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

[KokonoeAiyoko]

"Watered down" BLU would at least not have the same 130 potency elemental nuke copypasted five times in its spell list, or multiple crowd control skills that do the same thing, or be flooded with filler spells, or require to be carried in any content it tries to join. I'd happily take a watered down blue mage over a glorified gold saucer attraction that doesn't even give MGP.

That actually sounds like BLU to me. Have you never played the classic Final Fantasy games? That's literally how it's always been lol.

[wereotter]

That actually sounds like BLU to me. Have you never played the classic Final Fantasy games? That's literally how it's always been lol.

?

Thinking back on Quina and Strago.... no. This isn't how they've always been. They have spells that, on paper, appear to do the same thing, mostly attack all enemies with a spell, but those games had one key difference that XIV lacks. Elements matter.

That said, digging a little deeper into BLU here, I'm seeing that while it would appear on the surface that you have a lot of duplicate abilities (and you do) it's also about being smart regarding which abilities you use as you have a physical and a magical damage version of each. Drill Cannon is basically the physical damage version of Water Cannon. The Look is basically the physical damage version of Flamethrower, etc.

This COULD have been a really interesting thing to do with a job, and would have made the BLU think about what preformed parties they're playing with. Playing with a Summoner? Better bring magical abilities. Playing with a Monk or Red Mage? Bring the physical ones. The problem, to me, is that even if you attempt to optimize these abilities, the damage output of this job is still pretty pitiful, and would have to be a sponge of everyone else's buffs just to do below average damage.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

?

Thinking back on Quina and Strago.... no. This isn't how they've always been. They have spells that, on paper, appear to do the same thing, mostly attack all enemies with a spell, but those games had one key difference that XIV lacks. Elements matter.

That said, digging a little deeper into BLU here, I'm seeing that while it would appear on the surface that you have a lot of duplicate abilities (and you do) it's also about being smart regarding which abilities you use as you have a physical and a magical damage version of each. Drill Cannon is basically the physical damage version of Water Cannon. The Look is basically the physical damage version of Flamethrower, etc.

This COULD have been a really interesting thing to do with a job, and would have made the BLU think about what preformed parties they're playing with. Playing with a Summoner? Better bring magical abilities. Playing with a Monk or Red Mage? Bring the physical ones. The problem, to me, is that even if you attempt to optimize these abilities, the damage output of this job is still pretty pitiful, and would have to be a sponge of everyone else's buffs just to do below average damage.

Blue Mage has had a lot of "pointless" moves is what I'm getting at. Like, they fulfill either really niche uses and you stick to the movies that are potent for certain content. Personally I'm pretty satisfied with what Blue has been offering so far despite 50 cap. There's a lot of unique moves here.

In terms of parties, you'd really have to wait until 70-80 for that to even matter. It's level 50 to give everyone time to learn everything, there is still 50-60-70-80 to go.

That's a lot of moves that we still don't have yet so I'd reserve final judgment until that occurs. Tbh no one likes playing the level 50 jobs that area already in the game anyway cause they are limited.

[ReiMakoto]

That actually sounds like BLU to me. Have you never played the classic Final Fantasy games? That's literally how it's always been lol.

BLU:

FFV: Caster Support God in end game, in prog of the game learns powerful spells early (Aero) and generally learns a good range of damaging magic (As well as some niche skills)
FFVI: Learned some weird spells, and some other powerful skills,
FFVII: Enemy skill was great, powerful magic which wasn't necessarily better than regular magic, but wasn't worse either, it also didn't alter your stats like other materia
FFVIII: Not played it so can't judge its usefulness
FFIX: Quina was great, most of the stuff was percentage based but still
FFX: Kimari was Trash Moving on
FFXI: Not played it but heard it was good and strong in that one

Could go on for other BLU's but you get my point, they of course did get some useless skills, but so do black and white mages.

[Arrius]

?Thinking back on Quina and Strago.... no. This isn't how they've always been. They have spells that, on paper, appear to do the same thing, mostly attack all enemies with a spell, but those games had one key difference that XIV lacks. Elements matter.

It's not just elements here. It's also about the buffs and debuffs they can provide and inflict compared to any other jobs. Slow, blind, bind, stun, stop, drain, burn, paralyze, atk/def/str/dex down, fear. And the list goes on.
SE doesn't give the players much options for crowd control outside eureka, but the blue mage has it by the dozen. It was always a staple thing to tip the favors to your side with a blue mage because of its huge bag of tricks with the said buffs and debuffs.

I just don't see how they can balance that out without severely cutting down on the identity of the blue mage to make it a 'regular' job.

[RadicalPesto]

That actually sounds like BLU to me. Have you never played the classic Final Fantasy games? That's literally how it's always been lol.

In classic Final Fantasies most jobs are "pick spell from a menu" or "press the Fight button". If you want that kind of gameplay there's a lot of games for you to play, but that's horrible gameplay for a MMO where you control a single character.

[Shougun]

Blue Mage has had a lot of "pointless" moves is what I'm getting at. Like, they fulfill either really niche uses and you stick to the movies that are potent for certain content. Personally I'm pretty satisfied with what Blue has been offering so far despite 50 cap. There's a lot of unique moves here.

