Please make Blue Mage a normal job

[Shougun]

I never said those things were issues in themselves, but they are all similarities to Red Mage, including it's aesthetic and 'job fantasy'.
There's a lot of similarities, and I think, even if we still hadn't had any sign of Blue Mage in XIV yet, that such a job build, with the style it currently has, would be too similar to Red Mage to consider.

If it had an entirely different aesthetic, and was perhaps even a different role such as a Tank, then I'd be for it. In it's current form, I wouldn't like to see it as a regular job as a caster DPS.

Before we had GNB I thought blue mage tank would have been awesome. . . Back when we had stances I thought Immortal Lion and Azure Eye could be their defensive and offensive modes :3.

Personally I see normal blue, in the current state of the game, being in an offensive support role where when the offensive support fails it translates smoothly into more damage. For example bad breath in most basic terms is in effect a holy from white mage, blue mage being able to disrupt the enemy to support the team (dealing red mage / dancer levels of damage); however, they'd have a mechanic that any debuff that fails to connect (immune / too many debuffs on the monster) turns into a general stacking blue mage corruption debuff that their kit will work around as well (also the general debuff would have a different bit more friendly timer- good for boss fights, and may be applied via other mechanics that don't relate to a failing immunity).

In simple terms it would be akin to fester on summoner, except blue mage would have like 8 debuffs on trash instead of 2 and 8 stacks of 1 debuff on a boss. The blue mage specific debuff would deal more damage with damage related mechanics, such that blue mage gains damage as they loose their support benefits (boss ignoring most offensive support, enfeebles, of course). Having multiple mechanics that could interact, with the ultimate but not first step being a consumption of stacks that fuel their more ancient and wacky blue magic spells. So you could give blue mage pretty much exactly white wind (I would even say buff it, like your hp and a minimum of 300 potency aoe cure) but it would cost them their damage opportunity (which means a blue mage would only use it in emergency situations, like Paladin with Clemency).

Due to the carnival vibe I believe the mechanics of the job revolving around acts and reveals, game show host / ring leader on the battle field. Many of the wacky blue mage spells could translate into normal content, and some could translate 'partially' well. Like for example you might have doom flat out kill trash at some large % health, during the doom countdown the monster takes more damage (and refunds some of the cooldown / cost based on life remaining before death effect activated or if it's killed before doom finished then even more of a refund, quite a bit longer cooldown / cost if it succeeds), and if doom finishes and can't kill the monster it'll then deal massive damage instead (so awesome on bosses).

It could. But then BLU is taking up the resources and 'space' of two jobs, a full job (of which we only have 3-4 left) AND the extra stuff that makes it a Limited Job.

We could, for example, get Chemist, Geomancer, Mystic Knight and another phys ranged job in the next two expansions.
Or they could make BLU a normal job, and lose one of those four new jobs....

It would of course take more resources to have blue be both limited and normal; however, I would argue it would not take two jobs- it would be more like 1 1/2, because you could use much of the limited resources to build the normal portion.

It's a cup half full half empty thing but you can picture it as well that blue mage is currently one of the easiest normal jobs to implement right now. Much of what normal blue needs already exists, it even has story quests. You may add an extra reward or another side quest or something but much of normal blue could simply saddle up next to limited.

This is actually why I suggested what they could do, and should tell people if they're going to do it, is make a limited job each expansion, adding content to it as they go, and then in the end of that expansion cycle make it go from limited to advanced. This could be the way they go back to three jobs, sort of, per expansion without having to put three up front.

4.5 -> Blue limited
5.0 - 5.5 -> Blue gains more content and matches the current level of our jobs
5.5a/b - > New limited job
5.55 -> Blue becomes 'advanced' (gains normal utility)

As they've already made many resources for the job at the point that they get close to our actual cap, the cost of making them normal goes down significantly (of course it'll still be there, got to balance it).

Like I said obviously not free, but if we're arguing it'll cost to make it a job at least we could agree (?) that it'll likely cost a lot less as many of the quests, mechanics, art, and general lore can be used as a foundation.