Next new job better be heals

[Claire_Pendragon]

I would guess because they learn their magic from monsters. To really do that justice it has to be different, and because of that it ends up being a messy mish-mash of spells which doesn't lend itself well to a proper MMO class. So they tried something different, which is cool I think. Kinda sucks for big time BLU fans but you can't fault them for trying something new and interesting.

There's been tons of work arounds suggested by people on how to handle this. (And I dont mean the easy way out of just giving BLU quests to learn spells)
Almost every boss in the game does their primary attack/mechanic before being killed. So if they learned spells from MSQ dungeon bosses, as an example, there wouldnt be a problem (outside of the fact SE decided to go the route of FFXI where there is only a 'chance' to learn a spell, rather than 100% if you see it/get hit by it/use skill on an enemy. (Depending on which version of BLU you'd rather go with)
But i put most of the blame on the fact SE puts very little time into the design, and more on the animations. I dont remember where i heard this, be it interview, or someone saying "i heard it from a friend" so u can take it with a grain of salt, but something like 2 hours spent on the design of all the new jobs. so less an hour of each job. id assume this is one of the issues why they didnt think of solutions other than simple ones.

[MirronTulaxia]

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1. Most of the jobs in the series do not violate a core part of their identities. Further you're just making a logical fallacy. It isn't good to violate a core part of a jobs identity. Adding another job that does that would not make things better.

2. Blue has consistencies, even with XIV, that it wouldn't have had if you tried to wedge it into a specific role.

3. Blue Mages really aren't "melee" mages most of the time. They don't really need to be in melee range to make the most of their moves. They can be, and they'll certainly do better than a White Mage, but in terms of times that it's a dedicated job it really doesn't need to be. Given though that there isn't even a melee mage role in this game you're really just making my point for me of how Blue Mage doesn't work.

4. Dragoons... do not have a provoke effect. Provoke like effects are fairly rare. "https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Provoke_(ability)" should show you that. It's missing an instance (FFD), but it's mostly complete. Of noteworthy jobs there are Knights, Dark Knights, Vikings, and Warriors having Provoke. None of those are Dragoon.

5. Dragoons have access to heavier armor still, so acting like they don't is kind of silly. Dragoons absolutely could have been a tank, but as a job needs to be a single role that isn't an option. And tanks, in general, aren't really a thing in mainline FFs so you're going to have to twist things a touch to make it happen. As is Dragoons aren't in violation of how they work throughout the series. Still have spears, still Jump, still wear heavier armor.

6. Dragoons do heavy burst damage sure. But I don't think that having a job take a minute up in the air would be a great way to make the game work, and it wouldn't be the only game where you can speedily do Dragoon jumps, so it's again a minor aspect that doesn't violate the core.

7. Black Mages are in general fairly good at AoE damage relative to the bulk of jobs, owing mostly to the lack of competition. While Summoners are better that's more just about Summoners having stronger damaging spells in general without the split damage effect, they're stronger at single target damage compared to Black Mages as well. Summoners (not Black Mages) are probably the only one I'd accept as an exception, but go back to point 1 for why it's irrelevant.

8. Most of your complaints for Paladins are either specific to the nature of FFXIV or again not a violation of what Paladins are about. Paladins are not about "Break" attacks. That's not nearly consistent enough to treat it as a core part of their identity. They're heavily armored characters with some white magic/holy stuff that usually have a Cover effect. Paladins are that in this game as well.

9. Warriors are almost entirely inconsistent throughout the series, so any complaints about Warriors not lining up is pretty silly.

10. Monks could certainly have been a tank. Again, jobs can only be one role, so you're going to have to focus things a bit. Monks are still melee fighters with a mix of physical prowess and some supernatural chi effects, nothing really in violation of that. They don't "need" to avoid having gear, because this isn't even the first FF where they use gear, and it wasn't the last either.

11. Dragoon's need more than just Jump. That's, again, kind of a basic starting point. You can't have them just jump and nothing else, much like you can't have a job just use the same one move over and over again without any change. It's why they don't just Jump in Explorers either, and it was on a cooldown there as well.

