Why do people want Blue Mage in this game?

[MagiusNecros]

Uhh you're wrong, well partially.
Dark Knight has Blood Weapon and skills that not really drain, but restore HP and MP, but doesn't have the true Souleater gimmick of sacrificing HP.
Summoner can summon eikons, which are the Egi.

Egi are puny. They should comprise 80% of the SMN's DPS and not 33%. And all you use your Egi's for is Auto's and Radiant Shield/Contagion and then they go on autopilot. You build up a sissy Flare over the course of 2 minutes and you debilitate foes like an Arcanist/Necromancer class which a Summoner never has done. Ever.

You know what Blood Weapon would normally do? Restore HP and not MP. Blood Weapon is merely applying Osmose onto your weapon to regen MP. You are right about not sacrificing HP which is the main shtick the DRK has always had. Novelty class through and through.

The playstyle itself isn't bad. However labeling it as something it is not is completely pathetic.

[dinnertime]

Egi are puny. They should comprise 80% of the SMN's DPS and not 33%. And all you use your Egi's for is Auto's and Radiant Shield/Contagion and then they go on autopilot. You build up a sissy Flare over the course of 2 minutes and you debilitate foes like an Arcanist/Necromancer class which a Summoner never has done. Ever.

You know what Blood Weapon would normally do? Restore HP and not MP. Blood Weapon is merely applying Osmose onto your weapon to regen MP. You are right about not sacrificing HP which is the main shtick the DRK has always had. Novelty class through and through.

The playstyle itself isn't bad. However labeling it as something it is not is completely pathetic.

I agree about SMN doing more damage than the summon itself and that there's little pet-management but let's be real that pet-managing in this game is so annoying with the delay that I'm glad I have to do less of it. It's annoying enough to manually press Contagion over and over because sometimes it wouldn't respond the first time.
And sissy Flare? Mind you Deathflare has more potency and doesn't have a damage reduction like Flare does, and you can use it every minute, not 2. Also surprise, Summoner evolved from the Arcanist job. Jobs are there mostly to improve on the class. Besides, most debilitating skills like Bio are found in black magic, which a Summoner can also use so you're wrong on that.

Blood weapon can restore HP and MP, but here it's only MP, yeah.

[Tanathya]

There's really no "proper". Each job has seen changes in each FF game.

But everything followed a pattern, all of them have signature traits. SMN has always been about the summons, summons weren't just a minor sidekick like they are here, for example. Not even gonna mention DRK, already did many times and I'm sure there'll be more to come. BLM's signature spells were those three, yes, but they took away what made a BLM in the first place; elemental weaknesses.

The playstyle itself isn't bad. However labeling it as something it is not is completely pathetic.

This exactly here.

[Lemuria]

Besides, most debilitating skills like Bio are found in black magic, which a Summoner can also use so you're wrong on that.

Errm... in which FF universe? In most cases, games which included a summoner meant healing magic (as in white magic), not black. Both Yuna and Garnet start as healers, and in FFXI it was pretty much a given that you'd sub White Mage (at least until Scholar came out) to supplement your summons with healing the party. Aside from those rare moments you'd sub BLM on Summoner in FFXI (seriously, it was worthless for everything except Warp on SMN), you'd never be able to cast Bio on the class.

Want to know which black magic we can use on Arcanist that isn't native? Blizzard II. That's it. Do you know who else can use Blizzard II? White Mage! Though, since it's epic nerf to 50 potency, I don't think anyone even cares that the spell exists. Honestly, the summoners in FFXIV are so far removed from their counterparts the only thing they have in common is the name at this point.

Also, read up on your FF history. Blood Weapon has never once restored MP until Heavensward came out. It has always been HP only. Oh, and Souleater was reduced to a weaponskill, so make of that what you will. Very few of the classes we have play anything like their original jobs, though some of the classics survived at least. Monk, Dragoon, Paladin and White Mage are the ones I'd argue are the most faithful to the original jobs and even then creative liberties were taken here and there.

At any rate, change isn't always a bad thing. In fact, it was kind of crucial in some instances to keep a level balance, but let's not pretend that the jobs would come out unscathed. History has proven otherwise.

