Blue mage at patch 4.5

[Enla]

Guessing it's been said but got the impression this would be limited to its own instances and so won't be able to take on MsQ or into dungeons or raids. Blue Mage instances only: thankfully we only need to wait a day for confirmation if true.

I can see them limiting it at launch, because as others have said we're basically testing the viability of the class for them with the way it's being introduced. Limiting what we can do during the first few stages of testing before slowly opening up our horizons is a smart way of doing things. Ergo I hope that if fears are true, that'll be what's happening. I can't see them banning a class outright from group content. That's just too much money to spit down the drain. However they have done stupider things.

[KisaiTenshi]

The BLU design seems inspired by the original FFV version that also had the masquerade and cape.

I really was not expecting them to retain their original method of learning skills, so I'm curious as to just how many there will be available to learn.

The fact that it's referred to as a "limited" job makes me worried that it won't actually be usable in all of the content standard jobs are, though. It would be understandable if they wanted to give players freedom to learn a huge array of monster abilities, since that would be a balancing nightmare.

Prediction: Alphinaud becomes BLU

if it really is solo only for everything, then I'm done with this game. my 2 cents.

It's probably going to be an involved storyline akin to how Alphinaud 's side story was setup. You probably won't be able to use BLU until you finish the sidequest "job" like how all sidequest's for jobs have been, except in this case you get an actual 10-part storyline that isn't gated by levels.

Or who knows, maybe Yoshi-P doesn't care that much about lore and will hand it out to anyone who's finished MSQ 2.0 regardless of references to it in the AST storyline and the 4.3 "The Swallow's Compass" dungeon.

My opinion however, is that it's likely that "limited" content means that BLU's party content might be limited to Eureka content, FATE's and unsynced dungeons. Because how it's learned is different than being handed out like other jobs, you don't want to get a party that doesn't have the BLU skills to make it work. Another possibility is that it might be allowed in all content, but requires slotting in as tank/healer/dps, by which only skills designated for that role would be usable, consider how other jobs are synced, you can still play a synced job, but a BLU might have all skills as "level 50" and thus can't play any content that isn't level 50.

Anyway, another possibility is that it's intentionally a "solo" sync for all content, and it's more of a time-trial.

[Krokov]

I can't see them making this a solo only job, maybe at first while leveling and so on but at cap and later levels it would make no sense. Maybe making it versatile solo or grouping up.

UPDATE: Well I was wrong about the solo part. It's not entirely solo only, in the sense that you can do pre-made parties just not matchmaking parties. So you can do trials and such in a pre-made.

[Shurrikhan]

My issue with this classless base for BLU is that limited could mean that it's used in "limited content" which means it can't go into raids for 24 man raids, EX primals etc, which would really turn a lot of people off I hope that's not the case. My hopes is that we can use monster abilities to build how we wanna play (DPS/tank/healer) that way the choices are limited not the class.

I'm hoping that's just for now; I hope we see changes to the other classes/jobs, too, which move towards job identity over mere role identity with 5.0, making those distinctions a non-issue. Thus we eventually get a real job, rather than... leveling ourselves... as if a Kirby-chocobo.

Heck, with the trailer's 1.x flashbacks and seeming emphasis on moment-by-moment details, I'd really hoped we were going to move away from Role Actions finally, and maybe really doubling down on what makes XIV characters unique. I'm no huge fan of the XIII, XIII:LR, or X-2 systems at the far end of that extreme, but at least think that's a better direction than the utter nonsense of Role Actions. At the very least, I hope there are some well-designed and optionally very difficult solo fights that make use of that mechanic.

Design could go even further or broader that that, though. For instance, I'd like to see job changes permitted in raids as well, presumably through a raid-wide vote that siphons a bit of the permitted role pool from 3/15/6 to, say, 3/14/7. Once the role for "More healers!" succeeds, parties' individual members are allowed to volunteer for a swap, with other flagged candidates visible to them from the raid bars. Individual party members, in turn, could request to transfer out of or into a role, whenever they wanted. (Ideally, in such a world you'd want to be then be able to see their commendations, how many were in that role, their ilvls for each (non-redundant) job in role or the top three or so therein, with the one they're suggesting highlighted, and achievements generally and in-role, at a glance, but you could technically do without all that.)