12. FF doesn't have shield spells really. The closest you can have to a Shield spell is Bubble, which isn't a White Magic spell traditionally, it's Green or Arcane. I suppose that once in 4HoL it was a White Magic spell, but 4HoL in general is rather weird, and Bubble still does not work like the shield spells a Scholar uses. White Mages in this game are still healers with some damage effects, nothing in violation of that. As for using elements other than Holy this isn't the first time White Mages have used those elements. Wind is used by them in FFIII, Water is used by them in Explorers, Earth is used by them in Mobius. So in short, nothing in violation.

13. FFXIV doesn't have elemental weaknesses, and thus they had to give Black Mages some sort of theme. As is it's about balancing Fire/Ice which are two of the main three elements of a Black Mage. It's still a magic DPS all about blasting down enemies, not really any issues.

14. Scholar is not remotely consistent. FFIII is different from FFXI is different from FFTA2, and those are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head, may be another one. Because of TA2 you can't even point at balancing White and Black as a theme, because in TA2 it just does "every unit on the field gets hit with X" effects. Much like Warrior it isn't really much in the way of themes to call consistent or not.

15. Honestly? Summoner I agree with. As I said earlier, I think they should have done something different. I have an idea for Summoner that I feel would be slow and steady and work better. But I don't agree with "all AoE", as Summoners do have single target effects. I don't think that you could have a painfully slow job or painfully expensive one either, that's simply bad game design in an MMO. But I don't want to ramble about my idea of what a good Summoner would be, just suffice to say I don't quite agree with your idea. As for healing that's inconsistent in terms of presence, I wouldn't argue it's a core trait myself.

16. Bards are possibly the other exception. Bear in mind, again, that I said that adding more jobs does not somehow justify your argument. You're committing a logical fallacy when you try and say "well X did it so Y should too". If your argument is "jobs shouldn't be consistent with past iterations" then you're welcome to that, but that isn't something I agree with. As far as Bards specifically go? I don't think the trinity system is the issue, I just think they wanted to give Rangers something to stand out a bit and thus grafted Bard onto it.

17. Blue Mage is not specifically XI's version, so I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It's different from past versions while still retaining the core identity, a mage who learns spells from monsters in a manner different from other jobs. If you just used the current Blue Mage and let it join Duty Finder like anyone else you'd have a mess. As is it's doing its own thing without throwing balance under the bus. If you want to suggest just letting it join parties as is (add some levels and a couple spells or whatever) with zero restrictions then go ahead, but that's just a huge problem.

18. In short, a lot of your complaints seem to be treating it like what needs to happen is rigid 100% adherence to past games, when what I'm talking about is more along the lines of a short two sentence description of the jobs key features that you can use to look at past games and say "these all fit". Coupled with that you keep insisting on a logical fallacy and seem to think that the game system should be built around the jobs, instead of the other way around. The jobs in FFT aren't 100% the same as they were previously, but they worked within the system and found unique expressions that still fit the core theme while being expressed differently because it was a new system.

[Claire_Pendragon]

1. Most of the jobs in the series do not violate a core part of their identities. Further you're just making a logical fallacy. It isn't good to violate a core part of a jobs identity. Adding another job that does that would not make things better.

Nearly half or more do. But obviously what you have decided is a core part of their identity is different from what i have.
Therefor im sure nothing else we say is going to be on the same page. (Also, which fallacy are you suggesting im making?) (EDIT: It seems you're accusing me of making the fallacy, when im the one pointing out the fallacy, by letting it play out to its conclusion. I dont agree with it, which i explain later in this post. But at the same time, if you're against me doing it to other jobs, why would you defend it when its used as a defense, by the devs, for BLUs limited status?)

2. Blue has consistencies, even with XIV, that it wouldn't have had if you tried to wedge it into a specific role.

this alone makes no sense. You can have 4 WHMs in FF1. In most FFs u can choose the role you wanted for a job, as most jobs could fit more than one role, and in some cases in certain games, do some crazy broken stuff. FF14 in its nature turns jobs into singular roles. its like taking DnD classes, and making them fit only one role, when in their nature, they were all a sort of "jack-of-all-trades" class. As if an MMO sees DnD's cleric and says, well Cleric is obviously the healer.

