Quote Originally Posted by Ceallach View Post
I honestly think blue mage is fine as it is. You don't really use Vercure much as a red mage once you have a raid on lock, but that just means you're fulfilling your role as a DPS more. Does that mean red mage having Vercure was a mistake, or that it being a DPS was a mistake? No. But it does mean red mage couldn't really get better healing actions in order to avoid overshadowing actual healers.
To be honest, I think that says more about how impactful healers are than anything about RDM's power. What with the whole trying to minimize time spend actually using heals and maximize time spent DPSing on Healers meaning that a DPS with a single heal skill has potential to actually overshadow actual healers if they received additional support for that side of their job...

Now apply this to blue mage. This is a job that can literally do anything, that would never fit into a single role like paladin, dragoon, or white mage. The blue mage would have to gear up, spells and all, for the role he or she would be playing.
In THEORY they can do anything. In practice, it's quite possible for them to not actually be adequate at tanking/healing in actual content. It's all dependant on the potency of their skills and the balancing done.

Like, it's quite possible for them to have a "Tanking" stance that allows them to be hardier while soloing and then use crafted gear all melded for VIT/DET but that's still a far cry from having the higher defence tank gear, innate stats on tank gear, tank only stats such as Tenacity and the plethora of CD's needed to negate all the Tankbusters which are the only meaningful damage on bosses.

Same for healing. They might have heals, such as a RDM. But again, they might not have the same throughput, resource management and utility of an actual healer to make it viable.

This will be something we find out when we get to play them (But also, it's something that can be talked about now, in the sense that it is something that the balance team could choose to do in order to allow BLU to be a normal job but without becoming a "OP" meta job that dominates every other class)

But once you've learned every spell and obtained your equipment, what stops the meta from being 100% blue mages?
Utility that other classes bring? The fact that maybe they wouldn't be better at every role compared to every other classes?

In order to fulfill these roles, blue mage would have to be able to perform as well as the rest of the jobs in the game, if not better.
Again, this is entirely dependant on IF the balance team wanted to actually try and balance them to actually viably compete in all 3 roles. Rather than balance them to compete in a single role and just have solo utility that takes the form of the other 2 roles.

But add in spells like Level 5 Death (and let me remind you that no one who works for Square Enix has said whether bosses are going to be immune to this or not), and blue mage is a guaranteed "better" job because you can just one-shot the boss and be done with your raid or trial in five minutes or less.
Add in spells that could easily be given restrictions and has already been mentioned by SE to not work on final bosses in dungeons and you make the class OP...

Great argument. Very compelling.

Not like they can't literally just prevent the use of obviously OP spells like Level 5 Death in duties. As well as other spells having lowered Potency during duties so they can still be strong but not OP outside of fulfilling the fantasy of using OP monster spells in the overworld (Maybe you also limit their potency vs Elite Hunt marks so people don't just run around one shotting A/S ranks)

Or, perhaps blue mage will be underwhelming compared to any other jobs, and therefore would be ostracized in raiding environments because people care too much about the meta to begin with.
This wouldn't even be a problem. Since, 1) Not everyone is a hyper competitive raider who is super strict on meta only. 2) Classes can be rebalanced. If BLU is underperforming, they can get buffed at a later date so they are more acceptable in raiding environments.

This is a game in which any job can clear any content, after all.
Except Blue Mage, apparently.

But I'm really just tired of how small-minded people are being.
Hahahahaha, I like that comment. Especially, when you're being very narrow minded about how BLU implementation MUST be either extremely OP being able to perform all 3 roles equally if not better than all other classes AND have their OP abilities have to work on every target in the entire game no exceptions, OR they have to be anaemic in their power (Which is somehow and issue that requires they be hard limited in the content they can actually access... If just not being meta is grounds for that, why did WHM and MCH just get buffs to tide them over for 5.0 reshuffles instead of being banned from accessing raids?)

In fact, most of the arguments for limiting BLU stem from narrow mindedness. Either from the people who are giving the arguments, or the very notion of the argument itself.

In essence, the things I've noted are:

1) "People would complain that they have to do extra things when they main BLU instead of just rushing MSQ > Raids!"

Which is suggesting that the majority of players in the game are so narrow minded, that they are incapable of comprehending a new job that has a different progression systems. Thus the job needs to be limited so... People can't main it?

