I don't understand BLU defenders

[Beckett]

You’d do job quests to learn abilities instead of actually taking the time to learn them as a BLU normally would.

I can't speak for others, but I wouldn't have minded this. If every job quest was the BLU guild leader saying, "go out and learn White Wind from a Dhalmel, Leafstorm from a Treant, and Hydro Shot from a Pugil, then return to me." that would have been fine by me.

Even if you got these rediciously OP skills BLU is known for

Skills like Magic Hammer and Goblin Punch? The beauty of blue magic is that there are so many different options that you could use any combination of them to make a balanced job. You could even make up exclusive blue magic spells for FFXIV! You'd still want some of the standards, like Mighty Guard, but there's nothing saying that Mighty Guard has to be a party wide buff that negates all damage. It could just as easily be a self-buff that temporarily reduces damage taken. Or maybe it's the physical counterpart to Apocatastasis. The sky is the limit! Blue Mage, despite what the XIV devs seem to think, is not a job that's tied down in strict tradition, and it certainly doesn't need to be overpowered to be called a Blue Mage. A Blue Mage that doesn't have Shockwave Pulsar is still a Blue Mage

and put it into FFXIVs formula you’d have another caster dps with serverly disappointing skills compared to the actual skill. See summoner for examples of this.

Counterpoint: Red Mage. Just because they made a class people were disappointed by once doesn't mean they're guaranteed to do it every time.

I have no doubt that if they had put it into the FFXIV formula BLU would feel just like a SMN without the egi.

I'll quote myself from another thread for this one:

You could boil down any of the classes to that base level, if you really wanted to. PLD, WAR and DRK just hold hate and mitigate damage with different named abilities that all do essentially the same thing. But, of course, there are differences, and those differences in gameplay and aesthetics are enough to make us prefer playing one over another.

I have no idea what Blue Mage's particular gimmick could have been, but then I never would have predicted Red Mage's mana gauge either. As long as I was still able to use Mighty Guard and 1,000 Needles, I wouldn't mind being lumped into the Magic Ranged DPS category, or any other of the preset roles.

[shao32]

from my point of view BLU is a job that don't fit at all in FFXIV, what makes BLU a BLU is not only learning the skills from monsters but how this skills works too, most of then are based on add status effects like petry, oil, charm, curse, ect ect and none of then are allowed in FFXIV for balance purposes bcs every job have the right to be equally value in high end content.

so i see SE have the right here, or they make a SMN and name it BLU and have practically half of the comunity complaing about it or they make a pure BLU but separate to make the job feel like the job should be since nothing of what make BLU a BLU can be adapted to how the games works and have the other half complaing about it too.

on my opinion they should just go to the fan base and say "no, there will be never be a blue mage so stop asking for it" but since they choose to add it betwen the other 2 options i belive this is the best one and we still need to play the job and see how is it.

[Aellae]

And then you have cries of "This could have been something cool, instead it just follows the same cookie-cutter formula, when will SE give us something new?"

SE are damned no matter what they do.

This.
I am so, so tired of all the complaints (and 90% of it are complaints and not useful discussions) about Blue Mage. I am not sure why people are trying so hard to get another job they will be absolutely bad at, or can complain about in one of the hundreds threads about people failing to play it in roulettes/raids/whatsoever. Instead of balancing jobs, I wish SE could balance players.

And don't give me the "I wanted to play BLU in a normal game environment, no matter how much they would have to butcher it". Bullkupo. The outrage would have been just the same if you couldn't acquire skills from monsters, if you couldn't select what you want to use, if anything that is trademark of BLU got lost to fit it into the current game that is FF14.
Also don't give me the "SE has all the power, they can balance however they want and it will be fine". The moment you have RNG included and rely on people to actually read skills, get a decent loadout with them and weave them into a rotation themselves, it becomes a hell to balance it. Most of the community has a very casual approach which is completely fine. You can spoonfeed them rotations and shove combos into their face, and they will still fail. The disparity between good and bad in BLU becomes so massive due to the need to judge what skills are good and what aren't, it will be borderline useless in bad hands and borderline overpoweredmetanonsense in very good hands. How do you balance that? That is aside from the fact that the balance team will never foresee all the mechanics, side effects, chain reactions that could happen with an individual loadout. That's just a silly thing to ask for, they can't even foresee how the community will tackle certain raid mechanics with something completely different coming out than they might have expected.