3. Blue Mages really aren't "melee" mages most of the time. They don't really need to be in melee range to make the most of their moves. They can be, and they'll certainly do better than a White Mage, but in terms of times that it's a dedicated job it really doesn't need to be. Given though that there isn't even a melee mage role in this game you're really just making my point for me of how Blue Mage doesn't work.

Not sure what "14 doesnt have a melee mage" has to do with the subject matter. But "Not most of the time" is very inaccurate. In most FFs you dont easily regenerate MP, so spending time meleeing was a good way to save MP for harder fights. One of the reasons RDM has lower MP as well, since it could melee reasonably well in half the games. As for "dont need to be in melee range" im not sure what you mean by this. Lets look at FF4, where almost every single melee had abilities that retained full effectiveness in the backrow. MNK had kick, NIN had throw, PLD had cure/cover, DRG had jump. Only Cid was rather unhelpful in the backrow just scanning enemies. From FF5 and on, as a kid, I put all my melee in the back row. You may deal 50% less dmg, but also took 50% less dmg. But potions/cures remained at full potency regardless if ur front or back row. so to me, this seemed like the sure fire way to win all fights. So im not sure where your arguement of "BLU doesnt need to remain in the front row" is coming from. of course it doesnt have to be. Nor did RDM. Literally everything BLU is capable of, can be represented in some shape or form, even if its lessened to a large degree.

4. Dragoons... do not have a provoke effect.

I know, im saying ina game where its possible to get. (Cross class options)

5. Dragoons have access to heavier armor still, so acting like they don't is kind of silly. Dragoons absolutely could have been a tank, but as a job needs to be a single role that isn't an option. And tanks, in general, aren't really a thing in mainline FFs so you're going to have to twist things a touch to make it happen. As is Dragoons aren't in violation of how they work throughout the series. Still have spears, still Jump, still wear heavier armor.

suddenly you're ok with arguing semantics, but its not ok when i do it.

6. Dragoons do heavy burst damage sure. But I don't think that having a job take a minute up in the air would be a great way to make the game work, and it wouldn't be the only game where you can speedily do Dragoon jumps, so it's again a minor aspect that doesn't violate the core.

core mechanic doesnt work in an MMO, but somehow its not a core mechanic... no. you're not going to just straight up state inaccurate information like this, regardless if you think its opinion or not, and think im going to believe it.

7. Black Mages are in general fairly good at AoE damage relative to the bulk of jobs, owing mostly to the lack of competition. While Summoners are better that's more just about Summoners having stronger damaging spells in general without the split damage effect, they're stronger at single target damage compared to Black Mages as well. Summoners (not Black Mages) are probably the only one I'd accept as an exception, but go back to point 1 for why it's irrelevant.

this is relatively arguable, due to different versions through the series, and including things like SMNs running out of MP quicker than BLMs, and spending turns to get the MP back, which is a DPS loss. BLM has better sustain (which doesnt matter) but worse sustain than a melee. As for which games SMN did more dmg on single target, were only at certain level ranges, including games like 7, where they could hit past damage cap. Outside of breaking damage cap, and the majority of the game before that point, they were roughly equal most of the time. with exceptions again, like FFX where its a DPS loss to summon, since u lost 2 other party members, and did less dmg until the final attack.

8. Most of your complaints for Paladins are either specific to the nature of FFXIV or again not a violation of what Paladins are about. Paladins are not about "Break" attacks. That's not nearly consistent enough to treat it as a core part of their identity. They're heavily armored characters with some white magic/holy stuff that usually have a Cover effect. Paladins are that in this game as well.

currently vs when PLD was 1st implemented. (which is where my complaint was directed at. but if i lacked clarity on that, thats my mistake.) As for break, i didnt see it as a core ability, so much as something thats appeared a few times for actions outside of holy magic, but instead PLD gained brand new weapon skills, and had no native cures/protect. along with the ability Cover being different from any offline FF. Obviously being inspired by FF11s version of Cover. The point of the argument wasnt which abilities each job should have. It was how accurate have the devs made the jobs, and how much leeway have the creators taken before, w/o thinking "We cant do X because the job did something else instead before." They clearly make some changes, which is something FF as a series has always done.

