Please reconsider stance on blue mage

[Giantbane]

Let's be honest with the BLU. In any game that had them, while they may have had a ton of spells total, there were really only a handful that were all that good. Stuff like mighty guard or white wind and maybe a decent nuke or attack, but most of it became redundant by the time you had them all. So even if you had any old class, then picked 5 of the more iconic BLU magic spells as the Job abilities that you learned via the Job quests, you'd still be able to hit most of the high points.

However, a way that BLU could work in FFXIV would be to make the BLU a tank job. One of their more important abilities would be "Learn", which would reduce the damage of the next incoming special attack by 20-30% or whatever. When abilities are learned, they will grant the tank one charge of that ability and then the Learn ability will change to "Unleash". This will allow them to hit the enemy right back with the ability that was just absorbed. Wouldn't it be pretty cool to absorb titan's table flip and then turn around and cast it right back at him? Learn/Unleash would be the level 30 job ability, and the remaining abilities would be iconic BLU magic spells that you learn permanently via quest.

[Dwill]

Shiva party, looking for more. BLM's only with ilvl120+ gear, spam Fire strat.

And then 8-9 other PF groups with the same exact message. Balance is quite a thing.

Exactly. There is a reason more and more MMOs stopped using the elemental wheel altogether.

[Duelle]

Exactly. There is a reason more and more MMOs stopped using the elemental wheel altogether.

Quoted for emphasis. Some people just care more about being different for the sake of being different and seem to give balance the middle finger. :/

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Would blue mage be tank, healer, or dps? It has to have 1 role for the duty finder

I always thought that depending on which skills/abilities you have equipped if the BLU was a job, that BLU can switch between roles. Meaning you have a skill set of skills/abilities that make you a tank. Switch those around to something else so then you are a healer. Switch those around you can be DPS. Switch those around and you can be a buffer/debuffer, etc. Kind of like how FFXI does it, but whenever you have things equipped in FFXIV, your role changes. It's a thought I made awhile back.

[Nalien]

Quoted for emphasis. Some people just care more about being different for the sake of being different and seem to give balance the middle finger. :/

This is why I think something like a beast wheel would work well. It is effectively still a wheel, with all the depth that brings, but it doesn't affect overall balance, just an individual Job (or two, with Beastmaster).

It would mean Blue Mage would effectively play the way some people want Black Mage to play. They'd just need to work it so you can switch spells quickly (which I think would be achieved with a preset loadout tied to beast types (Cloudkin, etc.)), then you're effectively going "We're fighting X, so I'll use Y" for every fight.

[DishSoap]

Elemental Wheel thing to me always seemed really dumb in MMOs kind of like arrows. You get a bunch of spells that end up doing the exact same thing except one is Fire-flavored and the other is Ice. The Elemental Wheel only works in single player RPGs where the world is limited to an extend and it doesn't matter when a player decides to bring a certain class to a certain fight. BLM is fine right now, I'd rather it have spells that actually did things instead of GENERIC ELEMENT DAMAGE NUKE #10.

So why can't they just slap some iconic BLU spells together and call it a BLU mage. I mean it's not like party buffs on DPS classes are something new to this game either, MNK get something as powerful as Mantra, BLM gets Apocatastasis for whatever reason, and BRD get songs. I'd rather get something than nothing at all.

[MysteriousRonin]

Op: Please explain how Blue Mage would work in FFXIV please?

Sincerely Curious.

Like FFXI which did it really well and you ended up situationally equipping your spells like you would make a build a deck of cards in a card game. Yoshi-P shouldn't make true gamers and FF fans suffer because some other players are lazy or not very smart. No child left behind is not good for gaming.

[Nephera]

I honestly liked the mechanic Guild Wars 2 thieves have where they can steal an item (really just a unique skill determined by enemy type and a dice roll) at which point their steal skill is replaced with that item till they use it.


Could be used for blue mages where they copy abilities temporarily (Dropped when zoning/waiting too long to prevent using too powerful abilities cross-zone) and have to use them tactically on top of a base moveset(where your typical damage rotations would come from).

could make for another support oriented dps.


Edit: the downside to this system is that some of the things you can steal are kind of meh.

double edit: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal oh right i forgot wikis exist

But yeah the success of the system is largely up to the skills designed to be stolen. -shrug-

[Gardes]

Do we realy want only 5 Blue Mage spells? If they are going to release a botched up job like the current Summoner, I rather have they don't release a complex job like Blue Mage.

Ninja gets more than 5 skills. They get the ninja skills (there's like 3 or more) + 3 mudras + mudra activation. 3 mudras provide like 5 spells alone. Could be even more.

[VoltaAsura]

I don't want to see blue mage in FFXIV. WHY? Well thats because SE more than likely will chop BLU to bits and by the time it was "balanced" it would probably look nothing like what you know to be a blue mage. Please look at SMN and SCH for an example.

Also, mobs in this game are not very interesting or memorable. The attacks they could give would be rather useless imo, as most enemies are resistant to heavy.