SE, the concept of "Limited Jobs" is a really bad idea, turn back now

[Auryan]

IMO, RDM is a great job that is simplistic to pick up, with a good amount of nuance beneath the hood. Within FFXIV's world, where BLM is the elements of fire, thunder; and ice and WHM is the elements of water, earth, and air; RDM can use fire, thunder, earth, and air. Amidst all this, the casting of magic charges their sword to deal magical thrusts. It meets my fantasy of a spellblade, and is a jack of Black Magic, White Magic, and melee combat, but a master of none; it uses a combination of its three arts to grant it power on par with masters of any of the aforementioned elements.

That's the imagination I was hoping for with BLU; I don't care about Final Fantasy so much as I care about FFXIV. If I wanted FFV's BLU, I'd boot up FFV, as it were. If I wanted FFXI's BLU, I'd boot up FFXI.

I see where you're coming from. It all comes down on how we see the job. My idea of RDM was always a supporter job. RDM were decent healers, damage dealers and buffers. They were decent at everything, but didn't excel at anything. It's nice how they managed to work black and white magic into XIV RDM, but it all relates to damage dealing. The only supporting abilities it got was one group buff, a mediocre heal and raise. It's great that people like it, but it wasn't my fantasy job come to reality like how you see it. If it was my choice, I'd rather it be XIV's first support role job, but I admit, that would've needed much more accommodation to accomplish.

I was pretty much certain that they were going to do same thing to BLU as they did RDM. All of those monster skills would be drastically toned down (in potency, range and effects) and geared almost exclusively to just pure damage. BLU to me was always a weirdo. I always saw it as being able to do it all: heal, tank, dps, support, you name it. But that fantasy just wouldn't work in XIV. They ended up showing something closer to that fantasy than my first impression. And I appreciate that more than bringing a mage that looks like BLU but has few similarities.