[Duelle]

I'm not talking if they're a good effective class or not. More like "does it feel like a FF summoner?"

That's irrelevant, since the FF summoner is basically a black mage with Amano Yoshitaka artwork instead of particle effects.

[dinnertime]

But everything followed a pattern, all of them have signature traits. SMN has always been about the summons, summons weren't just a minor sidekick like they are here, for example. Not even gonna mention DRK, already did many times and I'm sure there'll be more to come. BLM's signature spells were those three, yes, but they took away what made a BLM in the first place; elemental weaknesses.

I'll agree that summons here do pathetic damage but again, they've worked out to play as companions since FFX.
Glad you actually mentioned the element weakness, and also there's an elemental resistance. I think this was not something necessary to remove but at the same time it gives me the opportunity to play BLM or WHM anywhere. Still, it's pretty disappointing.

Errm... in which FF universe?

FFIV's Summoner can use black magic, which is pretty much just Rydia.
It's understandable that most black magic can't be cross-classed because of how BLM works with the Astral Fire/Umbral Ice. Instead SMNs get debilitating skills (which black magic has) but most of these are actually blue magic with Shadowflare and Miasma known as an enemy skill primarily but what i'm trying to say here is that Summoners were able to use debilitating magicks before.

Also, read up on your FF history. Blood Weapon has never once restored MP until Heavensward came out. It has always been HP only. Oh, and Souleater was reduced to a weaponskill, so make of that what you will.

Eh, sure i'm wrong about Blood Weapon restoring MP before but Souleater has always been an ability.

Very few of the classes we have play anything like their original jobs, though some of the classics survived at least. Monk, Dragoon, Paladin and White Mage are the ones I'd argue are the most faithful to the original jobs and even then creative liberties were taken here and there.

Not even Warrior that is pretty much a generic tanky melee job? Or even Ninja which is in my opinion is far better than previous counterparts because of Ninjutsu instead of Throw but that exists as Fuma Shuriken or the Throwing Dagger skill.
I'll give Bard being far away from a usual Bard but I like the concept of Bard being combined with Archer/Ranger.

[Chasely]

A terribly poor example, since Egi's automatically give the summoner 4 new skills for the price of 1 slot, and the number of player-usable skills could still remain the same even with a larger number of summons.

It's not a terribly poor example at all. They get skills from said Egi, and in exchange, they have fewer class skills overall without said Egis. Also, Yoshi-P said himself that he didn't want to give sumoners more summons because that would upset the game's delicate skill balance. You can argue that he's silly for saying something like that, but we still don't have Ramuh, Moogle, Shiva or Leviathan egis, do we?

[Chasely]

That's irrelevant, since the FF summoner is basically a black mage with Amano Yoshitaka artwork instead of particle effects.

Not necessarily. Rydia was actually a red mage at first. She lost the ability to use healing magic when she focused on her summoning arts in the Land of Monsters. there have also been several instances of summoners who use only healing magic as secondary skills. Like Garnet and Eiko from FF9, and Yuna from FFX.

[Duelle]

Not necessarily. Rydia was actually a red mage at first. She lost the ability to use healing magic when she focused on her summoning arts in the Land of Monsters. there have also been several instances of summoners who use only healing magic as secondary skills. Like Garnet and Eiko from FF9, and Yuna from FFX.

You missed the point. The way summons work in the console FFs outside of X is that they're basically nukes with artwork instead of an explosion, or a 30-60 second cutscene in the PSX FF games (VII-IX). That's why the whole "feel like a summoner" claim is complete bullocks. Summons in the other FFs are basically pretty and time-consuming nukes.

[Chasely]

You missed the point. The way summons work in the console FFs outside of X is that they're basically nukes with artwork instead of an explosion, or a 30-60 second cutscene in the PSX FF games (VII-IX). That's why the whole "feel like a summoner" claim is complete bullocks. Summons in the other FFs are basically pretty and time-consuming nukes.

Actually, in FF7, the summons could take up to 15 minutes to completely perform. You're also forgetting that in the early FFs, summons were too expensive and their damage was equal to magic-type 2.5, rather than 3. They were useless starting about halfway into each game. /shrug