Quote Originally Posted by Valic View Post
I considered all of that as well, though I think this was really what a lot of people wanted prior to it's release. Considering how much development it has gotten by now, it almost feels like it needs a different approach than simply culling the concept and skills down to become "normal".


Originally I actually anticipated blue mage to be our caster tank eventually. white mage being a healer, red and black mage being support and regular casters respectively... why not have a mage in the tank spot (and it's blue cuz role too!)? Could've developed some system around turning on certain buffs that generate a resource on being hit and attacking similarly to DRK and have procs that activate monster abilities. Since the whole idea is getting beat up by monsters and learning their abilities, could've easily become a regular tank job with counter properties and something interesting. At the very least it could've been a base caster and even keep the thing it's doing now as a limited job, but balance it around being able to perform all the content instead of less than half of it.
A caster tank could be cool but I really don't think that SE is going to go too outside the box. That was the upside of the limited job system in the first place, it's side content but they can go all in with the blue mage quirks with that system.

Sadly I suspect any future tanks will all go into fending gear and all future healers into healing gear etc, I don't expect to get a system like WoW where half the tanks are actually leather armor instead of plate etc with mechanics to help them survive.

I wouldn't really call red mage a support caster though. It has more utility than black mage, but it's still very much dps focused. But a 'blue battle mage' could have been an interesting twist on blue mages as a tank. I also thought before red mage was announced it could also have been a fun tank with white magic for defense/self heals and black magic for generating enimity/attacking, but I also like what they did with red mage.

I can see both sides of the fence with BLU really. I like how blu gets to be full on blu with the current system, but also understand fans of the job wanted to MAIN the job and they can't with this system. And plenty of other jobs had overhauls. Red mage was tweaked to be a full on dps with some utility, not a real hybrid. Summoner. Dark knight losing its hp sacrificing to be more tanky. Even black mage if you think about it, being changed to cycle between ice/fire phases with lightning dots instead of choosing the element an enemy is weak to (if it has a weakness) and nuking it. It's not like BLU couldn't have been adjusted to fit into the mold too like other jobs have been, so while I'm fine with the current system I get why others aren't and why it didn't HAVE to be that way with BLU.