9. Warriors are almost entirely inconsistent throughout the series, so any complaints about Warriors not lining up is pretty silly.

The complaints werent directed at WARs lack of identity, but the fact the identity was taken from another jobs core identity. Such as MNK having the highest HP. Then when i said it was "the healing tank" it made no sense based on foresight/hindsight on the other tanks lack of identity. For those who can fight on the front line, BLU and RDM output the highest healing, followed by PLD. Then you can make arguments for jobs like DRKs absorbs, or MNKs chakra. (depending on the game, MNK can out heal PLD) but WAR? Neither FFXI WAR, nor other versions of Berserker/viking were known for being their healing, so why was this identity given to WAR? I have no issue with WAR having heals in a vacuum. I have an issue that this identity was taken from another job which already had this identity.

10. Monks could certainly have been a tank. Again, jobs can only be one role, so you're going to have to focus things a bit. Monks are still melee fighters with a mix of physical prowess and some supernatural chi effects, nothing really in violation of that. They don't "need" to avoid having gear, because this isn't even the first FF where they use gear, and it wasn't the last either.

It may not be the 1st nor last, but the same logic applies to BLU. The last FF to have enemy magic wasnt XIs BLU, nor was XIs BLU the 1st. Inconsistent logic.
Im not saying MNk had to be this identity. Im saying if you want to argue about how its ok for MNK to be different from the original, then its ok for BLU to be different from the original.

11. Dragoon's need more than just Jump. That's, again, kind of a basic starting point. You can't have them just jump and nothing else, much like you can't have a job just use the same one move over and over again without any change. It's why they don't just Jump in Explorers either, and it was on a cooldown there as well.

I understand this, im fairly certain everyone understands this. I doubt theres anyone who doesnt understand this. Now apply the same logic to BLU...

12. FF doesn't have shield spells really. The closest you can have to a Shield spell is Bubble, which isn't a White Magic spell traditionally, it's Green or Arcane. I suppose that once in 4HoL it was a White Magic spell, but 4HoL in general is rather weird, and Bubble still does not work like the shield spells a Scholar uses. White Mages in this game are still healers with some damage effects, nothing in violation of that. As for using elements other than Holy this isn't the first time White Mages have used those elements. Wind is used by them in FFIII, Water is used by them in Explorers, Earth is used by them in Mobius. So in short, nothing in violation.

I clearly didnt phrase this correctly, so this is my mistake. Im using the phrase "Shield" to mean mitigation, and not literal temporary HP. (Which BTW Stoneskin was, nor was this the 1st FF to use stoneskin) I meant the spells of Protect and Shell. They could be used similar to how they are used in PvP, for raid wide dmg reduction. Which can stack with temp HP shields. Which would have fixed the problem of them being seen as the "pure healer" in the prior expansions.

13. FFXIV doesn't have elemental weaknesses, and thus they had to give Black Mages some sort of theme. As is it's about balancing Fire/Ice which are two of the main three elements of a Black Mage. It's still a magic DPS all about blasting down enemies, not really any issues.

Purely opinion, that I disagree with. Spending time trying to figure out weaknesses was part of its fun, just as hunting down BLU spells was part of BLUs fun.

14. Scholar is not remotely consistent. FFIII is different from FFXI is different from FFTA2, and those are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head, may be another one. Because of TA2 you can't even point at balancing White and Black as a theme, because in TA2 it just does "every unit on the field gets hit with X" effects. Much like Warrior it isn't really much in the way of themes to call consistent or not.

I'll agree for the most part. I never played FFTA2. And I was quite upset at how different SCH was in XI, compared to 3. But I accepted it for the sake of keeping it balanced/usable in parties.

15. Honestly? Summoner I agree with. As I said earlier, I think they should have done something different. I have an idea for Summoner that I feel would be slow and steady and work better. But I don't agree with "all AoE", as Summoners do have single target effects. I don't think that you could have a painfully slow job or painfully expensive one either, that's simply bad game design in an MMO. But I don't want to ramble about my idea of what a good Summoner would be, just suffice to say I don't quite agree with your idea. As for healing that's inconsistent in terms of presence, I wouldn't argue it's a core trait myself.

