My Idea For Fixing Blue Mage

[Bonbori]

I wouldn't mind BLU becoming a full Job at some point, but I feel it's completely unfair to call it "fixing". You "fix" something that is not working as intended. But BLU was designed from the start to be a minigame, or side-content akin to Triple Triad, house-decorating or fishing.

Fishing is actually the best existing BLU parallel I can think of. I personally consider FSH to be a limited gathering job. It kinda lives in a world of its own. Aside from a handful of exceptions, fish are irrelevant to crafting, fishing is not profitable, desynthing fish isn't even part of Fisher itself, and Big Fishing is a self-serving collect-a-thon that rewards not much aside from personal satisfaction.

And you know what? I like it this way. I don't like being forced to fish to progress a quest or craft something (and I actually really appreciate that Stormblood FSH job quests were significantly easier than AAR and HW so I could experience the story without sinking hours of my life sitting in one spot and rolling dice), but I have enjoyed adding new fishies to my log to pass the time in between roulettes. It's a nice way to slow down and unwind. But I would absolutely despise it if fishing became relevant to high-end crafting or anything else, and I would hate if amazing rewards were gated behind the 20 layers of RNG that comprise Big Fishing.

As far as I'm concerned, FSH is in a great spot and it serves the purpose of stress relief and solo challenge perfectly. It's not my favourite type of content, but I can see the appeal to its target demographic. I can also think of several issues with FSH that could genuinely use a fix (tacklebox, for one), but nothing more drastic than that. If it was, for example, redesigned to function just like botany and mining, that wouldn't be "fixing", it would be fundamentally altering into something unrecognisable and most likely unpalatable to the people fishing was made for in the first place.

I expect BLU to be the same way - the combat equivalent of fishing.

As I said, I wouldn't be opposed to allowing BLU to function like a full job for the purpose of participating in relevant content, BUT I absolutely, fundamentally disagree that it would constitute "fixing" anything. It would be an expansion or perhaps evolution building on the established framework, but not fixing. It's not fishing because it's broken, it's fishing because it was specifically intended to be fishing.

[Skos]

BLU = FSH

This is a hot take I never expected to see.
But holy shit I resonate with your entire description so much. I've never thought about it this way.
Thank you for this.

[Brightamethyst]

Fishing is actually the best existing BLU parallel I can think of. I personally consider FSH to be a limited gathering job. It kinda lives in a world of its own. Aside from a handful of exceptions, fish are irrelevant to crafting, fishing is not profitable, desynthing fish isn't even part of Fisher itself, and Big Fishing is a self-serving collect-a-thon that rewards not much aside from personal satisfaction.

As bizarre as it sounds, this is probably the best comparison I've seen. Not everything has to be tied to or balanced around progression. It's okay for things to be self contained side activities.