[Granyala]

I don't see how they could balance BLU to be on par with other classes in content like savage/ex if the players can choose their abilities freely.
Most BLUs will be horribly gimped, because a lot of the abilities won't work properly on bosses.

As such, it makes sense to exclude it from high level content.

Locking it to 50 seems a bit extreme though. It should be able to handle normal Lv 70 content.

[TheRealMadruck]

My predictions:
1. BLU will be made even with other jobs by the times ShBr comes out.
2. BLU will not be able to change abilities at will but merely use toned down versions from select monsters you defeat via MSQ for its class.
3. BLU will have a similar quest chain as every other job: Every 5 until 50. One ever 2 levels 50-60. One every 3 60-70 so one so forth.
4. The term BLU has with "limited" strictly means limited upon release. Instead of doing all the hotfixes SE had to do in regards to NIN in ARR with its release, they can now do it this way intelligently letting people test the job and fixing it before launch. This is both smart in relation to appeasing subscribers and SE maintaining #s.

[kikix12]

3. BLU will have a similar quest chain as every other job: Every 5 until 50. One ever 2 levels 50-60. One every 3 60-70 so one so forth.

They literally, specifically, said that Blue Mage won't get any skills at all just from leveling. Since most skills are gotten from leveling, not class quests, then if they did get skills only from their job quests they would have what...11 skills in total?!

Not to mention that they said we will be surprised at how many actions they can learn. So rather than less, they are likely to have MORE skills than any other class. Also it's pointless to focus on the "actions they can learn" part if they are acquired as quest rewards, not actually learned.

[TheRealMadruck]

They literally, specifically, said that Blue Mage won't get any skills at all just from leveling. Since most skills are gotten from leveling, not class quests, then if they did get skills only from their job quests they would have what...11 skills in total?!

Not to mention that they said we will be surprised at how many actions they can learn. So rather than less, they are likely to have MORE skills than any other class. Also it's pointless to focus on the "actions they can learn" part if they are acquired as quest rewards, not actually learned.

Remember Kiki, in 4.5 you will be leveling to a max 50 and acquire skills like every other job in the current system of FF14. Like DRK, AST, MCH had a number of skills preset when you start at 30 and RDM/SAM at 50...it is incredibly safe to assume the same will happen to BLU. They are only now going a different way...instead of handing them out, they are making to which you acquire them via normal leveling. Why? It is simple...SE is in this for $ and they know BLU is a incredibly popular job in the FF universe. They are more than likely doing it this way to keep people subbed, which to me is completely reasonable.

Sorry, but this will not be the BLU you may expect if you played FF11 or any in the past that had BLU. Like RDM, we will see a variation of BLU in respects to FF14.

[Saefinn]

Remember Kiki, in 4.5 you will be leveling to a max 50 and acquire skills like every other job in the current system of FF14. Like DRK, AST, MCH had a number of skills preset when you start at 30 and RDM/SAM at 50...it is incredibly safe to assume the same will happen to BLU. They are only now going a different way...instead of handing them out, they are making to which you acquire them via normal leveling. Why? It is simple...SE is in this for $ and they know BLU is a incredibly popular job in the FF universe. They are more than likely doing it this way to keep people subbed, which to me is completely reasonable.

Sorry, but this will not be the BLU you may expect if you played FF11 or any in the past that had BLU. Like RDM, we will see a variation of BLU in respects to FF14.

They've already indicated that it is going to be different to other jobs and separate from them and is the first "limited job", but the latter is pretty ambiguous. So I don't think applying the same logic as the existing job system works. Whilst I am not expecting FFXI copy pasta, but there are some core fundamentals they adhere to in setting up jobs. For example they were clever with RDM because they managed to mix melee skills, magic spells and healing spells into the job and make them all useful to appeal to it's fast casting jack of all trades. But they have previously indicated the challenges of handling Blue Mage. However, we should learn more today.

[TheRealMadruck]

Snip

We will find out...but I sincerely doubt SE will break from the norms we currently have in place creating a entirely new system for one job. Maybe if they retroactively did so for all but again...I have doubts.