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.

[Lacan]

What for though?

I mean you can get the gear and loot from those much easier by running unsynced, or synched with traditional classes. "For fun" is a valid reason, but in reality very few people will run old content they've done before for no real reward and getting full groups together after the first week or two would be a pain.

I think they missed an opportunity with BLU and the Primal skills. For a start they could have given BLU better damage, a much better Mighty Guard, a rez and then made it so skills can only be learned in groups with BLU's. That would have been fun. I'd definitely have given that a go.
I feel they could unlock PotD to BLU as well. That could be fun. It's old content by now and nothing wrong if BLU is very strong there.

One idea for old content could be a BLU only currency for running old content synched in BLU groups. You get 1 token per instance on a week lockout and 2-3 for each raid or EX (so the more different things you try, the more you get in one week) and can trade a large number of them for unique mounts, minions, glam, music, ect. Of course, again BLU would need a significant buff, but it would make old content definitely worth doing.

I think the main reason for doing the content would be to strengthen the jobs themselves somehow. Like how blue mage has to run some dungeons now to learn spells. You'd have to give people some sort of incentive to work towards, but the fun factor is important too. Just doing dungeons with other blue mages has been fun for me. I imagine it'd be even better with other limited jobs to work with too, so you could figure out how they synergize and work together. That sort of thing.

Blue exclusive unlockables would be great too, but I think they mentioned not wanting to lock a mount behind blue mage so that people wouldn't level the job just to get the mount. Don't know if they meant that as a temporary measure or if it means they never intend to attach those sort of rewards to blue mage at all.

[Zsplash]

Blue mage has already been forgotten, it accomplished the original goal of being a fake (limited) job release to get pre expansion attention.

You can make up hypotheticals but no action to fix it will be taken unless players were actually causing an uproar and quitting. They're not so benevolent as to spend time remaking a job just because some people complained that the job is a waste of time as is.

[Lacan]

Blue mage has already been forgotten, it accomplished the original goal of being a fake (limited) job release to get pre expansion attention.

You can make up hypotheticals but no action to fix it will be taken unless players were actually causing an uproar and quitting. They're not so benevolent as to spend time remaking a job just because some people complained that the job is a waste of time as is.

it came out literally last patch. :v were you expecting them to add more stuff to it inbetween patches?

[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.

[ReiMakoto]

it came out literally last patch. :v were you expecting them to add more stuff to it inbetween patches?

No but I was expecting my favourite job to last more than a week and having meaningful things to do in the game I spend so much of my time in.

[Lacan]

No but I was expecting my favourite job to last more than a week and having meaningful things to do in the game I spend so much of my time in.

yea, that is an issue. I guess they were expecting people to take a long time learning all the spells. I haven't tried the masked carnival yet but I'm assuming that is supposed to keep people entertained too. lol

[hynaku]

Please don't make it normal job. There way to weak.

[Zsplash]

it came out literally last patch. :v were you expecting them to add more stuff to it inbetween patches?

Blue mage is what it is, content will be piled on top as is the norm. No changes to what it IS can be expected though. I have no doubt blue will never be a real job and I'm secure in knowing even if disappointing.

[ReiMakoto]

yea, that is an issue. I guess they were expecting people to take a long time learning all the spells. I haven't tried the masked carnival yet but I'm assuming that is supposed to keep people entertained too. lol

Yeah you're going to be dissapointed with the carnival, it takes about an hour to complete and are basically just glorified guildhests. Some of the fights are puzzles but they don't exactly have hard solutions, they're just "use X skill to get around this". And thats not mentioning the fact that self destruct/final sting can be used to cheese most of the fights in a very short amount of time and count as taking no damage.