I dont think you know what my idea really is, as I never said how it functions. I just stated the absolute skin deep basic identity. Im well aware that an identity need to be made to actually function in both trash pulls, and boss encounters. I also dont think its unreasonable to give the SMN single target attacks. But there technically is 0 reason to give them single target attacks. (unless you bring in CC as part of basic gameplay)

You're committing a logical fallacy when you try and say "well X did it so Y should too". If your argument is "jobs shouldn't be consistent with past iterations" then you're welcome to that, but that isn't something I agree with.

Im not saying that. Im saying that the logic of "BLU needs to remain as close to the FFXI identity as possible" isnt actually how they feel about all the jobs. Thats self explanatory. You and I just established they have made jobs different before. It makes no sense BLU is the only job with that requirement, but no other has it. Obviously theres no reason BLU has to be X% identical to a certain perceived identity. So the question now is, why was BLU the exception to this rule they claimed existed? They dont feel all jobs need to be upheld to this rule, and thats all I am ever saying. If they want to make different identities, thats their choice to make, even if I disagree with them. But if they are going to pretend there is a requirement for jobs to match players perceived identities of jobs, im going to call BS on it. I say there's an alternative reason, and based on what the leaker said, the current iteration of BLU wasnt what they originally saw in BLU. Heck, they even gave BLU summon abilities. Thats stepping on SMN identity, while never having been a BLU identity.

17. Blue Mage is not specifically XI's version, so I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It's different from past versions while still retaining the core identity, a mage who learns spells from monsters in a manner different from other jobs. If you just used the current Blue Mage and let it join Duty Finder like anyone else you'd have a mess. As is it's doing its own thing without throwing balance under the bus. If you want to suggest just letting it join parties as is (add some levels and a couple spells or whatever) with zero restrictions then go ahead, but that's just a huge problem.

I mean a job that learns spells by seeing them (not getting hit by them), equips them into slots, only had a CHANCE to learn the ability, rather than guaranteed like prior FFs, and can be any of the 3 roles based on spells equipped.
These ONLY existed in XI, and no where else. Half of the reasons they said BLU couldnt be a real job, were because of these 4 things. They didnt have to make spells be a % chance to learn, to which they claimed it wouldnt be fair for BLUs to be required to have their spells before a raid fight, since they could be really hard to go learn... THAT NEVER HAD TO BE A THING, NOR WAS IT A BLU IDENTITY! The closest thing, was BLUs could melee, to make up for a lack of spells, to do acceptable dmg, until they had useful spells. Games like 6, where BLU werent really a melee, was because Strago started off with his basic BLU spells, along with being able to use normal black and white magic like everyone else. They could have easily made basic WSs as filler attacks, until they gained the better DPS spells. (Again skin deep explanation, id have to go into far more detail how to balance it, and make it fun to play at the same time)

18. In short, a lot of your complaints seem to be treating it like what needs to happen is rigid 100% adherence to past games, when what I'm talking about is more along the lines of a short two sentence description of the jobs key features that you can use to look at past games and say "these all fit". Coupled with that you keep insisting on a logical fallacy and seem to think that the game system should be built around the jobs, instead of the other way around. The jobs in FFT aren't 100% the same as they were previously, but they worked within the system and found unique expressions that still fit the core theme while being expressed differently because it was a new system.

Im not saying that the jobs have to adhere to this rule, If anything, Im saying what you just finished off with, but saying it applies to BLU too. You're the one who's claiming BLU cant do it too.

Classic FFs didnt have pure trinity roles. So if you can look at a job, and say, "here are the roles it can fit into, while keeping the aesthetic, and general identity, with some alterations for the sake of being FFXIVs version/flavor." then you can do it for BLU too.

