blue mage

[Cabalabob]

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.

[Yorumi]

snip...

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.

[Cabalabob]

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.

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.

[Yorumi]

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.

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.