Blue Mage might actually be a good thing.

[Arkdra]

Why lock blue mage then.

Could have been the same without locking blue only to this, looting spell to use in mask carnival in a separate skill pool. Can't believe its impossible to just make them unusable outside of carnival while I can't use logos action outside of eureka.

No real reason to lock out blu specifically, they just did. Coulda been dancer, or the gunblade class, wouldn't matter to me. As to why not both though? More effort than they can reasonably put into it would be my guess. Let's really examine what they can do.

1. What we have now. 49 skills and special solo instances where the expectation is you tailor your skill loadout to the fight. Even bringing back old and tired elemental resistance. In theory, they could make some really difficult and fun fights for this depending on how wild they go with the skills. But 49 skills, all of which need to be learned through practical play and potentially blocked off by challenging content is just not workable to the greater game. I.E. Skills x y and z are mandatory power skills and are locked behind instances 1 2 and 3 and if only 10% of blu's finish those instances then blu becomes the biggest pariah. Or they make the masked carnival a sleep walk maybe, but I definitely doubt that. Never mind the constant potential for blu's to just make up nonsense rotations and generally be even more terrible than jobstoneless knobs.

2. Standard job. 25ish skills, all learned by, "Getting hit" in a solo instance. The plain jane option. Totally workable, but the masked carnival stuff would be devoid of any teeth for sure since skills used in the normal content require getting through them. A reasonably safe option and, if I am being completely honest, one that I am baffled they didn't go with.

3. The split. 25ish actions comprise the core of the job and are what you use in 99% of the content. Masked carnival has a pool of the other 24 skills and you have a limited number you can take into masked carnival (probably 3, maybe 5). This is only a little better than the standard job method to be honest. There isn't really much design space to work with if your special skill pool is that limited so the carnival stuff ends up only a little less boring. Plus fitting them into what is already a reasonably complex rotation (since it has to play like a standard job) would be tricky for most players and just more of an annoying gimmick than something fun.

If you would have preferred option 2 or 3, that's fine. I get it. But I prefer option 1.