Please make Blue Mage a normal job

[Auryan]

I disagree with your interpretations of BLU from other games, heres something I posted in another on reddit:
"FFV: Had some great progression spells, aero was strong and thousand needles had its sweet spot, but it really shined as a support in the end game with transfusion, mighty guard and white wind

FFVI: Strago was pretty cool, but his actual BLU skills were pretty underwhelming due to their weird conditions.

FFVII: Enemy skill materia is just great. Matra magic deletes the early game, you can do a certain cheese with the Midgar Zolom using the element materia to get Beta early and just wreck shop, then youve got mighty and wind as well, also also shadowflare.

FFVIII: Quistis' limit break, so yeah, pretty strong

FFXI: Pretty Situational, Percentage based skills had their place in a lot of fights though. Frog Drop was destruction if you caught a lot of frogs for it though.

FFX: Khimari was bad. That is all.

Final Fantasy Tactics series: Very strong if you could actually learn stuff, strong support and damage if you can learn the skills.

Now onto my Personal Favs:

Bravely Default: Vampire, support physical attacker, uses monster skills to debuff and then hit hard with physical attacks

Bravely Second: Catmancer, not only is the premise wonderfully ridiculous, it was a powerful physical attacker/ tank, and could set up some good synergy with other classes."

BLU's Nature as a job is that it shifts its identity to suit the game that it is in, the way it learns is different in different games, with its defining feature being it learns its skills in a different way and that they are monster skills. A FFXIV version of BLU that was balanced would be no less of a BLU than these other examples, because they're all different.

True. No BLU iteration are the same. I look at BLU as the quintessential weird mage. It learns and uses bizarre magic from monsters that covers a whole range of functions. Which ranges from situational and silly to essential and overpowered.

That to me just wouldn't work for XIV in a competitive and group settings. It didn't really work for XI either since it's much harder to accomplish that fantasy in an MMO.
For XIV, by trying to make it another job, they will have to completely alter that fantasy. At best it'd be like RDM where they create lore fluff on how it masters all monster skills, but in practical sense all of its skills will be geared towards damage with 3 or so for utility. And I didn't like it when RDM did that and wouldn't like it for BLU.

This version of BLU isn't perfect and needs more support. However, I prefer this to just another cookie cutter caster DPS. That's how I look at it. We all have our own job fantasies and it's perfectly fine to disagree on them.

[ReiMakoto]

True. No BLU iteration are the same. I look at BLU as the quintessential weird mage. It learns and uses bizarre magic from monsters that covers a whole range of functions. Which ranges from situational and silly to essential and overpowered.

That to me just wouldn't work for XIV in a competitive and group settings. It didn't really work for XI either since it's much harder to accomplish that fantasy in an MMO.
For XIV, by trying to make it another job, they will have to completely alter that fantasy. At best it'd be like RDM where they create lore fluff on how it masters all monster skills, but in practical sense all of its skills will be geared towards damage with 3 or so for utility. And I didn't like it when RDM did that and wouldn't like it for BLU.

This version of BLU isn't perfect and needs more support. However, I prefer this to just another cookie cutter caster DPS. That's how I look at it. We all have our own job fantasies and it's perfectly fine to disagree on them.

See yeah I disagree, BLU in my eyes isn't necessarily weird, but just different, it learns plenty of normal skills just off of monsters instead in its various iterations, and whilst it does have more "weird" skills, youve got to remember that traditional FFs have other jobs with these weird abilities as well, like BLM death and WHM had essentially tail screw.

I'd also have to disagree on RDM, if I wanted to play a "true" RDM I'd play another final fantasy game, I'm here for 14s interpretation of these jobs, and to play with my friends. To this end RDM is a pretty great adaptation, as is Bard.

Also can you please define "Cookie Cutter" for a class please, I see people talk about this a lot, but surely its all about the flavour and gameplay of the class, SMN =/= BLM =/=RDM, so what would make BLU generic and equal these. Just the addition of Peculiar light makes it fulfil a different role as a support like ninja, and the spells off the GCD like off guard and pec light could be expanded upon with the 1sec cast time skills to make a different playstyle.