too would think if/when they do decide that tank would be the better role for it

I would want blue mage and dancer, also beast Master

I too thought a more practical and lore way to make Blu into the game would also be to make it a unique sort of tank, however the weapon choice is far beyond me, maybe mace and shield or something possibly a bit outside the normal for the job that we know today.

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

I would want blue mage and dancer, also beast Master

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Mime could be funny as well... I felt in love with Mimes in FFT <3

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/...20090405192720

one of the main skills could be "copycat" which gives you a stance which saves the next party-members skill to your toolkit without any restrictions for one free usage. Like Flare without Manausage, Deathflare without Trance etc. Could be pretty tricky to get the efficiency working in random grps but in pre-made grps this could really be a new twist for a new cls-playstyle :3

Mimes ftw <3

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

I too thought a more practical and lore way to make Blu into the game would also be to make it a unique sort of tank, however the weapon choice is far beyond me, maybe mace and shield or something possibly a bit outside the normal for the job that we know today.

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Whip.

/tencharacters

Tank would be the most fitting role for BLU in the game as it is right now since tanks are the most versatile role.

They have damage skills for enmity, allowing BLU to learn attack spells like 1000 needles.
They have healing skills for recovery, allowing BLU to learn healing spells like white wind.
They have mitigation skills for defence allowing BLU to learn mitigation spells like mighty guard.

I really don't understand why people want BLU to only learn their spells in job quests, that would be incredibly boring. BLU could easily have a basic skill set using their weapon and learn blue magic on top of that from monsters in the world.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

.... learn blue magic on top of that from monsters in the world.

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isnt it the whole point talking about a Blue Mage at all? : o

pf would become more lively "Coil skill-farming BLUs only – only join if you mastered at least each one of a healing and tank selfbuff -> else kick!!11"


I'd love to go for skill hunting after all :3

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Originally Posted by Steelbreeze

Whip.

/tencharacters

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Interestingly enough i was going to respond with something like "but the tamer job uses tha whip" but then i thought of how a whip could be used to draw and grab targets like holmgang sometimes works, and it would make an interesting tank mechanic could be used for a gap closer as well as swinging around ala belmont style for aoe rotations.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

I really don't understand why people want BLU to only learn their spells in job quests, that would be incredibly boring. BLU could easily have a basic skill set using their weapon and learn blue magic on top of that from monsters in the world.

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Consider how many bad players are in the game that can barely put a rotation together. You're going to have blus queuing with half or more of their skills missing. Now you put them in a tank slot and you have tanks queuing with most of their skills unlearned. Yeah that won't go over well. You'd basically have to make a special system for blus that ties level or ilvl to the skills they've learned so they don't make queue requirements until they learn skills. I'd love to see blu learning their skills, and especially as a tank, it's just given the devs mentality about this game that's why you're not seeing it. And a blu in name only(ie learns skills from job quests) isn't all that appealing to me.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

Consider how many bad players are in the game that can barely put a rotation together. You're going to have blus queuing with half or more of their skills missing. Now you put them in a tank slot and you have tanks queuing with most of their skills unlearned. Yeah that won't go over well. You'd basically have to make a special system for blus that ties level or ilvl to the skills they've learned so they don't make queue requirements until they learn skills..

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Have to agree with this, they could barebones the concept esp for a tank job by giving them a skill to temporarily stock a recently used ability on them and then reflect it back on the enemy, but thats about the extent of it. Why pets dont get anymore actions, cause too many actions and an unfair advantage or something. The fun and thrill of the jobs classic design would be lost entirely to balance, and as you said before would be a nightmare if it was usable in anything but unsynced or solo runs due to the high liability of the player base

I understand the concern but look at it this way.

BLU could have a basic skill set that uses its weapon, this would include a 1-2-3 enmity combo and damage combo and a DoT skill and some quirky skills like a mitigation CD, damage increase CD and invulnerability skill. It would have role skills (since as of 4.0 that's going to be a thing) giving it Rampart (confirmed), Convalescence? Awareness? Foresight? Flash?

It will probably start at level 50 or higher, so it could have a tank stance already available when unlocked like DRK did. (ff explorers gave blue mage predetermination as a basic skill which was basically a tank stance).

This alone gives BLU the necessary tools to perform its job competently, we've all seen the tanks who sit in tank stance and just spam their flash/enmity combo and never pop a CD and can still clear content.

BLU spells would then be an addition on top of this basic skill set, BLU spells would be their clemency, their fell cleave, their abyssal drain, their sole survivor, their sheltron, their vengeance. The spells would be the thing that takes them from a competent BLU to a good BLU. You won't need them, but you'll perform way better if you have them.

