Blue Mage and Summoner responses worry me

[Garlyle]

Paladin is only a Paladin in English name only, it is called Knight in Japanese.

It's important to note, this is basically the old FF1 Knight class. It was primarily a physical attacker, but on promotion it got the ability to use the first three levels of white magic. For the most part, that magic was already obsolete by the time you got it, and was usually used for treating minor wounds and ailments outside of battle rather than inside.

That's basically what XIV's Paladin/Knight is - it has white magic for minor uses of such when it can afford the time (eg Stoneskinning itself while the boss targets the rest of the party with cast times), but isn't and probably won't ever be a dedicated healer.


Anyway, here's the thing about Blue Mage: Primarily and traditionally, Blue Mage has been defined by two things: The ability to learn from enemies, and a long-term spell selection that is both very versatile and occasionally quite gimmicky ("Heals everyone based on the user's HP", "Kill self to deal damage", "Kill self to full restore party", "Casts this effect on all enemies with a level that's a multiplier of x", "Deals damage based on steps taken", etc.). While the ability learning structure could easily be replicated via a focus on class quests and learning major abilities there, the problem is "what does Blue Mage become for us".

I could maybe, maybe see Blue Mage being transformed into a melee-range caster, with a focus on bufs/debuffs/side effects on those AoEs (including effects that might heal allies in range on cast for instance). But that's just one possible route - and there's a lot. Maybe they do decide to go with "here's this base skill set but here's a spell that amplifies DoT damage on something for when you've got arcanists, and here's one that acts as a cure but its potency is limited by how healthy the user is, while this one does damage getting stronger as the user loses HP", etc.

There's a lot of roads that could be explored for Blue Mage, and just settling on a gameplay concept - beyond just the DPS/Healer/Tank trinity, but also into what makes it genuinely unique gameplay wise, what strengths it brings to the table compared to others, etc. - is the hard part. WAR/PLD, WHM/SCH, BLM/SMN, MNK/DRG - even though these are similar things on the surface - tanks, healers, casters, melee - they are actually drastically different to play from each other. Figuring out what niche/variant fits Blue Mage is important for XIV - and for any other class they want to introduce.