Dev Team, you screwed up.

[Dualgunner]

Well they all have to perform the same function, to the same standard (or as close as balance allows).

But they perform their functions with starkly different methods. RDM vs BLM isn't just about how they perform against each other, it's what they do to achieve that performance; in other words, you can't play a BLM like you would play a RDM or SMN, and likewise playing a RDM or SMN like a BLM (or indeed, a RDM like a SMN and vice versa) won't net you the best results. You bring up how it would have to lose White Wind and Mighty Guard's current implementations--true, it would, but they could also be reworked to be an in-combat "Learn." Change Mighty Guard to be like Third Eye, where you take damage and this opens up a few options for reprisal.

White Wind (at the strength of a medica perhaps) could be one of these reprisals and bring a light heal to the party, and another of these reprisals could be one of the Primal's signature attacks, like Mountain Buster or something. Another route would be something similar to The Blackest Night; Mighty Guard puts up an hp bubble that if popped generates resource for BLU to use its stronger blue magicks like primal attacks. Make White Wind into a medica-like spell that costs this resource (we'll call it blue mana) as well.

Yet another route would be to make it more like manawall--a larger hp shield with intent to keep the caster alive through heavy hits for some positional cheesing. Or like FoE from Monk--a flat 10% damage mitigation that would either increase resource costs while up, cost a set amount of blue mana every server tick it's up, and/or cause a damage penalty.

Or for a support ability, Mighty Guard as a tank cooldown you can throw onto the MT. Works like palisade+apoc at the same time with the same cooldown as either of them, and optionally costs blue mana to cast onto the tank. Maybe 1/2 palisade + 1/2 apoc. Maybe 1 or 2% damage mitigation on the whole party for a lowball as yet another alternative.

There is probably much more that could be done with just these two abilities too. They don't have to be super tankstance and a broken-tier heal. All this to say...

My point is bringing it in line will destroy what it is. It would bring up the issue that healers have with identity - it will be interesting to see how they handle Dancer - I imagine poorly >.<

Bringing it in line intelligently would not destroy anything. We're beyond the ability to do that barring major overhaul now though, so we have to put up with limited BLU. But there are a lot of things they could have done with an unlimited BLU while retaining its identity.

[Sylvain]

. As for progression, at the least try to direct people with better hints rather than simply stating an area. Heck, freaking quote hints are fun enough to point someone in the right direction like a riddle.

I did my best to avoid guide, but there were some spell I just had no clue.
I agree, some flavor text like a small riddle would go a long for people to find spells by themselves without looking for guide

[Flana]

I find it hilarious people are complaining that they would have to "ruin" BLU to make it a standard mage job when they made MIGHTY GUARD which is arguably one of the most iconic BLU spells a freaking Shield Oath clone. It's literally just a tank stance you flip on and off. It's the absolute epitome of 'ruining' a spell to ram it in somewhere it doesn't belong. Why isn't everyone who thinks BLU can't function as a real job up in arms about that? It should be the number one post. You got denied a classic spell for a rehashed clone.

Heck, the way BLU plays right now could be made viable for real content if they fixed potencies to not be terrible. Is BLU now retroactively bad because it can be played like a caster? Because it already fits in to the caster role? There is nothing special or super broken about this implementation of Blue Mage beyond White Wind and the ability to troll trash mobs with tail screw or missile. As if those weren't able to be balanced at all.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

I find it hilarious people are complaining that they would have to "ruin" BLU to make it a standard mage job when they made MIGHTY GUARD which is arguably one of the most iconic BLU spells a freaking Shield Oath clone. It's literally just a tank stance you flip on and off. It's the absolute epitome of 'ruining' a spell to ram it in somewhere it doesn't belong. Why isn't everyone who thinks BLU can't function as a real job up in arms about that? It should be the number one post. You got denied a classic spell for a rehashed clone.