RDM could have easily been a melee mage, a caster DPS, melee Healer, and Caster healer. And to some degree, a tank too. (looking at FFXI for an example if needed)
Caster DPS is not the identity of RDM, but giving it a basic heal, rez, and a melee skill, suddenly its "good enough", and I agree. its good enough, even if its not what old RDM was.
BLU could have been all 3 roles, with the only one coming off as odd, would probably have been healer. Now as the expansions have changed tanking and healing, I would like to correct that to DPS only, as a BLU tank and Healer would be far too complex for what the devs currently have in mind for tanks/healers.
The current version of BLU is "mostly" fine. With very minor adjustments to balance, it could have been a caster DPS for normal parties. But now that they added mimicry, they doubled down on not letting BLU break out of being a limited job.
If not letting it do all 3 roles, or not letting it insta death a boss is breaking its identity, then we're back to disagreeing on whats BLUs identity.

(also, consider this a win in the argument for yourself, as I can no longer reply back on the forums in the morning. And can no longer defend my views to any additional comments. But do feel free to comment. I'll still read them, even if If I cant reply, or disagree with them. (or agree, in the off chance im convinced otherwise.))

[MirronTulaxia]

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1. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque" is the fallacy you are making. You are saying that because other jobs are not true to the series (a claim I don't even agree with) that it's fine if Blue Mage is not. Also of course different people define things differently. It goes without saying that SE for instance views Blue Mage as a legitimate Blue Mage and the other jobs the same way, while for others that won't be the case. The important part is to see how accurately the definitions one comes up with hold up under scrutiny. My definitions work just fine for the most part, though I'll grant that in this instance I've kind of hastily thrown them together as opposed to sitting down and defining them. What I'm basically looking at is consistent patterns.

2. The way a job plays out is somewhat dependent on how the system is set up, yes. Explorers does the same thing. Arguably XII does it with how it cut White Magic up, along with other Ivalice games. That doesn't mean those jobs are not proper representations of the job. Also four White Mages in FFI doesn't somehow change their role, all of them are ultimately the same job. The issue with Blue isn't just trying to wedge it into a specific role (though most of the jobs are basically a DPS variant, and the Healers are either consistently healers (White Mage) or basically established in this game), but that in order to make it fit into the system the same way the other jobs are you inevitably have to break some of its past consistency.

3. You described Blue Mages as being "melee mages". As there isn't a melee mage role in this game then it simply can't fill that role. It's pretty straight forward. As for the rest I'm not totally sure what you're going on about as it's kind of a huge aside. My point was that Blue Mages are not especially "melee" themed. But let's go through the games some.

In FFV, the first one with Blue Mages, they had a -8 Strength modifier. For reference White Mages had -7, Black Mages -9, and Red Mages +6. Melee mage? No, not especially. Strago has 28 Strength by default in FFVI. In terms of Strength the only person I saw with lower was Relm. Mog/Celes/Relm, the other three "mage-like" figures all have higher Strength. Again, melee mage? No, not really. I could mind you go through and compare Stamina/defenses but I don't expect that to pan out much better. Ignoring that Quistis only really has access to Blue Magic as a limit break, she's still in the bottom half of strength as far as the main group goes, with Squall, Rinoa, and Zell beating her overall. Quina is the first one of these examples that actually seems to be relatively better than other mages to a noteworthy extent, as her default max is 56 compared to Freya at 58 and Garnet/Eiko at 52 at the next lowest. Given that Quina has completely random damage though this is extremely arguable in terms of being meaningful. FFX's stats are kind of a mess to tackle so I'll set it aside, not even getting into the fact that Kimahri, much like Quistis, only has it as a Limit, making it a hard claim to call him a proper Blue Mage given he can't rely on it. Blue Mages in XI certainly stand out as far as melee potential goes, but they're hyper flexible in general. I wouldn't say they benefit from being melee in particular more than ranged and you can build them to be either or a number of other things.

Past that you're getting into spinoff territory. TA/TA2 you would have more of a case, their WA growth is roughly on par with Red Mages, which is roughly on par with Speedy Attacker kind of jobs like Ninja or Archer. Honestly just comparing stats Blue Mages seem like kind of ridiculous juggernauts in those games, probably owing to the difficulty of learning magic. Gun Mages round out the middle of the road kind of Blue Mage appearances. Outside of that we have Explorers where they're able to do anything.