Am I happy they felt like they had to limit a job so it can fit FF14? Not really. But all power to them if it helps seeing how the job will actually work within the community and gameplay. By the way, it's not even out yet, if you haven't noticed, so how much valuable insight can we actually expect from the nay-sayers?

from my point of view BLU is a job that don't fit at all in FFXIV, what makes BLU a BLU is not only learning the skills from monsters but how this skills works too, most of then are based on add status effects like petry, oil, charm, curse, ect ect and none of then are allowed in FFXIV for balance purposes bcs every job have the right to be equally value in high end content.

so i see SE have the right here, or they make a SMN and name it BLU and have practically half of the comunity complaing about it or they make a pure BLU but separate to make the job feel like the job should be since nothing of what make BLU a BLU can be adapted to how the games works and have the other half complaing about it too.

on my opinion they should just go to the fan base and say "no, there will be never be a blue mage so stop asking for it" but since they choose to add it betwen the other 2 options i belive this is the best one and we still need to play the job and see how is it.

Also this.

[Blokeymon]

But I guarantee if a die hard Monk found out their job was being changed into a pilgrimage class, where they literally walk paths without violence to achieve goals, suddenly limited jobs are an issue. Hey, it's a stealth game and it's new content, so what's the problem?

Remember when DRK wasn't a DPS?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[kikix12]

The live letter straight up said that it was going to be in the caster DPS role. I'm confused about why people think they will be able to set up their skills and be tanks or healers.

There are people that do, but there are many people that know that Blue Mage won't be able to become "green" or "blue". But in pre-made parties or unsynced runs, the only ones in which Blue Mage can take part, role have zero effect. Just yesterday I did run a dungeon (I believe it was a roulette, even) with healer, DPS and two tanks. So a party of four Blue Mages is very much possible.

BLU will be using caster role actions and caster gear. It won't have the defense or MND to do the other tasks. They have already said this in the live letter.

You see, THIS is the problem and this is why Blue Mage have the potential to be absurdly broken. This class historically have skills that have unique effects...and powerful at that.

For example in Tactics Advance, Blue Mage had Dragon Force which SIGNIFICANTLY increased ALL stats for the entire battle. Like, so significantly that a Blue Mage that used it was as tanky as the tanks. And since it upped STATS, you could stack it with protect and shell for further reduction.
There was also White Wind which heals damage equal to the amount of HP you have...in an AoE. Angel Whisper which heals and bestows re-raise. It was so broken that in sequel to Tactics Advance it couldn't target the user anymore. In FFVII it FULLY heals a target, removes some status ailments and works even on DEAD players, basically being a full-revive. Drain Touch which deals good damage and restores HP equal to the damage dealt. Not like Drain which is a weak skill hence offers weak healing. And those are only some skills that have the potential to be broken healer/tank skills.

So yes. A Blue Mage, depending on how crazy they will go on the skills, can be the BEST tank and the BEST healer in the whole game, despite being locked to a DPS role and DPS casters stats. Because its skills don't even CARE about its stats outside of damage.

[Aylis]

but limiting some peoples favorite job to 30% of the games 5 year old content

Just speculation on my part but I can kinda see their reason for doing it like this. Since BLU is being offered as something unique and something that doesn't behave like the normal jobs. The learning curve for the class might be a little steeper then the rest. Maybe they did it like this to give players time to learn the class, what works, what doesn't and all that stuff. Instead of the normal grind PoTD and HoH till max level, swap in your highest item level caster gear and call it a day. That and with the time that's going to be needed to actually go out and learn the spells instead of them being just given to players it makes sense why they would stagger the classes progression.

[LineageRazor]

from my point of view BLU is a job that don't fit at all in FFXIV, what makes BLU a BLU is not only learning the skills from monsters but how this skills works too, most of then are based on add status effects like petry, oil, charm, curse, ect ect and none of then are allowed in FFXIV for balance purposes bcs every job have the right to be equally value in high end content.