I'd argue that happens to other jobs too, just sometimes in less obvious ways. Say you have Super Smash Smash attack and Ooglop Slap, one clearly better than the other (or offers a nearly useless status infliction). What's so different than say Fire I II III IV VI, when in most of the games you have no need to ever go back down a level. Like in FFIX as soon as I got the stronger spell I'd just use it, no need to fire an enemy when I can Firaga or Meteor them.

Another example would be summons, often one summon would replace nearly half of all the other summons once learned (minus when you need to abuse elements lol).

Most jobs, imo, in most FF games (probably games in general) are full of pointless moves given progression; however, imo (lol), blue mage is unique in that the devs sometimes add goofy spells to blue mage just because (a shame that we don't see that more often on other jobs). Like Roulette which just randomly kills an ally or enemy lol.

ERr in other words:
Pointless skills, at least given progression: all jobs, in all games (almost always)
Nonsense goofy skills, blue mage usually

Imo other jobs in this game could use a few "off the regular bar" goof spells. Beyond that I see having a limit/unlimited, chained/unchained, limited content / main content (advanced) as the perfect solution to blue mage getting every thing that makes blue mage blue mage and more (goofy spell that can kill yourself? check! learning monster skills, check! can play with others, check! Although it's also probably one of the least cost effective routes lol, I still think it'd be pretty cool ).

BLU:

FFV: Caster Support God in end game, in prog of the game learns powerful spells early (Aero) and generally learns a good range of damaging magic (As well as some niche skills)
FFVI: Learned some weird spells, and some other powerful skills,
FFVII: Enemy skill was great, powerful magic which wasn't necessarily better than regular magic, but wasn't worse either, it also didn't alter your stats like other materia
FFVIII: Not played it so can't judge its usefulness
FFIX: Quina was great, most of the stuff was percentage based but still
FFX: Kimari was Trash Moving on
FFXI: Not played it but heard it was good and strong in that one

In FFVIII she's good, but tbh you don't really suffer from making other characters good either.. Unlike FFX where I don't know what happened but he just felt bad lol (I think it has to do with not having a defined sphere path), I leveled every character by switching them out.. of every.. fight... but I almost never actually utilized used him.

FFXI blue mage was awesome, especially back when the game moved slower and blue mage first came out. Felt like you were flying lol. After 20 second casts from black mage.. blue mage was over there doing 2 second chaos burning their mp and hitting the hate list like it was a white mage benediction . Certainly the RNG to learning spells was an element of suffering but that whole game found a way to make everyone pay, so it wasn't like "oh no blue mage, so bad every other job is easy" - have fun getting all your summons, or buying all your spells lol.

[HyoMinPark]

I’m not a native speaker, but I’ve studied Japanese for several years now, so take this as you will...

コツコツとソロで楽しむ育成型
— This one is tricky:
“コツコツ” is onomatopoeia, and it can mean “steadily” (like the steady tapping of something), while “ソロで楽しむ” literally means “enjoy solo” or “participate solo”; 育成 means “rearing, training, cultivation, or promotion”; 型 means “mould, type, model”.
So I’m translating it as “Model that steadily participates solo”.
A bit awkward sounding. While researching, I also read a definition for コツコツ as “little by little”... may ask my professor about it when I see her today.

パーティコンテンツには向かない
— “Not suitable for party content” — direct translation.
“パーティコンテンツ” is “party content”.
“向かない” means “not suitable”; the verb 向く can mean “to be suited for”.

So, may not be that important now, but I said I would ask my Japanese professor about the first bullet point. She said it could be translated as "Something one enjoys solo, little by little" - meaning you can slowly (and steadily) space out the content BLU has to offer.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

BLU:

FFV: Caster Support God in end game, in prog of the game learns powerful spells early (Aero) and generally learns a good range of damaging magic (As well as some niche skills)
FFVI: Learned some weird spells, and some other powerful skills,
FFVII: Enemy skill was great, powerful magic which wasn't necessarily better than regular magic, but wasn't worse either, it also didn't alter your stats like other materia
FFVIII: Not played it so can't judge its usefulness
FFIX: Quina was great, most of the stuff was percentage based but still
FFX: Kimari was Trash Moving on
FFXI: Not played it but heard it was good and strong in that one

Could go on for other BLU's but you get my point, they of course did get some useless skills, but so do black and white mages.

Keep in mind when you refer to "end-game", we don't have end-game Blue right now. We're at 50, that's 51-60-70-80 worth of moves still remaining. Maybe SE should've just waited and released it all at once.

In classic Final Fantasies most jobs are "pick spell from a menu" or "press the Fight button". If you want that kind of gameplay there's a lot of games for you to play, but that's horrible gameplay for a MMO where you control a single character.

Worked fine in FFXI. It'll work fine in this game too when we have level 80 cap imo.

I personally prefer to judge a game based on the content it currently has, not on the content that's been promised.

Daily post limit yipee!

That's fine, the point I'm making is that we can't judge it for its endgame qualities until then.

[Arrius]

So, may not be that important now, but I said I would ask my Japanese professor about the first bullet point. She said it could be translated as "Something one enjoys solo, little by little" - meaning you can slowly (and steadily) space out the content BLU has to offer.

Appreciate you went through with that, Hyomin. Even though it was kind of a long stretch to see what SE actually said compared to the translated piece.
Thank you anyway!