Job skills could then be saved for actually interesting things like chain affinity, doubles the potency of your next spell, azure lore, allows blue magic to be cast with no cost for the duration, unbridled knowledge, grants access to more powerful spells. Using these would take you from a good BLU to a great BLU.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

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Yeah but again look at it with existing skills. I had a drg queue one time for a 60 dungeon and he had NONE of his 50+ skills. His dps was about one third of what I was doing in tank stance. He was essentially a non-existent party member. Or look at it a different way, I was gone for awhile and when I came back had to do catch up. I was tanking gubal hard and expert in 240-250 gear with a 240 weapon. It was really difficult to hold hate even with tank stance. That was with just a bit of an ilvl difference and using everything at my disposal. Now drop a blu in that scenario tanking with half their skills missing. Not going to happen. A pld does slightly less damage than the other tanks and they're shunned for it.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

Yeah but again look at it with existing skills. I had a drg queue one time for a 60 dungeon and he had NONE of his 50+ skills. His dps was about one third of what I was doing in tank stance. He was essentially a non-existent party member. Or look at it a different way, I was gone for awhile and when I came back had to do catch up. I was tanking gubal hard and expert in 240-250 gear with a 240 weapon. It was really difficult to hold hate even with tank stance. That was with just a bit of an ilvl difference and using everything at my disposal. Now drop a blu in that scenario tanking with half their skills missing. Not going to happen. A pld does slightly less damage than the other tanks and they're shunned for it.

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You can't really work off this slippery slope logic though, as you said this is ALREADY a thing, bads will be bad, you can't stop that and you shouldn't design the game around it.

I just don't think they are going to make a tank out of a clothie job. SE is not experimental enough to make a tank out of a job that doesn't at least traditionally wear heavy armor even if it had traditionally been a DPS (i.e. if they wanted, they could have made DRG a tank. It wears heavy armor). So these threads can pop up all the time, which they do, but its just not going to be a tank.

Just being realistic.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

You can't really work off this slippery slope logic though, as you said this is ALREADY a thing, bads will be bad, you can't stop that and you shouldn't design the game around it.

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The point I'm making is more about the dev's mentality. They make a game that holds your hand as much as possible and then some more. They took elements out of the game for fear it was too complicated and boiled every job down to one stat. They're not going to design a job that could potentially be so poor. Of course after that you'd have all the forum whining about dps that spent 45 minutes in a queue only to get a blu incapable of doing his job, having to drop only to do another 45 minute queue to have the same thing happen. Believe me I want a blu like you're describing, I just know it's not going to happen.

What id like to see is a Geomancer as a tank (using things like walls of earth and vines for Aoe crowd control).... Storyteller for healer (like orator in ff tactics can buff party and debuff enemies as well as healing)... as for Dps Puppeteer ( works like BLU or BST unlocking various skills from collected minions)

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

... I really don't understand why people want BLU to only learn their spells in job quests, that would be incredibly boring. BLU could easily have a basic skill set using their weapon and learn blue magic on top of that from monsters in the world.

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I always thought an interesting idea for a Blue Mage tank would be to have a set of 'Absorb' abilities that acted both as mitigation and a way to (temporarily at least) learn extra abilities beyond their standard set and keep the diversity that Blue Mages is known for...

The idea would be that Blue Mages have an 'Offensive Absorb', 'Defensive Absorb' and a 'Support Absorb', which at a base level would simply provide damage mitigation (like Rampart), however getting hit by a special attack while an 'Absorb' is up would then turn that 'Absorb' ability into a special ability, the effects of which would depend on the type of the 'Absorb' and the category of the attack...

For example:
Offensive Absorb + Single Target Hit = High Damage Single Target Attack
Defensive Absorb + AoE Magical Hit = Short Duration AoE +Magic Defence.
Support Absorb + AoE debuff (e.g. Bad Breath) = AoE 'Esuna'.

This would of course require balancing, as it could be quite powerful in certain situations, however it is one way that Blue Mages could still be able to learn abilities 'in the wild', and have a diverse ability set, without having to break the established pattern of job quests.

(As a side idea, and as the 'Absorb' abilities would work best if the Blue Mage was the main tank, they could also have a 'Observer Stance' which lets them simply observe enemy abilities (rather than get hit by them) in order to gain access to their special abilities while off-tanking, etc.).

