Suggesting Ideas for Blue Mage with feedback & Removing Limited Job Status

[SpiralMask]

No, I meant more in terms of the practical, back-end coding issue. For a four-man dungeon, for example, the Duty Finder is coded to find one tank, one healer, and two DPS. But the game always considers BLU a DPS, even if you mimic a tank or a healer. Therefore, with the current actual coding of the Duty Finder, it would only ever be possible for BLU to queue via DF as a DPS--the Duty Finder just isn't set up to recognize BLU as a tank or healer, no matter what skills you have set or what you have mimic'd. This means that if BLU was allowed to use DF, you'd only ever be able to go as a DPS, which does suck some of the fun out of the class--part of BLU's appeal is being able to do all three roles.

In order to fix this issue, Square would either have to completely recode how aetherial mimicry works so that the game would actually recognize a BLU in tank stance as a tank or in heal stance as a healer, or they'd have to complete rewrite the way the Duty Finder works to allow BLU to select a specific role (tank, healer, or DPS) before queuing. Either possibility seems highly unlikely to me at this point.

However, even if the coding can't be fixed, allowing BLU to DF-queue as a DPS with a DPS-specific set of skills should still happen. If you just block the instant-kill skills from BLU, it would function exactly the same as any other DPS in average DF stuff without needing any real tweaks. The only reason I can see for this not happening yet is that Square just doesn't have the resources to actually balance another DPS class right now.

along with snipping the death skills for DF, moving white wind from %hp-based to a flat potency like other heals would help in any case so you dont have a DPS as the defacto best healer in the game, and a great many of the "OP" status effects (deep freeze, petrify, long-duration paralyze, etc) could be either put on a cooldown like the stun-kick role action, as a charge-based skill with a cooldown (i'd argue that loom needs this regardless), increased mana costs to prevent spamming, or reduced in duration for basic balance/encounter design allowances so the BLU isnt locking down whole packs through dungeons or skipping/breaking mechanics and whatnot (though in any case the problem of immunities/resistance buildup and the skills' overall limited usefulness in FF14's combat system remains, since most later-end monsters and bosses would likely be immune to everything but interrupts and possibly stuns anyway)