It's almost hilarious that we keep going to the Red mage isn't a true red mage argument, or samurai, or scholar, or black mage, or other jobs that got changed as a reason to justify the argument that BLU would work in the holy trinity system.. because most of these arguments stem from final fantasy xi which hey.. ima going to news flash this.. THIS IS NOT 11! if you want the 11 versions of those jobs.. great news for you. those servers are still live and it still seems to have quite the population.. You know what all of those other jobs have that blue mage wouldn't have if they implemented blue mage as a full meta job.. THEIR CORE IDENTITY!!!!! The core identity of blue mage isn't the fact they learn monster skills.. that could have been easily done inside the job quests.. no one would have said a thing.. or they could even have the learning system they have now and just have the horizontal prog be different then any other job but there would be set abilities that you had to go unlock.

So what is blue mage's core identity? What made them a unique class throughout the franchise and different from other casters if not for the learning of enemy skills.. oh wait I know.. THEY WERE AND ARE A GIMMICK CLASS!!!! the skills have always been hilariously broken and over powered if used right.. The other aspect of blue mage.. they were specialists at debuffing the enemy.. magic def down, def down, status ailments, etc etc... while simultaneously buffing the party, mighty guard, white wind, dragon force, auto life, im sure there are other examples.. we don't do status effects in this game like normal.. most bosses are immune to 90% of the status debuffs, they are a niche mechanic used so there's what.. a good chunk of blue's abilities.. Oh let's give blue mage an aoe heal.. wait no because there's no reason for a caster dps to have such a skill, lets give it party wide mitigation shields in the form of mighty guard, oh wait there's no reason a caster dps should have that either.. two iconic skills that completely unbalance the caster meta irrevocably in blu's favor, bye bye red mages for prog, bye bye summoners for meta (as if they aren't struggling enough to stay in meta) oh wait there's a black mage! nope.. because red mages would get buffed to keep up with blue mage and no one would want to take a class that's pure damage over that much utility. the forums would be on fire. if they did. take a second and really think logistically about what blu is and realize the dev team has a valid point in saying blu would be a nightmare to balance.. it would.