I could see Blue Mage working as a tank. It would need a substantial re-imagining though.
Initially I tried to think of ways to have the Blue Mage being hit work, but I don't think the devs will ever make a tank that is encouraged to take more damage.
I do however think a magic stealing theme could work, taking power offensively from enemies in order to power up your own mob themed attacks. The lore would focus on learning from your enemies (and allies in some cases) and taking their power to use against them.

So, after you've gained enough power you could use 'blue magic' to charge up a roster of moves.
Say the BLU AoE aggro generator is an overpower copy called 'Bad Breath'. As standard your character would breath out a wispy green cloud that does damage and builds threat, but powered up by stealing power from enemies the same move would also have a spectral Morbol behind you doing the full attack putting blind, heavy and poison on the mobs.
You could do the same for combos, like having a DPS combo based on the Ziz group of enemies (those bird things and their poison breath attacks) that when powered up turns into a conal DoT attack.
As a gimmick I admit it's a bit of a rip-off of WAR stacks and DRK dark arts. Would need a bit more to flesh it out properly, but a vague list of moves I think could work would be.

Lancet: Attacks done while under the effect of this buff generate stacks to spend on blue magic and charging up your basic attacks.

Scan: When placed on a target Lancet is more effective at generating stacks.

Learn: Saves the last received buff for re-use, stoneskin placed on you, use learn and have another stoneskin saved to use for the tankbuster.

Diffusion: Spreads your buffs to nearby party members at 50% potency. Healers shielded you and put a regen on? Share the love with the melee DPS.

Copy: Placed on another party member, duplicates buffs and debuffs they receive on yourself. BLM using raging? Copy him for a damage boost.

I'd have the stack count be quite generous and various moves use different amounts of stacks. 'Blue arts' as it were would be fairly cheap, straight up cast Blue Magic like Learn and Copy would be quite expensive in comparison.

Edit: Oh, and I'm thinking one-handed spear and an off-hand whip.

If their going to do BLU, it's probably going to be a DPS with support, akin to summoner. They could easily give it ability that allows it to have some damage mitigation (like Titan or monks earth stance.). I can't really see BLU wearing heavy armor. But maybe SE will finally start giving each tank their own gear set, like they do with the DPS jobs.

I still say the whole learning thing could be solved with job quests. Especially if the quest is something like tracking down the monster, and then fighting it. BLU doesn't necessarily have to get hit by the ability. It could be a different take on the job where they observe it in action and learn it. A lot of people want traditional. They want that FFXI BLU, where you have to beat the mob with a wooden katana until it submits. If RDM can take a different approach, why not BLU? Besides, the job starting at lv50~ kind of defeats the purpose of learning spells anyway.

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Originally Posted by TarynH

A lot of people want traditional.

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Well, that's the entire point of appealing to nostalgia and FF tradition by implementing traditional FF jobs, rather than something new and innovative >_>

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Originally Posted by Zojha

something new and innovative

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Sounds good! I like taking things out of context too!

The point in my post was that while yes, people do want traditional, the developers can also think a little outside the box. Like RDM. It looks traditional. Has traditional elements; using sword and magic, with light armor. But it's innovative in the fact that they gave it it's own "red magic," so it will have a defined role. They could do the same with BLU, which already has it's own "blue magic," but is difficult to place in FFXIV. Which has been stated in the past. It has also been stated that they are not sure how to implement a "spell learning" system.

So yes, tradition is great and all, but if it doesn't fit, then they have to get creative with it.

No matter the role it's pretty safe to say that any BLU skills would be gained in instanced job quests like every other job.... the lore as to if we observe, get hit or "consume" enemies is secondary... tho I like the idea of consuming enemies to gain skills (been done in previous ff titles)

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Originally Posted by TarynH

The point in my post was that while yes, people do want traditional, the developers can also think a little outside the box.

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And my point was that innovation is the antithesis to tradition. So if you're going to think outside the box when appealing to tradition, there is no point in appealing to tradition in the first place.

Hence, why Summoner is so commonly complained about, in spite of being a solid job. I'm fairly certain that the same will happen to Red Mage as well - the perceived identity of a red mage simply doesn't fit in a trinity game, so the people you appealed to by putting a traditional job in in the first place will be disappointed, because they aren't going to get the tradition they wanted the job for, they're going to get something else.
That's not to say people won't enjoy the job - but they'd enjoy it just as much if it had been sold as Spell Fencer instead.