Heck, the way BLU plays right now could be made viable for real content if they fixed potencies to not be terrible. Is BLU now retroactively bad because it can be played like a caster? Because it already fits in to the caster role? There is nothing special or super broken about this implementation of Blue Mage beyond White Wind and the ability to troll trash mobs with tail screw or missile. As if those weren't able to be balanced at all.

That's true. I've suggested in the past that, if needed for balance reasons, they could just make Bad Breath a poison DoT with maybe Stun and/or Silence for mobs, or that White Wind could be a simple healing spell, and people have told me that if we changed spells like that it wouldn't feel like a real Blue Mage, and that's why its implementation has to be done the way it is now. But now we have a Mighty Guard that has almost nothing to do with the classic Mighty Guard, not to mention the classic skills we didn't get, like Goblin Punch and Matra Magic, and I don't see any controversy around that.

[Dmhlucky]

The main issue i see, is that Blu in a MMO (all i have to go off of is XI) but Blu is all about diversity and adapting to the situation. It worked so well in 11 because of the variety of situations you could find yourself in. Elements mattered, Resistances mattered. These are 2 very key things that simply don't and can't exist in this game the way they did in 11.

It would require a complete overhaul of the game. Casters would need a variety of elements to compensate for the monsters resistances, which points back towards too many abilities and spells for hotbars.

In XI if you were a monk, going up against something with blunt resistance, you could equip a slashing weapon, and for the most part, there was at least one weapon in every type that was a different attack style, Joyeuse being piercing instead of slashing for example. In 14, Monk gets H2H weapons, which are blunt. That's it. So if they introduced content that had only Blunt damage resistant monsters, Monk would be banned from it by the community. Likewise if a monster had immunity to Fire damage, like Ifrit, Blm is obsolete.

Blu in 11 was all about monopolizing on the situation, so a monster weak to fire, or piercing, you could set spells to exploit that weakness. Right now, Mountain buster and the lightning counterpart, its quite pointless. There really is no reason to get both aside from completion. (yes, i know the Blu exclusive content has a use, talking outside of that)

They made 49 spells, and like people keep saying, most are garbage, or won't be used. Bristle would be Great if it can be used with the Primal abilities, but from what i am gathering, it can't. If it was insta cast, AND could be used for more than 1 spell, it would be worthwhile, otherwise its a wasted spell. Any of the lower potency various elemental spells are pointless.

If they had more varied ranges, cast times and costs, that would be a start.

I still like the idea of having a quest that unlocks the limited nature of the job, but also revamps a lot of its abilities. Meaning for the Blu exclusive, you could use Blu as it stands now. And for actual content, it would be modified.

And also the comments about jobs being clones of each other, they kind of are. All tanks have damage taken cooldowns/shield proc/parry/block, All heals are almost mirrored with a few unique abilities. Ast gets Holy, just in 2 parts. Rdm and Blm play different, but in a game like this, where there are assigned roles, they are DPS. All DPS essentially do the same thing. Thats the one major issue with this game, is a job needs to fit into a Role, which already limits what it can do. And then the other jobs in the role need to be balanced, otherwise there will be preferences.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

The main issue i see, is that Blu in a MMO (all i have to go off of is XI) but Blu is all about diversity and adapting to the situation. It worked so well in 11 because of the variety of situations you could find yourself in. Elements mattered, Resistances mattered. These are 2 very key things that simply don't and can't exist in this game the way they did in 11.

But if you look into how BLU was used in the offline FFs, it was about as adaptable as other jobs. Heck, Black Mage is all about adapting to the situation in classic FFs. Blizzard, Fire and Thunder are copies of one another except for the element. You see a Flan enemy with a red color? That means it probably is resistant to fire, so you use Blizzard because it's probably weak to that. All of that had to be scratched when it was adapted into FFXIV, and Blizzard, Fire and Thunder were repurposed to fit the game mechanics, and I don't see many people complaining that it doesn't feel like classic Black Mage. Personally, I think Black Mage is alright like that.

Classic Blue Mage actually has a lot of useless spells against bosses, and will have a few support spells (that could very well be implemented even if with slight modifications) and some damage dealing spells that you actually use when fighting a boss. Blue Mage was never that complicated of a class when it came to the actual gameplay.