It would be simple enough to clearly label the job as something different and when doing the quest to unlock the job, having a warning pop up that essentially tells you that the job is different and its progression system is more time consuming than other jobs because of that.

2) "BLU's would be ostracized for not having spells X, Y, Z in group content!"

Which is suggesting that there can't be anything in place to push BLU players towards picking up what people would consider "Core" spells. Whilst still retaining the feel and gameplay that is unique to BLU in terms of learning enemy spells.

Not only that, but it's not a particularly common occurrence to ostracize people for not USING skills on already existing classes. Like one of the things mentioned is that BLM gets an AoE spell at level 18. But how many level 18 BLM actually use it when it costs so much and that level tanks don't often pull half the dungeon at a time to make AoE damage worthwhile? (Especially when melee classes don't get their AoE's until level ~40 and healers don't get their AoE damage skills until level ~50)

3) "They have OP spells!"

Implying that such SPELLS can't be limited, in lieu of the ENTIRE JOB. Like, why is it so easy to accept the ENTIRE JOB being limited in its use, but so hard to think that maybe, just maybe, you could limit the problem spells?

It's not unheard of for an MMO to give classes fluff spells that are only useful in overworld content/solo rather than being staple in Dungeons/Raids. In fact, this is the case for many Tanks as is, with their Enmity combo and Tank stance being relegated to disuse for much of their time...

"But won't it feel awkward when you step into a dungeon and half your skills aren't usable!" is a retort to such limitation.

But, this is dependant on BLU being given such a large volume of directly OP skills to learn. Ones that, can't just be tuned down in potency during duties by their very nature (I.e. Level 5 Death). If there isn't so many OP spells, then you won't have to lose much when you enter a duty.

Also, again, it's based off the idea that the playerbase is so narrow minded that they would get upset that they can't just enter a raid and Level 5 Death all the bosses...

4) "They can be any role!"

Again, it comes from the narrow mindedness that there can't be actual balance done on the class.

Is RDM a healer because it has Vercure and Verraise?

Is SMN a Tank because it has Titan-Egi?

Are DRK, PLD and WAR DPS classes because they have Blood Weapon, Sword Oath and Deliverance respectively?

Or are they just tools within their kit that give an essence of another role but the jobs are balanced to the point where they are still only good for a single role?

It's not impossible for BLU to be balanced where it has Tank/Healer skills, but still only fulfils a DPS role outside of solo or outdated content because of the strength of said skills.


So yeah, the crux of at least my view point, is that, because people en masse are supposedly unwilling to accept the idea of a new job that has some different mechanical functions as a way of adding in a new dynamic to playing the game and thus would just complain endlessly if BLU was able to access all content in any way, shape or form.

That BLU and by extension, any future "Limited Jobs" that may be implemented as additional jobs with different dynamics to mix things up and add a little spice to those omnijob players (Or to attract people who just like to play with those little quirks), need to be segregated from the majority of the game and pretty much just secluded to their own little mini-game (That there's no guarantee will actually receive updates over time...).

Which, is frankly, BS.

There exists many different avenues to mitigate all of the various "Potential" issues (Since, well... We haven't got the job yet, how do we know that everyone will be complaining about having to go learn their new skills while "Everyone else is rushing through the MSQ"? How do we know that BLU's will be ostracized from group content because of not having spell X, Y or Z?)

Heck, there's even the option of releasing BLU as a normal job, able to do all content with the various different things implemented to mitigate the main issues that come to many people's minds and then if, for some reason, it becomes impossible to balance the uniqueness of the job vs how everyone is complaining about them, THEN they could make the decision to limit the job out of certain content.

But releasing it with the express purpose of not being able to do content, just feels disappointing. It feels as though they didn't really try to make BLU work and instead they're just using it as a cash grab.

In addition, to that precedent they're setting for any future jobs that might be cool or have interesting gameplay changes but because of fear of people complaining (Hint: People always complain. It doesn't matter what you do.) they'll just be relegated to mini-games instead of actually pushing the boundaries and making space for both traditional and non-traditional gameplay jobs.

Having more varied gameplay within jobs not only provides a different change of pace for veterans who might get a bit burned out on grinding DF to level up all their jobs, but also opens up more room for new players to find the game appealing if they enjoy the quirks of a particular non-traditional job.