How Blue Mage Could Exist in FFXIV

[LineageRazor]

Kimari and Quina (or w/e his name was from IX) had the blue mage MECHANIC of of learning enemy abilities. But were they ever called blue mages?

This is a fair point! Quina, I believe, was officially referred to as a Gourmand, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that Gourmand is a different job that happens to be able to use Blue Magic (referred to in-game as Blu Mag). Gourmand also has the Devour ability, which makes a reappearance in FFVIII as a GF skill bearers of Eden can (comically) use.

Khimari was not called a Blue Mage, but with the exception of Yuna the Summoner, NONE of the characters had job names, in spite of the fact that Lulu was clearly a Black Mage, Auron very much resembled a Samurai, Rikku could be classified as an Engineer, and so on. In fact, Khimari had several Dragoon traits as well, such as having Spear as a weapon and being able to Jump (though, Jump was one of his "Ronso Rage" Overdrive abilities, a category which includes all of his learned monster abilities). So he could be thought of as a Dragoon who could use Blue Magic, or a Blue Mage who can wield spears and jump.

I don't believe that FFVIII ever gave jobs to their characters, and Quistis is therefore never explicitly referred to as a Blue Mage - but at least in her case, her Limit Break was actually called Blue Magic.

Regardless of whether they were explicitly Blue Mages, fans of the job type tend to enjoy the above characters just the same, as they like to collect all the different spells. I would guess that's a big reason why a lot of the Blue Mage enthusiasts in this thread chafe at the idea of Blue Mage in FFXIV. The level of hand-holding and refusal to allow players to be excluded from content for building their character "wrong" means that the likelihood of a learning mechanic that requires a player to go out and collect spells is slim. Like all jobs, the Blue Mage job in FFXIV would very likely have a character acquire every ability as a matter of course just by progressing through their job quests. There goes the collect-them-all charm!

They COULD change things up, since Blue Mage is a special case - but this is one point Yoshi P was clear on, that he was afraid a Blue Mage player would be excluded from content because they had not acquired particular spells.

[Bright-Flower]

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Yeah, those characters are certainly blue mages in spirit if not title. And I know they have fans. But considering FF XIV is really unlikely to have an actual 'go out into the world and learn spells from monsters' mechanic and the job would probably only resemble blue mage in spell names/aesthetics etc, my guess is that they'll stick pretty close to the classic blue mage look and theme, and I don't think they're going to say make it a magitek tank job like some people have suggested. But only time will tell for sure of course. If they made FF XVI or XVII as a more sandboxy MMO maybe a classic blue mage would be a great addition, in FF XIV I think the best they can aim for is to capture the aesthetic and classic spell list.

I always though that BLU is a tank class...

Other than that, I may have some ideas for the skills. They could get those by killing enemies from their job quests.

To the best of my knowledge it's never really been a 'tank' class. In SOME games you have to get hit from a spell to learn it but that's one and done. I wouldn't consider a job a tank unless it A. has an ability to draw hits towards it or to take hits for party members like Cover in the old turn based games, and B. is sturdy enough to not get rekt doing so. I wouldn't consider classic 'turn hp into damage' dark knight to be a tank for example.