Don't like Blue Mage? Here is how to convince SE to change it...

[Shurrikhan]

Thank you answering.

And since you asked:

1. How exactly were you expecting Blue Mage, assuming it was implemented as a normal job, to be?
2. What user experience were you expecting (if any) that couldn't be gotten from another job?

Edit: For me personally, and given FFXIV's narrow combat and encounter design, I wouldn't have expected much, maybe a DoT mage with a heal (assuming ‘Caster DPS’ as a role). At least that wouldn't have been, button order aside, entirely a clone of RDM or SCH, however I certainly wouldn't have expected it to feel like a Blue Mage (similar to how I don't feel RDM feels much like a Red Mage) due to the extreme focus on DPS, and almost non-existence of significant debuffs, or buffs / heals beyond a limit, in FFXIV.

1.
I wasn't expecting it to be implemented until we'd first had previewed sweeping changes to job design favoring cohesion, identity, and versatility over templates. With those changes in place, the minimal further effort would be required to integrate BLU, while BLU in turn could promote further beneficial changes.

2.
None, ultimately, save for its "moments of glory" in combat, which would not be unique for having them -- only in the shape they take. All else, I'd actually hope would gradually become the property of all jobs for whom it'd at all make sense.
Learning skills from who you fight and how you fight them? Sold. I'll buy that for everyone, albeit to a lesser degree.
Combos not as chains but as inherent synergies between different effects, bonuses, or aspects within different skills? Sold. I'll buy it for everyone.
BLU could be the first to prototype the change, letting the devs test the waters and give a poster boy to the potential change, but it should be in the interest of universal design where possible.

That said, I do think BLU would still have enough of its aesthetic unique to it even if you were to make, to some degree, universal its every addition to the systems or undermechanics of the game. This, again, comes down to moments of glory in the fight, and the things you can laugh about or discuss outside the fight.

BLM has its Flarex3+Foulx2 potential burst. SMN can burst out a Summon Behemoth if needed. Bard has repertoire proc overloads. Monk has its twists and turns in rotation at certain SkS breakpoints from RoF, TK, and PB, and very satisfying perfect RoFs. I suspect BLU would have its own, though at first far more varied, moment such as those, in a panic Healing Rain set earlier to make sure the raid could survive the continuous raid damage of Lightning Phase doubling into Slime Pools and sourcing Whirlpool when adds spawned just as a ton of lightning strikes hit the raid -- their damage then channeling through the soaked ground beneath them and into the adds suddenly grouped up by Whirlpool.

Out of combat, that would be things like your "deck", if the "Pick X of Y" concept sticks, and the ridiculous names people come up with for their builds, weighing breadth vs. depth of synergy and capacity.

[Acidblood]

1.
I wasn't expecting it to be implemented until we'd first had previewed sweeping changes to job design favoring cohesion, identity, and versatility over templates. With those changes in place, the minimal further effort would be required to integrate BLU, while BLU in turn could promote further beneficial changes.

2.
None, ultimately, save for its "moments of glory" in combat, which would not be unique for having them -- only in the shape they take. All else, I'd actually hope would gradually become the property of all jobs for whom it'd at all make sense.
Learning skills from who you fight and how you fight them? Sold. I'll buy that for everyone, albeit to a lesser degree.
Combos not as chains but as inherent synergies between different effects, bonuses, or aspects within different skills? Sold. I'll buy it for everyone.
BLU could be the first to prototype the change, letting the devs test the waters and give a poster boy to the potential change, but it should be in the interest of universal design where possible.

:snip:

As much as I would like to see something similar, it is simply not realistic at the moment, to say nothing of the risk. Which is why I think it's smart that they have implemented Blue Mage the way they have; if their intention is to open up and expand the combat system then Blue Mage is the perfect 'test bed' for it (i.e. there is no type of ability that is out of place for a Blue Mage). And by making it 'limited' they can test and gather feedback with minimal risk of disrupting the established game (such as accidentally making a current tier raid bosses killable with Death).

This is pure speculation of course, which is why I framed my questions the way I did; this is the here and now, we must deal with reality, so given the realistic choices, which is the lesser of the evils.

[Shurrikhan]

As much as I would like to see something similar, it is simply not realistic at the moment, to say nothing of the risk. Which is why I think it's smart that they have implemented Blue Mage the way they have; if their intention is to open up and expand the combat system then Blue Mage is the perfect 'test bed' for it (i.e. there is no type of ability that is out of place for a Blue Mage). And by making it 'limited' they can test and gather feedback with minimal risk of disrupting the established game (such as accidentally making a current tier raid bosses killable with Death).

This is pure speculation of course, which is why I framed my questions the way I did; this is the here and now, we must deal with reality, so given the realistic choices, which is the lesser of the evils.

All improvement, all change, starts with here and now. No one is expecting sweeping changes today or even next patch and quite likely not the patch after that. What we're expecting is for the devs to show that they're aware of where barebone or ill-thought developments have felt lackluster, know how to gradually implement improvements to those and other areas of content, are willing to accept that the treadmill pattern is getting stale, have plans to renovate from it so that patches feel fresh, and will finally develop side-content is such a way that its assets and tech created for that purpose also aids the far greater bank of content outside the game.

It is of course the perfect "test bed", as you've said. The problem is that everything we've received in and with its announcement points at it not being prototypical, but rather -- placating. Rather than showing foresight, it looks like smug self-assurance, "Those things you say you want or find dull, you don't; we know better. And since you guys love side-content so much even when the resources spent offer nothing to the vast majority of the game, here's more side-content."

The possibilities are damn near endless. They've just been explicitly and implicitly cut down until we've been left with just a single toe of what it could have been.