Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Arrius]

The text says “Not Suitable for Party Content” — it says nothing about forming parties or joining parties, just that they aren’t suitable for party content.

But they were straight locked out of the matchmaking Duty content but still could make their own parties and tackle dungeons, of they could've just simply mentioned that beforehand and saved everyone the guessing back then.

There are several different inferences that can be made about the statement: the one I personally made was that it would be unable to fit into the regular party content due to being difficult to balance. In other words, I interpreted it as the job would actually be a bit overpowered, but it ends up being the opposite. Adding to the advertisement of it being a Solo Job, I also inferred it would have decent soloing capabilities outside of just the Masked Carnivale and overworld mobs, but its solo sustain for content near or at its level is fairly weak.

I think of the game balance as a rough line, where the Blue Mage is making sharp jumps up and down due to certain spells. And those 'sharp jumps' cannot be 'smoothed out' as that would endanger the integrity of the job, as the mmo's of this time and age are much simpler in terms to gameplay, complexity and depth. Just look at XI and the roster of spells they got over there.

As for the solo aspect, I would've gone with 'Designed for Solo-Oriented play' and soften the argument instead of taking a hard stance of 'Designed for Solo play'.
Just me, tho.