In short TA/TA2/X-2 have roughly midtier stats, FFV/VI/VIII/IX they're really not any better at melee than most (Quina, being completely random, is unreliable, so at least for me I wouldn't put her in the front row), and XI/E are very broad and flexible beyond the midtier category I would argue. If you really want to argue Blue Mages are melee mages (post 148, sentence five) you have your work cut out for you.

4. To the best of my knowledge there isn't any game you can give a Dragoon Provoke. The only game where theoretically it would be possible (FFD) Dragoons are on Light, Dark Knight Dark, so you can't cross skills that way. FFV doesn't have Provoke after all. I suppose you could do that in FFXI, but I don't think you'd have much success with Dragoons as a tank outside of any others, and the way subjobs work in that game you could give any job Provoke so it's kind of moot for Dragoon in particular.

5. None of what I said was semantics here. Just throwing out a broad "that's semantics" is meaningless if you aren't going to properly define it.

6. As I said, Jump is sometimes used as a fast move, not a long delayed jump. Not even getting into IX where in Trance you can do damage more regularly while in the air. Whether you want to count those moves as Jump is ultimately a matter of opinion. To me I don't define Jump as strictly being a long winded attack where you can't get hit before execution. It hasn't been that way since FFVII.

7. Summoners are better than Black Mages in terms of raw damage. Whether it's single target or AoE, Summons are in general more effective. Summons are just extremely expensive, and it's generally somewhat wasteful to just spam summons on a single opponent, especially if the Summoner has other options. But the point is simply that they're more powerful than Black Mages and will hit the cap faster assuming relatively parity in terms of the spells used. But yes, what a Summoner or Black Mage does specifically can vary from game to game.

8. Changing how Cover works, or giving Paladins new weaponskills, or whatever else you want to argue, does not inherently break what a Paladin is though. That's the crux of the argument. You can fit Blue Mage into the same system as everyone else. And then you are breaking part of the identity of Blue Mages.

9. As Warrior does specifically self-healing comparing it to jobs that use magic (which lets it heal others) is somewhat unfair, they aren't the same thing. There is a huge difference between only targeting yourself and being able to target others. As for Monks having the highest HP this isn't a constant thing and is very dependent on the game. Tifa, for instance has midtier HP and Vitality, so she's not really a tank. Ursula, another Monk, has lower HP than a Machinist effectively (Luca), not even getting into other characters in TAY. And, again, Monk is not a Tank. Could Monk have been a tank? Sure. There are plenty of arguments for that. But there isn't anything about Warrior as a Tank that causes any problems (and is an entire aside as you're going after what Warrior does, not how it violates past games, which was the entire point of that long tangent).

10. Monks aren't necessarily different from how they are throughout the series. There are mostly two styles of Monks as opposed to only one, one of them being more quick combo heavy and the other the tankier high HP kind. While we can argue about which one should be the "true" Monk, I wouldn't really say there is anything wrong with having both. XIV went with the former style, but it could have gone with the latter. And none of my arguments with regards to Blue Mage have anything to do with XI, you keep bringing it up but it's ultimately not important to my case. My argument for Blue Mage applies to every single instance of it, not just XI specifically.

11. Given that at no point I have suggested Blue Mage should only use one move this is kind of irrelevant. You're demonstrating a lack of understanding as to what my point is.

12. No, this is only the second FF to use Stoneskin, and it's not an exclusive ability of White Mages in that game either so it's kind of irrelevant. It certainly does not make White Mages "shield mages" like Scholars. Though even then I'm not even sure what this whole tangent is about. In the end there isn't anything about how White Mages are depicted in XIV that somehow conflicts with it. And certainly adding "temporary HP" effects wouldn't really help make it fit more. As for damage reduction I wouldn't consider that specifically to be important, though I would say being broadly defensive is.

13. Whether you find it fun or not is irrelevant. FFXIV does not have elemental weaknesses. As the jobs should be built around how the system works and not vice verse then you need to find something for Black Mages. I don't find having specifically elemental spells to be key to Black Mages, as not all FFs have elemental weakness as a major thing (such as, say, XIV). Black Mages are about casting the spells that make the people fall down.

14. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...ar_(Tactics_A2) is how Scholars in TA2 work. As you can see they're basically like indiscriminate Summoners. To use an FFIX example, all of their spells just about are Doomsday, just with different elements. The long and the short of it is Scholars are not really consistent barring "has a book".

15. Summons have single target summons though. If nothing else Chocobo and Sylph usually are, and there are other single target summons than those two. Being single target, to me, doesn't violate what Summoners should be. The key trait isn't "Area of Effect" but "meaningful boom" to be somewhat silly.

16. Again, nothing about Blue Mage as it is requires XI specifically. You've even acknowledged it doesn't work like XI's Blue Mage. So I don't know why you keep pointing to XI as the reason things are the way they are. A leaker seeing different traits than what we have now doesn't mean much of anything. Both in that we can't say for sure that they were being honest, and secondly that trying different ideas doesn't inherently mean much of anything. As for Blue Mages using summon moves, Summons are simply big monsters. There isn't any reason they shouldn't be able to.

17. FFVI Strago has to actually see the spells in order to learn them, not being struck by them. This is actually a noteworthy feature as Blind impacts learning the spell. So it's not an XI unique trait. Equipping them into slots is also a trait of Final Fantasy Explorers Blue Mage, so it's again, not a unique to XI trait. FFT is the first one that has percentage based learning. While not specifically tied to Blue Magic the concept is the same, so it's again not unique to XI. And Explorers lets Blue Mages be any role. They don't specifically have roles the same way XIV does, but they do acknowledge them, and Blue are the only ones that can be any of the four roles (basic three and Booster). So in short, all of the things you're saying are specific to FFXI can be found in other games, and some of them predate XI heavily.

18. As I said, even if we agree that the other jobs have violated what they should be (I don't), doing that with Blue does not make it any better. And a key part of what makes Blue what it is requires it learn spells in a method different from the other abilities in their respective games. Once you go to "levels and quests alone aren't how you learn abilities" you've got a mess of a job because you can't possibly use that in a balanced fashion with the rest of the game. If you'd like to propose something feel free.

19. You are welcome to post on GFAQs on the matter where I would likely see it.

[BarretOblivion]

To me, new job better be JUST heals. No DPS next expansion, one new job.
Why?
WE NEED REWORKS!
Healers need to be seriously looked at gameplay wise.
Tanks need to be seriously looked at gameplay wise.
MNK & BRD need reworks.

[Cled-cat]

My dream would be Geomancer as a Lifesteal/barrier healer that has a higher focus on DPSing to heal and create barriers. I don’t think the devs have either the guts or the imagination to implement an interesting take on a Healer like that though so it’ll likely be added as a DPS or a clone of old Nature themed WHM if its added at all. Feels bad to have such a pessimistic view on the devs but they’ve done nothing to inspire much hope for a new healer or the existing ones...

[Side-Eye]

Holy crap, people, calm down. If posts get any longer we're gonna need to download them on Kindle!

[BasicBlake]

For as much as people hate on the concept of time magic in 14, we are currently playing through Time Magic the expansion.

[Billythepancake]

For as much as people hate on the concept of time magic in 14, we are currently playing through Time Magic the expansion.

From what I understand, people don't hate time magic, what they hate is that AST had it's time magic stripped away from it and then having that be the excuse for having a time mage.

[MirronTulaxia]

From what I understand, people don't hate time magic, what they hate is that AST had it's time magic stripped away from it and then having that be the excuse for having a time mage.

I mean, I took the removal of time magic as being indicative of them trying to streamline Astro so it fits more with the core identity it has, that of divination and fate manipulation, along with the star bit. It may open things up for Time Mage, much like the changes to White Mage open things up for Geomancer, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're just changes that make sense for solidifying the jobs a bit more. If those changes were made to let new jobs fit in theme wise I'd blame it on the people who kept saying "Well White Mage/Astrologian are just Geomancer/Time Mage", as it would just be responding to those (false) complaints.