[Dmhlucky]

The lack of elements is something that actually very much bothers me in this game. I actually liked how they did it a bit better in Alpha and Beta, at least is logically made sense that monsters had elements, and hitting a fire spite with water was a good idea.

Offline games you can play however you want, You aren't being judged by the community. You aren't getting into a group and being told you are paying the game wrong because you chose a Blue hat over a red hat (sarcasm)

I know Blu typically has a lot of useless spells, but in solo games, that doesn't matter. And SE did an overall good job in this game of Not making spells obsolete. Most spells and abilities have some use, barring a few, Blizzard 2 looking at you. But then they add Blu and give them So many things they they worked so hard to remove from the rest of the game.

Maybe they'll add another Blu exclusive event, or Blu only dungeons where you actually queue with other jobs. Make Shiny rewards, fun things. Its just seems like an unfinished project, and its a shame, cause there was a vast pool of potential.

And yes i know, its not even a week yet, but you can progress so fast that people are already asking for more, people wanted a full job, and they couldn't even give us a proper weapon...

[wereotter]

Fire is actually 324, as it's expected that you will be in Astral Fire III when you cast it.

Assuming BLU damage formulas have been tweaked so that its potencies correspond to the other casters' potencies (i.e., 100 potency BLU spell = 100 potency BLM spell for two casters in equivalent gear, without M&Mend traits) [I haven't verified that this is the case], Water Cannon would be 270 potency (Off-guard + M&M V) and Fire would be 421 (AF III + M&M II). Stone II (the highest available at 50) is 260 (if accounting for M&M II).

So Water Cannon is probably actually much worse off than you initially suggested.

Right, I'm aware that it only gets worse as you get higher level, but I was just taking level 1 thaumaturge verses level 1 blue mage. But if we want a more fair level 50 comparison Jolt, the base red mage spell, is also 180 potency and doesn't become Jolt 2 until level 62.

I get that you're not supposed to just spam Water Cannon, and that you're supposed to chain monster abilities together to make other big attacks, I've done this. But I do think most of us can agree that base spell could use a tweak.

[Kabooa]

Right, I'm aware that it only gets worse as you get higher level, but I was just taking level 1 thaumaturge verses level 1 blue mage. But if we want a more fair level 50 comparison Jolt, the base red mage spell, is also 180 potency and doesn't become Jolt 2 until level 62.

I get that you're not supposed to just spam Water Cannon, and that you're supposed to chain monster abilities together to make other big attacks, I've done this. But I do think most of us can agree that base spell could use a tweak.

I ignore half the spell synergies because they aren't worth using.

[Ilyrian]

I find it hilarious people are complaining that they would have to "ruin" BLU to make it a standard mage job when they made MIGHTY GUARD which is arguably one of the most iconic BLU spells a freaking Shield Oath clone. It's literally just a tank stance you flip on and off. It's the absolute epitome of 'ruining' a spell to ram it in somewhere it doesn't belong. Why isn't everyone who thinks BLU can't function as a real job up in arms about that? It should be the number one post. You got denied a classic spell for a rehashed clone.

Heck, the way BLU plays right now could be made viable for real content if they fixed potencies to not be terrible. Is BLU now retroactively bad because it can be played like a caster? Because it already fits in to the caster role? There is nothing special or super broken about this implementation of Blue Mage beyond White Wind and the ability to troll trash mobs with tail screw or missile. As if those weren't able to be balanced at all.

Then you've missed my point entirely.
I don't really care if they make another caster DPS and call it Blue Mage. But it will still have to function exactly like the rest of them.
Point and shoot - press your buttons in an order. It's not going to be a tank, a healer, an off-tank, an off-healer. It won't provide some mythic utility. It won't be able to replace a healer... it will be its role.
Unless - they fundamentally change the core dynamic of group content. Which, though unlikely, could happen. But I'm thinking it won't.