The same applies to Blue Mage. If you can't offer a traditional blue mage, don't do something else and sell it as one - Sell it as something new from the get-go. The only thing you lose is a bit of hype before people realize it's not going to be the traditional blue mage they hoped for, but something else that just carries the same name.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

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A good example of keeping with tradition, while making innovative changes, would be Batman's origin story. Through the years it has received several tweaks; including how he was trained to fight, how he thought up the costume, how he acquired his tools, etc. Some of them were little, and some were huge changes. However, the traditional narrative of his parents being killed hasn't changed.

I'm saying you can still have the traditional BLU. It can still learn spells. Although the easiest way to implement this would be through job quests. However, unless they make sweeping changes to the job system, the job has to fit into one role. Which is why people debate over dps vs tank. But nowhere was it determined the BLU had to be "hit" in order to learn the spells. They simply had to witness the spell being used, regardless of it hitting the BLU or not. How else would you explain the healing and buff spells it learns? The BLU isn't "hit" by those.

Edit: Going back and looking at "traditional" BLU, it's pretty un-traditional. It seems to change with almost every iteration. Being hit, witnessing it, stealing it with Lancet, obtaining items dropped by enemies, eating the enemy, to beating a mob senseless to give it TP (a combination of being hit/witnessing). So I think they have a lot of wiggle room there to play with "tradition."

Touching on the topic of BLU learning skills from mobs... I want to bring up a point of what game design is when you break it down. Final Fantasy XIV has a structure for its classes. You have three roles, Tank, DPS, and Healer. All classes designed for combat will always fall into 1 of these and 1 of these only. All actions and traits across all classes are learned at the same levels. These are structural standards of the game. The reality is, a BLU learning actions from a mob does not fit in that structure.

It's similar to when people wanted Red Mage to be a DPS, Tank, and Healer all in one. The reality is, that isn't how this game is designed, and trying to break those rules would create a balancing nightmare because you're trying to reinvent the wheel for one tire while the other three are still round. It's the same reason you're not going to see a new anime character introduced to SpongeBob, or a Jeti in a future Harry Potter book. It just doesn't fit.

Designing the BLU to "learn skills from enemies" through job quests is the only way that the designers could retain the integrity of the traditional BLU while still following FFXIV's basic structure.

I almost want to argue that Blue Mage and Beastmaster should be Tanks because their known solo-ers. For example, Beastmaster could summon a Tank beast and command it while it's tanking. Think Smn/Egi... except where the Egi is the real source of combat while the Beastmaster assists. They could have Tank pots and DPS pots to represent their tank stance and dps stances. Maybe different beasts could be represented differently... like standing on the shoulders of a physical tank one while having the magic one holding you behind it with their tail curled around your waist. Have it be entirely about the pet, and not the master... which was kinda what I gathered was the biggest SMN complaint with egi's.

AS for Blue.. I think they'd be best represented by a Tank, because tanks do heal, dps, and take damage... and Blue was a jack of all trades job. How can you represent that without making some special exception for them? I don't think SE will make exceptions like that. We'll see how folks like RDM.. but i think folks will be a little disappointed they won't have the healing/defensive abilities of XI.

Though it's worth noting that both BST and BLU had secondary systems in place, namely a Rock/Scissors/Paper mechanic when it came to picking your mob based off ecosystems. http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Beast_Strength_Chart

If we have anything like that now... it's entirely hidden to us at present. Also, aside from maybe a hunt mob... what does anyone need help soloing in this game anyhow?

I'm​ had an idea for BLU not long ago I thought was pretty clever. Whether it's a DPS or tank, all of it's skills need to be universal. This is not even just a matter of certain people being "lazy" but also unintentionally missing out. That'd be a ton more work for gains that wouldn't put you above other Job. So, my idea was skill glamour. That is to say, all the skills will serve the same function, but you could "learn" a completely same functioning skill from some rando monster.

Example. A class quest gives you an AoE. Let's say it's Aqua Lung/Breath. Well, let's say you're out adventuring and slay some form of Malboro (Just killing it seems the smartest implementation IMO), and boom, you can now use Bad Breath, but only in place of Aqua Lung/Breath. This could apply for many other skill. Spider Web/Stone Gaze for slowing enemies down. Level ??? Death/Holy for an LB. It'd take a lot of work, and would honestly just be a vanity project for SE at that point, but who wouldn't love the job?

As for role, I'd say melee DPS, but with strong utility makes the most sense. Blu has always been about bringing the pain first, with very few, but very powerful​ utility skills (White Wind and Mighty Guard being prime examples).

Also, an aside here (If we do go tank), maybe if the story goes to Garlean, the BLU is a BLUe Knight. They mimic/capture/steal the powers of base monsters to replicate magic power since they can't use it naturally. It also gives us an excuse to have Micro Missile.