EVERY job we have is tailored to fit this game. Traditionally, a major purpose of BLM was to exploit enemies' elemental weaknesses with a variety of elemental spells, for example - that is COMPLETELY gone. While a lot of Blue Magic spells include status, there are plenty that do not. Keep only Bad Breath, and make it as useful as BLM's Sleep or SMN's Tri-Bind or any other job's crowd control abilities.

And their other spells? Give them Frost Breath for a nice aoe when dealing with packs, and for single-target DPS, have different sorts of Blue Magic interact with each other in interesting ways, like Magic Hammer inflicts a short-duration magic vulnerability that can be exploited by Death Ray, or Head Butt renders the mob briefly vulnerable to Slashing damage in order to follow up with Death Scissors. And hey, the Frost Breath example above? Inflict Fire vulnerability for a Bomb Toss follow-up! That's just one example of how you can include a variety of status-free Blue Magic spells while still making for an engaging and interesting DPS job.

YoshiP, judging by his comments on BLU four years ago and what we wound up with today, is clearly stuck in a rut in his thinking of how the job must work. But he's wrong. Every job was changed and given its own identity in this game, and that identity does not precisely match how it has been in previous games. If Yoshi's vision for BLU was incompatible with the game, he needed to change his vision, not implement it as-is (and preserve balance by locking it out of practically everything).

So yes. A Blue Mage, depending on how crazy they will go on the skills, can be the BEST tank and the BEST healer in the whole game, despite being locked to a DPS role and DPS casters stats. Because its skills don't even CARE about its stats outside of damage.

So... don't give them these things. Problem solved. White Wind didn't cure everyone for current HP in FFXI, for example - it was just a regular cure spell. On the subject of game-breaking buffs, BRD was king of these in FFXI, but look at it in this game?

When a job seems too OP to add to an MMO, change the job so it's not OP.

[Kaonis]

I've been at a loss about this whole mess too. I expect some bad arguments to try and defend bad design decisions as is tradition, but this time around the arguments are just....baffling.

I mean, even Yoshi-P's example of 'All the OP abilities of BLU' makes no sense. Already most bosses and enemies are immune to sleep/stun/knockback/bind/silence. Even then they create the abilities and could just not give them OP abilities to begin with. I mean where is the fun in a job whose sole existence is to break the game? Even as kids most gamers eventually turned off the game genie because its no fun to just be so OP all the time.

And this is even ignoring the fact that the job at launch will only be doing content from 2.x. So we get a job that is meant to be OP and solo old content....that we can already just unsync for? And from the live letter it sounds like they plan to only incrementally increase the levels, so they will most likely be level locked out of anything current.

I just don't understand how this is defensible by anyone? They are releasing a job to exist in a bubble by itself or to jump through hoops to play in a group in 5 years out of date content.

[kikix12]

So... don't give them these things. Problem solved.

Not the topic of this thread. Try again.

When a job seems too OP to add to an MMO, change the job so it's not OP.

Go read one of the other huge threads complaining about the Blue Mage. Depending on which you pick, you may even see my post that suggests a way to allow Blue Mages into duty finder and even most current content without changing the class or the broken skills at all.

This thread is about Blue Mages being advertised as DPS role, so why people think that they could fill in for a healer or tank in the game. It's not for "how to make Blue Mage balanced".

If Yoshi's vision for BLU was incompatible with the game, he needed to change his vision, not implement it as-is (and preserve balance by locking it out of practically everything).

And we have a summoner, my first or second most favorite class depending on the game, that I like the least of all the DPS classes in this game. And summoner is far more defined and historically significant since the summons were core points of ALL the games in which summoner appeared.

But you don't see me or "summoner" fans going on a forum-wide crusade with such fervor as it is for Blue mage.

[Aerlana]

That's how FF has been since forever? Hence my confusion.

RDM in Final Fantasy are either heal or DPS. not "DPS with some healing" but clearly half both.
Not in FFXIV, where RDM is just a DPS job with some healing skill.

Dark Knight is a job with a large gameplay around "auto-mutilate" mechanics, to deal really wonderfull damages.
On FFXIV, it is a tank... so good bye heavy damages and automutilate.

Bluemage is in other FF the job with the largest possibility of action, protec friends, stun ennemies, damages them, slow them, boost allies etc etc.
Bluemage could be a DPS with some side usefull skill (healing like rdm and/or damages boost like bard/mch )